The Visitor (2 page)

T
hey didn't even have enough time to look surprised before we struck.

As a bald eagle, I was the biggest of the five of us. I could carry the heaviest load.

I raked my talons forward.

I opened them wide.

“Tsseeeeeer!”

Tobias's hawk let loose an intimidating shriek.

My talons hit the gun barrel and closed on it.

Tobias slashed the ponytail guy's head with his own talons. Ponytail shouted in pain and surprise and loosened his grip on the rifle.

“Hey!” the second guy yelled.

Zoom!
I was out of there with the rifle in my talons.

With the additional weight of the rifle, it was a struggle getting any altitude.

“That bird has your gun, Chester! And that other one stole my beer!”

I glanced over and saw Marco. At least I think it was Marco. He had the beer can in his talons, half-crumpled.

Marco said in his most parentlike voice.

I heard the ponytail guy complaining down below. “That ain't right. It ain't right that no bird should take my rifle like that.”

I caught a little breeze and gained just enough altitude to get above the trees. But I was having a hard time. My wings were beating the still, dead air of the woods and not getting very much lift. I scraped the top of a tall pine tree and emerged from the woods. Still flapping hard to carry the weight of the rifle, I made it out toward the beach, over the low cliffs at the water's edge.

The blessed thermals were there. They lifted me up, up, and out over the water. I relaxed, letting the warm wind carry me higher.

I dropped the rifle about a mile out in the ocean. I figured any jerk who would shoot at a bald eagle
didn't need a gun. Marco dropped the beer with amazing precision right into a trash barrel. He looked as proud as he would have if he'd just thrown the winning basket in the NBA championship.

Cassie warned us as we lazily drifted back toward shore.

Two hours is the time limit. If you stay in a morph for more than two hours, you're trapped.

Forever.

There's an old, run-down church no one uses anymore not far from the beach. It has a bell tower, although the bell is gone. We flew there. That's where we had started from. Our clothes and shoes were still piled there.

Four pairs of shoes for the five of us.

Cassie, still in her osprey body, peered down at her watch lying on the floor.

We began to morph back into our human bodies.

Morphing takes concentration. When you're going from human to animal, it's harder. You really have to focus. But going back to human is easier.

I focused on my human self. I formed a picture of myself in my mind — tall, thin, with blond, shoulder-length hair. I focused especially on the hair, because I didn't like my last haircut. It was
uneven at the bottom. Not that it mattered. I just wished I could do something about the hair when I morphed. Unfortunately, morphing doesn't work that way.

The changes began quickly. The feathers that covered me began to melt. They ran together like hot wax. In some places when my skin reappeared, it would have this beautiful feather pattern for a few seconds.

My yellow bill sucked back into my mouth to become white teeth. That part sort of itched. It made me want to grind my teeth a few times.

My lips grew out around my teeth. My eyes went from pale gold to my normal blue. My legs grew quite a bit, from about three inches to normal size.

I looked over at Jake and saw the same things happening to him. Let me just tell you—watching someone morph is not a pretty sight. It's the kind of thing that would give you screaming nightmares if you didn't know it was going to be all right.

When Cassie morphs, she always does it kind of artistically. Like when she changes into a horse, she does it so it doesn't look totally creepy — she has a natural talent for morphing. If there is such a thing. The rest of us just let it happen however it happens. The results can be disturbing.

I happened to see Marco at the moment when
his hairy boy legs came shooting out of this little bird body and I yelped. “Yahh! Gross.”

“Ay, nyew donk luk so good yourself, Rachel.”

His mouth was morphing even as he spoke. So the first few words were garbled and the last were normal. I think what he said was “Hey, you don't look so good yourself, Rachel.” He was probably right. I was glad I didn't have a mirror.

My tongue grew fat in my mouth. My eyesight became faded and dim. The eagle's mind evaporated, leaving me all alone in my head. My wings became arms. My talons became toes. The scaly yellow eagle legs became my own legs, only they were still all scaly at first.

“Nice look, chicken legs,” Marco said. “Do those come in extra crispy, too?”

I smiled at him. “You're not one to talk, Marco.” I pointed down at the floor. See, his legs had changed back, but he still had huge osprey talons instead of feet.

As my skin began to appear, so did my morphing outfit. Fortunately, after a few tries, we had all learned to morph some very minimal clothing. Usually nothing more than skintight workout clothes or leotards. Not enough to go walking around in, but enough to keep us all from dying of embarrassment when we morphed in front of each other.

I checked out my friends. They were mostly normal again, with just a few remaining hints that they'd been birds a minute earlier.

Jake is kind of a big guy, strong-looking, with brown hair and serious, dark eyes—although at the moment, his eyes were shining with excitement. Sometimes being in a morph just totally freaks you out. Jake was a lizard once, and he still hasn't gotten over the fact that he ate a live spider. But I guess he enjoyed being a falcon, because he was babbling on and on about how great it was.

“That was so awesome!” he said. “It's like now, being back in a human body, I feel like I'm handicapped or something. I feel like I'm glued to the ground.”

“And blind,” Cassie agreed. “Human eyes are so lame for seeing things far away.”

She grinned and spread her wings. She had managed to keep her wings till the very end. Now she looked like some strange angel. Oddly, the look worked for her. The osprey's five-foot, gray and white wings were incredibly cool.

“Do you think you could fly?” Jake asked her. He looked a little awestruck.

Cassie laughed. “No, Jake. This body weighs about eighty pounds. These wings aren't built for that kind of weight.”

She morphed her wings into arms in about three seconds and laughed gaily.

Marco shook his head. “Great. When
we
morph we look like some mad scientist's genetic experiment gone totally crazy. And Cassie gets to look like an angel.”

Cassie and I have been friends for a long time, although to look at us, you wouldn't think we'd hang out together. Cassie is casual to a fault. The girl just doesn't care about clothing or style. I swear she would wear overalls to a wedding if someone didn't stop her.

Cassie lives on a farm and her whole family is massively into animals. Her dad uses the barn to run the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, which is a kind of hospital for injured animals. It's always full of birds and skunks and opossums and coyotes and every other animal you can think of.

Cassie's mom is a vet, too. She works at The Gardens, this huge zoo and amusement park. So maybe Cassie was just born with an instinct for understanding animals. All I know is she's always finished morphing while the rest of us are still looking like creepy half-human, half-animal monsters.

As for me, well, it's not that I'm Miss Fashion or whatever, but I do like nice clothes. I guess that, plus the way I look, makes a lot of people think I'm
stuck-up or something. People do think I'm pretty. But to me that's just an accident, you know? Looks are not the important thing. It's what's in your head that counts, and that's what I concentrate on.

Of course, that's another area where Cassie and I are a little different. I guess she would say, “No, it's what's in your heart that counts.” She's a natural peacemaker. If there's ever a hassle within the group, it's usually me and Marco who caused it, and Cassie who got us all calmed down.

“Personally, I'm glad to be back to my regular body,” Marco said. “The flying part is great, but it's not a good idea to be able to see that well.”

“Why?” Jake asked.

“Look, Jake, how many times have you been walking around the mall or whatever, and you'll see a girl who seems good-looking from far off, but when you get closer it turns out she's a dog? I mean, if you could see this well all the time —”

“Excuse me?” I interrupted. “I'm sure I didn't hear you say what I thought you just said.”

“I wasn't being sexist,” Marco protested. “It goes both ways. See, from far off, I look taller than I am.”

Marco is a little self-conscious about being short. He has long brown hair and a dark complexion, and most girls think he's really cute. But being small bothers him.

“Your problem isn't with people seeing you too well,” I said. “It's with people hearing you too well. You
look
like a fairly smart guy. Then you open your mouth….”

Marco just grinned. Marco lives to annoy people. He really is extremely smart and basically nice, underneath it all. It's just that the boy loves to provoke people.

Marco and Jake are best friends, even though Jake is serious and thoughtful and always trying to do what's right, while Marco is sarcastic and temperamental and is the most reluctant of the Animorphs. Marco still thinks we should just give up the battle against the Yeerks and try to stay alive. But with Marco you never know if he
really
believes that, or is just saying it to be contrary.

“Well, let's get out of here,” Jake suggested. “I have homework to do.”

“Me too,” I said. “And I have gymnastics class this afternoon and I'm totally unprepared.”

Cassie sighed. “It's such a drag. The chores and the homework all come rushing back as soon as we change back into our boring human selves.”

As soon as she said it, Cassie bit her tongue. She cast a regretful look to Tobias.

See, while all of us had changed back, Tobias had not. Tobias was still a hawk. Tobias, who had once
had unruly blond hair and eyes that seemed hurt and tender and hopeful all at once.

Tobias had been trapped while trying to escape from the hellish nightmare of the Yeerk pool. He had stayed more than two hours in that morph.

We had all returned to our human forms, but Tobias was still a hawk.

Tobias will always be a hawk.

W
e all walked most of the way home together, feeling worn out. The flying was a little tiring. And morphing always takes a lot out of you.

Tobias flew high overhead. He didn't really participate in the conversation. It's hard for him. See, he can think-speak to us and we can understand him, but when we're in human shape we can only talk in the normal way. He can't hear us unless he's close by, and he can't be close and still fly.

“This morphing thing would be so excellent if it weren't for the whole thing with the Yeerks,” Marco was saying. “I mean, if it were just normal, we could really use these powers.”

“To do what? Fight crime?” Jake asked.

Marco looked at him with a mixture of pity and amusement. “Fight crime? Who are you, Spider-Man? I'm talking show business. Movies! TV shows! I could go on Letterman. I could be an entire episode of Stupid Pet Tricks all by myself.”

“You're right,” I said, batting my eyes so he would know I was kidding, “you already have the stupid part down.”

“We'd be hot in horror movies,” Cassie said.

“Or how about as stuntmen?” Jake suggested. “One of us could jump off the tallest building and it would be totally realistic. Then we just morph into a bird on the way down and fly away.”

“Now I'm
really
mad at the Yeerks,” Marco said. “They're getting in the way of my showbiz career. I could be a millionaire. I could be trading funny lines with Dave. I could have beautiful Hollywood supermodels all over me.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, with a wink at Cassie. “Lots of women love animals. But sooner or later you'd have to change back into your actual self, Marco. And then, boom, they'd be outta there.”

We walked along the boulevard that goes by the construction site. It's this huge area of half-finished buildings with rusted earthmovers and cranes and backhoes scattered around. I guess it was originally
going to be a shopping center, but for some reason they never finished it.

We didn't take the shortcut
through
the construction site, like we would have in the old days, though. See, it was at this construction site that we saw the Andalite prince's damaged fighter land. It was here that the Andalite warned us of the Yeerk conspiracy and gave us our special powers.

It was also here that we saw the Yeerk commander, Visser Three, murder the Andalite prince. Visser Three is the only one of the Yeerks who has our same power to morph. Visser Three is an Andalite-Controller, meaning he has an Andalite body. A Human-Controller is a Yeerk with a human body. A Taxxon-Controller is a Yeerk with a Taxxon body. You get the idea.

Visser Three is the only Yeerk to ever capture an Andalite body. So he's also the only Yeerk who can morph.

That night at the construction site, he morphed into some creature from a far-off planet, a huge, horrible monster. And then he took the Andalite and …

You know what? I really don't want to talk about that…. You'll have to ask Jake.

We all fell silent as we passed by the site. Then I noticed that Cassie had stopped walking and was just
standing there. I went back to her and realized that she was crying.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Are you?”

I sighed. Flying around in the sky had been a wonderful distraction. But my head was still full of awful memories. “I guess not,” I admitted. “Last night I had a terrible nightmare about the Yeerk pool. I was back down there. Down there in that vast open cave. And I was hearing the screams and cries of the people being dragged to the pool.”

Cassie nodded. “You know what's worse than the screams? The way they stop screaming once the Yeerk is in their heads. Once they've become Controllers. Then you know they are slaves again. Lost.”

“Like Tom.”

We both turned. It was Jake. He and Marco had seen us stop and had come back.

Tom is Jake's brother. Tom is a Human Controller —a human being enslaved by a Yeerk in his head. We'd found the Yeerk pool and gone down into that hell to get Tom. We'd failed. We'd barely escaped with our lives.

Cassie put her arm around Jake's waist. “Someday we'll save Tom,” she said.

Jake kind of stroked Cassie's head. I guess he got embarrassed, because he instantly pulled away.
Cassie didn't mind. She knows how guys are about showing their true feelings.

I looked across the construction site and saw Tobias come fluttering down out of the sky. I couldn't see where he landed, because that part of the site is hidden from the road, but I knew right where he was—on the spot where the Andalite had died. Somehow, in those brief moments when the Andalite had been with us, Tobias had formed some kind of special bond with him.

We started walking again.

“We need to find another way to get at them,” I said angrily. It bothered me, imagining Tobias back in that maze of never-finished buildings mourning for the Andalite.

“Get at who?” Marco asked suspiciously.

“The French, Marco,” I said sarcastically. “Who do you think? The Yeerks, duh.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Marco said. “We tried that, remember? We went down into the Yeerk pool after them and got our butts kicked. Yeerks ten, humans zero.”

“So you figure you should just give up?” I demanded.

“We lost one game,” Jake said. “You don't quit the sport just because you lose one game.”

“Some game,” Marco said bitterly. “Some sport.”

“We didn't lose, anyway,” I said. The others looked at me like I was crazy. “Look,” I explained, “I know we didn't save Tom, and we sure didn't stop the Yeerks. But we gave them a reason to be afraid, at least.”

“Yeah, they're terrified of us. Visser Three probably can't sleep at night, he's so worried about five kids,” Marco said sarcastically. “Look, Visser Three doesn't think we're a threat. He thinks we're lunch.”

“He doesn't know who — or what—we are,” I pointed out. “The Yeerks are convinced that we're Andalite warriors because they know that we can morph. And they know that we found the Yeerk pool, and infiltrated it, and took out a few of their Taxxons and Hork-Bajir while we were at it. I think they're probably a little nervous, at least.”

Jake nodded. “Rachel's right. But just the same, I don't think we want to try to go back to the Yeerk pool. Besides … the door is gone.”

We all stopped and stared at him.

He shrugged. “Look, I just wanted to see if the door still worked, okay? Just in case. But it's not there anymore.”

The door leading down to the Yeerk pool had been hidden in the janitor's closet of our school. There were dozens of doors to the underground Yeerk pool,
spread all over the city, but this was the only one we knew about.

“So we find another way to get at them,” I said. “We can follow Tom again, when it's time for his Yeerk to return to the Yeerk pool.” Yeerks have to go to the pool every three days. They drain out of their hosts' heads and soak up Kandrona rays.

“No. We leave Tom out of it,” Jake said firmly. “If we call attention to him in any way, the Yeerks may decide he's trouble for them. They may decide to kill him.”

Marco gave me a sour look. “This is what you want to keep doing? Risking our lives and the lives of everyone we know? For what?”

“For freedom,” Cassie said simply.

Marco didn't have a smart answer to that.

“There's still Chapman,” Jake said.

Chapman is our assistant principal. He's also one of the most important Human-Controllers. He runs The Sharing, the club that helps recruit unsuspecting kids into being hosts for the Yeerks.

“If there were some way for us to get close to Chapman …” Jake let the words hang in the air. He carefully didn't look at me. But I knew what he meant. He'd obviously been thinking about this for a while.

“Melissa?” I asked.

He nodded. “It's a possibility.”

See, Melissa Chapman, Assistant Principal Chapman's daughter, is one of my closest friends. Or at least she used to be. The last few months, she'd been acting very strange toward me. Like she didn't care anymore. We take gymnastics together. Actually, we got into it at the same time. You know — something to do together.

“I don't like using a friend that way,” I said.

“Oh, suddenly the mighty Rachel is weaseling,” Marco crowed. “You don't like using your friends? You're pretty willing to risk
my
life.”

“Sure, Marco, but who said you were my friend?”

“Very funny,” Marco said. But at the same time he looked a little hurt.

“Kidding, Marco,” I said. “Just kidding. Of course you're my friend. But you're an Animorph. Melissa is just an innocent bystander.”

“I wish I had never come up with that word,” Marco said. “Animorph. Gimme a break.”

“Rachel, Melissa's father is one of the main Controllers,” Jake said gently, ignoring Marco. “She's in this whether she likes it or not.”

I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. Jake was right, of course. Chapman was the logical lead to follow. And Melissa was our way to get close. It made sense. It made sense for me to betray an old friend.

It also made me feel like dirt.