My name is Tom. The Yeerk in my head is named Tem.
This adventure began at an inconvenient time: the middle of school.
I was sitting in English class, a subject that Tem could offer no help with. He and I tried to focus on the lecture, but it wasn't easy. Just because I wanted to be a better student didn't mean the schoolwork stopped being incredibly boring.
That's when my beeper went off. Almost silent, I felt it vibrate in my pocket.
Yes, I had a beeper. This was the Nineties, before cell phones got really popular. Of course, beepers weren't popular either for my age group. But this particular beeper had most of its Earthly guts taken out and replaced with alien software. Instead of receiving a message from a telephone, it received information from the computer at the Yeerk pool.
I froze, immediately on high alert. The teacher paused his lecture at the same moment.
This was the class Mr. Tidwell taught, so the timing wasn't completely inconvenient after all. The student body knew Mr. Tidwell as one of the strictest teachers in school. I knew him as the host for Illim. I also knew that he had a beeper of his own hidden on his person. He had received the message too.
We made eye contact.
I raised my hand. "Mr. Tidwell, may I please use the bathroom?"
If it was another student, he might have argued a bit first, asking if it really couldn't wait till class was over. But he didn't hesitate before telling me, "Very well."
With a few of my classmates giving me confused glances, I quickly shoved my notebook into my backpack and sprung out of my chair. I walked up to his desk.
As he put a hall pass in my hand, Tidwell gave me a serious look and said, "Be back in five minutes."
I gave him my million-dollar smile. "Sure thing."
I was out of the school building less than a minute later.
Running across campus, I took the beeper out of my pocket and checked the tiny screen. It was an automated alert from the long-range scanners: Z-space corridor opening in Earth's orbit. That meant new arrivals.
I reached a pay phone and put in my loose change, wishing once again that I had my own cell phone. I dialed the Chapman house. Mr. Chapman would be working at his own school now, but hopefully Alison would be home.
She picked up on the first ring. "Hello?"
"It's me. You got the alert too, right?"
"Yep. I'm getting online right now."
The Chapmans had a secret room in their basement, with a smaller computer that was connected to the larger computer at the pool.
"The z-space corridor is opening slowly," Alison explained what the scanners told her. "So we've got a bit of time before the ship comes out."
Talking about stuff like this over a public pay phone wouldn't usually be a good idea. But the Chapmans also had alien software protecting their telephone line. Calls to or from their number couldn't be wire-tapped. (Somewhere, an immoral phone operator was probably listening in on a very confusing busy signal.)
The Chapmans got to keep all the cool stuff at their house. That's the advantage of being the only house on Earth with multiple Yeerks under the roof.
"Are they sending any messages?" I asked.
"Not yet."
"Do we at least know who they are yet?"
"Well it's big, whatever it is. Scanning the frequency-thingies . . . Looks like a Dayang colony freighter."
"Ugh, that's no help." The Dayang were a race of traders. They mass-produced and sold their ships to whoever needed them. It could have been anybody riding that ship.
"Hang on," Alison said. "I'm getting another call. It's probably Eva."
I looked around. There was no one else here - at the moment. I couldn't really stand outside the school's front entrance all day and not expect to get caught.
"Okay, I'm gonna head to the pool. I'll call you back from there."
I hung up and dashed to the bike rack. My mom had the car today. One more inconvenience, but at least I didn't have to run all the way.
As I pumped my legs and rode my bike as fast as possible, I felt a small twinge of pity for Tidwell. He had to keep up appearances, so he was stuck in school and missing all the action. But at least I got to escape.
.
From the high school to the abandoned building. From the basement to the underground cavern.
The cavern was dark. But hieroglyphic-shaped lights in the rock walls lit up automatically as I walked in.
The Kandrona, the pool itself and all the Yeerks inside were close to the entrance. A few cables on the floor connected the pool to the main computer terminal against the wall. Lining the walls all around was a mishmash of alien technology traded from several different species. The mechanical guts of the Yeerk ship itself - the long-range scanners, the communication array, the encyclopedic database - were here as well. The only thing from Earth here were some sleek-looking office chairs.
This was our base. The Yeerk pool.
I sat down at the main computer. With Tem and I working as one, we pulled up all available information on the freighter inside the z-space corridor. Then we set up a live connection with the computer in the Chapmans' basement. Alison's face appeared on one of the screens. Right after that, I heard Eva walk in behind me.
Eva looked at me disapprovingly. "Shouldn't you be at school?"
"Shouldn't you be at work?" I shot back.
Eva was a freelance journalist. Her hours were flexible. When she told people she was out chasing a story, it wasn't totally untrue. It was just sometimes a story she couldn't ever publish.
She frowned, but didn't scold me. That'd come later. She pulled up a chair next to me. "Alison said it's a Dayang freighter. Any updates?"
"It just materialized into regular space."
Dayang colony freighters were very large ships. Much larger than our Refugee Ship, even larger than a Blade Ship, but smaller than a Pool Ship. The Dayang designed them to be adaptable for a colony of any species. They're not meant to be a long-term home, but they're enough to support the group until they reached a new planet.
Eva typed at the keyboard, preparing to make first contact. Eva-plus-Edriss was our designated ambassador. Eva hadn't worked with aliens for as long as Chapman, but unlike him, she didn't constantly put off "you're causing me problems and I can't wait for you to go away" vibes.
She sent the ship a message in Galard, the closest thing to a "universal" language. Please identify yourself.
It took a few minutes for the reply to come. We are a colony of 63 Hork-Bajir.
"Hork-Bajir?" we heard Alison say in surprise.
Tem had heard of Hork-Bajir hitch-hiking with other species. After all, before it arrived on Earth, our own refugee ship had two Hork-Bajir hosts working with the Yeerks. But it was pretty rare for them to be flying around the galaxy on their own.
Before we could reply, they sent a new transmission. A request for a live video chat.
Eva opened the channel. On their computer, they could now see Eva's face. On our screen, and on Alison's screen at home, we saw the head of a Hork-Bajir. It was like a mix between a lizard and a bird. Green, scaly, with two horns pointed forward and a sharp beak.
I had never seen one before, of course. But it was just like the encyclopedia described to Tem. It wasn't a big shock to me or Alison.
Eva, however, gasped. "I know that face," she whispered.
The Hork-Bajir spoke in her own language. It roughly translated to, "We are looking for the Yeerk ship piloted by Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak."
Eva answered in the slow, stilted way the human mouth approximates the Hork-Bajir language. "That's us. My name is Eva, and my Yeerk's name is Edriss."
"I am Toby Hamee, daughter of Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak."
That got my attention like an electric shock.
I looked at Eva - or rather, towards Edriss inside of Eva. Edriss used to be bonded with Ket, before she . . .
Eva said, "Y-Yes, I kno-"
"Where are my parents?" Toby interrupted. She wasn't here for small talk.
Eva frowned sadly. She hesitated. "I'm very sorry, Toby. But Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak . . . are dead."
Hork-Bajir language didn't really have gentle euphemisms like "passed away" or "are no longer with us". Eva had no choice but to be blunt.
Toby's expression hardened. Her face may as well have been made of stone.
After some nerve-wrackingly long moments, she said, "How?"
"It was an accident. When the Yeerk ship came here, it broke. They were too close to the damage for too long. They died from radiation sickness." Eva used the Galard word for "radiation". There was no such word in the Hork-Bajir language. "Radiation is . . . It's like poison, but-"
"I know what radiation is," Toby said irritably.
Eva paused. "I'm sorry. They were sick before my friend and I found them. We could do nothing."
Toby turned her head away sharply and closed her eyes.
Eva and Alison were both quiet. Tem and I mostly felt awkward. What the hell we were supposed to say?
Eventually, Toby looked back at Eva and said, "Where are their bodies? I want to see them."
"They were buried. I can tell the location to your ship. We can meet you there."
They were buried in the same meadow as our Yeerk ship. I leaned close to Eva and whispered to her in English. "You sure it's okay to bring them to the ship?"
Eva looked at me sternly. "Tom. It's their daughter. We'll make it okay."
.
The Hork-Bajir were a strange species.
In the rules of the Galactic Truce, alien species were split into two distinct groups: "Advanced" species that understood zero-space and had the technology to travel to other planets, and "primitive" species that were isolated on their own world. It was a rule that the former shouldn't reveal themselves to the latter.
There's a gray area between those two groups that wasn't supposed to exist. That's where the Hork-Bajir were.
They used to be primitive in every sense of the word. And not just because they started later than other species. Frankly, they were never going to be very smart. And, yes, I know, I'm the jock who was barely pulling a C-average. I know how much it hurts to be told you'll never learn. But I'm saying this from a biological point of view. A monkey can't learn calculus no matter how much you try to teach it, because that's just not how their brains work. Hork-Bajir were smarter than monkeys, but less smart than humans.
They were probably never going to build spaceships. But then the Yeerk Empire found them, and they brought their own spaceships.
Hork-Bajir were a popular choice of slave for the Empire. Back then, Yeerks used their hosts like puppets. The hosts had no control over their bodies, but they were still aware of what was going on around them. Primitive species like the Hork-Bajir were being exposed to knowledge about space centuries beyond them.
Eventually, the Empire was destroyed. And suddenly there were all these free Hork-Bajir left behind. A non-advanced species that had been all over the galaxy.
Most of the Empire's former slaves went back to their own planets - well, the ones who survived the Andalites, that is - which isn't a lot.
But the Hork-Bajir's home planet was pretty badly messed up by one disaster after another. Going back there wasn't a very practical option. Most Hork-Bajir either settled down on the planets they landed on, or friendly aliens gave them a lift to a more suitable, tree-filled planet. They were a race of hitch-hiking alien nomads.
As Eva and I drove towards the woods, I mentioned how confused I was to find such a large group of Hork-Bajir traveling on their own.
"I don't mean to be rude . . . Okay, maybe I am being rude, but . . . Are Hork-Bajir really smart enough to pilot a spaceship by themselves? Even if it had really good AI, it's a lot harder than pressing a gas pedal and steering."
"Toby is a seer," Eva explained. "A genetic mutation much more intelligent than average Hork-Bajir. She's probably a lot smarter than us."
"Oh, I see."
She continued. "She was only a child when Ket and Jara were separated from her. It was after that when Ket and Jara met Edriss and Iniss. They volunteered to protect the refugee ship, even though they knew it would delay any chance of finding Toby again."
Tem and I nodded silently. They may not have been very intelligent, but Tem had always been in awe of how kind and selfless those two Hork-Bajir were. They stayed long after all other hosts either were killed or abandoned the pool. If not for those two, the refugee ship would have been destroyed long before it reached Earth. Every Yeerk in the pool owed their life to them several times over.
"They missed their daughter. And yet . . . they were never worried. They honestly believed Toby would be all right, no matter where she was. And sure enough, now she's all grown up, and assembling her own group of refugees."
"She must have learned about our refugee ship while searching for her parents," I said. "Then she heard a rumor about Yeerks protecting Earth and . . ."
One more reason why Ket's and Jara's deaths were awful. We fell silent in the car.
.
The Yeerk refugee ship was buried in a meadow in the woods. It was a big, empty clearing surrounded by trees. It had been a while since I'd been there.
Alison, Eva and I rendezvoused there with Toby and about a dozen other Hork-Bajir.
The Hork-Bajir were a tough-looking species. There were only vaguely human-shaped for having a head, torso, two arms, and two legs in all the same spots. But that's where the similarities ended. They were green reptiles. Their heads were on top of long, snake-like necks, and they had long, blade-tipped tails at the other end. They were about seven feet tall. Claws for hands and talons for feet. And most intimidating of all, they had razor blades growing out of their wrists, elbows, and knees. They looked like the forbidden love children between a Ninja Turtle and the Shredder.
Those blades were only for harvesting tree bark, which was what they ate. Hork-Bajir looked dangerous, but they were actually a very peaceful species. Supposedly.
The ship was buried in the center of the clearing. But at the very edge, right where the trees began again, were two rows of disturbed earth. Not too fresh; thin patches of grass had started to grow on top again. At the head of each, two twigs were tied together in the shape of a cross and planted into the ground.
Jara Hamee on the left. Ket Kalpak on the right.
Toby Hamee sat on the ground in front of them. She didn't cry. I wasn't sure if her species made tears the way humans did. She didn't really make any noise, she just sat and stared for a long time.
About a half-dozen other Hork-Bajir came down with Toby while the rest waited in the ship. I didn't know if they were her bodyguards or what. They never said anything. All of us stood behind Toby, humans on one side, Hork-Bajir on the other, respectfully silent and motionless.
Except one. After a minute, a Hork-Bajir woman (I could tell because she had two horns instead of three; besides that Hork-Bajir men and women looked mostly identical) broke away from the group and walked to the hill of dirt in the middle of the clearing. She looked over it intently.
When she started brushing her claws over the dirt and twigs, I walked up behind her. "Please don't touch that," I said in her language.
"Is this the Yeerk ship?" she asked.
"Yes."
She kept looking at the mound. I was worried she was trying to find the door. "Yeerks are inside?"
"No."
She turned and looked at me sharply.
"We moved the Yeerks to a better hiding spot," I explained.
"Your . . . 'technology' . . ." she said the word in Galard, "is inside?"
"No. We moved that too." Most of it, anyway. The ship was almost empty now.
"Where?" she asked.
I narrowed my eyes. "You don't need to know." That's the closest expression the language had for "None of your damn business".
She seemed to understand the translation. She glared down at me.
She was a foot taller than me and had a face that could literally skewer me, but I glared right back at her. [You don't scare me,] I thought. Tem was more nervous, but no one needed to know that.
Toby stood up again and called out to her. "Don!"
After a few more seconds, she walked past me and returned to her group.
Toby turned to face Eva and spoke calmly. "Thank you for bringing me here."
"What will you do now?" Eva asked.
Toby gestured vaguely in the direction of the mountains. "Our ship's scanners found a good valley in the mountains. We will make our new home there."
"You're going to stay on Earth?" Alison asked.
"If you're worried that we'll bother the humans, we won't. We just want a quiet place to make a new home."
It wasn't hostile, exactly, but her tone made it clear that it wasn't up for debate. They were staying on Earth whether we liked it or not.
"We won't make trouble for you, and you won't make trouble for us." With that, Toby walked to her group. They all turned to leave.
But before they left, Eva called out, "Toby . . . My Yeerk, Edriss, she was bonded with Ket. They knew each other very well. We want you to know . . . Your mother loved you, Toby."
I thought it was a nice thing to say, but Toby spun her head back like she was insulted. "I already knew that. Of course, I knew that."
And the group of Hork-Bajir marched back towards their ship.
.
We all had a meeting at the Yeerk pool, to explain to Chapman and Tidwell everything that happened.
When Tidwell arrived in the underground cavern, he looked at me dryly. "I believe I said five minutes."
"What, you were serious?" I asked innocently.
"If for no other reason than to let me know what was happening."
"We were still figuring out what was happening," I shot back. "Really, how much did you expect me to learn in just five minutes?"
He considered this, but then he said, "Fine, but you never came back for your other classes either."
I shrugged. "Well, it got late, and school was almost over anyway. There didn't seem much point."
"And that attitude is why I need to give you a week's detention," he said nonchalantly.
My jaw dropped. "You can't be serious!"
"You ditched school, Tom. Rules are rules."
"It's not like I didn't have a good excuse! Seriously, Tidwell." I ignored how he narrowed his eyes at my lack of "Mister". "If an alien invasion isn't an excuse for missing school, what is?"
"Eva and Alison could've handled it." Tidwell looked at Eva. "You said on the phone they weren't hostile."
"They weren't. It was a very peaceful encounter," Eva replied casually. That traitor.
I was about to say something, but Tidwell interrupted.
"Tom, I'm being strict because I'm worried about you. We may be half-alien now, but we're still half-human. It's important that you hold onto your regular human life. I don't want you to start throwing everything else aside because you think Yeerk-business is the only thing that matters. That's an easy trap to fall into - I say that from past experience. And as your teacher, I also say your education is important, even when it's boring to you."
He made a good point, but my teenager-ness didn't want to hear it.
"Yeah, yeah, but, like . . . If something happens during school hours, it's a lot harder for you or Chapman to sneak away without anyone noticing. I'm the practical choice for dealing with that stuff. Besides, it's not like I cut class all the time."
Tidwell stared at me, considering what I said. Then he said, "One afternoon detention."
"Come on-"
"One afternoon, and I'll make sure the school doesn't notify your parents that you skipped school, like they're supposed to," he said sternly.
I frowned. ". . . Fine."
[It is his job. How would it look if the strictest teacher in school let you get away with this completely?] Tem thought.
[Don't take his side!]
We explained all the details of what happened with the Hork-Bajir. Chapman pulled up an image of the mountains on the computer. The far-away valley where the Hork-Bajir were now settling.
"Are we really gonna let them do whatever they want?" I asked.
"They have just as much right to stay on Earth as the Yeerks," Eva said. "They're not invaders or pirates. They're refugees, like us."
"Here's a thought," Alison spoke up. "We need more hosts for Yeerks. And they know all about Yeerks. So . . ."
"But they would have to sneak through the city to come to the Kandrona every three days," Chapman said. "Distance aside, that's a big risk of being caught by humans. Or Andalites."
Eva nodded. "If we get a second Kandrona and set it up in the valley, then maybe. But unless that happens . . . Then again, from Toby's perspective, her parents were too busy helping Yeerks to search for her. I wouldn't blame her if she resented us for that."
"True," Alison frowned. "She wasn't exactly giving off 'let's be best friends forever' vibes."
I groaned. "We are never gonna get enough hosts."
"So what should we do?" Tidwell asked.
Chapman stared at the picture of the valley. "Nothing. We leave them alone. For now."
Tem didn't see a problem with it. Hork-Bajir were most at home around trees, not stone streets and metal buildings. As long as they stayed in their hidden valley, everything would be fine.
But I was uneasy. Toby said they wouldn't bother us. But I didn't like the way that other woman was snooping around the Yeerk ship.