Unless …
Unless she refused to return to oblivion.
It occurred to me then, for the first time, that Aldrea could live, through me, if I permitted it.
No! No, this wasn’t up to me. Was it?
She was alive, now. Alive in a way. She spoke and thought and felt and experienced and even learned. She was alive, but only by my grace.
Oh, my God. Was it my decision to make? Would I have to tell her when the time had come to return to nothingness?
Was I going to be the one to kill Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan?
The realization took my breath away. Aldrea felt my emotions.
<What is the matter?> she asked.
I couldn’t answer. What could I say? If I’d realized before I accepted the Ixcila I’d never have agreed to go along. It was impossible. It was immoral. Aldrea was alive, and if she died again, if she ceased to exist, it would come from my own selfishness.
There it was, I thought, the fatal weakness that had drawn Aldrea’s Ixcila to me. At some subrational, instinctive level, Aldrea’s spirit had sensed the weakness in me. She had known that I could not, would not, demand her death.
Tobias came swooping past. <Aldrea, how much further in this direction?> he asked.
<Another quarter mile, no more,> she said. <There is a place where the valley grows so narrow that the trees reach across it and touch each other.>
<Not anymore there isn’t,> Tobias said. Then, to Jake, he said, <Trouble ahead, fearless leader.>
<What’s up?>
<You’ll see for yourself in a few minutes,> Tobias said grimly. <Just keep your heads down.>
ALDREA
Hearts in my throat I raced through the trees. All familiar, a path I had traveled a hundred times, a thousand, with Dak beside me, with Seerow hanging onto my belly as we moved.
Home. It was just ahead. Home.
And somehow, somehow, he would be there, Dak, strong, smiling, holding his arms open for me.
My son, my little one, my Seerow, he would be there in his nest, waiting, smiling happily to see his mother.
Impossible. I knew. I was not insane. I knew. And yet, the hope … irrational hope. An emotion not touched by all that I thought I knew.
Home!
I swung faster and faster, leaving the others behind, with only the hawk for company, now.
I stopped. A clearing where there couldn’t be a clearing. An open space between the branches ahead. Sky rather than leaves.
No. It couldn’t be. I would die rather than see it. No.
I crept forward and now the others caught up. They stayed back, cautious, knowing something terrible had happened.
At last I did not need to go closer. I saw. A hundred trees, gone. The earth was scarred, bare. A huge, open space, naked beneath the sun.
The Yeerks had destroyed most of the valley’s end. It had been dammed up. A muddy gray sludge filled a crudely constructed lake. Tree trunks formed the sides. Bisected branches formed the piers that extended out into the lake.
Only it was not a lake.
My home, my valley’s end where the branches reached across the chasm to touch, was a Yeerk pool.
The others caught up to me. We all stood amid the high branches and gazed down at the devastation. The humans did not understand, of course, not really. This was my home. Not from decades ago, but from just the other day. Just the other day I left my husband and my son there. Just the other day they were alive.
<I’m sorry, Aldrea,> Cassie said.
It was true. I was dead. I saw, I heard, I touched and felt, and yet, I was dead.
This life was no life at all. This life was an illusion created by the Arn. My life was Dak. My life was Seerow. Everyone who had made up my life with theirs was gone.
I looked for any last clue to what had been. These had been trees I knew. Trees that had personalities, at least to me. They didn’t have the near-sentience of some Andalite tree species, but they were individuals nevertheless.
Stoola, Nawin, Siff trees, all gone, most burned away by Dracon blasts. Those that remained had been used to form the dam. Four of them laid lengthwise, stacked, then buttressed by saplings.
Behind the dam a billion gallons of the sludge Yeerks love. I knew Yeerk pools. I had spent my youth on the Yeerk home world with my parents. This had to be one of the largest Yeerk pools in existence. It might be home to ten thousand Yeerks, even more.
Then I spotted something I knew. Barely visible from this range. A minuscule patch where the bark had been cut away. Nothing unusual: where there are Hork-Bajir, there is scarred bark.
<Friend hawk,> I called. <I understand your sight is very powerful.>
<Better than human,> Tobias answered. <Better than Andalite or Hork-Bajir, too.>
I told him where to look. And he described what I’d known he would see: The wood where the bark had been scraped away was cut with symbolic branches entwined. A bit of Hork-Bajir graffiti. A love letter.
<The Hork-Bajir symbol for undying love,> Toby told the others. <It sounds as if it contains the Andalite letters “A” and “D,” as well.>
<The weapons will be there,> I said firmly. <Inside that tree. It has a hollow base. Dak and our fellow fighters used it as a hideout. There is a chamber inside, all smooth wood, silent and dark. The chamber is forty feet, almost round. Large enough to conceal a small transport ship. We cut a wide entry, disguised, grown over with new bark after each use.>
<You said you were not sure where the weapons are,> the Andalite said.
<I said I knew where we had most likely hidden them. That is the place.>
<It is part of the dam. It will be heavily guarded. Seven of us? It would be suicide, and for what? To learn that you made a mistake?>
<We mess with that tree,> Marco said, <the whole dam may come crashing down.>
<That’s what she wants,> Rachel said. <Revenge.>
I said nothing.
<The entry you talked about, can you get it to open again?> Jake asked.
<Yes. It will still work. It was precisely constructed. And the water pressure will have kept it shut.>
<Water pressure?>
<Yes. The opening is on the far side of the tree. It is beneath the surface of the Yeerk pool.>
It was not an easy plan to work out. We needed to get into the Yeerk pool itself. We needed to be able to function underwater. Aldrea needed to be in Hork-Bajir morph in order to open the tree.
Then, if she opened it, we needed to be able to get inside, enter the ship, and figure out how to fly it out of the middle of a log a hundred feet in diameter.
The plan we hatched was pure insanity. I knew this, not because Marco pronounced it insane, he thinks everything is insane. But I knew we were in trouble when Aldrea said it was insane.
“You have a better plan?” Rachel demanded. “Because we’re all ears, here.”
“What you are proposing is suicide!” Aldrea argued, speaking through me.
Marco laughed. “You’ve got my vote.”
“We need a whale,” Jake said. He looked at me, at Rachel.
“I’ll do it,” Rachel said. “Hey, it’ll be —”
“No,” I interrupted. “A sperm whale has a very narrow mouth. And I’m better at controlling a morph. Faster.”
Rachel argued. Jake hung his head. He’d known it had to be me. I snuck my hand into his and he squeezed it briefly.
“This is not how morphing powers are used,” Aldrea said. “Let’s take our time, raid the Yeerks, take weapons, perhaps capture some Hork-Bajir and starve the Yeerks out of them, then, when we have an army —”
<You and Dak Hamee, all over again?> Ax said.
“I want this attack to succeed!” Aldrea shouted. “I don’t want a wasted, futile effort. You humans are just children! What do you know about fighting the Yeerks?”
“They know quite a bit, Great-grandmother,” Toby said.
Jake held up his hand, cutting off debate. “The Chee c
an’t cover for us forever. We need to get this done and get out of here. Aldrea, yes, it’s crazy. But we’ve been doing ‘crazy’ since Ax’s brother showed up.”
There was a vote. Aldrea pleaded with me to vote against.
<I trust Jake,> I said. <If he thinks we can do it, we can do it.>
That’s what I told her. What I felt was a whole different story.
<Cassie, don’t be stupid,> Aldrea urged. <It is you who will die. The others will survive, but you will be the target.>
<I know.>
<If your timing is off by a few seconds … too much speed … too much mass too early … Cassie, you won’t just kill yourself, I am in here, too! If you are killed … I won’t have the option of returning to a bottle and awaiting some new chance at life.>
<I know that,> I said.
She was still arguing as I morphed to osprey. Still arguing as the others all morphed to flea or fly, all as small as they could get. Only Toby would not be coming along.
Once I was completely osprey, I picked the insects up, one by one. They crouched inside my beak. Not roomy or pleasant maybe, but safe enough.
I took to the air, released my grip on a high branch and floated out over the valley, out into the Hork-Bajir night. The narrow valley funneled heat upward, an almost continuous thermal that made flying easy. I turned in a spiral, flapped, rested, flapped again, higher and higher.
I flew up till I could see the barren lands beyond the chasm. There the thermal failed, dissipated by horizontal winds. I was as high as I could go.
<That’s it, boys, girls, and etcetera,> I said. <I can see the Yeerk pool. The dam is brightly lit. There’s a Bug fighter more or less hovering at the far end. Hork-Bajir are patrolling the dam, walking along the top. Both banks of the pool. They have guards everywhere. So. You guys need anything before I start?>
I was trying hard to sound nonchalant. I was scared to death. I was so far up, but not far enough.
<I could use a soda,> Marco said.
<We’re not the problem, Cassie,> Jake said. <Just don’t open your mouth and we’ll be okay. We’ll start demorphing as soon as there’s room.>
<Okay.>
I took a deep breath. I picked my aiming point: near the dam, but not too near. I didn’t want to hit wood. I didn’t want to hit as a full-fledged whale, either. A whale at that speed would be crushed by the impact.
Speed. It was all a question of speed.
I began to demorph.
<It can’t be done!> Aldrea warned.
<Yes, it can,> I said. <I can do it. Now please, shut up. I need to focus.>
I began to demorph. My talons became pudgy and grew into toes. My feathers melted together like wax under a blowtorch.
My face flattened, my beak softened into lips. My sensitive human tongue could feel the five insects inside my mouth.
Don’t open your mouth, I reminded myself. But that was only my secondary worry. That part was easy.
The hard part was keeping my wings.
I fell. Down and down through the night. Down and down toward the bright Yeerk pool below. Down toward the still-oblivious sentries who could burn me out of the air.
I fell, more and more human. But my wings, my osprey wings, I kept.
Morphing is never logical or rational. Things don’t happen in a neat, predictable sequence. No one can ever be sure how it will happen. But I could, with some part of my mind I couldn’t even feel, some part of my brain with which I could not even communicate, shape the way the morphing happened.
Ax says I have a talent. A gift. It wasn’t my doing, and I don’t know where it came from or why I have it. But, as I fell and demorphed and fell, my human body, my short, pudgy human body had wings that grew and grew and spread wider than osprey wings can spread.
I couldn’t flap them or even turn the edges or control a single feather, but I could hold them stiff, and as I fell, I fell … slowly.
<You’re doing it!> Aldrea cried. <Impossible!>
I fell slowly, reusing the accelerating pull of gravity. And then, only a hundred feet above the Yeerk pool, I began to morph to whale.
My feet twined together, like fast-acting ivy, or spaghetti twirled on a fork. They melted, and fused and my flesh grew thicker, fatter.
And still, I kept the wings.
Now I was within visual range of the Hork-Bajir guards. Now they could shoot at me, any moment, if only they looked up. One head raised to look at the stars and I would be —
Tseeeeeew!
A red beam appeared five feet from my face, then disappeared.
<Let go! Fall!> Aldrea cried.
<No! It’s too early!>
<Jake, they’re shooting!> I reported.
<Are we close enough?>
<I don’t know!> I cried. <No. No, we’re not.>
<Your call, Cassie. I trust you.>
Tseeeeew!
A second shot, this one behind me. More and more Hork-Bajir were looking up, goblin heads tilted back to see me.
They would not see a human. That was vital. We could not be here, certainly could not be humans. Humans on the Hork-Bajir home world? It would cause a galaxy-wide alert and bring more pressure than ever on Visser Three to find us, at all costs.
When the Hork-Bajir looked up they saw a melting, shifting thing with wide white wings and a whale’s tail.
<Let go, I tell you!>
<Not yet,> I grated.
Tseeeeeew! Tseeeeeeew!
<Aaaarrrgghh!> A hole the size of a quarter appeared in my tail fin, smoking.
Tseeeeeew! Tseeeeew! Tseeeeew!
Red beams everywhere, left, right, some so near I smelled the air burning.
<I am taking over,> Aldrea cried. I felt her will surge, a tidal wave inside my mind.
<NO!>
She was trying to fold my wings, trying to drop, reaching to take over my mind.
Tseeeeeew! Tseeeeeew!
A shot burned a seven-inch slice into my side. The pain was staggering.
My wings were … closing … losing the morph …
NO! This was my body, this was me!
I shoved against the tidal wave of Aldrea’s will, weak hands holding back a cataclysm.
The ground fire was a wall of flame.
At last, close enough. I demorphed my wings and plunged.
ALDREA
I had lost.
We fell, fell toward certain death, plunged tail first into the Yeerk pool, and still, all I could think was that I had lost.
Lost to a human child. I’d assumed the only question was one of self-restraint. I’d believed I could seize this body if ever I chose. But the little human female had held me at bay even as she performed an act of morphing that would have made her a hero among the Andalites.
No time to think about that. No time to think about how she could have … no, there was a battle to fight.
We plunged deep in the Yeerk pool and now Cassie was growing with a shocking speed, growing so huge, so fast that the body was creating little whirlpools.
<Now I need you,> Cassie said.
I almost laughed. It was outrageous. Now she needed me?
<I am here,> I said. What else could I say?
<Use my eyes. Use my echolocation. Take us to the log and the opening.>
We swam, almost blinded by sudden, seething groups of Yeerks in their natural state. But the firing was done. The Hork-Bajir-Controllers could not fire on the pool. As the human Marco had predicted. Once in the pool we were safe. Until the Yeerks could evacuate their brothers, call them to the far end of the pool.
Then they would heat the water to stea
m with their Dracon beams and boil us alive.
Minutes. No more. Maybe less.
<I can’t see,> I said.
<I’ll fire echolocation clicks,> Cassie said. <You’ll see a sort of sketchy picture. Relax into it. Let it happen to you, don’t strain for it.>
She fired a series of rapid sonic hiccups. I read the picture. The sketch, really, as she had said.
<Left. A hundred yards. I think. I don’t know.>
We were already moving, huge tail whipping the water, scattering lingering Yeerks.
In my vast mouth, the whale’s mouth, Cassie’s, I felt the others demorphing, growing.
<Need some air soon,> Jake said.
Cassie kicked, changed the angle of her fins, and skimmed the surface. <Whales don’t breathe through their mouths,> she explained. <I’ll need to travel on the surface, keep my mouth open.>
As soon as we surfaced, the firing began.
Tseeeeew! Tseeeeew!
Misses that caused eruptions of steam. And hits that caused agony.
<Diving!> Cassie warned. <Everyone breathe deep!>
And down we plunged, turned, and stopped. <Jake. We’re there.>
<We’re ready.>
Pah-loosh! Pah-loosh!
<I heard something,> Cassie said.
<Taxxons. They’re sending Taxxons in after us.>
<Rachel and Jake will take care of them. Demorphing, now! Jake! Three … two …>
Cassie was confident that her two friends could stop a small army of Taxxons.
We raced toward the solid wooden wall ahead. We surged, dived, then suddenly rocketed up to the surface.
Into the air! Mouth wide-open. Amazing that this monstrous beast could almost fly!
<One!> Cassie cried. <Go! Go!>
Aximili and Tobias leaped. One real Andalite, one morphed Andalite. Marco bounded, in Hork-Bajir morph. They landed atop the dike wall battlement.
We crashed back into the water, used our momentum to race along the wall toward where I’d heard the Taxxons. <Now!> Cassie yelled. She opened the whale’s mouth again for Jake and Rachel.
<Jake, Aldrea says we have Taxxons,> she warned.
<Yeah, I can smell them,>