The Escape

by K. A. Applegate

  «Sure, Marco.»

  «No, I mean it.» I realized I had grown very serious. I don't know why, but I wanted Jake to agree with me. It was important to me. «We're

  34 still just us. Nothing that happens can really change what you are. Right?»

  We flapped side-by-side back to the others.

  «Look, Marco,» Jake said wearily. «l'm not exactly a philosopher, okay?»

  «Yeah. Well, I'm me, no matter what,» I said defiantly. «No matter how many morphs, no matter how many battles. No matter what. I'll still be me. Everyone better accept that.»

  Jake laughed a little. «Marco, if it makes you feel any better, you'll always just be a punk to me.»

  I had to laugh, too. «Thanks,» I said.

  We flew over to the dolphin tank. Smooth gray torpedoes were swimming patterns against a blue background.

  «This ought to be interesting,» I said. «A hawk making physical contact with a dolphin?»

  I didn't know just how right I was.

  35

  4. guess we hadn't really thought it through too well. See, as humans all we had to do to "acquire" a dolphin was to pet it as it came up to the side of the dolphin tank.

  But Tobias in his normal hawk body does not have hands. He has talons. And if you've ever looked at hawk talons, you know they are weapons as much as they are feet. Hawks hunt with their talons, not their beaks.

  Jake and I saw Tobias circling high overhead. He was hesitating.

  «Might as well get it over with,» I called up cheerfully. I was still kind of powered up from the stunt on the roller coaster.

  36 «Fine,» Tobias said grimly.

  He wheeled, spilled the air from his wings, and down he came. Down like a bullet.

  Now, I should mention that this was a Saturday. It was early still, so the place wasn't full, but there were plenty of people around. The dolphin pool was ringed with people in the bleachers and pressed up close to the pool.

  But no one was watching the sky. Except for one little kid. One little kid, who pointed upward and in a clear voice that somehow penetrated above all the background noise said, "Mommy! That bird is going to hurt the dolphins!"

  "Tseeeeeer!" Tobias screamed in his best red-tailed way.

  «Um ... is this stupid?» Cassie asked, way too late.

  One of the dolphins shot up out of the water, clear up and out. And Tobias went for him.

  "Ooooh!" the crowd gasped.

  And Tobias struck. Like he was going after a mouse. Only this was a really big mouse.

  Talons raked forward, wings flared to act as air brakes, Tobias struck. And then, he stuck.

  Talons sank into smooth, rubbery dolphin flesh while the dolphin was still arcing through the air. It was a weird aerial ballet: the huge dolphin and the tiny hawk, colliding ten feet

  37 above the water. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't been insane.

  "Aaaahhhh!" the crowd murmured.

  Down went the dolphin.

  «0h, man, I'm stuck!» Tobias cried. «My left talon is -»

  And then he stopped thought-speaking because the dolphin had fallen back into the water. And Tobias had gone with him.

  Pah-LOOOSH!

  A huge splash. And now the crowd was on its feet.

  "Whoa!"

  "Is that part of the show?" someone said.

  "No way. Look at the dolphin trainers. They're going nuts!"

  This was true. The trainers were going ape. They were racing around the pool trying to get the dolphin's attention, hoping to get it to pull over and let them grab the lunatic bird.

  But dolphins like to play. And this was a whole new cool game. I guess Tobias wasn't hurting the dolphin, because the dolphin just grinned his perpetual grin and went tearing through the water.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. Flying high, crashing deep. And all the while Tobias kept yelling.

  «Aaaahhhh! He's gonna drown me!»

  38 We all yelled helpful advice.

  «Hold your breath!»

  «Gee, really?! Do you think?! Hold my breath?!» Tobias managed to respond.

  «He must be okay,» I said. «He's still capable of being sarcastic.»

  «Let go!» Ax advised.

  «Why didn't I think of that?» Tobias answered. «Ahhhh!»

  «Start acquiring him!» Rachel said. «lt will put him in a trance.»

  «l am acquiring him,» Tobias said. «Guess what? He's not in a trance. Ahhhhh!»

  «l'm going to help,» I said.

  «How?» Jake asked.

  «Kamikaze!»

  I aimed for where I thought Tobias would surface next. I spilled air from my wings, trimmed my tail, and dived.

  Suddenly, the dolphin leaped clear of the water. He leaped, in fact, straight toward a hoop that was suspended over the water. It was easy to see that the dolphin would glide effortlessly through the circle. And it was just as easy to see that the hawk on his back would not fit.

  «0h. No,» Tobias said matter-of-factly.

  I rocketed down, a white blur. Tobias was a target, swooping through the air on the back of

  39 the dolphin. I made a last-second adjustment with my tail and . . .

  BONK! I hit Tobias hard, knocking him clear of the dolphin. The dolphin shot through the hoop.

  «0w!» Tobias yelled.

  «0w, yourself, I just saved your life,» I said.

  Tobias flapped his sodden wings and labored for altitude. «Thanks. Next time find a way to save me that doesn't involve breaking any bones.»

  40

  We flew from The Gardens out toward the ocean. Everyone was in a pretty good mood, with the possible exception of Tobias.

  «The dolphin looked okay,» Cassie said. «Very superficial cuts. The vets will put some salve on him and give him a preventive antibiotic, I suppose, just to be careful.»

  «Well, as long as the dolphin is okay,» Tobias said. «Because I really, really hope the dolphin is okay.»

  «Are you going to be sarcastic the rest of the day?» I asked him.

  «Yes. I am going to be sarcastic the rest of the day. I nearly drowned. Now I'm going to go

  41 become the thing that nearly drowned me. I will be sarcastic until further notice.»

  I guess it's dumb, but, once again, I was kind of glad Tobias was in a bad mood. It distracted me from my own thoughts. If I could keep busy teasing Tobias, I didn't have to think about the fact that I was flying closer to where my mother was.

  «You know,» I said thoughtfully, «that could be a regular act at The Gardens. Hawk and dolphin. Kind of a dolphin rodeo, if you really think about it.»

  «Hey, Marco? You need to remember that you're just a lowly seagull right now, which is practically a pigeon, and I'm a hawk,» Tobias said. «You want to keep grinding my nerves, I'll be glad to show you the difference when it comes to aerial combat.»

  «Dolphin rodeo. I'm just saying it has possibilities^

  We flew across the beach and the surfline and out over sparkling blue water. It was a warm day and the water was calm. We weren't getting the kind of big, plump thermals Tobias liked for flying, but we weren't dealing with totally dead air, either.

  Almost immediately, we spotted Royan Island. It was a dark, lumpy silhouette on the hori-

  42 zon. It took another thirty minutes of hard flying to reach the island.

  There wasn't much of a beach there, which I guess is why the island had never become a tourist destination. It was pine trees gnarled by exposure to ocean winds, and tall grass with sprinkles of wildflowers. At one end of the island was a mansion surrounded by smaller buildings. A dock extended out into a small, protected inlet. There was a bloated motor yacht moored there. Behind it was a sleek, fast cigarette boat.

  «So that's Mr. Royan's house, I guess?» Rachel asked.

  «No. The original Royan was a bootlegger back in the twenties. According to the guidebook, the house is owned by the Marquez family now. Whoever they are.»

  «Let's land as far from the h
ouse as we can get,» Jake said.

  We landed in a stand of trees that lined a driftwood-strewn beach. I saw a couple of old beer cans and soda cans covered by grass. It didn't look like anyone had been there recently.

  We all came out of morph. All except Tobias, who stayed up to fly cover.

  «There are people in the house,» he reported. «A guard posted on the roof. Another guard down at the dock. Both are carrying concealed weapons.»

  43 He flew back to rejoin us. He landed on a rotting driftwood log and began preening his feathers.

  "Very useful, having your hawk's eyes," I said.

  «Don't try to make up,» he said, but not angrily. «Dolphin rodeo, huh?»

  "Guards don't mean anything," Rachel said. "Whoever owns that house is mega-rich. They can afford to be careful."

  "According to Erek, what we're looking for is underwater," Jake said. "May as well get going. See what is down there. If anything."

  "Okay. Let's morph. Everyone to dolphin. Except Ax, of course, who will be doing his shark morph." Jake looked at Ax. Then at Ax's hooves. "We need to get rid of those hoof marks in the sand. A Yeerk might possibly recognize them as Andalite."

  «Yes, Prince Jake.»

  "Just Jake," Jake said tolerantly.

  We waded out into the water till we were up to our waists. It was cold. I felt sand rush between my toes, pulled by the current. Tobias came down and landed on Rachel's shoulder.

  "Let's do it," Rachel said impatiently.

  "Let's get fishical, fishical," I sang.

  Rachel groaned. "Olivia Newton-John? Have you been listening to dinosaur-rock radio again?"

  44 "How about you? You actually know who sang that song."

  "My mom controls the radio in the car," Rachel said with a shudder. "And she wonders why I don't go places with her."

  "Is there any chance we could just do what we came here to do?" Jake asked impatiently.

  "Anyway, dolphins aren't fish," Cassie said. "Mammals."

  «0h, everyone shut up and let's get this over with!» Tobias yelled.

  I winked at Cassie. "Tense. Very tense. Too many high-caffeine mice."

  I had morphed dolphin before, so I knew what to expect. But even knowing what to expect doesn't keep morphing from being extremely weird.

  I focused my mind on the dolphin. And almost immediately I lost my legs. They seemed to be stuck together. As if someone had Krazy-Glued my thighs and calves. I waved my arms wildly, trying to keep my balance. But then my feet began to wither up and it was all over.

  SPLASH! I went down, facefirst, into the water. I opened my eyes underwater and looked back at my body. Like I said, every morph is different. And for some reason, this time I was morphing from my feet upward. The lower half of my body was already almost pure dolphin.

  45 "Good grief, I'm a mermaid!" I said. Although since I was trying to talk underwater, all anyone else heard was "Bloop bleep bloym bl blomblay!"

  What had been my feet had become a furled scroll of gray rubber. As I watched, the scroll unfurled to become a tail. Gray rubber moved up my body like a tide. But it was happening too slowly to keep me from needing air.

  With awkward human arms, I windmilled my arms to bring my head above water. As I did, I noticed the bizarre sight of a red-tailed hawk with its feathers melting into gray skin. As Tobias's beak suddenly expanded outward into a dolphin snout, I slipped back under the water.

  My arms were shriveling. My fingers stuck together, then grew a sheath of the same gray rubber flesh to form a flipper.

  I felt a little tingle at the back of my neck and realized that as I lay facedown in the sea, I could breathe through my newly formed blowhole.

  Suddenly, my eyes changed and the silty, stinging saltwater became clearer, almost like swimming pool water. I could see the others. They were almost totally dolphin. Only here and there were a few lingering bits of humanness. Jake's flippers still had pink fingers sticking out of them. Cassie still had a human mouth. As I watched, it bulged out and split into the usual toothy dolphin grin. Of course, Tobias didn't

  46 show lingering humanity. His last fading traces were pure red-tail: He had reddish feathers sticking out of his dolphin tail.

  But within seconds those final traces were gone and we were a normal pod of dolphins. All except Ax, that is.

  We had rescued Ax from the submerged Dome of the wrecked Dome ship. He'd been down there for a while, so he'd acquired a morph that seemed useful to him. The morph of a shark.

  I felt the dolphin consciousness bubbling up within my own. Dolphins are just about the coolest animal minds I've ever experienced. They may be the original party animals. Life is one big game to them. They like to eat fish, and they like to play.

  But man, they do not like sharks.

  And neither did I. See, the first time I went into dolphin morph, a shark cut me almost in two. And that kind of thing will stick with you, you know?

  It's Ax, I told myself. Not a tiger shark, just Ax.

  But he looked at me with those dead, blank shark's eyes, and I couldn't help but feel a chill, despite my dolphin playfulness.

  47 «L-et's just swim a circle around this island and see what we see,» Jake suggested.

  «l'm guessing what we'll see is fish,» I said. «The more I think about this, the more I wonder if maybe Erek was wrong. This island looks awfully peaceful.»

  «l don't think the Chee make many mistakes,» Cassie said. «But look, why waste time worrying about it? Let's swim!»

  Cassie took off at high speed through the water, and I couldn't help but give chase. Soon the five of us were tearing around at maximum dolphin warp, leaping out of the waves, diving to the bottom only to go ripping back for the surface,

  48 and just generally behaving like happy five-year-olds.

  It was a party in the water. The water felt warm now. Warm and slick as it rushed across my smooth skin. I dove deep, holding my breath for long minutes. I skimmed just inches above the sandy bottom, then rolled over and looked up at the sun, a distant, wobbling yellow ball that jumped this way and that through the water distortion.

  I fired a burst of echolocation clicks from my head and got back an amazing "picture" made up of bouncing echoes. My clicks bounced off fish, and off the shoreline, and off the rocks that jutted up from the bottom. The clicks also bounced off Ax, and the picture of his shark body disturbed the perfect happiness of my dolphin mind.

  Get over it, I told myself. He's Ax, not a real shark. Forget sharks. Put sharks out of your mind.

  «0kay, let's focus a little here,» Jake said, trying to impose some order on our idiot play. «Keep the shore to your left and let's take a quick run around the island.»

  «You mean like a race?» Tobias asked. «Be-cause that would be cool!»

  In my head, I heard Cassie laugh. «So, Tobias. I guess you're past your fear of the water?»

  «lt's kind of hard to be afraid of anything

  49 right now,» he said. «This was worth it. This is so cool. It's like flying, but with a really thick wind. Come on! Race you!»

  He took off and the rest of us followed. Ax came up behind us, but he was slower. Maybe his shark brain automatically disliked dolphins as much as dolphins dislike sharks. I don't know. I didn't care. I was in a race!

  Down and swim and swim, then up, break the surface to blow out old air and suck in new, then back down to swim and swim, and kick my powerful tail for every iota of speed I could get!

  We were zooming madly through the water, each trying to be the fastest around the island.

  I hadn't been echolocating for a while but then, as we turned a corner, I fired off a burst. The picture that came back made me stop dead in the water.

  «What is that?»

  «What?» Jake asked.

  «Shoot some clicks,» I said.

  I heard everyone blasting away, machine-gun bursts of clicks.

  «Whoa!»

  «What is it?» Ax asked. «Are you sensing something?»
/>
  «What is that?» Cassie asked.

  «l don't know, but it isn't natural, that's for sure,» Tobias said.

  50 «Let's go see,» I suggested. «There are limits to this echolocation thing.»

  We turned away from the island and headed farther out to sea. The thing we had sensed was composed of hard surfaces and sharp edges. And it was huge.

  Now our human minds were in charge again. At least mine was. Because I guess I knew this was what Erek had told us about. And if that part of his story was correct, then maybe the rest was, too. Maybe my mother was down there in that place of hard surfaces and sharp edges.

  We were in deep water, maybe two hundred feet, when we reached the spot we were looking for. But there was nothing there. Nothing but waving seaweed and jutting rocks and schools of silvery fish.

  I fired another echolocating burst. According to my echolocation, there was a massive underwater structure of some sort directly in front of me.

  «Erek's trick,» I said. «They're using the same trick the Chee use. It's a hologram. A hologram of a normal seabed. That way divers who may come around won't see it. And it won't be visible to planes flying over on sunny days.»

  «Yeah, but is it just a hologram, or a force field like Erek has?» Jake wondered.

  51 «lt would take a great deal of energy to sustain a hologram that large,» Ax pointed out. «To maintain a force field in water would take the energy level of a Dome ship.»

  «0nly one way to find out,» Rachel said. «let's go.»

  We headed straight for the place our eyes told us was just seabed. We swam for maybe fifty feet and then everything changed. It was like sticking your head through a movie screen and suddenly seeing the stage behind it.

  There, less than a quarter mile from the mansion on Royan Island and two hundred feet underwater, was a pink-shaded structure built into the side of an underwater slope.

  There were three vast openings, each big enough to drive a dump truck through. Two were closed by steel doors. The third was open, revealing a dark tunnel.

  Between these large openings were two circular portholes covered by convex glass or plastic. I could see clearly through one of these transparent blisters. Inside there were humans working at computer workstations. It looked weirdly normal. Like any office full of engineers or whatever. A Dilbert-looking place.