I didn't answer. His time was running out. Let him talk.
«We Yeerks evolved as parasites, not preda tors. Unlike you humans, we did not kill to eat. We were peaceful. We took many different species as our hosts. And as they evolved, so did we. Over time, the Gedds evolved. They were a sort of ... like a monkey, ! suppose. We were in the Gedds till the Andalites first came. Some of our people still have nothing better than Gedds for hosts.»
«What about the Andalites?» I asked. «What happened when they came to your world?»
«0f course. The Andalite has not told you their story, has he? What a pity. It's such a fine story. Ask your pet Andalite Ax sometime. Ask him about the story of the Andalites and the Yeerks.»
«Maybe I will,» I said. I hoped the Yeerk would keep talking, but he fell silent.
The hours passed. An owl left and was replaced by another. The moon went down. Dawn was coming. ! could feel it.
«Yes,» the Yeerk said, having read my
145 thoughts. «Dawn. Just a few hours left. Ahhhh!» He cried out in silent pain. «The fugue. It begins.»
«The fugue?»
«The final hours. You will not enjoy it, al though you may learn a great deal, human. You may learn more than you want to - aaaahhh!»
I was watching his pain from far away. I was an observer. Close enough to know what he was feeling, but feeling none of it myself.
At first it was wave after wave of pain. Starva tion and death by thirst. All rolled into one agony.
The sun came up. Cassie stepped into the shack from the woods outside. She looked at me and nodded. "It's happening, isn't it?"
I wanted to answer, but even now, my voice was not my own.
Cassie came and sat down beside me. Beside us.
"Ax says this part is pretty rough. Just remember, when it's all over, I'll be here."
She slipped her hand into my hand. I could feel it. So could the Yeerk. But he did not reject this small bit of comfort, even though it was intended for me and not him.
His mind was deteriorating. His thoughts were becoming more visible to me. Like a movie that kept drifting in and out of focus.
I saw images from a strange place, as seen
146 through strange eyes. Liquid all around. Shapes, like squids, shooting through the liquid. Yeerks. Swimming in the Yeerk pool. Soaking up Kan- drona rays.
And there were images of the first host. A Gedd. So, I thought - that's what a Gedd looks like. I had seen a few aboard the Yeerk mother ship but had not known what they were. They were humanoid, short and stooped, with webbed feet and three clumsy fingers.
I saw the world as the Yeerk had seen it, through Gedd eyes. The vision was dim. The hearing was better. The Yeerk had been excited at getting his first host. He had subdued the Gedd mind with ruthless ease, crushing it with his superior intelligence and will.
The memory made me sick. The Gedd's bewil derment. His fear. And the Yeerk's fierce arro gance.
I turned my attention away from the memory and back to the world around me. To my surprise, I noticed that my arms were shaking. My legs were shaking.
Cassie had put her arm around my shoulders.
"Jake, if you can hear me, it's almost eight. One hour to go. Jake ... the Yeerk in your head is dying."
"Yes," I wanted to say. "He is."
147 he fugue.
The final hours of the Yeerk's life. I was watching him die.
A lot has happened to me since I first saw the Andalite prince land in that construction site. More strange things than happen to most people in their entire lives. But the strangest was this. And the saddest.
The Yeerk cried in pain, again and again. And the visions came floating up, crystal clear, as if they had just happened.
Visions of the good times in the Yeerk's life. And of bad times. The emotions were strange. Alien. I guess that's the word for them. There was no memory of love. I guess Yeerks don't do love.
148 But there was affection. Pride. Fear. Regret. Those I could understand.
And along with the Yeerk's own memories, I began to see the minds of his hosts. The Gedd who had a name no human could hope to pro nounce. The Hork-Bajir warrior who had fought the Yeerk in his head every day of his life.
The Hork-Bajir, who had been forced to attack his own kind, to destroy his own friends, as an unwilling slave of the Yeerks.
But it was more than just memories. It was more. The Yeerk had carried with him some small part of that Hork-Bajir warrior's being.
Like a computer transferring a document onto a floppy disk, I realized. Part of the Gedd and part of the Hork-Bajir had been transferred permanently to the Yeerk.
And to my shock, I knew that those parts were now being transferred to me.
And then ... the memories I feared most.
Tom.
He had joined The Sharing for a simple, silly reason. A pretty girl he liked was a member. He had wanted to get close to her. He had gone to meetings. He'd played along with them, never guessing the truth. All he had cared about was the girl.
He had stumbled, accidentally, into a secret
149 leadership meeting. He thought the girl was see ing another boy. But she was one of them.
He had followed her, wandered into the meet ing and seen Visser Three. Visser Three in his An- dalite body.
I saw the Controllers grab a yelling, punching, kicking Tom. I saw as they tied him up. Carried him through secret passageways to the great, underground Yeerk pool.
I saw him scream as he realized what was happening. I felt his fear. I felt his rage as the Yeerk slug crawled into his ear and wrapped itself around his brain. I felt every ounce of his de spair.
And like the Gedd and the Hork-Bajir, this human, my brother, became a part of me.
The Yeerk was no longer in pain. It was be yond pain.
I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I opened my eyes. By my own will.
I don't know how she knew, but I guess she did. She nodded slightly and met my gaze.
For the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke. «So. You win . . . human.»
The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it. A physi cal spasm. My vision changed. I felt. . . it's hard to describe. I felt as if I were seeing through
150 things, /ntothings. Like I could see the front and back and top and bottom and inside of every thing all at once.
And then I saw it.
A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high.
Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . .
I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.
And then it saw me.
The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.
It saw me.
It SAW me!
No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I looked away.
And when I opened my eyes again, all I saw was a weird glow.
The glow faded, little by little.
I was trembling.
"It's over, Jake," Cassie said.
I rose slowly to my feet. I moved my own legs. I was in control of myself again.
I looked down on the wooden floor of the shack.
A gray slug, not six inches long, lay there . . . still.
As we watched, it withered and shriveled and became nothing.
151 lake? Are you all right, sweetheart?" my mom asked me that night at dinner.
I looked up. I'd been staring at my food, I re alized. Something with pasta and tuna fish.
"What?" I asked.
My mom and dad exchanged one of their "worried parent" looks. "Well, you're not eating. Don't you like it?"
I shrugged. "Sorry. It's fine. I was just . . . distracted."
My dad nodded. "It's just a change from the last two nights. You've been eating like you were trying to eat everything in the house."
"I was?"
Tom cocked an eyebro
w at me. "What, now
152 you're going to pretend it didn't happen? Last night you sat here and ate six pieces of chicken and kept yapping about how great it was. Then you ate a pie. A pie which was supposed to be for the four of us."
I hid a smile. Of course. Ax. The Andalite had played me for three days - two hours at a time. Ax was dangerous around food. The sense of taste was still totally amazing to him. When he was in human morph you didn't want to get be tween him and a bar of chocolate. Or a pie, I guess.
"You were a total pig," Tom said. "Chicken. Corn. Potatoes. Or, as you kept saying, 'Potatoes. Toes. Tay-toes.' I thought you'd gone nuts."
And were you suspicious, Yeerk? I thought, looking at my brother. A new Yeerk was in Tom's head. Another arrogant master of the galaxy.
My brother was trapped in a small corner of his own mind, able to see and feel, but powerless to do a thing. I knew.
I didn't sleep much that night. I did not want the dreams to come. I feared terrible nightmares of the eye. The eye that had stared at me from a different universe.
But the only dream that came was a familiar one.
! was the tiger. My brother was the prey. But, in the end, I was my brother. And he was me.
On the news that night there was a small re-
153 port on the closing of the new hospital. There was no explanation. But I knew what had hap pened. The Yeerks knew their plan was blown. They understood that we knew about it.
We had hurt them pretty badly.
But I knew better than to celebrate. Visser Three would be more determined than ever to stop us.
The next day I did something stupid. At least, Marco kept telling me it was stupid. But he didn't object very much. He understood.
We all met at Cassie's barn. And ! used her dad's cellular phone to call Tom at home. I went partly into a wolf morph before I did. Just enough to make the smallest changes.
Enough to change the shape of my mouth and tongue and throat. So that my voice would sound very different.
He picked it up on the third ring. "Yeah?"
"I have a message," I said in a thick, twisted voice that did not sound at all like me.
"What?" Tom asked.
"Don't give up, Tom. Don't ever give up."
I hung up before he could say anything.
"Do you think Tom ... the real Tom . . . heard it?" Rachel asked.
"He heard," I answered.
I wondered if he would have the strength to hold on.
154 But I knew the answer. See, a part of my brother was in my own mind now. Along with echoes of a long-dead Hork-Bajir and a simple Gedd. And yes, even a bit of a Yeerk with dreams of glory.
Marco smiled his sardonic smile. "And is it true? Will we win?"
"This is a very complicated planet, Marco. That's what I hear, anyway. And it's a very strange universe. Anything could happen."
155 Don't; miss
we barreled away across the dusty ground. Just ahead, a wall loomed. It was easy enough to find a crack. A roach can slide through a crack no thicker than a quarter.
We emerged into brilliant light and an assault of sounds and smells.
«So. Where do you think we are?» Marco asked.
«This looks like linoleum under us,» I said. «Dirty linoleum. I feel a lot of vibrations - lots of feet, I'm guessing. And voices. Too many for me to make sense of them.»
«l smell humans,» Ax confirmed.
«Humans don't smell,» I said, only half- joking.
«0h, humans smell,» Ax argued. «lt's not a bad smell. Sort of like an animal we have back on my planet called a flaar.»
«So we have french fries and humans,»
156 Marco said. «Are you telling me we have reached the Yeerk pool MacDonald's?»
«lf it's some kind of lunchroom or something, it would be a good place to listen in on conversa tions^ Cassie said. «Maybe we can get closer. Crawl up under a table. We should be able to - »
Suddenly a shadow fell over us. Something huge was overhead, blocking out the harsh fluor escent light.
«Now, that. . . that is not a human smell,» Ax said.
«l smell it, too,» I said. «lt's familiar. I don't like it. Something ... I've smelled it before . . . it's ... I can't get my human memory and my roach senses together. It smells like . . . »
«Taxxon!» Cassie said suddenly. «Look. That tree-looking thing up there. I think it's a Taxxon leg!»
«0h, gross. I hate those things,» I said.
«LOOK OUT!»
Hurtling down from the fluorescent sky at incredible speed came something like a bright red whip.
I powered my six legs in instant response.
It was too fast!
The red whip slapped the ground all around me. It fell over me like an awful, wet quilt. Some thing like glue oozed around me, seeping under my shell, gumming up my legs.
157 «Nooo!» I screamed.
«l'm trapped!» Marco cried.
I was lifted up off the ground. My back was glued to the red whip, and I was hurtling through space. I caught a wild glimpse of the others, stuck to the red whip just like me.
«What's happening?» Cassie cried.
«lt's the Taxxon,» Ax said. «l think he's eat ing us!»
We were stuck to the frog-like tongue of the Taxxon, as the evil creature slurped his tongue back down his throat.
«l can't get loose!» Jake yelled.
In an instant, without warning, death had come for us.
I was glued down, helpless, as the Taxxon's red tongue sucked back into its mouth.
And then . . .
And then . . . everything, everywhere, stopped.
Applegate, K A - Animorphs 06 - The Capture Page 9
