The Message (7 page)
Authors: K.A. Applegate
“Were you scared?”
For a while he didn’t answer. He just came over and leaned on the railing beside me. “I’m scared all the time now, Cassie,” he said at last. “I’m scared to fight the Yeerks, and I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t. I look at Tobias, and what happened to him scares me to death. What if I get stuck in morph someday? And most of all, I am scared of … of
him.”
I didn’t have to ask who Marco meant by
him.
Visser Three.
“That first time, in the construction site, when he killed … when he murdered the Andalite.” Marco made a twisted smile. “I see that in my head every day. And the Yeerk pool.” He shook his head. “That’s something I would like to forget, too.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “There has been a lot of fear.”
“So was I afraid yesterday? Bet on it. I was scared plenty. It was like, man, it’s not bad enough we have to fight Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and Visser Three, we also have to fight sharks? Sharks?” He laughed, and hearing him brought the laughter out of me.
We both just stood there and giggled like idiots for a while. It was that laughter you get after something really tense has happened. Relief laughter. “We’re still alive” laughter.
“Um, by the way, I was going to wait and tell everyone at the same time,” Marco said, “but I think we have a problem.”
“What problem?”
“It was in the newspaper this morning—two stories. One is about this guy who is going to be looking for some supposedly lost treasure ship off the coast. The other was this story about some big marine biologist guy who has a ship and is going to be doing some underwater exploration off our coast.”
“Yes? So?”
“So, all of a sudden our nearby ocean seems to be very interesting to people. Treasure hunters and an underwater exploration? At the same time?”
“Controllers? “
He nodded. “I think so. I think it’s all a cover story to explain why two ships will be out there with lots of divers in the water. I think it’s them, all right. And I think they’re looking for the same thing you’re looking for.”
I felt weak. The image the whale had given me surfaced in my mind. And the faint cry in my dreams, the cry for help.
“I … I can’t ask anyone to go out there again,” I whispered. “This time we might not be so lucky.”
Marco looked uncomfortable. “Cassie, you know how I feel about all this. I think we have to take care of ourselves first. And our own families.” He glanced back at his apartment door. “On the other hand … I guess after what the Andalite did for us, I wouldn’t feel like much of a human being if I didn’t try to save whoever is out there.”
“I don’t
know
who’s out there,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s even real.”
“But you think it’s an Andalite.”
“I think it is. But Marco, I don’t
know.
If someone gets hurt … killed … just because I have these dreams—I can’t make that kind of decision.”
“Yes, but can you decide to do
nothing
? That’s a decision, too.”
I had to smile. “Marco, you know, for a guy who’s always joking around and being annoying, you’re awfully smart.”
“Yeah, I know, but don’t tell anyone. It would destroy my image.”
I started to walk away.
“You know what was strange about yesterday?” Marco said.
“What?”
“The sharks. They were so totally deadly. I mean, we worry about Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and Visser Three. You kind of forget that right here on little old
planet Earth there are creatures just as tough and dangerous. It would be funny if it wasn’t some alien that ended up getting us, but some normal Earth creature.”
I didn’t think it was funny at all.
Marco grinned at my stone face. “Okay, not funny ha-ha. More like funny weird.”
14
O
kay,” Jake said. “Here’s what we know. Or at least, what we think we know.”
We were all at Rachel’s house again. It was a few hours after I had gone to see Marco. Tobias was perched on the windowsill. He didn’t feel all that comfortable being inside for long. He liked the feel of the wind and the open air.
“First, we believe that somehow a surviving Andalite, or maybe more than one Andalite, is trapped out in the ocean.”
“Hopefully Andalites can hold their breath for a really long time,” Marco joked.
“Second, Cassie believes she can find this Andalite,
thanks to the information from the whale.”
Everyone kept a straight face for a few seconds. Then, all at once, everyone cracked up.
“Information from a whale,” Marco repeated, giggling.
“Weird? Weird?” Marco crowed. “The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you’ve just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins … You’re suggesting that’s
weird?”
Jake smiled. “Well, stay tuned. It just gets weirder. Cassie and I have been going over maps. She says the location we’re looking for is pretty far out to sea. Too far for us to swim and still have any time left of our two-hour limit.”
“Well, that’s the ball game, isn’t it?” Marco asked.
Jake nodded at Rachel. “I was talking to Rachel earlier and she has an idea.”
Rachel stood up. She’d been lounging on the bed. “We hop a ride on a ship. First we morph into something like a seagull.”
Marco groaned. “I hate plans that begin with the words ‘first we morph.’ “
“We morph into seagulls,” I said, picking up the plan we’d worked out. “Then we fly out into the
shipping channel. We land on a tanker or a container ship or something that’s going the right direction. We morph back to human, rest up, let the ship get us closer, then jump over the side, morph to dolphin, and go the rest of the way.”
“Oh, well, when you put it that way, it sounds so easy,” Marco sneered. “How about if we just walk over to Chapman’s house and tell him to call Visser Three to finish us off? It’s so much easier, and the results will be the same.”
Jake sighed. “It is dangerous and risky, and there are about a hundred things that could go wrong. Plus, as Marco has told us, we have reason to think that Controllers will be out there, searching for the same thing we’re searching for.”
“This idea just gets better and better,” Marco said.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Jake suggested.
“I’m in,” Marco said instantly.
A split second behind him, Rachel said her usual “I’m in.”
Everyone stared openmouthed at Marco.
“Just once I wanted to beat Rachel to it,” he explained.
“Tobias?” Jake asked.
“You had the dreams, just like Cassie,” Jake pointed out. “Do you think we should do this or not?”
Tobias fixed his fierce glare on me.
“Okay, looks like we go,” Jake said briskly. “Tomorrow. First thing in the morning. We can’t wait any longer. The longer we hold off, the greater the chance the Yeerks will beat us to it.”
We left Rachel’s house. Marco split off in one direction. Tobias flew off to some unknown destination. Jake and I walked together for a while, even though it was out of his way.
“I think Tobias is feeling kind of left out,” I said. “You should talk to him later, remind him of how many times he’s helped us out.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jake agreed.
We walked a little farther in silence. It’s one of the nice things about the relationship Jake and I have. We can be quiet together and feel okay about it.
“This is really dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked him.
He nodded.
Suddenly I stopped walking. I don’t know why, but I had this need to tell him something. I took his hand and held it between both of mine. “Jake?” I said.
“Yes?”
It was on the tip of my tongue, but then it seemed ridiculous to say it. So instead I said, “Look, don’t ever get hurt, okay?”
He smiled
that
smile. “Me? I’m indestructible.”
The way he said it, I almost believed him. But then, as he went his way and I headed toward home, I glanced up at the sky.
Against the blaze of sunset I saw a flash of russet tail feathers. Tobias. Our friend, who had been trapped forever in a body not his own.
None of us was indestructible.
15
H
ey! Half a sandwich! It’s salami!>
Fortunately, one thing we always have plenty of in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic (also known as my barn) is seagulls.
We acquired the seagull DNA. Then the four of us, with Tobias watching from the high rafters, morphed into the new bodies.
I have been a bird before. An osprey, to be exact, one of the types of hawk.
But gulls are different in some ways. For one thing, they are scavengers, not predators. So as we took wing and flew in a rush of white from the open hayloft, I noticed different things, felt different things. My seagull mind was not searching for mice or scurrying animals. It was much more open-minded. My seagull intelligence looked for anything —
anything
—that could even possibly be food.
Fortunately, the gull brains were close enough to the other bird brains we’d all experienced that it was fairly easy to control them. We didn’t waste a lot of time getting started.
Although, once we did get started, everyone was constantly pointing out food.
Sometimes you just have to accept the animal’s basic mindset and go with it.
It’s easier being an osprey in some ways. Much less flapping.
Once we were out over the water, we could at least stop scanning for food. Mostly.
We flew low, just a few dozen feet above the water. Not like hawks, who can ride the thermals up to the bellies of the clouds.
But Tobias wasn’t much higher than we were now. There are no thermals over water and he was having to flap a lot to stay aloft.
We flew on, skimming the choppy surface of the water.
cool,> Rachel said.
It’s from Monrovia. You want to know what color the captain’s hair is?>
Hawk eyes are totally amazing. As long as it’s
sunny out, Tobias can read a book from, like, three blocks away.
It was hard, flying to catch up to the ship. It was moving fairly fast, and by the time we were close I was exhausted.
The ship was gigantic, painted a rusty blue, with a deck longer than a football field. The superstructure was all crammed toward the back. That’s where the crew would be, so we flew forward, hoping to find someplace private.
The deck was stacked with containers, big steel boxes like trailers. Row after row of them lined the deck, and we could see hundreds more down in the hold.
We settled in the narrow space between two rows of containers, far forward. It was like having walls all around us. Corrugated metal walls that went high over our heads.
Tobias twisted his head down to see the tiny watch strapped to his talon.
We decided to resume our human shapes. The space between the rows of containers was even narrower when we were fully human again.
“Brrr. It’s chilly out here,” I said. The steel deck was cold beneath my bare feet. And even though
the sun was high in the sky, we were in shadow.
“Man, I swear, this is the worst thing about morphing,” Marco said. “Can someone please figure out how to morph shoes, and maybe a sweater? Come on, Cassie. You’re the morphing genius. I’m sick of these morphing outfits.”
“But you look so cute in spandex,” Rachel teased him.
“Plus, they aren’t exactly fashionable. All I’m saying is—uniforms. Something cool-looking. And warm. Warm would be nice. When winter comes, we are going to be some sad little Animorphs.”
“I have a more important question,” Rachel said. “How do we know when we’re there? You know, our destination.”
Jake made a “who knows?” face. “I figure this ship is going, like, what, twenty miles per hour? Figure an hour, and that puts us twenty miles out, right?”
Rachel pointed a finger at her forehead and said, “Jake’s a total mathematical genius. One hour at twenty miles per hour. Right away he figures out that’s twenty miles.”
Jake laughed. “That’s about all the math I can do.”
We all just stared at him.
“Okay, eighteen miles an hour, more or less, straight south,” Marco considered. “That would put us within a couple of miles of where Cassie thinks we should go.”
I winced. Every time anyone said something about me deciding where to go or what to do, it made me nervous.