He didn't smell," I said. "What do you mean, he didn't smell?" Rachel demanded. "I mean that he didn't smell. He had picked up some odors off other people, off the ground, off dogs, whatever, but he had no smell himself. None. Like a black hole of smell. Like nothing there, nobody home." It was later that same evening. Jake and I had left the concert shortly after encountering Erek. We'd called a meeting, and now everyone except Ax was in Cassie's barn. Cassie's barn is actually the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. It's a sort of hospital for messed-up wild animals. Cassie's parents are both veterinarians. Her mom works at the Gardens, this big combination zoo and amusement park. Her dad (with a lot of help from Cassie) takes in every sick or injured wild animal they come across. The barn is lined with wire cages filled with raccoons, foxes, opossums, eagles, rabbits, geese, badgers, crows, squirrels ... I mean, you name it. It's animal central. "Maybe you just didn't notice it," Rachel suggested. "Rachel, you've been in wolf morph," Jake said. "You know how good your sense of smell is? Well, the dog's sense of smell is almost that good." Rachel shook her head. That's what she does when she's frustrated. She was standing in the middle of the barn floor, looking immaculate, as usual. Rachel is one of those girls from the cover of Seventeen. Beautiful, fashionable, way too tall, far too many bright white teeth, massive quantities of very clean blond hair. But beneath all that fashionable clothing and perfectly applied makeup there is a sword-swinging Amazon warrior just trying to break out. Rachel's like one of those terrible elf-maidens in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
- beautiful and dangerous. Jake is her cousin and Cassie is her best friend. Cassie actually experiences normal human emotions like fear and doubt. I approve of this because I sure experience plenty of fear and doubt myself. I've experienced more fear and doubt since I became an Animorph than most people experience in about ten lifetimes. Cassie has never met a dress she liked. She does not subscribe to Teen
or YM. She's much more likely to buy a magazine like Smelly Animals of America. You know, the kind of magazine that would have articles like "How to Give Suppositories to Raccoons," or "Let's Examine Owl Vomit!" If you want to picture Cassie, think of a short, cute girl with very short black hair, wearing overalls and big muddy boots and looking totally capable of giving a tetanus shot to an angry bear. Cassie is our animal expert, and our resident ecology nut. I'd say she likes animals better than she likes people, except that she really likes Jake. As in likes. Actually, she and Jake like each other, although neither of them will admit it, of course. The only time they'll act that way is when we're about twelve seconds away from doing something insanely dangerous. Then they'll kind of give each other these pathetic sad looks. It's so lame. The last original member of our group was perched in the high rafters overhead. Tobias had his talons sunk deep into the wood to give himself a firm hold. And with his hooked beak he was preening the feathers of his right wing. Tobias is a red-tailed hawk. That's what he's been since he stayed too long in morph. He lives as a hawk now, mostly. I mean, he hunts and eats like a hawk. Not that he has much choice. I don't think the school is really interested in a Hawk-boy as a student. Tobias lives in the woods, along with Ax. Ax is an Andalite, the brother of Elfangor, and the only free Andalite within a billion miles of Earth. Ax doesn't come to the meetings, usually. He has a human morph, but he doesn't like to overuse it. Besides, he basically figures Jake is his "prince," and he'll do whatever his prince tells him has to be done. So, that's our little group. Rachel, standing in the middle of the room, looking like someone was shining a spotlight on her. Jake, pacing back and forth and looking far too intense. Cassie, cradling a duck in her arms while she changed its bandage. Tobias, preening his feathers and looking around with that eternal hawk glare. And me, lolling back on a bale of hay. "Shh," Jake said suddenly. "I thought I heard something." less-than lt's just a squirrel up on the roofeagreater-than Tobias assured him in thought-speak. "You sure?" Jake asked. Tobias stopped preening and stared down at Jake. His hawk stare grew even more intense. less-than Am I sure?
I
do know what a squirrel sounds like. greater-than Jake nodded and looked a little embarrassed. Hawks not only have amazingly good eyes, their hearing is better than human, too. And Tobias knows the sounds that prey make. He has to. Asking Tobias if he recognizes squirrel sounds would be like asking Einstein if he knows how to add two plus two. I tried to bring us all back to the topic. "So, what does it mean if a kid doesn't smell like a human?" "There are plenty of times when you don't smell human," Rachel said with a smirk. "But then, maybe that's because you have a small monkey living on top of your head." Cassie made a snorking sound as she tried not to laugh. "Next time you decide to get a haircut, talk to me first," Rachel said. I ignored them both. We had important business, and I was not going to lower myself to trading insults with Rachel. Besides, I couldn't think of any. "He doesn't smell, and he's handing out flyers for The Sharing," I said. "He must be connected to the Yeerks," Rachel said with a shrug. "But how?" Cassie asked. She was pushing the duck back into his cage. "I mean, Yeerks infest various species -- humans, Hork-Bajir, Taxxons. But that doesn't change the fact that a human with a Yeerk in his head should still smell like a human. You know?" "Chapman is a Controller. He still smells human," I pointed out. "And by the way, I can't believe I'm even talking about how the vice principal smells." Jake shrugged. "I guess we need to find out what's going on with Erek." "But how do we find him?" I asked. "Infiltrate a meeting of The Sharing?" less-than like could do surveillance of his schooleagreater-than Tobias said. "Or maybe we could go back to where the concert was and look for clues," Rachel said. Then she winced. "Wow, that sounded so Nancy Drew." "Maybe Ax can try and tap into the Internet and get past all the security buffers and locate him," I suggested. Cassie held up her hand like she was asking a question at school. "Those are all fine plans, but how about if we just look him up in the phone book?" We all just stared at her. "Or we could just look him up in the phone book," Jake said sheepishly. Cassie headed for the house to get a phone book. "You know, she is just not getting the whole superhero thing," I said to Jake. "Does Wolverine look things up in the phone book? Does Spider-man? I don't think so." "Yeah, well, Wolverine has a big advantage over us," Rachel said dryly. "He's not real." Then she snapped her fingers. "That's what that hair of yours reminds me of: a wolverine. I knew it was something." "Oh, yeah?" I shot back. "Well, how about your . . . your ..." "My what?" Rachel asked coolly, with the absolute confidence of a girl who never looked less than perfect. "Your tallness," I said lamely. "You're . . . tall. Way tall." Somehow this brilliant comeback did not cause Rachel to break down in tears. Cassie came back carrying the white pages, already open to the "Knowledge's." "There are twenty- seven 'Kings" listed. But you said he transferred to Truman, so there are maybe six "Kings" that are in that part of town." "We work our way down the list," I said. "Although he still could have an unlisted phone." "I can't hang out tonight," Jake said. "I have got to write that English paper." "Here's a clue on the English paper. Don't say "I have got to,"" I teased. "I could go tomorrow, maybe," Rachel said. "But not tonight. My dad is in town just for tonight. He's taking me and my sisters to Planet Hollywood." Cassie looked at me. "I'm free," she said. less-than l'm good till it gets darkeagreater-than Tobias volunteered. Hawks aren't much use at night. "Fine. Me and Cassie and Tobias till it gets dark," I said. "Shouldn't be too hard. Our mission: to find the boy who doesn't smell." "Maybe he just showers a lot," Rachel said. "Did you think about that?"
1 saw Jake the following day in the school cafeteria. I was wolfing down the Goo of the Day, drinking milk, and trying to write
my English paper at warp speed. See, I kind of had some homework due, too. But I'd spent yesterday evening cruising around in owl morph looking for Erek's house. "English paper?" Jake asked as he sat down across from me. "Yeah." He laughed. "You're good for me, Marco. Compared to you, I'm so responsible. You have a topic?" I looked up at him and thumped my finger down on the paper. "I've already written thre
e pages. What do you mean, do I have a topic?" But Jake knows me. "So," he said. "Do you have a topic?" "A topic will . . . emerge. I'm going to just write until I discover a topic. The topic will rise from these pages. It will reveal itself to me. I just have to keep writing." He nodded and made a face at the Goo of the Day on his tray. "This food is blue. Food should not be blue. Hey, here's a topic for you
- the use of total bull in the writing of English papers." I grinned. "I am the master of bull. Three pages so far and I haven't actually said a single thing." "S. Did you guys happen to find our friend?" I shot a glance left and then right. No one was seated near enough to overhear us. Besides, the cafeteria was so noisy from yelling and laughing and clashing dishes and scraping chairs that no one could hear much of anything. "Yeah. We found out where he lives. Saw him through a window. Too bad, though. One of the other King residences we checked out had this girl living there who was amazing." "You weren't window-peeping, I hope." I gave Jake my best shocked-and-outraged look. "How could you even say that? What kind of person do you think I am?" Jake nodded. "Cassie wouldn't let you, huh?" "I am trying to write a paper here," I said. "On the topic of ...
?" "On the topic of how to write a thousand words and say nothing. Zero. Nada. Squat." Jake lowered his voice to just above a whisper. "We need to check Erek out. Definitely something wrong there." I put down my pencil. "You mean get inside his house?" Jake shrugged. "Not yet. Get Tobias to watch him when he's outside. But Tobias will need some help." I shrugged and went back to my paper. "I'll help. I'll have plenty of time. I'm dropping out
of school this afternoon. Right after the teacher gets done laughing at this paper." "Topic
- the use of rhetoric to obscure a lack of content," Jake said. I froze. I looked up. "That's brilliant! It means the same as "the use of total bull" ... but it sounds so much better!" "Eat your Goo. I gotta go." He left and I saw him head over to the spot where Cassie was sitting. It's one of our rules. We can never start look ing like a "group." In school or in public places, we keep our distance. We only reveal the relationships that already existed before we became Animorphs. I happened to see Chapman coming in through the door of the cafeteria. He grabbed some kid who was running and told him to slow down. Then he gazed around the room, looking for troublemakers, like any normal vice principal would. But Chapman isn't normal. Chapman is a Controller. The Yeerk in his head is high-ranking enough to speak directly with Visser Three. For about a second, Chapman's eyes locked on mine. It was nothing. But it sent a shiver up my spine. Chapman runs The Sharing. The flyers that Erek had been handing out at the concert had been about The Sharing. Erek had never been some major friend of mine. He was just this kid I'd say hi to in the hallway. Except that he had been there for my mother's funeral. A funeral without a body. Some other kids from school had come, so I didn't think anything much about it. Still, it was a nice thing for him to do. And now he was working for The Sharing. The Sharing is a front organization for Controllers. On the surface, it's a sort of club. Kids join it and go on camp-outs and field trips and stuff. Adults join it and supposedly do business deals together and take weekends at ski resorts. And probably most members of The Sharing never even know what's really going on. But the Controllers who run The Sharing are always on the lookout for some person with problems. See, the Yeerks don't just spread by forcing themselves on people. A lot of people become Controllers by choice. I guess they want to feel like they're part of something bigger. Or maybe it's the secrecy they think is cool. I don't know. All I know is that the Yeerks would rather have a voluntary host. They'd rather have you surrender your mind than have to take it by force. They work you up slowly through the levels of The Sharing, till they decide you're ready. Then they make promises and tell you lies, and the next thing you know, you're a slave inside your own mind, all the more easily controlled because you let it happen. I shoved the tray away from me and picked up my pencil again. I stared down at the paper. But I was seeing a funeral service. Singing. Flowers. Some priest talking about how great my mother had been. He hadn't even known my mother. I remember turning around in my pew to look at the church. A lot of people had come. A lot of sad faces. A lot of tears. Most people just looking solemn because that's the way you had to look at a funeral. Erek had been three rows back. He was wear- ing a suit that was probably scratchy and uncomfortable. But he didn't look solemn. He looked angry. And he was shaking his head slowly, barely, from side to side, as if he was unconsciously disagreeing with everything the priest said. At the time I figured he was mad because he had to dress up. I understood that. And now Erek had reappeared. The boy who didn't smell human. The boy who worked for The Sharing. "Well, Erek," I muttered under my breath, "we'll have to see about you. We will definitely have to see."
I here may be something in this world cooler than flying on your own wings, but I can't imagine what it is. Rollerblading? Hah! Surfing? Big deal. Skydiving? Closer, but not halfway to actual flying. Nothing is as cool as flying. It was after school that same day. I'd finished the English paper exactly nine seconds before the teacher came around to collect it. Then I'd gone to history and been assigned another paper. That's the nature of school: It never really ends. But finally the bell rang and blessed freedom! I was outta there and looking for a private place to morph. I wanted to check up on Erek. Remembering the funeral and all had made it seem even more important, although I wasn't sure I knew why. I climbed up onto the roof of the gym. Of course, no one is supposed to go up there, but hey, it was for a good reason. I morphed into an osprey. It's a bird, a kind of hawk that usually lives right near the water. I spread my broad wings and I flew away from school. Tell me you haven't sat there in some boring class, while some teacher went on and on (and on and on) about how x equaled y but only if you multiplied it by pi, and wished you could just fly right out the window. Zoom! Good-bye! Well, I can't fly right out of class because if I morphed in class there would be a lot of screaming and hysteria. But I can come close to doing it. Kids were still piling onto the buses as I caught a nice little headwind and used it to go airborne. I zoomed high above all the kids heading for their buses, and all the teachers heading for their cars. People were just ovals of black, brown, blond, and red hair to me. That's mostly what a person looks like from a hundred feet up. A hair oval. I have never felt as totally alive as when I'm in a hawk morph. Tobias doesn't have it all that bad, in some ways. There are so many worse animals to be. I felt a thermal, a pillar of warm air, billow up beneath my wings and I went for it. Zoom! Like riding an elevator to the top floor! Up and up. The warm air currents swept me higher and higher. less-than Yah-Hahffgreater-than Now the hair ovals were just dots, and the buses were bright yellow toys pulling slowly away from the school. But even from five hundred feet up in the air, as high as a fifty-story building, I could still see faces behind the school bus windows. With the osprey's eyes, it's like wearing binoculars. I floated up there, wings spread wide, my tail fanned out to catch every bit of lift, my talons tucked back against the underside of my body. Air rushed over the leading edge of my wings, making a slight fluttering sound. Wind flowed over my streamlined head, and I kept my hooked beak pointed forward to maintain every ounce of momentum. I rode that thermal as high as it would carry me. I'd learned that from Tobias. See, the thermal will give you altitude for almost no effort, and you can turn that altitude into distance. It's like soaring to the top of a mountain, then skiing down the slopes in whatever direction you want to go. Still, it did eventually require some hard wing-flapping to get to Erek's neighborhood. I spotted Tobias from far off, when he would have been invisible to any human eye. He was riding the wind, just like me. Maybe with a little more style, since he'd had so much more experi ence. When I got close to enough to try thought- speak, I called to him. less-than Tobias? Can you hear me8greater-than less-than like can hear you and see you, Marco. I've been watching you for twenty minutes. greater-than less-than No way. I just spotted you. greater-than less-than You have to know what to look for, Marco.
By the way . . . when I count to three, you need to bank a very sharp, very fast left turn. greater-than less-than Turn? Why8greater-than less-than Just do it! One. Two. THREEFFGREATER-THAN I raised one wing, lowered the other, skewed my tail, and cut a sudden, sharp left. FWOOOOM! less-than Aaaahhhhhffgreater-than A missile blew past me, doing what seemed like a thousand miles an hour! Only it wasn't coming from the ground upward, it had fallen from the sky down! And this missile had gray feathers. The wind from its passing nearly knocked me off balance. It was half a mile away, down and south, by the time I could even try to think about focusing. I saw swept-back, slate-gray wings and a tight tail. It was diving away from me so fast it made me look like I was standing still. less-than What the ... What was thatl backslash greater-than I yelled. less-than Heh, heh, hen. Welcome to my worldeagreater-than To bias said. less-than That's a peregrine falcon. You know, like Jake's morph. They usually prefer to knock off a tasty pigeon or the occasional duck. It must have been the way you were flying. He probably thought you were a big old clumsy duck. greater-than less-than Jeez. What did I ever do to make him mad8greater-than less-than Shake it offeagreater-than Tobias advised. less-than He missed, right? I know that bird. He's not as good as he thinks he is. He's taken a shot at me before. He must be hungry. greater-than Suddenly flying didn't seem nearly as fun. less-than Yeah. I'll shake it off. That should be easy, since I'll be shaking for at least another hour. greater-than less-than lt's not all just about riding thermalseagreater-than To bias said dryly. less-than Come on, you want to see our boy Erek8greater-than I moved closer to Tobias. Much closer. This was his world up here in the air. He knew what he was doing. less-than By the way, thankseagreater-than I said. less-than Always remember to look upeagreater-than Tobias advised. less-than The danger is usually above you. But on a lighter note . . . that's Erek right there. He walks home from his school. See him? Coming to the corner8greater-than I spotted the oval of hair below me. less-than Yeah, I see him. greater-than less-than like watched him this morning on his way in. I watched him play soccer during gym