Текст книги "Animorphs - 13 - The Change"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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No answer. I was too far away from them.

The Andalite body emerged fully from the human form it had morphed.

"Well, well, Ket Halpak," Visser Three said.

"That is your name, isn't it? Your original Hork-Bajir name? You've run us a nice chase, but it's time to come home now."

Visser Three seldom bothered to whisper his thought-speak. I guess when you're that powerful it never occurs to you to worry that someone might overhear.

Ket Halpak, he had called the Hork-Bajir. So it was not Jara Hamee. This was his kalashi. His wife.

They had her surrounded. Two humans carrying shotguns and Visser Three, armed with all the lightning speed of an Andalite. Not to mention morphs from all the dark corners of the galaxy.

There was no way to save the Hork-Bajir female. I'd have to take Visser Three out, and that wasn't going to happen. See, Andalites – even false Andalites – are impossible to sneak up on.

Those extra stalk eyes, turning this way and that, always looking in every direction, made it impossible.

Unless . . .

Unless there was a distraction. I knew the Swainson's hawk tended to roost in one particular elm tree. The light was too dim to see him. He might not even be there. But if he was . . .

I flapped hard to gain altitude. Not too much, there wasn't time. Just enough. Forty feet. Fifty

feet. Sixty feet. Then ... I folded my wings and plummeted toward the ground.

"Tseeeeeeeeer!" I screamed in the voice of a red-tail.

"Tseeeeeeeeer!" I called again, making sure the Swainson's hawk would hear me.

And down I came, wings back and tail narrowed for maximum speed. I aimed straight for Visser Three.

If the Swainson's hawk wasn't home, I was toast.

Then, a rustling sound from the elm! From the corner of my eye I saw wings flapping. The Swainson's was coming out to defend his territory against the pushy red-tail.

I've never been so relieved to see a fellow hawk.

"That bird! It's probably one of them!" Visser Three shouted, pointing at the Swainson's.

The two human-Controllers spun and raised their shotguns to their shoulders. And Visser Three, bless his evil heart, turned his stalk eyes toward what he thought was a threat.

"l'm a friend of Jara Hamee," I said to the Hork-Bajir. "Get ready!" Talons forward! Beak thrust out! A sudden flaring of wings to adjust the angle and . . .

Strike!

My talons raked Visser Three's exposed stalk eyes from behind.

"ARRRRRHHHH!" Visser Three bellowed in pain.

"Now, RUN!" I told the Hork-Bajir.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! The shotguns fired.

And we were out of there! Out! Of! There!

The Hork-Bajir bolted. I flapped like my life depended on it. It did.

The Swainson's hawk turned so hard, so fast, I thought he'd been hit.

But then he was hauling his tail feathers outta there, too.

"Andalite filth!" I heard Visser Three scream in my head.

But by then I was out over the trees and the Hork-Bajir was running flat-out below me, and I was just screaming like an idiot from the sheer insane rush of it all.

"Yesss! Yesss! Bird-boy shoots, he scores! Yah-HAH!"

lara Hamee and Ket Halpak were reunited in the shelter of the cave.

We were all exhausted and scared and confused. But we also had that slightly lunatic rush that comes from cheating death.

Marco and Cassie were both fretting about being late getting home. And everyone was getting close to the two-hour morphing limit. But despite all that, it was kind of sweet seeing the two Hork-Bajir together.

They didn't exactly hug. I guess hugging doesn't work all that well when you have blades all over. Ket Halpak did touch the healing wound Jara Hamee had made in his own head.

"Look, we have to get out of here," Rachel

said. She was still in her Hork-Bajir form. "l'll be grounded for the weekend if I don't get home. And I have the feeling we're going to be busy this weekend, so I can't get grounded."

"Your mom wouldn't ground a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student, would she?" I asked.

There was a kind of embarrassed silence. I wasn't supposed to know about Rachel's award.

"lt's not that big a deal," Rachel said. She looked down at the ground.

"What do we do about these guys?" Jake asked. He was still in tiger morph. There were scratches and cuts on his sinuous orange-and-black fur. While I was off rescuing Ket Halpak, there had been a skirmish between the rest of my friends and some Controllers.

No one had been hurt. But once again, I wasn't there when the real fighting started.

"You guys go on home," I told the others. "l'll keep watch over our Hork-Bajir friends here."

"You can't keep watch all night," Rachel protested.

"Hey, I have nothing else to do. I'll take a perch in the tree by the cave entrance. Not a problems

"l will help keep watch, too," Ax chimed in.

"let's, um, go outside and talk about this,"

Jake said. To the Hork-Bajir he said, "Jara and Ket? You have to stay in this cave till we come and get you. Tomorrow some time."

"What will you do with Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee?" Jara asked.

"We really don't know yet," Jake answered honestly.

"We will wait. Here."

"We fellana ... we thank you," Ket said.

Outside it had definitely turned dark now. No stars in the sky yet, but it was just a matter of minutes. Everyone demorphed while Ax and I kept a nervous watch.

"Okay, so what do we do about this?" Jake asked, once everyone but me was normal again.

I kept pace with the others by flitting from branch to branch. I'd let them walk a little way ahead, then fly a few yards ahead of them and wait till they caught up.

"We have two real live aliens," Rachel said. "We could take them to the media. How can you deny there is a Yeerk conspiracy when you see those two?"

"There is already a real, live alien among you," Ax pointed out. "Me.

But I have learned about human society. Humans invent all sorts of things that are not true. I have seen photographs of aliens in human newspapers. Do most people believe them?"

"Those aren't real newspapers," Marco said. "No one with half a brain believes those supermarket tabloids."

"And how do we know which newspapers and which TV networks are already infiltrated by the Yeerks?" Cassie said. "We could end up handing the Hork-Bajir right back to the Yeerks."

"Well, what exactly are we supposed to do with Romeo and Juliet back there?" Marco asked sarcastically. "Rent them an apartment? Buy them a house? Get them jobs? I mean, they are just slightly obvious. You know?

People are probably going to notice them if they start shopping at the mall."

We all laughed. But it was a brief laugh. The truth is, we didn't know what to do.

"Those two may be the only free Hork-Bajir in all the galaxy," Ax said.

"The only two free Hork-Bajir in existences

"Like members of an endangered species," Cassie said thoughtfully. "The last two free Hork-Bajir. Maybe the last hope of their kind."

"Oh, man," Marco groaned. "Cassie, don't start in with the ecology stuff, okay? Those are not a pair of spotted owls or humpback whales back there."

"l must stop here," Ax said. "We are close to the edge of the forest." Everyone stopped. Even though they all were

real anxious to get home to be yelled at by their various parents, no one left.

"What Cassie said may be true," Jake pointed out. "These two are an endangered species. What do you do with an endangered species?"

Cassie shrugged. "You find them a safe, protected environment. And then you hope they have lots of little Hork-Bajir, and somehow the species survives."

"Dm, hello. This is Earth," Marcosaid. "There is no safe place for an alien that looks like a mix of gargoyle and a lawn mower."

"Yes, there is," I said.

Four human heads and one Andalite set of eyes all turned to stare up at me.

"Where?" Rachel asked.

"l know a place. Way up in the mountains. A valley. There are caves and fresh water streams. It's hidden."

The picture of the place was clear in my mind. I could see it perfectly.

I saw a beautiful waterfall. I saw tall trees that practically blotted out the sky in some areas. And a wide meadow filled with wildflowers. In my mind I could even imagine the place being home to Hork-Bajir.

"Maybe we could take them there," I suggested.

Jake shrugged. "We don't have any better plan. Right?"

"Right now I need to think about what story I'm going to tell my dad when I get home," Marco said. "Tomorrow we can worry about taking Adam and Eve Hork-Bajir off to Tobias's Garden of Eden."

Not a bad description, I thought. That was a little what the valley was like. I could see the place as clearly in my mind as any place I had ever been.

There was just one little problem. I'd never been there. I'd never actually seen it.

And I had no idea where the lovely pictures in my mind had come from.

J. usually spent the night in my favorite nighttime perch. It's a high branch, up in the very middle of an incredibly old oak. I like the rough oak bark because it's easy to hold onto. I can sink my talons deep and drift off to my dreams.

My regular perch is deep within the tree because it keeps me out of sight of the night predators. The raccoons and foxes and wolves all work at night. They don't worry me too much. Wolves and foxes don't climb trees very well.

I do keep an eye out for raccoons because they can climb when they want to. And they are nasty, dangerous enemies. But it's a rare raccoon that can climb my tree without my hearing him.

I worry more about owls. Not that they usually prey on something as large and tough as a red-tailed hawk. Mostly they eat mice, same as I do. But they still scare me because they have powers I don't have.

I'm used to having this edge over all the other creatures. In the daylight I hear better than most animals, and I see better than any of them. My vision is many times better than human vision. If I were at home plate and you were holding a book open way out in right field, I'd be able to read it. If you were walking by on the other side of the street, I'd be able to see a flea crawling around in your hair. But that's all in daylight. At night I see a little better than a human ...

I mean, better than a normal human. But not much better.

That's why the owls scare me. They see through darkness like I see through daylight. To an owl I'm as visible as if I were outlined in bright red flashing neon. And an owl doesn't make any noise as it flies in for the kill. No noise. None.

It makes me nervous. But what can you do? I guess everyone has problems, right?

But at night as I listen for the sounds of raccoons scrabbling and open my eyes to watch the ghostly owls do their killing work, I wish I had a house.

If you asked me what I think of being a red-

tailed hawk, I'd give you two different answers, depending on the time of day. When the sun is up, and the thermals are piling up the tall clouds, and I'm riding the high breezes a million miles above the humans who crawl along below me ... well, then I'd say it's great.

But at night, when I cower on my branch and peer half-blind through the leaves at a cold moon and can only listen to the sounds of the night predators doing their work, well, that's different.

This particular night was different for a couple of reasons. I was not on my regular perch. I was in a scruffy pine tree that was located near the cave. I was standing guard over the Hork-Bajir, listening for any threats to them. I was out of my normal territory, in an unfamiliar tree. And I was jumpy.

As I sat there with my talons dug into bark, I heard the high-pitched squeal of a mouse.

I drifted back toward sleep. I tried to remember what it had been like to sleep in a bed at night. But I couldn't really remember. I could only imagine what it was like for the others.

Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel, all asleep in their beds. All with covers pulled up and pillows fluffed. Alarm clocks glowing on their night-stands.

I heard a sound. My eyes opened. I peered down through the branches and saw a shape like

a deformed deer, ghostly pale in the filtered moonlight.

"Hi, Ax-man," I said.

"Hello, Tobias. You heard me? I was trying to be silent."

"You're very quiet. For a big old four-legged, two-handed, four-eyed, scorpion-tailed alien."

Ax laughed. "0ne of these nights I may show you."

"Hah. Right. And eagles may fly out of my butt."

"ls that possible?" Ax asked, sounding alarmed.

"No. See, that's why it's funny."

"l understand^ Ax said, clearly not understanding at all.

Nights in the forest have gotten a bit better since Ax joined our little group. Having him around is not exactly like being in a nice, snug bed.

But it's good to have someone to talk to. The other forest animals don't have much to say.

"0ur two Hork-Bajir are pretty quiet in there," I told Ax. "They were talking earlier. Mostly in their own language. But even then they used some English words. Why is that?"

"The Hork-Bajir were never a very intellectual species," Ax said, with a hint of snobbery. "Their own language was primitive. It only had about five hundred words. That's what we learned in

school, anyway. I suppose it's true. I guess for duty here on Earth, the Yeerks thought they should be able to speak a few words of a human languages

"l didn't mean to eavesdrop on them," I said. "But it was easy for me to hear. They kept using some Hork-Bajir word. It sounded like kawatnoj.

Something like that, anyway."

"l don't know the word," Ax admitted. "l don't speak Hork-Bajir. I'll ask them tomorrow what it means."

"Maybe you shouldn't. They don't seem to like you Andalites."

"We tried to save them from the Yeerks," Ax said with sudden anger. "We failed, yes. But we did try. Why should they hate us?"

"l don't know, Ax-man. Maybe they've had Yeerks in their heads for so long they've just absorbed the Yeerk hatred of Andalites."

"Well. The Yeerks should hate us. We An-dalites will defeat them in the end! And of course, you humans will help, too."

I laughed silently. I like Ax, but he is a bit arrogant about his own species.

"l guess I'll go patrol around again," Ax said. "l haven't seen or heard anything unusual, though. Do you really think we can lead these Hork-Bajir safely to this mountain valley you mentioned earlier?"

I didn't answer. Mentioning the valley just reminded me. "Ax? Have you ever just had information pop into your head and not know where it came from?"

"No. I don't think so. Maybe something I forgot and then remembered later."

"No, this is like stuff I couldn't possibly know. It's like . . . " I froze.

Taxxons!

They were crawling through the woods. I could see them in my mind – huge centipedes, each as big around as a redwood tree. They moved on dozens of rows of needle-sharp legs. They held the upper third of their bodies erect, keeping their fragile rows of upper legs clear of the ground.

I could see them in my mind! I could see the gasping round mouths ringed with teeth. I could seethe jelly-glob eyes.

"Tobias?" Ax asked, sounding concerned.

"Taxxons," I said. "There are definitely Taxxons coming!"

"Where?" Ax asked in alarm. His tail cocked back, ready for a fight.

"l . . . they're coming. !..."! looked around me at the dark woods. No sign of anything strange. Let alone Taxxons. But I was dead sure they were coming, just the same.

"Ax? You know how I was just talking about

knowing things I couldn't possibly know? It just happened again. Just now. There are like a dozen Taxxons coming this way. Somehow they can smell the Hork-Bajir. Like bloodhounds."

All four of Ax's eyes looked up at me. He looked grim. "Taxxon trackers can sense warm flesh from miles away, as long as they have a sample.

They're a special breed of Taxxon. How did you know that? How did you know Taxxon trackers hunt by smell?"

"l don't know, Ax. But I am sure going to find out," I said angrily.

"Someone or something is using me, and I don't like it very much." Ax ignored my outburst. "lf the Yeerks have sent Taxxons, they'll back them up with Hork-Bajir or humans. No amount of Taxxons could ever destroy a pair of Hork-Bajir. Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak could slice up Taxxons all day."

"Can we throw the Taxxons off the scent?" I asked.

"No. If they have smelled these Hork-Bajir, nothing will throw them off."

"Then we have to move the Hork-Bajir. Now. Taxxons can't be all that fast. But we need to move out. Ax? I can get the Hork-Bajir started. You have to get to Jake quickly. Tell him what's happening."

"Yes, Tobias. I'll do that. But how will we find you if you're busy hiding from the Yeerks?"

"Take to the air. You all have bird of raptor morphs – eagles, ospreys, falcons. Use them. There's nothing raptor eyes can't find. I'll be heading toward the mountains."

Heading toward the mountains with a pair of Hork-Bajir, while someone or something used me like a sock puppet.

Well, that was going to change. I was the predator. I was the hunter. No one was going to use me.

" Jara Hamee, we have to go. Right now," I told the Hork-Bajir as Ax ran off into the night.

Jara stuck his bladed snakelike head out through the bushes. "What has happened?"

"Taxxons are tracking you."

I swear he went pale. His narrow eyes widened in fear. "Taxxon," he said, as if the very word made him want to spit.

But he reacted very quickly after that. He went back into the cave and came back out with Ket. I still couldn't really tell one of them from the other. At least not in the dark.

"Dark," Ket said, looking around.

"Yeah, I know. But I guess that won't stop the Taxxons. So let's get going." But how exactly we were supposed to move through the pitch-black forest, I had no idea. I couldn't see. And to my disappointment, the Hork-Bajir were not all that good at seeing in the dark, either.

It was tough going. I couldn't exactly drag my feathers through thorn bushes. The Hork-Bajir couldn't fly. And it was totally dark. The kind of dark you only get when you are a long way from the lights of homes and cars and streetlamps. It was so dark you couldn't see a tree till you ran into it. It was like being blind.

I rode on Jara Hamee's horns, just like I had with Rachel. Only we were moving more slowly and trying not to leave tracks.

"Where?" Jara Hamee asked. "Go where?"

"l don't really know," I grumbled. "l guess the little voice in my head will tell me."

The Hork-Bajir grunted, like that made perfect sense to him. "My head voice told me to run."

"When? What voice?"

I couldn't see his face, so I couldn't see his expression. Not that I would have known what a Hork-Bajir expression meant, anyway. "Ket Hal-pak and Jara Hamee at Yeerk pool. Yeerk drained out. Yeerk in pool.

Head voice say, 'Run. Go that way!'"

I sighed and narrowly avoided getting slapped

in the face by a branch. Talking to Hork-Bajir is frustrating.

"You're saying the idea just popped into your head to run away from the Yeerk pool?" I asked.

"Head say, 'Run, Jara Hamee. Take Ket Hal-pak. Run and be free. Run from Yeerks.' I ask how? How will Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak be free? Head say, 'I will send a guide.'"

"What?"

"Head say, 'Run, Jara Hamee -'"

"No, that last part. About a guide."

"Head voice say, 'I will send a guide.'"

"Who? Me?"

The Hork-Bajir didn't answer. I was quickly coming to realize that Hork-Bajir don't really get a lot of things. Speech seems unnatural to them. And it's true, they are not the geniuses of the universe. Which was fine.

But I was getting more and more annoyed by the whole thing. I had been moved around, put in one place or another. Things I couldn't possibly know had popped into my head. I was being used. And I really didn't like the idea of that.

I deeply didn't like the idea of that.

"0kay, that does it. Stop," I told the two Hork-Bajir.

They stopped. The two big monsters just stood there in the dark between trees and waited.

"We go now?"

"No."

"Taxxons coming."

"Yep," I said. "l know."

"We go now?"

"Nope. Not until I get some answers," I said defiantly. "This little parade stops right here until I get some -"

By the time I'd said "answers" I was not in the forest anymore. I was not anywhere. Not anywhere I could understand, at least.

I felt myself floating. Hanging in the air, only there wasn't any air. I wasn't flying, just floating.

There was light, a beautiful blue-green sort of light. It didn't come from any one place, though. It just seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

One thing was for sure – I was not in the forest anymore.

HELLO, TOBIAS. WE MEET AGAIN.

The voice was huge, but not harsh. It filled my brain and seemed to resonate throughout my body. My feathers quivered. My fingers tingled.

Fingers?

And only then did I begin to realize that I was changed.

I looked down at my body. And somehow, in a way I can't explain, I seemed to be seeing through my body, too. It was as if I could see

everything, from every angle at once. Like I was seeing myself through a million different eyes.

I was no longer a red-tailed hawk. But I was not human, either. At least not the way I had once been human.

I had arms that were wings. I had legs that ended in talons. I had a beak, but it was a mouth, too.

I know this all sounds crazy. I know it's impossible to really imagine it very well. But somehow I was both a human and a bird and some third thing that was in between the two.

We had seen many incredible things since we'd first found a dying Andalite prince in an abandoned construction site. I've seen Yeerks and all their tools – the Taxxons, the Gedds, the Hork-Bajir. I've seen Andalites and met the Chee, the androids in human form. I've traveled through time and to the Yeerk pool and into orbit in spaceships.

But there was only one species that could do this. Only one species that could own that huge head-filling voice.

"The Ellimist," I said in an actual voice that came from my own mouth.

Then, from the vague turquoise fog around me, I saw it flying toward me.

It was a bird of prey. A raptor. Some undefinable shape, part falcon, part eagle, part hawk. It had a snow-white belly and reddish-brown back and a tail that spread to show a dusky rainbow of colors.

The bird flew to me, then stopped and floated in midair.

YES, TOBIAS. ELLIMIST. OR AT LEAST AN ELLIMIST.

It laughed and the whole turquoise universe laughed along.

"So you're the puppet master," I said. "I should have known. But this isn't how you looked last time we saw you."

The bird shape smiled. Don't ask me how it smiled with a beak. It just did. I chose a shape

YOU WOULD IDENTIFY WITH.

"Baloney. You know better than that. You know I'm human."

ARE YOU? YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE A HUMAN TO ME.

I felt a queasiness in my stomach. I looked at the body I had. A body that was equal parts boy and bird.

"What do you want from me? Why are you making me do things I don't want to do?"

WHAT HAVE I MADE YOU DO, TOBIAS?

"You put me in places I don't want to be. You've dragged me into this stupid mess with these two Hork-Bajir."

The Ellimist dissolved from bird to human. But not entirely human. He was a human with wings. He looked like I did at that moment. And

when he spoke again, it was with a simple, human voice.

"Once I put you and your friends in a position to give your own former species a chance. I looked deep into the future, and found a way to help you – without using my power directly. And now, you are in a position to help the Hork-Bajir. Do they not deserve the same chance as humans?"

"You're trying to save the Hork-Bajir race from the Yeerks?"

The Ellimist smiled again and shook his head. "We do not interfere. We do not use our power for one species against another."

"Bull," I said.

The Ellimist let that go with just a faint smile. "I will not force you, Tobias. And I will not guarantee you will even succeed. There is every chance you will die and the two Hork-Bajir will die, and all will have been a waste."

"Thanks. That really cheers me up," I said. "Why me? Why stick me with this job? What am I, some kind of hero?"

The Ellimist didn't laugh. "Tobias, you are a beginning. You are a point on which an entire time line may turn."

I guess that should have made me feel important. But it didn't. I wasn't interested in being flattered.

"You want my help?" I asked the Ellimist. "Fine. Then I want yours.

You're just about all-powerful, according to Ax. You can make entire galaxies disappear if you want. I don't know why you don't just make things happen the way you want them to. But, hey, whatever." I looked him right in the eyes. Right into eyes that were a disturbing mirror image of my own.

"You want me to lead these Hork-Bajir to this place you've put in my head? Fine. But I want to get paid for my services."

"And what do you want, Tobias?"

"You know what I want," I said, almost choking on the words. "You know."

"Yes. But do you know what you want, Tobias?" the Ellimist asked. "And if you get it, will you still know?"

And suddenly, without any sensation of movement, I was back in the dark of the forest.

It was a long night. I can tell you that for sure. A very long night.

Even the Hork-Bajir were worn out by the time the first faint gray of predawn started to appear.

The whole time I was waiting to see a bunch of Taxxons suddenly show up, followed by heavily armed Hork-Bajir. Or else Visser Three in one of his awful morphs. Every shadow looked like it could be an enemy.

And I had other enemies in the forest to worry about. I was extremely aware of the fact that any number of other birds and various hungry mammals were noticing me and thinking maybe I'd make a nice snack.

But I was riding atop a Hork-Bajir. And none

of the forest predators could quite figure out how to deal with that.

At one point a pair of wolves, probably scouting for their pack, stood a few dozen yards away and watched us pass.

Wolves are very smart animals. They didn't know what the Hork-Bajir were. But they knew for sure they didn't want to mess with them.

Deer scampered away from us. Owls dismissed us. We were obviously not mice, and that's all the owls cared about. Foxes slunk away. Raccoons froze. Only the forest's most fearless creature ignored us and went on about its business.

In fact, I had to stop Ket Halpak from stepping on one.

"Stop! Stop! Nobody move!" I yelled, having seen the warning stripes of this most fearsome animal.

"Yeerks?" Jara Hamee responded.

"Taxxons?" Ket Halpak asked fearfully.

"No. Worse. A skunk. Just let it go on its way. Nobody move a muscle till it's gone."

"Hah! Small animal! Not kill Jara Hamee!"

"No, it won't kill you. It'll just make you wish you were dead."

I didn't know how much ground we had covered by the time we finally took a rest. I can't judge distances on the ground very well anymore. All I knew was that the sky was a shade lighter than absolute black. And the Hork-Bajir had

started to stumble a lot. They were beat. And I was starving.

"Do you need something to eat?" I asked the two Hork-Bajir.

"We eat," Jara Hamee agreed. Without any delay, he walked over to a tree. A pine of some sort. He drew back and slashed at the tree trunk with his elbow blade.

SCCCRRAAACK!

He sliced it straight up, opening about a three-foot gash in the bark.

With his wrist blade, he began to slice the bark away in chunks ranging from a few inches long to almost a foot square.

He tossed slabs of the stripped bark to his mate and took some for himself.

"That's what you eat?"

"Yes."

"ls that how you eat back on your own world?"

He chewed the bark and seemed to be looking far off. "When Jara Hamee small, Jara Hamee eat from the Kanver. Eat from the Lewhak. Eat from the tali Fit Fit."

"Are those all trees? I mean, are they like these trees?"

"Better," Ket Halpak said.

"Better," Jara Hamee agreed.

I got the feeling Jara thought he might have

insulted me by dissing Earth trees. "Earth tree good," he added.

"Earth tree good," Ket Halpak agreed.

It made me smile inside. There were times when my life was just so utterly insane I could only laugh. A pair of goblins from some far-distant planet were worried they'd hurt my feelings because they didn't like pine bark.

Then, like a light going off in my head, I realized something. "Jara, Ket? Is that why Hork-Bajir have blades? To strip the bark from trees?" Ket Halpak stood up. I was sitting on a rotting log, so she towered above me like a skyscraper. She pointed to her elbow blade. "For straight cut." Indicating her wrist blade, she said, "For taking off."

Sticking out her knee, she explained, "For down by ground."

"For the bottom of trees," I said. "Each of the blades has a special use. Each one is for harvesting tree bark."

"Yes."

She sat back down and took another chunk of bark.

"They aren't weapons? You don't use them to defend yourselves from enemies? To kill prey?"

Jara Hamee looked right at me. "Hork-Bajir have no enemy. No prey.

Hork-Bajir not kill.

Yeerk kill. Yeerk kill Andaiite. Andalite kill Yeerk. Hork-Bajirdie."

"You're caught in the middle. But that's why the Yeerks took over your race – the blades. They made you deadly, once the Yeerk evil was in your head. You're the ultimate soldiers. All because you're adapted to eating tree bark."

The Hork-Bajir had nothing else to say. They went back to eating.

"Look, I have to go for a while. I ... um, I have to go get food, too." Ket Halpak held out a chunk of bark. "Our food yours."

"Thanks. But I need a different food."

I didn't tell them what I ate or how I got it.

You know, it's strange. I never feel guilty about being a predator when I'm with humans. After all, good old Homo sapiens is the king of all predators.

But these deadly looking Hork-Bajir were not predators at all. Despite their looks, they were no more dangerous than a deer with a large rack of antlers.

They were just victims. Just a species that had the bad luck to look fearsome. And now they were caught up in a war between Yeerks and the rest of the free species of the galaxy.

I thought of all the battles we'd had with

Hork-Bajir. They had come close to killing me more than once. I had hated and feared them. Now I just felt sorry for them.

And I felt sorrier still, because I knew that my friends and I would fight against Hork-Bajir again in the future.

"l'll be back in half an hour or so," I said as I took wing. "Don't worry. I won't leave you."