Author's note: This story, as mentioned in the summary, is set in the same world as my story "The Parallel", and its plot is consequent upon the events of that story. This doesn't mean, of course, that I expect everyone who reads this story to have read that one, or that I don't seek to make what follows perfectly comprehensible to those who haven't. Still, I would like to remind everyone that the original story is out there, and that acquainting or re-acquainting oneself with it would doubtless make the reading of this one a richer and more rewarding experience. (Hint, hint.)

Disclaimer: What I said last time pretty much stands, I think.

My name is Anifal-Mekelial-Worrann.

My fellow members of the Morph Force believe that we ought to begin all our testimonies with such statements. It is comforting, they say, to know the name of the person whose experiences you are about to share. And it is, apparently, a literary tradition on Earth; both Prince Josh and Richard have alluded, in this connection, to a certain hunter of marine beasts who began his memoirs by inviting his readers to call him Ishmael.

So, then, my name is Anifal-Mekelial-Worrann. But what does this mean? First and foremost, it means that I am not human. I am an Andalite, bearing an Andalite name – a name given to me as I stood, shaky on my four legs, beneath the crimson sky of a world many hundreds of light-years from Earth.

But, though I am not a native of Earth, yet I am living on Earth as I write this, nor do I expect soon to return to my native world. Indeed, I question whether I would return even if I could; Earth is my battlefield, now, and so it shall remain until the Yeerks who threaten it are defeated. For how could I, having defended the humans so long from the malevolent slugs who seek to steal and control their very bodies, lower my tail and fly for home while the conflict yet raged? No, I shall continue to fight here, alongside the four young humans – Prince Josh, his sister Elly, Abby whom he has long courted, and their poorer neighbor Richard – to whom my late commander, War-Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, gave the morphing power just before his death.

Of course, because my friends are humans rather than Andalites, we do not fight in the ordinary fashion, with tail-blades and beam weapons. My friends do not have tails, let alone tail-blades, and they and their loved ones would be in great peril if they appeared in the Yeerk pool with shredders blazing. Ours is of necessity a more subtle warfare, and relies above all on the marvelous power of morphing – the ability to become any creature we have touched, and to remain in that form for as much as two hours. It is not lawful for any non-Andalite to have this power, but Prince Josh and the others have used it so well, and to such effect, that I can only admire Prince Elfangor's wisdom in choosing to die a criminal.

It remains true, however, that Earth is an alien world, and that, though my human friends and I can see the same truths, and cherish and defend the same ideals, there are some moods of theirs that I suppose I shall never be able to enter into. A case in point is their humor – and, in particular, that form of it practiced by the human artisan known as "Monty Python".

«All right,» I said to Prince Josh and Abby and Elly, as I stood, in spider morph, on the arm of a chair in the den of Abby's dwelling. (I should have preferred to be in my natural form, but it would have created difficulties if Abby's grandmother should glance into the room and see an Andalite watching her primitive televisual device.) «I have come to understand, I think, what the general purpose is for which humans create humor. Every sentient being desires things to be rational and harmonious, yet life presents us all with much that seems absurd or discordant. Each race, then, must find some way of rendering this tolerable, and your way – which is, I readily admit, far from the worst – is to artfully exaggerate the absurdities of life and the logical lapses of your fellows until their very incongruity becomes pleasurable. All that is clear enough. But how is this purpose served by portraying a group of giant warriors who desire shrubberies and torment others by saying Nee?»

I do not know why this question should have caused Elly to dissolve into giggles. Perhaps the film had put her in a generally humorous mood, so that even the most sensible comments seemed incongruous. Or perhaps sense itself seems incongruous after so much absurdity.

Prince Josh, meanwhile, put a hand to his chin and stroked it thoughtfully. "Let's see," he said. "Wit and its relation to the unconscious, as illustrated by the Knights Who Say Nee. I don't suppose you'd buy the notion that they're a devastating satire on modern consumerism?"

Abby turned to him, and wrinkled the flesh on her forehead. "They are?"

"I'm sure there's an English professor somewhere who's said so," Prince Josh replied. "But that's not the question. The question is, will Anifal buy it?"

«If you mean, do I find the suggestion compelling,» I said, «I must answer in the negative. The Nee-saying warriors do not express recognizable consumerist principles in an inappropriate fashion; they merely demand that King Arthur bring them a shrubbery, without having even a funny reason for doing so.»

"Yes, but Anifal," said Abby, exhaling heavily as she spoke, "that's what is funny about them. Like you said, absurdity. When people do things without having a reason, it's absurd, and the absurdity makes it funny. Isn't that obvious?"

«On a four-moon night, a bloody hoofprint gleamed,» I said.

"What?" Abby demanded.

«Why are you not laughing?» I said. «I have just quoted the first line of the Lay of Menelmacar when I had no reason to do so. If what you have said is true, that should make me at least as funny as the Warriors Who Say Nee.»

From Elly's point of view, it seemed that it had; her convulsions of giggling, which had begun to subside, renewed themselves at this point, and I began to be concerned for the integrity of her breathing mechanism. Abby, however, was evidently less amused; she turned to Prince Josh with an exaggeratedly plaintive expression, and inquired whether he "really thought it was fair of him to make her put up with this".

"Fair of me?" Prince Josh repeated. "What am I doing to you?"

"Oh, come on, Josh," said Abby. "You think Anifal would be here if you hadn't told him that he needed to learn about this 'cornerstone of human culture'? Any of the rest of us he would have ignored, but you're his prince, don't you know. And so now I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life listening to him talk about how irrational it is for witches to be made of wood."

«No, you won't,» I said. «I understood that scene. There are plenty of Andalites who fancy themselves very logical though they are really nothing of the sort, and Bedivere is a quite appropriate and skillful exaggeration of these – an admirable conception, in fact. But cleverness in one aspect of an artifice hardly compensates for incoherency in another.»

"Oh!" said Abby, her mouth-sounds becoming curiously full and orotund. "Oh, incoherency! I say, we are grand, aren't we? Pardon me, Prince Joshua, I'm off to play the grand piano!"

«Do you play the piano, Abby?» I said, surprised. «I knew you sang, but I had not realized…»

"Oh, for the love of…"

"Abby, let me try," Elly interposed, her voice faint from the effort of laughter, but still quite steady. "Anifal, suppose you think of it not as humor itself, but as part of that place in the human mind that humor comes from. I mean, you said every race has its own way of dealing with absurdity, right?"

«Naturally,» I said.

"And each race picks its way based on something basic in the way it thinks, doesn't it?"

«I suppose so, yes.»

"So if we choose to exaggerate the silliness in things, it's because we naturally like silliness," Elly said. "And if we like it, of course we'll put it in our movies – and especially our humorous movies – even if there's nothing especially clever about it. There doesn't need to be; the silliness by itself will make us happy enough."

I considered this. «Then it is like the rule about putting a female character in every story?» I said. «One does it, not because artistry requires it, but because male humans will enjoy looking at the female?»

The pinkness of Elly's cheeks deepened slightly, as she tells me is wont to happen, now and then, to female humans of her temperament. "Well… yeah," she said. "Yeah, I guess it's a little like that."

«I see,» I said. «In that case, I suppose I can scarcely criticize it. Diversity is the glory of the galaxy, and uniquely human delights are not less worthy because my people cannot share them. I only hope that I have not spoiled your enjoyment of the scene by pointing out its objective logical inadequacy.»

"Unbelievable," Abby muttered.

Prince Josh reached out and stroked her long, red-brown hair. "Oh, give Anifal a break, Abby," he said. "He's doing the best he can, I'm sure. And I might remind you that you're the one who raised the subject of this movie during our last mission in the first place."

"Well, duh," said Abby. "We were in swallow morph, and you were asking about our air-speed velocity. What did you expect me to do? It didn't mean I was expecting five hours of Andalite philosophy."

"Ha-ha!" came an unexpected voice from behind us. The four of us all rotated our bodies sharply (since none of us, at that moment, had stalk eyes), and saw what appeared to be a male Andalite – though of no regional sub-lineage that I could plausibly recognize – with a white sheet draped around his upper body, and a woven ring of leaves encircling the eyestalks atop his head.

"Nobody expects Andalite philosophy!" said this apparition – speaking, strangely enough, not in thought-speak, but in the audible speech of the humans. "Our chief weapon is surprise – and morphing; morphing and surprise. Our two weapons are morphing and surprise – and dialectical materialism. Three!"

"Chester!" Prince Josh hissed through his teeth. "For Pete's sake, have you forgotten there's a war on? You can't go around playing monkey tricks like this!"

The bizarre figure obligingly flickered and vanished, to be replaced by a human youth of nondescript appearance, grinning broadly. I then realized that the image had been a hologram, and that the being behind it was the ancient android who had long been one of our most valued allies.

"Sorry," he said. "Couldn't resist."

Abby cocked her head. "Tell me something, Chester," she said. "What would that first-do-no-harm Chee programming of yours have done if one of us had had a heart attack just now? Or haven't you heard what shock can do to people with high-stress lives like ours?"

Chester shrugged. "If you've lasted this long against the Yeerks, I figure you must be pretty sturdy specimens," he said. "And I don't think Josh needs to get his pants in a wad, either. You can say what you like about Controllers lurking under every rock, but I can't imagine that one's lurking in your grandmother; the Empire picks all its hosts at least partially for physical vigor, and the fine old lady I just snuck past doesn't have enough of that left to interest the meanest izcot."

Prince Josh made a non-committal sound, evidently unconvinced. I thought that wise of him; it has often seemed to me that Chester – who was, of course, originally made as a plaything by the utterly non-violent race of the Pemalites – does not regard our war or the Yeerk peril with all the gravity that it merits.

"Not that it wasn't a pretty dumb sketch, really," Chester continued thoughtfully. "I was in Rome when the Spanish Inquisition was going on, and the one thing no-one ever called it was fanatically loyal to the Pope. Despicably subservient to the secular power, more like."

"I dare say," said Prince Josh. "Now, what was it you…"

"Also, whelks aren't lamellibranchs," Chester added.

"Really? That's a…"

"And Aldebaran is in Taurus, not Sagittarius."

"Chester," said Prince Josh sternly. "Call me an alarmist, but, when you sneak into Abby's house under holographic camouflage instead of waiting to meet us on the way home, the little man in my stomach tells me that you didn't just come to itemize the factual errors of Monty Python. Why don't you just tell us what hideous peril is facing our planet, and get it over with?"

Chester sighed. "If only it were that simple," he said.

Prince Josh frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, just hang on a second," said Chester. "I want you to all be here for this. I brought Richard along, but we split up at the door to try and find you guys faster; hopefully, he'll hear my signal soon and…"

«I'm right here,» said Richard's thought-speak voice, and a tiny insect, of the sort the humans call no-see-ums, flew into the visual range of my spider's eyes and alighted on the chair's arm in front of me.

Chester nodded. "Okay, good," he said. "You and Anifal get yourselves demorphed, then; I'll throw an extended hologram around the room, and then we can go into…" Here he momentarily flickered into another human form, which distinctly resembled that of the movie's Sir Galahad, and finished, "…the whole vexed question of What Is Going On."