Текст книги "Animorphs - 06 - The Capture"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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My arm ... my leg ... they had changed! My arms were thicker, more powerful, and growing larger still. My hands had swollen and become huge. The fingers were disappearing, replaced by curved claws as sharp as stilettos.

Orange-and-black-striped fur appeared, a rippling wave that grew to cover me.

I was becoming the tiger!

71 The realization hit me like a jolt of electricity. I was morphing!

The Yeerk was morphing!

How could I have been so stupid? Of course! The Yeerk controlled my hands and feet and voice, he controlled my very mind. Of course he had my morphing power, too!

The others . . . they didn't realize. They didn't understand. They had tied me up, but it was useless. The Yeerk had access to every one of my morphs.

The ropes around my hands were painfully tight as my wrists swelled to become powerful forepaws.

The Yeerk raised the rope and used the tiger's teeth to tear the rope apart.

I wanted to warn Rachel. She was still asleep. I had to warn her. The Yeerk would escape. He might even kill her.

But try as I might, I could not reach my own body any longer. I could not reach my own body.

"I won't kill her," the Yeerk said. "Like you, she is capable of morphing. I will deliver Visser Three four morph-capable humans, as well as one Andalite scum."

I now saw the world through tiger's eyes. The night was brighter. And I heard with tiger's ears.

Ears that caught any sound that might be made by a predator.

The tiger sniffed the air. But the breeze was slight, and carried no warnings.

"What a wonderful animal this is, this tiger," the Yeerk said. "Excellent senses. Fast and silent and deadly."

The forest was dark and quiet, but for the rustling of leaves in the trees above. Absolute silence, as the tiger crept away. No sound as the tiger melted into the shadows. And Rachel still slept.

Soon the shack could no longer be seen. The beam of Rachel's flashlight was swallowed by black night.

But the Yeerk was uncertain now. He did not know where we were. He did not know which way to go.

And then ... a sound. A smell.

Humans!

72 "What are humans doing here?" He opened my memory. He searched my brain for an explanation. I had none. "Your own thoughts tell me it is wrong. It is very late. Humans, this deep in the forest?"

The Yeerk moved away from the human scent. They might be hunters. They might be park rangers. Those were the possibilities he had pulled from my own brain.

The Yeerk sent the tiger body into a loping run. But after just ten minutes, the tiger tired and he had to slow down. Tigers are not distance runners.

"Which way?" the Yeerk wondered.

And then . . . once again. Human scent. Human sounds.

I looked through the tiger's eyes and saw nothing. The Yeerk once more turned from the human scent.

The Yeerk searched my memory. "South. I must go south. But which way is south? Anything else will send me deeper into the forest."

"I guess you're lost," I said. The first thing I had said to the Yeerk in a long time.

"Shut up, slave. Once the sun rises in the morning I will know the way to go."

"Two hours in a morph," I reminded him. "lf I'm stuck in tiger morph, then this body will be useless to you. Visser Three will want my body morph-capable."

"Don't tell me what Visser Three wants," the Yeerk said.

But the Yeerk knew time was passing. He had to morph back to my normal human shape.

Moments later, I was watching the world through human senses. The night vision was less acute.

The ears heard too little. The human nose could scarcely smell a thing.

The Yeerk walked, pushing on as fast as my human body could move with no shoes.

"In a hurry to go nowhere?" I asked.

"I know where I'm going," the Yeerk snapped. Then he stopped. "Hah! I should have thought of it. Of course! The falcon morph. I will simply fly away."

I watched like it was a TV program. Like I was far away from my own body. I watched with interest as the body shrank. As wings sprouted. As talons appeared. As – WHAM!

The half-bird, half-human body went rolling, end over end across the ground.

73 "What?" the Yeerk demanded. "What hit me?"

He looked around frantically. But falcon eyes are for daytime hunting. They are stunningly good in sunlight. In the dark, they are nothing special.

The Yeerk continued to morph. Falcon feathers grew, the wings became more fully formed.

WHAM!

A shadow within shadows. A sense of something dark that disappeared before the Yeerk could turn the falcon's head. From far away I realized the falcon body had been injured. There was a deep, bloody gash in the right shoulder.

The Yeerk was beginning to be afraid.

WHAM!

A hammer blow! A ripping of flesh and ten don.

The invisible enemy had struck again. The falcon would not be able to take wing. Not now. The falcon was crippled. Disabled by a silent, invisible enemy.

And then I felt hope come alive in me again.

Because even as the Yeerk, crying in pain, demorphed and returned to human form, I saw the enemy.

It landed on a branch. It was outlined against faint moonlight and infrequent stars. The two little tufts on its head inspired its name.

"The great horned owl," I said to the Yeerk.

"I can read your every thought, you don't need to tell me what it is," the Yeerk snapped.

"Oh, but I enjoy telling you. It's a great horned owl. It flies without making a sound. Tobias watches them hunt sometimes. Tobias says they can hear a mouse burp from a hundred yards away. He says they can see a bug blink on a coal-black night." I laughed silently in my corner of my own brain. I laughed at the Yeerk. "As far as that owl is concerned, you might as well have a spotlight on you."

Then, to my amazement, Cassie's thought– speak was in my head. A voiceless voice that seemed to belong in a different life.

"Sorry I had to hurt you, Jake. But it was necessary. We realized the Yeerk would try morphing.

So we were ready. Rachel only pretended to sleep. We wanted this Yeerk of yours to make his escape when we were most ready for him. So you hang in, Jake. The forest is full of your friends."

74 The humans the tiger had smelled. ... My friends.

Then I felt it again. The sensation that filled me with a grim sort of pleasure. I felt the Yeerk's fear.

It was good to know that he was afraid.

It was very good.

75 Chapter 19

I could feel the Yeerk opening my memory like a book again. He was checking through the list of all the morphs I had ever done.

Dog. Fish. Flea. Seagull. Dolphin. Ant. Wolf.

I knew what he must be thinking. Which could he use to evade the watchful owl in the tree above us? The owl who saw through the night like it was day, and heard the sounds no human could hear.

"She can't stay in owl morph forever," the Yeerk said. "She has a two-hour time limit. Just as I do."

"But of course there's Rachel and Marco and Ax. You don't know how many of them are here.

You don't know where they are or what they are."

"Can the owl watch a flea? I doubt it. Or an ant?" The Yeerk smirked.

"True. But how far can a flea travel in the two-hour time limit? Twenty yards? Thirty? Then you have to demorph and my friends will have no trouble finding you."

"Shut up!" he yelled, losing patience.

I reveled in his anger. It meant he was scared. It also meant something else. I could not control my arms or legs. I could not even keep my mind closed from him. But he could not stop my thoughts. He could not stop me from talking to him.

And I had the power to annoy him. To distract him when he should be focused on escaping.

"You think you can harass me?" he said, reading my thoughts as soon as I had them. "You overestimate yourself."

"You underestimate us, Yeerk. You thought you'd just morph and walk away. You guessed wrong. And your three days is less than two and a half already. Tick tock, Yeerk. Tick tock."

"Let's see whether your owl friend can handle a wolf as easily as she handled the falcon." He began morphing. The wolf form was one I had enjoyed. Wolves are not subject to much fear.

And their instincts are easily manipulated. Not like ants. Or the lizard that was one of my earliest morphs.

I watched as my body sprouted gray fur. As my face bulged out to become a long snout. As my ears slid up the side of my head to rest on top.

"I see our owl friend is keeping her distance" the Yeerk said. "l thought as much." 76 He set out at a fast trot. Unlike tigers, wolves are long-distance travelers. They can cover amazing distances at a run. And worse, the wolf brain seemed to have some interior sense of direction. It knew which way was deeper into woods, and which way led to the city.

We ran through woods, through a night as dark as night can be. Clouds hung low over the forest, allowing only the palest glow from the moon.

"A quick jog back to what passes for civilization on this planet, demorph to human, and your friends will be powerless to stop me," the Yeerk said.

I wondered who he was trying to convince. Me, or himself?

"You're an arrogant bunch, aren't you? You Yeerks, I mean."

"Arrogant? Why wouldn't we be? We are the most powerful race in the galaxy. Overlords of the Taxxons. Conquerors of the Hork-Bajir and the Ssstram and the Mak. Soon to be conquerors of the humans."

"Don't count the humans just yet," I said. "And there are still the Andalites."

"We'll save the Andalites for last," he hissed.

He stopped moving and pricked up his wolf's ears. There came a distinct howling sound. Loud and not very far away, it rose and warbled and rose again before dying away.

A second wolf voice howled.

"Another wolf. Two," the Yeerk said. I felt him contact the wolf's own submerged instinctive mind. What was the meaning of the howling?

A notice. A warning to any other wolves that we are here. Don't come around, unless you want to risk a fight.

Suddenly I realized what it meant. I laughed.

"This is an area we were in before," I said. "As wolves. We discovered – "

"Silence! I know what you found. When will you figure out that I can read your memory as well as you can?"

"We found another pack of wolves. They think this is their territory," I went on, enjoying the fact that I was bothering him. "Those howls you hear? Those are my friends. They're calling to the other wolf pack. Better run faster, Yeerk. That big male who runs the other pack is tough." The Yeerk began running all out, pushing the wolf body for all the speed and endurance it had.

The dark tree trunks were a blur as we ran through the night, followed by the howls of wolves who were not wolves.

77 Then, a smell on the wind. The smell of an other wolf. A male wolf.

"I believe that's my old friend now," I said, laughing.

The Yeerk stopped running.

Ahead, through the trees, a pair of glittering yellow eyes glared at us. Other eyes appeared. Five wolves – five real wolves – waited for us to try to move forward.

"Go ahead?" I taunted the Yeerk. "Go kick his butt. Of course, that's a realwolf there. An alpha male. Leader of his pack, which means he's probably been in a dozen fights and won them all.

Go on, Yeerk. Tell him how the Yeerks are masters of the galaxy. I'm sure he'll be very impressed."

I could sense the Yeerk's hesitation. His uncertainty.

"So many species on this planet," he said to himself. "So many balances and connections.

Everything preying on everything else. Every power is checked by some other power. Every ad vantage is canceled by some disadvantage."

"Yeah. Earth. It's a tough neighborhood."

"When we take this planet, we will eliminate these species. We will simplify. Things should be simpler. Yes, much simpler."

"I have a news flash for you, Yeerk. I don't think you're going to take this planet. I think this planet is going to take you."

Just then, a human voice. "So. You about done playing games? Ready to come back to the shack?"

It was Marco. He was shoeless and wearing his morphing outfit. He had been one of the wolves who'd led us straight into the enemy pack.

Marco shivered. "Look, Mr. Yeerk, it's cold and I'm freezing. I always knew this situation with the morphing outfits was going to be trouble some day. So come on. Let's go back to the shack."

For a moment the Yeerk was so enraged he was ready to leap at Marco and tear out his throat.

But then, lumbering up behind Marco came Rachel. The very large version of Rachel with the trunk, the big leathery ears, and the two huge tusks.

Marco seemed to guess what had gone through the Yeerk's mind. "Go ahead. Try some thing. A wolf pack ahead. A very large, surprisingly fast African elephant behind you. And more surprises in the woods all around you. Oh, and one more thing . . . Cassie is nestled down in your fur. Sucking your blood, I imagine. She did the flea thing."

78 I realized then that there is a very basic difference between Yeerks and humans.

A human will fight even when he knows he can't win. Maybe our species is just a little crazy.

But human history is full of cases where a handful of guys would fight an entire army. They'd get stomped, but they'd fight anyway.

That's not the way it is for Yeerks. They are ruthless. They will do anything, absolutely anything to win. But when the situation is impossible, totally impossible, they stop fighting. They figure that other Yeerks will carry on the fight for them.

Different ways of looking at your world.

"You are fools," the Yeerk said, having read my thoughts. "It is madness to fight when you cannot win."

"Yes, it is foolish. It is crazy," I agreed. "And it's why we will win." The Yeerk demorphed and returned to human form. My human form.

Marco walked away into the woods. Rachel rumbled off. And a few minutes later, an owl appeared to lead the way back to the shack.

79 Chapter 20

The next morning, when it seemed like no one was watching, the Yeerk tried again. He morphed into an ant. He got three feet before running into a group of ants from a different colony. About forty of them attacked. They were ripping the ant body apart when the Yeerk demorphed and returned to human form.

"This is a savage planet," he said. "We will tame this world, when we take it over." But I don't think even he believed it anymore.

It was around nine in the morning on Saturday that the Yeerk first took over my body and brain.

By Monday evening, when the sun went down, he was growing distracted, unable to concentrate clearly.

By the time the moon rose in a newly clear, starry sky, he was weak with hunger. His slug body cried out for Kandrona rays the way a human would cry for food or water.

I could feel his arrogance evaporate. I could feel his despair.

He still had fantasies of being rescued. But he couldn't make those fantasies end very well. Even if he was rescued, he would no longer be the big hero who had destroyed the Animorphs.

He would try to think of clever ways to outwit my friends, but he could never be sure who was in the woods around us. Or what form they might have taken.

He tried to take on a bird shape again, reforming the peregrine falcon. The DNA had not been affected by the injuries Cassie had caused to the earlier morph, of course. The falcon was fine.

But it was daylight this time, and Tobias landed while the falcon was still half-morphed. He grabbed the falcon head in his talon and simply explained that if the Yeerk did not demorph, he would be killed.

For the first time, the Yeerk broke his silence with the others and spoke as a Yeerk.

"If you kill me, you'll kill your friend, as well," he warned.

"Yes," Tobias said. "I know."

"You won't do it"

"Right from the start we have all said the same thing – better to die than be a Controller." Tobias said. "But in any case, I don't need to kill you. I can simply put your eyes out. A blind falcon doesn't fly far."

The Yeerk surrendered and demorphed.

We waited, as the minutes and hours of the night ticked away. He still hoped for a miracle to save him. But his hunger was a terrible thing, growing with every second.

80 "You think you'll win," he sneered at me. "You won't win. Your people are blind to what is happening. And the Andalites will not return in time."

"Maybe. But you won't be there to see it," I said. "It must be four in the morning. Five hours left. Ticktock."

"You're a cruel little human, aren't you?"

"I don't think so, no."

"You know I am dying and you laugh at me."

"What do you expect? Pity?"

He laughed. "No. We don't offer pity. And we don't expect pity. We are the masters of the galaxy. Conquerors of the Hork-Bajir and – "

"Yeah, yeah, I know. The mighty Yeerk empire."

After that he said nothing to me for a while. It was impossible to sleep. He sat with my eyes open. He was too hungry to rest. The hunger infiltrated his mind. It twisted his thoughts.

"The Yeerk home world is a simpler place than this planet. Simple and elegant. No more than a hundred animal species. What do you have on Earth? A million species? More? What does a planet need with a million species?"

I didn't answer. His time was running out. Let him talk.

"We Yeerks evolved as parasites, not predators. Unlike you humans, we did not kill to eat. We were peaceful. We took many different species as our hosts. And as they evolved, so did we.

Over time, the Gedds evolved. They were a sort of ... like a monkey, I suppose. We were in the Gedds till the Andalites first came. Some of our people still have nothing better than Gedds for hosts."

"What about the Andalites?" I asked. "What happened when they came to your world?"

"Of course. The Andalite has not told you their story, has he? What a pity. It's such a fine story.

Ask your pet Andalite Ax sometime. Ask him about the story of the Andalites and the Yeerks."

"Maybe I will," I said. I hoped the Yeerk would keep talking, but he fell silent.

The hours passed. An owl left and was replaced by another. The moon went down. Dawn was coming. I could feel it.

"Yes," the Yeerk said, having read my thoughts. "Dawn. Just a few hours left. Ahhhh!" He cried out in silent pain. "The fugue. It begins."

"The fugue?"

81 "The final hours. You will not enjoy it, although you may learn a great deal, human. You may learn more than you want to – aaaahhh!"

I was watching his pain from far away. I was an observer. Close enough to know what he was feeling, but feeling none of it myself.

At first it was wave after wave of pain. Starvation and death by thirst. All rolled into one agony.

The sun came up. Cassie stepped into the shack from the woods outside. She looked at me and nodded. "It's happening, isn't it?"

I wanted to answer, but even now, my voice was not my own.

Cassie came and sat down beside me. Beside us.

"Ax says this part is pretty rough. Just remember, when it's all over, I'll be here."

She slipped her hand into my hand. I could feel it. So could the Yeerk. But he did not reject this small bit of comfort, even though it was intended for me and not him.

His mind was deteriorating. His thoughts were becoming more visible to me. Like a movie that kept drifting in and out of focus.

I saw images from a strange place, as seen through strange eyes. Liquid all around. Shapes, like squids, shooting through the liquid. Yeerks. Swimming in the Yeerk pool. Soaking up Kandrona rays.

And there were images of the first host. A Gedd. So, I thought – that's what a Gedd looks like. I had seen a few aboard the Yeerk mother ship but had not known what they were. They were humanoid, short and stooped, with webbed feet and three clumsy fingers.

I saw the world as the Yeerk had seen it, through Gedd eyes. The vision was dim. The hearing was better. The Yeerk had been excited at getting his first host. He had subdued the Gedd mind with ruthless ease, crushing it with his superior intelligence and will.

The memory made me sick. The Gedd's bewilderment. His fear. And the Yeerk's fierce arrogance.

I turned my attention away from the memory and back to the world around me. To my surprise, I noticed that my arms were shaking. My legs were shaking.

Cassie had put her arm around my shoulders.

"Jake, if you can hear me, it's almost eight. One hour to go. Jake ... the Yeerk in your head is dying."

"Yes," I wanted to say. "He is."

82 Chapter 21

The fugue.

The final hours of the Yeerk's life. I was watching him die.

A lot has happened to me since I first saw the Andalite prince land in that construction site. More strange things than happen to most people in their entire lives. But the strangest was this. And the saddest.

The Yeerk cried in pain, again and again. And the visions came floating up, crystal clear, as if they had just happened.

Visions of the good times in the Yeerk's life. And of bad times. The emotions were strange.

Alien. I guess that's the word for them. There was no memory of love. I guess Yeerks don't do love.

But there was affection. Pride. Fear. Regret. Those I could understand.

And along with the Yeerk's own memories, I began to see the minds of his hosts. The Gedd who had a name no human could hope to pronounce. The Hork-Bajir warrior who had fought the Yeerk in his head every day of his life.

The Hork-Bajir, who had been forced to attack his own kind, to destroy his own friends, as an unwilling slave of the Yeerks.

But it was more than just memories. It was more. The Yeerk had carried with him some small part of that Hork-Bajir warrior's being.

Like a computer transferring a document onto a floppy disk, I realized. Part of the Gedd and part of the Hork-Bajir had been transferred permanently to the Yeerk.

And to my shock, I knew that those parts were now being transferred to me.

And then ... the memories I feared most.

Tom.

He had joined The Sharing for a simple, silly reason. A pretty girl he liked was a member. He had wanted to get close to her. He had gone to meetings. He'd played along with them, never guessing the truth. All he had cared about was the girl.

He had stumbled, accidentally, into a secret leadership meeting. He thought the girl was seeing another boy. But she was one of them.

He had followed her, wandered into the meet ing and seen Visser Three. Visser Three in his Andalite body.

83 I saw the Controllers grab a yelling, punching, kicking Tom. I saw as they tied him up. Carried him through secret passageways to the great, underground Yeerk pool.

I saw him scream as he realized what was happening. I felt his fear. I felt his rage as the Yeerk slug crawled into his ear and wrapped itself around his brain. I felt every ounce of his despair.

And like the Gedd and the Hork-Bajir, this human, my brother, became a part of me.

The Yeerk was no longer in pain. It was beyond pain.

I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I opened my eyes. By my own will.

I don't know how she knew, but I guess she did. She nodded slightly and met my gaze.

For the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke. "So. You win . . . human." The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it. A physical spasm. My vision changed. I felt. . . it's hard to describe. I felt as if I were seeing through things, intothings. Like I could see the front and back and top and bottom and inside of every thing all at once.

And then I saw it.

A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high.

Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . .

I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.

And then it saw me.

The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.

It saw me.

It SAW me!

No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I looked away.

And when I opened my eyes again, all I saw was a weird glow.

The glow faded, little by little.

I was trembling.

"It's over, Jake," Cassie said.

84 I rose slowly to my feet. I moved my own legs. I was in control of myself again.

I looked down on the wooden floor of the shack.

A gray slug, not six inches long, lay there . . . still.

As we watched, it withered and shriveled and became nothing.

85 Chapter 22

Jake? Are you all right, sweetheart?" my mom asked me that night at dinner.

I looked up. I'd been staring at my food, I realized. Something with pasta and tuna fish.

"What?" I asked.

My mom and dad exchanged one of their "worried parent" looks. "Well, you're not eating. Don't you like it?"

I shrugged. "Sorry. It's fine. I was just . . . distracted."

My dad nodded. "It's just a change from the last two nights. You've been eating like you were trying to eat everything in the house."

"I was?"

Tom cocked an eyebrow at me. "What, now you're going to pretend it didn't happen? Last night you sat here and ate six pieces of chicken and kept yapping about how great it was. Then you ate a pie. A pie which was supposed to be for the four of us."

I hid a smile. Of course. Ax. The Andalite had played me for three days – two hours at a time. Ax was dangerous around food. The sense of taste was still totally amazing to him. When he was in human morph you didn't want to get between him and a bar of chocolate. Or a pie, I guess.

"You were a total pig," Tom said. "Chicken. Corn. Potatoes. Or, as you kept saying, 'Potatoes.

Toes. Tay-toes.' I thought you'd gone nuts."

And were you suspicious, Yeerk? I thought, looking at my brother. A new Yeerk was in Tom's head. Another arrogant master of the galaxy.

My brother was trapped in a small corner of his own mind, able to see and feel, but powerless to do a thing. I knew.

I didn't sleep much that night. I did not want the dreams to come. I feared terrible nightmares of the eye. The eye that had stared at me from a different universe.

But the only dream that came was a familiar one.

I was the tiger. My brother was the prey. But, in the end, I was my brother. And he was me.

On the news that night there was a small report on the closing of the new hospital. There was no explanation. But I knew what had happened. The Yeerks knew their plan was blown. They understood that we knew about it.

We had hurt them pretty badly.

86 But I knew better than to celebrate. Visser Three would be more determined than ever to stop us.

The next day I did something stupid. At least, Marco kept telling me it was stupid. But he didn't object very much. He understood.

We all met at Cassie's barn. And I used her dad's cellular phone to call Tom at home. I went partly into a wolf morph before I did. Just enough to make the smallest changes.

Enough to change the shape of my mouth and tongue and throat. So that my voice would sound very different.

He picked it up on the third ring. "Yeah?"

"I have a message," I said in a thick, twisted voice that did not sound at all like me.

"What?" Tom asked.

"Don't give up, Tom. Don't ever give up."

I hung up before he could say anything.

"Do you think Tom ... the real Tom . . . heard it?" Rachel asked.

"He heard," I answered.

I wondered if he would have the strength to hold on.

But I knew the answer. See, a part of my brother was in my own mind now. Along with echoes of a long-dead Hork-Bajir and a simple Gedd. And yes, even a bit of a Yeerk with dreams of glory.

Marco smiled his sardonic smile. "And is it true? Will we win?"

"This is a very complicated planet, Marco. That's what I hear, anyway. And it's a very strange universe. Anything could happen."

87