Chapter 26 (Tobias)

As we all walked along, I started to tune out the conversation, which was mostly just a logistical debate between Marco and the Kelbrid at this point anyway. I looked up at the scarred, blasted Kelbrid moon, hanging high in the sky. That moon had been haunting my thoughts ever since I had first laid eyes on it. I couldn't stop wondering . . .

"What happened up there?" I finally asked.

Zu looked at me, then looked up. The others all followed suit, until all of the Animorphs and all of the Kelbrid were staring up at the desolate brown orb hanging in the sky.

After a moment, Doua said, "That is not a tale for kuldir to hear."

"Why not?" Marco said, curiosity in his tone. "What's the big secret?"

Doua looked angry. "You would not understand such things, kuldir. We have reasons for keeping certain things secret."

"Of course," Marco snapped with savage sarcasm. "You're the high and mighty Kelbrid, and we're just little ignorant kuldir. We couldn't possibly understand anything as complex as shame and guilt."

Leave it to Marco to figure out the real reason why the Kelbrid were so intent on keeping whatever happened on that charred moon a secret.

Doua swept her wings forward menacingly. "Do not pass judgment on what you do not know!"

"Then tell us!" Jake snapped, obviously getting impatient with the whole argument. I was surprised. That was the first thing I had heard him say in the past several hours, at least. To be honest, I hadn’t thought he was even still listening. But perhaps he was as curious about that moon as the rest of us were.

"No," Bahm said. "It is not right. No kuldir has ever known the secret, and we do not intend to change that now."

"Maybe, just maybe, us kuldir might have dark pasts and guilty secrets, too," I said quietly. "Maybe, just maybe, we can understand this one tiny part of each other."

Zu looked doubtful. He seemed to be torn between wanting to believe what we were saying, and what he had always known to be true. Finally, he shook his head. "No, we can't. Not this." He pointed up at the moon. "See that? That is the very reason we don't trust kuldir. That is the reason we must always assume that we do not understand. We thought we could understand kuldir once." He paused for a moment, as if trying to find words. Finally, he simply said, "We were mistaken."

"Sounds a little like an Andalite I heard about once," I said. Ax looked sideways at me.

"This is a familiar story," I clarified. "One guy trusts the wrong people, and then a whole race blames themselves for the results? Seerow did the same thing. And the only reason I'm not citing a human example," I added quickly when I noticed Ax glaring at me, "is because humans have done something like that too many times to count."

"It isn't like that," Vuhl said, finally speaking up. "It wasn't just one person, or just one mistake."

There was a beat of silence as we all waited for Vuhl to go on, and she didn't.

"Come on. Can it really be so dangerous just to tell us?" Marco prodded. "What's the harm?"

"How can you not know the harm of a misunderstanding?" Doua asked disbelievingly.

"How can you be so afraid of misunderstandings that you're never even willing to try to overcome them?" Marco retorted.

"You only say that because-" Doua started, but Bahm held up his hand, silencing her.

"Maybe . . . maybe they're right," Bahm said heavily. As if those were the hardest words he'd ever said. "Maybe this is something we can share. Perhaps even something we should." He looked to Zu. Doua and Vuhl followed suit, looking at Zu. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that Zu was the best one to tell this story. We Animorphs leaned forward to hear, as Zu looked up at the moon.

"The moon is called Lethon," Zu began. "The inhabitants called themselves the Leth. This was a long time ago, when the Kelbrid were still a primitive race. Not even capable of space flight. The Leth, however, were capable of very limited space travel. But they could only reach Kelbri at the closest point in their orbit. So they visited us, once every lunar year.

"What the Leth did not know was that they carried a disease, harmless to them, but deadly to Kelbrid. We did not realize the danger until they were gone, and we began to die. But we survived, and recovered. And then the Leth came again.

"We tried to tell them to leave us alone, but we spoke different languages. They didn't understand why we seemed to hate them, and we didn't understand why they were killing us. They left, and more Kelbrid died of disease. The next year, we strived to learn their language. But it made little difference. The Leth believed that it was our own hatred of them that was killing us, and that we had to learn to accept our differences to survive. Much later, we learned that the Leth were particularly sensitive to strong emotions, so they actually could be killed by negative emotions like hatred and intolerance. And they had simply assumed that we worked the same way.

"But we did not know this at the time. We believed that they were evil, because they were killing us and then trying to blame us for our own deaths. And they believed that we were closed-minded and stupid for not seeing the real reason that we were dying. We could not understand them, and they could not understand us. But it was the Kelbrid who suffered for it.

"Again and again, they came, thinking they were helping us. Many Kelbrid died. But our encounters with the Leth forced us to develop new technologies. Weapons. We still did not understand that the Leth were not malevolent. We invented weapons to fight them.

"We eventually developed an immense pulse laser, inspired by technology that the Leth had. We . . . the Kelbrid of long ago . . . used this weapon to exterminate the Leth."

There was a sharp intake of breath. So that was the big secret. Genocide. No wonder the moon still felt tainted, even after all these years.

We were all silent for a moment or two, taking in the terrible truth. An entire planet, destroyed. A worldwide holocaust. All for a simple misunderstanding.

“That . . . is a terrible tale,” Ax said heavily, breaking the silence. “But, as Tobias mentioned earlier, it is not unique. All races have some terrible shame.”

“It’s more than that,” Zu said slowly, uncertainly. “Ever since the Leth . . . the Kelbrid have been different than they were before. It’s not just that we don’t trust kuldir. It’s almost as if we can’t. As if it’s part of our nature to fear those that are different.”

Suddenly, with a tiny shiver, I realized I knew what Zu was talking about. I recalled my experience morphing Vuhl. I remembered the Kelbrid instincts I had felt. That ingrained fear of the unknown, the overpowering hatred of anything that wasn’t Kelbrid.

“But why . . . “ Marco began, thinking.

But Ax got it. “Evolution,” he said simply. “The Kelbrid that trusted the Leth, those that befriended those that were different, so to speak, were the ones that were most susceptible to the disease. Those Kelbrid were eliminated from the population. The ones that were left-”

“-were the ones that feared difference,” Marco finished. “So now, that fear and hatred is encoded in their very most basic instincts. Almost literally beaten into them after all those years.”

We all fell silent again. It was a lot to take in. The holocaust of Lethon, and then this bizarre twist in the Kelbrid’s own evolution. We all just walked on in silence, thinking. Absorbing the shock.

Before, we had resented the Kelbrid. Understandable, of course, as they had seemed to resent us. But now . . . it wasn‘t fair to hate them, was it? They didn’t really have a choice. They were only following their instincts. Doing what they had evolved to do, being what they were supposed to be. What more could anyone, even a sentient race, do?

But what about Doua and the others? They were defying not only their culture, but their own evolution, their very DNA. How could that be possible?

I looked wonderingly at Vuhl, trying to figure out how she did it, how she fought the instincts that had so easily overpowered me when I‘d morphed her. She felt my gaze, and met my look with her own, unreadable eyes. And I knew, right then, that both of us still had a lot to learn.