<She’s gonna get us Visser Three,> I said. <Remember? That’s what this is about.>
<Careful, Ax,> I reminded him. <It’s … well, it’s worse than you said. Let the Taxxon smell the soil. Just let it dig and eat. Try not to think of us.>
<I will try to keep control of the morph,> said Ax. <As a young cadet, I researched the recorded successes and failures of Taxxon morphing. I once gave a presentation on physiological mechanisms for no-tallssith, the condition of being unable to control a morph.>
<Why didn’t you tell us this before?!> Marco asked.
<The results of my research were not encouraging.>
<Oooookay.>
Ax began to morph at the opening to the tunnel that I had started. Taylor watched with fascination. I was just grossed out.
Andalite features melted into a blue-black pool until nothing was left but an oily slick. It was as if everything Andalite had to be forsaken before the Taxxon could be born.
But then, out of the pool, the beast took shape. Four round, red, jiggling eyes shook in the pool like tiny internal organs. The body grew larger and larger. It was like watching time-lapse photography of a fungus. First it grew out, flat along the floor, then up. It was hideous. The strong, beautiful Andalite body transformed and corrupted.
The bloated worm neared full size.
We waited anxiously, silent, ready.
Ax didn’t move. The big Taxxon just stood there motionless, as if in a trance.
<Hey,> Jake snapped, <let’s get moving.>
<Ax?> Rachel said, more kindly. <Everything all right?> She inched tentatively toward him, the way you’d approach a chained dog you didn’t know.
<Give him a little nudge,> Marco suggested. He sauntered up beside Rachel, toward the big worm, his ape arms dangling loosely. He looked at Ax with exaggerated puzzlement, strolled the length of him, then announced, <It’s a comprehensive system failure. Can’t be fixed on-site. We’ll have to haul this beauty back to the shop.>
<I am okay,> Ax protested, speaking at last. <I have been practicing control. By temporarily triggering Taxxon hibernation, I am able to resist the urge to eat you.>
<Thanks for telling me about hibernation before, Ax-man,> I grumbled.
<I did not understand it until now.>
<Good,> Jake said tersely. <Now dig.>
Before you could blink an eye, Ax shot down the tunnel.
<Okay,> Marco said. <So I was wrong.>
I held my breath, wanting to be sure he wasn’t going to come racing back for a quick lunch. It was a good distance to where Ax was working, farther than you could see. But you could hear — no, you could feel — the sound of digging. A high-pitched, far-off ringing. The sound of teeth scraping dirt. Of dirt being devoured.
The sound sneaked up on you because it was so soft, barely audible. But it filled your head until all you could imagine was the Taxxon digging. And digging. Yard after stinking, slimy yard.
I shook my Andalite head, trying to break the trance. Beads of sweat flew off. I hadn’t realized how hot it was below ground. Four large animals make a cavern oppressive.
“Did you like it, Andalite?” The voice came from the far corner of the chamber where the gigantic steel gas main intersected it. Taylor leaned against the pipe. She was the only one who looked relaxed.
“Well?”
<Did I like what?> I said.
“Being a Taxxon, silly,” she replied. “I bet you did. Some individuals are cut out to be lower life-forms.”
<You’d know about that,> Rachel said angrily. <No living thing is lower than a Yeerk.> A low growl rumbled through her bared fangs.
“You know I’m right,” Taylor said to Rachel. “You know this one is weak.” She gestured at me.
<I’ll show you weak!> Rachel slashed the air.
“You wouldn’t dare. Hurt me and there’s no explosion. You won’t let this opportunity pass. You won’t let emotions get in the way. You Andalite bandits — you’re too much like us.”
Rachel growled and snapped her jaws, but backed away. Taylor’s words hung in my mind. This was a Yeerk plan. Every deadly detail was Yeerk. Mass destruction. No provisions to protect the innocent. That was to be expected, I guess. But we’d jumped on board.
<Is she right?> I said privately to Rachel.
<Are you crazy? The way you live, the things you do? I don’t know anyone stronger. You’re not weak.>
<No, not that. I mean about us being like her. Opportunists of the worse kind.>
Rachel let out a small roar. She rolled her huge head from side to side. <I’m sick and tired of this are-we-doing-the-right-thing, self-doubt crap!> she announced in thought-speak that everyone but Taylor could hear. <The Yeerks are killing people. They’re destroying Earth. Hello! What’s gotten into you guys? If someone starts shooting up your town and you shoot back in self-defense, do you ask if it’s justified?>
Marco was uncharacteristically silent.
Jake paced back and forth, a big cat in a small, confining cage. I moved nearer to Rachel, brushing Jake in the process. He let out a repressed snarl.
<Watch it!>
<What’s wrong with everybody?> Rachel asked me. <Everyone’s falling apart.>
<It could be her,> I said, looking at Taylor with both stalk eyes, keeping my main eyes on Rachel. <She has a way of setting the mood. Or maybe,> I said, <maybe we’re in too deep and we know it.>
<Don’t talk like that. After tonight, it’s going to be different. We’ll fry the Yeerk pool. The balance will tip. We’ll drive them out.> She was getting excited again, the way she does when she talks about the fight. But she sounded a little desperate, too. Like she needed to convince me. And herself.
<Then what?> I said.
<We could be together.> She paused. <All of us, I mean. Do normal stuff.>
<Yeah,> I said. <Rachel, do we know how many Yeerks there really are? On the Andalite home world? Invading other species? What if it’s never over? Sure, maybe we pull this off today. But it doesn’t change our numbers. There are still only six of us. One, two, three, four …>
<Stop it!> she yelled suddenly. <Tobias, I can’t get the image out of my head. The way it will play out tonight. A Yeerk pool full of hosts. Humans and Hork-Bajir. They smell natural gas. They feel it pouring in. They look around, up, confused, puzzled. They start to worry. Panic. The smell gets so strong they can’t breathe and they know … they know natural gas can blow … they run … too late. Suddenly … Ka-boom! A scorching, burning fireball destroys everything it touches. They’re vaporized … Cassie was right …>
<They’re Yeerks,> I said.
<They’re humans, too.>
I thought of all the stories Ax had told us of entire planets enslaved. Of how what couldn’t be enslaved was killed. Of great and peaceful societies destroyed by Yeerks.
A Yeerk was in the corner, not twenty feet away. A creature capable of the greatest evil, cowardly hiding inside a human so that no one would see the threat. How many were there now? Thousands? Fewer? More? Every day there were more human slaves. It was my first thought in the morning and my last thought before I slept.
They’d killed Elfangor, my father. The father I never knew.
The day would come when there would be no one left. An entire planet erased. I couldn’t let that happen.
<They’re Yeerks,> I repeated. <That’s all.>
Rachel rose on hind legs and cautiously lifted the sewer cap just enough to peer out. Standing erect, she was taller than the ceiling. She pushed the cap aside. Jake followed her out with a lightning leap. Marco brought up the rear.
Their time in morph was almost up. They needed to demorph and remorph, and Rachel needed to do a quick check-in at home. I’d been in morph about an hour and a half. Ax’s turn at digging was almost up.
They put the cap partially back and disappeared. It was just Taylor and me underground.
“Your friends have left you,” she observed. “What if they don’t come back?”
; This was part of Taylor’s fun. To play with my head. I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t let her affect me. When she walked slowly up to me, I didn’t move. When she reached out with her real hand and touched the fur just above my shoulders, I didn’t breathe.
“A handsome species,” she complimented, sounding not like a teenage girl, but like a sly, sophisticated Yeerk. “You deserve more than your tradition allows.”
I backed away.
“Your friends don’t understand how powerful we Yeerks are,” she continued. “But I know that you do. We will have no place for your friends in our new society, but you … every comfort you wish would be yours. We could rule together. Join us.”
I jerked away, shocked that I’d let her go on so long. She laughed. A long and confident laugh.
<I thought you were moving toward democracy,> I said quietly.
“Of course we are. Of course we are. But think … democracies need leaders, and laws to protect the citizens. Someone has to make the laws …”
<It will never be me.>
“You deserve more,” she persisted, then grinned, turned, and walked away. It was an odd thing to say. I felt like a doomed mouse, poked and prodded by a clawed cat. I couldn’t respond. I could only look away.
A crescent of light illuminated the chamber. I heard yelping and looked up to see two wolves pawing and pushing at the heavy iron cap. They slid it open and leaped down, landing very hard.
<We wanted to be smaller,> Marco explained privately. <But we have to keep Taxxon-Ax in line, and Yeerk-girl intimidated.>
Jake paced back and forth before the tunnel opening. The new morph allowed him eight paces before he had to turn around. Better than the five in tiger. He was silent for a minute, then, looking at the watch I wore, <Guys, uh, we’ve got a problem. Ax was due back by now. I’ve been calling him, but he doesn’t answer. Did you change plans, Tobias?>
<No.> I raised an arm to silence everyone. We listened. Marco pressed an ear to the side of the tunnel. I could just make out a very faint grating sound, much fainter than before. Maybe it was Andalite hearing. Or maybe Ax was …
<He’s still going at it,> Marco announced. <The boy’s gonna dig to China.>
I took a few steps into the tunnel. <Ax, can you hear me? You have to stop. You’ll die of exhaustion.> There was no reply, thought-speak or otherwise. <He must be fixated. We have to stop him.>
<Just what do you have in mind?> Marco asked.
I looked at Taylor. She sat with her back against the wall and glanced from me to Jake to Marco with casual suspicion. I looked hesitantly at the opening of the tunnel. It wasn’t really large enough for our power morphs.
<I have an idea,> I said. I took off the watch, checked the glow-in-the-dark numbers. Put it around Jake’s right front leg. <Cover me.> I trotted several feet into the tunnel. When I saw, through swiveled stalk eyes, that Jake and Marco had planted themselves in front of the entrance and masked me from Taylor’s view, I demorphed. Then I began to morph again.
Feathers turned to thin skin that stretched tight as an umbrella over wing bones. Blindness banished all trace of light. It had been dark already, but now there was a vision void. A nothingness that made my heart pound.
Then, a new sense. A kind of hearing. The sharpest hearing you’ve ever known. I couldn’t make out everything, but the higher sounds were crystal clear.
Then suddenly, it was more than mere hearing. I could tell exactly where all sounds came from. They formed a picture of my surroundings. So much like sight. So different, too.
I was echolocating. I was a bat.
<Jake, Marco, follow me,> I called. I flapped my thin wings far faster than a hawk ever does and flew easily along the tunnel. The sonic chirps I emitted told me exactly where the sides were. The bat felt at home.
<Ax?>
No answer. I flew a long way, maybe a quarter mile, until I came to something strange. The tunnel became something else, something expanded. A hollowed-out space. A large cavern-room. Like maybe Ax had gone nuts and circled up and down ten or twelve times.
I could hear Ax now. Closer. The high-pitched screeching of Taxxon teeth on dirt and small rocks was almost deafening to bat senses. Extra-loud echolocation was necessary to see over the noise. The tunnel continued on the far side of the chamber. I flapped my wings and flew in.
<Ax, is that you?> My chirps weren’t returning. They were being absorbed. By something soft, something …
WHAP!
I flew into Ax’s backside and slapped to the tunnel floor.
<Ax, stop!> I focused all my energy on that thought-speak command, trying to penetrate his trance. It worked. He stopped digging.
<Cannot go on,> he groaned faintly.
<Darn straight. You’ve got minutes left in morph, Ax-man. Let’s clear out.>
<Too weak. Can … not … can … not move.>
The tunnel had narrowed to barely bigger than the circumference of the Taxxon. Usually a Taxxon’s vigor made its tunnel at least large enough for it to comfortably wiggle out.
<Tobias, what’s going on?> Jake, sounding understandably edgy. <We can’t see anything.>
<Follow the tunnel,> I said shortly. <Ax is stuck. An overeating stupor. He’s dying here with, like, seven minutes left in morph. You have to pull him out.>
<You want us to march straight toward a Taxxon? Whose side are you on?>
<He’s too weak to turn around or hurt you.>
<I better get overtime for this,> Marco said. <Serious overtime.>
Marco and Jake crawled through the pitch-black until they bumped into Ax.
<Oh, man!> Marco gasped. <Wolf sense of smell is way too good.> The stench was overwhelming.
They bit into the soft baggy flesh and pulled.
“Skreeeee!” Ax cried involuntarily.
<Hurry,> I said to Jake. <There’s no time!>
The hulking worm began to move. Marco strained and fought. Jake snarled and pulled. Inch by inch they dragged Ax out. By the watch around Jake’s leg, it took a full five minutes to reach the carved out, earthen cavern.
Less than two minutes to go.
<I think he’s unconscious,> Jake said.
<His skin has no bulge. It’s like he’s deflating.>
No answer.
<Ax, now!> Jake ordered.
<We were too late,> Marco said flatly. <He’s going to die.>
<Ax!> I cried. Panic gripped my tiny bat heart. <Ax! Ax! Ax!>
<Yes, Tobias. It is me.> I caught the echo of something larger and more reflective than a Taxxon. A form that was changing. Becoming taller than a wolf … four legs … two arms …
We collapsed in the darkness, exhausted and terrified, thankful to be together.
I demorphed and prepared to dig again as a Taxxon. But then …
“Hey, what’s going on?”
A faint light, way down the tunnel. It was coming nearer, bobbing as it came.
Jake and Marco saw the light, too. We watched as it increased in size and brightness until at last Taylor emerged into the earth-cavern. Rachel was in grizzly morph right behind her, her body wedged tight in the tunnel.
Taylor crawled on hands and knees in the Taxxon goo. There was no question the Yeerk was in full control. It was the kind of thing Taylor-the-girl would never do. Her hair was a mess, plastered to her face by Taxxon slime. One hand gripped an electric fluorescent lantern.
“What happened here?” Taylor demanded, looking at the cavern. When my eyes adjusted, I saw what a strange place the cavern was. It wasn’t square or round or ovoid. Nothing normal. It was an undulating, chaotic intersection of many different, smaller tunnels.
<I lost control of the morph,> Ax answered honestly. <I do not remember everything. I know that I became confused. I dug and ate in circles for many minutes before regaining focus.>
<He ate himself to exhaustion,> Jake added, more for Rachel than for Taylor. <We had to drag him out.>
<I
do not remember,> Ax confessed.
“Andalite incompetent,” Taylor raged suddenly.
<Watch yourself, Yeerk,> Rachel roared back.
<It’s okay, Ax-man,> Jake said privately. <You dug about ten times farther than we expected. Tobias, take it easy this time. And, uh, don’t morph or demorph near us, okay?>
I didn’t need to be reminded. Jake didn’t want me eating them. He also didn’t want Taylor seeing me morph straight from hawk to Taxxon.
I hopped to the opening of the tunnel Ax had dug and flapped a little to get out of sight. My wings scraped the tunnel sides and I crash-landed about fifty feet in.
<I’m going Taxxon,> I warned.
I was better prepared this time. I was ready when the instincts reared up and told me to follow the smell of my friends.
I turned my ravenous, empty belly to the tunnel instead. I rushed forward to the place where Ax had stopped. Fierce hunger propelled me into the soil wall.
I was more aware this time. I felt what was going on around me. What was going on inside the Taxxon mind. It wasn’t simple hunger. It wasn’t pure rage.
No. What drove the Taxxon to eat and dig was more complicated. It was something I understood. A sort of insecurity or fear.
Yes, a fear … grossly exaggerated … beyond anything humans experience … a desperate fear of not having enough … a terror of starvation … a horror that your essential needs will go unfulfilled … a horror demented and contorted by the Taxxon mind until it became a sick, murderous evil.
I wouldn’t have understood, or even noticed, if I hadn’t been hawk for so long. I’ve experienced just enough of that feeling to recognize it.
A whole species of terrified overeaters. It made me almost sorry for them.
Almost.
I dug and thought of Taylor. The Yeerk and the girl. What they’d let themselves become …
Was anyone all evil? That couldn’t be possible. I’ve heard that even Hitler was good to his dogs.
Taylor had been too insecure to face her peers without her beauty. She’d done what she had to do to make the fear go away.
Evil, even the worst evil, has banal origins every human can understand.