The Predator Page 5

  "And sucked blood."

  He looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, it was Rachel's blood. Kind of. I mean, okay, it was cat blood, but Rachel was morphing the cat."

  "Jake? Do you ever listen to yourself?"

  "I try not to think about it," he admitted. "But look, we want to try and give Ax a chance to get home. And if he stays here he's a danger to us. We've got this big Anda - " He looked

  67 around to make sure no one could hear, and low ered his voice. "We have this big Andalite run ning around Cassie's farm. What if someone sees him? Any Controller is going to know what he is. And they're going to wonder why he's on Cassie's land."

  I nodded. "Yeah. You're right. But I almost died the other day. I was almost boiled alive. I know you're the big hero type, Jake, but I'm not."

  I grabbed my book out of the locker, slammed the door, and headed down the hall. Jake kept pace.

  "You know what next Sunday is?" I asked him suddenly. I hadn't planned to say anything.

  "Sunday? I don't know. What?"

  "Two years, to the day. Two years since my mom died. And I don't know what to do. I don't know whether I should talk to my dad about it, or just let it pass. But I know one thing - this would be a really bad week for me to turn up dead."

  I kept walking. He didn't follow me.

  Two years.

  She'd taken the boat out of the marina. She'd sailed it out into a rough sea. No one knew why. She'd never done it before. We'd always gone out together, the three of us.

  That night, after the high winds had blown past, they found the boat driven up onto the

  68 rocks. The hull was shattered. There was no sign of my mother, except for a frayed safety rope.

  They never found her body. The Coast Guard guys said that was not unusual. The ocean is a big place.

  So is space, a voice in my head said.

  Somewhere, very, very far away, a mother and father wondered what had become of their chil dren.

  For a long time, I made up stories about how my mom had survived. Maybe on a desert island or something. But I'm a realistic person, I guess. After a while I accepted it.

  And after a while, Ax's parents would accept that he and his brother, Prince Elfangor, would not be returning. That they had been lost forever in space.

  Lost fighting to protect Earth. To help the hu man race.

  To help me.

  I spotted Cassie up ahead, walking with some of her friends. She smiled vaguely when she saw me. We were supposed to kind of ignore each other in school, so no one ever figured out that Jake and me and Cassie and Rachel were hang ing out a lot.

  As I brushed past her I muttered, "Tell Jake I'll do it."

  Sometimes I really hate having a conscience.

  69 L wonder why these people moved?" Cassie said.

  "Maybe they didn't like living next door to a Controller who is part of a conspiracy to take over the world," I said. "Or else maybe they just don't like assistant principals. I could understand that."

  We were standing in the backyard of the house next to Chapman's. It was empty. There was a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. It did make you kind of wonder why these people had decided to move. Not that Chapman ever acted strange. That's the big problem with Controllers - you can never tell who is or who isn't.

  "It's convenient for us, anyway," Jake said.

  It was night. The moon was high and full and

  70 bright, so we were hiding beneath a tree. There was a high wooden fence between us and Chap man's.

  Ax was just changing from his human morph back into his Andalite body.

  We had already acquired some ants earlier, at Cassie's barn. We were getting ready to do it. I was scared. Badly scared.

  I guess the others were, too. Everyone was talking too much, the way you do when you're nervous. Cassie was shivering like she was cold, only it was about seventy degrees out.

  "Tobias?" I asked. He was in the tree, just a few inches over my head on a low branch. "How well can you see?"

  «l think I'll be able to see you as long as you stay aboveground,» he said. «The moonlight helps. But I'm not nearly as good at night as I am during the day. My eyes aren't much better than yours in the dark.»

  "Swell," I said.

  Jake glanced at his watch. "It's time. We know Chapman will be at the meeting of The Sharing, starting about now."

  The Sharing is a "front" organization for Controllers. It's a way for Controllers to get together without anyone being suspicious. Supposedly, it's just a sort of combined Boy Scouts and Girl

  71 Scouts. In reality it's a way for the Controllers to recruit willing hosts.

  Yes, believe it or not, some people choose to accept Yeerk control.

  We didn't have to ask how Jake knew about the meeting of The Sharing. Jake's brother, Tom, is one of them. A Controller who is very into The Sharing.

  "You ready, Ax?" Jake asked. The Andalite had to be back in Andalite form before he could morph. Just like all of us had to be human before morphing into another being. Once Cassie had tried morphing straight from one animal to another. Nothing had happened. And Cassie is the best morpher.

  «l am ready,» Ax said.

  "Everyone ready?" Jake asked.

  "Yep," Rachel said.

  Even she sounded tense. There was a bad feeling hanging over this whole thing. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.

  "Okay," Jake said. "Soon as we're all morphed, we head across the grass, down along the wall, underground. We find a crack or a hole, and enter the basement."

  "Yeah. Nothing to it," I said.

  I concentrated on the ant I had acquired ear lier. There wasn't much to think about, really.

  72 When I'd held the ant in my hand it had just been this tiny little dot. You could see that it had a sectioned body and legs, but that was about it.

  The morphing began very quickly.

  "Whoa!"

  Falling! Falling!

  That was the first sensation. I was shrinking rapidly. The ground was rushing up at me. It was like one of those nightmares where you are falling and falling but never seem to hit the ground.

  I was still maybe a foot tall when my skin seemed to turn crisp, as if it had been burned. It became hard. Harder than fingernails and glossy black.

  I looked over at Cassie and nearly screamed.

  She was farther along than me. Only a foot tall and hard-shelled black all over. Glistening, ridged, plastic-looking skin.

  Her legs were shriveling rapidly. So were her arms, although they had become longer, to match her legs.

  The third set of legs was growing out of her chest.

  And her face . . .

  Her face was no longer human. Her head was sort of teardrop-shaped. Wickedly-curved man dibles were growing out of her mouth - huge, slashing, deadly-looking serrated jaws.

  73 Her eyes had gone flat and dead. Just black dots. Antennae, looking almost like another set of legs, sprouted from her forehead.

  Her waist was pinched tight. Her lower body swelled till it looked as big as a watermelon.

  I didn't want to watch. Because I knew that all these same changes were happening to me. I knew it. I didn't want to think about it. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted the changes to be done.

  Suddenly, all around me, huge, raspy spears shot up out of the ground!

  Grass! I was diminishing to true insect size. The rough, sharp shafts that were rising all around me were just blades of grass. They weren't grow ing. I was shrinking.

  One exploded directly under me. I tumbled, end over end.

  And then my eyesight failed. My eyes simply stopped functioning.

  I was blind!

  Blind, and falling, rolling, cartwheeling down the side of a blade of grass.

  74 J. was standing upright. I knew that. I had stopped falling.

  But I was blind.

  No, not completely blind. It was not just black ness. But my eyes saw no detail. I could see patches of light and areas of dark
ness. But they were misty and fragmented, and my ant brain was not interested in them.

  No. The world was not about sight anymore.

  It was all ... something else. I knew I was getting something. Something ... a sense. A feeling, almost.

  Then, I could feel ... I could feel my antennae waving. Waving back and forth, searching. Searching ... no. They were smelling.

  75 My antennae were smelling. I was looking for a scent. Several scents. It was not like human smell. Not like Jake had described dog scent when he'd morphed his dog Homer.

  That kind of scent is full of possibilities. Sub tleties.

  This was different. I was looking for just a few scents. Just a few smells.

  I tried to prepare myself. I had been through this before. There is usually a time, a brief few seconds, before the animal mind appears with all its fear and hunger and intensity. I needed to be prepared. Ants were tiny and weak. Surely their fear would be extreme. I would have to be -

  Then, wham!

  The ant's mind erupted inside my own!

  There was no fear. None.

  There was no hunger.

  There was no ... no self. No me.

  No me.

  No ...

  My antennae swept the air. Strange. Not home. Not the colony.

  Enemy territory.

  Smell them. Smell their droppings. Smell the acrid odors they smeared along the ground to mark their boundaries.

  «How are you guys doing? It's Tobias. How are you guys doing?»

  76 Strangers. The smell of others. They would come. There would be killing.

  Killing. Soon.

  Move.

  «Jake. Marco. Rachel. Cassie. Answer me. It's Tobias. Talk to me.»

  I began moving. My six legs picked their way nimbly. I was a nearly blind insect, picking his way through a forest of giant saw-edged grass blades.

  Food. The smell of food. Find it. Take it. Re turn to the colony with it.

  Change direction instantly. Move toward the smell of dead beetle. Others around. Us. Ours. They had the right smell. They were not enemy.

  «You guys are heading the wrong way.»

  Moving faster now. Feet feeling each blade of grass. Antennae sweeping the air, searching for the scent of the enemy. Searching for the scent of the dead carcass that we had to find and re turn to the colony.

  «Listen to me! You are going the wrong way! The ant minds are controlling you!»

  Close now. The scent of food was stronger.

  Mandibles working. We would touch the car cass. We would judge its size. If it was too big to carry, we would hack it into smaller pieces and carry the chunks to the colony.

  77 «You have to take control! You have to fight! You have to get a grip!»

  Or enemies would come. And kill.

  The smell of enemies was everywhere.

  There. We had reached the dead beetle. I scented the air. I touched it with my legs, touch ing again and again to learn the size.

  I? My legs?

  Confusion.

  «Fight! Fight it! You have to get control!»

  It was big.

  The others were with me. I opened my cutting mandibles wide and bit into the beetle, slicing tough shell, biting into meat.

  « listen to me. You are losing. You have to fight!»

  Fight?

  Suddenly, I realized that there had been some thing ... a sound. Yes, not a smell. Not a smell. Not a feel.

  «You are humans! You are humans 1 . Listen to me. You are not ants. Fight it! Fight it»

  Yes, not a smell or a feel. In my head.

  My.

  Me.

  Marco.

  «AHHH!» I screamed inside my own head. Tobias said later that it scared him half to death. He thought I was being killed.

  78 That wasn't it at all. I had been reborn.

  «AHHHH! AHHHH! AHHHHH!»

  «What's the matter?» Tobias cried.

  «l ... I ... I lost myself,» I said. «l was gone. I was lost. I didn't even exist.»

  «Get out of that morph!» Tobias said.

  But I could hear the others now, snapping back into reality. Becoming again. Crying.

  «What kind of creatures are these?» It was Ax. He sounded terrified. Terrified. «They have no self! I was lost! There was nothing to hold onto. They are not whole. They are only parts, like cells. Just pieces. What kind of foul crea tures are these?»

  «Listen. You guys morph back,» Tobias said. «This sucks. This isn't right.»

  «Hive,» Cassie said, sounding shattered. «They are social insects. Part of a colony. A hive. I should have guessed. I should have known. Ax is right. Each of us is only a part. Like a single cell within a human body.»

  «Guys? I see other ants. They're coming your way,» Tobias said.

  «How far away?» Jake asked. «Can you see them up there?»

  « l'm not in the tree. I'm right here. I'm stand ing right over you. You're only a few inches from my right talon.»

  79 «l don't want to have to do this all over,» Rachel said. « let's do this. Let's get it done.»

  «Are we all in control now?» Jake asked.

  One by one, we said yes. It was only partly true. Yes, I had gained control over the ant mind. But it was still there. It was powerful in a totally new way. It was the simplicity that made it hard. The ant was a piece of a computer. Just a tiny switch, a part of a much bigger creature - the colony.

  «Guys?» Cassie's "voice" in my head. «lf you try, you can kind of use these ant eyes - a little, anyway. If you concentrate you can notice light and dark. It's like watching a really, really bad black-and-white TV that's almost all snow. And you can only see what's right in front of you. But you can almost see a picture.»

  She was right. I could kind of see. But noth ing I saw made any sense, anyway. I could recog nize blades of grass. But a long, sloped wall that seemed about six feet high was a mystery to me.

  «Someone just ran over my talon,» Tobias said.

  The wall. Tobias's talon.

  «That's good. You're heading in the right direction^ Tobias said. «You're coming up on the fence.»

  If there was a fence, you couldn't prove it by

  80 me. I saw nothing. The bottom of the fence was seven or eight body lengths above me. Irrelevant.

  «l don't want to go into Chapman's yard,» To bias said. «lt would look fishy if anyone saw. Just keep going in the same directions

  We did. I barreled through a forest of grass. Then, very suddenly, it ended. We were out of the grass and racing across a moonscape of boulders, each the size of my head.

  In my ant brain the alarm bells were still ring ing. Enemies! Enemies! Their scent was every where.

  But it was not fear I felt from the ant brain. It was not capable of emotion, or anything like emotion. It simply knew that there were enemies close by.

  And it knew that it would come down, sooner or later, to kill, or be killed.

  81

  we hit the wall. I knew it was the concrete wall of the foundation. I knew, logically, that just a foot or so over my head, the wall became wood siding. But I could not see that kind of distance.

  What I saw and felt and "smelled" was that the horizontal world had simply stopped. Reality had a corner. The entire world, as far as I was concerned, was a corner between concrete and sand, one vertical, one horizontal. The concrete was full of cracks and pits big enough for me to climb inside of.

  «Head down,» Jake reminded us. «Look for a way to follow the wall down.»

  «There's a tunnel here,» Rachel said. «But it ... smells . . . bad. Real bad.»

  82 She was right. I found the tunnel, too. It was one of theirs. It belonged to the enemy.

  «l know there is an enemy. I can sense it,» Ax said. «But who? What?»

  «l don't know,» Jake said grimly. «Let's just hope they're not around.»

  We headed down the tunnel. The smell of the enemy was powerful. Their stench wrapped around us. We were an
invading force. We were going deep, deep into enemy territory.

  The tunnel was narrow. Boulders brushed con stantly against my abdomen. My legs kicked some away. Others had to be moved aside. I should have felt cramped and claustrophobic, with the earth all around me, and my friends close ahead and behind me. But my ant mind was at home in tunnels.

  I was traveling down. I knew my head was pointed down, but gravity seemed less important than it did when I was human.

  «There's a side tunnel up here,» Rachel said. She was in the lead. Big surprise. «There are a couple of side tunnels. It's starting to branch out. Should I YAHHHH!»

  «What? What?»

  «0h, oh, oh. An ant!»

  «What? Rachel!»

  «He's running! He's running away. It's okay.

  83 It's okay. He was smaller than me. He ran off down a side tunnel.»

  «l guess we're the baddest ants in the tunnel, I said, trying to joke away the sudden clutch of very human terror.

  «Let's hope so,» Jake said.

  «l feel air,» Ax reported. «A breeze. Down this next side tunnel.»

  «Follow it,» Jake said.

  Quickly we were out of the sand boulders and in a canyon. That's what it seemed like, anyway. Like a deep, deep canyon. A crack in the con crete foundation.

  We clambered over craggy rocks and squeezed along the narrow crack. All the while the breeze grew stronger.

  Then we were out of the canyon. We were on a flat, vertical plane.

  «l think we're there,» Cassie suggested. «l sense open space all around. Air. And it's dark.»

  «0kay. Morph out. But be careful.»

  «Wait! Get horizontal first,» I said. «Humans can't cling to walls, and we don't know how high up we are.»

  «Marco's right. And someone should go first.»

  « For once , I volunteer,» I said. I couldn't wait to get out of that ant body.

  First I moved away from them. It was totally

  84 dark, so I didn't have to watch the changes in myself. But trust me, feeling them was bad enough.

  Once I was human again, I began to look for a light. Then I froze.

  My huge, human feet could crush my friends!

  I stood perfectly still and ran my hands along the wall. Nothing. Nothing. A bulletin board. A desk! Phone. Some kind of machine, probably a fax. There! A lamp!