Well that was fucked up.
The bear eventually dropped the seal carcass, stood up on all fours, and lumbered away. When he was out of sight we walked to the bloodstained spot. Four wolves and two fleas.
The body was about four feet long. The bear had left us plenty. In fact, it looked like he'd just ripped off the skin and chowed on the seal's blubber, leaving most of the meat for us. It was still steaming.
We stood there over it, looking briefly at each other and then back to the body. None of us wanted to take that first bite.
<Ax? Tobias? What about you guys?> Jake asked. They were both stuck on my skin somewhere.
<Actually,> Ax replied sheepishly, <I am not hungry.>
<Uh, me neither,> Tobias mumbled.
<What?> said Rachel. <How can't you be hungry?> Then: <Oh.>
<I apologize, Marco,> Ax said. <The flea's instinct was quite strong.>
<It's okay,> Cassie said. <It's no worse than what we're about to do.>
<Oh, yeah?> I said. <You can have them next, Cassie. You guys could've at least asked.>
<Let's just do this,> Jake said abruptly.
He stuck his snout into the carcass and tore off a stringy piece of the seal's flesh. We joined in after that, digging our sharp wolves' teeth into the already half-frozen body, tearing off chunks and gulping them.
<Say, Ax,> I said when I'd finished gorging. <Any idea where we are?>
<Far north,> he said.
<Northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland,> Rachel offered. <Iceland?>
<It may not be the Iceland, but it's an ice land,> Tobias said. <Past that, who cares?>
<We've got company,> Jake interrupted.
A couple of Arctic foxes were sitting on the ice a hundred yards away. They were about two feet long, with thick coats of long white fur.
<They'll just have to wait until we're done,> Rachel said greedily.
<Life's going pretty well, huh?> I said. <We're down to chewing seal bones. Not that I'm complaining. Any food is better than no food.>
<It could use salt,> Cassie said.
Coming from her, it was so unexpected we all burst out laughing.
<Salt? It could use a charcoal grill, some barbecue sauce and fries on the side,> Jake said. <And coffee. Hot coffee. I don't even drink coffee and I want some.>
Cassie stuck her nose in a drift and used the snow to wash the blood off her mouth. Then she rubbed her paws in the snow to wash them off, too.
<Now what?> Cassie asked.
<Yeah. Now what, Dad?> I asked Jake.
He sighed. <So far we're just getting chased. You don't win by running away. But first things first. We need to acquire some cold-weather morphs. We're barely surviving right now. We need the power to go on offense.>
<What do you think the odds are that our pal the polar bear will let us acquire him?> I asked.
Then my sensitive nose picked up the scent of seals, very close. Live seals. I spotted the two little gray balls floating in the water. They were the baby seals who'd escaped from the polar bear. Looking right at us with those big black eyes.
They had faces like puppy dogs. Little heads with big eyes and whiskers. No ears. I usually like to reserve the word cute for myself exclusively, but there was really no other way to describe them.
<They're looking for their mother,> Cassie said.
Their mother? Their mother was ...
An unexpected wave of emotion swept over me. Dumb, I know, but for two years I thought my mom was dead. Not the same, though. Was it?
Watching those little seals floating in the water, waiting for the mother who would never return, brought all the sadness back in a rush.
I moved between them and the horrible carcass on the ice. It wasn't our doing, killing their mother. But we'd profited from it.
<Our cold-weather morphs,> Rachel said. <Right there.>
Jake came up with the plan. Cassie and I volunteered.
The job wasn't that hard, actually. While still on the ice, Cassie and I demorphed and remorphed into dolphins. We had to move fast. Dolphins are relatively warm-water animals, with no fur or blubber to help them deal with that kind of killing cold.
Then Jake and Rachel pushed us into the freezing water. I felt like one of those clowns you see on the news occasionally. You know - the ones who like to go swimming in the freezing winter ocean. In nothing but swimming trunks. The minute I hit the water I could feel my whole dolphin body, usually so full of energy and playfulness, go stiff and numb.
The seal pups barely even tried to escape. In any case, it was a vain try. Seals are amazingly agile, but we had the speed and the size and the intensity.
They dodged and weaved once or twice, but they were no match for us. I tried not to think about what that meant for their future. If they were no match for a couple of chilly dolphins, they'd be no match for the first killer whale or polar bear to come along.
Cassie and I grabbed one in a perfectly executed, acrobatic maneuver. We came up swiftly behind him and each grabbed a flipper.
The pup struggled, but this was a case of Great Dane versus Chihuahua. He did, however, manage to scratch me on the nose a few times with his tiny teeth. It drew blood. It hurt, and it felt good. I felt like I deserved it.
After we'd gotten a good grip on him with our mouths, being careful not to hurt him, we pulled him back to the others. They'd started to demorph when they saw us coming back.
We nosed the little seal up onto the ice. Up at the feet of a strange little collection of unlikely creatures: two humans dressed for an August day, a red-tailed hawk shifting from talon to frozen talon on the ice, and Ax.
Jake and Rachel grabbed the pup and held him between them. First one, then the other, acquired the pup's DNA. They held him still as Ax pressed his many-fingered hand into the wet fur. Tobias fluttered up and landed on Rachel's shoulder. A painful thing for Rachel, though by then she was too cold to feel the bite of the talons.
The seal pup looked up, mystified but amused at the winged creature who gingerly touched him with his talon.
Cassie and I propelled ourselves up out of the water and demorphed on the ice. Not a pleasant experience. My skin froze to the ice halfway between dolphin and human. I ended up leaving an inch of Marco behind.
"Have I mentioned that it's cold?" I shivered, human once more. I touched the seal. Wet and firm and soft. Like touching a furry water balloon.
"Sorry," I said, for no good reason.
"Nothing we can do," Cassie said. She set the pup back down on the ice. He scooted to the water's edge and slid in, rejoining his - or her - brother or sister.
"They might m-m-make it," Rachel chattered.
But Cassie shook her head. For some reason she smiled sadly at Tobias. "No, they won't make it. But they'll feed some orca or polar bear, and you can't go all mushy over these guys without realizing that orca babies and polar bear babies have an equal right to live."
<Still, if we could ...> Tobias said.
They were remembering the skunk litter we'd once saved. Tobias had eaten one of the skunk kits.
Then he'd helped Cassie keep the rest alive.
"Nature, huh?" Rachel said.
<Yeah. Nature,> he replied. <Guess we better morph.>
"Or we could just stand here and freeze solid while discussing survival of the fittest," I said. I was hopping from bare foot to bare foot, trying not to let either freeze to the ice.
Rachel gave me one of her patented, insolent smiles. "You in a hurry, Marco? Has it oc-c-ccurred to you yet that if those little guys are some killer whale's meat, we w-w-will be, too?"
That had not occurred to me. Now it was occurring to me in vivid color with sound effects.
"That's a happy thought, Rachel."
"Always here for you, Marco," she said. But already Rachel was changing.
I focused my cold-addled brain on the new image of the seal. And then, slowly at first, I began to morph. My arms began to shrink. Smaller, smaller. Weird doll-sized replicas of arms that shrank till they were no more than three inches long.
My fingers shrunk, too, but from the tips grew long, ice-gripping claws. The fingers melted together, then instantly separated again, drawing a thin web of flesh between.
My legs were almost disappearing. I knew I was going to fall, but it still surprised me when I suddenly just plopped over, face first, onto ice. My feet shrank and narrowed and transformed themselves into the seal's flippers.
All the while my torso was growing smaller and yet chubbier. Blubber bubbled up beneath my skin. It was a little like that movie with Eddie Murphy, The Nutty Professor. Like that, only on a smaller scale.
I heard squishy sounds as my internal organs twisted around to fit my new body. My bones cracked and groaned, reshaping themselves to form my new skeleton. I was now an over-inflated football with flippers.
On my still-human face I grew long whiskers. My ears shriveled up and into my skull, leaving just a pair of holes! My head was no bigger than a baseball, while my nose stretched itself out until it was shaped like a puppy's.
I looked out at the frozen world through large, dark eyes and discovered that they saw about as well as my human ones.
Finally, short, thick fur sprouted all over my body, rippling across my chest and down my back like I was a Chia pet.
And then ... and then ...
Oh! The joy! The blessing! The fabulous, incredible, sensuous sensation! The most wonderful thing I have ever felt from the day of my birth to that very moment.
Warmth!
I was warm! Warm! If the heavens had opened and a giant hand had come down out of the clouds, giving me a billion dollars, my pick from the entire cast of Baywatch - past and present, and allowing me to grow two feet taller while magically acquiring all of Michael Jordan's skill with a basketball, I could not have been happier.
I! Was! WARM!
Cold? What cold? There was no cold.
I was on the beach at Malibu, sipping lemonade and talking trash with Tom Cruise.
I felt other things, of course. The seal's instincts were all there: an urge to run, an urge to chase fish, yadda yadda, but come on, I was warm!
My whiskers were amazingly sensitive. They felt even the slightest change in wind, the slightest movement from anyone else in our group. And part of me was still sniffing for my mother, but I, Marco, was the one in control. And I, Marco, was warm.
Did I mention I was warm? And happy? For about three seconds.
<The Venber!> Tobias yelled, blowing my happy mood away.
<Where?> Jake snapped.
TSEEEEEEEEW!
A huge bolt of blistering light hit the ice not a foot away. If it had hit rock, we'd have been blown apart in the shrapnel explosion. But it hit a patch of perfectly smooth ice.
SHWAAANGGG!
Ricochet! The Dracon cannon blast hit at a low angle, hit reflective ice, bounced, and blew a hole in the side of the ridge behind us.
It was a one-in-a-million shot. We decided not to try for two.
<Run! Dive! NOW!> Jake yelled.
Run. Yeah, right, no problem. I spun my ball-shaped body. We were only a few feet from the water, but it seemed like a mile with these weird little legs.
No, not legs. Feet. Feet with no legs. Not a good land-going combination. I shuffled my fat belly right and left, right and left, and inched toward
the water.
It probably looked funny. It didn't feel funny.
TSEEEEEEW!
Ka-BOOOM!
A miss, but not by much. Water and oil rose in a column behind us, Old Faithful at sub-zero temperatures.
<They must have just seen us morph!> Cassie said.
<Maybe they just really hate seals,> I said. But even in my panic I realized the importance of what Cassie had said. If the Venber knew we were human, we couldn't allow them to reach the Yeerks again.
I shuffled my fat belly over the ice, picked up momentum, saw the water's edge, kicked frantically and ...
The next cannon blast blew the spot where we'd been into ice cubes.
But by then, I was in the water.
This is a really good one.
Is Cassie actually a vegetarian? She seems the type but I'm not sure if that's ever been explicitly said.
Chapter 19
Rachel is just being pragmatic, I guess. But it makes sense it would hit Marco hard.
also Marco wants to chill on a beach w/ Tom Cruise.
Also we haven't gotten to it yet, but isn't a certain character in Visser straight up based on Tom Cruise's Scientology faceman persona?
Altman? Maybe, but he was probably based more on L. Ron Hubbard than Cruise, if Hubbard were more charismatic
Awkward as our seal bodies were on land, they were perfect for the water. We couldn't swim as fast as dolphins, and our tail flippers weren't as efficient as a dolphin's tail, but we cruised, using our front flippers as rudders.
<We should be safe under the surface,> Jake said. <There's no way they can follow us, right, Ax?>
<I believe not, Prince Jake,> Ax replied.
I noticed one of the others doing it first. Making little clicking noises. Echolocation. Like dolphins. Like bats. Like Venber.
I shot off a few clicks of my own. What bounced back was an amazing picture of my surroundings: every fish, every plant, several other seals close by, every chunk of ice floating on the surface.
We swam for maybe half an hour. Back toward the Yeerk base. Back toward our mission, long forgotten in the rush to stay alive.
It was also, we hoped, a good tactic. We would be doubling back on the Venber. With any luck at all, they'd search the ice for us till they became extinct. Again.
<Did they see us? I mean, as humans?> I asked.
<Why else would they take a shot at a bunch of seals?> Tobias wondered.
<Great. Now we have a whole new problem,> Rachel said. <We can't let them reach the Yeerk base.>
<Go kick their butts, Rachel. Let me know when you're done.>
<There is a way to ensure that these Venber do not connect with the Yeerks,> Ax pointed out. <Destroy the Yeerk base.>
<Yeah, 'cause that'll be so easy,> I said.
<Wipe out the base, we eliminate the problem,> Jake reasoned. <Kill two birds with one stone, as they say. Sorry, Tobias,> he added as an afterthought.
We stopped twice to surface and catch a breath. Seals can only hold their breath for about ten or fifteen minutes. We spy-hopped up through holes in the ice, but the frozen monsters were nowhere to be seen. Neither were any bears.
For the first time since we'd landed in this godforsaken place, I felt almost comfortable. I should have known the feeling wouldn't last.
<Here they come!> Cassie yelled.
For a split second I didn't know what "they" were, but then I felt a vibration in my whiskers and knew the threat came from the water.
That meant one thing.
Orca! Killer whales!
<MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!> Jake screamed.
We moved. But then, down through the murk of water, I saw them. Twin submarines in white and black. Willy-free and looking for a seal meal.
<Oh, man,> Tobias groaned. <They're on us!>
<These are very large creatures,> Ax said with more than a little panic in his voice.
<Yeah, they are,> Rachel replied. <And I think they've got big appetites, too.>
I pumped my rear flippers as fast as I could. Above us, sheet ice. A hole! We needed a hole! There! Light!
I shot toward the hole. I saw the others converging with me.
One, two, threefourfivesix, we blew through the hole, into the air and landed on ice.
Mad scrambling to get away from the hole, crazed, clumsy scrabbling. But then I looked down.
Down through the ice I saw a black-and-white smile.
I could see the orca. Which meant ...
<Cut left!> I yelled.
Crrrrrack! Pah-LOOOSH! The huge, blunt snout exploded through the ice like a scene out of Hunt for Red October.
Right beside me! The ice rose up, a brand new mountain. I slid down the steepening slope and motored my pathetic claws.
Crrrrrack!
The second killer whale erupted, not ten feet in front of us. They were working together. Trapping us.
<I am so totally sick of this mission!> I shouted.
<Morph!> Cassie yelled. <They hunt seals, not humans.>
Great advice. But try demorphing when the Navy from Hell is popping up all around you, grinning big toothy grins and eyeballing you like you're a cheeseburger.
I scrambled and slid and began to emerge into my human shape.
The orca behind me dropped down into the water, then shot - if you can picture a black-andwhite sausage the size of a stretch limo shooting - straight up.
Over my head and dropping toward me!
Any normal seal would have kept going in a straight line, and any normal seal would have been lunch. But I had a human brain. I dug one claw into the ice and spun to my right.
A huge load of sleek blubber landed with a crash inches behind me. Mouth open, the orca was ready to snap me up.
Only I wasn't there anymore. And by the time Willy spotted me again, I had very cold arms and very cold legs and was hobbling away like some hideous freak of nature.
Willy thought that over. He decided he didn't want to be eating anything that looked quite like me.
The two seal-killers slid back down through the ice and went off about their murderous day while I stood there, demorphing and shaking and shivering and chattering out words I can't repeat here.
I saw the others, spread out over a hundred yards or so, all in their normal bodies, all looking about like I felt.
"Is this just the absolute armpit of the universe?" I demanded.
"Ask him," Rachel said.
Only then did I notice that everyone was not staring at me. But past me.
I turned. And I said, "Hi. Um ... no offense about the armpit thing and all."
"None taken," he said.
I guess I expected him to run. But he didn't. He just stared at me, then at the others, then back at me.
He was sitting in a beat-up little fishing boat with a small outboard motor. It suddenly occurred to me that he'd probably scared the killer whales off with his engine.
I kept looking at him. He kept looking at me. I didn't know what to do. Or what to say.
So I waved and said, "Hi. How's it going?"
He didn't say anything for a minute. Just stared. Finally he said, "You some kind of spirit or something?"
I put my frozen hand on my frozen chest. "A spirit? What makes you say that?" I made a lame attempt at laughter.
He grabbed his oar and paddled closer.
He had a large, round face, with slightly slanted black eyes and skin like well-worn boot leather.
Inuit, I guessed, what with this being the frozen north. In any case, I was pretty sure he wasn't French.
He was wearing a weird combination of clothes. Pants made of fur, mittens made of some other kind of fur, and a shabby, big, blue parka that could have come from Eddie Bauer's.
"You look cold," he said when his boat had touched the edge of the ice. "I didn't think animal spirits got cold. You want a blanket?" He held up a huge piece of fur, dark gray and silver with light gray rings. The same kind of fur I'd been in just two minutes ago. I took it and wrapped it around myself and under my feet while he drove a spike into the ice's edge, anchoring his boat.
"How about your friends?" he asked. "They animal spirits, too?"
"I guess so."
He eyed me with more curiosity than fear. More interest than skepticism. He wasn't much older than I was. It seemed weird that a kid so young would be out all by himself in the middle of nowhere.
Of course, I wasn't one to be calling anyone else weird.
"My grandfather used to talk about animal spirits all the time. I just thought he was crazy." He spun his finger around his ear in that universal gesture of insanity. "But I always told him, 'Yeah, that's right, Grandpa.' "
"Uh-huh," I said, covering my ears from the freezing wind. "I mean, you never can tell, can you?"
He stared some more. "Tell your friends I have more pelts."
"He has pelts!" I yelled a little too loudly. "How about if you guys all come on over and have some nice, warm pelts?"
Not that I was worried. Not that I needed company.
The others came closer.
The guy began handing up sealskins out of his boat. They were piled high. But a number of them looked as if they'd been burned. Scorch marks parted the fur.
"Are you an eagle?" he asked Tobias, peering curiously at him.
<A hawk, actually. A red-tail. We're a very common species.>
"Not around here. The birds around here don't talk." Then he focused intensely on Ax. "What are you?"
I could almost hear everyone sigh in relief. If this guy was a Controller, he would (a) know an Andalite when he saw one and (b) stay far, far away.
<I'm an Andalite.>
"You a common species, too?"
A joke! I decided to like the guy. Besides, anyone who could be this laid-back about running into our little freak show had to be all right.
"That's a lot of sealskins," Cassie said, huddling within one herself.
"Yeah. A lot. Not so good, though. All those burned ones, barely worth hauling to the trading post. And anyway, they'll come off my quota. Bad."
"How did they get burned?" Cassie asked, already knowing the answer as well as I did.
"Those crazy Star Trek men. Shooting seals with phasers and all. Like those people are using them for target practice or something. They show no respect. Makes me mad."
"Star Trek guys?" I said.
"Yeah," he replied. Then, "Oh, I guess you animal spirits don't watch TV, huh? You need to get a satellite dish, Spirit-boy."
"The name's Marco. That's Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias ... he's the one with the wings and Ax. Ax isn't from around here."
"Hi. I'm Derek."
"Derek?" I don't know what I expected to hear, but it wasn't Derek.
"Are you all alone out here?" Cassie asked.
"Yeah."
<How far away is your home?> Tobias asked.
"Oh, a ways." He cocked his head toward the west. The kid was talking to a bird. But he didn't even flinch. "Coupla days."
"A couple of days?" Jake said.
"Sure. I go on hunts every year," he said. "Since I was a kid."
"And you hunt seals?" Cassie asked, her voice level.
"Yeah." Derek cocked his head. "You don't like hunting?"
"Well ... not like the crazy Star Trek guys."
"Hunting for sport. Like it's a game. Yeah, we get guys come up here for that. Up from New York and Detroit. Shoot bears and caribou from helicopters. No respect for nothing, those guys. Those guys at the station, though, they're the worst. They're just crazy for killing." He cocked his head. "That must make you animal spirits mad."
"We ... we never exactly said we were spirits," Jake said.
"No? So what are you, then?" he asked. "Aliens?"
"He's an alien," I said, pointing at Ax. "The rest of us are just idiots."
The guy smiled. His expression hardened. He didn't like not getting answers. "You have something to do with that station they're building? With those big ice creatures? With the spaceships?"
I shot a look at Jake. He shrugged.
"Yeah, we have something to do with them," I said.
"Yeah?" he answered. "Well, I don't like them. What are they doing up there, anyway? They aren't any of those ecology people come up here sometimes. They aren't hunters, either. They're making a mess in the water. Scaring away everything with their noise and their weird guns. Who are they? Who are you?"
"I guess you could say they're the bad guys," Jake said. "And we're the good guys. We came here to destroy that station."
"Sounds good to me," Derek replied. Like it was no big deal. Like we'd just suggested a visit to the local 7-Eleven. "I hope you do. I worry Nanook's gonna stick his big nose around there and end up getting it shot off or something."
"Nanook?" Jake said. "Who's Nanook?"
"Nanook's my friend. You don't know Nanook?"
"Uh, should we?" I said.
"You must've seen him," he continued. "He's been around here the last few days. I've been following him. I like to watch him work. He's a very great hunter."
"Maybe we have seen him," Jake said, puzzled. "What does he look like?"
"Well, he's pretty big, with white fur," he began.
"Oh, him!" Great. The Inuit comic. "Yeah, we've seen him."
"You've been hunting him?" Rachel said. "With that?" She pointed at the rifle in the bottom of his boat. And his short spear. "You're gonna need more firepower."
"Not hunting him. Tracking him. Nanook's my buddy. Known him since I was a kid."
"Well, here's a really insane question," I said brightly. "Do you think we could pet him?"
I'm not going to speak as to the eating in morph question, but they've been in the arctic overnight having been chased much of the day by alien hunters. If they were sitting in their houses all day, then sure, they could probably go without food, but between the exhaustion from running all day and the extra energy it takes to survive in the cold, their caloric requirements must be enormous.
For comparison, average recommebdeddaily caloric requirements for Americans are 2000 to 2500 calories per day. Recommended caloric intake for polar explorers is 5000-6500 per day.
We didn't have to go far to find Derek's friend Nanook.
We morphed back to seals, followed Derek's boat, and found the polar bear sprawled on the ice on his back, lounging in the sun. Like he was at the beach. Frankly, it annoyed me. How could any creature enjoy this place?
We crawled up onto the ice a few hundred yards away from the bear and demorphed to human.
"I wish I could do that," Derek said, watching with interest as human faces appeared on seal bodies. We'd been careful to stay downwind of the bear. We'd been chased enough.
The plan was simple. The kind of plan we come up with when we just can't think of anything smart or subtle.
"So you're gonna just go grab old Nanook?" Derek asked skeptically.
"Yeah. Why? Something strange about that? Something totally, absolutely INSANE about that?" I asked. <That is sarcasm,> Ax helpfully explained to the Inuit.
"Yeah," Derek said. "I thought maybe it was."
I looked at Rachel. She and I had the fun part of this plan.
She grinned her Xena grin. "Okay, Marco, yes, even I think this is insane."
She was already morphing. Growing huge-shouldered, with rail-spike claws and shaggy brown fur. I was morphing, too. Back to gorilla. The only other morph we had that could help with this particular plan.
Together our little gaggle advanced on the polar bear. A grizzly, a gorilla, a bird, an alien, and two humans wrapped in seal pelts.
Derek stayed behind. He didn't offer any explanation. None needed: He was sane. When you're the only sane one at the lunatic picnic, you don't have to explain.
The polar bear abruptly rolled over. "He's noticed you," Derek called out from his safe distance.
Jake, Cassie, Ax, and Tobias all hung back. Rachel and I kept going forward.
<This whole thing would be killer on Pay-Per-View,> I said. <Extreme Fighting: two bears and King Kong.>
<I go straight at him. You grab him from behind.>
<Yep.>
<Ready?>
<Nope.>
<GO!> Rachel yelled, and we were off at a slipping, sliding, panicked, pants-wetting-if-I'd-had-pants run.
Bear-to-bear! The polar bear didn't even flinch. Rachel dropped to all fours and slammed into the other bear's shoulder. Brown on white.
Whumpf!
"Hrrroooowwwwr!"
"Hrrroooowwwwr!"
Raking claws! Snapping jaws. The two bears were up on their hind legs now, swinging away like a pair of super heavyweights.
Rachel was not winning. She wasn't losing, but she was also not winning.
She shoved. The polar bear shoved back. Rachel landed on her back.
It was a shocking sight. I hadn't thought there was anything strong enough to knock a grizzly down. I saw a spray of blood across the polar bear's white chest. Rachel's blood.
I was in a loping run, trying to get around behind the big white monster, but the two bears were up again, on all fours, circling, circling, lunging!
WHAM!
<I could use some help here!> Rachel yelled.
The polar bear was a hair taller, maybe heavier, too. On the other hand, he was just a bear. While Rachel was human. Well, at least her brain was human.
The polar bear rose to its full height, ready to come crashing down on Rachel. That's when Rachel rolled into it. Not a bear move.
The polar bear went down, tripping over Rachel to slam jaw-first into the ice.
<Hah!> Rachel yelled. <Now I don't want your help, Marco. I'm taking this guy down myself.>
I considered it for a split second. But I was pretty sure Jake would not approve. I leaped forward and grabbed the polar bear's right arm.
He shoved himself off Rachel and swung his arm to throw me off. He didn't throw me off. But he did fling me into a nearly flawless double axel.
I kept my grip, but let me tell you something: Polar bears are strong. Gorillas are so strong they can rip saplings out of the ground. And this guy was stronger.
I held his one arm and Rachel slammed directly into his belly, headfirst.
The polar bear went "wooof!" and froze for just a second while he sucked wind. The second was enough. I grabbed his other arm - well, leg actually - and pinned him in a sort of full nelson.
Rachel wrapped her own big paws around him and together we wrestled Hulk Frozen to the ice. Tobias swooped down out of the sky, complaining about there being no lift at all in this cold air.
Like that was the major drama.
He sank talons into Derek's friend Nanook and began to acquire him, while Rachel and I lay panting and counting our wounds. The bear went into the acquiring trance and a few minutes later we all had his DNA floating around inside us.
We let the bear go and ran like ninnies back to the water's edge.
"That was cool," Derek said. "This will make a great story for me to tell. No one will believe it, but it will be a great story."
Nanook the polar bear went lumbering off. No doubt to tell some stories of his own. I could hear it now: "No, seriously! A gorilla. I'm minding my own business, and suddenly there's this gorilla ..."
We left Derek. He said there was a storm on the way. So we said good-bye and let him go to tell whatever stories he wanted to tell. If he told a Controller he'd seen humans morphing, it would be trouble. But it occurred to us that an Inuit village in the middle of absolute nowhere was probably not
high on the Yeerks' list of places to take over.
We had morphed the polar bear, giving Derek one last bizarre performance. Star Trek? Hah! He wouldn't be seeing this kind of thing on his satellite dish any time soon.
Now we were feeling pretty good. Better than we had since arriving here in Popsicle World.
We had the morph for this place. Like being a tiger in the jungle or a crocodile in a swamp, we owned this place now.
Owned it!
I've been a gorilla. I've been a rhinoceros. I've felt power before. But this was new.
I stood nearly ten feet tall, reared up. I weighed maybe fifteen hundred pounds. And if those numbers don't mean anything to you, think about it this way. I was three feet taller than Shaquille O'Neal. I weighed five times as much as him.
I could have dribbled Shaq the length of the court and stuffed him. I was mighty. I was seriously mighty. My front paws were a foot wide. Each had five webbed toes with long, black claws. My powerful front legs could have flipped over a pickup truck.
And the cold?
What cold? If the thick layer of blubber underneath my skin wasn't enough, my body had made other adaptations for warmth.
My fur looked white, but it wasn't. It was transparent. Transparent and hollow. Every bristle was like a little greenhouse, turning sunlight into warmth, which was absorbed by my black skin.
I could see just as well as I did as a human, maybe a little better. Far better than poor Rachel in her grizzly morph. My hearing was only average, but my sense of smell was awesome. I could smell seals all over the place.
Not much else to smell, when you think about it.
The bear mind that lay just beneath my human consciousness was no bubbling stew of emotions, no panic, no fanatic hunger. Nanook was calm. Completely without fear. What was there to fear? He could go for weeks without eating. Hunting was more about play than survival. He actually spent more time lounging around than he did looking for food.
We sauntered back toward the Yeerk base with the cockiness of Clint Eastwood going into the town saloon.
It was a long walk, punctuated by refreshing plunges into the icy water. We ended up having to demorph, of course, and that was no fun at all. But then it was back to being Lords of the Ice.
<Guess Derek was right about the storm,> Tobias said.
The wind was pretty bad by the time we came in sight of the Yeerk base. No new snow was falling, but the drifts were being whipped up and thrown around. Visibility was dropping fast.
<It may be helpful to us,> Ax suggested.
Jake was surveying the half mile of scenery ahead between us and the base. <I'm thinking we approach from the water. Last direction they'd expect an attack to come from.>
The base came to within a hundred yards or so of the water at one point. It was a collection of corrugated steel buildings, an unattractive bunch of structures placed seemingly at random. There were vehicles - Sno-Cats and big trucks and motorized cranes. Nothing alien to the casual observer.
Unless you happened to notice the big silver Venber, bending steel with their bare hands as they built the main satellite dish.
<What do we do about them?> Cassie wondered.
<Try and stay out of their way,> Tobias suggested.
<How about afterward?>
<Take them home and make them pets?> I suggested.
<They are a unique species,> Ax said. <They may not be pure Venber, but I would dislike being the latest to exploit and destroy them.>
I said, <You know, fearless leader, it occurs to me we're big tough bears and all, but just exactly how are we supposed to destroy that base? Maybe we better focus on that first.>
Regarding the Inuit village, I know I'm not Visser Three, but if I'm building a secret arctic base and there was a small human village nearby that might discover what I was doing, I would definitely take that place over.
My fur looked white, but it wasn't. It was transparent. Transparent and hollow. Every bristle was like a little greenhouse, turning sunlight into warmth, which was absorbed by my black skin.
Something that always bugged me was that they all have their personal battle morphs and stick to them even as they get supplanted by superior morphs. Polar bear is more formidable than gorilla but I don't think Marco ever uses it again. It's definitely more formidable than wolf, and Cassie should start using it forthwith, but I think she only ever does it again once (to make a point).
A thermal? What's that?
A thermal? What's that?
Something that always bugged me was that they all have their personal battle morphs and stick to them even as they get supplanted by superior morphs. Polar bear is more formidable than gorilla but I don't think Marco ever uses it again. It's definitely more formidable than wolf, and Cassie should start using it forthwith, but I think she only ever does it again once (to make a point).
They (minus Jake) use it in a book a while from now but as Bibliotechno Music points out it overheats really quickly and things go poorly
Huh, when is this, I don't remember it at all?
The book where Jake is out of town and Rachel is made temporary leader while someone from the yeerk government is around to judge Visser Three's competence.
Night was falling. Gloom spread slowly over the lake, turning the ice a ghostly blue. At the base, the lights came on. The Venber didn't need them, but the human-Controllers in their Michelin Man parkas did.
We came with the night. Moving as silently as we could, single file so that at a casual glance a person might only see one bear.
We had a plan. The four fateful words that usually end up meaning a lot of yelling, screaming, mayhem, and madness.
One thing we knew. Or hoped we knew: Visser Three was not at the base. Not even the bighangar building could have contained his Blade ship. That was some relief. Unfortunately, the Venber were there. They worked on, oblivious to changing light. Heedless of the plummeting temperature.
They knew we were out there on the ice. Knew at least that a bear was out there. We kept our line straight. Would their echolocation show more than one shape? Would they have the wit to sound an alarm?
There was no way to know, as we crunched across the ice, staring at one another's big bear butts. Jake in the lead. Tobias behind him. Then me, Cassie, Ax, and Rachel.
Closer and closer, in slow motion. No running. No sudden charge. Just that slow, steady, lumbering walk.
We were totally exposed. No cover. Nothing at all between us and a well-aimed Dracon blast. The Venber we saw weren't armed. They were wielding tools, carrying, shaping, twisting. But the Dracon cannon couldn't be too far off.
It was like one of those Civil War battles. Walk, walk, walk, standing upright, no dodging and weaving, just walking steadily toward death. Nothing you could do about the bullet that blows a hole in your heart. Nothing.
Closer and closer. We could hear their heavy footsteps. We could smell their strange, chemical
smell. I could see the effortless power as they worked. One of them swung his big hammerhead around and seemed to look right at us. But that was it.
Just a look.
And now we were practically among them. Venber to the left. Venber to the right. I had stopped breathing. Our little single-file subterfuge was all over. They could see plainly that we were six great big bears.
No reaction. Work continued. We kept walking while my brain screamed the word "ambush!" over and over.
Suddenly a door opened. A rectangle of light. Loud human laughter. A man or woman - who could tell? - in a huge parka stepped out onto the ice. And froze.
She stared at us. We kept moving. No one here but us bears, ma'am. Nothing to worry about. Just a little bear parade.
"ALARM!" she screamed. Definitely a she. "ALARM! ALARM!"
<The hangar!> Jake ordered. <Go for the hangar!>
We broke into a run. And we could move out when we needed to.
Past the Venber!
The big hangar door was shut and locked, but we barreled toward it, heedless of the searchlights that snapped on everywhere. Heedless of the human-Controllers pouring from the buildings.
"Andalites in morph!" someone yelled. He sounded in control. Not panicked. He sounded like a guy with a big stick to swing. "Program the Venber! Target: any quadruped. Override all security protocols. The Andalites must not escape."
Program the Venber?
<That explains much,> Ax said.
It explained diddly to me, but maybe I was just too busy thinking about what a creature who could twist rebar like it was spaghetti could do to me.
<Keep moving! Side door! Side door to the left!> Jake commanded.
To my left, a slight figure. Another woman? A kid? Stepped out, carrying what I would have sworn was a TV remote control. She was calmly punching keys on the thing.
<Here they come!> Rachel yelled from the back of our disordered line.
We knew who "they" were.
The Venber dropped their tools, dropped their sheet metal and rebar, and broke into a loping, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, cross-country run. Five of them! No! Two more ahead, closing in, trying to cut us off.
<Don't fight them, keep moving!>
But two lines were converging: two Venber, six bears, with the hangar side door being the point of intersection.
WHUMPF!
The first Venber hit Jake headlong. Jake missed the door and slammed hard against the side of the hangar. He left a big dent in the corrugated metal.
Tobias, right behind him, lunged for the Venber, roaring.
The Venber swung one of his beefy twin arms and knocked Tobias sprawling. He might as well have been a teddy bear.
A second Venber was closing on me. If I fought, I'd lose. Keep running! STOP! I dug in my claws. A shower of ice crystals and the Venber blew past me, too clumsy to turn in time.
The monster crashed headlong into the side of the hangar. Now we didn't need a door. There was a nice, big, Bugs-Bunny-runs-through-the-door kind of hole. You could almost make out the Venber's silhouette in the steel.
Cassie plowed into me, knocking me forward. We both picked ourselves up and hauled.
The first Venber was after Jake, swinging arms that would shatter Jake's bones if they connected.
<Don't worry about me! GO!> Jake said, seeing us hesitate.
We went. Tobias was already picking himself up to give Jake a hand, so we went. Through the hole. Into ... warmth!
Bright lights! A huge space. Two parked Bug fighters!
And there, on the floor between us and the nearest Bug fighter, a Venber.
Or what was left of him.
Silent, ghastly, he writhed. The lower half of his body was already a spreading pool of viscous liquid. A powerful smell hit us. Like chlorine or something.
The top half of the Venber kept reaching for us. Trying to obey its programming. It was nothing but a biological computer. A hideous creation of the Yeerks. Even in its own death throes it could do nothing but obey its programming.
We splashed through the Venber's liquid body. There was no other way. I felt a chemical tingle on my paws. I tracked it onto the floor beyond.
<Jake!> I yelled. <Get them into the hangar!>
Human-controllers now, rushing around from behind the Bug fighter. Dracon beams in their hands, but they were too slow.
"Hhhhhrrroooohhhwwwr!"
Rachel and Ax roared and plowed into them. The human-Controllers went down like bowling pins.
Jake and Tobias came up behind, still running, bloodied, their white fur ripped away in chunks.
Two big Venber were after them.
The two Venber hit the warm air. They kept charging, even as their ski feet turned to glue.
Another, right behind them. Charging, deadly one second, then pitiful the next.
I froze there, staring. Watching the mindless suicide. They came at us, leaping through the gap, slowing, stumbling, falling, melting.
Ax was aboard the nearest Bug fighter. I snapped out of my horrified trance and realized they all were. All but Cassie and I.
We waited till all eight of the Venber at the base had destroyed themselves. I don't know why.
With all the danger, all the terror, someone still needed to be a witness. Someone needed to be able to tell the world someday about this Yeerk atrocity.
<Marco! Cassie! What are you doing? Come on!> Rachel yelled.
We turned away, with Venber remains staining our footsteps, and crammed aboard the Bug fighter. The others were already demorphing. Otherwise there'd be no way to fit this much bear into a ship designed for a Hork-Bajir, a Taxxon, and maybe one or two passengers.
Ax was emerging from the bear, blue fur replacing white, his stalk eyes rising from the bear's quizzical brow. His paws were slimming down into Andalite fingers as he engaged the ship's controls.
<We are powered up, Prince Jake,> Ax said calmly. <Who will take weapons?>
<I will,> I said.
The Bug fighter rose gently from the hangar floor. Through the transparent forward panels we could see human-Controllers splashing through the almost entirely liquefied Venber. One Venber head and arm were still ... and then that was gone, too.
I was more human than bear. I'd been aboard a Bug fighter before, and I more or less knew the weapons station. Not much to it, really. Easier than a Nintendo joystick.
"The other Bug fighter," Jake said, sounding very calm.
Ax turned our ship till our two Dracon spikes were aimed point-blank at the other ship.
<Low power, please,> Ax suggested.
I fired. Even at low power the concussion from the disintegrating Bug fighter knocked us back against one of the corrugated steel walls.
We swiveled and blew the wall into atoms. Ax kicked the ship into gear and we were out in the night, circling above the base.
"The dish,"Jake said.
I fired.
TSEEEEEEW!
The dish blew into atoms.
"That building over there."
TSEEEEEEW! Building gone.
We systematically destroyed the base, building by building, vehicle by vehicle. Each time, we allowed time for the human-Controllers to run like scared sheep. It was the base we wanted, not them.
Finally, Jake said, "The hangar."
I aimed and fired. The last remains of the Venber became smoke and steam and loose atoms.
"Rest in peace," someone said. It turned out to be Rachel.
We hauled up and out and south as fast as the little ship would move. But we didn't get far.
<Sensor probe!> Ax yelled. His hands flew over the console. <We're being probed by ...> He waited while the ship's computer came up with the answer.
<The Blade ship, Prince Jake. It is on an intercept course.>
"Can we outrun it? Lose it?"
<No. However, we can travel some distance before it catches us.>
We raced south. The Blade ship came on like a cheetah after a pig. We had a big head start, but the cheetah was going to be enjoying bacon, and nothing was going to change that.
Three minutes before the Blade ship would have intercepted us, we blew the Bug fighter to smithereens. It was a huge fireball in someone's night sky. No doubt a lot of people saw it and wondered.
They did not see the six birds of prey that floated down to Earth.
This is a plot hole we just sort of have to ignore, but... there's nothing to stop the Yeerks from just rebuilding that base and starting the Kandrona-every-body-of-water plan over again.
A lot of the resolutions of these books just kind of force us to accept the Yeerks immediately abandoned their plan just as the Animorphs stopped worrying about it.
The books do employ a certain Saturday morning cartoon logic, so any plan once thwarted isn't going to be tried again.
