The Conspiracy Read online

  "Yeah, he and my dad had a big fight about it," I said, tugging free. "My dad said he had to go."

  And then Tom had looked at my father with black hatred.

  No, not Tom. The Yeerk inside of him.

  Controlling him.

  Tom's hands, doubled into fists.

  Poised to leap at my father.

  "You left them alone," Marco said. Not an accusation. No blame. Just fact.

  Like I said, Marco sees the line that goes from A to B. He'd already seen Tom's dilemma. And he'd seen Tom's ruthless solution.

  I followed Marco's narrowed gaze.

  My house was still.

  Too still.

  I bolted, stumbled up the steps, and threw the door open with a slam that echoed down the street.

  18 Silence.

  The empty kind, when you know nobody's there but you.

  "Dad?" I yelled anyway, running into the hallway. "Dad? Tom?"

  No answer.

  Heart pounding, I took the stairs two at a time.

  "Dad?"

  Looked in my parents' bedroom. In Tom's. In mine.

  Neat - except for my room. Empty.

  Which made me feel a little better, but not much.

  "Jake," Marco said from right behind me.

  19 "Yaaahh!" I yelped, going airborne.

  "Sorry."

  "Don't do that!" I said harshly, pushing past him and heading back down the stairs to the kitchen.

  I swung around, searching the kitchen for something, anything that would tell me where they'd gone.

  Cabinets. Sink. Glass jars full of cookies and pasta and coffee, lined up on the counter. Coffee machine. Refrigerator. Toaster.

  Orderly. Nothing out of place.

  I exploded.

  Slammed against the side of the refrigerator.

  BAM!

  One of the magnets fell off. The apple, which had been holding my mother's note about Grandpa G.

  Only the second note, the one that had been tacked beneath it, was gone. Had someone taken it? Why, when it had the flight number and details about what to bring when we drove out?

  The garbage.

  Frantically, I grabbed the plastic can and flipped open the lid. Knelt and peered inside.

  Lying crumpled atop the banana skins and the coffee grounds and the empty yogurt container was a wad of pink paper. Crumpled. I rose and smoothed it out on the counter.

  20 The top of the note was the one from my mother with the flight information. At the bottom of that note was my father's handwriting.

  Jake: Went to a Sharing meeting with Tom to explain why he can't help them out this weekend. Be back soon. Love, Dad.

  "Oh, God," I whispered.

  My father hadn't thrown away the note. Tom had. He'd been covering his tracks.

  Tom was taking my father to The Sharing.

  But not so he could be excused from his obligations.

  He was going to make our father a Controller. He would watch as they forced him to his knees and pushed his head down into the thick, sludgy Yeerk pool. He would listen to his pleas. Listen to his cries. His screams of horror and disbelief and panic. Listen and laugh.

  No.

  I started to shake.

  I should have known. Should have seen it sooner. Marco had seen it, why hadn't I?

  "We have to find them," I said, searching my mind frantically for a way to do it.

  "How?" Marco said. "We don't even know where they are."

  21 "Marco, this is my father !" I shouted, losing it. "I'm not letting them take him."

  "Even if we find him, you may not have anything to say about it," he said quietly. "It might already be too late."

  No, it couldn't be too late. Couldn't. . .

  No. They wouldn't have my father. I was going to stop them. Even if it meant stopping my brother.

  Any way I had to.

  Marco re-crumpled the note and put it back in the trash.

  Placed the apple magnet back on the fridge.

  I stood there, frantic, vibrating with impatience, wanting to go, go, GO somewhere, anywhere, just get going and find my father.

  "We have to cover our tracks, Jake," he explained. "We can't let Tom know that we know."

  "Right, whatever," I said, hurrying toward the door.

  I didn't tell Marco, but at that moment I just didn't care about keeping our secrets. I didn't care about saving the world. I was saving one man. The rest of the world could take care of itself.

  There were some losses I wasn't willing to take, no matter what. I'd lost my brother. That was it. I wasn't losing anyone else.

  "The Chee," I said suddenly.

  I reached for the phone. Marco pushed the re-

  22 ceiver back down. "Not from the house, man. Look. Jake. Jake, listen to me."

  "What? WHAT?"

  "You're the boss, Jake. You're the fearless leader. But not right now, okay? You're too messed up over this. Let me call the plays."

  I knew he was right. I said nothing. I hated Marco right then. Hated him because he wouldn't have made the mistake I'd made. He would have seen . . .

  Hated him because he'd already lost his mother and he knew what the inside of my head was like, because he knew I was scared and just wanted to cry.

  "Come on, man," Marco said.

  We went down the block to a pay phone to call Erek King. He's a Chee.

  The Chee are a race of androids. Pacifist by design. But definitely anti-Yeerk. The ultimate spies. Our friends. At least as much as a nearly eternal machine can ever be a friend to a weak, short-lived human.

  The Chee would know of any Sharing meetings scheduled.

  "There's nothing scheduled," the human-sounding voice said.

  "But there has to be," I said desperately, pacing the length of the stupidly short phone cord.

  23 "Tom's taking my father to it! C'mon, Erek, please!"

  "Jake, you know I would tell you if I knew," Erek said with calm regret. "Perhaps Tom asked for an emergency meeting to deal with this problem."

  "Then how are we ever gonna find out where they are?" I said, glancing at Marco to see if he had any suggestions.

  He shrugged, looking miserable.

  I turned away, wanting to cry.

  Fighting to get hold of myself.

  Think, Jake.

  If the Chee didn't know where the Yeerks were gathering, how were we supposed to know?

  "Wait," I blurted. "Stupid! I don't have to find the Yeerks to find my father. All I have to do is find my father and we'll find the meeting. Should have thought of it."

  "All right," Erek said cautiously.

  "No, it's easy. He always carries a cell phone. I'll just call and ask him -"

  "You can't," Marco and Erek both said at the same time.

  "Why not?" I said.

  "Jake, if you call and ask your dad where he is, and then the meeting gets broken up by us, don't you think the Yeerks'll put two and two together?"

  24 "I don't care," I said, before I could stop myself.

  The sympathy on Marco's face evaporated. "You're not getting me killed to save your father!" he snapped.

  "There may be another way," Erek said, interrupting. "Give me the cell phone number. You hang up, dial the cell phone, and I'll tap into the frequency. You call but don't speak. If your father picks up, I'll analyze the auditory data and we may be able to determine his location."

  I didn't look at Marco. Couldn't. "Good. Great." I gave Erek the number, hung up, and dialed my father's cell phone number.

  It rang once.

  Twice.

  My hands were shaking.

  Marco was staring at me, eyes narrowed. His body was tense, ready to snatch the receiver if I as much as opened my mouth.

  I closed my eyes, willing my father to answer.

  Praying it wasn't too late.

  25 Hello?"

  Tom.

  Tom had answered my father's cell phone.

  My mouth opened automatically to res
pond.

  Marco lunged, twisting the phone out of my hand.

  Put it to his ear.

  Watched me with dark, unreadable eyes.

  I didn't move. I couldn't.

  Because I couldn't believe what I had almost done.

  If I'd said one word, just one, then I'd either have condemned my father to the Yeerk pool or I would have condemned my friends to death.

  I couldn't stop shaking.

  26 Couldn't 't get control.

  Marco listened, then hung up the receiver.

  "You'd better call Erek back," he said coolly, stepping away from the phone.

  I nodded, too embarrassed to even look at him, too worried about my father to say something that would close the distance between us.

  "I've analyzed the incoming data from the call and have narrowed it down to four possible locations," Erek said when I called.

  "Four!" I blurted. We didn't have time to search four different places! "Where are they?"

  "Well, factoring in the frequency strength, the cell phone towers that were activated, and background noise such as the sound of jet engines overhead, car engines moving slowly, human footsteps, and various other sounds, our analysis suggests they're in the northern section of town, roughly between the eight thousand and the fourteen thousand blocks north-south, and the six hundred and twelve hundred block east-west. An area six blocks by six blocks."

  "What's in that area that could hold a meeting, even a small one?" I was grateful. I was also impatient. Frantic.

  "Senior Citizen Center, a small strip mall with four stores, a small hardware store, and an auto-body shop. Plus, about seventy-five private homes."

  27 I let out a curse. "Homes! We can't search seventy-five homes! Erek, I need more."

  "There was a snatch of conversation. Just two words."

  "What words?"

  "'Normal hours.'"

  "What?"

  '"Normal hours.' Like the last two words of a sentence. Blah, blah, blah, 'normal hours,'" Erek said.

  I had a sudden flash of him on the other end of the line. Would he be in his true android form, or wreathed in the perfect hologram that let him pass as a normal human kid?

  "Eliminate the auto-body shop," Marco said. "That'd be noisy. Real noisy. If they're open, that is. Same with the hardware. Nails dropping, paint cans being shaken . . . It's the old folks' home or the mini-mall."

  "Or one of seventy-five private homes," I said. "Erek? We need your best guess."

  "I don't have-"

  "Take a shot!" I yelled.

  "The mini-mall. Four stores. Play the odds," Erek said.

  "Get hold of Rachel. Get her and the others up there to the other locations."

  I slammed down the phone. No time for thank-yous. There'd be thank-yous if we won this race.

  28 "Mini-mall," I told Marco.

  "What about the old folks? They'd have a main room. Stores wouldn't."

  "'Normal hours.' Sounds like a store."

  "Unless it's about mealtime, or visiting time at the old folks' home," Marco said.

  "Let's go," I said.

  We jogged back to my house. It was the closest, safest place with no one home.

  I stripped off my outer clothing - getting down to bike shorts and a T-shirt. The kind of tight, minimal clothing we can morph in.

  I focused my mind on one of the double-helix strands of DNA that swim in my blood.

  When I opened my eyes, I was falling. Shrinking. And no matter how many times it had happened before, it still made my stomach lurch.

  Smaller and smaller, with the floor racing up to slap me, falling like I'd jumped off a skyscraper.

  My skin turned gray and white, mottled. Across the dead gray flesh the Etch-A-Sketch lines of feathers were drawn. An eerie design that suddenly was no drawing but three-dimensional reality.

  My eyes slid apart, around my head. Eyes that could read a dictionary from a block away. Raptor eyes. Falcon eyes.

  My legs shriveled, becoming mere sticks. My

  29 fingers extended out, bare hollow bone that was quickly covered by feathers. Tail feathers erupted from my behind, down my chest, down my back and stomach.

  Marco was undergoing a similar mutation. Morphing. It's what we do. It's our weapon.

  He was becoming an osprey, I, a peregrine falcon.

  Marco began to say something, but his words were cut short as his mouth and nose melted and stiffened and extended into the wicked, curved beak of an osprey.

  My talons sprouted, grew curved and sharp.

  «l'll meet you there,» I said.

  «No, wait.»

  «Marco, I'm faster than you are.»

  He hesitated. «Yeah. Okay. But Jake?»

  «What?!» I snapped.

  I expected him to say, "Don't do anything stupid."

  «You're not alone, man,» Marco said.

  30 "Peregrine falcon. The fastest animal on Earth. In a dive I could hit two hundred miles an hour.

  But I was a sprinter, not a marathoner. To get to the north end of town I had to soar. Not easy in the evening when the sun has cooled and the concrete no longer steams the air to provide lift for a raptor's wings.

  I flew hard, circling for altitude. Marco kept pace at first, but then he fell behind and below.

  When you're flying, altitude equals speed. Tobias taught me that. Spend the energy to gain altitude, then you can turn a long trip into a single glide.

  I rose and rose, milking every breeze to give

  31 lift to my swept-back wings. Up I went. And at last, boiling with impatience, I made gravity my friend.

  I could not see my specific target but I could see the area, the neighborhood. I took aim, whipped my wings, and went into a power glide.

  Faster, faster!

  The wind tore across my feathers. Around my face. Blearing my eyes. Straining my muscles. One wrong move, one sudden flare of my wings and the speed could snap my shoulders, cripple me, leave me falling, helpless to Earth.

  I was a race car driver. One wrong twitch of the wheel and I would spin out of control.

  No way to measure my speed, but I was flying faster than I'd ever flown before. The ground raced by. Porch lights and streetlights and bright red taillights were long neon trails.

  I was outpacing the cars on the highway below. But I was too low. I'd misjudged the angle. In my haste I'd not gone high enough, and now I was too low, skimming the treetops and peaked roofs and telephone wires, blazing, a rocket!

  My muscles burned, my heart was a jackham-mer, my lungs burned.

  I blew across the mini-mall before I even realized I was there. I braked carefully, took a wide turn, and circled back.

  A Starbucks. No. Too public.

  32 A knife shop. Closed. Dark.

  Computer Renaissance. Open. Bright. A possibility.

  An antique store. Lights on. Half shades drawn up. Two men walking in past a sign that said closed.

  I used the last of my speed to buzz the cars in the lot. The lot was full. My dad's car was there.

  I landed in the shadows behind the mini-mall. I began to demorph. How to do it? How to attack and get my dad out? What morph, what creature?

  My feet sprouted first, pink and bare and huge.

  My eyes straddled my bulging, human nose, which had split away from my shrinking beak.

  I shot upward as my legs thickened and grew.

  Hair. Fingers.

  My insides gurgled and sloshed sickeningly.

  An osprey landed on an overturned crate.

  I was fully human. Standing with bare feet on gravel and crumpled cans and scruffy weeds.

  I glanced at Marco. He was beginning to demorph.

  I began to morph. I felt the powerful, tiger DNA stir in my pulsing blood.

  Sharp, gleaming fangs sprouted in my mouth. Claws that could disembowel a bull grew from my fingertips.

  33 it-

  «No,» Marco said. «We can't go storming in like the marines, Jake! It's
too obvious.»

  I was still more human than tiger. The yellow teeth, saber sharp, made speech clumsy. "I'm koink in!"

  «Jake, I will have to try and stop you,» Marco said.

  We stared at each other for a long, tense moment. A half tiger and a half osprey.

  Marco became fully human. I stopped my morph.

  "Look," Marco said finally, quietly. "I know you're freaked but if we make this a rescue mission, we're all dead. All of us. Everyone. The Yeerks aren't idiots. They go after your dad and suddenly the Animorphs attack a minor meeting? They can add two plus two, Jake. You let the Yeerks know who you are, Jake, how is that gonna help your father?"

  He was right. I knew it but I didn't want to hear it.

  "We have to create a distraction. Mess up the meeting but not let them know why," Marco said, as thick, coarse hair began sprouting from his bulging, growing body. "We're gonna buy some time and I've got it all planned. Do your falcon morph again. Your eyes will be better than mine."

  "But-" I said.

  34 "No buts, Jake," he said. "You know me. You know I've worked it out."

  I hesitated, frustrated and not used to being the one taking orders, but I couldn't deny that he was right.

  I was losing my clear thinking and that was dangerous.

  Surrendering, I concentrated on the falcon morph.

  Marco finished his massive, muscled gorilla morph and waited, standing guard until I was done.

  «0kay,» I said. «Ticktock, Marco. »

  «Well, Rachel's not here so I guess it's up to me,» Marco said, knuckle-galloping his way around to the front of the mini-mall. «Let's do

  He stepped out into the parking lot. I flew, watching from above.

  My father and my brother were close by. One predator, the other prey. Both, in different ways, in mortal danger.

  And if they were to be saved, it was up to Marco. Not me.

  35 it's funny about gorillas. They're gentle creatures by nature. They don't give you the fear chills you get from the big cats or the bears. Mostly when you see them they're zoned out in some zoo cage.

  But they are a whole different animal when they're moving. You see a big gorilla moving fast and you get a sense of just how much power you're looking at.

  Humanlike? Yes. But like a human who's been built at the Mack truck factory.

  Marco walked over to a car.

  Grunting, he lifted it up by the rear bumper. Lifted it clear off the ground, back wheels not touching.

  36 And dropped it.