The Other Read online

  He paused, then after a few tense moments, he continued.

  he added, his thought-speak dark,

  Ax said. There was a trace of sympathy in his thought-speak. Just a trace.

  Gafinilan countered.

  I believed him.

  “So, where is he?” I asked. “I’d like to meet him.”

  Ax.

  Gafinilan.

  “Oookay. So, can I ask why?”

  “It is unthinkable to intrude upon the isolation of a vecol,> Ax explained.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m going to point and laugh or anything,” I said. “I can’t even say ‘hey’ to the guy?”

  No answer, from either Andalite.

  Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. Probably. But there are some topics I just can’t let alone.

  I faked a laugh. “You Andalites need some serious attitude adjustment when it comes to the differently abled.”

  Ax said simply.

  Gafinilan said heartily. Changing the subject.

  Here’s the thing. When Ax is in human morph he can’t get enough of cinnamon buns. I mean, it’s frightening. Well, I saw that same crazed look flit across his normally expressionless Andalite face. The look that says, “Give it to me now or I will be forced to hurt you.”

  he said carefully.

  Gafinilan clomped through the back door and led us into the main section of the greenhouse.

  Ax said.

 

  I know next to nothing about green things, but even I could see this Andalite had a green thumb. As it were. At least ten varieties of flowers, in pots and in orderly beds on the ground. Two kinds of roses, purple peonies, orange day-lilies — Gafinilan had been nice enough to provide clearly labeled signs for the ignorant. Bushes and shrubs, leaves glossy green, some flowering. Several slim potted trees. Even a small section of Japanese rock garden, complete with neatly raked gravel.

  Gafinilan explained. In his oddly huge hand, he held five or six stalks of what looked a lot like scallions. Except pinkish.

  I watched, almost fascinated, as both Andalites placed several stalks of the root on the ground and then proceeded to eat them in the normal Andalite fashion. Crushing the plant beneath their hooves and absorbing its nutrients.

  Then the almost-fascination ended. It seemed the Andalites had forgotten I was there. So I took a closer look at some of the more exotic-looking stuff Gafinilan was cultivating. Strolled down one narrow aisle and up the next, each littered with bags of potting soil, trowels, watering cans, and cacti in flattish bowls.

  “Bzzzzz!”

  What the …

  I smacked the air with my hand. Stupid bee.

  “Bzzzzz!”

  Another one! Smack!

  But I was wasting my time. The bees weren’t interested in me. They were interested in the sweet and colorful flowers that filled the greenhouse.

  Of course. Gafinilan relied on the bees to help fertilize his plants.

  Quickly, I checked to see if Ax and his host were still absorbed in the illsipar ritual. They were.

  Then checked out the greenhouse for a hive. None.

  Checked my brain to see if I know anything about honeybees. Like, do they sting? Nothing there.

  But I was going to acquire a honeybee regardless. If the bees were coming from and returning to a hive somewhere outside the greenhouse — without getting zapped by the force field — that meant they knew a safe way in and out.

  Just what I needed.

  I stood still. Hoped I smelled my sweetest. And …

  “Bzzzzz!”

  Got it! Held the bee loosely in my fist and hoped I acquired it.

 

  Ax! Still clutching the bee, I peeked around a potted plant to see the two Andalites had finished their snack.

  Gafinilan answered, one stalk eye pointed my way.

  I smiled.

  Gafinilan said.

 

  “Yes, of course,” I said, cutting Ax off. Hoping he’d keep quiet. “We’ll extend your invitation.”

  Ax looked back at me, slightly puzzled. I grinned crazily.

  The stupid bee had stung me!

  Ow! I opened my fist, out of sight, and tossed the bee to the ground.

  Then I came forward to join the other two.

  Suddenly, Gafinilan was all conviviality, the host with the most.

  Ax’s prince and my best friend was not going to pay a visit to Gafinilan before I did a little further investigation on my own.

  But I didn’t tell him that.

  We met at the mall, Ax, in his human morph, and I strolling in together, stopping here and there, looking like a couple of normal guys hanging out at the mall.

  Jake on his own. Browsing through the Nike store, pretending to still be interested in something as harmless and normal as sports.

  Tobias with Rachel. She, carrying a bag from Express and one from Bebe. He, looking slightly awkward and out of place.

  Finally, Cassie. In a pair of jeans that actually fit.

  Accidentally on purpose, we hooked up in the food court. Ax wanted to buy a box of cinnamon buns. Jake thought a Pepsi sounded good. What do you know?

  We gathered at an empty table and while Ax stuffed his face and I pretended to flip through a comic book I pulled out of my back pocket, we told the others what had gone down.

  “You know you took a huge — and I’ll add, too, stupid — risk, Marco,” Jake said, keeping his voice low and his expression bland.

  “Yeah, well, we got what we wanted,” I said. “We got inside. And we got to confirm that Gafinilan is a bit of a loose cannon.”

  “Yes,” Ax agreed. Though it was hard to take him seriously with frosting on his chin. “His mood does not seem perfectly stable. Bul. But he is a fine gardener. And he has created an impressive human cover.”

  “Yeah, down to the patterned paper towels,” I muttered, tossing the comic book on the table. “The place is too perfect.”

  Rachel leaned in to the conversation. “Sounds like he’s overcompensating. Trying too hard. It’s understandable. He’s got to be scared.”

  “Of who?” Tobias asked. “Us or the Yeerks?”

  Jake slurped down the rest of his soda. “He wants to meet Ax’s prince. I say we pay him a visit.”

  “Not a good idea, man. Look, I’m getting a very bad feeling about this guy. This situation. I’m not readi
ng clear motives. I say we wait before sending you in.”

  Jake shrugged. “For what? For the visser to grab him? For Gafinilan to tell the visser there’s at least one human ‘Andalite bandit’?”

  “It’s risky,” Cassie added. “Marco’s right.”

  “We take precautions, per usual. I go in with cover.”

  Jake stood. “Gotta get home. My mom’s cooking one of my favorites tonight for dinner. If I’m late, she’ll wonder.”

  “I’ll walk out with you,” Cassie said.

  “Let’s plan on my meeting Gafinilan as soon as possible,” Jake said. “Maybe tomorrow night.”

  “I’m out of here, too.” Tobias stood and twitched his arms. “This place weirds me out. Ax-man? You coming?”

  Ax patted his stomach. “Yes, Tobias. I believe I am full for the moment.” He stood and gathered up the shredded remains of the Cinnabon box.

  It was me and Rachel, alone.

  I puffed out my chest and smiled. “Any particular reason you wanted to be alone with me, Rachel?”

  “Yeah. So I could watch you act stupid. The usual.” She leaned back in her seat. “I mean it, Marco. I’m not in the mood.”

  I put my hands up, conceding defeat.

  “Okay, okay. So … ?”

  “A lot of times you’re a major cynical freak, you know?”

  I barked a laugh. “Uh, thanks. I guess.”

  “But you’re also the best at knowing when something genuinely stinks. I can block out your lame jokes but I can’t ignore your paranoid instincts.”

  “Gee, thanks, again,” I said.

  Rachel frowned. “I mean it. Look, you’re not letting Jake meet Gafinilan before you go back there yourself. Don’t bother to deny it. You have a plan. I want to know what it is.”

  Quickly, casually, I glanced around. “Why? So you can tell your Bird-boyfriend and screw me up with Jake?”

  “No, you moron,” Rachel hissed. “So I can go with you. You’ll need someone to cover your butt.”

  “See! I knew you cared.”

  WHAM!

  And that’s when Rachel’s foot connected squarely with my shin.

  There wouldn’t be time to do my bee morph before my “mission.” So I spent a few minutes on the Internet, hoping to discover some pertinent facts about the bee’s capabilities and weaknesses. Something that might help me know what to expect when the honeybee brain kicked in.

  And I learned something that scared the tar out of me: that honeybees, like ants, are social insects. Just not to the same extent as ants. But they function as part of a greater whole. Not individuals. Machinelike in their dedication to the survival of the colony. Devoted one hundred and fifty percent to the hive.

  Now you know where the saying “busy as a bee” came from.

  This did not make me happy. Being an ant had been one of the most frightening experiences of my otherwise already-bizarre life.

  I’d lost myself, going ant. So had Jake and the others. There had been no sense of self. Of individuality. Most people can’t even imagine what losing that part of you feels like. It’s one hundred times more intense than your worst nightmare.

  I took a deep breath. I would have to avoid the actual hive if at all possible.

  I looked at my watch. Time flies when you’re scared peeless.

  We met way too early in the morning. Rachel used her bald eagle morph and I went osprey. And we flew to Henry McClellan’s house.

  she asked.

 

  We did. Before a full three minutes had passed, we spotted a honeybee.

  And it was headed toward the greenhouse.

  Perfect. Maybe I wouldn’t need to find the colony after all.

  Rachel said.

 

  Which wasn’t very easy. The bee zipped along erratically. Up, then down. To the right, then down again. Left! Up! Slanting on a diagonal! Reversing direction, backtracking.

  Then, in a final show of acrobatic skill, slipping effortlessly through a tiny hole in a panel of glass.

  Rachel said.

 

  Rachel pointed out.

  She was right. Adopting the buddy system with a honeybee was my safest — not to mention only — chance of getting inside.

  We found the hive carefully hidden in a small cluster of trees at the far end of Henry McClellan’s backyard.

  I grumbled.

  Rachel landed on a branch of the live oak next to the partially rotted-out old tree that housed the resident honeybee community. she warned.

  I muttered.

  I landed at the foot of Rachel’s tree. Quickly demorphed and scurried over to stand just below the hive. Cut down on postmorph travel.

  None of us enjoy morphing anything really small. Particularly insects. Particularly ants, which are so, so not human. Honeybees are a lot cuter than ants. All fuzzy and stuff. Maybe this means they are less driven and simpleminded and violent. Right?

  Now or never. I crouched to minimize the insane fall that would come as I shrank down to the size of a Gummy Bear. And I held the image of the honeybee in my mind.

  Morphing is not logical or orderly. It does not proceed in a preordained pattern. It is not predictable.

  This time, the first bit of me to go was the part of my torso that became the bee’s thorax. Marco to about midway down my chest. Bee thorax. Marco below. Ugh.

  Have I mentioned that the honeybee has an exoskeleton? Which precludes the need for an internal skeleton. So I’m pretty sure I was mostly ribless and partially spineless at the moment.

  Rachel remarked helpfully.

  I chose not to respond.

  Chitin. That’s what the exoskeleton is made of, a hard substance that protects the internal organs and also keeps them from drying out.

  Fliip. Fliip.

  Two sets of flat, thin wings sprang from the bee’s thorax. Membranes, really, lined with veins, the set in front, larger. Together, using a propeller-like twisting motion, the two sets allowed the honeybee to fly.

  Poofpoofpoof …

  Hundreds, thousands of little hairs sprouted from all over my body.

  Rachel noted.

  Also on the thorax, three pairs of segmented legs. When the morph was complete I would be able to walk and even use the frontmost legs to clean my antennae.

  Next to show up were the antennae. Segmented and coated with tiny hairs. Super-important sensory organs. Sensitive to touch and odor. Attached directly to the brain.

  Cool. I could move the antennae because each was set in a socket on my head.

  Huh? Okay, human head was rapidly becoming the kind of triangular head of the bee.

  My human mouth, suddenly sealed.

  My chin, splitting down the cleft.

  Shloop!

  And shooting out of that vertical mouth, a proboscis. A long and hairy tongue that would allow the bee to drink liquids.

  Mandibles, a pair on either side of my head. Kind of like pliers. Useful for eating pollen and manipulating wax and snatching enemies.

  Okay, gross. I was blind, my human eyes gone.

  Then: Pop! Pop! Popopopopop!

  Vision. Thousands of teeny lenses showing me thousands of pieces of the world. All combining to make one huge-faceted mosaic or gridlike picture.

  The bee couldn’t distinguish color as well as a human. That red birdhouse I’d spotted before morphing — not red to t
he bee.

  But boy, could I see movement! Forms were not as clear or obvious as was the fluttering of flowers on their stems or the flitting of a butterfly from leaf to leaf.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Three more eyes, small, shot out above my compound eyes. They couldn’t really distinguish anything, not movement or form. But the eyes did seem to detect light.

  And here came the abdomen.

  Oh, lucky me. I was a female. How did I know this? Because my abdomen was slimmer than the rounder abdomen of the male drone, for one.

  But mostly because I had a stinger. It was about one eighth of an inch long and at the end of my abdomen. Kind of worked like a hypodermic needle. Except the tip was barbed so that it would stick into the skin of the honeybee’s victim. And it shot poison, not some vitamin formula.

  Nice to have a weapon. But don’t use it, Marco, the human brain in me reminded. If I stung an enemy, part of the stinger would remain in the enemy after I’d broken free. And I would die. Just like the bee I’d acquired. The bee who’d stung me.

  But as the morph came to completion, I wasn’t thinking about cause and effect — sting and die. Thinking about cause and effect — that was a human brain thing to do.

  And right then, I was all honeybee. All armored flying insect with a vital mission — to work and work and work for the hive. For the queen.

  The hive! I had to get to the hive!

  I shot up from the ground.

  A harsh sound. Meaningless to the bee.

  I landed on the lip of the hollowed section of the dead tree. Was met by a guard bee, another worker, like myself. I did not smell like the enemy. So round and round in circles, first this way, then that, the other bee twirled on its three sets of legs. Flicking its wings, my comrade told me the location of a new source of food for the hive.

  All for the hive!

  I would go and gather …

 

  What … man. My brain finally shook itself back into place. What was I doing?