The Alien (12 page)

I looked up at Tobias. Only he knew what I meant.

Slowly, feeling as if my clumsy human legs were made of a heavy Earth material called “concrete,” I turned and walked away from my human friends.

“You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” A famous human named Rolling Stones said that. I thought it was very wise, for a human.

— From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

T
he morning ritual is for normal times. The next morning was not a normal time.

This was the day I would die.

I said, and bowed my head low.

The people! The people were trillions of miles away.

I said, and raised my stalk eyes to the sky.

My prince? Elfangor had been my prince. He was dead. Now a human, Jake, was my prince, and he had discharged me. I wasn't even telling him what I was doing.

The ritual was a lie.

I said, and raised my face to look at the rising sun.

Honor. To die avenging my brother. I felt my insides quiver. It was fear. I know fear. I've felt it often enough in battle. But I'd never gone into a fight I
knew
I would lose.

This wasn't honor. It was running into the hands of death.

Couldn't I ask the others for help? Couldn't I go to Prince Jake and tell him?

No. Not without telling them that I had called my home world. Not without agreeing to tell them everything.

It was time for the last words of the ritual.

I drew up my tail blade and pressed it against my throat in the symbol of self-sacrifice. I was breathing hard, as if I'd just been running. My hearts were beating fast.

Tobias's voice said.

I muttered. I was angry that Tobias was there.

I didn't answer. The truth was, I couldn't stand to talk about it. I was afraid. Sickly afraid. If I could achieve surprise, maybe I could kill the Visser. But he had the body of an Andalite adult. A full-grown male. The Visser was also more experienced than I was. And he would have guards. There would be Hork-Bajir nearby.

Tobias asked.

<
Assassinate?!
> I yelled.

I said bitterly.

Tobias said.

Tobias said nothing for a while. he said at last.

Tobias said.

Tobias said bitterly.

I ran then. I ran and ran and ran.

It was miles to the secret place where I would find Visser Three. I wanted to run the whole way, to run away from my own fear by heading straight toward it.

It's what Elfangor would have done. Elfangor, the great hero.

Elfangor would live on in everyone's memory as the perfect warrior. The shining prince. If I was lucky, someday people would say,

I would get points for that. People would say I had done well in the end. Others would say,

And still others would say,

I ran and ran till my chest ached from breathing the heavy air of Earth. I ran through dried leaves and rustling pine needles. I jumped fallen, rotting logs, and skirted patches of brambles. I ran past trees that did not speak, like the trees of my own world.

Each time I pictured being face-to-face with Visser Three, I went even faster, trying to outrun the fear.

I was far from any human homes now. Far from human roads. Deep within the forest. Old forest full of shadows and gloom.

But at last I saw the sun shining on green grass, just ahead. A meadow. Right where Eslin's note had said it would be.

I stopped running and gasped for breath. I leaned against a tree and tried to recover my wind. My legs were shaking from a mixture of exhaustion and fear.

The meadow was beautiful. Green grass and tiny flowers in yellow and purple. I would have liked to feed there myself.

I crept toward the meadow's edge, always keeping within the shadow of the trees. I saw nothing unusual. No Bug fighters. No Hork-Bajir. No Visser Three.

Just the wildlife of Earth: two deer grazing. Squirrels racing up and down the trunks of trees. A skunk waddling boldly past.

It would be an hour before the time the Yeerk Eslin had given me. I had an hour to plan and prepare, now that I saw the ground we were on.

I looked at the meadow. A stream, perhaps three feet across, cut the meadow in half. The grass grew tall by the stream bed.

I tried to guess where the Visser would run. Would he go to the left or the right? I would only get one chance, so I had to guess right.

I imagined where I would go, if it were me. Visser Three was in an Andalite body. Maybe he would move like an Andalite.

I stepped out into the blazing sunlight and walked to a place I thought would do. It was beside the small stream. A place where the grass was a bit shorter, and where it would be easy for Visser Three to step into the stream.

Then, I saw them: the hoofprints. Andalite hoofprints.

Visser Three. Yes, he had been there, perhaps a few days earlier. Eslin was right. This was the place.

I had to wait, concealed. Ready to attack at the right time. I could never hide in my Andalite body. But there were other options.

The rattlesnake. That would be the morph to use. What better way to strike suddenly than with the body of a snake?

I focused my mind on the snake. I concentrated on the change. I felt it begin almost immediately.

It was unlike any morph I had done before. Usually my legs would become some other type of leg. My arms would become some other type of arm, even if they were only fins.

But this time there were no arms, no legs. Nothing of my own body would find an echo in this new shape, except for my eyes and tail.

My legs simply melted away. Withered. Dis­appeared. I fell to the ground, a legless stump.

My arms shriveled and evaporated.

I heard the sounds of grinding inside my body, as all my bones melted together into my spine.

I was shrinking, but since I was already lying on the grass, it didn't seem as extreme as it sometimes did. The stalks of grass grew higher around my head, and the purple flowers grew larger, but there wasn't the usual feeling of falling as I shrank.

What I did feel was a terrible sense of utter weakness. I had no arms! I had no legs!

But my tail . . . ah, that I kept, although in a very different form. The blade of my tail suddenly broke up into a sort of chain. There were dozens of raspy blisters, all connected. The rattler's tail.

My fur disappeared very swiftly, and over my bare skin scales grew. Like tiny, interlocked armor-plates that formed a pattern in brown and black and tan.

I grew a mouth. A huge mouth for the size of my body. I was a tube, and the open end was my mouth. It was a shocking body. A bizarre body. Stranger even than morphing an ant or a fish. I was a creature with no separate parts.

My Andalite stalk eyes went dark. A large, amazingly long, fast-moving forked tongue grew in my mouth. But it wasn't like a human tongue. This tongue's sense of taste was beyond anything a human tongue could ever achieve. This tongue tasted the very air.

And then, I felt the feature I had waited for. Huge, long, curved fangs. Fangs that were each a tiny, hollow needle. Above them venom glands grew and filled with toxin.

I felt the snake's mind emerge beneath my own awareness.

It was not a hot, driven mind like in some animals. It did not overwhelm me with fear and hunger. It was a slow, calm, deliberate mind. The mind of a predator. A hunter. A calm, deliberate killer.

And the senses!

The lidless eyes saw strange colors, but they gave me a good range of vision.

The tongue, which shot out from a slit on the bottom of my mouth, taste-smelled the air. It brought me an incredible array of sensations: the scent of grass and earth, the scent of insects, and the scent of living, warm-blooded creatures.

Just below and behind my snake nostrils were two pits that sensed heat, especially the levels of heat put off by prey.

Yes, this was a good morph to use. The Visser would not expect me. The Visser's Andalite body was fast, but it was not faster than the snake. I knew that from my own experience.

I began to move, slithering through the grass. I moved with sinuous grace, easily, silently. I followed my tongue. It shot out and back, again and again, sensing, smelling, tasting.

I felt the rattler's mind with my own. It was unafraid. It had no honor. It had no friends to worry about, no family to disappoint, no laws to break. It felt no loneliness. The snake had always been alone.

I settled into the grass and waited, patient, motionless, counting off the minutes in my head.

And then I felt the vibration of the earth beneath me. The vibration that was the sound of a Bug fighter landing. Then another. Just two. Not far away.

It was time.

The Yeerks were coming. Visser Three was coming.

And as I drowned my fear in the calm lake of the snake's predator brain, I prepared to kill.

And to die.

I
smelled him long before I saw him. I smelled Andalite flesh. The Yeerk that was the real Visser Three — the Yeerk inside the Andalite body — I could not smell.

Visser Three ordered. His thought-speech was loud, open, to reach his soldiers.

His voice was in my head. I felt churning in a stomach I no longer really had. I tried to squash my own fear beneath the snake's calm, but it rose suddenly.

I went over the plan: strike, escape, demorph, go back for the kill.

I would have to demorph before the Visser's guards could come to his side. And I would have to hope that the snake venom would slow him down.