«Seems to be.»
"Tobias, this is a stressful situation for Marco. Jake put you in charge. If Marco is -"
«Hey! Hey! Am I invisible? I'm here, okay?»
"Okay, then. I'll ask you. Are you okay, Marco? You seem kind of jazzed. Manic."
I said a harsh word. Then, «Everyone stop acting like I'm some kind of dimwit. I know what I'm doing. I don't need a bunch of psychoanalysis, here. This isn't Oprah!»
Cassie bit her lip thoughtfully. She got a distracted look in her eyes. I realized she was listening to Tobias or Ax or both communicating in private thought-speak. I don't know what they told her. But I saw that flicker of emotion in her eyes: pity.
"Well," she said at last, "The Gardens has a
77 newish mountainside habitat. It's open-air so you shouldn't have any trouble getting in after hours. Or getting near the goats."
I launched from the windowsill. Neither Ax nor Tobias spoke to me as we traveled. Maybe they were privately ripping me apart. I didn't care.
I saw the bright, clear line.
78 15
The Gardens: Kick-butt amusement park meets zoo. Very expensive admission price. If you go in through the gate.
I spotted the darkened Ferris wheel ahead, and my favorite, the snaking, sloping roller coaster in the amusement park section of The Gardens. A moment later, flying over the zoo, I saw what had to be the mountainside habitat Cassie'd told us about.
A rolling, grassy plain. A stream meandering across the north end. And in the middle of the plain, an imposing, incredibly steep stone and concrete "mountain" full of shallow caves and terraces. The habitat itself was surrounded
79 by a high mesh fence, on top of which we landed.
I could make out the dim, humped shapes of several goats just inside the largest of the shallow caves. They were sitting on the ground in a cluster. Several more goats stood motionless, staring back at the three large birds staring at them.
«Interesting,» Ax observed. «Bearded, white-coated creatures with hooves. And horns. Grazers. I would point out the similarities between the mountain goat and Andalites, except for my extremely disappointing experience with the cow.»
«l think mountain goats might be a bit more intelligent than cattle, Ax,» I said. «And a bit more aggressive. These guys look like they mean business.»
«Look at the shoulders on that one staring at me,» Tobias said nervously. «He's like a line-backer or something.»
«Yes, acquiring one might be quite a challenge^ Ax observed. «Perhaps we should choose one that is asleep.»
«Good idea.» I lifted off and flew to a ledge outside a small cave. Tobias and Ax followed. I'd seen one large shape inside. Yup. A big mountain goat, asleep. Male? I couldn't tell. All of the
80 goats had black horns and beards though I figured some had to be female.
Ax and I demorphed quietly a few feet away. The fake mountain hadn't looked like all that much when we were birds. As a human, though, the ground looked a long way down.
I swayed and grabbed some rock.
Then I began to crawl over toward the massive, shaggy white beast.
"What if he wakes up?" I said.
«This is your little picnic, you tell me,» Tobias sniped.
I sighed. "Tobias, look, get up off my back, okay? I know you're thinking Jake will blame you if this all goes bad. But we need to just get along, here, okay?"
Tobias laughed. «0kay. I'm done pouting. Unless we end up getting kicked cross-country by these big goats. Then I'll pout plenty.»
I stepped closer. Dumb to be scared of a goat. All the animals I'd been near. All the animals I'd been, and I was worried by a goat?
I placed my hand on its side. It looked at me.
"Please don't shove your horns into my kidneys," I said pleasantly.
It stirred. I wanted to pull back. But that would have been the wrong move.
81 My hand touched rough fur. I focused. I needed to begin acquiring this big boy right now.
The goat seemed about ready to spring up and butt me into the next dimension. But then it settled down as the acquiring trance took hold.
Ax clopped forward and when I withdrew my hand, he laid his own on the goat. Tobias was last.
«Come on, you guys,» he said when he'd hopped off the back of the sleeping goat. «Morph and let's get out of here before it wakes up.»
"Uh, don't look now but I think we have another problem."
On the ledge stood Mr. Mountain Goat's homeboys. And they didn't look happy to see us.
"Uh-oh," I said.
It took the goats approximately two seconds to cover about a hundred feet of ledges, boulders, gullies, and curves.
I turned.
I ran.
Tobias fluttered away to safety. Ax leaped nimbly away. Me? I got goat horn in the butt.
I flew.
"Aaahhhhh!"
Later, I read that male mountain goats enjoy
82 butting each other with their horns - in each other's butts.
And let me just say that unless you have been butted down a fifteen-foot-high cliff by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound angry male mountain goat, you have not experienced true humiliation.
83 16
I lay in my bed, in the dark. Every few minutes I'd check the glowing numbers of the clock. Three fifteen. Three forty-two. Four-oh-nine.
I wanted to sleep. Needed to sleep. Couldn't.
Fiver have one of those nights? Where you're exhausted, where you'd pay anything just to fall asleep? But the wheels in your head just keep spinning and spinning aid spinning?
Imagined conversations. Me talking, explaining, arguing. Changing the words around, repeating them, rehashing them. Around and around in circles.
l^e talking to Jake, an imaginary Jake. Explaining, with perfect logic.
84 Me talking to my dad in some fictional future, some nonexistent world where things were different and I could at last tell all the secrets I'd guarded with my life.
Me talking to my mom. Raging. Explaining.
Me explaining to my mom, as my mom, as my real mom, why I had to do it.
Me explaining to my mom as Visser One. Laughing, chortling, savoring my victory over her.
This is how I defeated you! I crowed.
This is how I saved you! I explained.
No choice. No choice.
I had to do it, Dad, you understand, right? What else was I going to do? Too much on the line. I had responsibilities. You know how that is, right? And besides, she was already dead to you. You'd already grieved, remember? You spent years just sitting in your chair, staring blankly, your life falling apart. . .
See, Jake? Don't ever doubt me again. I did it, okay? I put the mission first. I saw the big picture. So just don't ever doubt me again, because I did what had to be done. . . .
Mom, what was I supposed to do? I saw all the plays. I saw all the pieces on the chessboard. There was no solution that freed you. There were only solutions that destroyed you. I had to. How else? How else to ...
85 Die, you Yeerk piece of crap. Wither and die, and remember with your last, dying thought: It was for her. I killed you for her.
For Jake.
For my dad.
For...
Around and around, as the hours ticked away. As exhaustion sank deep into my bones.
Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee.
Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably.
And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do.
Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold."
I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it?
It was the whole point. We h
urt the innocent in order to stop the evil.
Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers.
86 How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win?
No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.
"Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold."
87 17
The next morning we all met at the barn. I was past tired. My butt was sore. My elbows were raw from skinning down the artificial cliff.
Tobias seemed tired, too. Too tired even to tease me about my encounter with the goat. Ax acted as though he'd spent the night snoozing like a baby.
I explained my plan to Jake and the others.
"We take out Visser One. We take out Visser Three. We leave the Yeerks believing they've erased the free Hork-Bajir colony. The free Hork-Bajir end up much safer; the Yeerks end up leaderless."
I avoided looking at Cassie. From Jake there
88 was just the briefest flicker of sadness. But Jake, too, is addicted to the bright, clear line.
Rachel kept her eyes down, focusing on the dirt-and-hay floor.
Rachel's not stupid. She knew anything she said would just make me mad. And I guess she, like all of them, was putting herself in my shoes. Wondering if she could do it.
"If it works, we have them both," I concluded. "But there's a lot to go wrong. A lot of unforeseen things that -"
Cassie put a hand on my arm. "Marco, you know we'll try to help your mother, in whatever way we can."
"She's only one person." I shrugged off her hand and stood up. "And we're supposed to be saving the world, right?"
It was one of the lines I'd practiced the night before. It sounded more bitter and less cool and calm and in control than I wanted.
"Okay," Jake said.
That was it. Just "okay." He didn't come out with any of the lines I'd put in his mouth in my imaginary conversations.
"So we do it?" I asked.
"Yeah. You call the plays, Marco."
I sucked in a shaky breath. "Okay. Okay. Okay, we want to push the timing. Don't give Visser One time to think about it. Keep her off
89 balance. I know the place. I hiked near there once with my dad. I need someone to contact Erek."
Erek is one of a small group of Chee. They are androids. Pacifists by programming. But working to infiltrate the Yeerk ranks. Spies.
The Chee pass as human by the use of sophisticated holographic projections. They live human lives. Many human lives. They've been on Earth since the time of the pyramids.
«I'm on it,» Tobias volunteered, flying down from his perch in the hayloft.
"Okay. We don't let her see us. We play the arrogant Andalites the whole way. Visser One can't -"
"She's your mother!" Cassie exploded. "She's not 'Visser One.' She's your mother! Is everyone just going to let this happen?"
Jake sent her a cold look. "This is not the time, Cassie."
"When is it going to be the time? When Marco's mind is screwed up forever by this? He's in denial. This is his mother, for God's sake."
Jake said nothing. No one said anything. Cassie's words just hung in the air.
"Go on, Marco," Jake said finally.
"We want her to focus on disliking Andalite arrogance," I said. "She hates Andalites. So, we want her to dwell on that. Maybe it will be
90 enough to keep her from seeing the trap. As soon as we're ready, I'll E-mail her."
"Ax, do you think we can play the roles of arrogant Andalites?" Jake asked.
«It will certainly require good acting skills to imbue the fundamentally humble and dispassionate Andalite character with a taint of arrogance^ he said.
"Yeah. Humble is the very first word that comes to mind when I think 'Andalite,'" Rachel said with a drawl.
«l think I should do as much of it as possible,» Tobias suggested. «l spend the most time with Ax. I can do a pretty good "arrogant Andalite."»
«l am very close to taking offense,» Ax huffed.
"Okay, Tobias. But you have to allow time to get to the mountains."
«I'll have a tailwind. And I go "as the bird flies," not on winding mountain roads.»
I went to the computer Cassie and her dad use to keep medical records. "Ax? We need a secure screen name. Something not even the Yeerks could trace back here."
Ax worked at the computer for a few minutes, muttering about primitive human technology. Muttering in a dispassionately humble way, of course.
«You may compose your message.»
91 I typed. I hit "send." I didn't think about what I was setting in motion.
"Okay. Everyone understands what's what, right?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Okay. I'm outta here."
I began to morph to osprey. Moments later, I was in the air. Relieved to be away from my friends.
Approximately fifteen minutes later, I landed in a leafy elm tree near the busy corner of Green and Spring Streets.
Tobias sat on a telephone pole across the street, preening his feathers.
«You get Erek?»
«Yeah. He's on it. Think she'll show? Your m -. I mean, Visser One?»
«Yeah. I think she'll show.»
Minutes later she drove up in a rented Audi. She slammed it into a parking space, bullying her way past a family in a Chrysler Town and Country.
She climbed out. The driver of the van yelled something at her. She gave him a look. He decided to drive off.
She wasn't in the disguise, anymore. She looked like my mom again. She was my mom.
The olive skin. The shampoo-commercial black hair. The dark eyes.
92 «Visser One,» I told myself.
She stood pretending to be fascinated by the wares displayed in the window of the Ace Hardware.
«You're on, Tobias,» I told him. «Remember: arrogant Andalite.»
«Visser One, you will follow my instructions literally and immediately,» Tobias said.
Her head jerked. She looked around. She eyed a blind woman's guide dog suspiciously.
«You will be crossing paths with a human-Controller named Chapman,» Tobias said.
"Chapman!" she mumbled. "One of Visser Three's incompetents. He would turn me in in a second if it meant his advancement through the ranks."
«Exactly the point, Yeerk. You want Visser Three. Surely you understood that we had to attract his attention. We are delivering him. Do not question me again.»
My osprey eyes could see her mouth form a string of foul words. Tobias ignored her.
«Chapman's afternoon run takes him past the human business called Dunkin' Donuts. It is one street to the east. Walk there now. Make sure he sees you. Do not attempt to escape,» Tobias said. «We will protect you, if necessary.»
Visser One was standing outside Dunkin' Donuts at 1:55 p.m.
93 At precisely 2:10 p.m., Chapman rounded the corner, dressed in a lime-green and yellow jogging outfit.
The Yeerk in my mother's head opened her hand. Her purse dropped. Chapman, always playing the role of pillar of the community, bent to pick it up for her. He straightened and held out the purse.
Visser One formed a smile. Then, the smile froze.
It was convincingly done.
Chapman said nothing. But I could see the blood draining out of his cheeks. He took a step back and then ran off double speed.
From my next perch, on the corrugated tin roof of Fred's Car Wash, I saw Chapman stop at a pay phone a block away and frantically punch the numbers.
Visser One stood fuming. She looked around again, trying to spot us. But there were pigeons and dogs and we could have been anywhere.
«Walk north one street,» Tobias said. «Em-bark on the large vehicle that stops at the next corner. Disembark at JCPenney.»
"It's called a 'bus,' you Andalite fool," she muttered in response. I happened to hear as she passed by below me.
Tobias's act was working.
94 «Good job, Tobias. You do a good Andalite. When the bus comes, you fly. I'll ride.»
<
br /> «You're the boss,» Tobias said.
Two minutes later a bus pulled up against the painted yellow curb.
«Embark,» Tobias snapped.
«Embark?» I asked Tobias.
«l thought it sounded like something Ax would think was right.»
My mother got on the bus. I swooped down off the car wash and landed, scrabbling, on the hot metal roof of the bus. There was nothing to hold on to. But a couple of tiny rivets had popped out and I seized a precarious hold by prying my talon tips into the holes.
Not my favorite way to travel.
The bus rumbled back into traffic and began the five-minute ride to the mall. Fortunately it never got over ten or fifteen miles an hour. Ducking my head down and streamlining my body, I could resist the wind.
I could have kept pace from the air, which would have been a lot more comfortable.
Two blocks away from the stop in front of JCPenney, I lifted off. I flapped for altitude. An osprey near the ground sticks out.
I scanned the area for familiar faces. I spotted the hard stare of a peregrine falcon's eyes.
95 Jake was perched atop a bank out on the periphery of the mall parking lot.
«We're on schedule at this end,» I reported.
«You're sure Chapman saw her?»
«0h, yeah, he saw her. He nearly wet himself^
«Good. Were you followed?»
«We can only hope.»
«Any sign of her own forces?»
«We haven't exactly had time to watch everyone,» I said. «How about the others?»
«Rachel and Cassie are in place. Ax should be getting to the mountain soon. I think we can be confident that Erek will be there, on scheduler
«0kay, Tobias?» I called.
«Yeah, I'm above you.»
«You can go, dude. We got it, here.»
«I've got it, here,» Jake corrected. «Don't forget, Marco. You stay quiet.»
«l know, I know,» I said, a little exasperated. «Don't let her hear my voice. Not even the one in my head.»
«That's right. The clothes are in that Dumpster.»
«You had to stash them in a Dumpster?»
«Hey, you wanted clothes, right?»
I flew to the Dumpster. It wasn't bad. I think
96 it was all boxes and stuff from the Gap and Old Navy. Much better than a restaurant Dumpster.
I demorphed in the Dumpster and pulled on the clothes Jake had stashed there.
The Reunion Page 5