The Experiment

  "Hold my feet and lower me over the back so I can open the door," Cassie yelled.

  "I will go first," Prince Jake said.

  "Not happening, Jake. You weigh twice what I do," Cassie said. "Don't distract me when I'm try ing to be brave."

  Cassie shimmied to the back edge of the roof as Prince Jake and Tobias clutched her ankles. Marco threw his arms around Prince Jake's waist, Rachel around Marco's. Lying beside this human chain, I braced with all four hooves against the slick roof and grabbed Prince Jake's ankles.

  We had no real way to brace ourselves. We could only hope that our bodies, pressed flat, would create sufficient friction to resist the hurricane of wind.

  "Lower!" Cassie shouted. "I can't quite reach!"

  Carefully, the human-Andalite chain of bodies inched forward until the only visible part of Cassie was her bare feet.

  36 "I'm there!" she cried. Then, "No lock!"

  "No luck?"

  "No lock" she yelled, and there came a rolling sound as the door slid up into the roof.

  We hauled Cassie back up. Cassie flipped positions. Still on her stomach, she swung her legs over the back of the truck and held on to the roof's edge as we clutched her wrists.

  "Oh, man!" Cassie moaned.

  "What?" Prince Jake demanded.

  "Just'Oh, man!'" Cassie said.

  From inside the truck came a loud cry. "EYAH! EYAH! EYAH! Hoo hoo hoo!"

  I was unclear as to the meaning, but I suspected they were noises emitted by the chimpanzees. Perhaps they were alarmed. I certainly was.

  Cassie swung back and forth. And now another car was closing the distance behind us. It was dark in the tunnel, but still sufficiently light for the human in the car to clearly see that we were breaking into the truck.

  The car was also close enough that if Cassie slipped, it would slam into her and most likely kill her instantly.

  "Okay, let go of me!" Cassie yelled.

  We released our grip.

  "Aaaahhh!"

  Thump!

  37 "Owww! I'm okay. But owww!"

  Cassie was inside the truck. Marco followed quickly. It was easier with someone inside to assist.

  The driver behind us did not notice me, but he definitely noticed the others as they swung down into the truck. The driver was smiling, making a sort of pumping motion with his fist and yelling.

  I believe what he yelled was, "Waaahhhh-hooh! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!"

  I am unclear as to the meaning. But I believe they were noises of approval. He cannot possibly have known our mission, of course, so I took it as a general approval of the notion of breaking into trucks. Or perhaps he merely enjoyed acrobatics.

  The driver passed us by. And now it was my turn. Just one problem: I could not possibly support my own weight with my own arms and fingers.

  I had to morph to human. And looking ahead, I could already see the far end of the tunnel.

  We had used more time than we should have. I had only two minutes left.

  38 J. morphed to human. I morphed very quickly.

  In human morph I had only two eyes. This made it easier to ignore the tile still flashing by at shocking speed.

  As soon as I had strong human arms I shoved my lower body over the edge of the truck. But something was wrong!

  Too heavy! I could not hold on!

  Numerous hands grabbed at me, slipped, tugged, grabbed again.

  "Ax! You're still not morphed!"

  My lower half was still mostly Andalite. Too large! Too heavy!

  I felt my hands weakening. My fingers were

  39 being pried open by the weight. I would fall onto the road. Humans would drive their cars over me. Possibly their trucks filled with "stuff" as well.

  I was no longer concerned with the tile overhead. I was much more interested in the pavement below.

  "Grab his tail!"

  "I have a leg! He's morphing his leg! Ax, I ..."

  "EYAH! EYAH! EYAH! Ooog! Ooog!"

  "Get him, get him, he's slipping!"

  "He keeps morphing!"

  "Hoo hoo hoo hoo hah ah HAH HAH HAH HAH!"

  "Please make every effort not to drop me!" I cried.

  "Okay, I got a human leg here," Rachel said.

  Moments later, I was hauled inside the truck. Suddenly I felt no wind.

  The truck emerged from the tunnel. I began to laugh.

  "Are you okay, Ax-man?" Tobias asked.

  "I am very well! Very, very well. Well-luh." There was nothing funny about eluding death, but there was certainly joy. And relief.

  "'Please make every effort not to drop me.'" Marco repeated my plea, and now everyone laughed.

  Rachel drew the door down. There was not

  40 much light, but there was enough. And the relative quiet was very enjoyable.

  I looked around at the inside of the truck. On either side of the truck, eight-foot-wide, four-foot-tall cages held shaggy, brownish-black creatures with hairless, surprisingly human, faces. Two were hunched forward, clutching the bars and screeching. The others had flattened themselves against the far walls, grimacing and pounding the floor.

  "No bananas." Marco spread his hands wide in apology. One of the chimpanzees spit at him.

  "We need to acquire them right away. Grab his foot, if you can," Prince Jake suggested.

  "You grab his foot," Marco said. "I've been a gorilla. I know what our grandparents here can do when they get cranky."

  "Here." Cassie had opened a sturdy plastic bin on the floor. "This'll help."

  I began to demorph to Andalite form as Cassie cautiously held out a handful of grayish-brown pellets to one of the chimpanzees. The chimpanzee paused and seemed to sneer at her. The truck hit a bump. Cassie lurched forward and the chimpanzee drew back.

  "It's okay," she murmured. "These are for you."

  The chimpanzee regarded her solemnly. It

  41 seemed to be deciding whether or not the food was a trick.

  One giant finger extended through the bars of its cage, pointing at Cassie's palm. The creature's skin looked like tan leather. I heard Rachel inhale abruptly. Marco shimmied backward an inch. Beside him Tobias was demorphing to hawk form, watching the chimp intently.

  "It's okay," Cassie repeated. "She's not going to hurt me. Here, girl." She reached forward slowly.

  "Rachel? Get ready, in case we need fire-power," Prince Jake warned.

  "Not necessary," Cassie said. "This girl's just a sweetie. She'll be fine. Won't you, girl? No need to be upset. No."

  The chimp paused again, considered, pursed its lips, and grunted. Without warning, it grabbed Cassie's wrist.

  But Cassie is not easily bothered by non-human animals. Her other hand shot out and grabbed the chimp's enormous hand. Cassie focused, and the acquiring trance calmed the animal.

  But Cassie herself was not entirely calm. She looked troubled. I could not tell why. I only noticed that for several seconds she seemed almost to be carrying on a silent argument with herself.

  42 But then she focused again and the chimpanzee's eyelids drooped imperceptibly. Its muscles slackened. The food in its hand dropped to the floor as it slumped into the cage's bars.

  The rest of us made contact while we could. We acquired the chimpanzee. Chimpanzees are a species closely related to humans but slightly more attractive, and with a superior method of locomotion that allows t hem to operate as two-footed or four-footed creatures.

  "Okay, ticktock. We must be almost there. Keys?" Rachel asked.

  "Here they are," Marco said, snatching a ring from a wall clip. "Let's hope these chimps don't attack as a good-bye gesture." He smiled at one of the soon-to-be-freed chimpanzees. "Loved you in all those old Tarzan movies."

  "This stinks," Cassie said. "We shouldn't be turning them loose in a strange environment. We shouldn't be ... never mind."

  "Ah, I was wondering how long it would take," Marco said with a derisive grin.

  «Look, a day running around the streets has got to be better than
whatever the Yeerks have in mind for them,» Tobias said.

  Prince Jake leaned toward the first cage, ready to open the door. "Here we go," he breathed, sliding the key into the padlock. "Freedom. At least till someone rounds you up."

  43 I felt the truck grind to a stop.

  "Now," Prince Jake said. "Ax? Stay out of sight. There may be cars right behind us."

  Cassie and Marco slid the door up.

  And the chimpanzee we had morphed, faced with freedom, decided to urinate.

  44 Tun away, already!" Marco yelled.

  A truck was coming up behind us, slowing. Cars were alongside. Two children in one of the cars pointed at us and bounced up and down in their seats.

  "Cassie, make them leave!" Marco pleaded.

  Cassie scooped up a handful of food pellets and flung them toward the truck behind us. The chimpanzees merely stared. The driver of the truck leaned out of his window and said words I have been told are impolite.

  «l've got this,» Tobias said. He flapped his wings furiously and launched himself toward the lead chimpanzee.

  "Tseeer!" he screeched.

  45 The lead chimp bounded away. The others tumbled after him. And now the truck driver behind us began to say words that were worse than impolite.

  «Thought that might do it,» Tobias said smugly.

  With a jerk that almost knocked me off my hooves, we were moving again.

  Prince Jake yanked the door down, but before he did I saw one of the chimps climbing in the window of the truck while the driver exited quickly from the opposite door. A second chimp was bouncing maniacally on the roof of the car with the children. The children were screaming with joy. Their mother was also screaming, but perhaps not with joy.

  "Okay, into the cages and morph," Prince Jake said. "Ax? How's our time?"

  «l estimate we will arrive at the laboratory in three of your minutes.»

  "Ax, don't make me tell you again: They're not our minutes," Marco said. "They are everyone's minutes. Just plain old minutes and ... oh guh-ross." Marco wrinkled his nose disgustedly as he climbed into the nearest cage. "Someone call the manager. This cage is filthy."

  "You guys go ahead," Cassie said. "I'll hang back to lock the doors behind you."

  It made sense. Cassie was the quickest

  46 morpher. And someone would have to lock the cages from the outside.

  I closed my main eyes, trying to focus despite the lurch of the truck and the realization that we were very short on time. I focused my thoughts on the image of the chimp. Then I felt it begin.

  My front legs melted into my torso as my back legs swelled into the powerful limbs of the chimp. My hooves split open into five-toed feet. My Andalite arms grew bulky with muscles. My hands exploded into leathery flesh and thick fingers.

  I felt two faint blips as my hearts stopped beating, absorbed into the pounding heart of the chimp. Inside me - bones crunched, blood pumped, as a mass of organs and systems transformed from Andalite to primate.

  My stalk eyes had already retracted, disappearing into the top of the chimp's head. Beneath the flattened nose that was similar to my own the chimp's mouth emerged. It was large and mobile and full of teeth.

  I turned my head to squint at the others in the murky light while wiry brown fur sprouted over most of my body.

  "Urrgghh," I grunted through the chimp's mouth, grabbing the bars of the cage. I tried again to speak.

  «lnteresting,» I said. «Though these bodies

  47 are nearly identical to humans, they are incapable of coherent speech.»

  «Yeah, that's why you never see chimpanzees running for president. They're smart enough. They just can't give a decent speech.»

  Marco, of course. Humor, almost certainly. Although it occurred to me that I should perhaps check and see whether chimpanzees were accorded full citizenship.

  I blinked my primate eyes and flexed my thick, powerful fingers. I felt . . . human. Like I was a four-foot-tall, almost two-hundred-pound, heavily muscled human.

  And the mind? It was not exactly human, but it was similar. The same threads of curiosity, understanding, and emotion woven into a complex map. It was nothing like the single-minded hunger instinct of the shark, or the blind rush of sensory input that characterized the bat, for example.

  Sentient? Self-aware? Able to hold abstract thoughts in its head?

  Impossible to be sure. In morphing we acquire instinct, but instinct is less important when intelligence is more developed.

  This mind had very little in the way of instinct. And I sensed a great deal in the way of intelligence.

  The chimpanzee would be able to understand

  48 that when the cage was locked, it would not be able to escape. The chimpanzee would understand that scratching its head repeatedly would not open the door, but it would make it feel better.

  The Andalite part of me suddenly felt a little ill. I knew that chimpanzees were very close to humans on Earth's evolutionary scale. I later learned that ninety-seven percent of chimpanzee DNA is identical to human DNA.

  Too close to human? Sentient close?

  We have a rule - we Animorphs, I should say - that we do not morph humans or other sentient beings without permission. Had we just violated that belief?

  Cassie circled the cages quickly to lock the cage doors. Then she ducked into the cage closest to the hook where Marco had found the keys. She reached through the bars, locked her own door, and tossed the keys on the floor beneath the hook.

  "Hopefully the driver will think they fell off when he hit a bump," she said.

  Cassie morphed with shocking speed.

  I decided to ask her about the chimpanzee. Cassie is often the person most willing to examine deeper philosophical issues.

  «Cassie, I am concerned by this morph,» I

  49 said. «ls it sentient? Was it improper to acquire

  She said nothing. As though she had not heard me. Then she turned her dark chimpanzee eyes toward me. «Could it have given permission, do you think? Is it capable?» she asked rhetorically.

  «No. I doubt that it could have understood the question,» I answered. «But you have not answered my question, Cassie. Is this creature sen-tient?»

  Cassie said nothing and Marco laughed a thought-speak laugh. «You don't get it, Ax. See, Cassie's on her own private mission here. She wants to save the chimps. So her usual moralizing doesn't apply.»

  It was a harsh thing to say. But Cassie made no answer.

  «A silence fills the room,» Marco said sardonically. «Animal lovers. Typical. They care more about animals than they do about humans. If we were doing this for some other reason, we'd have Cassie giving us a bunch of crap about not using sentient creatures. But she's thinking she can maybe save some chimpanzees, so hey, if it's for the sake of animals - »

  «Let it go, Marco, » Prince Jake interrupted.

  Cassie said nothing in self-defense.

  50 I did not know what to think. I could only assume that humans do not believe chimpanzees are sentient. Clearly, if they did believe it, they would not be keeping them imprisoned and using them for experimentation.

  Yes, that made logical sense, I reassured myself.

  On the other hand, it is sometimes the case that humans do not make logical sense.

  51 I he truck slowed and then came to a stop.

  When the door rolled up on its rusty hinges, the still-bright afternoon light flooded the truck. I squinted and shrank against the far wall of my cage.

  "Okay, you monkeys, get ready," a large human grunted as he pulled himself into the truck.

  I looked past him. A second human slid a ramp into place, connecting the truck to a large, open doorway. The doorway was elevated several feet above the ground. In fact, it matched the height of the back of the truck. Proving that sometimes humans are capable of planning ahead.

  52 Just inside the building stood three men in white, loose-fitting artificial skin. Clothing. At their feet was a flat metal cart on wheels.
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  Marco and I were in the cages closest to the door. One of us would be the first to go.

  The men lifted my cage, straining as they pulled it onto the cart. Once on the cart, they pushed me along the ramp.

  I shifted uneasily behind the bars. Was I acting the part appropriately? What would a chimpanzee do under these circumstances?

  «Everyone be kind of cool,» Cassie instructed. «These chimps were probably raised in captivity. They'd be somewhat used to all this.»

  The vibrations caused by the cart's wobbly wheels against the ramp rattled through my legs and up my spine.

  Inside the building, the cart turned a corner, guided by three pairs of human hands, and slid through an open door.

  HooHoo He-YAH! He-YAH! Heeeee!

  This new room was filled with other chimpanzees. All around me chimpanzees chattered wildly, screeching and jumping in cages that were mounted on the walls with thick steel braces. Clearly, they were unnerved by our intrusion.

  Wheels whined against the floor as the cart stopped outside an empty cage. Two horizontal

  53 rows of four cages each lined the wall, the same one in which the door was located. Once in the cage, I would have difficulty seeing who was entering the room.

  A human with a gray beard and small blue eyes referred to a chart that he had undipped from the side of the cage. "Hello, Pumpkin. There's a good girl. How about a treat?" He held out a cookie frosted with white icing.

  I sniffed carefully. Sugar.

  A delicious treat? No doubt. But was it also heart-healthy and low fat? In These Messages, everything is heart-healthy and low fat.

  What would taste be like to a chimpanzee? I was certain that the chimpanzee brain wanted the cookie. Oh yes, it wanted the cookie.

  I grabbed it.

  The man smiled. He unlocked the cage door.

  I tensed again as each of my powerfully developed muscles stiffened in readiness. I felt the chimp's mouth stretching into the strange grimace-smile that to a chimpanzee indicates fear and displays teeth.

  Teeth that were midway through munching one of the most delicious cookies I had ever tasted. In any form.

  The man reached forward with sudden speed. He snapped a collar around my neck and grabbed one of my enormous hands.