The Departure

by K. A. Applegate

  I took a deep breath and began to follow the hobbling Controller. How? How to reach the Yeerk inside her?

  "So," I said. "Looks like we have a long walk

  75 ahead of us. All day, if we're going in the right direction. Maybe more than one day, if we're going the wrong way."

  "I'm starving," she muttered.

  "How do you feel about mushrooms?"

  "What?"

  "Mushrooms. See? Over there, by that fallen log. You have to be careful, of course, because a lot of mushrooms are poisonous. But I did a paper for Life Sciences class last year. All about wild mushrooms. Those are edible."

  "I'm not eating raw mushrooms. They're gross." She had fallen back into her character as a little girl. It was so strange. She was both a little girl and a full-grown Yeerk.

  "Well, I'm going to get some. You may change your mind."

  I tromped over and began very carefully choosing from among the mushrooms that had sprouted up during the rain. I squatted comfortably. "So, Karen, or whatever your Yeerk name is, tell me about your life. I know you don't like your commander. That's about it?"

  "What's your game, human?" she sneered. "You save, me, you guide me, now you feed me? What are you trying to prove?"

  I lifted a pair of mushrooms each the size of my fist and stuffed them in my pockets. "It bothers you, doesn't it?"

  76 "What bothers me?"

  "It bothers you when your victims don't hate you."

  She let out a harsh, barking laugh. She started to say something. Then she started to say something else. She ended up saying nothing.

  I stood up and handed her a mushroom. "Here. You can eat it now or you can wait. We may find some nice green onions or even some edible flowers to go with it. Practically a salad."

  "You think you understand me? You don't. Nothing bothers me," Karen said harshly.

  "It doesn't bother you that you've enslaved a child?"

  "Slavery is a human concept."

  "Okay. Then forget that. How about this: Does it bother you when you hear Karen - the real Karen - crying inside your mind? Does it bother you when you're with her mother and Karen wants so badly to talk to her mom, just to tell her she loves her? Just to say, 'I love you, Mom,' and she can't even say that? Does it bother you then?"

  Karen jerked like I'd slapped her. "You don't know what you're talking about!" she cried.

  "Oh, don't I?" I said. "Let me ask Karen. Let me talk to Karen and ask her."

  "This human host has no secrets from me," she said. "I know what she thinks."

  77 "And feels," I added.

  "And feels!" she said defiantly. "She hates me, okay? Does that make you feel superior? She hates me. She wants me dead. She sits there in the back of my mind and imagines me being tortured, dying a slow, screaming death! That's what she feels. Hate! Hate! Hate!"

  The trees seemed to reverberate with the sound of her screaming voice. The birds fell silent.

  I shook my head. "Let me speak to her. Let's ask her if she hates you."

  "Shut up."

  I smiled. "It works both ways, doesn't it? You can feel her emotions, but she can feel yours, as well. Is that it? She knows what's going on inside your mind. So what is it she really feels toward you? It's not hate."

  "Shut up," Karen muttered again. She began to walk again, wincing with each step.

  "It's pity, isn't it? She feels sorry for you."

  Karen walked a few more steps. Over her shoulder and in a voice as cold as ice she said, "Let's see how much pity you feel after I've turned you over to Visser Three, Cassie. Let's see how well you control the hate when you are nothing but a helpless puppet."

  78

  We didn't move very fast with Karen's bad ankle. It gave me a chance to look around.

  "Look! Deer!" I said. I crouched down and Karen sank onto a log, grateful to take a rest.

  "It's a mother and fawn," I said. "Look how alert she is. She smells us."

  "Bambi," Karen muttered under her breath.

  "Yeah," I said. "I loved that movie."

  "This human . . . this host body of mine, it... she loved it, too. It was her favorite videotape when she was younger. You humans make everything sentimental. It's an animal. So what?"

  I shrugged. "To tell you the truth, I've been feeling that way myself lately."

  79 I stood up and the two deer scampered away, showing us their tails.

  "I thought you cared about animals."

  "I did. I mean, I do. It's just lately ... I don't know. Things have been confusing for me lately. Normal stuff like school or my f amily or even the animals I take care of, it's all started to seem boring or something."

  Karen nodded. "Of course."

  "What do you mean, 'Of course'?"

  "I mean, look at what you do, who you are, what you experience. You fight. You kill. You have power and you use it. Of course that's more interesting than your old, normal life."

  I shook my head and munched some of the mushroom I'd picked. "That's not it. I mean . . . I don't know what it is."

  Karen laughed. "You were just an average, everyday kid, weren't you? Before you got the morphing power."

  "Pretty much," I said.

  "Now when you're morphing, or when you're in battle, you feel so alive! So vividly alive! Normal life seems boring now."

  "Is that what being in a fight is like to you?" I asked. "Not to me. I hate it. I've just gotten all confused. How can I go around doing the things I do and still believe that life is sacred?

  80 That every life is sacred? Sometimes I'm a predator. Sometimes I'm prey. I don't know . . . it's confusing."

  For a while, Karen said nothing. Then, like it wasn't important, she said, "We have people like you, too."

  "People like me?"

  "Sure. Yeerks who oppose the wars, who feel it's wrong to take unwilling hosts."

  I was so stunned I stopped walking. "What? There are Yeerks who are against all this?"

  "Don't act so surprised. We aren't all the same." Her face took on a bitter, resentful expression. "See? You believe the Andalite propaganda about us. According to the Andalites, we're nothing but evil slugs. We don't deserve to be free, flying around the galaxy. We're just parasites."

  "It was the Andalites who helped you achieve space flight," I said. "Seerow was his name, wasn't it? The Andalite who helped your people?"

  Now it was Karen's turn to look surprised. "You know a lot." Her eyes narrowed. "You're not all humans, are you? There must be some Andalites with you."

  "Without the Andalites, you'd still be trapped on your home world, isn't that true?"

  "Yes. Without Seerow, we would be. He was the one good Andalite."

  81 I smiled. "So there's at least one good Andalite."

  "And many good Yeerks," she said.

  "Maybe so."

  Once again, neither of us said anything for a while as we walked on slowly. We emerged from the shade of the trees into a small meadow.

  It was breathtaking. The rain had raised an explosion of flowers, all lifting their petals toward the sun. Golden and white and blue, all still glistening with morning dew.

  "Do you know what life is like for us?" Karen asked. "In the Yeerk pool, I mean?"

  "No."

  "We are born with a hundred or more sisters and brothers. We don't hatch from eggs. And we aren't born the way mammals are born, either. Three Yeerks join together. They literally join together, with three bodies becoming one. Then that one body begins to fragment. It breaks up into smaller pieces, grubs they're called. Bit by bit the body disintegrates, and each grub that falls away becomes another Yeerk. Sometimes there are twins, two Yeerks from one grub. The parent-Yeerks die, of course."

  She looked at me to see my reaction. "You aren't horrified? You aren't shocked?"

  Actually, I was. "I've studied a lot of different animals, so I guess I'm kind of hard to shock."

  82 Karen looked back at the meadow, 'in our natural state, we have an excellent sense of smell. We
have a good sense of touch. We can hear. We can communicate, using a language of ultrasonic squeaks. But we cannot see. We are blind, until we enter a host. Over the millennia we have moved up the evolutionary chain to more and more advanced hosts. Eventually, the Gedds became our basic host bodies.

  "They are clumsy, slow creatures. But they have eyes. Oh, you can't imagine! You can't imagine the first time you enter a Gedd brain and seize control and suddenly, you are seeing! Seeing! Colors! Shapes! It's a miracle. To be blind and then to see!"

  Suddenly she stooped down and snatched up a caterpillar from a leaf. "Do you see this? This is what I am, without a host body. Helpless! Weak! Blind!" She spun and pointed at the meadow. "Do you see those flowers? Do you see the sunlight? Do you see the birds flying? You hate me for wanting that? You hate me because I won't spend my life blind? You hate me because I won't spend my life swimming endlessly in a sea of sludge, while humans like you live in a world of indescribable beauty?"

  She put the caterpillar down gently on its leaf.

  "Most of you humans don't even know what

  83 you have. You have the most beautiful planet in the galaxy. No other place is so alive. In no other place are there so many trees, so many flowers, so many amazing creatures. You live in a palace. You live in paradise, and you hate me for wanting to live there, too."

  "I don't hate you."

  She ignored me. She was talking for herself now. "What choice do we have? Back to the Yeerk pools? Back to our home planet, with Andalite Dome ships in orbit above us, waiting for one of us to try and rise from the sludge, then blow us apart? Leave the universe to the almighty Andalites and the species they happen to like?"

  Karen gave me a bleak, hard look. "There are those of us who wish it could be another way. That there was some middle choice between being slugs beneath the Andalite hooves, and being ... and being . . ."

  "Slave masters?" I suggested.

  I expected her to yell at me. Instead she put her face close to mine. Her voice was low. Her green eyes so enormous I almost felt I could see through them to the Yeerk inside. "What would you do, Cassie? What would you do, if you were one of us? Would you live your life as a blind, helpless slug?"

  I didn't have an answer. Instead I looked away.

  84 A chance look.

  Tan and black! Moving fast!

  "Aaaahhh!" I screamed.

  The leopard took two liquid, silent steps and with the third step, opened its killing jaws, aiming for Karen's throat.

  85

  The leopard flew.

  Karen never even had time to react. Neither did I.

  But someone did.

  It happened almost too fast to see. A blur of gray hurtled down from the sky. It hit the blur of tan and black.

  A flash of talons, bright red blood welling around the leopard's eyes.

  "Rrrooowwwrr!" the leopard snarled.

  But it hit Karen, just the same. Down she went. I lunged toward the leopard.

  Wham! It hit me with the back of one paw, as cool and calm as Jackie Chan. It was like being slammed by a hammer. I went down hard.

  86 "Aaaahhhh! Help!" Karen screamed.

  The osprey fluttered up a few feet, then came down again in a second attack. It raked the leopard's face, but this time the leopard struck back.

  With a crumpling sound, the osprey was knocked down. It lay jerking and heaving in the dirt.

  I had already started morphing, but it was too late. The leopard opened its jaws. Karen, on her back and screaming, kicked wildly at its face.

  The leopard chomped her leg. Its jaws closed right over the splint of sticks. Karen screamed, in pain this time.

  The leopard looked around, coolly surveying the situation. It could smell the dangerous wolf smell already coming from me. It decided maybe this was not the place to eat its prey.

  The leopard began to drag Karen away. It still held her ankle and dragged her along backward across the dirt and leaves and pine needles.

  "Help me! Help me, Cassie! I'll let you go, I swear! Help me!"

  I staggered after her on bandy, half-wolf legs, lumbering clumsily and slowly, half-human, half-wolf.

  "Help me! Help me! Aarrggghh!"

  I looked at Marco. Because, of course, he was the osprey. He was fluttering weakly and starting to stand up. He was also starting to demorph.

  87 He'd be okay. But Karen would not be okay. As soon as the leopard felt safe it would apply the killing bite: to the throat, to the back of the neck, or even to the head itself.

  I was mostly wolf now. But would the leopard back down? The last time, I'd scared it away before it got to Karen. Now it would be defending its "kill."

  And I had a bad feeling about fighting a leopard one-on-one.

  I bound forward, letting out a threatening growl.

  The leopard turned, keeping Karen's leg twisted in its mouth. It stared at me with curious ye I low eyes.

  We were each about a hundred and fifty pounds. We each had powerful jaws. Each of us was fast. I had an armor of thick fur around my neck to ward off bites. But the leopard's teeth were much longer than mine. And it had four deadly paws, each armed with hooked, ripping, razor-sharp claws.

  I felt a terrible sinking sensation. One-on-one, in a fight to the death, I would lose.

  We stood staring at each other, just a dozen feet apart.

  Karen lay on her side, shaking in terror, her face contorted by pain.

  "Help me," she moaned pitifully. "Don't let him eat me."

  88 I was shocked. I knew right then: The person begging for help was the real Karen. Not the Yeerk in her head.

  At least if I charged, the leopard would have to let her go to fight me.

  I advanced a few steps. The leopard opened his mouth and spit out Karen's leg. It bared its teeth, drawing its lips back in a hideous snarl.

  It screamed a threat: "Hhhheeerrrooowwwrr!"

  It wasn't going to just walk away this time. It had tasted the blood of its prey. It wasn't going to walk away without a fight.

  Karen began to crawl slowly away, sobbing.

  The leopard watched me. With senses so alert they made the air tingle with electricity, it watched me, waiting, ready.

  «Marco, if you can hear me, I am gonna need help,» I said.

  I charged.

  It was like running into a tornado. I thought the wolf was fast. It wasn't. I'd been slashed in half a dozen places while I was till snapping at the air with my jaws.

  Slash!

  Slash!

  Slash!

  I backed away, bleeding, shocked. The leopard's speed was at a whole different level. And now the leopard knew. It knew it could beat me.

  89 "Hhhheeerrrooowwwrr!" the leopard snarled, with a note of triumph in its voice. Snarling, it bared its four-inch teeth.

  It was simple. I could turn and run, and the leopard would let me go. Or I could stay and fight.

  I've fought before. I've fought Hork-Bajir. But I've never been more afraid of any creature. The leopard wasn't just quick. It was quick, with perfect accuracy and terrifying grace. It was fast while looking almost lazy. It was like a supernatural thing. Like it existed outside of my whole notion of time.

  I was a big, clunky thing made out of sticks and nails. The leopard was made of mercury. It was liquid metal.

  Was I insane? Was I going to die to save a Yeerk who would destroy me herself? It made no sense. It was absurd. No one but a fool would even think of it.

  No, not to save the Yeerk, a voice in my head said. To save Karen, a scared little girl.

  Don't be an idiot! There was no Karen, not anymore. Karen was just a puppet of the Yeerk.

  You don't risk your life to save your enemies. You protect your friends and destroy your enemies. That was life. That was reality. Basic survival of the fittest: Protect yourself first, protect your own family and tribe second. Protect your enemies never.

  90 Walk away, Cassie, I told myself. The leopard will be quick about it. One bite and i
t will be all over for Karen and the Yeerk in her head. One bite and the threat will be gone. One bite and the secret of the Animorphs will be safe.

  Die for your enemy?

  No, walkaway.

  I stood there, poised, frozen, unable to decide.

  And then I saw the leopard's malevolent gaze waver. It focused up and behind me.

  I sniffed the air and knew what had happened.

  «Run away, little kitty,» Marco said. «You may be able to take on a wolf, and you may be able to take on a gorilla, but you can't take on both of us.»

  The light in the leopard's eyes went dull. The calculation had changed: The odds were too great now.

  It turned and walked slowly away. It had backed down twice now. And I had the feeling the leopard didn't like losing.

  It stopped near a tall fir tree and looked back over its shoulder. It stared at me with its yellow eyes. Of course it couldn't talk, but I knew what it was saying: Next time the little one is mine.

  91

  «How's that for a last minute rescue?» Marco crowed. «l am the cavalry. I am nine-one-one. Now all we have to do is figure out how to explain to that little girl that a gorilla and a wolf are working together.»

  The "little girl" was clutching her ankle and writhing in pain. I began to demorph.

  «Hey! Hey! What are you doing, Cassie? You can't demorph in front of that girl!»

  «l have to. She needs help.»

  «So run off into the bushes, out of sight. Then come back. She's just a kid. You can come up with some story to explain it. She was probably too scared from the leopard to even track on what you and I were doing.»

  92 I continued demorphing. «Marco, she already knows.»

  «What do you mean, she already knows?» Marco said, all humor and joking gone from his voice.

  I made the transition to mostly human. "I mean, she knows."

  «0h, great, Cassie!» he sighed. «Okay, well, she's just a kid. Who's gonna believe her if she starts ranting and raving about some girl who turned into a wolf?»

  I knelt in front of Karen and began unwrapping the splint I'd made around her ankle.

  "Listen to me," I said in a low whisper I hoped only Karen would hear. "Don't tell him what you are. Not if you want to live."