Jake landed beside me.
«Fly, right?»
«That's the plan.»
Jake quickly demorphed, then morphed to fly. He buzzed his wings, took a few quick turns, then landed on my shoulder.
I climbed out and we hurried around to a side entrance of the JCPenney.
Visser One had walked from the bus stop through the door. She waited impatiently for instructions. She pretended to shop, tugging fitfully at some kids'-size Michael Jordan jerseys.
My size, maybe. Was she thinking about the son her host body had once had?
No, not likely. She was thinking about the fact that Controllers were everywhere. Thinking about the fact that by now Visser Three had a tail on her. Was watching her. Tightening his ring around her.
I lurked behind a tall potted plant. "Okay, directly ahead," I whispered to Jake. "There's a TV screen hanging down from above. Do you see it?"
Flies are very weak at seeing distances. It's why I had to be human. So I could act as an air
97 traffic controller and direct Jake toward his target.
«l see bright, swirling lights, above and straight ahead.»
"That's the TV. Okay, she's in an almost straight line from here to the TV, just a shade to the right."
Jake took off. I lost sight of him immediately, of course. Hard to see a fly against the confused backdrop of visuals.
«I'm on her,» Jake announced a few moments later. «Beginning contacts
Seconds later I heard Jake's thought-speak voice, sounding very different. And I saw my mother's head snap up.
«Go to the back of this establishment, Yeerk,» Jake instructed. «Purchase a neck protection garment. Also artificial skin designed for the protection of hands.»
Scarf and gloves. I almost laughed. It was classic Ax-ese.
Visser One must have said something harsh. The next thing I heard was Jake saying, «Do not be foolish, Yeerk. We are using this process to equip you as necessary. And to discover any pursuit. For your information we have spotted four human-Controllers who are already watching you.»
98 A lie, of course. But Visser One's head snapped around before she got control of herself.
«We are creating a trail, Yeerk,» Jake said with utter smugness. «And you are being watched, so do not attempt anything stupid. One wrong move and we'll kill you now and worry about Visser Three later.»
«Very nice,» I complimented Jake.
«Next stop, the camping store,» Jake said. «Let's see how well she holds up. She's volatile. She could go off.»
«No. She'll stick with the plan,» I said.
I understood Visser One. She saw the bright, clear line, too. Problem was, only one of us could be right.
99 18
Rachel, her hair in two dorky braids and a goofy fisherman's cap low on her head, was staked out in Shoes and Handbags.
I was a few aisles over, in Hosiery. I looked slightly out of place. I could only hope that no one from school would spot me as I perused the racks of sheer-to-waist, sandal-foot taupe pantyhose.
That's the kind of thing that stays with you in school.
Visser One stormed into the Scarves, Gloves, and Hats department. She grabbed a gray wool scarf off a shelf, snatched a pair of woefully inadequate fancy leather gloves, and dutifully purchased them with a no-doubt-fake credit card.
100 Then she started to walk back toward the exit leading into the mall. All according to plan.
Then . . .
"Excuse me, ma'am? Could you follow me please?"
A security guard. Plainclothes. The kind of guy who always seems to end up following me through a store.
Rachel shot a glance at me. She raised a questioning eyebrow.
I moved closer, carefully, keeping out of Visser One's line of sight.
"Follow you?" my mother's voice snapped. "Why?"
"Just follow me, ma'am. I need to ask you some questions."
The Visser's hand drifted down toward her purse. The guard saw the movement, too.
"You are under arrest for stealing that scarf."
"I bought this scarf," the Visser said tightly. "I have the receipt."
The guard laughed nervously. He glanced around, like he was looking for help. But he sounded determined enough. "If you reach into your purse for the Dracon beam I'm sure you have, I will kill you right here and now, traitor."
Visser One's hand was in the purse.
The guard reached inside his coat.
101 We were about two seconds away from a shoot-out in a crowded store.
Suddenly Rachel was behind me. "Hide, you idiot. You're gaping like a tourist! I have this," Rachel whispered.
She was right. I was standing in the open, drawn toward her without realizing it. If my mother had turned . . .
I ducked behind a display of long velvet shawls.
Rachel moved fast. She locked her hand around Visser One's wrist. Then, in a loud, nasal whine, she said, "I saw you buy that scarf!"
The guard hesitated. Visser One stiffened. She stared closely at Rachel, but Rachel had turned away.
"This woman is being arrested, and she didn't do anything! Lady! Lady! You sold her that scarf, now she's being arrested! What kind of a store is this?"
One thing we couldn't do: leave any Controller behind who could recognize us and wonder. Rachel was avoiding eye contact, hiding beneath her hat and bad hair. Hiding behind a false voice.
I hoped it was enough.
"It's ridiculous! This woman is being arrested and she paid for it! She paid too much, if you ask me, for that fabric. It's not cashmere, after all!"
102 I smothered a grin.
It was working. A crowd was gathering. The saleswoman was in it now, agreeing that Visser One had paid for the scarf.
«What is going on?» Jake wondered, confused.
It's hard to follow conversations when you're a fly. But of course we couldn't answer him.
Rachel moved out of the crowd and grabbed my arm.
"Let's get out of here."
"No one is watching -"
"Security cameras," she hissed. She nodded toward the ceiling. I saw the dark glass blister that hid a camera.
"Oh."
I followed Rachel toward a dressing room.
My first and probably last visit to a women's dressing room.
Rachel led me out a back door. Into a maintenance walkway, all cinder block and steel doors.
We reached the camping store before Visser One and Jake did. Cassie was waiting there.
She ran interference as Visser One was put through her paces buying climbing rope and pitons.
Rachel and I drifted around, pretending to shop. We were watching the others in the store. Watching those who were watching Visser One.
103 Jake had bluffed earlier, claiming that we'd spotted four human-Controllers on Visser One's tail.
That was no longer a lie. Within minutes we were confident that the true number was not four, but five.
"You wanted to make sure she was followed, Marco. She's being followed. And now we are setting up one heck of a shoot-out at the OK Corral," Rachel whispered. "You'd sure better know what you're doing."
"Yeah. I'd better."
104 19
She had ropes and pitons, gloves and boots.
She had a tail of human-Controllers behind her as she drove the rented Audi from the mall out of town, toward the distant mountains.
The OK Corral.
All of us were in the car with the exception of Tobias and Ax.
We were in roach morph, crawling beneath the driver's seat.
Fuzzy black carpet was like tall grass beneath my six legs. A long-forgotten, open roll of peppermint Lifesavers was a huge log, its diameter far longer than we were tall.
Way, way overhead, as high as clouds, was the steel tube and coiled spring underside of the
105 seat. Too far away to see more than huge, indistinct shadows were gigantic feet and ankles pressing on high-rise pedals.
She knew we were with her. She didn't know where we were, but she knew we were watching her.
"Why don't we merely take a helicopter to this Hork-Bajir colony?" she asked.
«You assume the colony is located somewhere high up?» Cassie took over the job of communication. We needed to put Visser One off her guard. Needed her to begin to see us as allies. Cassie was the one for that job.
"Obviously," Visser One snapped. "Am I a fool? Ropes? Pitons?"
«You would not find it from the air. It is in a narrow, hidden valley high in the mountains. Trees would block a simple human helicopter.» She paused. «Your troops, when they arrive, will need to cut their way in.»
"My troops?"
«We are not fools, either,» Cassie said. «You do not intend to merely arrest or discredit Visser Three. You intend to kill him. We both know that with his morphing ability he is far more powerful than you, with your unstable human host body.»
"I can deal with Visser Three."
«Can you? We have tried many times. And yet, he still lives.»
106 "Humility? From an Andalite?"
«Realism from an Andalite,» Cassie said.
Visser One barked out a laugh. "You're afraid of him."
«Tell her, "yes,"» I said privately to Cassie. «Tell her he's killed a lot of us.»
«Yes. We were far more numerous, once. Many of us have died fighting Visser Three.»
A lie, of course. But it sounded real enough. Visser One would latch on to the information. She would think we were fools for revealing it.
We wanted her to think us fools.
"Do you imagine I will be more gentle when I am in power, again?"
I started to tell Cassie what to say. But she was already there, ahead of me.
«No. We simply think you will be weaker,» Cassie said. «The disruption of command will work to our benefit. And in direct battle you will be easier to kill than Visser Three. Humans, Controllers or not, die easily.»
Again, it had the feel of honesty. The insult would make it seem honest.
And it had the added benefit of focusing my mother. . . Visser One ... on the danger of Visser Three. We were reminding her just how deadly Visser Three could be.
"And yet..." Visser One mused. "And yet, the
107 casualty reports from Earth are always weighted heavily toward Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. In fact. . . I am trying to recall when I have ever seen a report listing a human-Controller casualty."
My guts were ice.
We had made a mistake. We had made a terrible mistake.
«What do I say?» Cassie demanded.
«l . . . I . . .» My brain wouldn't work. The thoughts wouldn't form into any sort of order.
Visser One had just put her finger on our greatest secret.
«Say something» Rachel yelled.
«No, too late,» Jake interrupted. «Too late. Let it go. No choice.»
"Well, well, well," Visser One said.
She knew.
There was only one reason why a group of Andalite guerrilla fighters would inflict more casualties on Hork-Bajir than on humans: The Andalite guerillas weren't Andalites.
A human would spare a human life.
«She knows,» Jake said. «0r at least suspects^
«Yeah.»
«Marco . . .»
«Nothing changes,» I said harshly. «She was going down before. She's still going down.»
108 Not true. Before it had all been abstract. It had all been about the solution, the line from A to B.
Now it was about survival. No one could know the truth about us. It would bring our annihilation.
No one could know what we were, and live.
109 20
Visser One drove like a madwoman. The Audi tore around hairpin mountain curves at speeds that would have been high on a freeway.
The roll of peppermint Lifesavers had become a menace. With every wild turn or braking it rolled suddenly, a redwood log coming downhill at us.
«Has your mother always driven like this?» Rachel asked.
«My mother is not driving,» I said coldly. But she was. My mom had always been a wild driver. It used to make my dad crazy. This was the Yeerk tapping into the human host's brain.
«Maybe so,» I amended. No need to start a
110 fight with Rachel. «Maybe that is the way she used to drive.»
«Yeah? Now I know where you get your driving skills.»
Rachel, being nice. I laughed to myself. When Rachel started being nice it meant things were really bad.
Visser One took a hard right and the ride turned bumpy.
An understatement.
The carpet jumped beneath us. We used our roach legs as shock absorbers, but there was a lot of shock to absorb. Wild vibrations that translated to the roach mind as danger.
Suddenly, mercifully, the car stopped.
"I have followed your directions. Andalites," she said.
The final word was said with a half laugh.
«We must be at the Visitors' Center,» I said.
«Good,» Rachel said. «I'm carsick.»
«Unpack the items you purchased. Begin to walk along the main trail.»
"Visser Three's forces will be all over me in seconds!" she protested.
«No. They'll track you,» Jake said. «They won't move till he himself is here.»
"Tell that to the fool back at the mall!"
«He acted out of panic. He wasn't expecting you.»
111 Visser One got out of the car and slammed the door. We waited until enough time had passed for the Visser to grab her gear from the trunk, change into the hiking boots, scarf, and gloves and start up the trail.
«Let's go,» Jake said. «Rachel? You're first. Keep low.»
Rachel motored out from under the seat onto the back floor mat. She began demorphing immediately, growing, sliding, shifting to keep her mutating limbs from being caught in the tight space back there.
Mostly I saw her feet. They filled my vision. Bare, of course. We'd never learned to morph shoes.
Her head eventually rose above the seat back. "Okay," she said. "We're clear. For now."
«0kay. Morph and go.»
Rachel tried to roll down the window. But of course it was power, and Visser One had taken the keys. She cracked the door on the passenger side. She morphed to bald eagle and took off, racing to her appointed position.
If Tobias had not made it, Rachel would. If both made it, so much the better.
Cassie, Jake, and I spread out throughout the car and began to demorph. If we'd all stayed in one place and demorphed we'd have ended up as sardines.
Ill
112 I demorphed on the passenger side. My head rose from the gruesome mass of bug exoskeleton. I could see through the windshield. Really see. Like a human.
She'd chosen a parking space distant from the few other parked cars. Good and bad for us. No one would spot us on the way to their own car. But we'd have a long, open walk to the trailhead.
I looked around. Rachel was just clearing the nearest trees.
I spotted Visser One moving speedily toward the trail. She'd always kept in good shape, my mom. Although sailing had been her thing, not hiking.
Jake was in the driver's seat. "Okay. We go straight to bird morphs. The bad guys won't be far behind us."
"Or far ahead, either," I said, nodding toward the dwindling figure of Visser One.
"One at a time or we'll look like a bird-of-prey convention," Cassie said.
I began to morph to osprey. I was closest to the open door. A few minutes later I was all feathers and talons. I fluttered out through the door, landed on the gravel, and flapped into the air.
I wasn't ten feet up before I saw it: a long, black limousine. It was entering the parking lot.
No one goes camping or hiking in a limo.
113 «Visser Three!» I said. «Heads down. He's here!»
I continued flapping, flapping, fighting dead air, feeling conspicuous.
&nb
sp; Not that there weren't birds of prey in the forest. But Visser Three knew by now to look out for hawks and eagles.
The limo skidded to a stop, spraying gravel. Behind it, three big SUV's.
The limo window rolled down. I was maybe thirty feet up, forty feet downwind from the Audi.
A hand thrust out of the limo window. Osprey eyes saw it clearly. Saw what it was holding.
«Jake! Cassie!» I yelled.
TSEEEEEW!
The Dracon beam fired. The front of the Audi sizzled, fried, and disintegrated.
«NOOOO!» I cried.
TSEEEEEW!
Ka-BOOOM!
A fireball exploded from the Audi's gas tank. The entire car, what was left of it, erupted upward, spun halfway on its axis, and landed on the gravel.
It was a charred shell before it hit the ground.
114 21
« Jake! Cassie!»
No answer. Nothing. Silence. Silence but for the crackling of the fire.
«Rachel!» I yelled. «Jake and Cassie are ... I think . . .»
But Rachel was already out of thought-speak range.
Slam! Slam! Slam!
Doors opened and closed and the human-Controllers piled out of the SUV's. Boots hit gravel.
Chapman climbed out of the limo and joined the guys coming from the SUV's.
And then, last, came a human who was no human.
Visser Three in human morph.
115 He looked around, barely sparing a glance at the burning wreck of a car. A park ranger was running from the Visitors' Center.
The Visser jerked his head.
TSEEEEW!
The ranger sizzled and disappeared.
Then, I felt those cold eyes on me. At this distance his voice was faint. If I'd been human I'd never have heard my death sentence.
"The bird," he said. "Kill the bird."
TSEEEEW! TSEEEEW!
To my left! To my right!
The Dracon beams scorched the air on either side of me.
Two seconds for them to aim again. One, one thousand . . . Two, one thousand . . .
I jerked left.
TSEEEEEW! TSEEEEEW!
Misses, far to one side. And now I was farther away. The nearest tree was only fifteen feet away.
TSEEEEEW! TSEEEEEW!
Just in front of my face branches burst into flame.
I flared, lost speed, and dropped. I used the momentum of my fall to whip hard around the tree trunk and zoom wildly, inches off the pine needles.