Authors: K. A. Applegate
“How can you be so sure?” Cassie asked. She was
working as we talked, cleaning an empty cage with a brush and a bucket of sudsy water.
“The question is, what do we do about it?” Jake asked. Of course, I knew he’d already made up his mind to do
something.
But Jake doesn’t like to act like the one in charge, even though that’s how I think of him. He lets everyone have their say first.
I said.
the mountains. So I’m guessing it was doing something
in
the mountains.>
Rachel nodded. “That makes sense.”
Marco rolled his eyes. “The mountains? Have you suburb-dwellers ever been to the mountains? We’re talking about a large area. No matter how big this ship is, it could hide in a thousand places in the mountains.”
“Then we’d better start looking right away,” Rachel said brightly.
Jake looked at Cassie. “Cass? What do you think?”
Cassie shrugged. “I halfway feel like we’ve done
enough. You know? We attacked the Yeerk pool. We barely got out alive. We infiltrated Chapman’s house and Rachel was captured. Again, we barely got out alive. I guess the question is, how many risks are we going to take? How many more times are we going to barely escape?”
I could see that Marco was surprised. Suddenly it sounded like Cassie was on his side. “Exactly! Exactly! Just what I’ve been saying. Why is it our job to get killed?”
But then Cassie went and blew it all for him.
“I mean, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t just do
nothing
while people are enslaved by the Yeerks,” Cassie said. “Maybe it’s just me… .” She shrugged. “The thing is, I have these powers.” She shrugged again. “I can’t just do nothing.”
“Look, these aren’t people we know,” Marco argued. “They aren’t my friends. Or my family.” He shot a guilty look at Jake. “And we did everything we could for Tom. So why should I get killed for strangers? We can’t stay lucky forever. Don’t you people understand that? Sooner or later, we’ll slip up. Sooner or later, we’ll be standing around here crying because Jake or Rachel or Cassie or Tobias is gone.”
“You know something?” Rachel exploded. “I’m tired of trying to talk you into this, Marco. You want out? Fine, you’re OUT!”
“Hey, Rachel, you’re not just doing this to help save the human race,” Marco yelled back. “You get off on the danger. That’s why you went with Tobias to free that bird. That wasn’t about saving the world. That was about rescuing some stupid bird.”
Marco realized he’d gone too far. He fell silent. The others all looked guiltily at me. Rachel shot Marco a look of pure anger.
“I’ll be with you,” Rachel said instantly.
Cassie nodded.
Jake made a wry smile. “You say you’re not a leader, but I’ll go with you.”
Marco shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Your choice,” Rachel said.
“That’s not what I meant,” Marco said angrily. “I meant no, not in the morning. Tomorrow’s a school day. If all of us skip school on the same day and later there’s some trouble with the Yeerks, don’t you think Chapman might put two and two together?”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Marco’s right. After school.” He looked at the others and nodded.
It bothered me that Marco was right. But he
was. Marco might be a pain in the butt. But he’s a very smart guy.
It worried me a little. It made me wonder. Was he right about other things as well?
How many risks could we take before we lost? How long till the five of us were four? Or two?
Or none?
J
ake had a peregrine falcon morph we’d used before. Marco and Cassie had morphed ospreys. Rachel had been a bald eagle. So we all should have been able to fly up to the mountains.
But there are millions of bird-watchers in this country. They’re very cool people because they never hurt a bird. They don’t hunt. They just get pleasure out of watching birds fly or nest.
Bird-watchers would think it was very, very weird if they saw a red-tailed hawk, a bald eagle, a falcon, and two ospreys all flying together as if they were on a mission.
And some of those gentle bird-watchers might be not-so-gentle Controllers.
“Bird-watchers!” Marco snorted as he tramped over the carpet of pine needles deeper into the woods. “We could fly, but no. No, we have to walk. Twenty miles, probably!”
Cassie’s farm has a lot of open grass areas, and it borders on a national forest. The national forest goes on forever. It stretches from the edge of town all the way up into the mountains. It’s all pines and oaks and elms and birches. Wilderness, really. Thousands of square acres of it.
“Oh, come on, Marco,” Cassie chided gently. “It’s an opportunity to try out a new morph! “
“Yeah,” Jake chided. “Instead of being home doing math homework, you get to turn into a wolf. Are you going to tell me you’d rather be doing equations?”
“Let’s see,” Marco considered. “Math? Or becoming a wolf and going off to find aliens? Maybe I should ask the school counselor what she thinks. It’s such a common problem. I’m sure she’d have some good advice.”
Since it wasn’t a good idea for us all to travel to the mountains as birds, the others needed a morph that could travel far and fast through woods.
And there were the two injured wolves in Cassie’s barn….
Jake stopped, looked around, and announced, “This is good.” We were a few hundred yards into the woods. I came to rest on a low branch of a huge oak tree. The hawk in me took note of a squirrel a few branches up. He started chittering and shrieking his little squirrel warning:
Danger! Danger!
Hawk! Hawk!
I gave him a look. He twitched, stuck the acorn he was holding into his cheek, and took off at full speed.
“What I don’t get is why I have to be a girl wolf,” Marco grumbled.
“We had one male and one female,” Cassie explained for the tenth time. “If two of us morphed into the male, we’d have two males. Two male wolves might decide they had to fight for dominance.”
“I could control it,” Marco said.
“Marco, you and Jake
already
fight for dominance, and you’re just ordinary guys,” Rachel pointed out.
“She’s right,” Cassie said sadly. “I’m afraid your primitive male behavior might slow us down.”
“Hey, when I morphed into a gorilla, I handled that gorilla brain okay, didn’t I?” Marco demanded.
“Sure, Marco,” Rachel said. She batted her eyes.
“But that was different. You and the gorilla were already so much alike.”
Cassie and Rachel gave each other discreet high fives.
“Hugely funny,” Marco said.
“We flipped a coin, fair and square,” Jake said. “I got to be the male. You’re one of the females. Get over it.”
“Let me see that coin again,” Marco said suspiciously.
Jake smiled. “Let’s just do this. Cassie, you want to go first, to see what it’s like?”
We had learned from hard experience that morphing can be extremely disturbing. Jake had morphed into a lizard and been almost overpowered by the animal’s fearful brain. The same had happened to Rachel when she’d morphed a shrew. She still had nightmares about the shrew experience— its fear and, worse, its hunger for bugs and rotting flesh.
On the other hand, Jake had morphed into a flea, and according to him it was kind of a big nothing. Like being trapped inside a very old, very bad video game where you could barely see anything. The flea brain had been too simple to make trouble.
“Okay. I’ll let you know.” Cassie closed her eyes and concentrated. Then she opened them again.
“Wait. Let me get down to my morph suit first. I don’t want to get tangled up in my clothes.”
She removed everything but a leotard, kicked off her shoes, and stood barefoot on the pine needles.
The first change was her hair. It went from very short black to shaggy silver in just a few seconds. It traveled down from her head, down her neck, over her shoulders, around her neck. Long, shaggy fur.
Then her nose bulged out.
I shuddered. You never really get used to seeing people morph. It is something straight out of a nightmare. Even though Cassie seems to have some kind of talent for it. She’s never quite as gross as the others. I guess it’s because she’s so close to so many animals. Maybe she just has a special feel for them.
Still, as the wolf snout began to push out from her face, it was not a pleasant sight.
Her ears grew furry and pointed. Then they slid straight up the side of her head till they almost touched on top.
Her eyes went from brown-black to golden brown.
All over her body, the fur replaced the bright pinks and greens of her leotard. A tail suddenly shot out from behind. I could hear the grinding of her bones as they rearranged. Her upper arms shortened. Her lower arms grew longer. Fingers shriveled and disappeared, leaving behind only stubby black nails.
There was a sickening crunch as her knees changed direction. Her legs shrank and thinned and grew fur.
Suddenly she fell forward, no longer able to stand erect.
It had taken about two minutes.
Cassie was now a wolf.
“How is it?” Jake asked.
Cassie jerked suddenly at the sound of his voice and spun around to face him. She bared her teeth and snarled a warning that would have made a Taxxon back up.
She had very impressive teeth.
“Let’s all stand really still,” Jake said.
“Good idea,” Marco agreed. “Really, really still. Because those are really, really big teeth.”
Everyone stood motionless. They had all been through similar experiences. We knew what was happening. Inside the wolf’s head, Cassie was fighting to gain control of the wolf’s wild instincts.
“Are you sure?” Rachel asked warily.
“Then I’m extra glad I put on deodorant,” Marco joked.
Marco laughed at the guilty look on Rachel’s face. “Oooh, busted by Cassie the wonder-nose.”
“Let’s get busy,” Jake said. “The two-hour clock is now running. Tick-tock.”
One by one they each stole a glance at me. I’m the handy reminder of what happens if you stay in a morph for too long.
I
was jealous.
I mean, okay, if you ever have to be stuck as an animal, I think being a hawk is the coolest choice of all.
But still, I was jealous. My friends were really enjoying being wolves. I guess it was a strange experience for them.
I flew above the forest, skimming the treetops, while down below they ran. They moved so fast it wasn’t always easy for me to keep up. Not that their actual speed was so great. It’s just that they never stopped. Never rested. They just moved at a constant ten miles an hour or so. Over fallen logs. Between
trees. Under bushes. Nothing even slowed them down.
Well, actually, that’s not completely true. Two things slowed them down a little.
One was Jake. He was the dominant male. In wolf packs that’s called an “alpha.” So he had a special wolf job to perform.
he admitted.
he admitted.
The other thing that slowed them down was when they stopped once and started to howl. It was Jake who started it. It caught everyone by surprise. Including Jake himself.
“OWWW-OOOOOOO-yow-yow-OOOOOO.”
was doing it, too.
“Yow-yow-OOWWOOOOO!”
Cassie and Rachel weren’t far behind.
“OOOOO-yowww-OWW-OOOOOOO!”
I heard the yowling, of course, so I took a quick turn around a tree and headed back to them.
Jake admitted sheepishly.
Cassie suggested. Which sounded perfectly reasonable. Until you saw that “Cassie” had her head tilted back and her snout pointed at the sky and was yodeling like an idiot.
I flapped my wings and broke out from under the trees. The city and the suburbs were far behind me now. We had traveled pretty far in an hour’s time. It was about the same time of day as my second sighting of the invisible ship. The time when it had been heading toward the mountains.
I swooped back down into the trees.