Текст книги "Animorphs - 17 - The Underground"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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Tobias flapped away and came back in less than a minute. "lt's a food delivery. The truck looks pretty big, and it's dark in the back." Jake nodded. "Okay, I don't think more than three of us should go. We morph to bird, fly into the truck, morph to human, then to cockroach. We hide in some of the food and they carry us right in. Rachel, this is your guy. I mean, you saved him. So you're in. I'll go. Tobias doesn't have a useful morph, and Ax is too obvious when he passes through his Andalite phase. So it's Marco or Cassie."

We flipped a coin. Marco won. Then we explained to Ax what it meant to flip a coin.

It took twenty minutes for us to find a place to morph into seagulls.

Seagulls were less noticeable than birds of prey. Unfortunately, the place we found was a Dumpster. It was an empty Dumpster, but still . . .

As soon as I had my snowy white wings, I was up and out of there. We zoomed around, gaining altitude, and watched as Ax and Cassie retrieved our shoes and outer clothes. We still can't morph regular clothing, just whatever is almost skintight. In my case a leotard.

Tobias stayed up at a higher altitude, looking for trouble of any kind.

The three of us waited and watched the back of the grocery truck. There were two guys unloading it. One looked like the driver. The other was wearing a white apron. Probably a cook or something from the facility itself.

"We need to time this right," Jake said. "l don't want to be a seagull trapped inside a truck."

"One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand . . ." Marco counted off the seconds between trips by the truck driver or white apron guy.

"How about right now?" I said. I spilled air from my wings and dove toward the back of the truck just as the driver went into the building, pushing a dolly loaded with tomato crates.

Jake and Marco fell in beside me and we swooped, swift and neat, into the dark of the truck. I opened my wings and tilted my tail down to kill my speed. Then I took a quick glance around and used my remaining momentum to zip over the top of a wall of cardboard boxes and land in a cramped area behind.

I felt pretty pleased with myself. Marco and Jake landed beside me.

Marco landed a little clumsily and sort of rolled and fluttered into the wall of the truck.

"That was dumb, Rachel," Jake said. "You should have waited."

"I knew it would work," I said. I seethed a little at Jake calling me dumb. He wasn't always so careful. Of course, he is our unofficial leader, so I guess he feels responsible. Although as far as I'm concerned, I'm responsible for me.

"Okay, let's demorph," Jake said. "But this space looks pretty tight back here. So everyone watch your elbows."

"I'm telling you, I saw some birds fly in here," an irate voice said.

"You see birds? I don't see any birds. Let's get this unloaded. I'm on overtime here, and my company don't pay overtime."

I heard some grunting and the sound of more boxes being lifted. I began to demorph as fast as I could.

Jake was right. It was crowded. We went from being three birds, each smaller than a chicken, to being three kids. We were jammed together, and it wasn't pretty. Marco's hand and fingers were just emerging from his feathers when his arm bones sprouted and forced the fingers into my eyes.

I twisted my head aside as well as I could. But my head was the size of a grapefruit, with my eyes still stuck on the sides and a beak jammed tight into the space between two boxes, so it was hard to move.

There was a pain in my back and I had this jolt of fear. Was I feeling the morphing itself? The Andalite morphing technology keeps that from happening, but was it failing somehow? The pain was pretty severe, like the pressure of a ... well, of a knee being driven into my back.

"Jake, do you have your knee in -" But just then, thought-speak stopped working as we crossed the line from mostly seagull to mostly human.

In another few seconds we were packed together like sardines in a can. I literally could not move. We were one big mess of knees and elbows and twisted heads.

"This is ridiculous," I muttered.

"Morph to cockroach," Jake managed to whisper.

I've never been crazy about morphing bugs. But this was one case where I was relieved. For once I wanted to get small.

I focused my thoughts on the cockroach. And somehow – I have no idea how – that triggered the cockroach DNA in my system to begin reformulating all the cells in my body.

Of course, a cockroach is minuscule compared to a human being. So I was about to become half as big as my own thumb. According to Ax, all the excess mass gets pushed into Zero-space, where it sort of hangs like a big wad of guts and hair and stuff.

As I morphed the cockroach, as I became smaller and smaller and smaller, more and more of me was being deposited in some blank, white nonspace.

It's not something I like to think about.

In any case, the morphing itself was so disgusting, it distracted me from any such worries.

See, although we were shrinking, we were all still pretty large when the cockroach features began to appear. The extra legs, for example.

Two extra legs sprouted from my chest. They just poked out, like they belonged there. They came out looking like sticks a few inches long. But they just grew and grew and became hairy and articulated. It happened to all of us at almost the same instant.

SPLOOOT!

SPLOOOT!

SPLOOOT!

Unfortunately, we hadn't shrunk to roach size yet. Morphing is never totally logical. Things happen in weird, unpredictable ways. The three of us were each about the size of cocker spaniels when the legs appeared. Followed by insanely long antennae that shot from our foreheads and waved around madly like sensitive bullwhips.

My regular legs were changing. My arms were changing. My face was changing, and that's never good. But it's even worse when you're watching this mirror image of yourself. Marco's smirky face was just six inches from mine when big bug eyes popped out and his lower face split into the creepy, grasping mouthparts of a cockroach.

I've morphed a bunch of times. It is still a freak show nightmare.

The box was getting big beneath me. Now there was so much room I could no longer see Jake at all. Marco was a vague, low-slung shape off across a smooth, light brown cardboard plain.

I tried out my thought-speak. "You guys still there?"

"Yeah," Jake replied. "Let's take cover inside this box." I hadn't really looked at the box to notice what was inside. But I could see an open seam that looked as if it was six feet wide. In reality it was probably an inch. But an inch to a roach is way more space than necessary. A roach can squeeze through a space no wider than the thickness of a nickel.

The final changes were taking place. The hard, fingernail material that made up my outer body replaced the last vestiges of human flesh. The tiny remaining shreds of my liver and heart and lungs all disappeared to be replaced by the utterly primitive organs of the cockroach.

My dim, blurry, distorted roach vision wasn't great, but I was used to it and could more or less make sense out of things as long as they were close. And in addition, I had my antennae. They were tingling with information that seemed like some weird mix of touch and smell. I felt the air currents around me. I felt the vibrations as the cook lifted a heavy load and trudged away. I sensed Marco and Jake, two fellow roaches, although their presence didn't matter much to the roach brain.

But mostly, I smelled food.

Lots and lots of food. Very close by. Sweet. An overpowering smell-touch. Right beneath me.

I powered my six legs and went jerking forward.

ZOOM!

It's gross being a roach, but being a running roach is amazing. Your face is about a millimeter from the ground. And you feel like you're going two hundred miles an hour. It's as if someone strapped rockets on your back and shot you off across the ground, with your nose practically skinning on the dirt.

I zoomed over to the big seam in the box. Now I could see Marco and Jake fairly clearly. We were all standing next to the edge. We couldn't see down inside and it looked like a big, rectangular well or something.

"What do you think is down there?" Marco wondered.

"I don't know," I said. "But it's some kind of food, and it smells sweet." Suddenly, vibrations. The men were coming back, and I felt a massive, jarring thud as they stuck the edge of the dolly beneath our stack of boxes.

"Let's do it!" I yelled. I powered straight out into the darkness and fell through the perfumed air.

"I hate when she says that," Marco groaned. "Anytime Rachel says "let's do it" in that insane, suicidal, rock-and-roll way of hers, disaster can't be far away."

I fell!

Down and down and down. Probably at least three inches.

I hit bottom, only bottom wasn't flat. It was curved and pitched. I grabbed with the tiny claws at the ends of my legs, but I slipped farther before I could latch on.

Jake and Marco dropped not far away.

I looked around as well as I could in the gloom. I was standing on something almost cylindrical, except that it was also curved. And pressed in right beside this curved cylinder was another, each maybe ten times my own body length. And wait! Others, all around. In addition to being cylindrical and curved, now I could see that they tapered down to a blunt tip.

Some of these curved things were gathered together at one end, like a bunch of...

"Bananas," Marco said. "We're in a crate of bananas."

"0h. That must be what we were smelling. The sweet smell," Jake said.

"Good. This should be easy. They're moving us now. In a few seconds we'll be inside."

"Gross. Roaches on bananas," I said, making conversation while we waited. "Maybe that's why Cassie always washes her bananas before she peels them."

"No," Jake said. "lt's because of pesticides. You know, poisons."

"Poison?" Marco said nervously. "l don't feel sick. At least, I don't think I feel sick."

"lt would just be trace amounts," Jake said. "But I suppose they spray poison on the bananas down in wherever. Ecuador or wherever."

"Ecuador? That just popped into your head? Ecuador?" Marco demanded.

"Besides, Cassie's probably wrong. What's going to eat through banana skin? This skin is like foot-thick leather."

"l think it's for the spiders," I said. "Haven't you ever heard how sometimes there are tarantulas crawling around bananas? Happens all the time. They come up in the holds of ships and -"

"Excuse me? Tarantulas?" Marco squeaked.

"0h, come on. What are the odds that there's a tarantula in this particular crate of bananas?"

Unfortunately, right at that moment I got the answer. The crate was out of the truck and a bright beam of sunlight shone down through the opening in the box. A brilliant shaft illuminated the bananas. It was a bizarre landscape. Curves everywhere. Like someone with a protractor had drawn an endless jumble of arcs.

It was about eight inches away. Sitting comfortably atop a bunch of bananas. It was, no exaggeration, as big as an elephant to me.

"Um, guys? Don't anyone make any sudden movements, okay?"

"0h, puh-leeze," Marco said. "How lame do you think we are, Rachel? Now you're going to pretend there's a tarantula in here? So I'm supposed to go screaming around like a nitwit while you laugh yourself sick?"

"Marco. Jake. Just look behind you."

I guess they looked.

"Aaaaahhhh!"

"Aaaaahhhh!"

They ran. The spider moved.

Roaches are fast. Tarantulas are faster.

I would have never believed something that big could move that fast.

But I guess it had been a long, hungry boat ride up from Ecuador for the tarantula.

"Rachel! Where are you?" Jake yelled.

Eight hairy legs were a blur. All I could focus on was a huge, ripping beak like a hawk's, and eight eerie eyes all in a cluster in that huge hairy face.

It was after me!

I motored. I leaped as well as my roach legs could leap. In some tiny corner of my tiny roach brain I heard the cockroach instincts screaming, Fly! Fly!

I fluttered open the hard shell that covered my gossamer roach wings and I flew. I flew nowhere! Maybe two inches! Roaches can't fly worth a -

It was on me! Looming over me! The sunlight streamed down and then a shadow. Not the shadow of the spider, something bigger, farther away.

I was looking up at nostril! A pair of huge, hairy, human nostrils. And beyond them, weirdly bright human eyes.

I tried to run, but the spider reared up, flailing its front legs like a frightened horse. It jammed one of those legs down so fast I didn't see it move. A claw grabbed my left middle leg. I fought and twisted, but there was no escape.

Huge fangs were descending on me.

Then, "Oh! Oh! Aaaarrrggghh! A spider!"

Everything went nuts. The bananas went flying. We were falling, me and the tarantula, which still refused to let me go. Monstrous bananas, each as big as a piece of concrete sewer pipe, fell toward us. But the spider and I were falling, too.

WHAM!

Bananas all over me. Brilliant sunlight everywhere!

In panic, the cook had knocked the pile of boxes off his dolly. The banana crate had smashed down onto the floor just inside the loading dock.

"What are you doing with my bananas?" the truck driver yelled. Then, "Oh, jeez! Kill it!"

I'd been battered and beaten by falling bananas, but that spider still had me. And now, in addition to the sheer, screaming panic I felt, the roach brain was adding the terror of sudden, bright light.

Run! the roach brain yammered.

Run! my brain agreed.

"Stomp it!" someone yelled in a voice that vibrated down through my body.

A huge, slow-moving shadow came down and down and down.

SQUISH! A banana exploded under the impact of the giant shoe. It gushed banana goo, sweet and sticky, all over us.

And still that tarantula held me. Eight huge, expressionless black eyes glared down. The gnashing, hungry beak strained for the chance to rip me open.

"ls that one of you?" Tobias cried from far away.

Thanks be to a million years of evolution that has given the hawk its magnificent eyes. Oh, yes, oh, yes, love those eyes.

"lt's me!" I yelled.

I didn't see Tobias come falling from the sky. All I saw was a blur of big, craggy talons snatch the spider up, up and away.

I kept my grip on a banana. My leg was ripped away by the spider, which flatly refused to let go. It hurt in a sort of vague, distant kind of way. But roaches are pretty tough.

"Let's move!" Jake said. "Head toward the shade. That should be the inside of the building."

We moved out. I moved a little more slowly, and with a tendency to drift toward the side with the missing leg.

And from high above I heard Tobias say, "Hmmm. Not bad. Not bad at all."

"See, this is what happens whenever Rachel starts in with her "let's do it" attitude," Marco complained as we scurried across a filthy floor.

"We end up being eaten by spiders or something."

"Hey, I don't see where you suffered, Marco," I said. "I'm the one who can only count to five on her legs."

"Stick close to the base of the wall," Jake said. "l don't want to get stomped. I got swatted in fly morph, and that's enough for me. I am not getting stomped on, too."

We were a little shaky, obviously.

"You think Tobias actually ate that spider?" Marco asked.

"With banana relish," I said.

We laughed a nervous kind of laugh and continued zooming along the rubber baseboard in the facility's kitchen. Then, an opening in the wall and we were in. I was grateful to be out of the harsh light. And away from so many shoes.

"I've spotted the guy." It was Cassie's thought-speak voice.

I was puzzled. "What are you doing?"

"Ax and I morphed to harrier and osprey. We've been looking in the windows, trying to spot Mr. Edelman. I have him. Second floor. Above the kitchen, then maybe twenty feet along the building. He's in a room with three other patients. They're wearing hospital gowns and slippers.

They're watching TV."

"It's the show called Gilligan's lsland," Ax added helpfully.

"Now, how does Ax know about Gilligan's Island?" Marco wondered. No one answered him.

"Okay, straight up," Jake said.

The inside of the wall was a natural home to cockroaches. In fact, I noted several scattered areas of roach poop.

It's the kind of thing a roach brain notices.

The inside of the wall was otherwise a pretty clean place. I was standing on a wide expanse of wood. The grain was like ripples under my roach feet. A nail head protruded in front of me and looked about as tall as a tall woman. To my left and right were the backsides of Sheetrock – featureless, blank, gray.

We tried our feet out on the Sheetrock. They tended to slip. So we scuttled down to an upright beam and climbed the wood instead.

Eight feet straight up, and it was weirdly like flying. I felt the "ground" recede way, way below me. Dozens of times my own height. I knew I wouldn't be hurt if I fell. But still, hanging sideways, crawling straight up against gravity, seemed dangerous.

We reached the top of the beam and I was grateful to haul myself up and over into a space between the upright and a cross beam. We were just beneath the floor. But now things were complicated. The space between the second floor and the ceiling beneath it was mostly blocked by a wall of wood. But eventually we found a way in, walking sideways and scraping between rough-sawed wood-ends.

My antennae waved wildly, trying to comprehend the long, square tunnel before me. It was almost pitch-dark. Only a tiny hint of light filtered down from the floor above. And after the run-in with the spider, I was very jumpy. Who knew what might be in that vast, dark space?

"That light must be from some kind of crack," Jake said.

"I guess we go toward that. Unless anyone else has any ideas?"

"l have an idea," Marco said. "We get out of here, go back to the mall, and see how many Cinnabons Ax can eat before he explodes."

"Oh, come on, you babies," I said, trying to sound braver than I felt.

"Let's go." I scuttled forward. I was walking on Sheetrock that formed the ceiling below. The wooden walls on either side of me were insanely tall – ten, twenty times my height.

But we soon reached the light. I felt better. My roach brain felt worse.

Across our path lay a huge tube. It seemed to be metal and looked as big as a felled redwood. From the large tube, two smaller tubes went straight up toward a brighter light.

"Plumbing," Jake remarked.

Sudden movement in the darkness!

"Aaahhh!" I yelled, but even as I was yelling, I realized what it was.

"A brother roach," Marco said. "0r sister."

"Come on, let's get this over with," I said. I scampered straight up the nearest vertical pipe. And within seconds I was poking my bullwhip antennae out into the light beneath a sink.

"It's a bathroom," I reported. "Come on." We piled out through the hole, and down onto cold, white ceramic tile.

"Are we in the right place?" Marco wondered.

"l don't know. I forgot to bring my map of the inside of the walls of the nuthouse," I said. "We need to have Cassie or one of the guys confirm where we are. There's a window up there." I took off, scurrying across the tile, up the wall and onto the wire mesh of the window. I could see light, of course, but could not see through the glass.

"Hey, Cassie, Ax, Tobias. Do you see a roach sitting on a window?" Ax answered. "Yes. I see you. You are in a small room just alongside the room where the human named Edelman is."

"Thanks." I rejoined the others. "So. Now what?"

"Now we talk to Mr. Edelman," Jake said. "We need to get him to come in here. We'll have some privacy in here."

"And then what, he talks to a cockroach?"

"No. One of us needs to demorph and talk to him," Jake said.

"Wait a minute," Marco objected. "Isn't he going to think it's a little weird, some kid appearing magically in his bathroom?"

"It's a facility for people with mental illnesses, Marco," Jake pointed out. "Who's going to believe him?"

"I'll do the talking," I said. "Mr. Edelman is my responsibility. I rescued him. And I'm starting to think I'm sorry I did. You guys stay out of the way. I'd hate to accidentally step on you." I began to demorph.

The squares of ceramic tile grew rapidly smaller. I shot up and up, like Jack's magic bean sprout or something.

I was about two feet tall, with skin like burnt sugar, monstrously long antennae sprouting from my forehead, human eyes, semihuman legs that bristled with dagger-sharp hairs, blond hair, and a wide, throbbing yellowish-brown abdomen, when the bathroom door opened.

A man shuffled in, wearing slippers. He headed for the toilet. He hesitated. Slowly, very slowly, he turned.

My human mouth was just appearing. My lips grew from melted roach mouthparts.

"Hi. Could you get George Edelman for me?"

The man nodded. "Sure." He started to go. Then he turned back. "Are you real?"

"Nah. Just a figment of your imagination."

"Ah. I'll get George."

I was human by the time Mr. Edelman poked his head cautiously into the room.

"Hi," I said cheerfully. I stuck out my hand. "I'm ... I'm helping your lawyer with your court case."

He was startled. Who wouldn't be? He swept his eyes around the room as though maybe, just maybe, there was something weird about meeting me in a bathroom. He didn't notice the two cockroaches huddled together under the sink.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Then he looked down. "You're not wearing shoes."

"Yes, I apologize for my slightly ..." I was looking for a sophisticated word like "unconventional," but I couldn't think of it. ". . . my slightly weird appearance here."

"Yes. Weird." He glared at me for a while, uncertain what to make of my utterly bizarre appearance in his bathroom. Then he shook my outstretched hand. "I guess I'm not one to be talking about 'weird.'"

"Would you like to have a seat?" I said, indicating the toilet.

"No. Thanks." Again the look that said, "Wait a minute, I may be nuts, but there's something strange about this." Then he said, "You're awfully young."

"Thank you," I said. "Actually I'm twenty-five, but I work out, I eat the right foods, and I always wear sunscreen. Mr. Edelman," I said bluntly, before he could ask me any more questions, "why did you try to kill yourself?"

He sat down on the edge of the tub. I leaned against the sink and tried to look like a very youthful twenty-five-year-old with no shoes. Mr.

Edelman looked at me with confused, but kind, gray eyes. He made an effort to smooth his rumpled hair.

And he said, "I had no choice. It's this thing in my head."

I nodded. "Okay. Yes. What thing in your head?" ,. "The Yeerk." He made a weak smile, like he was expecting me to laugh and denounce him as a lunatic.

My heart beat faster and I missed a breath. I sucked in a lungful and kept my expression fixed.

"What exactly is a Yeerk, sir?"

He hesitated again. He was tired of telling stories no one believed.

Maybe he was on prescription drugs. They do that in psychiatric hospitals. He was probably loaded up on tran-quilizers or something. All of a sudden, I felt sorry for him.

"Mr. Edelman, I promise you ! won't laugh. And I won't make you take any pills. And I won't say you're crazy. Can you tell me what you mean when you say 'Yeerk'?"

He nodded. "Yes. Yeerks are parasitic aliens. They enter the brain through the ear canal. They take over every function of your conscious mind. They . . ." Suddenly he went into a spasm. It wracked his body. He jerked wildly, wrapped his arms tight together, and tried to control it.

His mouth snapped open and shut like some mad ventriloquist's dummy.

I grabbed him by the shoulders, trying to do something to help. But then he started raving. He was speaking in a strange, manic voice.

"Ill what? Farum yeft kalash sip! Sip! Sip! The pool!

Gacastp AAAAHHH! Help! Coranch! Coranch!"

Suddenly, he fell silent and almost collapsed. I propped him back up.

"Are you okay?"

"No," he whispered. "It happens sometimes. It's the Yeerk. You see, he's mad. Insane. He's in my head and he won't get out. But he is insane!

Insane!"

"Okay, okay, try and chill, okay, Mr. Edelman?"

"Yes. Yes."

"Look, I can't stay much longer. But you have to tell me: How is the Yeerk staying alive without Kandrona rays? You've been in here for more than three days."

I cannot possibly describe the way he looked at me then. Hope. Dread.

Amazement. All three.

I grabbed him again by the shoulders. "I know it's weird, but you have to trust me. How does it happen? Why is the Yeerk insane? How does it survive without the Kandrona?"

"Andalite?" Mr. Edelman whispered wonder-ingly.

"Yes," I lied. "Andalite."

"It's the food," he said, gushing the information. "The food! During the famine after... after you Andalites destroyed the one Kandrona, we found out, they found out that a certain food could help them get by. For a while. But there were problems with it – AAHHH! Yeft, hiyiyarg felorka!

Ghafrash fit Visser!"

Mr. Edelman jerked and slavered and yelled for a few minutes and I waited and worried that someone might come. Some attendant or doctor or something. But no one did.

I wished I could help the man. I had spent enough time close to Controllers of various types – human, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxon – to guess that some of what he was saying was in the basic Yeerk language. And other words were Hork-Bajir. Yeerks seem to adopt some of the language of their hosts. The Yeerk who was in Edelman's head must have been a Hork-Bajir-Controller at one point.

Mr. Edelman calmed down and got control of himself again. "Sorry. The Yeerk breaks through sometimes. What you hear is the raving of a crazy Yeerk."

"It's okay," I said. "What's this food? The food that allows Yeerks to survive without the Kandrona?"

"They discovered it quite by accident. No one guessed what it could do.

No one realized it would prove addictive. But it did. Terribly addictive. And over time, the continued ingestion of it began to eliminate the Yeerks' need for Kandrona rays. At the same time, it drove them crazy. You see, it seems to literally replace some of a Yeerk's brain stem."

I nodded. I could barely contain my excitement.

A food that could destroy Yeerks! "What is the food, Mr. Edelman?"

"Oatmeal," he said. "But only the instant kind. And then, only the maple and ginger flavor." He shook his head. "Yeerks cannot resist the addiction, once exposed. And they slowly, but surely, drive themselves mad. There are dozens of men and women like me. In places like this. On the streets. Or worse."

"Thanks for telling me," I said. "Urn . . . Listen, is there anything I can do for you?"

He shook his head a little sadly. "The Yeerks will leave me alone. After all, who is going to believe a madman? I ... I am sorry I tried to destroy myself. It all just got to be too much. This . . . this alien lunatic in my head. My family wanting to keep me locked up in here."

"Isn't there some way to get the Yeerk out of your head?"

"No. No. He will'live as long as I do."

I've never seen sadder eyes. I hope I never see eyes that sad again. I looked away.

"I just wish . . . the times when I am myself, when I am in control, I wish I didn't have to spend them in here."

He looked out through the dirty bathroom window with its heavy wire mesh.

We have our ultimate weapon," Marco reported to the others when we were all safely assembled back in Cassie's barn. "Maple and ginger oatmeal."

"Instant maple and ginger oatmeal," I corrected.

"Instant," Marco agreed.

Cassie, Ax, and Tobias all just stared. Tobias was his hawk self, and he can really stare. Ax was in his own Andalite body, and he could stare with four eyes at once.

"Oatmeal," Cassie said.

"Oatmeal," Jake confirmed. "But only the instant maple and ginger. !

guess they don't know why."

"Maybe it's the maple," Tobias suggested.

"Maybe it's the ginger. Or maybe it's the 'instant.' Whatever that is,"

I said. "Who cares? Suddenly we have a weapon to use on human-Controllers. A human-Controller who eats this stuff gets hooked and the Yeerk in his head goes nuts. What we have to do is find some way to get a lot of this stuff into a lot of Controllers."

I took a sidelong glance at Cassie. Something told me she was not going to approve of this. But Cassie was bending over a cage, poking her fingers through the wire to check a bandage on an injured badger.

To my surprise, it was Tobias who said, "You know, something about this doesn't feel totally okay. You know?"

Marco, who had been lounging on a bale of hay, jumped up. "What? What?

We have green kryptonite here! We have something that can make Yeerks go nuts. Why is that not a good thing?"

"It sounds to me like they get addicted to it. Like a drug," Tobias said.

I winced. "It's oatmeal, okay? Not anything illegal."

"A drug is in the eye of the beholder," Tobias argued. "lf you get addicted to the illegal stuff and it messes you up, that's a drug to you. If you get addicted to oatmeal and it messes you up -"

"It's still just oatmeal," I said. "Oatmeal is oatmeal. Jeez! I can't believe we're having this conversation."

"Look," Marco said, "the bigger question here is WHO CARES?! They're Yeerks. They're the enemy. They attacked us, not the other way around."

"What about the hosts? The humans?" Ax asked. "The Yeerks are made invulnerable to their normal hunger for Kandrona rays. They can live inside their human hosts forever, even if the oatmeal is later taken away. These hosts would lose all hope."

"If we lose this war we're all going to be without hope," I said. "Ax, I can't believe you, of all people, would even hesitate."

Ax swiveled his stalk eyes toward me. "We Andalites have been at war longer than you. We understand the temptation to sink to the level of your enemy."

"Sink to the level of -" I started to yell.

Ax cut me off. "We also know that you can't win if you are not prepared to be a little ruthless. It's a question of balance. How far into savagery do you go to defeat the savage?"

I looked around the barn. Marco and I had drawn closer, almost unconsciously. Tobias was up in the rafters, using his hawk senses to listen and look for anyone approaching the barn. Ax was shifting on his four legs and stretching his scorpionlike tail.

Jake and Cassie were the only ones not to say much. Jake looked troubled. He was staring, but not at anything real. I could guess his thoughts. His brother, Tom, is a Controller.