It came to me then, in a flash of insight: I had made a terrible mistake. I had risked Ax's life to get the computer, to make it impossible for the Yeerks to fly the Bug fighter.
But now, we knew they'd have to fly the Bug fighter to get us home.
You could say we had a bargaining chip. You'd think maybe we could trade Visser Three the computer for a ride home. But I knew better. Once he had the computer, the Visser would just kill us.
We were trapped. Trapped, because of my own mistake.
We had been in monkey morph for almost the two-hour limit. It was time to change and regroup, and hopefully figure out what to do next.
We swung away through the trees, far from Visser Three. We scampered down to the ground and began to demorph.
Tobias flew up and landed on a fallen tree beside us, since there were no low branches. There was a black, singed area on his tail.
"Tobias!" Cassie cried. She rushed over to him as soon as she was human again.
"I'm fine." Tobias said, as Cassie lifted his tail to check for damage. "But someone took a shot at me and almost hit me.
I guess one of the human-Controllers must have been a birdwatcher. He knew red-tails don't fly in the Amazon. But before they chased me off, I saw them working on our crashed Bug fighter. Three Taxxons crawling all over it, repairing it.
And a bunch of Hork-Bajir shooting anything they didn't like."
I told Tobias what we'd overheard Visser Three saying. "They need the Bug fighter to get back to the right time. I don't know why, and Ax doesn't know why."
Ax was fully Andalite again. He held up the yellow disk. "They cannot fly that Bug fighter without this. I guarantee it."
He was still focusing on that. Not thinking ahead to the fact that we needed the Yeerks to have the stupid computer now. I know it sounds weird, but I was actually mad at Ax for not seeing what an idiot I'd been. I wanted someone just to say, "Jake, you've blown it, man. You're not the leader anymore."
It would have been a relief.
"Jake!" Rachel hissed.
"What?"
"Don't move. Don't anyone move a muscle," Rachel said.
I moved nothing but my eyes. From the bushes around us, utterly silent, the heads began to rise. Beside each head, a spear, cocked and ready to fly.
"I think the local guys have the drop on us," Marco said nervously.
I was amazed. It is impossible to sneak up on an Andalite. It is even more impossible to sneak up on a red-tailed hawk. And yet about twelve guys, some older, some younger, all with intense, jet-black eyes and black hair, had done just that.
There was no doubt in my mind that if we even twitched, let alone attacked, twelve poison-tipped spears would fly, and the six of us would go down permanently.
"Uh . . . Cassie?" Marco whispered. "You're the tree-hugging, save-the-rain-forest, love-the-planet person here. Who are these guys?"
"Humans," Cassie said.
"Noduh," Marco said.
"That's all I know. Humans. Some bunch of people who live here. What am I, an encyclopedia or something?"
"I don't think they like us," Rachel said. "But they don't look like they want to kill us."
I recognized one of the faces. It was the kid who'd thrown a spear at me before. His alert, black eyes watched me. Rachel was right: They didn't like us.
"I wonder if they saw us morph?" I decided to try raising my hands in a gesture of peace. Slowly, slowly, I raised my hands, palm out.
No one stabbed a spear in me. That was a good sign. I took a deep breath. Until that moment, I'd forgotten to breathe.
"Hello. We ... um, we don't want any trouble," I said.
"You got that right," Marco whispered.
One of them stepped forward and came right up to face me. He may have been thirty or forty or eighty. I couldn't be sure.
But he was definitely the leader of the group. You could tell.
He was wearing extremely little. So little I think Rachel and Cassie would have been embarrassed, if they weren't busy being terrified.
The man lowered his spear and peered intently into my ace. He spoke. But it was no language I knew.
"Sorry, I don't speak, um, whatever."
The man thought that over for a moment. Then, he pointed a finger at me and said, "Macaco."
I guess when I didn't understand that, either, he decided I was an idiot. He launched into an amazingly good pantomime of a monkey. "Oh, monkey? Monkey is macaco?"
The man nodded and smiled. Then the smile was gone. He jabbed a finger right in my chest. "Macaco. Tu. Espirito macaco."
"Whoa!" Marco said. "Tint's Spanish.Espiritu means spirit or soul."
"Maybe it's Portuguese," Cassie said. "They speak Portuguese in Brazil. This man is probably the headman of his village. He probably has some dealings with the Brazilians. He must have learned some Portuguese."
"Portuguese, Spanish, they're sorta alike," Marco said.
"Spanish is all my grandmother speaks. And my mother grew up speaking Spanish."
"So you can translate?" Rachel asked.
"Well, no. I mean, I know maybe fifty words. But it's easy to figure what he's saying. He's saying Jake is a monkey spirit.
Espirito macaco."
"So they did see us morph," I said. I nodded at the man. "Yes.
Espirito macaco."
Yes, I was a monkey spirit.
He looked hard at Ax. At his extra stalk eyes and his wicked tail.
"Mat. Diabo."
"I'm guessing he's calling Ax a devil," Marco said.
I shook my head firmly. "No mat.No diabo."
The man glared at Ax. Then he took the butt of his short spear and began to draw something in the dirt. It took a few seconds for me to recognize it. It was a creature with two arms, two legs, and a tail. It had blades on its elbows, knees, and head. The man pointed at the drawing."Diabo. Monstro."
I swear I almost started laughing in sheer relief. The man had drawn a Hork-Bajir. "Yes, definitely. Mat. Diabo. Monstro and any other bad word you can think of."
I took my bare foot and rubbed out the drawing.
"He liked that," Rachel said.
The guy grinned and slapped his chest. "Polo."
"That's either his name or his favorite brand of shirt,"
Marcosd.
I pointed at myself and said, "Jake."
The man nodded. Then he rubbed out what was left of the Hork- Bajir picture. He grinned a huge grin. He laughed out loud, and all his men and boys laughed with him. Even the kid who'd tried to shish kebab me.
"You know, I think I like these guys," Rachel said.
Suddenly, the skies opened up, and rain came pouring down on us. Pouring down like we were standing under Niagara Falls.
Polo grabbed my hand and forearm in a strong grip. We were sealing a deal. "Diabos. Matar diabos."
"I think he said hunt. . . kill the devils," Marco said.
I looked into Polo's eyes. I had no doubts. "That is exactly what he said."
Polo and his people stepped back into the bushes, and in an instant they were invisible in the pouring rain.
"Those little guys up against Hork-Bajir warriors?" Rachel shook her head skeptically.
"I have a feeling about those "little guys,"" Cassie said. "I think maybe this forest is theirs, and they don't like a bunch of alien diabos stomping around killing everything in sight."