Authors: K. A. Applegate
The Encounter (2 page)
But there has been a price to pay. You see, there is a limit on the power to morph. You must never remain in a morph for more than two hours. If you do, you are trapped.
Forever.
And that is the curse of the Andalite’s gift.
That is why, when Rachel returned to her human body, I didn’t.
It would take Rachel a while to get home on the bus. I traveled a little faster. So I had time to waste.
The sun was setting, and in my mind I could still picture the freed hawk heading into the sun.
I hoped she had found a nice patch of forest to spend the night. That’s what a redtail likes: a nice tree
branch with a clear view of a meadow full of little mice and rats and shrews and voles as they scurry below. That’s how we … they … hunt.
I headed toward the tall buildings of downtown. I caught a beautiful thermal that billowed up the face of some skyscrapers. A thermal is like a big bubble of warm air. It rises beneath your wings and makes it effortless to just go soaring up and up.
I caught the thermal and went shooting up the side of the skyscraper like I was riding an elevator.
A lot of the offices were empty, since it was Saturday. But around the sixtieth floor I saw an old man looking out the window. Maybe he was some big, important businessman, I don’t know.
But when he saw me he smiled. He watched me soar up and away. And I knew he was jealous.
I was half a mile up when I finally turned away from the sun and headed toward Rachel’s house.
The sun was going down. The moon just peeked over the rim of the world.
Then, I felt … I don’t know how to describe it. It was in the air above me. Huge. Vast! Bigger than any jet.
I looked up. But there was nothing there.
And yet, I felt it in my heart. I knew it was up there. Coming toward me, but perhaps a mile higher than me.
I focused all the power of my hawk’s eyes on the sky.
A ripple!
That’s what it was. A ripple. Like the ripple you make throwing a stone into a calm pond. The faint twilight stars flickered as it passed by. The sun’s light bent. And for just a split second I was sure I could see … something.
But no. No. It was gone.
If it had ever really been there.
I tried to follow the hole in the sky, but it was moving too fast. I tried to see which way it was going. And where it had come from. It seemed to be moving away from the mountains and picking up speed.
But I lost it over the suburbs as it accelerated away.
I flew on to Rachel’s house. I watched as she got off the bus far below me. The others—Jake, Marco, and Cassie—were all up in her room, waiting for us. I was not surprised.
She could only wave up at me. You can “hear” thought-speak when you’re human, but you can’t make thought-speech.
I told Rachel.
She gave me a little wink.
Rachel went in through the front door. I flew in an
open window. There we were, all together, the five of us: the Animorphs.
The other three must have seen the commercial and were not at all happy.
Marco started the conversation.
“Are you INSANE?!!” he said.
M
arco yelled for a while. Jake made us promise never to do something that stupid again. And Cassie, being Cassie, got everyone to make up and be friends again.
“We aren’t supposed to be rescuing animals,” Marco said. “We’re
supposed
to be rescuing the entire human race from being enslaved by the Yeerks.”
I pointed out.
He scowled at me. But there’s no point in scowling at me. With my face, I can out-scowl anyone.
“You’re right,” Marco said. “But since all of you guys think you have to save the world, and since
you’re all my friends, more or less, I figure someone has to keep you from being
total
idiots.”
Marco is the most reluctant of the Animorphs. Although actually he’s the one who came up with the word “Animorph.” And he’s been in with us from the start. Marco just thinks we should look out for ourselves and our own families.
Marco and I will probably never be very close. He’s a typical smart-aleck kind of guy. Always confident. Always has some funny or sarcastic thing to say. He’s short, or at least he’s not very tall. I guess girls think he’s cute because he has this long brown hair and dark eyes.
Jake grinned at Marco. “So you’re the one who has to rescue all of us from being idiots?”
“Boy, if Marco’s the sensible one, we’re all in serious trouble,” Rachel said.
Everyone laughed.
Jake gave Marco an affectionate punch in the shoulder. “Just the same, it’s nice of you to want to save us all. It’s almost
sweet.”
Marco made a face and grabbed one of Rachel’s pillows to throw at Jake.
Marco and Jake are absolute opposites, although they’ve been buds forever. Jake is big. Not football-player big, but solid. Jake is one of those people who are natural leaders. If you were ever trapped
in a burning building, you would turn to Jake and ask, “What do we do?” And he would have an answer, too.
You can tell he and Rachel are cousins. They’re both kind of determined people.
“I have to get going,” Cassie said. “I have horses to feed and birdcages to clean.”
“Don’t say the word ‘cage’ around Tobias,” Marco said. “He’ll do some guerrilla-commando-ninja-SWAT-team-hawk-from-hell attack on the Center. And he’ll talk Rachel into stomping your house flat.”
Everyone laughed, because we all knew why Cassie had birdcages. Her father and mother are both veterinarians. Her mom works for The Gardens, which is this huge zoo and amusement park.
Her dad runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in the barn on their family farm. The Clinic takes in wild animals that are sick or hurt and cares for them.
The cages Cassie had to get home to clean were filled with sparrows with broken wings and eagles who’d been shot and seagulls who’d gotten tangled in trash.
Cassie is our expert on animals. She also gets us access to animals to morph. She’s a gentle person. She can also morph better than any of us.
Everyone stood up and started to go.
“You coming, Tobias?” Jake asked me.
“Cool,” he said. “I’ll put some food up in the attic for you in case you get home late. I don’t want anything getting at it, though. Can you open one of those Rubbermaid things?”
I saw the way the others kind of looked away when Jake mentioned the attic. They feel sorry for me.
I said.
Tom is Jake’s big brother. Tom is one of
them.
Everyone said good night. I saw Cassie and Jake touch their hands together in a way that could almost have been accidental. Then they were all gone. All but me and Rachel.
“I don’t like thinking of you living in a cold attic,” Rachel said.
It would just worry her. And she worried about me too much.
“Yeah. Take care of yourself, Tobias.”
I flew out through her window into the night. Rachel’s sad eyes seemed to follow me. I hated the way they all felt sorry for me. All they could see was that I was not what I used to be. All they saw was that I had no home.
But they didn’t really understand. I hadn’t had a real home since my parents died. I was used to being alone.
And I had the sky.
T
he next day I decided to go back to where I had seen—or not seen—the big thing in the sky.
I had a feeling about it. A bad feeling.
I flew up over the same area, rising as high as I could on the thermals.
Hawks are not quite as good at soaring as eagles or some buzzards are. (Man, you should see the way a turkey buzzard can work those thermals! Awesome.) And actually, the red-tailed hawk in my head would be just as happy perched patiently on the branch of a tree, waiting to see its next meal go scurrying past.
But I didn’t eat like a hawk. I ate food that Jake
gave me. I didn’t hunt. Although sometimes the urge to hunt was pretty strong.
I could just hear Marco making some smart crack about me eating mice. Or roadkill.
When you’re in a morph, it’s hard to resist the animal’s instincts. Jake found that out when he became a lizard. He glomped down a live spider before he’d gotten control of the lizard’s instincts.
I hadn’t done that. Yet. I was afraid if I did it once, I’d never be able to stop.
I soared high above the city, over the area I’d been through the day before. But nothing. Nothing moved in the air above me.
Then it occurred to me: Whatever it was, maybe it only happened at certain times of day. It had been almost sunset when I’d felt its presence last.
I decided to come back around sunset. Which meant I had the whole day ahead of me with nothing special to do. This did not make me happy. See, the fact is, a hawk spends almost all its time hunting food.
As for me, Tobias, when I hadn’t been in school, I used to spend most of my free time watching TV, hanging out at the mall, doing homework, reading … all things that were difficult for me to do now.
I missed school. Even though I had constantly been picked on by bullies. I didn’t really miss my
home, though. See, when my parents died, there was no one who really wanted me. I ended up getting shunted back and forth between an uncle here and an aunt across the country.
Neither of them really cared about me. I don’t think they even missed me. I had arranged for Jake to leave a message with my uncle. We told him I had gone to stay with my aunt. Each of them, my uncle and my aunt, thought I was staying with the other.
I had no idea how long that trick would hold up before one of them figured out I wasn’t in either place.
I guess when they realize it they’ll call the cops and report me as a runaway. Or maybe they won’t even bother.
So. What was I going to do with my day? I’d been floating up here in the high air, just below the clouds, for a couple of hours. It was time to give it up and try again another time.
I tilted my wings and adjusted my tail, turning toward Rachel’s house. Maybe she would be hanging around the house, bored.
Then it happened.
A mile or more above me, the ripple passed through the air. An emptiness, a hole where no hole could be.
I reacted instantly. I had to get closer.
I flapped till my chest and shoulders were sore. But it was moving too fast, and it was too high.
It pulled away from me, a wave of air, a rippling of the fabric of the sky. It was moving in a different direction, though. It was moving
toward
the mountains.
Then … a flight of geese on the move in a tight V-formation.
There were maybe a dozen of the big, determined geese, moving along at an amazing rate, powering their way through the air like they always do. Geese always seem to be on a mission. Like, “Get out of our way; we’re geese and we’re coming through.”
The geese were aimed straight for the disturbance.
Suddenly, the lead goose folded like it had been hit by a truck. Its wings collapsed. But it did not fall.
The crippled goose slid through the air. It slid horizontally, rolling and flopping like it was passing over the top of a racing train.
Most of the other geese suffered the same fate. One or two peeled away in time, but geese are not real agile.
The invisible wave smacked into the flight, and the geese were crushed. They were rolling and sliding along some unseen but solid surface.
And everywhere the geese hit, I could catch little glimpses of steel-gray metal.
The wave passed by. The geese fell in its wake, dead or crippled.
It
flew on, unconcerned. But then, why should the Yeerks care about a handful of geese?
And that’s what they were, I was certain. Yeerks.
What I had seen, or not quite seen, was a Yeerk ship.
I
t figures,” Marco said thoughtfully. “The Yeerks would have to have some kind of cloaking ability. Like ‘stealth’ technology, only much better.”
We were all in Cassie’s barn. Her dad was away for the afternoon. And it’s one of the few spots where I can go and not look out of place.
It’s a regular old-fashioned barn, but with rows of clean cages and fluorescent lights. There are partitions keeping the birds away from the horses, and more partitions keeping the raccoons and opossums and the occasional coyote away from the skittish horses. The floor of the barn is usually strewn
with hoses and buckets and scattered hay. There are charts on each cage showing the condition of the animal and what treatment it’s getting.
It’s usually a pretty noisy place, what with various birds chirping or cooing, horses snuffling, and raccoons fussing with their food.
I looked over a little nervously at a pair of wolves, one male, one female. One had been shot. The other had eaten poison left out by a farmer. Wolves were new in the area. Wildlife experts had brought some back to the nearby forest.
Wolves make hawks a little edgy.
“We were always able to see Yeerk ships,” Rachel pointed out. “We saw the Bug fighters and the Blade ship.” She was leaning against a cage that housed an injured mourning dove. The dove was watching me suspiciously.
“Yeah, but every Yeerk ship we’ve ever dealt with has been either on the ground or about to land,” Jake said. “Maybe the cloaking ability doesn’t work when they get close to land. But if you think about it, Marco is right. They would have to be able to avoid being picked up by radar. Maybe they also have the ability to avoid being seen.”