The Warning

  "Shall I tell you who and what I am, Andalite? Shall I?"

  I didn't answer. I waited.

  "My Yeerk designation is Esplin-Nine-Four-Double-Six. Note the 'double six.' Do you know what it means?"

  «No.»

  "A 'double' designation means that I am a twin. That two Yeerks grew from the same grub.

  128 When there are twins, one is considered the prime, and one the lesser. I am the lesser. My brother, my twin, is the prime. To him go the best assignments, the best hosts, the rank, the power, the glory. And to me, only what I can take." He made a fist on the word "take." "In some cases, brothers can share. In some cases, twins can even become allies. But not with my brother. My brother is power mad. Or maybe just mad now. He left me nothing. He assigned me to a poor, unimportant human host. This Joe Bob Fenestre, a lowly programmer working in the bowels of a telephone company.

  "Well, that wasn't good enough. I wanted more. And if I couldn't have it as a Yeerk, I'd have it as a human. I ended up making an alliance with my host. We were two of a kind. Two losers in the shadow of our betters. I used Yeerk technical knowledge to make Fenestre rich. And in the process, I created Web Access America, which made me the greatest source of information on humans there was. I knew secrets my brother could only guess at."

  «You sift E-mail. You spy on chat rooms.» "You know human computer terminology," he said.

  I swallowed hard. I'd been careless. I had sounded "human." Bluff it out. «We Andalites

  130 are a small, hunted band on this planet. Knowledge is survivals

  He seemed satisfied with that.

  "I became an invaluable asset to the invasion. All by myself I had become a powerful human with vast information. But of course, my brother couldn't tolerate that. He had me declared a traitor. He cut me off from the Kan-drona. He would have killed me. For the crime of being as great as he, he'd have murdered me."

  Joe Bob Fenestre's eyes bored into me. And I felt a chill of premonition. See, right then I knew who this twin brother was. Who he had to be.

  «0h, my God,» Cassie whispered. She'd guessed, too.

  "Yes, only one twin can be great," Fenestre said bitterly. "Only one of us could be the mighty Visser Three."

  129

  le first encountered Visser Three within minutes of finding the Andalite prince, Elfangor.

  Visser Three showed up and murdered the helpless Elfangor. Since that time we have fought him many times. He is the only Yeerk in all the universe ever to have successfully taken over an Andalite body, long ago in another war on another planet. When he took the Andalite body as a host, he acquired the Andalite's ability to morph. He is the only morph-capable Yeerk.

  And now I understood why his brother, this Yeerk living in the head of Joe Bob Fenestre, would instruct his men to shoot at birds and any other animal they saw. Any one of them might be Visser Three in morph.

  131 "I gather, from your silence, that you know my brother," Fenestre said.

  «We have fought him,» I said simply.

  "And yet, you're still alive. Not many can say that. My compliments."

  «How do you survive without having access to the Yeerk pool? I see you have created a replica here in this room, but surely you haven't managed to create your own Kandrona to supply the vital Kandrona rays.»

  Fenestre nodded. "Well, well. So you know a Yeerk pool when you see one. And you know about the Kandrona." He shrugged. "I have found a way to stay alive without a Kandrona. That's not important. What's important is ... what now?"

  «He's lying,» Cassie whispered instantly. «0r at least he's not telling the whole truth. The Kandrona. He doesn't want to talk about that.»

  I nodded my tiger head. It probably looked funny, such a human gesture coming from the huge cat. «Your brother must know where you are. He could kill you anytime he wants. He could hit you from orbit and leave this place a big, smoky ruin.»

  "No, no, that would be too noisy. Some idiot human with a camcorder could manage to record it."

  «He could send in Hork-Bajir. They'd cut

  132 through your guards just like we did. Or he could come himself. If he wanted to kill you, he would. He could. He hasn't. So why not?»

  Fenestre smiled a wintry smile. "Clever, clever Andalites. So good with your computers and your magnificent Dome ships. You still think you're the lords of the galaxy, don't you? We spread from planet to planet and you keep falling back. And yet your arrogance is so unbelievable you never pause to consider that maybe you're not so clever, after all."

  «Cassie's right,» Marco chimed in. «He's weaseling. He's trying to distract you.»

  «Yeah, you're both right,» I said. Then to Fenestre I said, «lf you want to live, answer my questions. Answer me, and you'll live. Lie . . .» I let the threat hang in the air.

  Fenestre looked at me long and hard. "I suppose I'll have to rely on Andalite honor," he said in a mocking tone. "All right. My brother has not killed me because I have information he wants and needs. He doesn't want me dead, he wants me in his torture chamber aboard his Blade ship. You see, I have found a way to survive without the Kandrona. And Visser Three would give anything to know how."

  Fenestre lowered the Dracon beam he'd been pointing at Ax. "There's a way to process and refine Kandrona rays from another source. It can

  133 be made into an edible product. A food, so to speak, that I can consume with my human mouth and digest."

  I felt a cold chill. If that was true, there would be no stopping the Yeerks. Their reliance on Yeerk pools and Kandrona rays was one of their greatest weaknesses.

  «You're lying,» I said. «lf there was a way to keep Yeerks alive without Kandrona rays and Yeerk pools, that information would make you invulnerable, even to your brothers

  This time the wintry smile was even colder. If that's possible. "Oh, maybe not. For one thing, there is a long, involved process. But that's not the problem. The problem is the raw material. The raw material is my brother Yeerks. I must destroy and process and consume a Yeerk every three days to survive. I have become a cannibal."

  «Whoa,» Marco said.

  "My brother would use this process for himself. But, as you can imagine, it would never become popular around the Yeerk Empire."

  «You really are Visser Three's twin,» I said. I felt sick. Then I felt sicker. «How do you get the Yeerks?»

  He shrugged. "What do you think that silly Yeerk forum is about, that silly mix of fact and fiction? I control Web Access America. I know the identity of all the screen names. The chat room is

  134 full of different types: people who are actually Controllers, trying to throw suspicious humans offtrack; humans who have discovered our little invasion and are trying to rally opposition to us; and then, there's me. I spot the Controllers. I spot the humans who think they have found family members who are Yeerks. I monitor the real gung ho Yeerk-fighters who identify potential Controllers. I track down the screen names. I find the Yeerks. One every three days. Ten a month."

  «Cool by me,» Marco whispered. «Give the man a pat on the back, and let's get Ax and Rachel outta here.»

  I had the same feeling. Fenestre was a sickening creature, but as vile as he might be, he was wiping out a hundred or more Yeerks per year. So much the better.

  But then Cassie exploded. «How are you getting the Yeerks from the human hosts?!»

  Fenestre cocked an eyebrow at her. He seemed surprised. I saw a shadow of suspicion in his eyes. Cassie's question had not been whispered. It had been shouted angrily.

  Why, he was asking himself, would an An-dalite care?

  "How am I getting the Yeerks from their human hosts?" His face was dark. His eyes empty. "How do you think I get them?"

  135 Cassie let loose a growl and was racing toward Fenestre before I could say a word. He raised his Dracon beam. I leaped through the air.

  I landed, paws outstretched but claws retracted, on Cassie. I knocked her wolf body sprawling across the floor.

  «What are y
ou doing?!» she yelled.

  «We aren't here to annihilate this guy,» I said. «l told him we wouldn't.»

  «Do you know what he's doing? Do you under-stand?» Cassie cried.

  «l know. I know. I KNOW!» I screamed in frustration. «But I told him he was safe. I promised. Besides . . .»

  «No! Don't say it, Jake. If you say that I won't

  136 be able to deal with you anymore. So don't say it.»

  I felt like she'd punched me. In my own, real face. What had I been about to say? Was I really going to say it was okay for this creature to go on doing what he did, as long as he got the Yeerks?

  Was I going to say that? Me?

  «l wasn't going to say what you think,» I said lamely.

  Cassie didn't answer. She's good at spotting lies. Too good.

  «!...! don't think . . .» I stammered.

  «That kid, Gump. That kid who was worried about his dad,» Cassie said. «That lonely little kid. That's who this monster goes after. Jake. Not some abstract person with no face and no name. He'll wait until Gump does something stupid. Till he confesses his fears to his Controller father, and his father makes him a Controller, too. Then Fenestre will go after them.»

  «What do you expect me to do?» I asked her. «You want to get rid of this man because he's evil? Do you want to do it yourself, Cassie?»

  «You . . . your morph would do It better,» she said.

  «You want me to get rid of him for you?» I asked. «That's what you want?»

  Fenestre just stood there, waiting, as a wolf and a tiger bristled, face-to-face. He was trying

  137 to figure something out. But I could see from his eyes that the truth had not come to him, yet.

  I backed away from Cassie. I turned back to Fenestre. «My friend has lost friends in battle against your people. She is emotional.»

  He nodded, unimpressed. "We've all lost friends in this unpleasantness."

  «Release my two friends,» I said. «We'll let you live. We'll walk away. As long as you are in this house, we won't harm you. But I'll tell you so you'll know: If we ever catch up with you in the outside world, that protection will not exist.»

  It was a stupid little threat. I said it to make myself feel better.

  Ax and Rachel were released. The instant Fenestre turned off the bio-stasis fields, Ax continued to morph back into his normal Andalite shape.

  I stared hard at Rachel. Was she breathing? Yes!

  Was there still time to get her back into her own body?

  «Rachel! Can you hear me?»

  «Huh? What? Oh, man! What am I doing here?»

  «Rachel, listen to me. Start demorphing. Right now.»

  137

  «There's some guy! Who's that guy?» she asked, glaring at Fenestre with eagle's eyes.

  138 «Rachel, for once, don't argue. Forget the guy, we're getting out of here. Demorph! Do it! Marco. Get Rachel. Carry her out of here.»

  «l'm not letting him carry me!»

  But she was too weak to do much, so Marco went over and lifted her gently in his massive gorilla hands.

  "Perhaps we'll meet again," Fenestre said cockily as we backed away.

  I said nothing. What was there to say? I was letting a monster live. I was letting a killer go free.

  By the time we hit the stairs Rachel was de-morphing. Ax was almost fully Andalite. He still had two bird-shot pellets in his body, but they weren't enough to harm him.

  Tobias flew, as well as he could, overhead. We stumbled and trotted down the stairs, through the wreckage of the house and outside into the fenced, defended yard.

  By the time we reached the trees, Rachel was Rachel again. We all demorphed, and soon we were five tired, wary kids and one Andalite hidden in the deep shadows of the trees.

  We could still see the house. Fenestre's billionaire mansion.

  "What happened in there?" Rachel demanded. "Someone ripped that place. Was there

  140 some big fight and I missed it? Oh, man! I can't believe I missed a big fight. So what happened?"

  "Someone will tell you later," I said shortly.

  "Was the guy a Controller or not?" Rachel demanded. "Was he a good guy or a bad guy?"

  I laughed a little. My eyes locked with Cassie's and then we both looked away, unwilling to make contact. "Rachel, I don't even know which /am anymore."

  139

  J. guess someone eventually told Rachel and Ax what had happened. It wasn't me.

  I got home and went up to my room and just stared at nothing for a long time. My mom called me to dinner and I mumbled my way through.

  And then I went out in the backyard and sat on my rusted-out old swing set from when I was four and I stared at the sky as it turned dark. The stars came out and man, I hated them. They weren't beautiful, they were deadly. It was from the stars that all my problems had come.

  My mom came out after a while. She pretended like she was checking to see if the grass needed watering. But of course she was checking on me.

  141 "Whatcha doing out here? Thinking great thoughts?"

  "Nah. Just hanging."

  She locked her arms over her chest and looked up at the sky like I was doing. "It's a beautiful night. Look at the stars."

  "Yeah."

  "Is anything bothering you, Jake?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, if anything was bothering you, you could probably tell me without my embarrassing you too much."

  "I know, Mom. It's nothing."

  She sighed. "Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. You've turned into a real teenager. Mom's too out of it to talk to."

  She didn't say it in a mean way. More like a joke.

  I made a smile for her. "That must be it," I said. "It must be that whole teenage thing."

  She shrugged. "You know, when I was your age and feeling upset, my mother, your gram, would always just say, 'You don't know what unhappy is, you're just a kid.' Like anything a kid would feel would be less difficult or painful than what an adult would feel."

  "That's probably true," I said, not really listening.

  "No, it isn't," my mother said firmly. "In a lot

  142 of ways being a kid is worse than being an adult. You have the same things to deal with: friends, temptations, love and hate, and all that. Only you don't have the two great weapons that adults have to help them."

  I cocked an eye at her. "What two great weapons?"

  "Well, the first is experience. Experience maybe doesn't make you smarter, but it means you can think, 'Hey, I had something like this happen once before, and I survived.'"

  "Okay, I'll ask: What's the second great weapon?"

  She looked right at me. "You are, Jake. Because as your mom, I can look at you and think, 'Oh, man, as bad as I feel right now, as bad as things may be, at least it isn't as bad as being a teenager.'"

  I laughed. It was a tired, weak laugh, but it was something.

  "You know, X-Files is on. You used to love that show."

  The next day at school I was still feeling bad. It's nice that my mom and dad care about me. It's nice that they sympathize. But they don't understand, and they can't understand because for them everything is about my age.

  How can they help me make life-and-death

  143 decisions? How can they help me keep making those decisions when I've made mistakes?

  How can they help me make decisions no human being can ever make correctly - like deciding what to do with Fenestre?

  I looked around for Cassie. We'd left it on pretty bad terms. But after a while I realized she wasn't there. Wasn't in school.

  I suddenly knew where she was.

  I made my way to the roof of the school building, cursing under my breath because I knew I was going to get busted for skipping second period. Then I morphed to my falcon and flew away.

  I wasted some time going to Gump's house, which was stupid. Cassie would have waited till he was away from the house. So I searched around for the nearest elementary school and headed the
re.

  The kids were at recess. One little boy was way off by himself at the far end of the playfield. There was a dog with him. At least, the average person walking by would think it was a dog. I knew it was a wolf.

  As I watched, the little boy patted the wolf and then walked back to his classmates.

  The wolf watched him go, then jumped the fence and faded toward some nearby trees.

  «Cassie,» I said.

  143

  She looked up, surprised. I landed on the

  144 ground and began to demorph. She resumed her human shape, too.

  "That was Gump, I guess."

  "Yeah."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I told him I was a magic, talking wolf. He didn't exactly buy that. I guess by his age they're pretty much past the point where they believe in magic."

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  "I told him not to go to that chat room again. I told him . . ." Her lip quivered suddenly. "I told him not to talk to his father about Yeerks. Told him not to . . ." Her voice was strangled. She gritted her teeth and squeezed out the last few words. "I told that little boy not to trust his father."

  There were tears running down her face. I guess they were running down my face, too. One of the things Cassie and I share is that we trust our parents, unlike some people, I guess.

  "What a terrible thing for me to do," Cassie said. "What a filthy, disgusting thing for me to do."

  "It was the best you could do," I said. "It was all you could do. I guess it's hard to fight evil without doing some along the way." Maybe there was a little "I told you so" in my voice.

  Cassie just walked away. I let her go. Not

  145 everything can be settled. Not everything can be smoothed over.

  A few days later they showed a fire on the TV news. It was a very big story because it was this huge mansion.

  The mansion belonged to billionaire Joe Bob Fenestre. Fenestre was safe. No one was hurt.

  I remembered warning him that he was safe only as long as he stayed in that house. Now it was no longer possible for him to stay in the house.

  Did the mansion burn down on its own? Or did someone start the fire that deprived that evil creature of sanctuary?

  If someone set the fire, there was a long list of suspects. Visser Three. Cassie. One of the others.