Applegate, K A - Animorphs 04 - The Message

by The Message (lit)

  «Tell me,» Ax said. «l have the feeling that this body I am in might be able to fight. Is this true?»

  I grinned inwardly. «Yes, Ax. Sharks can fight.»

  «Then, Prince Jake, shall we deal with these Taxxon scum?»

  «Don't call me 'prince,'» Jake said. «And the answer is yes. Let's go kick some Taxxon butt.»

  125

  Chapter 21

  T here were a dozen Taxxons in the water. Five of us. Swimming in a straight line, the Taxxons were faster. But, as we soon discovered, we were more maneuverable.

  «Pick a target,» Jake said tersely.

  I focused on one of the big worms. But I had to force myself into the fight. This was not a shark, and the dolphin's instinctive dislike of sharks was not there to prod me.

  I had to find the will to fight in my own, hu man mind. It's not such an easy thing. I had fought the Yeerks to preserve human freedom. Now I fought to help the entire world. Still, fight ing doesn't come naturally to me.

  127 And yet, I knew what I had to do. The Yeerks would show no mercy. If the Taxxons won, we would be killed. Or worse.

  I powered toward one of the Taxxons as he powered toward me. We were like two trains run ning on the same track. Head to head.

  At the last possible second, with the gaping red mouth of the Taxxon just a foot away, I zoomed sideways, arched my back, and rammed the Taxxon's side.

  I expected it to be like the shark - hard, tough, unyielding. It was not. It was like hitting a soggy paper bag with a sledgehammer. The Taxxon burst like a dropped watermelon.

  «Aaaaarrrggghhh!» I wanted to throw up. I beat the water with my tail and recoiled from the horrible scene I had created.

  All around me the battle raged. Dolphin against Taxxon. And Ax's shark against Taxxon.

  Scientists believe that sharks are one of the oldest species of animals still in existence. Nature built them as perfect predators. Perfect killing machines. Nature hasn't had to revise or update them much. They were built right the first time.

  Dolphins are very different. Scientists say that millions of years ago, dolphins were land animals. Sea mammals not very different from humans

  128 and other mammals. They evolved their way back into the ocean. Part of that evolution included learning to cope with predators - with killer whales and sharks.

  I don't know what sea the Taxxon race evolved in. I don't know what natural predators they faced there. But they were not ready for this ocean. They were not ready to go one-on-one with the masters of Earth's deep seas. They were no match for dolphin or shark.

  « Okay , let's get out of here,» Jake ordered. «They've had enough.»

  «Not so tough, are they?» Rachel asked, trying to sound tough herself. But she seemed shaky to me.

  I shot to the surface and filled my lungs with warm evening air. The sun was dropping toward the horizon. Two ships were close by and steam ing in our direction.

  But far worse was the Blade ship, which hovered now just a hundred yards up in the air.

  «We can't waste any more time,» Marco said. «The plan was to head back for one of those little channel islands, unmorph, rest, and then take the rest of the distance. But even the island is al most two hours away at top speed. We have to make a run for it, or we'll have to choose between being trapped in morph or drowning. And that's not a great choice.»

  129 «You're right, Marco,» Jake said. «Top speed for the nearest island.»

  «How do you tell the time?» Ax asked.

  «Sometimes we can carry a watch. Some times, like now, we just have to guess and hope for the best.»

  « Oh . With your permission, I will keep track of the time.»

  «You have a watch?»

  «No, but I have the ability to keep track of time,» Ax said.

  «Good enough,» Marco said. «How much time left?»

  «We have been in morph for approximately thirty percent of the safe time.»

  «Thirty percent?» I tried to think. Math was never my best subject. And it's hard to be mathe matical when you've just come from a battle and are scared half to death. «That would be about thirty-six minutes. Which means we have an hour and twenty-four minutes left.»

  BAH-LUMPH!

  I heard a huge concussion behind me. Like someone had dropped a big truck in the water.

  «What was that?» Marco wondered.

  «Something hit the water,» I said. Some thing big.»

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  « Okay , now what is that? » Rachel asked.

  130 I rose to the surface to breathe and look around. The two surface ships were still closing in, but they were not very fast, and they were not gaining on us. The Blade ship had disappeared. I scanned the sky in all directions, but I couldn't see it.

  «Does anyone see the Blade ship?» I asked.

  «No. But that doesn't mean it isn't still nearby,» Jake said. «lt may have recloaked.»

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  «What is that?»

  «Whatever it is, it's getting closer,» I said.

  Suddenly I remembered that I was not limited to the usual human senses. I fired off a rapid se ries of echolocating clicks.

  The picture that came back was startling.

  « It's something in the water. Big. Huge. The size of a whale, but not moving like a whale.»

  Jake, Marco, and Rachel all echolocated.

  « It's after us, whatever it is,» Rachel said.

  « It's big, it's fast, and it's after us,» Marco agreed.

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  I rose to breathe again and looked back. At just that moment I saw, far behind me, a huge, dark red, almost purple hump above the water. It seemed to be covered with hundreds of small fish tails, all beating frantically.

  131 I went under. «Ax, there's something back there. I don't think it's from Earth.» I described it to him, at least what I had seen of it.

  «Mardrut,» Ax said.

  «Mardrut? What does that mean?»

  «A mardrut is a beast that lives in the oceans of one of our own Andalite moons. To think of that filthy Yeerk scum on our own moon! Acquir ing our animals!»

  «Ax, look, what is a mardrut?» I asked him.

  «lt is a very large creature that swims by shooting water out of three large chambers. It makes a sound - »

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  «A sound like that?» Marco asked.

  «Yes,» Ax said. «l guess so. I did not recognize it. I have only heard it once, and that was in school, and I wasn't paying attentions

  It almost made me laugh, the image of an Andalite classroom where Andalite students zoned out on the lesson just like we did. But it really wasn't a good time for laughing.

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  «But this is no true mardrut,» Ax said.

  «No,» Jake agreed.

  «Then you know who and what is chasing us?» Ax seemed surprised. «You understand that this is Visser Three in morph?»

  132 «We've met before,» Rachel said tersely.

  «You have fought Visser Three? And you still live?» That definitely surprised the Andalite. «l honor you.»

  «Yeah, swell, thanks,» Marco said dryly. «But I'd trade the honor for a good outboard engine so I could outrun that evil creep.»

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  133

  T he creature Visser Three had become did not tire.

  We did.

  I felt like I had been swimming forever. Half an hour into the chase, I was exhausted. We had been powering through the water at panic speed. Fighting every current. Fighting the terrible urge to rest as our tails weakened. Fighting the grow ing hunger.

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  The mardrut never tired. It never weakened. It gained on us a foot at a time, bit by bit.

  I could see it now. A huge purple-and-red mottled bag that undulated and oozed through the water. It was propelled by the three huge wa-

  134 ter sacs, firing one after another. Betwee
n those loud bursts, the hundreds of tiny tails that cov ered its entire surface thrashed and kept up mo mentum.

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  Then he spoke. We had all heard that silent voice in our heads before. It was like hearing the most terrible curses. It was pure malice and ha tred poured directly into our brains.

  «l am coming fo r you, brave Andalite warriors,» Visser Three sneered. «l am coming for you.»

  That voice churned my insides. I felt my own hatred flaring up to match his. The images Ax had painted - an Earth brown and empty and filled with nothing but the slaves of the Yeerks. . . .

  I had lived my entire life without feeling hatred. It is a sickening feeling. It burns and burns, and sometimes you think it's a fire that will never go out.

  «l am coming for you. You will be mine. Shall I make you Controllers? Or shall I simply eat you? The time for me to decide draws near. You weaken. Your time runs short.»

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  We had all been exposed to Visser Three. Ax had not. He seemed to shudder, even in his shark

  135 body. The dead shark eyes showed no emotion, but his swimming became erratic.

  «Ax,» I said to him. He did not answer. «Ax, we have heard his voice before. We've heard his threats. And we are still alive.»

  «He will kill us,» Ax said. «He will kill us! He killed Elfangor!»

  «Ax, hang in there. Don't answer him. Don't think about him. Just swim!»

  But Ax's fear was catching. He was right. We didn't have enough time to make it to land without being trapped in our dolphin bodies. And we would never escape him, anyway. I glanced back.

  He was only five body lengths away!

  I demanded still more from my burning muscles, but there was nothing more to ask.

  This is the end, Cassie, I told myself. This is the end.

  I felt the terrible hatred surge in me again. But I didn't want to end my life that way. I would not die with hate in my heart. That would be one victory I could deny Visser Three.

  I let my mind drift, even as my shattered body struggled to go on. I felt my mind floating back. To the barn, and all the animals there. To my fa ther, my mother. To Jake.

  I remembered good things. Riding the high thermals with Tobias and the others with wings

  136 spread wide. Good days. Sitting at my grand mother's feet as she told me the story of our fam ily, of all the generations who had lived on and worked the farm.

  And then a more recent memory surfaced. The whale. I remembered his huge, gentle si lence filling my mind.

  I could even hear his song.

  Wait! I could hear his song. That wasn't mem ory. I was hearing his plaintive, haunting song, reverberating through the water.

  He was not far away.

  I opened my mind and let my human con sciousness slip away. I let go. I invited the dolphin mind - the mind that loved to play and loved to fight and loved the feeling of soaring out of the water right up into the air like a bird - to surface in my head.

  I fired echolocating bursts, a thousand quick clicks compressed into a few seconds. And more than that, I cried for help.

  It was foolish. It was ridiculous. But I cried out in a silent plea, like a child with a nightmare calling for her mother.

  The monster is after me! The destroyer! The evil one!

  Help me.

  «We have used eighty percent of our time,» Ax managed to say.

  137 «Twenty-four minutes left,» Marco gasped.

  «lt doesn't matter. I'm done for,» Rachel admitted. «l can't keep going. And he's too close. It's time to turn and fight.»

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  «We cannot possibly win,» Ax said.

  «We know,» Jake said. «But if I have to lose, I'd rather lose fighting than let him catch us one by one.»

  «That is a very Andalite thing to say,» Ax said. «We have a lot in common. I wish it had ended differently.»

  «O n the count of three,» Jake said.

  «O ne.»

  «Two.»

  «Let's go.»

  We stopped. We turned to face the mardrut.

  «Jake?» I said. «l wanted to tell you . . .»

  «Yes. Me, too, Cassie,» he said.

  WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  The red-and-purple behemoth rushed at us.

  I shook with terror. But I was too tired to swim away.

  Help me! I cried one last time. But I knew there was no one to help.

  And then I let it all go ...

  . . . and said good-bye.

  138

  «I' ve made up my mind what to do with you,» Visser Three said. «After this long chase I am really quite hungry.»

  He rushed at us.

  We rushed at him.

  Something dark came hurtling up from the ocean floor.

  Something dark and long and bigger even than the mardrut.

  FWOOOMP!

  Visser Three shuddered and stopped dead in the water.

  A second dark shape, as fast as the first.

  FWOOOMP!

  139 «The great ones,» I whispered.

  « It's the whales!» Marco yelled.

  There were five of them in the water.

  The two big males who had struck first had heads like sledgehammers. Sperm whales. Sixty feet long. Sixty-five tons. The weight of fifty cars.

  They had dived deep and come tearing up at awesome velocity to slam into the creature from another world's ocean.

  The mardrut was big. The mardrut was strong. But nothing living can survive for long, being slammed by creatures weighing a hundred and thirty thousand pounds.

  Then, the whale - my whale, because that's how I thought of him - began to lash the mardrut with his tail. Hammer blows. Hits that could have knocked walls down. Again and again, as two smaller females joined in and the two sperm whales circled back for another attack.

  «Rrraaaggghhhh!» Visser Three's cry of pain and fury echoed in my brain.

  «He's retreating!» Jake crowed.

  «He's running!» Rachel said. «Hah-hah!»

  «l don't think Visser Three likes whales very much,» Marco yelled. «l don't think he likes them at all!»

  The whales chased him for a while, but they let him go in the end.

  140 Whales are not very good at killing. They don't really have much of a talent for hating and de stroying.

  My whale, the big humpback, returned in a few minutes and rested in the water beside me.

  I wanted to thank him, but, as I said, whales don't think in human words or human thoughts. Still, I tried, anyway.

  Thanks, big guy.

  People who argue about how smart whales are, or whether they are as smart as humans, kind of miss the point. Whales will never read books or build rockets or do algebra. In all those areas, humans are smarter. Humans are the great brains of planet Earth.

  But it isn't necessary to believe whales are as smart as humans to believe that they are great. They don't have to know words to sing songs. They don't have to be anything but what they are to be magnificent. And even though I don't really know what a soul is, I know this - if humans have them, then so do whales.

  I wanted to thank him for responding to my call for help. But I had a strange feeling, as he opened his great heart to the dolphin mind that was in my own, that he hadn't just come in re sponse to me.

  I had the feeling - and that's all it was, a

  141 feeling - that in some way the sea itself had called him to respond to the presence of an abomination.

  Of course I never told that to Jake or any of the others. They would have laughed. At least, Marco would have.

  «Morph time is almost up,» Ax said.

  «l think if we morph, the whale will carry us until we are ready to morph again,» I said.

  So we morphed back to our human bodies, and Ax morphed to his Andalite body, and we crawled up on the whale's huge back.

  I fell asleep. I know that sounds pretty incred ible, but I did. I was exhaus
ted. Physically. Emo tionally. In every way you can be tired, I was tired.

  When I woke up, it was sunset. We were near shore. I could see the beach, and just a little farther down the shore, the mouth of the river.

  We were wet, of course, covered with splash ing water and the spray from the whale's blow hole. It was a little cold, especially now that the sun was going down.

  But then again, I wasn't Visser Three's lunch, so I wasn't going to complain.

  Jake was sitting cross-legged on the whale's back, smiling at me.

  "Some day, huh?" he said.

  142 I smiled. "Yeah."

  "We did it. We saved the Andalite. And we got out alive."

  "Barely," I said.

  "You know something? You were right. You trusted your feelings and we followed you and we're all safe."

  I nodded. "Yes, I guess so. Only ... as Marco would say, let's not do this again any time soon, okay?"

  Jake smiled his slow smile. "It's fun being a dolphin, though, isn't it? I know you were worried about it. You know, thinking maybe it wasn't right and all."

  I shook my head slowly. "I'm still not sure it's right. But I guess we don't have much of a choice. The Yeerks started this fight, not us. And after what Ax said ... I guess it's not just about one species, human beings. It's about all the an imals. It's about all of Earth."

  Jake nodded. "I think if you could ask the dolphins, they would say it's all right to use them. Since what you're trying to do is save them."

  "Nah, they would just think it was all a big game. They would never understand."

  We both laughed. Even if they could talk, the dolphins would never really understand what we

  143 were so upset about. We knew that better than anyone.

  "I guess that's true," Jake said. "But we do understand." He met my gaze. "We do understand what's at stake. And we'll do whatever we have to do to win."

  I knew what he was trying to tell me. We'd used the dolphins to save them. We'd used other animals to save them, too. And that made it okay.

  144

  W e morphed once more into our dolphin bodies and swam down the river to the place where we had entered the water. We beached ourselves in shallow water and returned to our human bodies.

  "It feels good to be human again," Jake said.

  Marco said, "Oh, Jake, you were never exactly human to begin with."

  I guess it was funny, but we were all too tired to laugh.