The Decision

  CHAPTER 8

  "So how do I acquire it without it acquiring me at the same time?" Prince Jake asked nervously. "Don't be a big baby," Marco said. "Like you've never been bitten by a mosquito?" "Never in cold blood," Prince Jake said. It was several days later. My human friends attend school five days in a row, then do not attend for two days. They don't know why. But they try and arrange for missions to take place on non-school days. We were in the barn, surrounding a transparent glass box. In the box were a number of small, fragile-looking flying insects. "You need to catch one in your hand. Don't squeeze too hard or you'll kill it," Cassie said. "Like this." She stuck her hand in the box. After two unsuccessful attempts, she enclosed a mosquito in her hand. She withdrew her hand, covered the box again, and began to focus on the mosquito. After a moment she opened her eyes. "Okay, who's next?" "Just hand me your mosquito," Marco said. "It probably already bit you, so maybe it's not hungry anymore." "We can't all morph the same mosquito," Cassie said. "Only females suck blood. Males are useless." "Amen," Rachel said, then laughed. "So what's that mosquito in your hand?" Marco demanded. "Like I know?" Cassie said. "I don't have a magnifying glass that good. And even if I did, how exactly do you tell a male from a female?" "That's easy," Marco said. "The males think loud belching is funny and the females don't." "Is there any chance we could just get on with this?" Prince Jake asked. 8allyes,"; I said. 8I do not fear the bite of these tiny insects."; I put my hand inside the glass cage. I had some difficulty grabbing one of the creatures, though. Human hands are stronger and faster than Andalite hands. In the end, Cassie grabbed a mosquito and handed it to me. 8Thank you,"; I said, and began to acquire the necessary DNA. When we had all finished Prince Jake said, "Okay. Let's go." We morphed to birds of prey to fly quickly to the hospital. With harrier eyes I saw that the human Hewlett Aldershot the Third was still in his hospital bed. But there was a major difference. There were now four large humans seated around him. In the room next door to the left, we saw four more. And in the room next door to the right, another four. Human-Controllers, no doubt. And no doubt heavily armed. Twelve armed humans to protect Hewlett Aldershot the Third from us. 8Kind of flattering, actually,"; Rachel said. 8Twelve guys? And maybe more we don't see."; 8The Yeerks must have some high-ranking people in this hospital,"; Cassie observed. 8To get two private rooms just for guards like that?"; 8So how do we get in?"; Marco wondered. 8How about a diversion?"; Rachel suggested. 8I go into elephant morph, Jake does his rhinoceros, and we rip that place apart!"; I said, 8As I understand, we each hope to bite the human, so that we can be reasonably sure of extracting sufficient blood. But Rachel, before you can go from elephant to mosquito you must pass through human. I, on the other hand, have no need of an intermediate stage. And nothing would draw the attention of a bunch of Controllers better than an Andalite."; It made perfect sense. Prince Jake agreed that it made sense. So while the others went up to the roof and morphed back to human in preparation for becoming mosquitoes, I landed in a dark, open window at the far end of the hospital. I fluttered inside, waited, listening. I heard human breathing. My harrier eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could make out a young human female, looking very frail in her bed. I demorphed as quickly as I could, shedding feathers and growing fur. Suddenly the girl's eyes opened. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Are you a fairy?" 8ationo. I am an Andalite."; It was all I could think of to say. Besides, I felt reluctant to lie to a sick child. "What's your name?" 8My name is Aximili-Esgarrouth- Isthill."; "That's a funny name," she said. Then she closed her eyes and began to sleep once more. I took a deep breath. I moved to the door as silently as I could. I opened it and stuck one stalk eye out into the hall. Two humans in white were at the far end of the hall. I took another deep breath. Well, I thought, I am supposed to create a diversion. I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The two humans did not see me till I had nearly reached them. Then their mouths opened very wide. And their faces began to change color: one turned white, the other red. I don't know why. "Holy ..." "What the ..." Obviously they were not Controllers or they would have been yelling "Andalite!" rather than "Holy" and "What the." These were innocent humans. 8Hello,"; I said. 8Please, do not be alarmed."; "It's ... it's some weird, mutated deer!" "It's some kind of trick. It's gotta be a trick. All right, Terry, you can come out now. Hah-hah, big laugh." I passed them by and kept walking toward the heavily guarded room of Hewlett Aldershot the Third. A human went past pushing a cart loaded with food on trays. He never looked up. He just kept looking down as he went. Then I guess he noticed my hooves. "Aaaahhhh!" he cried, and shoved the cart so hard it turned over. Clang-clash-Wham! 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 prickly, 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 massive 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 passively 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 mass 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,"; Cassie 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. The one I was looking for was lying down. Lying still. I focused on the mosquito senses. I struggled to put together the sound waves from my antennae, the smell of carbon dioxide from my palps, and the shattered, lurid view through my compound eyes. Huge, huge, vast beyond imagining, stretched my target. Hundreds of times my length, millions of times my weight, Hewlett Aldershot the Third lay prone, oozing attractive aromas. I fluttered on gossamer wings and landed. I was on a rough, uneven surface. There were bumps and ridges of warm, pink flesh. Here and there, like lone trees scattered on a dry plain, hairs rose like curved spears from the flesh. The flesh was alive. It moved slightly, causing me to rise and fall. The human was breathing. But more fascinating than the slow rise and fall of breath, was the Thump! Thump! Thump! of a drumbeat beneath my feet. A pulse. The beating pulse of blood rushing through arteries and veins. And then ... POP!

  CHAPTER 11

  There was a distinct popping sound and suddenly, instantly, I was no longer a mosquito tapping into a human's vein. I was in space. White, empty Zero-space! 8Whaa ...? What? Z-space?"; I cried. Maybe not the most brilliant comment. But I was confused. I kicked my legs instinctively. My Andalite legs. I was back in my own body. But there was nothing to kick against. I felt no sensation of movement, no air was rushing over me. Already the lack of oxygen was beginning to cloud my brain. My eyes were going blind. My limbs were numb. Zero-space! It was impossible. And yet here I was. I looked around frantically. I turned my stalk eyes in every direction. I saw my own body, inside and out. An n-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, twisted so that I could see inside my own body. And there, to one side of me, were four human bodies spread out in the same way--weird cross sections. I saw Prince Jake's face, but also his beating heart and the muscle tissues of his legs and the inside of his brain. The same with the others. They were all writhing in agony. And there was one bird, very still. 8Prince Jake! Tobias!"; I cried. But of course they couldn't answer. There was no air to carry their mouth-sounds. There was nothing, not even the few stray atoms and molecules that float free in regular space. There were no stars or planets. Nothing exists in Zero-space. I happened to catch sight of a silvery, graceful creation, perhaps half a mile away. A ship! As with the bodies, I saw the inside and outside of the ship all in one picture. I could see distorted individuals inside, going about their duties. But even mind-numb and gaping at a confused nightmare vision, I knew what sort of creatures they were. Andalites. It was an Andalite ship! Its Zero-space engines burned brightly, but it was not moving away. It hit me in a flash. I knew what had happened. As any Andalite knows, when you morph something much smaller than your own body, the excess
mass is extruded into Zero-space. It hangs there, a wad of randomly arranged matter. Or at least that was the theory. There was nothing random here. Because we were outside of normal three-dimensional space, I could see the insides of everything and everyone. But the bodies were still definitely human and Andalite bodies. They were not just random globs. Once, some time ago, I explained to my human friends about excess mass being pushed into Zero-space. They asked whether some ship traveling through Zero-space might not hit these matter bubbles. I'd laughed. After all, the odds were ... Well, obviously it now seemed the odds were pretty good. The Andalite ship had come too close and had pulled us into its magnetic field. It was now dragging us in its wake as it blasted through Z-space. 8Aboard the Andalite ship!"; I cried with all the power I could still muster. 8Andalite ship! Andalite ship! We're trapped in your wake and dying. Help! Andalite ship, help!"; The energy it took to cry out sapped my remaining strength. There was no air. I could literally see my own lungs collapsing inside me. I could see my hearts frantically beating, trying to keep me alive. But now the hearts were slowing ... slowing. 8Andalite ship! Help! Help!"; I cried. 8Help ..."; I can't describe the pain of seeing my own fellow Andalites so close. The first Andalites I'd seen in so, so long. But of course they couldn't see me. Inside the ship they preserved normal three-dimensional space. The Andalites in the ship saw only bulkheads and decks about them. And then I literally saw, as though I were standing outside myself, the last beats of my heart. I saw the blood flow in my brain slow and stop. I knew I was going to die. I was going to die within sight of my own people. Die ... My consciousness went dark. And then suddenly, I wasn't dead. I wasn't spread out in multiple dimensions. I was in one piece, alive, and lying on my side on a shaped table that adjusted gently to hold my tail and legs comfortably. 8What?"; I said, for no particular reason. 8I don't think what is the question,"; an Andalite voice said. 8I think why and how and especially who are the questions."; I turned my stalk eyes and there, standing beside me, were three Andalite warriors.