When it was my turn, the Gedd's head was thrust beneath the surface of the pool. My sonar found the head quite easily, of course. And I'd been taught how to pinpoint the opening into the head by extending two palps.
It was quite a small entryway. I had to squeeze myself down and work my way slowly inside the ear canal. From there on, it was all by feel. My sonar didn't work, of course. And the smells encountered were unfamiliar, useless.
But then, after what seemed far too long a time, my palps encountered a surface alive with electricity!
The brain. I could feel the activity, the snapping neurons, the arcs of microvoltage between synapses. I had to flatten myself all the way. My palps sought for trenches, gaps, openings around the brain. And I found them. I pushed my body down inside each wrinkle of the brain. Just as I'd been taught to do.
And slowly at first, then faster and faster, I began to make contact! I felt the neurons connecting to me!
Only someone who has done it can understand. It was . . . it was beyond description. Suddenly, I was not just myself, I was something much larger. Where my body ended, a second body began, so that very soon I forgot my own body entirely.
I had arms many times longer than myself. They ended in three-fingered hands that could actually move objects. Lift them, turn them over, set them down in different ways. I had legs that lifted my new body up high. I could move through the air!
Oh! How can I explain it? The power! The joy! The feeling that I had suddenly grown huge, vast, powerful.
No one had told me it would be so wonderful.
And then I felt inside the brain, a place I had not been. A place untouched by my control.
I opened that part of the brain. And in doing so, I opened the Gedd's eyes.
For a long, frozen moment of disbelief, I did not know what was happening. I didn't understand what my brain was receiving.
How could I? How could any Yeerk who has not had a host?
Objects - not felt, not smelled, not reflected on sonar - but seen. It was like a sonar image, but oh, so much more. So much! The data assaulted my brain. I reeled, overwhelmed, unable to understand or accept.
I looked through the Gedd's eyes. I used the Gedd's own brain to filter and interpret the eerie, insane input. And then, slowly, I understood.
I was looking at other Gedds.
I was looking around at the inside of the spacecraft.
I was looking down at my own pool.
I saw movement within the pool and caught a flash of something gray and wet.
I had never before seen one of my own people. I felt like some super-being. Like I was no longer a Yeerk at all. I could see! And in a flash I knew that this one sense was more powerful than every other sense combined. Sight plus powerful limbs! It was inconceivable.
I had to leave the Gedd host and return to the pool.
Afterward I communicated with my friends and siblings. Many of them found the whole experience terrifying. Sickening. Awful.
Not me. From that moment on, I swore that I would do whatever it took, pay any price, to have eyes again.
(The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, by K.A. Applegate)
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