The Conspiracy Read online

  WOOOEEEE! WOOOEEE! WOOOEEE!

  I almost laughed. Car alarm!

  Marco went to another car. He lifted it. Dropped it. And another. Lift. Drop.

  WEEEEYOOOOP! WEEEEYOOOOP! WEEEEY-OOOOP!

  HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

  WaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAA!

  The night was filled with clanging, screaming, whooping car alarms.

  And then a very familiar car. One we both knew.

  Chapman's car. Chapman, our assistant principal. A leader of The Sharing. A Controller.

  An enemy.

  Marco didn't lift Chapman's car. He punched it. He punched the driver's door with a fist the size of a gallon milk jug.

  SHHHLUUUUUEEE! SHHHLUUUUUEEEE!

  Then he crashed a huge, hairy gorilla fist down on the hood of my father's new car.

  SPREEET! SPREEET! SPREEET!

  «Hey!» I hollered, horrified. «That's our car! My dad's going to have a cow.»

  «l hope so,» Marco said. Then with barely suppressed glee, «l believe my work here is done.»

  He ran back into the shadows. In five minutes he'd be in the air.

  37 It took approximately eight seconds for the doors of the computer store, Starbucks, and the antique store to begin spewing out very angry men and woman.

  Chapman came running from the antique store.

  So did my father, with Tom close behind.

  "What the heck happened?"

  "Vandals!"

  "Lousy kids!"

  "This neighborhood has totally gone to -"

  "Call the cops!"

  "I'm suing this shopping center!"

  "Look at my door!"

  That last was Chapman.

  The rest of the Controllers from the antique store looked uneasy.

  I waited, holding my breath, counting the seconds until my father, followed by a furious, scowling Tom wove through the crowd.

  "My car!" my father cried. He practically fell to his knees. "Someone hurt my baby!"

  "Mine, too," Chapman said, gazing angrily at the fist-sized dent in his car door. He looked around the street, then nodded at the two big, bulky men who were flanking him.

  They split up and started searching the street.

  «Chapman's got guys looking for us,» I called to Marco. «Better get out of here.»

  38 «Well, come on, dude,» Marco replied. «l'm in a tree down the street. What're you waiting for?»

  «l can't go yet, Marco,» I said. «l have to make sure my father's all right. I have to make sure he's still . . . You know.»

  I scanned my father's face. Had he become a Controller yet? Stupid. I didn't know. Couldn't know. It's not as if Controllers go around twitching or exchanging Yeerk high fives or playing with their ears. A Controller looks, acts, seems exactly normal.

  My father could be my father.

  Or he could be screaming, helpless, just beginning to realize that his eyes and ears and mouth no longer belonged to him.

  I waited.

  And then Tom gave me the clue I was hoping for.

  "C'mon, Dad, calm down," he said, going over to him. "We can call and report it when we get home if you want to. Let's go back inside, okay? The meeting just started and a lot of important things are gonna happen tonight. You don't want to miss it. Trust me."

  "'Go back inside'?" my father echoed, looking at him like he was insane. "I'm not going back inside! Somebody just tried to break into every

  39 car on this street! I'm going home right now and call Joe Johnson!"

  "Who?"

  "He's our insurance agent, you really should know that, Tom. Come on."

  "But, Dad," Tom pleaded, shooting a furious, agitated look back at Chapman, who stood on the curb watching them.

  The high wail of distant police sirens split the night.

  Chapman shook his head slightly.

  "I'm staying till the end of the meeting," Tom said sullenly.

  "Then I'll expect you home by ten." My father unlocked the car and got in.

  Face tight and twisted with ill-concealed rage, Tom stalked over and stood on the curb next to Chapman, watching as my father drove away.

  «He's clean,» I said as an owl landed silently on a nearby ledge. «He's clean. He's okay.»

  «Yeah,» Marco said. «Let's get going.»

  «Deal,» I said, letting the falcon's keen senses carry me swiftly home.

  «Jake? That's round one. You know that,» Marco said, after a moment.

  «Yeah,» I said. «l know.»

  The fight to save my father had only begun.

  40 I

  can't believe you took that kind of chance," Rachel said, scowling. "You should have waited for the rest of us!"

  It was late that night and we'd all snuck out to meet in Cassie's barn to figure out what to do next.

  It wasn't going well.

  I was distracted, nervous leaving my father alone in the house with Tom.

  Tobias was perched high in the rafters.

  Marco was strangely quiet.

  Cassie was listening, her face filled with distress.

  Ax was watching me with all four eyes.

  And Rachel . . .

  41 Well, she was just plain mad.

  Apparently Erek had gotten word about our search for my father to Rachel, who'd been shopping at the mall.

  She'd rushed to back us up, stowing her packages in a rented locker. In her hurry, she'd forgotten to lock it.

  By the time she'd morphed, found Tobias, and flown north, The Sharing meeting had completely closed down. They'd found nothing but cops writing vandalism reports.

  When she'd gone back to the locker for her packages, someone had stolen them.

  A mad Rachel is a scary thing, and I didn't envy the thief if she ever caught him.

  "We weren't looking at a battle, we were just creating a diversion," I said. "Otherwise we'd have waited for you."

  I didn't look at Marco as I said it.

  «lt was an urgent situation Ax said calmly.

  "Exactly."

  Tobias was in the rafters. He ruffled his wings. «A temporary victory. As long as your dad is trying to force Tom to go with you guys, your dad's in danger.»

  "I know," I said wearily. "I've thought of trying to convince my dad to lighten up, but there's no way. He's not going to let Tom show disrespect for Grandpa G."

  42 "This is so stupid," Rachel said. "I mean, we're suddenly in a knockdown, drag-out fight behind some funeral? This is idiotic! This is a nothing fight. No possible gain for us. All we can do is get hammered."

  I nodded. "Believe me, I know, Rachel. It's out of nowhere."

  "Had to be four days," Marco complained. "Couldn't be two days, which would be no biggie to the Yeerk."

  «You will not attend this burial ceremony, Rachel?» Ax asked.

  "No, I'm not really related," Rachel said. "Grandpa G was Jake's great-grandfather on his mother's side. We're related on his father's side."

  «Ah. And that is important?»

  «You know, maybe I'm not getting it, but why didn't Tom just tell your father he's not going and that's the end of it?» Tobias interrupted.

  I looked at him.

  So did the rest of us.

  «What?» he asked, sounding defensive. «l used to do that whenever one of my aunts or uncles wanted me to go somewhere I didn't want to. They never made me go.» He was quiet a moment. Then, abashed, he said, «0h. Duh. They didn't care what I did.»

  "Your relatives are jerks and they didn't deserve you," Rachel snapped.

  44 "My father said we're going as a family," I said. "And knowing my father, Tom would stir up more trouble than he could handle by directly defying him, you know?"

  "Sure," Marco agreed. "It's hard to get to those Kandrona rays when you're grounded for life."

  "Plus, if he acted really badly, then I'm sure your parents would start looking at him differently," Cassie added. "They might even decide The Sharing is a bad influence and try to make him qu
it."

  I nodded. "Tom's Yeerk is passing as a normal, high-school kid. Bottom line, he can either follow family rules or he loses his cover. The Yeerks have a choice-. Keep Tom in place by infesting my father. Or withdraw Tom's Yeerk, put him into a new host, and kill Tom to keep him from talking."

  "There's another choice," Rachel said.

  "Yeah," I said. I knew. I just couldn't make myself say it out loud.

  "What choice?" Cassie asked.

  "If the Yeerks can't make his father into a Controller soon enough, they could just kill him. As an orphan Tom's cover isn't affected. Might even be enhanced," Rachel said. And then, looking me straight in the eye, she said, "And Tom would probably be the one to do it."

  43

  There was only one way to protect my father.

  Surveillance.

  From the moment he left the house for work in the morning until we left for the cabin on Saturday.

  Twenty-four-hour surveillance.

  I could do most of it. He was my father and although I didn't say it because I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, I really didn't think anybody would watch him as carefully as I would.

  I did agree to some backup. I knew I couldn't be everywhere at once.

  The next morning Tom was all sweet reason and compromise. He went out early, claiming he'd talk to some of the kids from The Sharing

  45

  before school. See if they'd cover for the commitments he'd made.

  Right.

  I waited until my father was in the shower, then called myself out of school due to a death in the family.

  Luckily, I sound enough like my father.

  I went down and lurked in the living room outside the kitchen. I heard the sounds of my father getting ready to leave: slurped coffee, the ritual checking of his beeper, the "Ow!" as he burned his fingers getting an English muffin out of the toaster.

  Stupid to morph in the dining room. Idiotic. But I was going to roach morph and I couldn't travel far on those six little legs. Besides, Tom was gone. And my dad wouldn't come this way.

  I focused on the roach.

  Not my favorite morph. Not anyone's favorite morph. But I needed to be small, fast, and sur-vivable. Maybe a fly would have been better but I'd had a close call as a fly once: Someone swatted me and smeared me all over the storage rack on a plane.

  Roaches are harder to kill.

  I felt the changes begin. So creepy at the best of times. But standing there in my dining room, shrinking as the chairs grew, shriveling down toward the wood floor you'd gouged with a rake

  46 when you were four, falling into the shadow of the table where you ate your Thanksgiving meal . . . that added a level of weird.

  I caught unexpected sight of myself in the dining room sideboard mirror. The skin of my face was turning brown, glossy, hard.

  I looked away. You don't want to see yourself turning into a cockroach. You don't want to see the way your mouth divides into insect mouth-parts. You don't want to watch your skin melt like wax under a blowtorch and then re-form into a hard, stiff armor. You don't want to be making eye contact with yourself when your eyes stop being eyes and become expressionless black pin-heads.

  Maybe you'd think we'd all be used to it. Speaking for myself, at least, no. I'll never be used to it.

  Morphing may be a great weapon. It is also a horror beyond imagining.

  My bones dissolved. There was a liquid, squishing sound.

  A pair of twitching, hairy, jointed roach legs exploded from my swollen insect body like a scene out of an Alien movie. I was expecting that. They matched what my arms and legs had become.

  Long, feathery antennae sprouted from my forehead.

  47 Crisp, glossy wings cupped my back.

  My vision was extremely limited. But my antennae made up for some of that loss. You couldn't call what they did hearing or smell, exactly, more like some weird melding of the two. And yet, not like either.

  The plan was for me to hitch a ride with my dad. Tobias would be gaining altitude, looking to hitch an elevator ride on a thermal. From high up he'd be able to watch almost all of my dad's drive from home to his office. Two miles, give or take.

  But his reaction time would necessarily be slow. He'd be backup, but if there was an attack it'd be up to me.

  I was a roach. I turned like a tiny tank and motored beneath the door.

  Whoooom. Whoooom.

  My dad's footsteps. Vibration and breeze. My antennae fixed his location. I fought down the roach brain's desire to run.

  Whoooom. Whooooom.

  Feet the size of an aircraft carrier floated past in the dim distance. No problem. I had roach senses and roach speed married to human intelligence. I was safe.

  Safe until I got ready to hitch a ride. My dad wore cuffed pants. The cuff. That would be the place to ride safe and secure.

  48 Just a question of getting there. Up onto the shoe. Up the sock. Should be no problem. Right.

  Light change! Movement! Above me! I dodged. BAMMMMM!

  49 It was the size of one of those big oil storage tanks you see on the outskirts of the city. It was ten times my height. A million times my negligible weight. It hit the linoleum floor like a bomb.

  Smucker's raspberry preserves.

  The jar slammed into the ground an inch from me.

  CRASH! The glass shattered.

  Huge globs of jam erupted. A glass shard swathed in goo landed like some kind of Nerf meteor beside me. The preserves, a wad twice my own size, hit me in the back as I scurried madly away.

  My feet scrabbled insanely. Out of control!

  50 The roach brain screaming Run! Run! RunRun-Run! in my head.

  The goo fouled my back legs. I couldn't move!

  I fought it, but that just made things worse. I lost my balance and rolled over onto my back, all six legs pushing frantically at the raspberry glue. Seeds like footballs jammed the chinks in my armor.

  From far, far up in the stratosphere I heard my dad yell a word he's not supposed to use in front of the kids.

  Then I guess he saw me. Because he said a worse word.

  And I knew right then: He was going to kill me.

  The glass shard! It stuck like a boat prow from the goo. I caught the edge with one leg and pushed. Leverage. Something a roach wouldn't understand. But I did.

  A second leg grabbed the glass. It would have sliced human flesh, but my hard twig legs weren't hurt.

  I pushed and scrambled, shoved, twisted, fighting my way out of the red goo -

  WHAM!

  The USS Nimitz landed on the floor a millimeter from me as I hauled with all my might.

  I was on all sixes again, but the goo was all over me, slowing me, dragging at me as -

  WHAM!

  51 The USS Elsenhower dropped a millimeter ahead of me.

  "---roach!" a booming voice bellowed. "Now I've got jam all over my shoes!"

  You're about to have Jake all over your shoes, I thought. I was getting clear of the jam, but it still clung to my spiky legs. I couldn't get traction. I couldn't get up any speed.

  WHAM! The Elsenhower again.

  The wall of shoe sole, twice my own height, appeared in front of me with horrifying suddenness.

  I powered my legs and lunged.

  I grabbed the sole. I pulled, I powered, I used all the energy that a combination of roach fear and human terror could provide.

  Up! I was on the shoe!

  "Where'd it go, the lousy . . ."

  I tried to get out of sight. I ran for the shadow of the pant leg cuff.

  "Aaarrrgghh!" he bellowed in a voice that vibrated every molecule of air in the room.

  Now came the dancing portion. My father hopped on one foot, the foot I was on, while attempting to crush me with the other foot.

  Not happening. Not now. I had my speed back now. I had the curves and swoops of polished leather, the same color as my own body, to race on.

  52 Running toward the heel, perpendicular to the grou
nd, I hauled. The other shoe poked at me, kicked at me, missed!

  At the heel I turned a sharp left and headed vertical. Up the shoe. Over the top onto a soft cotton sock, a sort of gray lawn of scruffy, weirdly twisted grass.

  I was in the dark now. Invisible to my father.

  "Where'd you go?" he demanded.

  Freeze. Just freeze, Jake. Don't move. Don't. . . The preserves were very sweet. Very, very sweet, and my roach brain craved sweetness. Sugar. The ultimate lure. And it was still on me. On my legs. On my face.

  My mouthparts moved.

  I could eat the sugar sweetness off my own leg ...

  "Oh! Oh! Oh!" my dad yelled.

  He'd felt me. I'd moved. Now I was in trouble.

  WHOMPF!

  The dark folds of the sky dropped with sickening suddenness as my dad slapped his leg.

  WHOMPF!

  WHOMPF!

  Don't touch the skin! I ordered myself. If I touched the skin he'd know for sure. He wouldn't stop then.

  Had to tough it out. Had to hide. Make him think he was wrong, that he hadn't felt me.

  53 The pants! The gray wool blend that made up the vertical sky. That was the trick.

  WHOMPF!

  Down it came. I reached, grabbed, and suddenly was lifted away from the sock. I clung to the pants.

  The banging stopped. Slowly the pant leg was drawn up. But I was in a fold, invisible.

  The pant leg dropped. My dad wiped up the preserves and the broken jar, and drove to work.

  54 he drive was uneventful. I was glad. I couldn't really have taken much more excitement.

  Somewhere far above the car Tobias watched. I didn't care. I crept down and out and settled comfortably in the cuff. I was o n the left leg so there wasn't much movement.

  Ax was waiting at the parking garage by my dad's building. I could feel the car taking tight turns, going up the ramp.

  «l believe I see your father, Prince Jake. Are you with him?»

  Ax calls me his prince. It's an Andalite respect thing.

  «Yeah, Ax. Barely.»

  55 «You have completed two circuits of the open spiral and have ascended.»

  That took a couple of seconds. «0h. Yeah, it's a ramp. The cars use it to get to higher levels.»

  «Yes, Prince Jake, it was not overly difficult for me to deduce the purpose of the open spiral structure^ Ax sniffed.

  I'm Ax's "prince." But I guess the whole respect thing only goes so far.