54 No doubt the chimpanzee would have been afraid. But it was enjoying the cookie. So was the Andalite.
"Okay, Pumpkin," the bearded man said. "Here we go." As he swung with the arm that held mine, I found myself responding without thought. My legs pushed against the floor. My free hand clutched at the top of the cage door and pushed, too, as I vaulted toward the cage opposite me.
Then I was in. Another lock clicked into place as I swallowed the last cookie crumb and sat down.
"Good girl, Pumpkin," the man said. He handed me another cookie while the other men pushed my former cage out of the way. "Okay, let's go for the others."
I took a look around as the three men left to unload my friends. I appeared to be in some kind of holding room. It was covered by small white squares of a hard, somewhat shiny substance. Tiles, I believe they are called. There was a drain in the center of the floor.
Eight-human-foot-square cages lined the two longest walls, and one, about eight feet deep by fifteen feet wide, was set into the shorter wall to my right. To my left, against the other short wall, was a metal table covered with bins containing
55 papers. Next to the table was a frosted glass door.
The big cage was empty of animal life, but held a tire swing, dull red rubber toys, and a thick rope with several knots. Someone had scribbled in bright colors on the concrete block walls.
The noise was deafening. I crouched against the back wall of my cage and covered my ears, somewhat overwhelmed. At least twenty chimpanzees were screaming and hooting, stamping their feet against the floors of their cages. I looked up as one directly opposite me took a mouthful of water from a squeeze bottle and sprayed it in my general direction.
Did they sense that I was different? That I was not quite all chimpanzee? Without really thinking about it, I jeered back in full chimpanzee screech. And then turned as the door opened again.
«l'm innocent, I tell you!» Marco cried in private thought-speak as he was wheeled into the room. «l can't do hard time! I'm innocent! You got the wrong guy! You can't keep me locked up! I want to call my lawyer!»
56 « I he big question is still: What are we doing here?» Cassie said, when at last all of us had been brought together.
«That's what we'll find out. Soon as these handlers leave,» Prince Jake said.
«Ticktock,» Rachel muttered. «We've been in morph for a long time now.»
"Clear chimp menagerie area," a voice said.
«Loudspeaker,» Cassie remarked. «Look at the handlers!»
The handlers were heading for the exit. They were moving quickly. Very quickly. In a hurry to be out of the room. I assumed they had somewhere else to be. The others made the same assumption.
57 We were all mistaken.
«Cassie. You want to demorph and bust us outta here?» Prince Jake asked. «The rest of us might as well stay in these morphs for now. Someone could come back in.»
«No problem,» Cassie said. «Then maybe Ax and Marco can get us into that computer over there. Maybe we'll learn what this is all about.»
I had not noticed a computer. It was outside of my limited range of vision. Cassie began swiftly demorphing.
I spent the time considering what we might find in the computer. I was confident that I could easily break any Yeerk security measures. But once into the system, I still might find nothing.
I watched Cassie's softer human features begin to emerge from the chimpanzee. Watched the fur melt and smooth out to form her own human skin. Watched her legs strengthen, her arms weaken.
Chimpanzees are proof of the unpredictability of evolution. Many humans think evolution involves improvement. Of course, it does not. It merely involves survivability. Often individual capabilities are lessened in the process of moving toward a survivable species. Humans are clearly weaker than chimpanzees. But their brains are much more capable.
Well, somewhat more capable.
58 Cassie was entirely human when the door opened. From the first tiny noise of the handle being moved, I realized our mistake. It wasn't that the handlers had somewhere else to be.
It was that the handlers didn't want to be here.
And when the door opened, I saw the reason why.
If there had been any slight doubt that the laboratory was Yeerk-run, the creature who stepped through the door followed by three cringing, terrified human-Controllers put an end to it.
He stepped boldly into the room. Swaggering like the conqueror he was.
He was Andalite in form. His host body is an old Andalite warrior named Alloran-Semitur-Corrass.
But he was no longer Alloran. He was no longer an Andalite at all, except in outer form.
He was Visser Three. The Abomination. The only Andalite-Controller in the galaxy.
I leaped at the bars, unable to control the urge. Visser Three did not flinch.
«Cassie!» Rachel yelled in thought-speak directed only at us.
Cassie was farthest from the door. But in two more steps Visser Three would see her.
«Remorphing!» Cassie said. «But -»
«Distraction!» Prince Jake yelled.
59 Hoo-hoo-hoo! E-YAH! E-YAH!
We started screeching, but the Visser was indifferent. We were caged. We were an inferior species. The great Yeerk Visser was uninterested in us. In fact, he seemed bored. Like he was performing some tedious duty.
Of course! It was just a routine inspection. Only by monumental misfortune had we encountered him. And in two seconds that misfortune would turn fatal. We were caged! Helpless!
«Poop him!» Marco yelled suddenly.
«What?»
Marco swept his hand across the bottom of his dirty cage. He grabbed a handful of... well, of dung.
A swift, overhand throw. The . . . product. . . flew!
it hit Visser Three full in his face.
«Poop him!» Marco yelled again.
I swept my big chimpanzee hand across the cage floor and without pause threw the ... items ... as hard as I could, and with as great an accuracy as I could.
The result was that a large glop stuck on Visser Three's right stalk eye.
«Yah HAH!» I cried in sheer glee.
It was an unusual tactic. A desperate tactic. But I must say it was truly satisfying.
60 I he six of us hurled biological waste product. Then the genuine chimpanzees, sensing a game, joined in.
The air filled with product.
Visser Three was covered within seconds. So were his human-Controller assistants. The four of them beat a hasty retreat through the doorway.
«Now f/?afwasfun!» Rachel said happily.
Cassie was fully chimpanzee again.
The tactic had succeeded brilliantly.
Then, from beyond the door, came the thought-speak sound of Visser Three's rage.
«Kill them all!»
I shot a look at Prince Jake.
61 One of the human-Controllers must have argued with the Visser.
WHAM!
The door blew open. A human-Controller landed on the floor. One of his hands had been reduced to a stump. The hand itself lay nearby.
«l don't care if they're test animals!» Visser Three raged. His voice lowered to a sinister, insinuating, false-friendly tone. «l'm here to close this facility, anyway. Phase Two is already a success. This series of tests has been superseded.»
"Y-y-y-yes, Visser!"
«So I want them all killed! Do you understand me?» he said calmly.
"Y-yes! Yes! Yes, Visser!"
«What? No argument? You don't want to question my orders?» the Visser asked pleasantly. He arched his tail forward and almost caressed the human-Controller's neck with the blade.
"NO! No, Visser Three. Never!"
The Visser withdrew his tail. He bent over and picked up the human-Controller's severed hand. He looked at it with interest and then tossed it to the injured man. «Here. Reattach it. And destroy these creatures.» He turned and stalked away, but then stopped. «Bring the Taxxons in
from the control room. No point wasting fresh meat.»
63 Visser Three disappeared. One human-Controller was holding his own hand. The other two were very pale.
Visser Three is not a leader who believes it is important to be popular with subordinates.
62
« I hat's our signal to get outta here,» Marco said.
The human-Controllers left the room, practically knocking one another over in their haste to obey Visser Three's orders.
«Demorph!» Prince Jake said. «Fast!»
No one needed to be told twice. The Taxxons would not take long to arrive.
I demorphed to Andalite. Cassie was already human. She kept morphing. Maybe a fly, maybe a flea, I could not be sure. I saw antennae. I saw bizarre mouth-parts. But mostly, I saw her shrink. She kept morphing only long enough to be able to squeeze between the bars.
Once out and free, she stopped her morph
64 and quickly returned to human. She grabbed the keys and with quick, trembling hands released one Andalite and three humans. Tobias was hawk again and simply walked through the bars.
Cassie began to open the other chimpanzee cages.
"What are you doing?" Marco asked her.
"I'm letting them out. You heard what Visser Three said. They're going to be killed."
"All we have to do is morph to flies and go out through the door," Marco said. "Once the Taxxons get here ... I mean, no one is going to count the chimps. But if they get here and find nothing to eat, the Yeerks are going to realize they've been had. They're going to know we were here."
"You guys can go," Cassie said. Her eyes flashed. Her jaw muscles worked. They are signs of determination in humans.
"Marco's right," Prince Jake said. "We can make a clean getaway. If they realize we've been here, they'll be on guard at the meatpacking plant. It'll make it harder for us."
"Not if we stick to chimpanzee morph," Cassie argued. "Yeah, if we went to grizzly bear and tiger and all. But what if we only do chimpanzees?"
I looked at Rachel. She smiled. "I'm in."
65 "You always back Cassie," Marco said angrily.
Rachel shook her head. "Nan. I just like the idea of the chimpanzees getting some back, you know?"
Cassie was already halfway into chimpanzee morph. Rachel was following. I waited to see what Prince Jake would do.
"So much for me being in charge," Prince Jake muttered. Then he began to morph.
We had just all made it into chimpanzee morph when the door opened and the first Taxxon pushed his slithering bulk into the room. The needle-sharp rows of legs skittered on the tiles. The round, red mouths gaped. The row of jelly eyes glittered.
There is an Earth animal called a centipede. It is similar to a Taxxon, although a hundredth the size. And I do not believe centipedes are cannibalistic.
A Taxxon's hunger is so great, so overpowering, that even the Yeerk in a Taxxon's head cannot control it. A Taxxon will eat any living thing. Including another Taxxon.
Taxxons are cruel but not strong. Perhaps they would have been able to attack and kill disunited, essentially peaceful chimpanzees.
But what they faced were not chimpanzees. They faced chimpanzees animated by the will of
68 their much more intelligent and much more violent cousins: Homo sapiens.
What awaited the Taxxons were creatures with all the tremendous strength and agility of the chimpanzee, united with all the war-making skill of humans.
"Srreeeee!" the Taxxons cried, in giddy anticipation of a meal.
"Hoo-Hoo-Hoo!" the genuine chimpanzees cried, and retreated to their cages.
But six of the chimpanzees waited calmly. They had armed themselves with a variety of weapons: a screwdriver, a chair, a computer monitor.
The lead Taxxon reared up, ready to slam its upper third down on us.
«You know, I really, really hate Taxxons,» Rachel said.
I stepped in swiftly and struck straight up with a wrench I had discovered. The Taxxon's soft underbelly opened like a moistened paper bag.
Srrr-EEEEEEEEEE!
Rachel moved fast. She rolled in beneath the Taxxon and yanked off one of its sharp legs. Now she had a weapon.
The lead Taxxon motored its dozens of legs and tried to scramble back.
Too late. It had been injured. Its blood was flowing.
69 The other Taxxons surged into the cramped space and attacked their fellow creature. The Yeerks in their heads were no doubt doing all in their power to stop the cannibalistic massacre.
But nothing can control a Taxxon's hunger.
Prince Jake grabbed the exterior door - the one that led out to the truck. But the door was locked from outside.
We had only one other choice.
«let's bail!» Tobias said. «Right over them! Into the lab!»
67
We escaped. The genuine chimpanzees followed us. For a while. But they proved impossible to organize. Cassie did all she could. We all did. But the chimpanzees, while intelligent by the standards of nonhuman animals, are still limited.
Too limited even to grasp their own freedom.
As we raced and bounded and swung through the lab, the true chimpanzees split off, preoccupied with bright lights and shiny objects.
How can I describe what we saw as we raced through room after room looking for an exit? Chimpanzees were not the only creatures being used for experimentation.
68
There were smaller monkeys. Rats. Dogs.
I soon saw why humans prefer to draw an arbitrary line between themselves and other animals. Had humans been used as these animals were used, the only appropriate descriptive word would have been torture.
Torture.
Useful, no doubt. Medically justifiable, most likely. And it is not my business to judge humans. But this behavior of theirs did trouble me.
After dark that night, I ran into the open fields to feed. The night was black. Even the lights from the neighborhood where the others lived seemed dim. Earth's single moon was only a sliver in the sky. It was a visible difference between Earth and my home world. But I was finding that the differences I could not see mattered much more.
Andalite creatures live in greater harmony than Earth animals. I thought of the kafit birds, the hoobers, and the djabalas. We practiced mor-phing these creatures, but caging them, killing them, eating them was unthinkable. We were creatures of the same world.
But as Marco, or perhaps Rachel, had once said: Earth is a tough neighborhood. The competition for survival on Earth is brutal. This is a planet filled with powerful, violent predators.
70 Predators armed with huge teeth, impervious armor, claws that could open an Andalite's body from end to end.
And yet it is Homo sapiens, with his weak jaw and purely symbolic claws, with his soft, unar-mored flesh, who rules.
For millions of years we Andalites have not felt the pressure from other species. With our speed and our tails we are without physical peers on our home world. It is different for humans. There are parts of this planet where even today humans are prey to stronger animals.
Perhaps that explains the odd, disconnected human attitudes toward other Earth species. Some they cherish and pamper. Some they protect. Others they use. Still others are annihilated.
And yet would it not seem that they would eat the animals that threatened humans, and not the utterly inoffensive creatures like cows? We certainly didn't choose such animals for battle morphs.
And to abuse chimpanzees, animals almost identical to Homo sapiens, comes very near to a Taxxon view of morality.
«You are an alien,» I reminded myself. «And furthermore, you are a grazer by nature. Not a predator.»
I was perhaps not the person to fairly judge human habits. My understanding of human evo-
71 lution was that it began with hunter-gatherers. Humans never had the option of simply grazing.
When I got back to the scoop, I turned on my TV after making a few adjustments. I stood close to change
the channels, watching as colors and figures flashed by. A woman singing. A newscaster intoning that several local people had been reported missing. Teeth, and toothpaste. A cheeseburger. It looked delicious.
I turned the set off.
Wings rustled above me. Tobias was gliding in for a landing, his talons clutching a black plastic rectangle. He released it as he swept his wings forward to clutch the nearest branch.
«A present for you, Ax-man.»
I picked it up. Gray buttons in the shapes of numbers and arrows covered one side.
«What is it?»
«lt's a universal TV remote. I spotted it in a Dumpster.»
A TV remote? What was remote about it? «Thank you, Tobias. But I do not understands
«Turn the TV on.» He opened his wings and swooped down from the branch. «You use it to change channels. You know, so you don't have to get off the sofa. Or, well, the ground.»
I switched on the TV and sat back in the scoop, too far to reach the set. I pointed and pushed the "up" arrow.
72 Images blurred and noises blended together as the remote changed the channels. Marvelous! Much more efficient! I would expend fewer calories per channel changed. When I realized the time I could save . . .
«0h, look! It is Friends»
«Just a rerun. Urn, Ax?» Tobias cocked his sleek head at me. «How did you get so many channels? I could swear I saw MTV and CNN just now. But you don't have cable, so . . .»
I glanced up from the TV set. Phoebe was playing her guitar at Central Perk. «l made improvements^
Tobias hopped close to the set and peeked behind it. «0h, man. What is all this?»
«A primitive satellite receivers
«You made a satellite dish out of a broken radio, two old soda cans, and . . . what is this?» He held a piece of thick black wire in his beak.
«The wire that humans hang from limbless trees. Very convenient. I found it this evening before I fed.»
Tobias quickly dropped it. «Ah. That would explain the power outage in Jake's neighborhoods
«Power outage?» I was shocked. «That black wire controls the electric power?»
«When it's not stolen for personal use, yeah.»
73 «Ridiculous. Why is it not better protected? And why should one small piece matter? The management of your power sources is quite primitives