.
The human host, Chris, could feel my pain, but he could not see the resentful thoughts that went through me as I listened to their Governor's speech. "These foul beings have brought with them slaves, members of other species who have already been made into Controllers. Like cowards, they hide behind these victims of their menace to infest us all, to use our bodies as tools for their own perverse pleasures." She spoke harshly, as if she knew, personally, what went through each and every one of us. As if our very existence was enough to make any civilized creature wrinkle it's equivalent of a nose and burn us.
I'd been present when we acquired the Hork-Bajir. The Ssstram. I was too young to have a host when we'd acquired the Naharans, but I had seen the vids of our very first extraterrestrial bondings. These species also resented our need for their bodies. They also resisted infestation. But throughout the conflicts, they never spoke of us without honor. Even the Andalites, who hate us - even they acknowledge when we fight well and bravely. And we acknowledge their prowess as well. Even Visser One, monster that he can be on most occasions, acknowledged that Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul had fought well and bravely, that he had struck a mighty blow against us during his time as a warrior. He allowed Elfangor to die with a sense of accomplishment, a sense of righteousness.
Where were the Governor's words about our cunning? Our resourcefulness? Where was the acknowledgement that we had done well, hiding our invasion for so long? Where was the basic respect that one being shows another, even one under the scourge of war?
My name is Orkath One-Seven-Two, of the Hett Simplat pool. What that means is that a generation ago, three Yeerks - a male named Siom Three-Seven-One, a female named Pilat Four-One-Two, and a mixer named Hett One-One-Nine, crinkled into the corner of some cold, steel vat in the emptiness of space and fused their bodies together, the male's dual antennae sliding through the porous middle of the mixer's squishy flesh and into the opening in the middle of the female's front end. Very little is known about the sensations of the act - it may be pleasurable, like human coupling, or it may be painful considering that the parent Yeerks die during the act. But what we're pretty sure of is that both the male and female Yeerks attempt to "infest" the mixer, their bodies becoming paper-thin and enveloping around hir just as they would a host body's brain. From that union the three bodies become one distinct, huge mass, and then that mass slowly breaks down into hundreds of grubs. Each grub matures into a new Yeerk.
Those three - my parents - were the first to procreate off of the homeworld. We were the first Yeerks born in space, pioneers of our race's expansion into the galaxy. Ours was a glorious heritage, not one to be taken likely. And I held a place of honor in that heritage, because only one in twenty Yeerks is born as a mixer, and I was one. It would be my duty one day to facilitate a joining with two of my fellow Yeerks, and one day spawn an Orkath Something pool. Mine would be a joyous legacy, my children spread into hosts across the galaxy. And these... these humans... had no respect for that legacy. No common decency to acknowledge us as civilized beings, despite our differences. They were worse than the Andalites.
I clamped down on my host, hard. I had been allowing him to share control with me - I had even made a declaration of friendship. But now I knew. I knew that there could never be a friendship, with him, or with his species. I pointed his eyes towards the young male whom we had just shared a moment's passion with, despite the fact that my host was also male and their society frowned upon this. He was in shock, staring at the screen, listening to the words of his commander. Realizing that his world was under fire. He was a threat, he and all of his backwards, contemptable species, especially now that they were being rallied against us. The only solution was to make sure he would not be able to harm us.
"I can't believe it," he mumbled, staring at the screen as the Governor's transmission ended.
"That we're at war, or that there are real aliens?" I asked curiously. I genuinely wanted to know, too.
"Both," came the hesitant reply, the boy's head tilting in my direction. I could already see suspicion behind those shrewd eyes. That was good - he wasn't a complete idiot, I acknowledged. At least /I/ knew how to acknowledge my opponent's strengths, even as I worked against them.
"It makes sense to me," I said, using my host's mouth. By then he started to realize my intention, to rant and rave in my head. I ignored him.
"What do you mean?" Eric asked curiously.
"Well," I said conspiratorially, "Not everybody knows it, but there's a level of membership in the Sharing that's higher than being a 'full' member. They talk about an even higher sacrifice, about giving up control to a higher order." Outright lie, of course - full membership /was/ about infestation. But the boy didn't know that, and the story was plausible. "I didn't go for it because it was starting to sound way too much like a cult. But maybe it was these Yeerts or Yeerks or whatever."
He seemed to digest that information, eyes glazing over as he became lost in his own thoughts. But I wasn't about to let him stay there - he'd have time enough for that sort of thing once his thoughts were all that was open to him.
"They meet at the Community Center... we should go there, see what we can see about it." I looked at him pleadingly. "If I'm right, then the Governor needs to be told."
Again, there was hesitation. But only a moment. "Okay," he agreed, "you're right. We should make sure."
My host body screamed the entire way there. Quite the emotional roller coaster, a human can be. He went from pleading with me to cursing me and back within seconds, several times over, before we reached the Community Center. Truth is, a part of me did feel sorry. I had liked the idea of a partnership, friendship between us. Ironically, I had been feeling very lonely over the last few months, isolated, and my host's company had been a comfort to me. But he was a member of a contemptible, aggressive species. Our control of his species and his planet was crucial. In many ways it even felt like we were doing the galaxy a favor.
«How could you be doing this to me?» Chris raved.
The problem started when we reached the Community Center. That's when I turned around to tell Eric to stay low. He was already stopped, a butcher knife in hand, looking angrily at me. "That's far enough, Yeerk," he declared.
I peered at him. "What do you mean, Yeerk?" I asked. "I'm not a Yeerk."
Eric shook his head sadly. "If you weren't a Yeerk, then by now you'd have shown some indication of mistrust towards /me/. Instead, you've quietly, trustingly led me here. Because you know I'm not a Yeerk. You know you are." With a sigh, he added, "Besides... no way in this world I'm really lucky enough to have Chris Windward as a boyfriend."
With a glance behind the astute child, a grin appeared on my stolen face. "Very good, Eric," I conceded, the need to pretend over. "But entirely too late. Have you yet guessed, about the Sharing?"
"The regular full members," he declared, although it was obvious from his face that he hadn't thought that part out yet. "They /are/ the Yeerks. There is no inner-inner circle, like you were trying to convince me." He'd perhaps have had another thought to relay, but the feeling of Cody pressing a Dracon Beam into his back was enough to quiet him.
"I'll make it simple," I said, trying to keep my voice firm. Trying not to leave even the slightest hint that I cared for this human child. "You come along quietly and politely, or I give the order and watch you vaporize into sub-atomic particles."
"Maybe I'd prefer that," Eric replied, trying to sound tough.
"Come now," I said, smirking. "Think of your family, your friends. How they'd miss y—" Suddenly, the words stopped coming! Blades shot out of my forehead. My legs. My arms. I toppled over as a large, green tail ripped open my jeans and jutted out, too heavy for my frail human body to hold upright. I was morphing! My human host was rebelling against me, and he was doing it by triggering my morphing power!
Eric took the opening immediately, swinging his knife arm back and knocking the Dracon Beam out of Cody's hand. He took off at a full forward run, barreling past me, Cody on his heels.
"Stop him you fool!" I yelled out, clamping down hard on my host. But I didn't stop morphing. He had made a good choice for me, the morph of a Hork-Bajir warrior. I needed something with arms that could grab, good hearing, and speed. Hork-Bajir eyesight was a drawback, but it provided all of those strengths to compensate.
He played an interesting game of chess, my human host. He knew that I would regain control almost immediately, and he knew that I'd likely approve of the choice of a Hork-Bajir. He hoped to get another few seconds of control once the morph was completed, a weakness of fighting a new morph's instincts for the first time.
But I was not going to have those problems this time. I was not a stranger to the form or mind of a Hork-Bajir. I had been a Hork-Bajir-Controller before.
I didn't bother gloating when at last my host had realized his error. I had another human host to hunt down. I ran at the speed of a human dog, the claws of my talons clanging against the pavement of the sidewalk. I found Cody unconscious two blocks down the road. Evidently my prey was smarter than I'd anticipated.
«Hah, that's right, Yeerk!» my host taunted. «Your little 'friendship' plan backfired, and now he KNOWS! He'll go to my mom, my brother, and you'll be finished!» I could see his fantasy very clearly, his mother and brother and boyfriend surrounding me, human weapons trained on me, demanding that I release their loved one or die. Eric making a touching speech, before pulling the trigger, saying how he loved Chris too much to see him as a host. Me crawling out of his ear, and the others getting him to a hospital in time.
Underneath it all, his thoughts were more grim than that. He wasn't the idiot that his fantasy portrayed – he knew the end was coming. He knew that soon, very soon, all of his loved ones would be infested or dead. Everyone in this town would. And still, he could deny his own perceptions enough to have this absurd dream.
Humans. Who could explain them?
I lifted my Hork-Bajir nose to the wind and took a good sniff. There it was, just on the edge of my senses – the scent of fear. Coming from… above me?
I looked up.
CLANK! The butcher knife fell from the sky, the intensity of gravity slicing it through one Hork-Bajir eye. "GFFFAAAAAAHHH!" I bellowed. Eric continued climbing the tree even as I ripped out the knife. It was a critical wound, but I wasn't willing to demorph just yet. Not when he'd made the mistake of trying to use a tree as cover against a Hork-Bajir. Climbing trees is what they used to live for.
In no time at all, I was eye-to-eye with my terrified prey. Perched safely in a spot where I knew he was cornered, I began my demorph. Slowly, as he watched, horrified, his beloved's features replaced those of the inhuman monster he'd stabbed.
"Now let's be sensible," I said to Eric. "It's not really all that bad." I was going to say more, but no longer being a Hork-Bajir, I was no longer distributing my weight in a way that was good for the tree. Two human children on a tree branch inevitably leads to a broken tree branch.
Down we flew, the height not great enough to kill but great enough to injure. Sure enough, the bone in my leg snapped in two, and Eric was spared only because he landed on top of me. I started to feel my head go numb, as I'd hit it on the pavement.
"Don't worry, Chris," Eric's voice was saying, though it was already starting to sound distant. "I'll get that Yeerk out of you."
--
Author's Note (10/6/08): The following note was written originally as an OOC addendum to my chapter. I still believe it an important message, so I'm leaving it here:
Sorry that took so long. Lost faith in F.F. for awhile there.
Also, I was put through the "Age Verification" system when I went to post this section of the story. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is just one of many, many ways in which children have been and will continue to be made into the new second-class citizens of the world. We are not so much different from the Yeerks, we humans. We constantly feel the need to control others. Once we controlled black people, once we controlled women. We did this by calling them "inferior", by proclaiming that they couldn't possibly understand the world about them the way that the white man does.
That's the precise same argument being used against every child today. They are also being told that they are "inferior"… that they don't get it, and never can "until they're older". I am aware that a lot of my readership is either under 13 or just over it. As someone who is now older, I can assure you – that old line is not true. I understood it just fine then. Please, kids – take some control of yourselves. Do /not/ let things like this continue. Start questioning the rules. Start asking "Why?" and asking it a lot, and if you don't get an answer that you like, then re-educate the supposedly "wiser" adults around you. If you can gather together and, as a group, oppose some of these ridiculous acts of discrimination being pushed on you, maybe you can stop this before it gets any further. Because the next step is state-imposed curfews. Dress codes. Language standards. Some of them even want to start shoving tracking chips in your bodies so they can keep tabs on you. And if they can get you to accept their control now, while you're kids? That makes you easy-to-control adults, too. And then they can /really/ run things the way they want.
Okay, I'll get off my soap box now. But please, for all our sakes' – fight back. Prove them wrong. Show them that a human is a human, regardless of color, creed, or even how long they've been breathing air on the planet.