Thus began the diversion. Suddenly doors opened. Heads stuck out and looked and screamed.
People came running down the hall. Most turned around when they saw me and ran the other way.
"Oh, no! Did you see it? Did you see it?"
"It"s a monster!"
"I knew they were doing genetic experiments down in the labs! It"s some kind of freak!"
It would almost have been insulting, if I were sensitive.
But then the door to the right of Aldershot"s room opened. Out stepped a human. He gaped at me for a second, then yelled, "Andalite!"
He gaped one second too long. He yanked out a gun. I snapped my tail forward and he quickly dropped the gun.
"Andalite!" he screamed again, but with extra hatred this time.
Now the guards came boiling out of all three rooms. They jammed into the hallway, too many to move freely. Human guns were being drawn.
And I saw a couple of handheld Yeerk Dracon beam weapons, too.
In a split second they would all start shooting. The lead slugs from the human weapons would be most dangerous. Not just to me, but because they would rip through the walls and might hit innocent people.
"Shoot! Shoot him, you fools, or Visser Three will have us for lunch!" one of the humans roared.
FWAPP!.
I whipped my tail, left to right, a millimeter from slicing open the front row. They backed up, stumbling back into their fellows.
FWAPP!.
I whipped again, but now they were ready to start fighting. And I was seriously outnumbered and worried about innocent humans being hurt.
Obviously, I had not planned the diversion very well.
And that"s when it occurred to me. The one way to keep from getting shot.
8I surrender!"; I cried. 8I want to defect.";
CHAPTER 9.
"What?"
8I wish to defect. I am interested in joining the Yeerks. I would like to become a Controller. Do you have any information on membership? Is there a fee?"; A dozen weapons were leveled at me. From behind me, at that end of the hall I heard other human voices.
"What is going on around this place?"
"Is that a horse?"
"Look at the eyes on its head!"
"Where"s security?"
The leader of the Controllers made a snap decision. He hustled me out of the hallway and into the room where Hewlett Aldershot the Third was sleeping his comatose sleep.
The room was small. Too small for all the guards. There were only five of them now. Much better odds.
"You want to join us?" one of the Controllers asked dubiously.
8Actually, no,"; I said regretfully.
FWAPP!.
I struck and the nearest guard leaped back, plowing into his men. I had about half a second before they"d recover and shoot.
FWAPP! CRASH!.
I shattered the window with my tail blade.
8Here"s a trick I learned from Visser Three!"; I yelled. I ran three steps, ducked my upper body, flattened my stalk eyes, tucked my legs, and flew through the shattered window.
Down I fell!
8allyaaahhhh!"; Too far, way too far, but better than getting shot.
8The window"s open, Prince Jake!"; I cried. 8And the Controllers are--"; WHAM!.
CRUNCH!.
?--distracted."; I landed in a bush that cushioned some of my fall but also tripped me. I rolled and tried to scramble up, but then realized, as ridiculous as it seemed, that I was trapped inside the p.r.i.c.kly, clawing branches of the bush.
Blam! Blam! BlamBlamBlam!
The guards were firing from the window. Bullets tore the branches and slammed into the damp soil all around me.
Human weapons operate on a principle of exploding gases that drive a solid metal pellet along a tube. The tube acts to spin the bullet, thus improving accuracy. It"s no Yeerk Dracon beam, or Andalite Shredder, but it does a very good job of blowing large, messy holes in you.
I needed to get small. Small enough to get away!
I began to morph the mosquito.
8We"re in!"; I heard Prince Jake say. 8Ax, are you okay? We think we hear gunshots, but our hearing in these morphs is fuzzy."; 8ally are correct: You are hearing gunfire,"; I said tersely.
8Are you okay?"; Tobias asked.
8ation really. But I hope to be soon."; If I live that long, I added silently.
I was shrinking rapidly, and now there were sirens wailing at a distance, coming closer.
"Police!" I heard a human voice cry from above. "We can"t get arrested."
"If we let the Andalite escape we"ll get worse than arrested! Keep shooting!"
"I can"t see what I"m shooting at. The bushes. And it"s all in shadow."
I was shrinking faster. Leaves that had seemed quite small now were as big as my face. Branches that were twisted and tiny were growing larger, larger. They no longer trapped me. I could have walked out of the bush, except for the fact that my legs were dwindling even faster than the rest of me.
Someday Andalite scientists will find a way to make the morphing technology totally predictable and logical. But for now it is often erratic, weird, and totally illogical.
Especially when morphing bizarre Earth animals.
My hind legs had finished shrinking when they were still as big as an Earth cat"s legs. Then they began to reverse and grow again. My hind legs thinned, becoming mere sticks, but their length became ridiculous. Longer than the rest of me all together!
My front legs became somewhat shorter stick legs and a third pair grew from my arms.
I was no longer on all fours. I was on all sixes. I was standing on insect legs, yet most of my body was still Andalite. A very small Andalite, but far too large to move around on insect legs.
My stalk eyes crawled forward across my head, down to a point just above my main eyes.
They began to extrude. They grew like some horrible fast-sprouting tree. A long, bare stick that then sprouted new branches: short, stunted, twisted branches. Bulging round pods popped from my head at the base of these hairy sticks--these antennae--and began to move them around.
My main eyes were still functioning, but from the antennae I received a whole onslaught of new sensory input. Temperature! Wind direction! Sound waves from the rustling leaves, from the muddy, far-off voices, and sharp, disturbing sounds from the explosions of gunpowder and the impact thud of ma.s.sive bullets all around me.
I was no longer worried much about the bullets.
I was too small to hit except by the most amazingly unlucky shot. I was less than an inch long and getting smaller.
The dirt looked like a field strewn with boulders. The trunks of the bushes sprouting up from the ground were thicker and taller than any tree on Earth or my planet.
My nostril slits closed and began to twist and push outward. Two stubby, hairy palps appeared, and these immediately began feeding an entirely new set of data to my brain.
Smell! But not smell as an Andalite or human knows it. This was specific, targeted, directed smell. It wasn"t smell that waits pa.s.sively for whatever comes along. The palps were searching the molecules of the breeze, sampling, looking ...
Hungry.
Gossamer wings rose from the melting flesh on my back. My body pinched into three distinct segments: a tiny head, a muscular thorax, and a swollen, vast abdomen. Overlapping armored plates clanked down the bottom of my abdomen.
And yet, through all this, a tiny, shrunken version of my Andalite main eyes continued to function.
I wish they hadn"t. I wish I"d never had to see what happened next.
From my chin, from the place where a human would have had a mouth, it grew. A spear! A needle!
Impossibly long. On the end were tiny, serrated teeth, almost like the teeth of a saw.
Inside the spear it was hollow. It was a straw. A tube for sucking blood.
A retractable sheath grew along with the spear.
A sheath that would help keep the needle sharp.
Blood.
That was my goal. That was my hunger.
Blood!
I fired my gossamer wings and rose, unsteady and wild, upward, upward, to where my palps had located the scent they sought: the sweet scent of exhaled animal breath. The guidepost that pointed the way to food.
CHAPTER 10.
That"s when my eyes stopped working. I was blind for a few seconds as the morph completed. I shrank some more, and suddenly from my forehead popped two bulging compound eyes.
Through them I saw a vision of reality shattered into thousands of tiny pictures. Thousands of tiny pictures, each different from the next, each a fragment of distorted light and eerie colors and nightmarish swirls of energy.
I never lost control of the morph. I mean, I never forgot who I was, or what I was, as sometimes happens in a morph you"re doing for the first time.
So it wasn"t that I lost my mind. It was simply that the hunger of the mosquito was so great, so powerful, so totally clear and forceful, that I felt myself going along with it. Accepting it.
I was flying, and knowing who I was, and yet as the mosquito"s instincts cried, "Blood!
Blood!" I answered, "Yes! Yes!"
Mosquitoes do not fly with the speed and acrobatic genius of a fly. Or with the precision and power of a bird. They fly wildly, blown by chance breezes. The legs dangle long and drag at the air. The wings are underpowered. But the mosquito gets where it"s going.
It seems a harmless insect when you see it. But I have done some research.
Mosquitoes transmit bacteria, viruses, and parasites. They carry the diseases encephalitis, yellow fever, and malaria.
Malaria alone kills two million humans each year. Mosquitoes are the greatest ma.s.s murderers on planet Earth.
8Ax! Ax! Talk to me,"; Prince Jake called, and I realized suddenly that he"d been yelling for some time.
8I am fine,"; I said. 8I have morphed to mosquito."; 8Good,"; he said. 8Look, I know what you"re feeling right now. Don"t fight it. The hunger stops once you bite."; 8Follow the smell,"; Ca.s.sie said.
8That"s carbon dioxide your palps are smelling. It comes off animals, including humans. Go for it."; I rose, hungry, to the open window. But there I was confused. There were many warm, carbon dioxide-emitting creatures.