The Octopus Effect (17 page)

“He'll be fine,” Gilio said. “He'll also be able to fly around with you to seek out signs of Sirabetta as quickly and as quietly as possible. I'll flush out all the traitors in due time, but for now, speed and stealth are of the essence.”

“Won't three kids flying around seem kind of suspicious?” Simon asked.

“Indeed,” Gilio said. “That's why I want to give you a bit of Biology access.”

Alysha grinned. “You mean we get new formulas?”

“Not formulas, exactly. As the study of all life, Biology has laws, yes, but so much more. Forms, aspects, communications, generators, processes.” Seeing the kids' confused stares, he held up a hand. “Those vesicles are a variation on a cell's active transport
process
. Flangelo is able to take on the
form
of a bird and can
communicate
with other birds. Kender's exoskeleton is an
aspect
of arthropods. Cassaro can
generate
different fungi and accelerate their growth. Targa can affect adrenaline, also called epinephrine. It's a chemical that gives you energy; part of a
process
that's activated when you face danger, so you can run away or fight.”

“Fight or flight!” Owen shouted. Gilio raised an eyebrow. “Nature shows can teach a lot,” Owen said with a shrug.

“In any event,” Gilio said, “I'll use my
Teacher's Edition
to give you the aspects of an animal that naturally uses camouflage. You'll be able to use that ability as easily as it can. And unlike your formulas, it won't tire you out. Not for a long while, at least.”

“So, you're going to turn us into chameleons?” Alysha asked.

“No, you won't turn into anything, and no, not chameleons. Follow me.” He led the kids and Flangelo along the mountaintop to his modest-size house. They walked around the house and stopped by a huge dirt plot containing countless beautiful, exotic plants of all different colors, shapes, and sizes. Some towered dozens of feet in the air while others were just a few inches high.

“This is my garden,” Gilio said. “You'll never find a more diverse mix of species. There are plants from all over the world here, including several that are believed to be extinct. There are even some that haven't been discovered. Yet.”

He guided them around the garden; a sunflower turned to follow them as they walked. They came to a blob of water about twenty feet wide and fifty feet high. It flowed and rippled but didn't spill; it was kept in place, presumably, by the same formulas as on the dome. In fact, the topmost part of it connected with the dome above them.

“This is my second-favorite garden,” Gilio said, “and my little nod to the Beatles.” As he gestured to it, a form became visible at the bottom of the water blob, near one of many piles of rocks set on the mountaintop.

Simon leaned forward and saw it was an octopus. This was an aquarium!

“Amazing creature, the octopus,” Gilio said. “Wondrous natural abilities. They're very intelligent, too.”

Simon touched the watery cage; as with the dome, it felt dry to his hand. A ripple spread out across the aquarium, and in response, the octopus approached. It placed the tip of one suction cup-covered limb on the same spot as Simon's hand. Simon could feel slight pressure as it pushed against the water; he pushed back and smiled.

“I can feel its tentacle,” he said.

“Arm,” Gilio said. “Squid and cuttlefish have two tentacles with their eight arms, but octopi just have arms.”

“I'm still calling them tentacles,” Alysha muttered.

Simon turned back to Gilio. “What else can they do besides camouflage?”

“They have many wondrous abilities. Why do you ask?”

Simon smiled. “I was just thinking . . .”

The first thing most people think of about octopi is that they have eight limbs. That's really no big deal: spiders have eight legs, and you don't hear them bragging about it.

The octopus also has gills for breathing underwater, but so do most sea creatures. Octopi can do so much more, though. There's that whole camouflage thing (you've got to admit, changing color
and
texture merits a round of applause). Plus they can detach limbs if a predator grabs one; they've got arms to spare, after all, and they grow back. Few octopi are known to limp.

They can also squirt a cloud of ink to help them escape: the ink, floating in the water, can look like a big, scary fish to confuse dumber attackers, or it can simply blind the attacker so the octopus can scoot away.

Certain octopi are also excellent mimics, using their flexible bodies and color-changing abilities to look like tougher or poisonous sea creatures. Gilio warned that combining two different aspects like that might be too difficult for the kids to handle.

Octopi can move quickly through the water by jet propulsion. Not that they actually hop into a small plane, but rather they shoot water out of a special organ so they can streak away from danger.

Alysha jumped at that one. “Do you know how hard it is to fight with electricity when the bad guys are standing far away?” she complained. “Throwing things I've electrified gets tiring. I have enough exercise in gym class, thank you!”

Of course, it wouldn't be practical for her to squirt water out (unless she was swimming at the time), so she'd have to use air. More problematically, she didn't have the organ to do so. It's called a mantle, with a muscular attachment called a siphon, and humans have neither.

“I'm going to have to assign another body part to act as your siphon,” Gilio said. “Nose works best, I think.”

Alysha grabbed her nose. “That's gross!”

Gilio frowned. “Can you think of a better body part?” Alysha shook her head. “Nose it is, then. Now at least one of you will need to take on camouflaging,” Gilio said.

“Me,” Owen said.

“Are you sure?” Gilio asked. “You'll have to focus on velocity while—”

“Me.”

Gilio frowned. “It'll take intense concentration—”

“Trust me,” Alysha interrupted. “If it'll keep us out of danger, he'll be a champ.”

Gilio nodded. “And you, Bloom?”

“What's left?”

“How about flexibility?” Gilio offered. “I think it'll be invaluable, especially if you
do
run into problems.”

“Sure,” Simon said. “Why not?”

“Understand that once these are imprinted, they're biological changes,” Gilio said. “You won't have to say any words to make them work, and Simon won't even have to activate his. It will always be on.” He opened the
Teacher's Edition of Biology
. A pen rose out of the inside cover of the Book, much as with the
Teacher's Edition of Physics
, but this one was filled with bubbling green liquid. He pulled three blank pieces of paper from his pants pocket and unfolded them.

The Book, responding to a mental command from Gilio, started turning to the proper section. Simon, Alysha, and Owen watched the pages flip past. Of course, Alysha and Owen couldn't read the Biology symbols. As with the Book of Physics, most of the contents were nonsense squiggles and shapes except to the Keeper.

Simon squinted as he watched, unsure if he was seeing what he thought. “Hold on . . . can you stop the pages for a second?”

Gilio nodded, and the Book of Biology obeyed him.

“Can you go back to . . . there!” Simon pointed at the page. He leaned forward, marveling at how the shapes shifted, blurred, and then flickered into clarity. “That's the nausea formula that Sirabetta once used on me.”

Gilio nodded. “You can tell? Incredible. There's always been a respect between Keepers and Books from other Orders, but that's unheard of. Can you read any others?”

The Book of Biology flipped through the pages more slowly, and Simon examined each. He shook his head until . . . “There!” He pointed to a series of green lines and splotches. “That's how to take on the form of a sparrow!”

Gilio blinked slowly. “Remarkable. You
can
read them. At least the ones you've come into contact with before.”

Simon stared at the page and then turned to Flangelo. “I'd wondered how you could go from human to bird when they have such different masses. I get it now; when you become a sparrow, your extra mass is converted into another form like air molecules and dispersed around you. And when you change back to human, you convert other molecules from wherever you are to remake your old mass back.”

Flangelo awkwardly whistle-chirped. “I just turn into a bird.”

Gilio gaped. “You saw all that? On
that
page?”

Simon became self-conscious. “Sort of. There're all these comments and footnotes that imply it.” He paused. “Can't you see them?”

Gilio took his glasses off, breathed on them, and rubbed them. He put them back on and looked down at the page. “My boy, I can see the language of the concepts there and, from that, see how to turn a human into a sparrow and back. That's it. I know Biology, Chemistry, and Physics often rely on one another for their processes, but I only know that in an abstract way. I don't
understand
it on that level. But what you're seeing . . . what you're talking about . . .” He shrugged. “I'm not sure.”

“That's so cool,” Owen said. “You're like a super-Keeper!”

“Show off,” Alysha said. “Told you he's going to know everything.” But she said it with a warm smile.

Simon's cheeks reddened. “It's nothing, really. I just can read it.” He wasn't used to so much praise, and he wasn't sure how to react to it.

Gilio glanced at the Book of Physics, which was hovering around Simon's shoulder. “Are
you
allowing this, somehow?” He looked at his own Book. “Or
you
?”

Both tomes did the Book equivalent of looking away and whistling innocently.

Gilio sighed. “I hate it when they do that.”

“Especially since you
know
that they know,” Simon said.

“Great, yeah, you should have a support group. Keeper's Anonymous or something,” Alysha said. “Unlike Simon, some of us can't read that. So maybe you can give us those super powers now? Go Team Octopus and all that?”

Gilio cleared his throat. “Very well, let's proceed.” The Book of Biology flapped to the right page, and Gilio started copying symbols onto the three pieces of paper. Each had a large blob in the middle and several smaller squiggles and shapes around it. Gilio scribbled each of the kids' names across the top of the proper pages and handed them out.

Simon saw nothing unusual while Gilio wrote out Alysha's jet propulsion or Owen's camouflage attributes, but he leaned forward with interest as his name was written atop a page with the flexibility information.

“What are
those
?” he asked. Simon was pointing to something in the Book that looked like nonsense to me, but it made Gilio turn pale.

“Why that symbol in particular?” Gilio asked.

“I don't know. I can
almost
see . . . something. Two lines coiling around each other.” He reached out, and at Gilio's nod, touched the symbol on the Book's page.

“That's the core of this process,” Gilio said. “The octopus DNA.”

“I've heard of that,” Alysha said. “It's this double-squiggle thing, right?”

“We call it a double helix,” Gilio said. “A tiny doublestranded coil filled with things called genes. Every cell of every living being contains their DNA, and each gene in the DNA is a code that makes a living thing what it is. So octopus DNA has genes that decide what size an octopus will grow to, what color it will be: everything about it.”

“And you're giving us octopus DNA?” Simon asked.

“I'm giving you each part of the DNA with one octopus trait on it. You'll absorb it and make it your own. You'd need the entire DNA to take on a form, to
become
that animal, like Flangelo to a sparrow. Becoming an octopus wouldn't be practical for you.”

“Good,” Alysha said. “No offense, but they look kinda gross.”

“Now, take a few minutes with your pages,” Gilio said. “Here's a little secret that I don't usually tell Order members getting their first abilities: in Biology, we absorb the trait through touching the page rather than reading it. The DNA seeps through the paper into your skin and bonds with your own DNA.”

“He didn't reveal it to me until he gave me my second form,” Flangelo said. “He didn't want me to get nervous during the procedure.”