I stretched out my hand and Cassie opened the cage. I touched the mole and kept my hand there while I felt the mole DNA become a part of me. I suppose the mole became quiet and still, the way most animals do when you acquire them, but who could tell? It was already pretty quiet.
When it came to Tobias's turn, the mole got a bit more excited. You have to be in your own body when you acquire new DNA. And now the hawk body was Tobias's own true body. So to acquire the mole, he had to flap down to the cage and grab the poor creature with his talons.
Just as Cassie's father arrived, we left the barn and went toward the school.
The Yeerk pool is a vast, underground complex. It's like one of those covered football stadiums or whatever. In the center is the pool itself, but there is an open area all around the pool, so all together it's probably a thousand or fifteen hundred feet across. I'm guessing. We never exactly measured it.
It's big, for being a hole in the ground. It stretches beneath the school and clear over to the mall. At least the entrances do. The entrances are concealed stairways that come in from angles all around the pool. We've found entrances in the janitor's closet at school (the Yeerks eliminated that one later) and in the dressing rooms at The Gap in the mall.
"Based on the entrances we've found over time, I think the center of the Yeerk pool is right at this intersection^ Tobias said.
We were all at the intersection between the school and the mall.
"Well, we can't dig here," I said.
"We wouldn't want to," Marco pointed out. "We don't want to be right over the pool when we dig through." He made a falling motion with his hands then said, "Splash!"
"Good point," I agreed. The idea of falling into the Yeerk pool itself was nauseating.
Jake said, "However, we want to be close to the pool itself so we can tell exactly where it is when we dig through. That way we can dig a horizontal side tunnel out over the pool and use it to drop the oatmeal."
Marco nodded. "I have the strange feeling this will involve some kind of geometry I should have paid attention to in class."
"You are asking for a lot of precision, Prince Jake," Ax said. "We have no instruments. Stru-ments. Not even primitive human instruments.
Struuu-ments. Mints? In-stru-mints?"
"We have to make an educated guess, Ax. And don't call me 'prince.'"
"Yes, Prince Jake."
Tobias had come to rest on a high lamppost. Hawks have amazingly good hearing, so he could still hear us talking.
I looked up at him. "Tobias? You're the one who keeps track of entrances and stuff. What's your best estimate?"
"And don't forget, we could use some privacy for morphing," Jake said.
Tobias opened his wings and flew up and up. He inscribed a swift, irregular circle in the sky, then came back to roost. "l think I have a place."
It turned out to be a toolshed. It was in the backyard of a house that was empty and had a decrepit "For Sale" sign in the weeds of the overgrown front yard.
The house was on the main road, sandwiched between a convenience store and a place that sold hot tubs. There was a lot of noisy traffic going by all the time. Some distance behind the house there was a forlorn little park. Just a few trees, some picnic tables, and a lumpy sort of hill with rocks jutting out of the soil. It didn't look like anyone had lived in the house in a long time.
The toolshed was rusted tin with a dirt floor. It was empty, except for some bags of potting soil and a rake.
"Perfect," Jake declared. "A little cramped, but perfect. But once we're all in mole morph, it'll be roomy enough."
Cassie cleared her throat. "Dm . . . maybe I should have mentioned this earlier. But it's not about all of us being moles at once. Not at first, anyway. I mean, only one mole can dig at a time."
We all stared at her as we let that bit of information sink in. Somehow I'd had images of us all down underground digging away together. Now I was getting a very different picture.
"We're gonna be down there alone?" Marco yelped. "Underground? Dirt pressing in all around us? No air?"
Cassie shrugged. "Well, you'll be a mole."
"Well, then it's all right," Marco said with shrill sarcasm. "We'll be moles, so it's okay to be under twenty feet of dirt with no air."
"Oh, you big baby," I said. "No problem."
I say these things. I don't know why. They just pop out of my stupid mouth.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Marco said, placing his hand on my shoulder, "we have a volunteer."
What could I say? I had to tough it through. "Okay. Fine, Weenie-boy.
I'll go first."
It was hot in the little shed with all of us crammed in there. Hot and airless. And already I was feeling a little claustrophobic.
You know, the fear of tight spaces.
I focused my mind on the image of the mole. And by whatever weird means the morphing technology works, I began to change.
The first thing I noticed was that there was more room in the shed. The bodies that had been pressed close were getting farther away. I was shrinking.
But I wasn't shrinking at the same rate all over. My legs and arms were shrinking much, much faster.
FLUMP!
My butt hit the floor!
"Whoa!" Jake yelled. "Catch her!"
Jake and Cassie grabbed me. Just in time to keep me from falling over.
Too late to save my dignity.
Marco started giggling. "Heh heh, ha ha ha ha!"
Cassie was snorting desperately, trying not to laugh.
My legs had shriveled away, leaving nothing but feet. My arms were nothing but hands. I was still a human being, but with feet alone where my legs should have been.
Jake and Cassie held my shoulders and balanced me upright. I was like one of those blowup clowns you punch and it rolls back. I was sitting down, waving my toes and fingers and wishing I could strangle Marco.
"Wait till it's your tuuuuurn, nyarco!" I yelled. But my face chose that moment to start pushing out and out and out.