The Alien (6 page)

I glared back at him. Maybe it was the human adrenaline in my system, but I was becoming angry now. Angry at the accusing look in Prince Jake's eyes. “Yes, I knew.”

“How did you know?”

I hesitated. Prince Jake did not like my hesitation. He suddenly wheeled around and pushed me against the wall.

“How did you know the Yeerks would do this?”

“Because it's happened before. You think this is the first planet the Yeerks have infiltrated? Do you think Earth is the only place where we Andalites have fought them? They don't leave witnesses.”

Prince Jake let me go. But he looked at me with unmistakable suspicion. “I don't like you keeping secrets from me, Ax. I'm your friend. We're your friends. We should know whatever you know. You didn't tell me about this.”

“Terrible things happen in war,” I said. “You did what you had to do. Destroying the Kandrona was part of that war.”

“You can say it's a war,” Prince Jake said. “But I hate it.”

“Love the warrior. Hate the war. War-ruh.”

“What is that, an old Andalite saying?” Prince Jake asked sarcastically.

“Yes. My brother used to say it.”

Prince Jake looked at me for a very long time. It made me uncomfortable. “You know something, Ax? Sometimes I get the feeling we humans are just pawns in this big game between you Andalites and the Yeerks. We're just ammunition in this war, aren't we? Too dumb to know what's going on. Too primitive to be real warriors.”

“That is not the way it is,” I said. My own anger was diminishing. Prince Jake's suspicion was not.

“You fight alongside us, Ax. As far as I'm concerned, you're one of us. But then I find out you're keeping secrets. Rachel and Marco keep asking me: What do we know about Ax? What has he ever told us about his own planet, while we show him everything? I told them we could trust you. Now I wonder. I
really
wonder. There's no trust when you keep secrets. You should have told me this is what the Yeerks would do. You know I have a brother who . . . you know about Tom. I had a right to know what could happen.”

“Maybe you would not have destroyed the Kandrona if you had known it could endanger Tom,” I pointed out.

Prince Jake stuck his face very close to mine. “That's what you think? You know what, Ax? You're right to try and learn more about humans. Because you don't know a thing about us. Not a thing.”

An Andalite may think that humans are simple, open, trusting creatures. But they are more subtle than they seem to be at first. Possibly this is because of their spoken language, where no word ever means just one thing.

— From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

M
y day at the human school ended with the removal of the teacher who had been a Controller. Prince Jake went home. I went back to the woods and gratefully resumed my true shape.

But I spent a very bad afternoon and night. I realized that Prince Jake and the humans could never be my true
shorms
. I knew there was a wall between me and them. But they were all I had. Without them, I was utterly alone. And Prince Jake's anger and suspicion had hurt me.

It is a terribly lonely thing to be hundreds of trillions of Earth miles from every living member of your own people.

The next day, Marco invited me to “hang out” with him. This was a surprise. Marco has never been very friendly, unlike Cassie and Tobias and Prince Jake. Rachel, too, has never seemed to take to me.

I morphed into my human body and met Marco at the edge of the woods. “So,” he said. “You want to be Pinocchio, huh?”

“What?”

“Pinocchio was a little boy carved out of wood. He wanted to be a real, live human.”

“I do not want to
be
a human. I merely wish to study them.”

Marco smiled. “What a coincidence. And I want to study Andalites.”

It took several seconds for me to understand what he was saying. “Oh. Prince Jake asked you to press me for information.”

“Jake was a little ticked off that you didn't tell us everything you know,” Marco said. “Rachel was even more ticked. Come on, we have to catch the bus. You want to learn about humans, right? I thought I'd take you to a bookstore. Smart as you are, you can learn to read English.”

“Bookstore? Book-kuh-store?”

“Yeah. Books. Fiction. History. A hundred thousand books all about the human race. And you get to choose any of them you want. We have no secrets, unlike certain species I could mention who don't even tell us a little thing like how they eat with no mouth.”

“I see. You open your society to me. Societeee. Teee. And you want me to do the same in return.”

“I told Jake I could cleverly weasel all the information out of you, but he said, ‘No, Ax is a friend. Show him we have nothing to hide. Maybe he'll finally decide to trust us.'”

I felt a pang of guilt. They were treating me with trust. They had never done anything to hurt me. On the contrary, they had been wonderful to me. Good in every way.

“I have reasons for keeping secrets,” I said.

Marco nodded. “Yeah, we know. Rachel says you probably aren't allowed to interfere with primitive races like humans.”

I was surprised. It was very close to the truth. At first I did not know what to say.

Marco smiled a cold smile and nodded his head. “So, that is it, right? Kind of too late for that attitude, isn't it? After all, the Yeerks are interfering with us like crazy.”

I had no answer to give. But as I looked around at the street, at all the humans in their cars, and all the humans lurching along on two legs, it occurred to me just how defenseless I would be without Prince Jake and Marco and the others.

We had reached the bus stop. Suddenly Marco slapped his pants. “Oh, man. I left my money at home. We all pitched in for your book fund. I left it on my desk. Come on.”

“Where are we going? Ing? Ing-ahng-ing. That is a
very
satisfying sound.”

“Yeah, everybody loves a good ‘ing.' We have to run over to my house. Don't worry, it's just around the corner.”

Marco led me down the street. There were houses on both sides. Big, boxy structures with transparent rectangles here and there.

“That is Prince Jake's house,” I said. I had spent time in Prince Jake's house.

“No, it's just the same model as his house. This is a subdivision. There are only, like, five different models of houses. They all look alike. Welcome to the suburbs. But it beats the place I used to live in.”

He was correct. There were only five types of house. Although some had more grass, and some had less. Also, some houses were decorated with items that had been placed on the grass.

“What is that decoration?” I asked.

Marco followed the direction of my gaze. Then he rolled his eyes upward. “That's a Big Wheel.”

“It is very attractive. Very colorful.”

“Uh-huh. I'd love to tell you how it works, but it's the very height of human technology, so it's secret. Primitive races could get hold of Big Wheels, and then who knows what might happen?”

I am still learning about human mouth-sounds. But I am very sure Marco's sound was sarcasm.

“There's my house. My dad is home, working. He sprained his ankle, so he's using his home computer. Don't be weird, okay?”

“No. I will not be weird. Weeeerd. Weeeeerduh. I will act like a normal human.”

“You act like a normal human and you'll win an Oscar,” Marco said. He led the way up to his house and opened the door. “Okay, look, you wait right there by that table. Don't go anywhere. If my dad comes in and talks to you, just say ‘yes' and ‘no.' Got it? Yes and no answers only. I'll run up to my room. I'm gonna call one of the others to meet us at the bookstore. You're already driving me nuts.”

I stood by the table. There was a primitive computer on the table. It even had a solid, two-dimensional screen. And a keyboard! An actual keyboard.

I touched the keyboard. It was amazing. Andalite computers once had keyboards, too. Although ours were very different. And it had been centuries since we'd used them.

On the screen of the computer was a game. The object of the game was to spot the errors in a primitive symbolic language and correct them. Of course, before I could play I had to make sense of the system. But that was simple enough.

Once I understood the system, it was easy to spot the errors. I quickly rewrote it to make sense out of it.

I said to myself.

“Hello?”

I turned around. It was an older human. He was paler than Marco, but other features were similar.

Marco had warned me to say nothing to his father but “yes” and “no.”

“No,” I said to Marco's father.

“I'm Marco's dad. Are you a friend of his?”

“Yes.”

“What's your name?”

“No,” I answered.

“Your name is ‘No'?”

“Yes.”

“That's an unusual name, isn't it?”

“No.”

“It's not?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, it's not an unusual name?”

“No.”

“Now I'm totally confused.”

“Yes.”

Marco's father stared at me. Then, in a loud voice, he yelled, “Hey, Marco? Marco? Would you . . . um . . . your friend is here. Your friend ‘No' is here.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes, that's what I said.”

Marco came running down the stairs. “Whoa!” he cried. “Um, Dad! You met my friend?”

“No?” Marco's father said.

“What?” Marco asked.

Marco's father shook his head. “I must be getting old. I don't understand you kids.”

“Yes,” I offered.

After that, we went to the bookstore.

Books are an amazing human invention. They allow instant access to information simply by turning pieces of paper. They are much faster to use than computers. Surprisingly, humans invented books before computers. They do many things backward.

— From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

I
t was evening of the next day. I was in the woods. I was reading a book. The book was called the
World Almanac
. Did you know that twelve percent of households have a dehumidifier? Did you know that a sheep can live for twenty years? Did you know that humans used to believe their sun orbited Earth?

It's a wonderful book.

The book told me many useful things. It took humans only sixty-six years to go from inventing the first flying machine to landing on the moon. It took Andalites almost three times as long.

Humans are a very clever species. Someday, if they survive, they could be one of the great races of the galaxy.

Of course, Andalites will always be greater.

I was standing by the stream, with one hoof in the water, drinking, when my stalk eyes saw a swift shadow falling from the sky.

Tobias opened his wings and shot just over my head.

He had kept most of his speed, so he swiftly disappeared above the trees. But a moment later he was back, with four other large birds of prey following him.

Tobias took a position on a branch. The others landed on the ground. I knew then it was the other Animorphs.

They quickly began to demorph. Prince Jake grew out of a falcon's racing body. Rachel emerged from a huge bald eagle. Cassie and Marco had both acquired osprey morphs, and were now becoming human again.

I felt a tingling of worry. They had obviously been searching for me, and were in a hurry.

I asked.

matter
?> Marco demanded.

But just at that point, Marco crossed the line from thought-speaking morph back to human. His human mouth was still a beak, however, so he just squawked.

I watched Cassie as she made the change. Cassie is a natural
estreen
: a person with an ability to make morphing almost artistic. On my planet it is an art form. There are professional
estreens
who change shape in fantastic, beautiful ways.