The Departure Page 7

  Was Aftran anxious? Afraid? Why?

  She moved the osprey's head and swept the horizon anxiously. And that's when I saw the birds. They were far off, even for osprey vision, but one, the largest, was definitely a bald eagle. And the other birds flying with it were not eagles.

  I could guess what the other birds were: a peregrine falcon, a northern harrier, another osprey, and, of course, a red-tailed hawk.

  I tried to shut the knowledge off from Aftran, but she knew as soon as I knew.

  «So. Your friends are coming. To rescue you? Or to kill you?»

  «To kill you,» I told the Yeerk. «They'll hold me until you starve from lack of Kandrona rays.»

  I could tell Aftran was shocked. «You know about Kandrona rays! Of course, I see it now. I haven't had time to open all your memories.»

  «Your people will find Karen,» I said. «When they find she's no longer a Controller, they'll kill

  112 her, won't they? They can't allow her to go around telling what she knows. They'll kill that little

  «And your friends will kill me!» Aftran said. «Do you know what it's like to die of Kandrona starvation? Do you know what kind of agony it

  «Then let's put an end to the killing!» I cried. «Your side, my side. The Animorphs will be here soon. They've seen me. There will be a battle. Some of those Controllers down there on the ground will die! Some of my friends may die! Karen may die! You may die! For what? For what?»

  She laughed bitterly. «You think we can make peace between human and Yeerk and Andalite? Don't be stupid.»

  «No, I don't think we can make peace between all humans and all Yeerks and all Andalites. But you and I can have peace. One Yeerk, one human.»

  Aftran said nothing. But I could hear echoes of her thought. Back to the Yeerk pool. To hide among the other Yeerks. To try and disappear in the mass of slugs. To leave her host and never return.

  Never to see again. Never to see blue, green, red. Never again to see the sun. Any sun.

  113 Why? So some little human girl with green eyes could be free?

  «Do you know what you're asking me to do?» Aftran demanded.

  «Yes,» I said.

  «And if you were me?»

  I hesitated. «l can't answer that. I'm not you.»

  But Aftran opened my brain again, flipping through pages of memory, listening to my instincts, absorbing my beliefs.

  «You believe you would sacrifice anything to save Karen,» Aftran said. «That's what you believe. You believe if you were me, you would make the sacrifices

  «But I'm not you,» I said again.

  «Maybe you are,» she said coldly. «More than you think.»

  Aftran turned in the warm, morning air and began flapping back toward Karen.

  And that's when an echo of Aftran's thoughts bubbled up inside my own consciousness, and I felt the heart-freezing dread.

  114

  We flew first over the heads of the Controllers. The human-Controllers disguised as state police.

  «0n the ground, there. Yaheen-Seven-Four-Seven, this is Aftran-Nine-Four-Two of the Hett Simplat pool. I know you don't see me. But listen to my warning: A group of five birds of prey is coming this way. They are the Andalite bandits in morph!»

  I saw the human-Controllers looking around, puzzled at the sudden thought-speak, but also looking worried. They began to unlimber their guns.

  «So much for peace,» I said bitterly. But

  115 then, I realized: She had said "Andalite bandits." Aftran had lied to her fellow Yeerks.

  We landed beside Karen. She had managed to hobble and crawl into the meadow. She didn't realize it, but it had taken her a little farther from the searching Controllers.

  It could take them hours to find her now. And possibly my own friends would be delayed, too, as the human-Controllers tried to attack them.

  More battle. More violence. Pointless.

  «Not pointless,» Aftran said, reading my thoughts as if they were her own.

  The osprey came to rest within a few feet of Karen. Karen had stopped crying. Now she gazed in wonder and confusion, as I ... as Aftran . . . as we began to demorph.

  The feathers melted away and flesh reappeared. My eyes grew dim and human again. My hearing was clouded. My wings became arms and my talons grew to become legs.

  Karen's face took on a look of defeat. She realized now who I was. And what was inside my head.

  Karen tried to turn away, tried to run. But her ankle failed her instantly and down she went in the grass. Her hand clutched at a bundle of yellow wildflowers.

  «Don't do this, Aftran,» I cried. «Stay in me, let her go!»

  116 But as I watched, helpless inside my own body, I saw my own hands reach out and take Karen roughly.

  She cried and beat at me with small fists, but my hands blocked her blows. My hands grabbed her head and held her ear against my own.

  I wanted to cry, but I didn't control my own tears. I wanted to comfort, but my voice was not mine.

  I pressed Karen against me and held her tight, and the Yeerk named Aftran extended a slithering extrusion from my ear into Karen's.

  It took a few minutes. Slowly, gradually, bit by bit, I felt myself regain control.

  I could turn my eyes. I could move my legs. But Aftran retained control of my hands till she was almost entirely across, back inside Karen's head.

  My hands! I controlled them. I pushed away, shoving Karen from me.

  I saw the last of the Yeerk. The last of the slithering, gray slug shloop into Karen's head.

  I sat down, suddenly too exhausted and dispirited to run or morph or even think. I just wanted to cry. I guess maybe I did. I don't know.

  Karen's voice said, "Your friends or mine will find us soon, but not very soon, I think."

  "What does it matter?" I asked.

  117 "It matters that they not find us for two hours."

  "What are you planning on doing?" I asked. I looked up and realized that Karen's green eyes were filled with tears. Karen's tears. But they only flowed because Aftran, the Yeerk, was crying.

  "You tell me what you think I should do," Karen said harshly, despite the tears. "Andalites, humans, there's no difference: You're both smug, moralizing, superior races. You both live in beautiful worlds. You have hands and eyes and the freedom to move about wherever you like. And you hate us for wanting all those same things."

  "We can't help what we are, anymore than you can. We're born with eyes and hands and legs. You're born as ... as what you are."

  "Slugs!" Karen cried. "That's what you call us, isn't it? Slugs! Like some wet, slimy thing crawling across the sidewalk after it rains. Something you step on and say 'Eewww, gross!'"

  "You're a Yeerk. I can't change that. You can't change it, either. All you can do is make other creatures into slaves so you can be more free. How can you justify making Karen a slave so you can be free? It's wrong. I don't care if you're human or Andalite or Yeerk, it's wrong."

  Karen looked at me and nodded. "Yes. I

  118 know." She shrugged her shoulders and looked down at the ground. She bent down and raised a leaf so I could see it. Hanging from the bottom of the leaf was a caterpillar. It was maybe an inch and a half long. It hung from the bottom of the leaf and was busy writhing out of its old skin. The old skin was gathered around the caterpillar like a sock that has fallen down your leg.

  "This is what I am," Karen said. "A slug. A worm. What this little creature experiences is what I would experience if I didn't have a host body."

  "I ... I'm sorry," I said. It was all I could think of to say.

  "You ask me to become this worm again. You ask a lot of me, Cassie the Animorph. You say we can make peace between us, just you and me and Karen. You say we can make a start. And then you ask me to give up everything, while you go on about your life, living amidst splendor and magnificence."

  All I could do was to shake my head. I didn't even know what it meant. Was I denying what she said? No. It was the truth.<
br />
  "So I ask you, Cassie," Karen said in a silky voice. "What will you give up, if I give up everything?"

  "I . . .what can I ..."

  Karen carefully, gently placed the half-

  119 cocooned caterpillar in my hand. "Let its DNA flow into you, Cassie."

  "No," I whispered.

  "You ask me to pay a terrible price to make Karen free again. Will you pay the same price? Will you become this little creature? Will you stay in that morph for two hours while I stand guard?"

  "But... I would be trapped permanently!" I cried.

  "Yes. Just as I will be trapped permanently."

  I couldn't breathe. My heart kept pounding really fast, then seemed to stop. I couldn't even see anything - just Karen's face and the caterpillar.

  "It's a lot easier to tell someone else what they must do than to do it yourself, eh, Cassie?" Karen mocked.

  "It's a trick," I whispered. "You'd trap me, then you'd just laugh and take off."

  Karen shook her head. "You know better than that. You have morphing power. As a host body, you would be incredibly valuable. Visser Three is the only morph-capable Yeerk. Your body, along with the bodies of your friends? Unbelievably valuable. I would be the Yeerk who captured the Animorphs. They'd make me a sub-visser at the very least. I'd have it all: a great assignment, my choice of host bodies. Do you think I would deliberately trap a morph-capable body as a bug if I

  120 weren't sincere? I'm giving up everything] Will you give up nothing'?"

  I looked down at the caterpillar, squirming in my trembling hand.

  I raised my eyes and looked around at the world. The trees. The grass. The sky. The flowers.

  I had cared about nature all my life. And still I had not understood how magnificent it was until that moment.

  To lose my parents. My friends. The entire world.

  To save my parents. My friends. Maybe even the entire world.

  I closed my eyes and began to focus. And the DNA of the caterpillar entered my blood.

  121

  The caterpillar grew still. It stopped writhing. Most animals become calm and quiet while being acquired.

  "Now do it," Karen said.

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to say, "Forget it!" I could morph to the wolf instead and kill her. It would save my friends. It would save me.

  But it wouldn't free the little girl named Karen from the Yeerk in her head. And it would just be more of the same: violence and brute force and another innocent victim.

  I looked around me at all I was losing. And I focused my mind as I had done a hundred times before.

  Slowly, the changes began. I am a fast

  122 morpher normally. Even Ax says so. But I was not hurrying now. I wanted to hold onto every last second of my life as a human.

  But still the changes came.

  My legs began to shrink. I was falling, falling toward the ground. Karen's face, which had been lower than mine, became level with mine, then higher than mine.

  The ground rushed up toward me, pine needles thickening to become twigs, blades of grass looking like saplings. Karen's swollen, splinted ankle looked as thick as a redwood tree.

  As my legs shrank, so did my arms. I stared down at them as they withered, twisting and curling like a paper that's been thrown on the edge of a fire. The fingers curled and disappeared.

  My body was thickening, elongating. The trunk of my body was now huge compared to my arms and legs. And my head was getting smaller as well. My field of vision was distorted by the fact that my eyes were moving closer together.

  Suddenly, all along my back, tiny sharp daggers sprouted - the spines of the caterpillar.

  And all along my front, sets of minuscule legs began to emerge. It was beyond creepy. I looked like a Taxxon! Three pairs of little, sharp legs grew out of my chest. Four more sets of somewhat different-looking legs grew from my stomach.

  123 My own two legs melted together, and quite suddenly I was in the body of a worm.

  I wanted to cry. Morphing is always terrifying. Morphing a new creature is the most terrifying thing. But morphing a hideous bug and knowing that you will spend the rest of your life in that body!

  I felt a cinching, like someone was tightening series of belts all up and down my body. I looked down and saw the puffy yellow and green flesh become a dozen segments. It was like those little snap-together plastic blocks babies play with.

  I fell forward, helpless. It seemed like a long fall, but I was now no more than six inches long and still shrinking.

  I saw pine needles as big as telephone poles rush up at me. I saw a beetle walking by, looking as large as a dog. I saw a flash of color - flowers all around, the sky, and Karen's green eyes. And then I saw nothing more.

  I landed with a soft poof I

  My rows of legs absorbed the slight shock, I could still sense vibration. I could feel my mouthparts moving. I knew that the caterpillar's extremely simple, basic mind was rising up within my own. It was urgent. In a hurry. Hunger? No, something else. Something it had to do.

  I could fight the caterpillar mind. I could resist. But what would be the point?

  124 Demorph! Demorph! I cried. Don't do it! I begged myself.

  But now it was already too late. If I de-morphed, Karen would know our deal was off. And I would be totally vulnerable as I slowly returned to human form.

  I cried out silently, pleading, begging, screaming.

  But there was no answer.

  I was alone. I was more alone than any human being has ever been.

  I abandoned myself to the caterpillar, and it began to climb the stalk of a flower it could not see.

  125

  Jake

  My name is Jake.

  I was in my peregrine falcon morph searching for Cassie when Marco came rushing up, flapping at full speed.

  «l found her,» he said. But his thought-speak voice was grim.

  «What's happened?» I demanded.

  «The short version? She's a Controller now. And if we don't haul butt we're dog food.»

  I absorbed the sudden shock. No time for feeling scared for Cassie. I had to act. But we would need everyone together, and that would take time. We were spread out over twenty miles of forest.

  Cassie's parents had started worrying when

  126 she didn't come back from supposedly fixing the water trough. Her mom had started calling all her friends, starting with Rachel. Her dad had gone out to where the trough was and found Cassie's favorite mare wandering around outside the fence, scratched up, wet, with its saddle over on one side.

  Her dad knows wild animals. He found the bear tracks. He followed the horse and bear tracks until it got too dark to see.

  They called the cops and the park service. A search was organized. But it's almost impossible for people to find a single person in a hundred square miles of forest.

  Rachel called me. I called the others. Marco said something he didn't really mean about Cassie not being an Animorph anymore, so she wasn't our problem. Rachel knocked him on his butt.

  Marco is my best friend, but there are times I admire Rachel's directness.

  We spent the night in owl morphs, floating silently above the forest. Owls see blackest night like noon with a cloudless sky. But all we were seeing were the many little forest animals, and, occasionally, the search parties and their flashlights.

  It was Marco who figured out that we were making a mistake. Looking with eyes wasn't the

  127 only way. He morphed to wolf and used his incredible sense of smell to follow the scent of the mare to the edge of the river. We found a torn strip of fabric hanging from a bramble bush.

  Cassie had gone into the river.

  Then we overheard some of the searchers talking. It wasn't just Cassie who was missing now. There was a little girl named Karen.

  When the sun came up we switched to bird-of-prey morphs. And we focused on following the course of the river. To tell you the truth, we were mostly looking for a body lying in th
e water. I mean, of course we still hoped she was alive. But we knew Cassie had all the powers of morphing available. Surely, if she were alive and okay, she would morph and fly home.

  We spread out, far and wide, looking for any clue. And I guess Marco had finally found it.

  Now, with all of us gathered together, Marco told everything he knew. He told how Cassie had revealed herself to the Controller, Karen. He told how she had saved Karen from the leopard with Marco's unwitting help. And he told how Cassie had allowed herself to be made into a Controller in a desperate ploy to save the human girl, Karen.

  «She's an idiot!» Marco concluded savagely. «Right now that Yeerk in her head knows everything. Everything!»

  128 «Why would Cassie do this?» Ax wondered. «It is obvious that this Controller must be eliminated^

  «Cassie must have had a reason,» Rachel said.

  «0f course she had a reason,» I said.

  «Yeah? What?» Marco demanded. «What reason could she have for giving us all up to the Yeerks?»

  «You really don't know, Marco?» I asked him. «You really don't know why someone would not want to kill? Or even stand by and let someone else kill?»

  «She has no choice!» Marco said.

  «There's always a choice,» Tobias said. «l can't get mad at someone not wanting to take a life. I can't get mad at someone for thinking life is sacred. I just can't.»

  It surprised me, him coming to Cassie's defense. Tobias lives as a pure predator. For him, killing is something he has to do for breakfast.

  «This is a war,» Rachel said coldly. «We're fighting for our lives. We have a right to do whatever it takes to win.»

  «Maybe we'll lose, maybe we'll win,» I said. «But if we win and someday it's all over, you'd better hope there are still plenty of Cassies in the world. You'd better hope that not everyone

  129 has decided it's okay to do whatever it takes to win.»

  Everyone fell silent for a while, and we just flew hard. It was strange, the silence. I'm supposed to be the leader, although every day that goes by I wish a little more that I wasn't. But one thing a leader does is try to understand his people. I understood them.