The Stranger

  de fiance. "You're using me. You're using my friends" affection for me as a tool. And I'm not going for it." "Let's think this over a little first, Tobias," Cassie pleaded. "I mean, just because we're up set. dis.th decision is for the whole human race. Do you understand that? He's talking about humanity becoming extinct." "Tobias, you personally have a lot to lose," jake reminded him. "If we say no, you're right back in your hawk body." "So we have two votes no, Tobias and Rachel, one vote yes from Cassie," Marco said. But I hadn't voted. Marco had just assumed. . . . And he was right, I realized with a sick churning in my stomach. Marco was right about me. I had to vote no. If Tobias was ready to stay in the fight, with all he had to lose, I couldn't do less. "What this character wants us to do is run away," I said. "He wants us to abandon our people and our planet just to save ourselves and the people we care about personally." Tobias met my gaze. There appeared a faint flicker of his old, human smile. less-than This is a decision for humanseagreater-than Ax said. less-than like fight the Yeerks. I follow Prince Jake. But I don't trust this Ellimist, however great his power. greater-than "Guys, I know how you feel," Cassie said, "but think about this. We may not even get out of this Yeerk pool alive. And if we die, then what chance do humans have against the Yeerks? And anyway, he says that humans will lose. Isn't it better to save some humans, rather than losing everyone?" Jake and Marco had still not voted. I noticed that they were looking back toward the building we had come from. And past the building, to what looked like a tall, circular column rising straight up to the rock ceiling of the cavern. The column was a mix of steel and clear glass. Inside the column was a human-Controller, seemingly frozen in mid-air. She looked like she had been falling down the long tube. Or else flying up it. A dropshaft! We had used one aboard the Yeerk mother ship. It was a sort of elevator that worked on some invisible force to let you fall safely from one level to another. But did it go up, as well as down? That was the question. Was the human-Controller in the shaft fall ing or rising? Jake cocked an eyebrow at me. He looked back to the column, making sure I had noticed it. I squinted closely at the frozen Controller. She had shoulder-length hair. If she were falling, it should have been swept upward. It was down around her neck. "Mr. Ellimist," Marco said, "thanks for your offer. But I don't think so. I don't think I want to be in your zoo. And I don't like being muscled like this. I'm glad you like Earth, but we'll take care of it the best way we can." That made it four against. Me, Marco, Tobias, and Ax. I counted Ax, even if he said it wasn't up to him. Cassie was alone in leaning in favor of the El limist offer. "You all know I take care of lots of sick animals. They are always afraid of me, even though

  I am trying to help them. Are we being brave saying no? Or are we just being foolish, resisting someone who is trying to save us?" What she said made me think. With a shock, I pictured nature films I had seen. I remembered one that showed environmentalists attempting to capture some tigers. They were trying to move the tigers to a game preserve where they would be safe. Tigers are almost extinct, and the hu mans were trying to save a few. But the tigers had resisted. They had growled and fought and avoided the capture nets. Was that us? were we animals on the edge of extinction, resisting the being who'd come to save us? I wondered if I should change my vote. Save myself. Save my family. What would they say, if they had a vote? My mom? She would never risk the lives of her children. She would vote yes. And my dad? If we were all magically trans ported to a safe place together, and I had to explain what I had done? That I had voted to save all of us and give up the fight? What would he think of that decision? "You know what bothers me?" I heard Jake tell the Ellimist. "You say the human race will lose to the Yeerks. But I don't believe you can tell the future. See, you don't know how we're going to vote. If you did, you wouldn't bother to be here, would you?" He looked around at each of us. Cassie smiled sadly. "If you guys vote to stay, I will, too." Jake reached out and took her hand. "Mr. Ellimist, I guess you have your an

  - his was -- swer." Instantly, we were back in our roach bodies. IF YOU LIVE, I WILL ASK ONCE

  M. IF YOU LIVE. The red whip of the Taxxon's tongue held me glued down, helpless! less-than Morph! Morph ouffgreater-than Jake yelled in my head. I didn't need to be told twice. Through the fear, I focused my mind on my own human body. Suddenly all around me went dark. less-than We're inside the Taxxonffgreater-than I yelled. less-than Focus on morphingffgreater-than Jake yelled. less-than We are busting out of here.greater-than A gush of stinging liquid, like a tidal wave, washed me from the sticky tongue. I tumbled blind and terrified through hot, viscous goo. But at the same time I could feel that I was growing. My roach antennae brushed against something very close to me. Another cockroach. But bigger than it should have been. less-than Demorphingffgreater-than Cassie yelled. less-than Right with yeagreater-than I yelled back. Everything was closing in around me. The bodies of the others were shoved against mine as we all grew out of our roach morphs. I felt the gut of the Taxxon spasming as it tried to deal with this deadly growing meal. My human lungs were growing back, and as they grew they began to need air. I was suffocating! My body was not as durable as the roach form. less-than Airffgreater-than I heard Marco cry. less-than like can't breathe. greater-than less-than Just keep morphingeagreater-than Jake said. less-than We'll try and pop this worm open. greater-than less-than like have my tail ageagreater-than Ax said. less-than Should I

  - greater-than less-than YESFFGREATER-THAN Jake said. less-than Do xffgreater-than The darkness around us split open suddenly. I caught a glimpse of Ax's scythe-like Andalite tail slicing the Taxxon open from the inside. Air! Air rushed in. Stinking, foul, vile air, but air. We exploded from the inside of the Taxxon, wrapped in its guts, covered with green-blue slime. We were not fully human yet, still some awful melding of human and bug, but we were finish ing our demorphing as fast as we ever had. Air! I sucked it into my still-forming lungs. The Taxxon lay ruined and reeking all around us. The room full of human-Controllers eating dinner was no longer frozen by the Ellimist. Now they were frozen by sheer disbelief. "Let's bail!" I yelled. "Before they can think about it." We ran. Slipping and slithering through the Taxxon's guts, still forming the last of our fingers and toes, we tore out of there. "Get them!" a human voice yelled. "Get them, you fools, or Visser Three will chew your bones!" Suddenly, with a roar, the human-C ontrollers surged up out of their chairs. A Hork-Bajir near the door moved swiftly

  to cut us off. Ax swung his tail with blinding speed. It hit the Hork-Bajir in his shoulder. "Head for the dropshaft!" Marco cried as he led the way from the room. "Everyone but Ax, if you can morph again, do it!" Jake yelled as we raced for the dropshaft. "We need firepower!" I didn't need to be told. The only one of us who had any kind of natural ability to fight was Ax. I was already trying to focus my mind on the bear that I had made a part of me. Part of me knew it was foolish. I should morph the elephant, or a wolf. I knew both of those morphs, I could handle them. But I also knew the elephant might not fit in the dropshaft. And I wanted power. "Whumpf!" Something hit me and I went sprawling across the dirt. A man stood over me. A grown man! He had slammed into me. For some reason, this outraged me. What kind of a creep would hit a girl half his size? Of course I knew the answer. I knew the man was not really a man at all, but a Controller. The Yeerk in his head didn't know or care about chivalry. The man bent over me and began to put his hands around my throat. Suddenly, he only had one hand. "Aaarrrgghhh!" he cried, falling back. "Thanks, Ax," I said. less-than We are trappedeagreater-than he said. I looked past him. The others had all reached the dropshaft, a hundred feet away. Between the two of us and them was a small army of human- Controllers and Hork-Bajir. As I watched, Marco, and then Cassie, were swept up the dropshaft. Only Jake was still standing there. He looked back at us with an ex pression of horror. "Jake, get OUT of here!" I screamed. "We'll be okay!" Several of the Controllers began closing in on Jake. But most of them only had eyes for Ax. They could see that he was an Andalite

  - the deadly enemy of all Yeerks
. I don't know what they thought I was, still dripping with Taxxon goo. Suddenly, a pair of Hork-Bajir warriors rushed at us. Their bladed arms slashed the air. They came at us like a pair of chainsaws on high speed. Ax struck! But the Hork-Bajir were too fast. less-than Aaaarrrhhffgreater-than There was a deep gash down Ax's flank. He struck again and again, his scorpion tail almost invisible. The human-Controllers stayed prudently back, as much afraid of getting sliced and diced by the angry Hork-Bajir as by Ax. But more Hork-Bajir were rushing up, and Ax was los ing ground. Then ... I realized I was no longer afraid. A deep confidence had welled up inside of me. Utter confidence. Utter fearlessness. I realized I was no longer standing erect. I was on all fours. When I looked down I expected to see my two hands splayed on the dirt. Instead I saw massive paws. Coarse, dark brown fur. Black claws, each like the point of a pickax. I had become the bear. It was his confidence I felt. It was his total lack of fear. I was an animal that had never, in a thousand generations of grizzly bears, known an instant of real fear. Suddenly, I felt a terrible pain in my shoulder. One of the Hork-Bajir had slashed me. I glared with nearsighted eyes and saw nothing but a tall blur. I had never morphed the bear before. I had never learned to control its brain, its instincts. The bear mind was focused completely on one basic fact

  - it had been challenged. There was exactly one response to being chal lenged. Attack! "Grrooowwwrrrr!" I roared. I charged the Hork-Bajir. He cut me again. It didn't matter. I barreled into him, eight hundred pounds of very angry grizzly. The power! I was a truck doing seventy miles an hour! I was a tank! I was the largest carnivore on land and nothing, NOTHING challenged me and survived! I could barely see the Hork-Bajir through the bear's weak eyes, but I smelled him and felt him, and I swung my massive paw and hit him full

  in the chest. I struck him with a blow that would have knocked a train off its tracks. The Hork-Bajir went flying. More came. More discovered why part of the Latin name for the grizzly species is horribilis. I barely remember what happened next. I gave myself up to the bear's rage. Its anger and my own became one. All the tension within me, all the uncertainty, all the doubts were swept away as I gave myself up to the bear's violence. I remember that at some point, Jake got into his tiger morph and joined the fight. And I have flashing images from my memory of terrible de struction. Of ripping claws and crushing jaws. But the next thing I clearly remember is flying up the long dropshaft, while Jake's voice in my head kept saying, less-than Rachel, morph out. Morph out. You're out of control! You are OUT of control! Morphffgreater-than I was clawing wildly at the air, trying to kill the tiger that was suspended above me in the dropshaft. Trying to kill Jake. I felt as if I had snapped awake from a dream. Slowly, as we rose toward the surface, I left the bear and returned to myself. I he soaring rush up the dropshaft seemed to last forever. The dropshaft entered solid rock, and as I rose, I shed the last of my bear form. I felt the return of my human reason. But I was still confused and disconnected from what was going on. Then, quite suddenly, I was at the top of the dropshaft. I stepped off onto solid concrete. The others were all there. Ax was trying to morph into his human body, but he was having trouble. Mor- phing is exhausting. Morphing rapidly from one form to the next more than once makes you feel like you want to just crawl in a corner and die. I knew how he felt. I stumbled from sheer weariness as I stepped onto the cement floor. It was dark, with just enough faint light to see the faces around me. "Careful," Cassie said, taking my arm. "We're okay. We're safe. We're in the base of the water tower behind the school." "Gotta get out of here. Yeerks will be watch ing." "Yeah, they were," Marco said. He jerked his head over to the corner where two human- Controllers lay unconscious. "Let's get out of here," Jake said. "You okay, Rachel?" "Yeah. Tired is all. I ... I never morphed the bear before. Didn't have time to get control. Sorry." "It's okay, Rachel. That grizzly got us all out of there. But get some rest, huh?" "Yeah. Rest would be nice." Somehow I made it home. I crawled into my bed and fell instantly asleep. I didn't wake up till the next morning when my alarm went off. I was groggy, barely able to read the numbers on my clock. "Rachel? Are you up?" my mom called through the door. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm up," I said. I crawled out of bed and staggered toward the bathroom. Jordan was in the bathroom we share. I went out into the hall toward my mother's bath room. She was already up and dressed in a tan busi ness suit. She was adjusting her nylons. "You don't look too good," she said, giving me a side ways look. "Uh," I said. "Can I use your shower?" "You're wearing the clothes you came home in last night," she said accusingly. "You came wandering in at nine-thirty, barefoot and wearing your leotard. That's what you're still wearing." I stared stupidly down at myself. Yes, I was wearing my morphing outfit. "Urn ... my, urn, I left my shoes over at Cassie's. I was showing her some gymnastics stuff. Can I use your shower

  or not?" "Coming home barefoot and falling asleep without even having dinner," my mom said, and shook her head. "Rachel, if you are having some problems or something, I want you to talk to me." I did the wrong thing: I suddenly burst out laughing. "Problems? No, why would I have any problems?" I giggled, and wiped the sleep from my eyes, and giggled some more. My mom sighed. "I have an early court ap pearance this morning," she said. "The Hallinan case. But I want you to stay home tonight. I think you and I need to have a little talk. I know your father has thrown a big problem into your lap. I know this decision is very difficult for you." "Can I use your shower or not?" I sighed, no longer giggling. "Go ahead. Make sure Sara gets on the bus okay." I closed the bathroom door behind me and fled to the sanctuary of steaming hot water. It started coming back to me then. All of it. Exploding out of the Taxxon's stomach. The El- limist's offer. The sight of Tobias, back for too brief a time in his own body. Human again. And the battle ... a rampaging, enraged bear. A bear that was me. I shuddered. I was running out of hot water. "Rachel? What did you do, fall in?" It was Jor dan, outside the bathroom door. "Jordan? Make sure Sara gets off to school, okay?" I called out. "I'm running a little late. You go ahead, too." I skipped school that day for the first time in my life. I lay around the house and watched day time trash TV. I flipped channels back and forth, between one bunch of messed-up people and another bunch of even more messed-up people. It was nice, watching other people with prob lems. Their problems all seemed easy compared to mine. But over the electronic pictures of angry people and placating hosts, other images appeared. A Taxxon, split open like a torn bag of garbage. The frozen, silent screams of involuntary hosts in their cages. And through all the television noise, I could still hear other voices. The Ellimist's voice in my head. We can save a small sample of the human race. And Jake's voice. You are out of control! And my father. To another city. Another state. I tried not to even think about everything that had happened the day before. I mean, it was so ridiculous. I lived in two completely different worlds. One world was filled by my family, school, gymnastics classes, shopping, listening to mu sic, watching TV . . disnormal stuff. But then I had this whole other life. A life where I wasn't just Jordan and Sara's big sister, and my mom's firs t child, and a teacher's pet, and a gymnastics student who was weak on the balance beam. In my other life I was ... a warrior. I risked my life. I fought in deadly nightmare battles against terrible odds. I became so much more than just a kid. Noon rolled around and I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. I turned on the TV in the kitchen while I cooked. And there was my dad on the noon news. He was doing a remote

  - a story from outside the studio. Some stupid event at the convention center. I muted the sound and just watched the pic ture. I threw my sandwich in the trash. "What am I supposed to do?!" I yelled suddenly, shocking myself. "What am I supposed

  to do!" My voice sounded flat and dead in the silence of the kitchen. I felt foolish. It wasn't like me

  to get all emotional. I stood there, just staring at the cupboards. The Ellimist. . . the bear ... my father. . . . What was I supposed to do? Leave my mom and sisters? Leave my dad? Leave my friends? Leave the whole messed-up planet? I imagined going to se
e my father down at the convention center. "Dad? I have this problem." And he would put his arm around me and fluff my hair the way he always did and say, "Come on, kid. Don't be so serious." I turned the TV sound back on. My dad was grinning at something. He was doing some chatter with the anchorpeople back at the station. "... be leaving us soon, and we're all sorry to hear that. But I know it will be a great opportu nity for you." "Yes, it will," my father said. "Although I will really miss all the