or what ... it is. greater-than My spider eyes could see the foot and most of the way up the leg. It was like looking at a double-exposure photograph. There was the out ward appearance of a human leg and, way up high, shorts. But beneath ail that there was this machine made of what seemed like steel and ivory. It was thousands of interlocked plates, almost like the chain mail armor knights used to wear. Each of the individual links was roughly triangular in shape. The "ivory" segments were a little larger than the segments that looked like steel. The robot . . . android . . . whatever it was, was smaller than the human Erek. The leg I was looking at was oddly constructed. More like a stretched-out dog leg than a human leg. The robot leg, along with its holographic projection of a human foot, lifted off, as Erek went on his way. less-than Jake8greater-than I called. less-than Yeah? Hey, I think I see our guy. There's this person . . . it's hard with fly senses, but I see this person who is kind of shimmering all over, and it's like there's something hiding underneath all the shimmering light. greater-than less-than Yep. That's hmeagreater-than I confirmed. less-than Wait a minute! There's another oneffgreater-than less-than Whatl greater-than less-than Another one of themeagreater-than Jake answered. less-than like just buzzed right past him. There are two of these things. greater-than less-than 0kay, northings have gotten comgreater-than I started to say. FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! A hurricane of wind! The ground in front of me exploded as two big taloned feet landed in the dirt. A shadow over my head! I ran. Two big black triangles came down from the sky above me. They dug in, just in front of me! Just behind me! Like a power shovel, the two triangles closed together. I was inside. I was in darkness. Total darkness. Some big, muscular thing was crushing me, squeezing me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. I was being squeezed and pummeled. And then I realized . . . I was being swallowed. less-than AAAAAHHHHHFFGREATER-THAN I yelled. There are two kinds of thought-speak. Private, which is like whispering right in one person's ear, and public, which is like yelling. I was yell ing. Every person near that lake heard me. Normal humans, who probably wondered, "What was that?" And Controllers, who knew it was thought-speak. But I didn't care. I was being swallowed. less-than Marcoffgreater-than Jake yelled. less-than What's happening8greater-than less-than Marco! Everyone can hear yffgreater-than Ax warned. I tried to control my panic. I was being swallowed, but I wasn't dead yet. less-than Something . . . something just grabbed meffgreater-than I said, aiming my thought-speak at Jake and Ax only. less-than like think it was a birdeagreater-than Ax said. less-than like saw it. Very big and black. It flew off. greater-than My spider legs were crushed against my side. Two of them were broken. The hairs all over my body were blind. My eyes were blind. There wasn't enough air even for my spider body to live on. I was being forced down the gullet of a bird, flying through the air, and seconds away from suffocating. less-than Tobias8greater-than I cried desperately. less-than Can you hear me8greater-than less-than Marco? What's happening8greater-than Tobias answered. His reply came from far off. less-than A bird ate me. Black bird. We're flying. Can you see . . . his Helpffgreater-than less-than Marco, there are a dozen big crows flying. I can't tell which one. greater-than I felt my mind beginning to fade. The spider was dying. What would happen if the spider died? I wondered, as my attention drifted away. What would happen to the big wad of Marco mass in Z-space? That thought did it. I was outta there. Morph out! I tried to form a mental picture of my own real self. A mental picture of a human named Marco. But it was all confused. My mind was dying, and as it sank it called up a thousand images. Images of wolves and giant ants and gorillas. Images of all the animals I had been, all the minds I had lived in. I couldn't grab that human image and hold onto it. But then, floating up in my disintegrating consciousness, came the image of my mother. I guess that's not a surprise. They say dying soldiers on the battlefield often call out for their mothers with their dying breaths. And I guess that's what I was doing, too. But this was my real mother. The way she'd been when she was truly alive. Not the Controller. Not the Controller known as Visser One, but my own real mom. She was smiling at me. She was much taller than me, but she bent down to pick me up. I flew, up in the air, up to her face. She kissed me. "You are going to grow up to be so cute," she said. "My little Marco." Marco. The human boy. I saw myself clearly then, like I was looking through her eyes at the little toddler I'd been. Not the Animorph Marco, but the little kid Marco. Suddenly . . . The pressure was growing. Growing. I was squeezed from all sides. I felt muscle tensing to restrain me, but then, the muscle weakened and quivered. A ripping, tearing sound! Light! Light! I was demorphing. Demorphing and growing. I had burst through the throat of the crow! And now, I was falling! less-than Marcoffgreater-than Tobias yelled. Muddy, distorted vision showed me the crow falling alongside me. I was falling. Falling through the air, a vile mix of crippled spider and emerging human. I was the size of a baseball, I guess, and getting bigger. I hate to even think of what I looked like. I know I wasn't pretty. WHAMMMMM! I hit the ground. I bounced. I hit the ground again. I lay there, not knowing where I was, or what I was. But I knew one thing for sure. I was going to demorph. I was getting OUT OF THAT MORPH! If I'd had a mouth, I would have started screaming and never stopped. But my mouth reappeared late. Four of my spider legs withered and disappeared. My remaining legs became human arms and legs. My tiny claws became toes. My fangs and jaws became teeth and lips. My eight spider eyes shut down one after another, leaving only two. And slowly, those two eyes became fully human. I looked up through human eyes at a blue sky. At the high branches of trees looming above me. And then, I looked up into the face of my former schoolmate, Erek. Erek the android.
Marco?" Erek said. "Didn't you used to have longer hair?" The hair thing again. Anyway, to my human eyes Erek looked completely, one hundred percent human. I knew it wasn't true, but even so, it was almost impossible not to believe the holographic projection that surrounded the android. Could I remorph into something powerful enough to ... to make sure he wouldn't be a problem? Probably not. There were Controllers all around the area. All he had to do was yell for help. Just then, a girl came running up. She looked down at me, then at Erek. "Who is this?" the girl asked. "His name is Marco," Erek said calmly. "You know the "Andalite bandits" Chapman is always talking about? The ones who use Andalite morph-+ technology to carry on a guerrilla war?" "Of course," she said. Erek pointed down at m e. "I think this human is one of them." There it was: the end. The end of our existence as Animorphs. We'd always known that if the Yeerks ever discovered our true identities, or even that we were humans, they would wipe us out within a matter of days. I felt sick. Sick with fear for myself, and for the others. I'd blown it. I'd given away our great secret. Erek jerked his head toward the girl. "This is my friend Jenny." I was not pleased to meet her. I heard the sound of people rushing through bushes. "Nothing over here," Erek said loudly. "Jenny hurt her ankle. I'll help her. Keep searching. I think I heard something over there." Erek must have noticed the extremely shocked and puzzled expression on my face. He grinned. "There are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."" "Shakespeare?" I said, amazed. "Yes. Hamlet. I saw the very first performance." "But ... but that would have been like centuries ago." Erek nodded. "Do you know where I live?" I nodded, with my head still down in the dirt. "Morph into something small enough to escape from here," Erek suggested. "Come to see me at my house, you and your friends. We have a lot to talk about." For some stupid reason I said, "You're not human. We know you're an android." "And you're not an Andalite bandit," Erek said. "How do I know I can trust you?" Erek shrugged. "I could turn you in, right now. I'd be Visser Three's new best friend. Even the Visser knows how to reward those who carry out his orders well." "Maybe you want to catch all of us at once," I said. Don't ask me why I was arguing with him. Maybe it was the humiliating position I was in. Maybe I felt like I had to act tough since I was on my back in the dirt, wearing severely unattractive clothing. Erek squatted down. "Marco, if I gave you to Visser Three, he w
ould get the names of all your friends from you. I know you're a brave person. You'd have to be, to do all you and your friends have done. But you are not brave enough to survive the Visser's torture. You would tell." I took a couple of seconds to think about that. He was right, of course. I had a healthy respect for the kind of torture Visser Three could inflict. "We'll be there," I said. "I guess we don't have a choice. You have us by the ... you have us cold." Erek shook his head. "It's not like that. It will be a meeting of allies, Marco. You see, we, too, fight the Yeerks."
My dad made chicken for dinner that night. I'd spent the afternoon with my friends, debating the mess with Erek. We'd gone round and round, but in the end we knew we would show up for the meeting. We had no choice, really. Barbecued chicken, skin-on mashed potatoes, roasted corn on the cob. This was the absolute height of my father's cooking ability. So I had to eat it. I had to. But man, there is something about popping out through the throat of a bird that totally destroys your appetite for dead bird. "How is it?" my dad asked. "Great," I answered. We were on the deck in our backyard. It was a house like the house we'd lived in long ago when we were a complete family. After my mom's "death" -- that's still how I thought about it- my dad had spiraled down for a long time. He'd lost his job. We'd moved out of the house and ended up living in a pretty terrible apartment on the edge of a bad part of town. It was okay, really. I mean, having a lot of stuff and a nice house is cool, but it wasn't being poor that bothered me. It was being alone. My father had been off in some world of his own for a long time. I'd been the one who had to cook and clean and all that. It was nice to have a house and a yard and a barbecue again. But it wasn't about the house. It was that my dad was my dad again. I know that sounds corny, coming from me. "Another piece?" "Sure. Breast." I held out my plate and tried not to think about exploding crows, or the fact that I'd come very close to having beetle for lunch. Sometimes my life was just too weird. I had questions to ask my father, but I wanted them to sound natural. You know, like I was just making normal conversation. "So, Dad. What are you doing at work lately?" He shrugged and gave me a wink. "We're finishing up the observatory project. I still can't figure out what happened there. That software your friend No accidentally created just sort of disappeared." My friend "No" was really Ax. There was a long story behind all that. You could probably ask our friendly neighborhood Andalite about it, but it wasn't a story I could tell my father. "What'll you do then, after you get done at the observatory?" I asked, trying to seem totally casual by chomping on corn the whole time. My dad's eyes flickered toward me, almost suspiciously. He shrugged. "A project I can't talk about for this company called Matcom." I laughed, trying to stay very casual. "Building a better bomb?" He didn't answer for a few seconds. Then, in a strange voice, he said, "I've never done weapons research." I was actually surprised. "Why not?" "You gonna eat that chicken or just tease it?" He gave me a long look, like he was trying to decide if I was old enough to hear what he was going to say. I picked up the chicken breast. Chicken wasn't crow, after all. "It was your mom," he said. I stopped eating. "The last year, year and a half before . . . you know. Before. It was like this perfect time for us." He smiled at some picture only he could see. "We used to fight every now and then when you were younger, like most couples. But then it was as if all our problems were gone, settled. Maybe I had changed. Maybe she had. I don't know." I felt cold fingers around my heart. "It was the best time of my life," he said. "It was like we'd achieved some level of perfect peace and perfect love. But at the same time, there were these times when your mom would seem upset. Like she was struggling with some problem she wouldn't tell me about." I had stopped breathing. I knew. I knew now when the change had been made. The perfect love my father was talking about was the Yeerk at work in my mother's head. The Yeerk wasn't interested in stupid little domestic battles. It wanted peace so that it could focus on deeper goals. "Anyway, one day I woke up in the middle of the night. Your mom was sitting up in bed, wide awake. I knew she'd had a bad dream or something. But it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was just. . ." He shook his head. "It was so strange. She sounded like she was trapped in a deep well, and trying to call out to me." There were tears in my eyes. I hoped my father wouldn't notice. "She said, They won't take you if you stay away from the military." It didn't make any sense. But the way she said it... like it was the hardest thing she'd ever said . . . like it was the most important thing she'd ever said." I had some idea just how hard it had been for my mother to say that. Sometimes, when there is some terrible need, the human being crushed beneath the Yeerk can force its way out. It can seize control for a few desperate seconds. They say the price the human host pays is terrible. The Yeerk has mental tortures it can carry on for weeks. My mother, my real mother, had struck when the Yeerk was distracted, and for a few seconds regained control. "Anyway," my dad said, "I know it was just your mom having a bad dream. But ever since then, whenever an opportunity came up to do defense work, I just got this bad feeling about it." I couldn't even pretend to eat any more. "Dad, are you thinking about taking on a military project now?" He avoided my gaze. "There are some very exciting things going on with this Matcom. The thing they want me on isn't military in any way. But... well, they do carry on some very secret work. I guess some of what they do is probably military." There it was. The reason Tom was trying to get me to bring my father to The Sharing. My father was working on some project that the Yeerks wanted to control. My mother had warned him. It may have been the last words that she, the real, human woman, ever spoke to him. He was going to ignore that warning, and now the Yeerks wanted him.
92 We had decided to meet with Erek at his house. We had not decided to trust him completely. Jake, Cassie, Ax, and I were going to the meeting. Rachel and Tobias stayed outside as backup. Rachel was all primed to use her grizzly bear morph if we called for help. "I'll be within range of Ax's thought-speak," she said for the tenth time. "I can morph my bear in a minute and go through that door about ten seconds later." "If you do that, try not to stomp over me in the process, okay?" I said. I glanced up and saw Tobias swooping down to settle in the tree in Erek's yard. I could joke about it, but the truth was, it did feel reassuring to know Rachel and Tobias were ready to be the cavalry. We went up to the front door of the very ordinary-looking house. I sent Jake a look that said, "Man, I hope we're right about this." But Jake was busy exchanging solemn glances with Cassie. "So? Someone knock on the door," I said. I glanced at Ax. He was in his human morph. His human morph is made up of DNA gathered at the same time from all of us except Tobias. There's some of Jake and Rachel and Cassie and me in Ax's human shape. In the end result he's male, but almost as pretty as a girl. Plus, he's annoying in human morph. "Knock? Knock on the door? Why? Knockon. Knock-kuh." Andalites don't have mouths, and Ax can't get over how fun it is to make actual sounds. Plus, you don't even want the boy in the same room with certain foods. Jake knocked. The door opened. I was surprised . It wasn't Erek. It was his father, Mr. King. He nodded. "Come in." We stepped inside. I felt completely dorky. It was like we were coming over to ask if Erek could come out and play. I mean, the house looked so normal inside. Normal furniture and normal lights and normal dishes displayed in a hutch. A normal TV on "mute," showing pictures from CNN. There were two dogs, a Labrador mix and a fat little terrier. The Lab just lolled over on its back. The terrier came running over to sniff our shoes. "Is Erek here?" I asked. Mr. King nodded. "Yes. Would you like a soda or anything?" "No thanks, Mr. King," Cassie said. She bent over to scratch behind the terrier's ears. "You like dogs?" Mr. King asked. "She likes any animal," I answered. "She even likes skunks." "But dogs, do you like dogs?" Cassie smiled. "If reincarnation were real, I'd want to come back as a dog." Mr. King smiled, nodding as if Cassie had just said something profound. "Would you all come with me?" He turned and led the way toward the kitchen. Once again, the total normalcy of it seemed jarring. There were little Post-It notes on the refrigerator saying things like "dozen eggs, bell peppers." Some
one had left a box of Wheaties out on the counter. Mr. King opened a door. It led down to the basement. We followed him down the narrow wooden steps. At this point I started to wonder. I noticed that Ax was morphing slowly out of his human shape, returning to Andalite form a little at a time. Good old Ax. He sensed danger and he wanted his tail available. I wanted his tail available, too. Mr. King paused when we all got down to the basement. He watched with absolutely no surprise as Ax finished transforming. He waited politely for Ax to be done. Then, to my utter amazement, I felt a slight dropping sensation. It took a few seconds to realize what was happening. The basement was dropping like an elevator. When I looked up I couldn't see a roof overhead, just darkness. "Whoa," Cassie commented. "Don't be afraid," Mr. King said. It didn't last long. We may have dropped four or five floors. At least that's what it felt like to me. Then, with a slight lurch, the basementst elevator stopped. "Is this the floor for men's clothing?" I asked. I was almost not surprised when one entire wall of the basement, hung with tools and garden hose and a rake and hoe, simply disappeared. Where the wall had been was now a hallway lit with a golden light. "My basement won't do this," I muttered to Jake. "Have you ever tried?" he asked. "This way," Mr. King said. We followed him. It was way too late to start worrying now. The hallway wasn't long, just fifty feet or so. It reached a dead end, a blank wall. But then that wall, too, disappeared. "Yah!" "No way!" less-than Strange. greater-than "This is just a hologram, right?" I said. But somehow, I knew it wasn't. It was real. Unbelievable, yet real. What was beyond the hallway was a vast, vast chamber, lit in glowing gold light, soft and buttery warm. I stepped out of the hallway onto springy grass. And over my head, maybe a hundred feet up, there was a glowing orb, like a sun. That's where the yellow light came from. Stretched out before us, for more than the length of a football field, was a sort of park. Trees, grass, streams, flowers, butterflies flying around jerkily, bees buzzing from flower to flower, squirrels racing up and down the trees. Walking here and there were androids. Androids in their natural form, machines made of steel and something white. The androids had mouths that were almost like muzzles, clumsy-looking legs, and stubby fingers. But it wasn't the presence of half-dozen or so androids that was really shocking. What was really shocking was that there were hundreds, maybe even a thousand dogs. Normal, everyday Earth dogs, every breed and half-breed you could imagine, running in packs, yipping, yapping, bowwowing, howling, growling, ruff-ruffing dogs. They were chasing squirrels, smelling each other, and generally having a great ole dog time. Jake, Cassie, and I stood there with our jaws hanging open like complete idiots. If Ax had possessed a mouth, his would have been hanging open, too. It was doggie heaven. Dogs and robots in a huge, underground park. One of the robots came trotting toward us. As it got near, a hologram shimmered around it. A second later, it was Erek. "Welcome," he said. "I guess you're probably a little surprised."