Read The Illusion Page 7

  The others say morphing makes even Rachel look bad and I can understand. It strains the definition of beauty. But to me, she looked natural and strong. I liked watching her change. She was an eagle now.

  And down into a dive!

  We both screamed. Rotating wildly as we plummeted toward Earth in free fall from an insane height. The sand and hills and wharves raced toward us as we dropped. An awesome rush.

  I cried, giddy.

  We spread our wings, like parachutes. Caught the air just above a whitecap breaking on shore. We found a thermal and caught the free ride. Up and up and up again. Circle after circle. World’s greatest carnival ride.

  she shouted, awed by the sheer joy of flying.

  We weren’t a hawk and eagle on this morning. We were two humans. Rejoicing in the greatest pleasure we’d ever known. Enjoying the gift Elfangor had given us. Rising toward the brilliant, dazzling sun.

  * * *

  “My patience is about to end,” Taylor said ­quietly.

  * * *

  Pain.

  Pleasure.

  Pain.

  Who was I? Where?

  * * *

  I lay on my back in the cube, staring into an interrogation light.

  The sun. I watched it burn and shimmer. Intense and warming.

  ARE YOU HAPPY, TOBIAS?

  I remembered the Ellimist. The voice that came from everywhere and nowhere.

  * * *

  And I flapped down from the beam in Cassie’s barn to see the clothes Rachel picked for Ax’s day at school. Smiling at Marco’s sarcasm: “Rachel, he looks like he’s going to the country club to play polo. He’s like a bully magnet. Even I want to beat him up.”

  And Ax: “Yes, I am fully human. Mun. Hyew-mun. Human. Huh-yew-mun.”

  Then, the time I stood next to Cassie. Over a large flowerpot on her back porch. We’d all come over to see them. Two baby rabbits. “Parsley” and “Pansy” Marco had named them.

  “Go ahead, Tobias. It’s your turn.” Cassie smiled encouragement. I stepped forward with my lettuce leaf. Reached a hand over those two tiny, vulnerable little lives. Trusting now, because we’d nurtured them.

  And the moonlit night I galloped across the field behind Cassie’s barn. Ax just behind me. He said the grass there was of superior quality. Richer soil.

  Skr-eet. Skr-eet. Skr-eet.

  A deafening alarm. Blinking lights.

  I closed my eyes again. Still feeding with Ax. Still crushing lush grass underhoof.

  * * *

  I felt the pleasure ray shutting down. I realized I was in the cube.

  “Your time is up. Do you understand that? You can never escape your morph. You will be a bird till you die.”

  Who said that? Rachel? Taylor, the sub-visser?

  Me?

  “You vile little bird!” she shrieked. “Who are you? To sacrifice your body! Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  Still in a stupor I rolled over and saw her pacing in front of my cube, thinking visibly. Running through her options. If she couldn’t present Visser Three with a new Andalite-Controller, what was left?

  Her fear was obvious. It twisted her face. It made her breath come short and fast.

  While she’d tortured me her desperation had grown.

  “The Andalite bandits. Give me their location!” She stamped her foot on the floor like a frustrated, tired child. “Tell me where they are. I demand it! Where are your friends?”

  I was silent.

  “Your childish loyalty is amusing. But you’ll learn, Andalite.” She spoke the words bitterly and with emphasis. “You’ll learn that it’s foolish to protect your friends. Friends always betray you.”

  I answered instinctively, forgetting to keep up my guard.

  “Oh, wouldn’t they?” she snapped. She walked back to the table. Toward the three-color device. I could tell she had more to say, but she bottled it, and said simply, “I pity your innocence.”

  Right then I had only one thought. If I could distract her, maybe the torture would stop. If I could draw her out, maybe she’d forget to press the button. For a moment. At least for a moment.

  I said, desperate.

  She stiffened. “You do not ask the questions, Andalite!” she roared. “I ask. You answer.”

  Her hand hovered dangerously above the red circle.

  I couldn’t take any more. I couldn’t. The hawk was defeated. The human, defeated. Me, whatever I was, I was defeated.

  No more. No more pain. No more memory.

  Milk-white fingers brushed the button’s surface.

  Get her to talk! Appeal to her sense of power. Her pride …

  I blurted out. Almost immediately I wished I hadn’t. Complimenting this monster made me ill.

  But she froze.

  Her fingers lifted from the button —

  “Yes,” she said, “I know.”

  — and touched the side of her face. “There was a time when I … this body … was the prettiest and most popular girl in her school. When I had a party, everyone …”

  I’d struck a nerve. Keep going. Keep her hand from the button.

 

  “Shut up, Andalite. Be silent, and suffer.”

 

  That stopped her.

 

  She looked hard at me. She knew I was trying to provoke her. She knew I was trying to delay the pain.

  She also knew I was right.

  I said.

  “No.”

 

  The sub-visser snorted derisively. “He needs me. I’m his expert on humans.”

 

  “Not like me!” she yelled, flying into a sudden rage. “I’m a voluntary, do you not know that? This girl, this human, chose this life, chose to invite me in to take control! Why? Why? Because she’d seen humans as they truly were. She chose us over her own people. Why? Because humans are weak and petty and stupid and we will rule them all, we will make them ours, all of them!”

  She was shaking. From rage? From fear?

  I said.

  I had no idea what I was saying. No idea what kind of twisted person I was dealing with. She seemed to make no sense. I was throwing anything out there. Saying anything. Anything to keep her going, talking. Away from the button.

  “Weak? Foolish? When I … when she walked down the hall at school, there wasn’t a boy who didn’t dream she was his.” She came right up to my cube. Her breath steamed the glass. “Not a girl who didn’t wish she were her. She was homecoming queen. Tennis champion. Student-body president. She was the princess, and the school was her court.”

  What was going on? I’d never heard a Yeerk talk this way. This was Taylor I was hearing. At least as much as the Yeerk inside her.

  I pressed.

  She ignored me. Her eyes scanned the air as she searched her mind for the past.

  “There was nothing she couldn’t do! Had it all. Humans have pleasures that Yeerks … a different world of senses, of sight and sound and touch and … nothing she couldn’t have! The memories, when we first came together, I went through them all, of course, you have to when you first infest a new host, and they were so …”

  Suddenly, she fell to her knees on the cold, barren concrete.

  “Then the fire. She was alone that night. My parents … her parents, her parents … were out, at some
party.” Taylor shook her head and her blond hair glimmered. “I still don’t know how it happened. How it could have happened! When I, she, woke up the house was blazing. Flames attacking my door. Crackling outside my window. Smoke everywhere. I couldn’t escape!”

  She covered her face with her hands. Hands that I had seen change. Hands I knew were artificial.

  Keep her talking, Tobias. Buy time. It’s all you have.

  I said, my voice soft, low.

  “Terrible,” she said. “Horrible. The pain. You can’t … well, yes, maybe you can imagine. We lost our left arm. Her right leg. And my face … some came to see me in the hospital, some friends. Never again, after that. Word went around. She’s a monster. She’s hideous. One day I was queen. The next day, nothing.”

  I chanced.

  “They held out friendship. Hope. In her darkest hour, they made me believe that her life ­wasn’t over. That I had a future. Then came the offer. If I … she … would enter their center circle — take advantage of everything they had to give me — they would repair her body. They had their own members’ hospital, they said. Incredibly advanced technology. I would be whole again. I would be what I once had been!”

  Taylor scrambled to her feet. She plastered her hands against the glass of my cube and stared at me. Her glare was intense, compelling. As if she were trying to make me understand.

  “Maybe it seemed a little weird at first.” She slammed her palms against the cube and I shuddered. “But all I could think about were the kids at school. I hated them for forgetting me. All she wanted was for things to be the way they had been. I wanted to be envied. Envied. Do you understand!” she demanded. “I wanted all of that, all the memories, the sweet, perfect memories, I wanted to live that life.”

  She’s crazy, I realized. She’s insane. The Yeerk. The girl. The line between them all confused.

  Hawk. Boy.

  Yeerk. Girl.

  I had a terrifying moment of understanding. Pity. To be the human girl desperate, terrified, alone, all alone, needing someone to look at her without cringing. To be the Yeerk, hungry for sensations that were so intense, so powerful compared to the dull, blind life of a slug.

  “I took the deal.” Taylor laughed dryly. “Two Controllers helped me, in my wheelchair, I waited down in the pool, not knowing what host, I’d only ever been Hork-Bajir before. I allowed myself to be infested, she opened herself to me, willingly. Until that moment, until I was lying on my stomach, my head held over the surface of the pool, she hadn’t known, of course, how could she? How could I?”

  Taylor’s eyes closed briefly.

  “This girl, this Taylor person, this insignificant injured girl wasn’t my goal, of course, I was a sub-visser, I was slated for a host who held a vital position. My mother, the chief of police. I betrayed her, of course. Helped them take her involuntarily.”

  Her eyes flickered. Shame? Surely not. Not from the Yeerk. But the human? The human who was half of this split personality? Maybe.

  “I didn’t want her, the older woman. I wanted these memories. I wanted the life I knew would be mine when the Yeerks, when my people, had repaired the body. And now, I am beautiful once again,” she said triumphantly. “But look at you! Look at what you’ve become! How pathetic your hawk body is! A nothing creature. All for nothing.”

 

  She was silent.

 

  Her face twitched. Her eyes bored in on mine.

  I asked again.

  “I am a sub-visser of the Yeerk Empire.”

 

  She hung her head. For a long time she said nothing. Looked at nothing.

  Then, at last, she raised her face to me and smiled.

  “Then join me in my madness, Andalite,” she said and sent my body and mind reeling into hell.

  The blue button glowed. I laughed crazily. Like being tickled, I couldn’t stop.

  And then:

  Punched in the gut. The red circle screamed.

  Blue. Giddy, laughing hysterically. Eating ice cream.

  Red. Slapped in the face. Struck with a two-by-four. Surgery without anesthesia.

  I flew up, flung myself at the glass. I cried. I wanted it to end. If she wouldn’t stop, I would end it myself. By ending me.

  I threw myself against the side of the cube. My beak cracked. Splinters of pain electrified my face.

  The blue button lit up and I was laughing madly.

  The red button roared and I was gripped with grief. My aunt’s voice: I don’t want him! He’s nothing to me. Where does Loren get off dumping him here?

  Again I shot toward the wall.

  “I’ve got you now!” Taylor cried.

  I cried again, barely able to speak. I fell into a corner. The room was dimming quickly now. The light that had seemed so bright was just a dull glow. Disappearing.

  * * *

  Disappearing …

  Alone. I was alone!

  Ax, Jake, Cassie, Marco. How could they do this to me?! Abandon me here! I hate everyone who isn’t here. Who isn’t going through this with me.

  If only Rachel were here. Rachel …

  No! She’s dead. Dead or trapped. All of us. All the ones I love …

 

  A pain! Greater than anything!

  What did this lunatic girl want from me? What did she want? She no longer cared what she got out of me. This was pain for its own sake. Hurt for no purpose but to hurt.

  She would kill me. No, no, she wouldn’t! She would keep me alive, alive in this inferno.

  I screamed.

  Did she hear? Did she not hear my thought-speak cry?

  She slammed her fist on the pain button.

 

  No sound coming from me. Or did she not hear? Or was I not making a sound? Was I even still alive?

  Down, swirling down. The world …

  Dimming …

  Death. Was this death?

  * * *

  And I was walking in the woods. A path lined with trees whose upper boughs met in cathedral arches. Near the school. After a play we’d put on. “Is your father here tonight?” the teacher had asked.

  “Yeah. Where’s your dad?” said a classmate.

  I followed the trail through the woods. My heart so full. I stopped at a clearing. A point stuck up out of the dirt, gleamed in the moonlight, caught my eye. I dug in the surrounding earth, trying to free the object. Deeper and deeper.

  A hard, scythe-shaped blade. I held it before me. Why did it seem so familiar? So much a part of me? I looked beyond it into the evening sky. And froze.

  Two moons cast a warm yellow light over the woods. Over thick asparagus-spear trees.

  What!

  This wasn’t Earth! This was …

  The moonlight brightened to a strong and dazzling brilliance. It compelled my gaze. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to.

  he said.

  I started, scared. The light faltered.

 

  A broad face came into focus. A familiar face. An Andalite.

  I watched as a tail arced upward. Curved slowly over his back and moved toward me.

  A shiver. As the cool flat of his blade pressed against my forehead. It was electric. Like nothing I’ve felt before or since.

  A new surge of memories! But how? How can they be memories when I haven’t lived them? They’re new to me, though they seem like mine. No, these were not my own.

  They were …

  An urgent transmission from the commander of the fighter squadron. On the view screen: a Desbadeen tanker in the distinctive
figure eight design.

  The fighter’s computer voice broadcast thought-speak data with admirable calm.

  Every particle of my body focused on the hole of the figure eight. Guide the ship through that opening. Clearing it was my only hope.

  The computer voice:

  I fumbled wildly for the clasps. The sides of the ship scraped and erupted into fire. Searing heat scorched my arms and flank.

  Ka-choomp!

  The ship ejected me into space. But I ­couldn’t clear the Desbadeen craft! The gray wall of steel filled my vision!

 

  I hit like a bullet.

  Rods of fire in every bone. My body tossed from wall to wall as the pod hurtled uncontrollably through space. Stars streaked the blackness. The Dome ship. Too far … too far. I was alone.

  * * *

  Red colored the air. Screams and bellowing filled my head. The battle raged on the Taxxon home world.

  “Sssseeeeeyaaa!”

  A hundred Taxxon teeth bit down on my leg.

  “Sssreeee!”

  Another mouth sliced into my forearm.

  I had to fight! Kill to survive!

  Sshhhwing! I whipped my tail up from my rear and sliced clean through his belly.

  “Skkkreeeee-eeeeeee!” A cry of horror I will never forget. My first kill.

  I looked at the second Taxxon. Into those gel­atinous eyes. Those who say you can’t read emotion in Taxxon eyes are fools. I saw terror there. A plea for life. My hearts pounded. Nausea.

  “Ssssnnnnaaaaa!”

  I cut a gaping hole in its side. It released my arm. Fell to the ground, shrieking in agony. I turned, and with a retching noise expelled the morning’s grass.

  So this was war.

  * * *

  I stood on the grass near the Dome ship’s lake. Stared into the crystals that grew up from the water. A seductive, hypnotic green.

  Loren. I longed to have her here next to me. To hear her say my name. To see our son.

  I performed a ritual for his safety and health.

  Five years since the Ellimist returned me to my proper time. Five years since I left my life on Earth to resume Andalite form and honor my duty.