The Test

by K. A. Applegate

  I said. My words sounded preposterous. I wondered for a second if I hadn’t dreamed it all.

  “Don’t believe it,” Rachel muttered, charging out of bed. “C’mon. Let’s get the others.”

  An hour later, we had all assembled in Cassie’s barn.

  “A deal?! Come on. Our help?! Puh-leeze. If some Yeerk contracts a democracy virus, I’m supposed to care?” Marco said skeptically. “I don’t think so.”

  Ax nearly sneered.

  “But what if she’s telling the truth?” Cassie countered. Cassie was the only one of us who’d befriended a Yeerk before. Who’d actually morphed a Yeerk. I knew she, at least, would want to give my story some consideration. “Maybe she really does believe in a better way. She wouldn’t be the first Yeerk to have a change of heart.”

  “No, she’d be the last. That creep wouldn’t even breathe if it didn’t serve her,” Rachel sneered. “She’s not about to found a democratic leadership because it’s a just philosophy. She wants something else.”

  “Seems obvious to me,” Marco answered. “It’s the means, not the end, that interest her. She’s keen on democracy because it’s a process that will eject Visser Three.”

  “Do you always assume the worst of people?” Cassie asked.

  “Always.” Marco smiled. “People are who they are. My bet is that when Taylor failed to break Tobias with torture, the visser sent her packing. She’s probably been plotting revenge ever since.”

  For a second, nobody spoke. Jake glared at Marco and I was pretty sure I knew why. I was guessing it was probably also the reason no one had mentioned how I’d been recaptured in the first place. No one had mentioned that I’d made a huge mistake by rescuing the lost kid. Now I realized why. Marco’d mentioned torture, something he was apparently not supposed to do when I was around, not even in passing.

  Their hypersensitivity made me mad. Did they think the memory would mess me up? Couldn’t they see me getting stronger? Couldn’t they tell I’d be fine?

  “Tobias, what’s your take?” Jake said, breaking the silence. “You know more about her than anyone.”

  What was my take, now that I wasn’t locked in a cage, waiting to be tortured? Rachel looked at me. Her eyes gave me strength.

  I said, suddenly knowing the truth.

  “Know what would be even more irresistible?” Marco added. “Get Visser Three and the Andalite bandits both killed in the process. Two birds, one stone.”

  Rachel nodded. “Marco has a point. An irony in itself.”

  “We’ve had other chances to get Visser Three and we’ve blown them,” Jake said. “We might not get a shot like this again. Can we afford to pass it up?”

  Ax observed.

  “Right,” Marco agreed. “Capitalize on the chaos. Divide and conquer.”

  “We tried that, remember?” Rachel said. “The time we pretended to help Visser One destroy Visser Three. It didn’t go over real well.”

  “This is different,” Marco replied flatly. “It’s not about my mother this time. It’s not personal.”

  Not personal? Marco didn’t know how wrong he was.

  “Tobias,” Jake said. “I still think this should be your call.” He looked up at my perch on the rafter. “Do we deal with Taylor or not?”

  I looked away from the group, out through the loft window. Out at the moon, gigantic on the horizon.

  People have told me that when the moon fills the sky like that, when it looms huge like a glow-in-the-dark beach ball, it’s really just an illusion. It’s your mind playing tricks on you. And it’s true. If you look at the moon through a camera lens, it’s just a dinky dot in the sky. Our minds make it bigger than it is.

  I said after a moment,

  I stopped. What if Taylor was all I knew she was and worse? I looked back at the orange-white moon. I knew it was just an illusion, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it, immense and amazing.

  I said finally.

  Win or lose, I had to deal.

  The freak and geek club. The middle of the night, deep in the forest. Four kids and a bird crowded around a laptop salvaged from a Dumpster and repaired by an alien kid and friend, Ax. An Andalite and brother of Elfangor. Ax’s fourteen fingers deftly powered up the unit and dialed up the Internet.

  “Ax, this is way cool,” Rachel whispered, “but how did you do it? A cell phone? Internet access? That’s more allowance than I’ll ever see.”

  “You mean because Macy’s has you on that pesky outfit-per-week plan?” Marco sneered.

  “I’d like to think that an Andalite who once made contact with his home world could arrange Web access,” Jake said.

  Ax said somberly. He was using an old car battery for power. All the wires and tape patches spilling from the jerry-rigged setup made Ax look pretty clever to me.

  “The bank wasn’t reassured by the whole ‘unemployed alien’ aspect of your application?” Marco said.

  “That’s right,” Cassie said. “So I’m helping him. You know the cell phone I’m supposed to take with me, for emergencies only? Well, Dad made a deal with me. I can talk for half an hour a week if I do Saturday morning meds.” I watched her locate the cell phone. It was opened up and tangled in a nest of wires. “Ax, you can put that back together, right?” she said, a bit nervously.

  The screen dimmed and revived. Rachel raised an eyebrow. But then, sure enough, the AOL welcome screen loaded.

  “Excellent,” Marco said, smiling. “Oh, wait, wait! The James Bond home page! Play the teaser trailer. Ax. Listen to me!”

  Ax ignored him and typed in the address to Taylor’s Web page: http://www.EarthIsOurs.com.

  We got a message. “The URL cannot be found.”

  Ax explained.

  “Uh, Ax-man?” Marco pointed to the flickering screen and sounded out the address. “You typed Earth-I-saurus.com. You made it a dino. It’s Earth-Is-Ours.”

  Ax, being uncharacteristically funny. He typed in the right address.

  Taylor’s Web page took a while to download and the image was fuzzy at first. Slowly, the screen became clearer. It was a picture of the earth from outer space, a beautiful blue-green sphere covered with clouds. There was a caption, “Triumph will be ours,” and a box to send a message.

  Ax waited for my dictation. I thought about what to say. I wanted to intimidate her, cut her down to size, make her wonder if we’d bite, make her worry that we wouldn’t. I wanted ambiguity. I wanted to see her squirm.

  In the end, all I wrote was, “Okay, we’ll play.” Jake signed off with the word “Bandits.” Ax clicked “send.”

  And then we waited. The others took turns playing minesweeper and solitaire. This time, Ax’s extra fingers somehow gave him an edge.

  Taylor’s reply came an hour later. “No time to lose,” it read. “The plan is to attack and seize the ‘Pool.’ Your special skills are needed. Meet me in a public place. Let’s say Borders bookstore. The wildlife section seems appropriate.”

  Everyone spoke at the same time.

  “Seiz
e the Yeerk pool?” Jake repeated.

  “An attack?” Cassie.

  “I’m there!” Rachel, of course.

  “The wildlife section!” Marco.

  Ax announced coolly.

  “We’ll need a human morph that won’t give us away,” Marco echoed. “It ain’t gonna be Ax. He attracts too many girls. And of course I can’t go. Same reason.”

  “Guys,” I said, half-scared, half-thrilled by the meaning of my words, “I just happen to have the perfect morph.”

  Six hours later, when its doors opened, I strolled into Borders bookshop. Strode past piles of self-help books and tiers of best-sellers. Despite Rachel’s objections and Marco’s security concerns, Jake had let me go. I needed to be the one to deal with Taylor. Jake knew that.

  But even Jake had some reservations about this morph. About the victim becoming the victimizer. So for a variety of security reasons, watching from various stations both in and outside the store, were my friends.

  Two seagulls on the roof, Ax and Cassie, watching the front door and the sky. A fluffy cat, prowling the back alley, keeping an eye on the back door. In the magazine section, a short kid with pants as wide as a tent, huge bug-eyed sunglasses, headphones, and a knit ski cap disguising nine-tenths of his face. And in a stall in the men’s room, waiting for a signal, Jake, ready to provide immediate firepower if necessary.

  Rachel chose the outfit, so I was dressed to kill. And I would have looked great in rags. See, morphing uses DNA, and I’d morphed her body as it would have been before the fire, before the accident. No artificial arm. No reconstructed beauty.

  I was a cover girl who could give even Angelina Jolie a run for her money. I was …

  “Taylor,” I said easily, coming up behind the tall blond wandering the wildlife section. She spun around, surprised and off guard. Her mouth dropped open. She was face-to-face with herself. And for a second, I’d trumped her. She was mine.

  “That’s clever,” she conceded, recovering quickly like a good detached Yeerk should. “Yeah, a nice touch. But how? Is there some new, improved Andalite morphing technology that allows you to acquire while in morph?”

  I smiled on the outside. On the inside, I seized up. I’d just given myself away. But she’d never figure it out. Would she? She’d never know the whole story, that my true form was hawk, that I was no Andalite. But already, I’d given her more than I’d wanted to.

  I searched the brain of my new body for a savvy reply. A strategic comeback. I searched it for the ruthless, crushing Yeerk. What I found was gentleness, fear, and joy. Very little cunning. Almost no hate. The human Taylor had once been an average kid. Like me. Like I’d been.

  The realization steeled me against the nervousness that gnawed at my stomach.

  “You’re not the only ones with scientists,” I said guardedly.

  She accepted that answer. We walked toward the cafe.

  The high school kid behind the counter stared wide-eyed. One, make that two very attractive girls were closing in on him.

  “Uh, what can I get you?” he asked shakily.

  “Decaf latte with skim,” Taylor purred.

  The kid turned to take my order. I smiled and he almost fell over. It was crazy to have such power. I’d been on the receiving end before. I’d just never been the source. Is this what Rachel experienced? Was this part of what made her so brave?

  “Triple espresso. Heavy on the cream and the sugar.”

  Taylor turned to me. “You dare abuse my body, you filthy grass eater?”

  The kid raised his eyebrows. “Grass?” he said. “I can juice you some wheat grass, but that’s all we have.”

  Taylor glared at the boy. I laughed. We were mirror images, literal carbon copies. But I was alive. Taylor wasn’t. Not really. I had a sense of humor. Taylor had a coldness that enclosed her like a shield. The kid could see this. Anybody could.

  We brought our drinks to a table and sat in opposing chairs. Three college kids were studying together nearby, but out of earshot. A writer was reading her work to an enraptured public thirty feet away. Salsa music spilled out of the speakers.

  Taylor gripped her mug like it was the enemy.

  “I suppose you want details,” she said icily.

  “Of course.”

  “Listen carefully,” she began, her voice hushed. “There’s a natural gas pipeline, a large one, that runs a half mile from the Yeerk pool. We need to dig a connecting tunnel from that pipeline to the pool.”

  “Why?”

  Taylor huffed, arrogant and exasperated. “So that the pipe can be ruptured. So that thousands of tons of natural gas will spew into the Yeerk pool complex. And so that the gas, when exploded, will kill everyone exposed. The hosts. The Yeerks.”

  It was a disgusting plan. It was even more horrible than I expected.

  I took a sip of coffee, to keep it looking natural. Twin teens, probably comparing notes on last night’s dates. “That’s what you call a giant leap for democracy? I don’t get it. You want to end the violence with a big bang of your own? You think the violence will end there?”

  “Surely you see that we need a bargaining chip,” Taylor replied. “We have to take control of the place and oust Visser Three. We have to get some leverage. Without this plan — if the rebels tried a more peaceful protest — the Yeerks in orbit would oppose us. But if the plan works, we have a Yeerk pool full of hostages. They couldn’t attack us without putting their own at risk.”

  “That never stopped you Yeerks before,” I retorted.

  “Well, the Yeerks in orbit have to feed, don’t they?” she shot back angrily. “There’s no way around that. Within three days every Yeerk will need Kandrona rays. They will be forced to accept rebel leadership. If they want to survive.”

  I forced a false tone of admiration. A little flattery wouldn’t hurt with this egomaniacal Yeerk. “This plan is your brainchild, isn’t it? It’s brutal, ruthless. Brilliant, really.”

  “You know me well, Andalite.” A smile washed over her face.

  But then, suddenly, her face transformed. All at once, her blue eyes filled with desperation. Her pink lips parted in wordless horror. A different voice, a frightened, abused little voice, called across the table in a toneless whisper.

  “Don’t listen,” it said. “Don’t listen to her!”

  I sat transfixed as Taylor’s hand blazed across the tabletop, crashing into her latte, smashing the mug to the floor. There was a huge racket as ceramic clattered across tile.

  The writer stopped her public reading. The students raised their heads. The salsa music trumpeted on.

  “Miss, are you okay?” The high school kid was instantly at Taylor’s side. She was crouched on the floor, her head in her arms. A second passed. Two seconds. Silence. On the third, her head snapped up.

  “I’m fine,” she said, climbing back into her chair. “Get me a refill.” Her face was strong again, controlled. And I knew what I’d just seen.

  Taylor the Yeerk had a rigid command over her host body. No longer did she let her human speak independently. No. Somehow, she’d severed their collaboration. Except they’d been partners for so long, the host could still break in, on occasion. Taylor the girl could still break in. Did break in …

  Why? Why would the Yeerk wait until this moment to fully enslave her host? She claimed to be interested in democracy and peace. It didn’t compute.

  “Any questions?” Taylor inquired, as if nothing had happened. As if the conversation hadn’t been disrupted by a distinctly Yeerk version of multiple personality disorder.

  “Yeah,” I said. “First one. A natural gas explosion as large as the one you’re planning will collapse the Yeerk pool. And the city built above it. It will devastate everything for miles.”

  “My allies are in control of the pumping station,” Taylor answered calmly. “The amount of gas will be carefully controlled. The Yeerk pool will not collapse.”

  “Fine. Question two. J
ust how do you plan to tunnel through the earth, from the pipeline to the pool?”

  “I don’t. That’s where you come in.”

  “That’s absurd,” I laughed. “No earth animal, no morph we Andalites have, could do that kind of job in less than weeks. And even then, it would just be a tiny tunnel. Not nearly enough to move the volume of gas you’re talking about.”

  “That’s why I selected an animal for you to morph that can do the job in hours, not days or weeks.” Her lips curled into a devilish smile. “You always underestimate me, Andalite.”

  “What morph?” I asked. She wrapped the fingers of her artificial hand around my arm and started to squeeze.

  “I have a morph that will leave behind a tunnel at least as large in circumference as the pipe itself.”

  “What morph?” I repeated.

  “Taxxon, my Andalite friend. Taxxon!”

  “Is she insane?” Marco cried. He’d ditched the ski cap and sunglasses but the headphones still hung around his neck.

  “Yes. I believe we established that during our last encounter.” Ax, of course. He’d gone from seagull to Andalite to eerily attractive human boy in a Dumpster conveniently located behind the bookstore.

  “Taxxon! I’d rather morph E. coli. I’d rather morph an ant again.”

  “That’s kind of what Taxxons are like, isn’t it?” Jake said. “Brainless, driven, starved.”

  “Who knows?” Rachel shrugged impatiently. In the time between demorphing from cat and joining the rest of us, Rachel had slipped into The Gap and bought a couple of T-shirts. No moss grows on that girl. “But I can handle it. I’m in.”

  “Whoa.” Cassie held up an arm. “Wait a minute. Who says we’re even gonna do this?”

  I’d demorphed in the Borders bathroom. Jake had left a bag of clothing behind a trash container. I remorphed as my human self, and crossed the street to the mall. Now I sat in the food court listening to my friends freak out.

  “When do we have to give her an answer?” Jake asked me.

  “We don’t. We just show up at the natural gas pumping facility tonight. Or we don’t.”