Текст книги "Animorphs - 13 - The Change"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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Animorphs

The Change

Converted to E-Book by:

Kamal Raniga

My name is Tobias.

The other Animorphs can't tell you very much about themselves, but I can. See, I don't have an address. I can't be found. I live in an area of forest by a meadow. That's my territory.

My territory includes the meadow, which is maybe a hundred yards across in one direction, and half that in the other direction. My territory also includes the trees around the meadow, and the woods heading north for about another hundred yards.

Of course, my territory is also the territory of other animals. Owls, jays, foxes, raccoons, on down to ants and spiders. But no red-tailed hawks.

Except me.

My name is Tobias, and I am human. Partly. Most of my mind is human. At least I think it is. I mean, I remember human things. I can read and use language. Most of my close friends are human. And I was born a human, in a human body with arms and legs and hair and a mouth.

Now, though, I have wings and talons and feathers. And instead of a mouth I have a hooked beak.

I can make sounds with my beak. But nothing that sounds human. To speak with regular humans I use thought-speak.

But there were no people nearby right then in the early morning, as I waited patiently in the branch of a dying elm tree.

I kept my eyes focused sharply on the meadow. I knew the pathways and homes of the mice and rats and rabbits who lived there. And I knew what it meant when the tall, dry grass twitched just the smallest bit.

With my hawk's eyes I could see what no human could hope to see. I could see the individual stalks of grass barely tremble as a mouse brushed between them.

And with my hawk's ears I heard the faint sound of mouse teeth, chewing on a seed.

The mouse was seventy or eighty feet away. An easy target.

I opened my wings slowly, not wanting to make a sound. I released the grip of my talons on the branch and fell forward. My wings caught the cushion of air and I swooped, almost silent, toward my prey.

The grass twitched.

Through the grass I saw a flash of brown. The mouse was running.

Too slowly.

I raked my talons forward. I swept my wings forward to cancel my speed, dropped one wing to turn, and fell the last foot like a rock.

It was all over very quickly.

But this time as I dragged the mouse away to a safer spot, I stumbled on a faded magazine someone had thrown away. The wind whipped the pages by, one at a time. Advertisements. Graphs. Pictures of the president with some foreign leader.

And then one page stayed open. A photograph of a classroom. Kids my age.

Some of the kids were goofing off in the back of the class. Some looked bored. Most looked more or less interested, and three were practically leaping from their seats, waving their hands for the teacher. All that, frozen in a photograph.

A classroom like any classroom. Like the classrooms I used to attend. I would have been one of the kids paying attention, but too shy to

volunteer. I was never very bold or aggressive. I was a bully-magnet, to tell you the truth. The kid most likely to get pounded. The kid from the home so screwed up that I ended up being shuttled back and forth between aunts and uncles who didn't even remember my name half the time.

But that wasn't me anymore.

his is my life now. I accept it. And there are some very nice things about being a bird.

Some very nice things.

Well-fed and full of energy, I flapped across the meadow, gaining altitude the hard way – with sheer muscle power.

I swept above the trees and fought my way higher still. Out beyond my own territory. Higher and higher. And then I felt the air billowing up beneath me.

A beautiful thermal. A pillar of warm air that rose up from the ground as it was heated by the sun. I swept into that warm air and it lifted me up like an elevator.

I turned and turned within that warm current,

twisting higher and higher, till I was nothing but a speck to the tiny humans on the ground. Up and up, till the only sound was the wind ruffling across my feathers.

I caught a glimpse back down behind me. A glimpse of a strange creature that looked like a blue deer at first. Until you saw the head with its extra stalk eyes mounted on top. And the slashing, scorpion tail.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill. The only Andalite alive on Earth. My friend.

Or as much of a friend as you can be, when one of you is a Bird-boy and the other is an alien.

"Ax-man!" I called down. He kept running. That's how he eats. He runs across grass and leaves, and the crushed vegetation is absorbed up through his hooves.

"Tobias! Out hunting?"

"Nope. I had breakfast. See you later." I flapped and glided and soared till I was over houses. They were just little squares of gray and orange and brown roofs. Tiny swimming pools glittered an unnatural blue. I saw trimmed green lawns and parked rectangles of cars and roads with dotted white lines down the middle.

I flew on, across the homes, across the roads, to the school. Maybe it was because of the picture in the magazine. Maybe that's why I wanted to go there.

It was late morning now. The light was sharp and clean. I could see through the windows of the classrooms.

There was Jake, unofficial leader of the Ani-morphs, looking like any normal guy. He was lounging at his desk, feet stuck out in front. He was sleepy and trying to keep his eyes open.

More than any other person alive, Jake held the future of the human race in his hands. Strange to think, huh? That some big, sleepy kid in sneakers and a jacket was the leader of the only resistance to the Yeerk invasion of Earth?

As I watched, he nodded twice and slumped. The girl sitting behind him leaned forward and gave him a gentle poke in the shoulder.

That was Cassie. Another member of our little group. Cassie has never met an animal she didn't like. And she's never met a fashion she cared about. She's small, compact but strong-looking. Not like she's muscular.

More like she's part of something bigger than herself. Like she's some living extension of the earth.

Anyway, that's how I see her. Like some gentle soldier in the service of nature itself. Corny, isn't it? Sorry, but I have a lot of time to think. And I guess that makes me get too serious sometimes.

I swept by, high above, and turned the corner. In another classroom I spotted Marco. He was

talking. This was not a surprise. The class began to laugh. The teacher laughed, too, then looked exasperated, like she didn't want to laugh. This was also not a surprise. That's Marco. The boy loves to be the center of attention.

It took a while before I spotted the last human member of the Animorphs.

She wasn't in her usual classroom. In fact, I spotted her first in just a brief glimpse, walking down the hall.

Then she stepped outside. Out into the empty quad that separated the main building from the gym and the temporary buildings.

She stepped out into the sunlight, and her blond hair became a flame of pure gold.

Rachel.

Have you ever known a person who seems to walk through life with her own private spotlight shining on her? That's Rachel.

"Hi," I said in thought-speak. "What are you doing? Skipping school?" She couldn't answer. See, you can only do thought-speak when you're in a morph (or if you happen to be an Andalite). Although you can hear it just fine.

Rachel stopped walking and shielded her eyes with her hand, scanning the sky for me. Then she gave just the smallest wave, just a twinkling of two fingers.

She jerked her head toward the gym. That's where she was going. She opened her binder and revealed a piece of yellow notepaper clipped inside. Ah, so she was delivering a note for some teacher.

But Rachel must have forgotten that I can see things no human could ever see. Beneath the note was a fancy-looking sheet of stationery. It was a letter, addressed to Rachel. It read: "Congratulations! You have been named a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student."

I was about to add my own congratulations, when I noticed the date.

There was to be an awards ceremony Monday. This was Friday. It was the kind of thing Rachel would have invited everyone to.

Everyone but me. I can't exactly go to things like awards ceremonies.

Rachel hadn't even told me about it. And I knew why.

"Hey, I have something to show you after school," I said, trying to sound perky. "My Yeerk pool mapping project is paying off. Want to go for a fly after last period?"

I saw her smile. She nodded her head again, just a slight movement no one else would notice.

"Cool," I said.

I soared away and she walked on to the gym.

There are definitely some nice things about

being a hawk. And flying with Rachel is probably the nicest. But it would have been nice to see her get the Packard award, too.

Sometimes I asked myself if I had it to do all over again. ... If I could never become Tobias the hawk, and only be Tobias the boy, would I actually do it?

I didn't think about that often, though. Maybe I didn't want to find out the answer.

I spent the day drifting around on the breeze and checking everything I had learned in the last couple of weeks.

See, we knew the Yeerk pool was a gigantic underground complex beneath the school. We knew it extended at least as far as the mall. But we had never figured out where all the entrances and exits were.

That's what I'd been doing with my days – following people we knew were Controllers, watching them come and go. From them I learned the extent of the Yeerk pool.

Maybe I should back up and explain. I know you're probably someone living a nice, normal life. You go to school, hang out with your friends, have dinner with your family, watch a little TV. Normal.

And if I told you that maybe your teachers aren't really your teachers anymore; and maybe your friends aren't your friends at all; and maybe even your parents have become something totally different, well, you might think I was nuts.

I understand. You wouldn't believe how often I have these dreams that maybe none of it's real. That there is no Yeerk invasion. That Yeerk slugs are not inside the heads of so many people. That maybe I have my own hands and toes. . . .

It all started when Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and I took a different way home from the mall. In a dark, eerie, abandoned construction site we saw the spaceship land. And we met the strange part-deer, part-scorpion, part-humanoid creature called an Andalite.

His name was Elfangor. Much later we found out he was Ax's big brother.

He told us about the Yeerks, the race of parasitic slugs. The Yeerks, who, like some awful galactic disease, are spreading secretly from planet to planet.

They steal bodies. They make other creatures into Controllers – absolute slaves. The entire Hork-Bajir race has been enslaved. As well as the incredibly gross Taxxons, although they went along

voluntarily. They've gotten the Gedds and other races, too.

And now, it's our turn.

They are here. The Yeerks are among us. Inside the people you least suspect. Cops. Teachers. Friends. Parents. Reporters. Pastors and priests. Your own brothers and sisters.

The Andalite Prince Elfangor warned us. And he gave us the weapon – the power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and acquire.

There was just one big drawback, see. You can't stay in a morph for more than two hours. After that you stay in morph forever. That's what happened to me.

The Yeerks also have a weakness. Every three days they have to return to the Yeerk pool. They drain out of the heads of their host bodies and swim in the sludgy liquid of the pool. There they soak up the Kandrona rays that they must have for nutrition.

We've been to the Yeerk pool. It's not a place you want to see. Trust me. The screams that we'd heard in that place will be with me forever.

The Yeerk pool was where I lost my humanity. Where I passed the fateful two-hour time limit. Someday, somehow, we will destroy that place. But first, we have to understand it better.

That's what I was doing. That's why I spent

my days trying to discover every possible way in and out of it.

I was in the air over the mall at just about two-thirty in the afternoon when I spotted the big bald eagle floating, serene and powerful, on the thermals. The brown body stood out against the clouds, while the white head seemed almost invisible.

It was an odd place for a baldie. They usually like the shore.

I flapped hard to change direction and gain speed toward the eagle. I knew this eagle.

"ls that you, Rachel?" I asked.

"Sure. Who else would it be? Is this great flying weather, or what?"

"lt's perfect. You up for a little cruise?"

"0f course. What's up?"

"Well, while you and the others have been off saving the world, I've been busy, too."

I shot by, just beneath Rachel's big eagle wings, and swung out past her, then turned and moved in front of her. I was showing off. I'm more agile in the air than a bald eagle is. Although a baldie is quite a bit bigger than me. Kind of like comparing a turkey to a chicken.

Rachel made a sighing sound in my head. "Tobias, just because you can't come along on every single mission doesn't mean you need to do extra work."

"Yeah, well, whatever," I said. "The point is I've been watching known Controllers from the air. I started with Chapman and his wife and the reporter and the policewoman we know about. And Tom, of course. " Chapman is our assistant principal. He's a very big deal Controller. Tom is Jake's brother. He's a Controller, too.

"l followed them and watched them and now I've found four separate ways into the Yeerk pool. Besides the one we know that goes through the

"Cool. When we know the Yeerk pool entrances, we can start figuring out who more Controllers are." Rachel sounded impressed. Even though all I'd done was fly around and keep my eyes open.

"l have a lot of free time," I said. I knew I shouldn't say what I was about to say next. But it was out before I could stop myself. "So.

Congratulations, I guess, huh? Packard Foundation Outstanding Student. " Rachel was silent for a few seconds. "Did someone tell you? Oh, no, of course not. You saw the letter in my notebooks

"Just call me old hawkeye," I said lightly.

"Tobias . . . you know how much I wish you could come. I mean, Cassie will be there, and she's great. But you know Marco will just be making snide remarks, and Jake will be trying not to laugh."

"No big deal," I said. "The only thing is, don't hide stuff from me because you think it will hurt my feelings, okay? I can't handle you feeling sorry for me."

"l don't feel sorry for you," Rachel lied.

"Good. Because, you know, how you think about me is sort of important." I winced. I'd sounded way too sincere.

I mean, what was I thinking? Rachel's a human. A real human. I'm a hawk.

You think Romeo and Juliet were doomed, just from being from families that didn't like each other? Well, you can't get any more doomed than caring for someone who isn't even the same species.

"Anyway, congratulations," I said as breezily as I could."Now follow me, and I'll give you a little tour of the Yeerk pool entrances."

"0n a day like this, I'd follow you anywhere," Rachel said.

"We're not going far. Just to the car wash."

"They're using the car wash? No way." Rachel laughed. "You have to admit, they are ingenious."

We flew. Not side by side, because that would have looked suspicious.

Hawks and eagles don't exactly fly in formation like geese. We kept a hundred yards apart. But with our incredible vision and thought-speak, we might as well have been next to each other.

We rose higher and higher on the thermals, then thermal-hopped. That's where you rise to the top of one pillar of warm air and glide to the next. Then you rise again and drift to the next. It's an easy, lazy kind of flying. You don't get

where you're going very fast, but you don't get tired out, either.

It was awfully nice, flying just under the bellies of the clouds with Rachel. I may have lost my human body. But I've gained wings. And flying is ... well, I'm sure you've daydreamed about it. I know I used to. I'd sit in class, gazing out at the sky, or lie back in the grass, looking up, and wonder what it would be like to have wings. To be able to fly up and up and away from all the stupid little problems of life.

Flying is as wonderful as you'd think. It has problems, too, like anything else. But oh man, on a warm day with the mountains of fluffy white clouds showing the way to the thermal updrafts, it's just wonderful.

"So where are we going? We're not heading toward the car wash," Rachel pointed out.

I snapped alert. I looked down at the ground, spotting the familiar road grids and buildings I knew so well from this angle. We were in an area bordering the forest. Not far from Cassie's farm. "What am I doing herel" I asked. "l must have spaced. Sorry. This way."

I cranked a hard left turn and beat my wings to gain some speed. Rachel has to deal with the two-hour limit. We'd wasted a lot of that time. I couldn't believe I'd spaced out so badly.

We flapped hard for a while.

"Um . . . Tobias? Am I crazy, or are we right back where we were?" I looked down at the ground. She was right. We were right back in the same area by the edge of the forest.

I felt a cold chill. "No way," I whispered.

"Are you lost?"

"Lost? Of course not," I said. "l don't get lost. We're heading just south of east. I know exactly where we are. But this isn't where I was heading."

"ls there something going on here?" Rachel asked.

"This makes no sense," I said. "l was heading for -"

And that's when I saw it happen.

We were gliding over the edge of the forest. Farmland on one side, all green and perfectly squared. Then a band of scruffy brush and fallen-down wire fence. Then the trees – elms, oaks, various pines.

The trees extended in a long sweep right, from the farmland up into the far-distant mountains. With my hawk's vision I could even see snow on those far-off peaks.

But that's not what I was noticing right then. What I was noticing right then was that a single huge oak tree was sliding to one side.

Just sliding. Like it had no roots. Like it was

on a skateboard or something. A huge oak tree just slid over.

And beneath the oak there appeared a hole in the ground.

"What is that?" Rachel demanded.

"You got me," I said.

"That whole tree is just. . . moving."

"And the hole under it isn't natural," I pointed out. "lt's too round.

It's man-made."

"0r else not man-made," Rachel said darkly.

Something's down there! I saw something moving. It's coming up! Coming up out of the ground!"

"l see it," Rachel said. "What is it? Can you see?"

I had a better angle than Rachel. And I could see what was coming up from underground.

I saw a snakelike head with huge forward-swept horns.

I saw powerful shoulders and arms that were armed with blades at the elbows and wrists.

I saw the big Tyrannosaurus feet and the short, spiked tail and the blades at the knees.

I saw seven feet of razor-bladed death.

"Hork-Bajir," I said.

"TTork-Bajir!" Rachel snarled.

A year ago that name would have meant nothing to me. It would have just been some nonsense word.

But now I knew the Hork-Bajir. The Andalite who gave us our powers had told us that the Hork-Bajir were once a decent, peaceful species. But they had been enslaved by the Yeerks. All of them were Controllers now.

The entire species carried the Yeerk slugs in their heads.

And with the Yeerks controlling their every action, the Hork-Bajir were walking killing machines.

Amazingly fast. Incredibly strong. Armored,

bladed, almost fearless. They were the shock troops of the Yeerk empire.

Hork-Bajir had come close to killing Rachel several times. And all of us had felt the Hork-Bajir blades at least once.

"What is a Hork-Bajir doing, coming out in broad daylight?" Rachel asked.

I looked closely. The Hork-Bajir was climbing some kind of ladder. When it reached the surface, it blinked its reptilelike eyes at the light. It climbed out and stood like some vision of a demon. Then I noticed that there was a second Hork-Bajir coming up behind it.

"There are two of them!" Rachel said.

"Yeah. And you know what? I think they look scared."

Just then . . .

SKREEEET! SKREEEET! SKREEEET!

The alarm was deafening to my hawk hearing. The sound screamed up from the hole in the ground. The two Hork-Bajir jerked in surprise and fear.

One of them grabbed the other and held it close for a split second. In an instant, they were off and running through the forest.

Running as if their lives depended on it.

And let me tell you something– Hork-Bajir can move out when they want.

Those big, long legs take big, long steps. They plowed into the

brush, slashing wildly with their bladed arms, slicing through bushes and thorns and small trees like a harvester going through a wheat field.

"How are you doing on morph time?" I asked Rachel.

"l still have an hour at least," she said.

"So we follow these guys?"

"0h, yeah."

We flapped to gain some of the altitude we'd lost and prepared to follow the Hork-Bajir. Not much of a challenge, really. They were chopping a path straight through the woods that a blind man could follow.

"They're not exactly into the stealth thing, are they?" Rachel commented.

And that's when things really broke loose. Up from the hole in the ground humans poured. Armed humans. Men and women, dressed in an array of normal-looking human clothing.

Controllers, of course. Not that you could tell by looking. But I knew now that hole led down to the Yeerk pool. And there was no doubt in my mind – these humans were human-Controllers. Slaves to the Yeerks in their heads.

They carried human weapons – automatic rifles, handguns, shotguns.

The Yeerks were going after the two Hork-Bajir. But they were being careful. They were

sending only human-Controllers. They weren't going to risk any more Hork-Bajir being seen by normal people.

Twenty . . . thirty human-Controllers climbed up out of the hole.

"They'll never catch them," Rachel said.

"l know. What is going on here? Are those Hork-Bajir trying to escape somehow?"

Up from the hole, machines began to appear. They seemed to levitate. I almost laughed when I saw them.

"Dirt bikes? The Yeerks have motorcycles?" It seemed bizarre, even funny. The Yeerks have faster-than-light spacecrafts. Now they were using dirt bikes?

"Uh-oh," Rachel said. "The Hork-Bajir are fast, but they aren't thatfast." VrrrrRRRROOOM! VrrrrRRRROOOM! Vrrrr-RRRROOOOM!

Human-Controllers were firing up the motorcycles. I could hear the sputtering roar of the engines. In all, fifteen Yamahas and Kawasakis came up through that hole.

VrrrrRRRROOOM! Vrrrrraaaa-vrrrraaa-vraaaa!

The motorcycles took off. Some had just one rider. Others had two – one to steer and one to shoot.

The Hork-Bajir had a lead of a few hundred yards, but they'd never outrun this small army.

As I watched from the safety of the air above, the motorcycles roared off through the woods in pursuit. They churned up dirt and leaves and shattered the quiet.

And they gained quickly on the two fleeing Hork-Bajir.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Rifles barked. Motorcycles roared! The Hork-Bajir ran, but the bikes leaped and twisted and snaked toward them.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!

Rifles, automatic weapons, and shotguns all ripped apart the tree trunks. The human-Controllers were firing wildly. Firing at anything that moved. From the ground they couldn't see the Hork-Bajir yet. But they could see flashes of them, and they kept on shooting.

"This is going to be all over in about ten seconds^ Rachel said grimly.

"What are we going to do?"

"You want to help Hork-Bajir?" I asked incredulously.

"Have you ever heard the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

The Yeerks want these two Hork-Bajir dead. That's good enough for me."

"Me, too," I said. "We'll have to use thought-speak. Talk directly to them."

"Let's do it," Rachel said.

I would have smiled if I'd had a mouth. Rachel is so brave she is just short of being reckless.

I like that about her.

"Hey. Hork-Bajir down there."

I saw them stagger, as though they were shocked and amazed to be hearing thought-speak. Like that was their major problem.

"You're about ten seconds away from being dead," I said. "Listen to me and you just might get out of this alive."

"First of all, stop tearing up the foliage, geniuses. They're following the trail you make. And second of all ... jump left! Now! Jump!" The two Hork-Bajir leaped to their left, just as a pair of motorcycles roared past, missing them by a few feet.

BOOM!BOOM!

One of the Controllers cut loose with both barrels of a shotgun. I could see the pellets tear a tree trunk to wet sawdust.

"0kay, keep going that direction^ I told the Hork-Bajir.

Thought-speak is kind of like E-mail. You can address it to everyone, or you can address it to a

certain person. It sounds complicated, but you get used to it.

"Do you have a plan?" Rachel asked me so that the Hork-Bajir couldn't overhear.

"l hadn't really thought that far ahead," I admitted.

"Do you know a safe place for them to hide?"

I searched my memory. I had to think like a human, not a bird. The Hork-Bajir couldn't exactly hide in trees.

"Yeah. There's a cave I know about. If we can keep them alive till then." The Hork-Bajir were running flat out. But now I saw a pair of big four-by-four pickup trucks coming from the other direction. The trucks raced along a dirt road, coming up to cut off the two fugitive Hork-Bajir. The Yeerks were pulling out all the stops.

"Man, this is like a really bad chess game where the other player has all the pieces," I muttered.

"You know these woods, Tobias," Rachel said. "That's our edge."

"Yeah. We hope." I turned my head left and right. Yes. I did know these woods. I knew where we were. I knew every tree and every ravine and every tiny stream.

"0kay, you guys, cut to your right now. There's a ditch. But there are a couple of Con-trailers in your way. So you need to pass the big rock pile there, keeping it on your left."

The Hork-Bajir hesitated, missed a couple of steps, and looked around in confusion.

"Did you guys hear me?"

"They heard you," Rachel said tersely. "l think the instructions were too complicated."

"0h. Great. Oooookay. In that case, let's play follow the leader." I took a deep breath and glanced around to make sure I knew exactly where I was. Then I spilled a little air from my wings, tried to keep all the speed I could, and dropped down into the trees. "0kay. Time to play "follow the big birdie"!"

I zoomed just over their heads.

"Yeah, me. The big brown bird with the pretty red tail. Follow me and stay close!"

"Tobias!" Rachel yelled. "0ne of the trucks is moving in ahead of you!" I zoomed left and the twin monsters came racing right after me.

Have you ever flown at full speed right through a densely packed forest?

Probably not. So let me tell you – it's exciting. Exciting like a video game set to the highest speed, where one wrong move means you're a bundle of crushed bird bones and feathers.

"Stay with me, boys, we're gonna be hauling butt," I said. I shot between two trees that were

so close together I felt my wingtips brush rough bark. I cranked a right so sudden and sharp I almost splattered against an oak. And then I flapped hard to gain speed before the two not-very-bright Hork-Bajir ran over me.

High overhead, Rachel called down with updates.

"Tobias! Three dirt bikes on your left, converging^

"Tobias, that truck is coming up behind you. They've spotted the Hork-Bajir!"

"Tobias! Look out! Guy with a gun!"

BOOM!BOOM!

Shotgun pellets ripped the air around me and stripped the leaves from a branch.

My flying muscles were aching, but I was too high on sheer adrenaline to care. It was insane! I was rocketing through the woods, barely missing tree trunks, just skimming above the saplings, blowing through territories belonging to other birds who'd have killed me themselves if I'd slowed down.

I was the rabbit and the two deadly Hork-Bajir were the dogs chasing me through the woods. And I'll say this for the Hork-Bajir – they may not be great at following instructions, but they knew how to stay on a target.

ZOOM! Through the trees!

ZOOM! Barely rising fast enough to clear a rocky outcropping!

ZOOM! Left!

ZOOM! Right!

ZOOM! Straight up with every single muscle screaming.

"Tseeeeeer!" I screamed in a combination of fear and total powered-up, red-tailed excitement.

Man, I was doing some serious flying.

But I was not getting close to my goal. And I was not losing the pursuing dirt bikes and four-by-fours.

"Tobias! Oh, man! There's a helicopter coming up from the south. Maybe two minutes away!"

"We're dead meat if that chopper gets here before we lose these Controllers on the ground. There's a stream. Think these monsters swim?"

"They don't look like they do," Rachel said.

"Hork-Bajir. Can you swim? If you can, signal me by quickly slicing down the next sapling you come to."

Slash! A sapling was suddenly shorter.

"AII right then, stay with me!"

I hung a brutally hard right and scraped my belly across a branch doing it. I fought my way through the grasping twigs and leaves and motored on.

"Thank goodness I ate a good breakfast," I muttered.

"Tobias! You can't go that way. The trucks will cut you off! They have guys in the back of each one with shotguns."

"No choice," I said. "ln about two minutes I'm going to collapse. And right about then that helicopter will get here!"

"0kay. Then we need to get rid of the guys with the guns," Rachel said calmly. Like flying against a guy with a shotgun was no big deal.

"Rachel, have I ever mentioned that you are extremely cool?" I said.

Then, to the Hork-Bajir: "Just keep running this same direction. Don't stop."

I peeled away, and fought my way up and up and up, above the treetops.

There was Rachel, gliding majestically on her huge eagle's wings. I needed altitude so I could turn it into speed.

Ahead, through the gaps in the tree cover, I could see the two pickup trucks. They were still bouncing along, kicking up dust as they hurried to cut off the Hork-Bajir.

In the back of each truck there was a man with a shotgun. These guys were holding on for dear life, so at least we had a chance of not getting killed.