The Pretender Read online

  There was not a Yeerk alive who didn't know that name.

  Visser Three had wondered what happened to the son of his archenemy. Did Elfangor's son know the truth? Was Elfangor's son somehow connected with the "Andalite bandits" who caused the Visser such pain?

  149 Investigation had revealed that I had disappeared from school and from the custody of my indifferent relatives. That must have really piqued Visser Three's interest.

  So he devised a trap. Invent a cousin. Offer me what I obviously did not have: a home. Lower my defenses. Then read me the letter.

  But then came the complication: Visser Three had a crisis to deal with. The young Hork-Bajir named Bek. He would need two traps: one for me, one for the free Hork-Bajir.

  Just in case I was connected with the "Andalite bandits," he would play the role to the hilt: In that first visit to check out Bek, he pretended to a humanity he did not have. Later he arranged to make it seem he'd saved some girl's life. What better proof that he was truly a human?

  It would have worked. Except for the fact that Visser Three was called suddenly to the facility where they had just "captured" a group of free Hork-Bajir.

  He'd been passing as Aria at the time. He needed to get to the weapons facility quickly. A helicopter would do the trick, but he would need to travel in human morph.

  I saw him. And that was all that saved my life. And doomed his plan.

  150 I flew back to my meadow, my mind and heart more full than I would have thought possible.

  Elfangor. My father.

  I had no doubt about who had erased Elfangor's life on Earth. Who had allowed him to leave me that one, short letter.

  Only the Ellimist could have done it.

  I landed back on my favorite branch in my favorite tree. He had left me. My mother never remembered him. He had never existed for her, so she did not feel the pain of it. And I would not have known, but for the letter.

  And now, I guess I could be angry at him. But that wasn't how I felt. Elfangor had run away from his duty when he came to Earth. He'd had no choice but to return to that duty. No choice at all, if he was to play the part he had to play, and be the great prince he was.

  I'd lost a father. Because of that fact, Elfangor had been where he had to be, when he had to be there, to change the lives of five ordinary kids forever. And maybe . . . maybe. . . save the human race.

  I wondered why the Ellimist had allowed my father to leave that letter. But I didn't wonder for long. The answer was too simple.

  See, I had a duty, too. And who is there to re-

  151 mind you that what you want for yourself is less important than doing what is necessary and right?

  «Message received, Father. Message received.»

  152

  I swept down across the grass, silent, my wings carefully aligned. I raked my talons forward, flared my tail, swung my wings forward, and dropped with perfect precision.

  My talons sank into the back of the rabbit's neck.

  And then again, as before, I was not the hawk, but the rabbit. I was not the remorseless killer, I was the victim. Not predator, but prey.

  In this vision I felt the pain of my talons in my own neck. I felt the terror of the death from the sky.

  But I held on. I had to accept what this vision was telling me. What some corner of my own mind had wanted me to understand.

  153 The rabbit became calm and quiet as I absorbed its DNA. I acquired the rabbit, made it part of me.

  Then I tightened my grip till the rabbit stopped squirming. Till its heart stopped beating.

  I am, after all, the predator hawk. I kill to eat.

  But I am also the human being. And I can never take a life, not even for my own survival, without feeling.

  I had heard my father's message come down through the years. Now I heard the message my own mind was telling me: You are both, Tobias. Hawk and human. You always will be. You will always kill to eat. And you will always regret.

  It's a rotten situation, I guess. But my duty is to be what I am. A hawk. A boy. Instinct. And emotion. I'll have to go on walking that tightrope.

  I ate the mother rabbit. All I could hold.

  Then I morphed into the mother rabbit. And I shepherded the babies safely back to their den, as over our heads the other hawk flew, looking down at us for a chance to hunt and eat as I had done.

  Life would have been a lot easier for me if I could have been a simple, ruthless animal. If all my decisions were straightforward. If everything made sense.

  But that's not the way it is for human beings.

  I looked up at the other hawk through terrified

  154 rabbit eyes. I had become prey, this time for real. This is what it felt like. This is what my prey saw when they felt my shadow blot out the sun. It was good that I knew.

  «Sorry, my brother hawk,» I said to the shadow of death above me. «There's nothing left for you in this meadow. These little ones are under my protection now.»

  I killed to eat. But I didn't need to eat these little ones. These I would save. These little ones I could pity. That was the human thing to do.

  That night I went to Rachel's room. She was asleep. She was ticked off when I woke her up. But she rolled out of bed and put on a robe and told me she'd never get any sleep with some idiot bird coming in and out at all hours.

  Then she showed me the cake. She lit a candle and I blew it out by flapping my wing. Neither of us sang "Happy Birthday." But she said it.

  "Happy birthday, Tobias."

  155 Don't; miss

  Animorphs

  #24 The Suspicion

  I. was getting small. I was getting small very fast.

  I've shrunk before, when I've morphed various insects, for example. But this was new. I was shrinking as a human.

  The only good thing was that at least my morphing suit was shrinking, too. Bad to be shrinking. Worse to be shrinking right out of your clothes.

  "Hey!" I yelled. "What did you do to me?"

  «Hah! You glory in your swollen, bloated bulk, human! You dare to defy us! We shall see how bold you are when you are the same size as we. Now you will taste bitter defeat! Now you will feel the sting of eternal humiliation^

  "I don't glory in my ... Hey, who are you calling bloated? Wait a minute! Stop this!"

  I was still shrinking. I'd started at four foot something. Now I was less than a foot tall. And I

  156 was still shrinking. I glanced over and saw a raccoon. He was bigger than I was. Not to mention being a million times more hostile.

  «Cassie!»

  I spun around and spotted Tobias, swooping in like a 747 coming in for a landing.

  "Tobias! Look out! They have a shrinking ray!"

  «A what?»

  FLASH!

  "Never mind. You'll find out soon enough."

  «Hah HAH! You all think to resist the might of the Helmacrons because you are large and because you glow with the transformational power! But we, too, know how to use the transformational power! Shrink! Shrink! And become our abject and pitiable slaves!»

  «Hey,» Tobias said, sounding puzzled. «I'm shrinking. And you've already shrunk!»

  "Tobias! You have to warn the others not to come in here! Somehow they're using the power of the blue box to do this."

  «l can't leave you. You're less than six inches

  "Warn the others!" I cried.

  Tobias turned, but he was shrinking fast. He was already down to about hummingbird size. Suddenly the door was much farther away for him.

  157 «Well, this is unfortunate,» he said.

  A huge, galumphing form appeared in the doorway: Marco.

  "Get back!" I screamed.

  But of course what he heard was, "Get back!"

  FLASH!

  "Hey!" Marco ye I led. "No flash photography."

  «Marco! Quick, before you shrink. Warn the others to stay out!»

  "Say what? Before I what?"

  But he turned and yelled over his shoulder. "Jake! Ax!
Rachel! Stay out of here!"

  I could see him peering down at me. His face was about the size of the Goodyear Blimp - if it was about to land on top of you.

  "Oh, this isn't good," he said.

  I was shrinking still further. I was already as small as a cockroach. The roof of the barn already looked like it was the sky. A dim overhead light might as well have been the moon.

  Marco was standing on sequoia legs, with feet the size of twin Titanics.

  "What's happening in there?" Jake yelled.

  "Well," Marco said calmly. "The Helmacrons have the blue box and they seem to be using it in a kind of bizarre way."

  "I'm coming in," Jake said decisively.

  "No!" Marco yelled in a voice that already sounded like someone breathing helium.

  158 "No, Jake and Ax, do not come in!" Then, as an afterthought, he said, "Rachel, you could come in."

  «Marco!» Tobias chided.

  "Hey, the Wicked Witch gets to be full size and I'm down here singing, 'We represent the Lollipop Guild'? I don't think so."

  «Rachel, Jake, everyone stay out!» Tobias cried in thought-speak that we all heard clearly.

  "Okay, everyone just stay put," Jake ordered. "Look, the other Helmacron ship took off. Rachel hit it with a brick."

  I would have laughed. Only I was now shrinking down to the point where scattered bits of hay on the ground were looking like huge, felled trees. Grains of dirt were the size of soccer balls.

  "I think I'm done shrinking!" I said. Not that anyone heard me. Something flew into view. Something that seemed weirdly large. Tobias. He was roughly the size of a very small fly. But he was about as big as me.

  «l think I've stopped shrinking,» he said.

  "Me, too."

  «But we're the same size. I should be smaller than you. I started out much smaller than you.»

  "I guess that's not how it works," I said. "I think the idea here is to shrink us all to the same size as the Helmacrons themselves."

  159 Marco, now no more than three inches tall himself, came walking over. He was huge to us. But his face was getting closer all the time.

  "Oh, man, you guys are small," he said. "Honey, I shrunk the Animorphs!"

  "Rachel! Get a brick!" Jake said in a huge voice that reverberated around us.