The Alien

by K. A. Applegate

  Prince Jake said, “Mr. Pardue? This is my cousin from out of town. His name’s Phillip. He’s just hanging with me today, okay?”

  “Just sit. Sit. Be quiet and sit.”

  I could tell from Prince Jake’s facial expression that he was troubled. He took my arm and led me to the back of the room.

  “Take that desk,” Prince Jake said.

  “Take it where? Wheh-err? Where?”

  “I mean sit in it.”

  I understood sitting. I was getting pretty good at passing for human.

  Once, for two days I had to morph Prince Jake and pretend to be him. I was successful in fooling his parents and brother. Although I later learned that his parents believed “he” had become mentally ill. When the real Prince Jake returned, they took him to see a doctor.

  “Sitting in this desk is unpleasant,” I said.

  “You got that right, dude,” a human I didn’t know said.

  “What is going on back there? Quiet down,” the teacher demanded loudly. “What is . . . what . . . wha . . .” Suddenly he clutched at his head with both hands. “Everyone be quiet! Quiet!”

  Now Prince Jake looked very troubled. “Mr. Pardue, are you okay?”

  All the other humans stared at the teacher, too. Everyone was very quiet.

  “Okay?” Mr. Pardue demanded in a loud, angry voice. “Am I okay? Am I — aaaaahhhhh!”

  Without warning, Mr. Pardue pitched forward. He fell on the floor. He clawed at his head with his hands.

  And he cried. “Yeerk! Get out of me!”

  He clawed at his head till blood began to flow.

  Aaaaaarrrggghhh!” the teacher cried as he clawed at his head.

  One of the humans began screaming. “What’s happening?! What’s happening?!”

  Someone else ran from the room into the hallway and began to shout, “Help! Help! Help!”

  Prince Jake and I sat very still, side by side in the back of the room.

  “Stop damaging our body!” Mr. Pardue cried. Then, as if he were answering himself, he said in a slurred voice, “Get out my head! Get out of my head! You’re finished!”

  Prince Jake’s gaze met my own. We both knew what was happening.

  “That makes two,” Prince Jake whispered.

  “Two that we’ve seen. Something is going wrong for . . . for them.”

  Mr. Pardue began crying. He began cursing. All the while he writhed on the floor, and the other humans stood around horrified, helpless.

  “Did you know this teacher was a Controller?” I asked Prince Jake, making my voice very quiet.

  “No. He always seemed like a nice guy. I can’t just sit here and watch this!”

  “Get OUT OF ME!” Mr. Pardue screamed suddenly.

  The Yeerk in the teacher’s head was weakening. It was starving from lack of Kandrona rays. The human host, the real Mr. Pardue, was fighting for control.

  Suddenly Prince Jake stood up and rushed to the teacher’s side. I was right behind him. I tried to grab his arm to stop him, but he was too quick.

  “Prince Jake!” I snapped, but he ignored me.

  Prince Jake knelt by the teacher’s bleeding head. “I know what this is,” he whispered. “I know what this is, Mr. Pardue. Ride it out. The Yeerk will die. You’ll be free.”

  Others were coming closer. Close enough to overhear. “Stay back,” I said to them. “There may be danger.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. It seemed to work. The others stayed back.

  Mr. Pardue rolled his eyes up to focus blearily on Prince Jake’s face.

  Prince Jake grabbed the teacher’s shoulder in a tight grip. “I’ve been there,” he whispered. “I’ve done it, Mr. Pardue. I was a Controller for a while. I survived. Just hang on.”

  I searched the faces of the other humans, trying to see if they had overheard. Jake was my prince, but this was dangerous, foolish behavior.

  Suddenly the door of the room opened. I recognized the human who rushed into the room.

  Chapman.

  He is the assistant principal for the school. He is also a high-ranking Controller.

  “All right, kids, everyone out,” Chapman snapped. “Everyone out to the quad. Out of the building. Mr. Pardue is just sick.”

  “You!” Mr. Pardue cried. “No! Chapman is . . . he’s . . .”

  “I said OUT!” Chapman roared.

  The humans fled the room, anxious to be away from the scene of madness.

  But Prince Jake did not move. He stayed by the human called Pardue. I saw his fists clenching. There was a dangerous light in his eyes.

  Chapman looked at me. Then back at Prince Jake. “Jake, you and your friend get out.”

  For a frozen moment of time, no one moved. I held my breath. Would Prince Jake start a fight? If so, I would have to join him. But this was a foolish fight. Prince Jake could not afford to reveal himself.

  I grabbed Prince Jake’s arm and yanked him up to his feet. He glared furiously at me.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  Slowly he nodded. “Yeah. Hope he gets better.” He looked at Chapman. “He will get better, won’t he, Mr. Chapman?”

  “Who can say?” the Controller answered coldly.

  I drew Prince Jake away. He stopped at the door, and we looked back to see Chapman draw a short steel cylinder from his pocket. He pressed it against the neck of the weeping teacher.

  “No!” Mr. Pardue cried. “No!”

  Then, very quickly, Mr. Pardue fell silent.

  Prince Jake turned away and ran. He pushed his way through the others, who were still clustered just outside the classroom. He ran clear outside. He gasped at the air, as if he did not have sufficient oxygen.

  I caught up to him, but it was difficult. He has more practice running on two legs.

  “Prince . . . I mean, Jake. Are you sick?”

  He shook his head. “Pardue was a Controller. The Yeerk was starving. And why? Because we destroyed the Kandrona. Me and you and the others. We did this!”

  “It was necessary,” I said. “We struck a powerful blow against the Yeerks by destroying the Kandrona.”

  “Chapman killed him, didn’t he?” Prince Jake said. “The little steel cylinder. Did you see that? Not just the Yeerk, but the real Pardue. He killed them both.”

  There was no point in lying anymore. Prince Jake had seen the truth. And the idea of lying now, here, made me feel unwell inside.

  “If the Yeerk inside the teacher had died, the teacher would have survived and been free,” I said. “He would have told other humans what happened. He would have warned them. The Yeerks can’t allow witnesses.”

  “They’re going to kill every host whose Yeerk dies, aren’t they?” Prince Jake asked bitterly. “Every Human-Controller whose Yeerk dies is going to be eliminated. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Prince Jake’s face showed an expression. I believed it was an expression of sickness.

  “We did this,” Prince Jake said.

  “It’s war,” I said.

  “My brother,” Prince Jake said. “Tom. He’s a Controller. What about him?”

  I had no answer. The Yeerks would save as many as they could. But if their emergency system was breaking down, they would do what had to be done. They would eliminate any evidence.

  Prince Jake was staring at me. “You knew they would do this?”

  I glared back at him. Maybe it was the human adrenaline in my system, but I was becoming angry now. Angry at the accusing look in Prince Jake’s eyes. “Yes, I knew.”

  “How did you know?”

  I hesitated. Prince Jake did not like my hesitation. He suddenly wheeled around and pushed me against the wall.

  “
How did you know the Yeerks would do this?”

  “Because it’s happened before. You think this is the first planet the Yeerks have infiltrated? Do you think Earth is the only place where we Andalites have fought them? They don’t leave witnesses.”

  Prince Jake let me go. But he looked at me with unmistakable suspicion. “I don’t like you keeping secrets from me, Ax. I’m your friend. We’re your friends. We should know whatever you know. You didn’t tell me about this.”

  “Terrible things happen in war,” I said. “You did what you had to do. Destroying the Kandrona was part of that war.”

  “You can say it’s a war,” Prince Jake said. “But I hate it.”

  “Love the warrior. Hate the war. War-ruh.”

  “What is that, an old Andalite saying?” Prince Jake asked sarcastically.

  “Yes. My brother used to say it.”

  Prince Jake looked at me for a very long time. It made me uncomfortable. “You know something, Ax? Sometimes I get the feeling we humans are just pawns in this big game between you Andalites and the Yeerks. We’re just ammunition in this war, aren’t we? Too dumb to know what’s going on. Too primitive to be real warriors.”

  “That is not the way it is,” I said. My own anger was diminishing. Prince Jake’s suspicion was not.

  “You fight alongside us, Ax. As far as I’m concerned, you’re one of us. But then I find out you’re keeping secrets. Rachel and Marco keep asking me: What do we know about Ax? What has he ever told us about his own planet, while we show him everything? I told them we could trust you. Now I wonder. I really wonder. There’s no trust when you keep secrets. You should have told me this is what the Yeerks would do. You know I have a brother who . . . you know about Tom. I had a right to know what could happen.”

  “Maybe you would not have destroyed the Kandrona if you had known it could endanger Tom,” I pointed out.

  Prince Jake stuck his face very close to mine. “That’s what you think? You know what, Ax? You’re right to try and learn more about humans. Because you don’t know a thing about us. Not a thing.”

  An Andalite may think that humans are simple, open, trusting creatures. But they are more subtle than they seem to be at first. Possibly this is because of their spoken language, where no word ever means just one thing.

  — From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

  My day at the human school ended with the removal of the teacher who had been a Controller. Prince Jake went home. I went back to the woods and gratefully resumed my true shape.

  But I spent a very bad afternoon and night. I realized that Prince Jake and the humans could never be my true shorms. I knew there was a wall between me and them. But they were all I had. Without them, I was utterly alone. And Prince Jake’s anger and suspicion had hurt me.

  It is a terribly lonely thing to be hundreds of trillions of Earth miles from every living member of your own people.

  The next day, Marco invited me to “hang out” with him. This was a surprise. Marco has never been very friendly, unlike Cassie and Tobias and Prince Jake. Rachel, too, has never seemed to take to me.

  I morphed into my human body and met Marco at the edge of the woods. “So,” he said. “You want to be Pinocchio, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Pinocchio was a little boy carved out of wood. He wanted to be a real, live human.”

  “I do not want to be a human. I merely wish to study them.”

  Marco smiled. “What a coincidence. And I want to study Andalites.”

  It took several seconds for me to understand what he was saying. “Oh. Prince Jake asked you to press me for information.”

  “Jake was a little ticked off that you didn’t tell us everything you know,” Marco said. “Rachel was even more ticked. Come on, we have to catch the bus. You want to learn about humans, right? I thought I’d take you to a bookstore. Smart as you are, you can learn to read English.”

  “Bookstore? Book-kuh-store?”

  “Yeah. Books. Fiction. History. A hundred thousand books all about the human race. And you get to choose any of them you want. We have no secrets, unlike certain species I could mention who don’t even tell us a little thing like how they eat with no mouth.”

  “I see. You open your society to me. Societeee. Teee. And you want me to do the same in return.”

  “I told Jake I could cleverly weasel all the information out of you, but he said, ‘No, Ax is a friend. Show him we have nothing to hide. Maybe he’ll finally decide to trust us.’”

  I felt a pang of guilt. They were treating me with trust. They had never done anything to hurt me. On the contrary, they had been wonderful to me. Good in every way.

  “I have reasons for keeping secrets,” I said.

  Marco nodded. “Yeah, we know. Rachel says you probably aren’t allowed to interfere with primitive races like humans.”

  I was surprised. It was very close to the truth. At first I did not know what to say.

  Marco smiled a cold smile and nodded his head. “So, that is it, right? Kind of too late for that attitude, isn’t it? After all, the Yeerks are interfering with us like crazy.”

  I had no answer to give. But as I looked around at the street, at all the humans in their cars, and all the humans lurching along on two legs, it occurred to me just how defenseless I would be without Prince Jake and Marco and the others.

  We had reached the bus stop. Suddenly Marco slapped his pants. “Oh, man. I left my money at home. We all pitched in for your book fund. I left it on my desk. Come on.”

  “Where are we going? Ing? Ing-ahng-ing. That is a very satisfying sound.”

  “Yeah, everybody loves a good ‘ing.’ We have to run over to my house. Don’t worry, it’s just around the corner.”

  Marco led me down the street. There were houses on both sides. Big, boxy structures with transparent rectangles here and there.

  “That is Prince Jake’s house,” I said. I had spent time in Prince Jake’s house.

  “No, it’s just the same model as his house. This is a subdivision. There are only, like, five different models of houses. They all look alike. Welcome to the suburbs. But it beats the place I used to live in.”

  He was correct. There were only five types of house. Although some had more grass, and some had less. Also, some houses were decorated with items that had been placed on the grass.

  “What is that decoration?” I asked.

  Marco followed the direction of my gaze. Then he rolled his eyes upward. “That’s a Big Wheel.”

  “It is very attractive. Very colorful.”

  “Uh-huh. I’d love to tell you how it works, but it’s the very height of human technology, so it’s secret. Primitive races could get hold of Big Wheels, and then who knows what might happen?”

  I am still learning about human mouth-sounds. But I am very sure Marco’s sound was sarcasm.

  “There’s my house. My dad is home, working. He sprained his ankle, so he’s using his home computer. Don’t be weird, okay?”

  “No. I will not be weird. Weeeerd. Weeeeerduh. I will act like a normal human.”

  “You act like a normal human and you’ll win an Oscar,” Marco said. He led the way up to his house and opened the door. “Okay, look, you wait right there by that table. Don’t go anywhere. If my dad comes in and talks to you, just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Got it? Yes and no answers only. I’ll run up to my room. I’m gonna call one of the others to meet us at the bookstore. You’re already driving me nuts.”

  I stood by the table. There was a primitive computer on the table. It even had a solid, two-dimensional screen. And a keyboard! An actual keyboard.

  I touched the keyboard. It was amazing. Andalite computers once had keyboards, too. Although ours were very different. And it had been centuries since we’d used
them.

  On the screen of the computer was a game. The object of the game was to spot the errors in a primitive symbolic language and correct them. Of course, before I could play I had to make sense of the system. But that was simple enough.

  Once I understood the system, it was easy to spot the errors. I quickly rewrote it to make sense out of it.

  I said to myself.

  “Hello?”

  I turned around. It was an older human. He was paler than Marco, but other features were similar.

  Marco had warned me to say nothing to his father but “yes” and “no.”

  “No,” I said to Marco’s father.

  “I’m Marco’s dad. Are you a friend of his?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Your name is ‘No’?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s an unusual name, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, it’s not an unusual name?”

  “No.”

  “Now I’m totally confused.”

  “Yes.”

  Marco’s father stared at me. Then, in a loud voice, he yelled, “Hey, Marco? Marco? Would you . . . um . . . your friend is here. Your friend ‘No’ is here.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  Marco came running down the stairs. “Whoa!” he cried. “Um, Dad! You met my friend?”

  “No?” Marco’s father said.

  “What?” Marco asked.

  Marco’s father shook his head. “I must be getting old. I don’t understand you kids.”

  “Yes,” I offered.

  After that, we went to the bookstore.

  Books are an amazing human invention. They allow instant access to information simply by turning pieces of paper. They are much faster to use than computers. Surprisingly, humans invented books before computers. They do many things backward.

  — From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

  It was evening of the next day. I was in the woods. I was reading a book. The book was called the World Almanac. Did you know that twelve percent of households have a dehumidifier? Did you know that a sheep can live for twenty years? Did you know that humans used to believe their sun orbited Earth?