The Pretender

by K. A. Applegate

  I spread my wings and flew away.

  111

  I. didn't sleep a lot that night. Talking to Rachel had not exactly made me feel peaceful.

  In the morning, in a couple of hours, we would all go to the Hork-Bajir. I would ask them where the secret Yeerk facility was. We would tell them that's where the Yeerks had Bek. Maybe that would even be the truth.

  There would be a battle. Maybe we'd survive and maybe not.

  And then I would have a different battle to fight. One with myself.

  Human or hawk? What was I?

  I sat in my tree and clutched my perch and stared out across the meadow. The hunger was terrible now. Terrible enough to leave me weak. If

  112 I didn't eat I would not have the strength to fly to the Hork-Bajir. I would not make it to the battle.

  Was that so important? Hadn't I done enough? Hadn't I paid a high enough price?

  I could morph to human. Stay human. Eat as a human. No fighting over territory, no fighting Yeerks.

  And I would still have Rachel.

  Such a simple decision. So easy. Any fool knew the answer. Be human! Be human!

  I spotted the slight movement of grass in the dim predawn light. The rabbit coming out to feed. So cautious now. She'd lost one baby.

  Then I saw the other hawk. He was waiting, he was watching me. And I knew right then today was the day. He could see my weakness. He knew he could take me.

  I began to shake. To tremble. Some combination of hunger and fear and emotions too numerous to list.

  I saw the rabbits clearly. They were mine for the taking. But I knew the terrible vision that awaited me. I knew that as I descended on my prey I would become that prey.

  It was the human in me. I had to fight it! If I wanted to be a hawk, I had to destroy the part of me that felt, the part of me that cried for the creatures I killed. No predator could feel for his

  113 prey. I could not allow myself to feel the terror I inflicted, feel the pain I caused.

  «That does it,» I told the other hawk. «This is stupid. I'm not fighting you! I'm not going to kill those helpless creatures. I'm done with this. I'm a human being!»

  I fluttered to the ground. And I began to morph.

  Morph to human!

  No. Not yet, I told myself. The others are counting on me still. The Hork-Bajir are counting on me. Later. After the battle. Then I can morph to human and go to Aria.

  I flapped my wings and rose into the air. I needed food and I had seen a cat killed by a passing car. Just this one last time. Then I would put it all behind me.

  One last time, picking the dead animal flesh from the pavement. One last humiliation, one last battle, and I would be done forever.

  It was my birthday, after all. A good day to be reborn.

  I found the cat. I ate as much of it as I could hold.

  114

  We, the Animorphs, stood before the free Hork-Bajir. I rested on a low branch and did the talking. I told them about our failed rescue attempt. I explained our guess that Bek was at whatever facility the Hork-Bajir had been raiding. "A trap," Toby said.

  «Yes.»

  "And you want to step into that trap, anyway?"

  «We have no choice. We will free Bek. We only need you to tell us the exact location of this facility.»

  Toby considered this for a moment. Even now it was weird talking to a Hork-Bajir who could

  115 think and speak on my level. And maybe a little over my level at times.

  "We will go with you," Toby said.

  "No, no," Jake said. "We work alone. Besides, we're just going to grab one little Hork-Bajir. We don't need a whole army."

  Toby said, "This is a trap. But it is a trap because the Yeerks expect us to come after Bek. We must do the unexpected. We must surprise them even as we step into their trap."

  I looked at Jake. Jake raised an eyebrow at me in surprise.

  «l told you: Toby ain't your average Hork-Bajir,» I said to Jake in private thought-speak.

  "The Yeerks expect a rescue mission. Or at worst, a raid like the ones we have carried out: stealthy, in and out, quickly disappearing into the forest," Toby explained.

  "What do you want instead?" Jake asked her.

  Toby got a hard look in her eyes. "Attack! Destroy the entire facility. Even if it means destroying other Hork-Bajir. Even if it means losing Bek."

  Even I was shocked. «That's awfully harsh, Toby.»

  She smiled grimly. "The Yeerks must not be allowed to think that they can use hostages against us."

  116 "Aren't you kind of missing the point?" Cassie said quietly. "I thought the point was to save Bek."

  "No," Toby said. "The point is to defeat the Yeerks. We must be strong. Once we free a Hork-Bajir, he must never be taken again."

  "Do you think the Yeerks will respect you? They won't. They'll come after you harder," Cassie pointed out.

  Toby nodded. "That is true. But the Hork-Bajir will respect themselves. A fool is strong so that others will see. A wise person is strong for himself. The Hork-Bajir will be strong for the Hork-Bajir. That way, when the Yeerks are all gone, we will still be strong."

  "Fair enough," Jake said.

  Marco stepped forward and jerked his thumb at Rachel. "Toby, meet Rachel. You two can visit the psychiatrist together."

  "She's right," Rachel said. "Someone pushes you, you push back. Doesn't matter who it is. You have to make the other guy pay a price."

  Cassie rolled her eyes. "That's like a perfect rationalization for gang warfare."

  "World War Two," Rachel shot back. "The Nazis push, you push back. If you don't, they kill you anyway."

  "Northern Ireland? The Middle East?" Cassie said.

  117 Marco said, "They shend one of yoursh to the hoshpital, you shend one of theirsh to the morgue. That's the Chicago way."

  Cassie and Rachel both just stared at him.

  "Sean Connery in The Untouchables," he said, disbelieving. "C'mon, don't you people have cable?"

  "Ah, Sean Connery. I thought you were doing Urkel," Cassie teased.

  "Marco is Urkel," Rachel said.

  It took Toby just minutes to assemble the Hork-Bajir. Ten of them ended up coming with us. More would have come but we insisted some be left behind. Just in case.

  Ten Hork-Bajir and the six of us. Not exactly an army. But not exactly a group to laugh at, either.

  If I went through with my decision to become human, it would be my last battle.

  We traveled along the valley to its farthest end. It was a good walk. The valley was big enough to house a lot more Hork-Bajir. The Ellimist had been looking ahead when he'd chosen it.

  "I fight you," a Hork-Bajir I didn't know said to me as I fluttered along, keeping pace with the group.

  «What?»

  "In Yeerk pool. Before. I fight you." He grinned

  118 and pointed to a nasty scar across his left eye. Then he pantomimed a bird coming down and raking his face with its talons. "Fal Tagut say 'Aaaahhhh!' "

  «l did that? I'm ... sorry.»

  "No sorry! Fal Tagut not free." He tapped his head with one long claw. "Fal Tagut have Yeerk. Now free. Good! Hork-Bajir and humans friends. Toby say."

  It was a long speech for a Hork-Bajir. Fal Tagut seemed worn out by it.

  I wondered about the image of Hork-Bajir and humans living side by side if the Yeerks were defeated. Humans didn't have a great record of getting along with people different from themselves. Humans killed one another over skin color or eye shape or because they prayed differently to the same god. Hard to imagine humans welcoming seven-foot-tall goblins into the local Boy Scout troop when they couldn't even manage to tolerate some gay kid.

  Get pushed, push back. Toby had already seen it. She knew that the Hork-Bajir would need to be strong to defend themselves against humans once the Yeerks were defeated.

  Get pushed, push back. The only way.

  No, not the only way. There was another way. Don't push to begin with. It's th
e aggressors who start the cycle. It's the guy who wakes up in the

  119 morning and decides he can't get through the day without finding someone to attack, to insult, to hurt.

  But where does that leave you? Letting jerks dictate your reactions? Always sinking to the level of whatever creep comes along?

  My mind went to that other hawk. The one who wanted my territory. There it was: Push and push back. But it wasn't a good comparison, was it? That hawk wasn't human. All he had was instinct. Couldn't blame him for doing what was natural.

  So maybe humans were no better. Maybe you couldn't blame a human animal for just being an animal. Except that my hawk opponent had no choice, no free will. He'd never heard "Blessed are the peacemakers." or "I have a dream." or "All men are created equal."

  It suddenly occurred to me, right then, for the first time, that what I thought was so unique about me - that I was half instinctive predator, and half human being - wasn't so unique after all.

  Every human - Jake. Rachel. Marco. Cassie, all humans - kind of lives on that edge between savage and saint. And the thing is that sometimes when you get pushed you do have to push back. And other times, you have to turn the other cheek.

  120 I saw the scar on Fal Tagut's face. I'd put it there. I'd been trying to kill him at the time because he'd been trying to kill me. Now we were on the same side.

  I guess the trick is to figure out when to do which thing. When to fight, when to let up. A balancing act. And even if I went back to being fully human in body and mind, that balancing act wouldn't go away.

  Maybe realizing that should have made me feel bad. But it didn't. Just made me feel human.

  121

  «It is a ground-based weapons platform,» Ax said. He was struggling to keep the slow-burn anger out of his voice. «You can see the Dracon beam already in place. They only need to position the targeting sensors to have it operational.»

  We were at the edge of a perfectly round bowl blasted or cut into the earth. We were in dense forest. And anyone approaching from air or land would have still seen dense forest. Hologram projectors maintained perfect illusion. Until you got close enough.

  Hikers or campers who got close enough would most likely never return. They'd be dispatched by the patrols of human-Controllers and Hork-Bajir.

  122 A patrol had intercepted us. Now they wished they hadn't. The human-Controllers were trussed up tightly and hanging from a very high branch of a very tall tree. The Hork-Bajir may not be rocket scientists, but they are very good with vines, roots, and trees in general. Those Controllers weren't going anywhere for a while.

  The Hork-Bajir-Controllers, four of them, had been knocked unconscious, their faces shoved into dug-out holes in the dirt. Apparently, this kept Hork-Bajir unconscious longer. These four would be coming with us. Unwillingly at first. But in three days or less, when the Yeerks in their heads died for lack of Kandrona rays, there'd be four more free Hork-Bajir.

  We had slipped through the hologram and could now peer down cautiously from the lip of the vast hole the Yeerks had made. In the center was a single structure. It looked like some power station or something. Blank steel and bits of this and that jutting out at odd angles. Atop this structure was something that looked like a miniature Washington Monument mounted on a swivel base.

  «Is that the Dracon beam? I've never seen one that large,» I said.

  Ax swiveled his stalk eyes toward me. «The size is embarrassing, really. If the Yeerks were

  123 any good at engineering they could have an equally powerful weapon a third of that size.»

  «Is it powerful?»

  «It could vaporize entire mountains on your moon,» he said flatly. «0r destroy an Andalite ship in orbit.»

  "Can it be pointed down? At the ground?" Jake asked him.

  Ax peered closely at the weapon. Then he smiled that strange Andalite smile they do without a mouth. «Yes.»

  "How do we get down there?" Rachel wondered.

  "Fly? They'd see us and shoot us out of the air," Cassie said.

  «What would they do if they captured a bunch of free Hork-Bajir?» I wondered.

  Toby looked at me and nodded. "They would cage us and hold us till we could be made into Controllers again. Until they could transport us to the Yeerk pool."

  "They know we were at Frank's Safari Land the other night," Marco pointed out. "So they know we have some contact with the free Hork-Bajir. And if they brought Bek here it means they're expecting a rescue attempt."

  "Well, Visser Three knows we're connected to the free Hork-Bajir. But does whoever is running

  124 this project know it?" Cassie speculated. "Maybe. Maybe not."

  Jake asked Toby, "When you've raided this place in the past, how many of your people have come on each mission?"

  "Usually three or four. We did not want to risk everyone."

  Jake smiled. "Then we send in three or four Hork-Bajir. It'll look exactly like previous raids. Only these four Hork-Bajir will have hitchhikers on board. They put up a fight, then let themselves be taken. Only then do we demorph and strike."

  Marco groaned. "We're not talking fleas again, are we? I hate morphing fleas."

  He had good reason. Marco had come very close to being trapped in flea morph. Being trapped as a hawk is one thing. But a flea? I'd rather die.

  "Pick a bug, any bug," Rachel said with a laugh. "Flea, fly, mosquito. A bug's a bug."

  "Yeah, right," Marco muttered. "I'm an ant and I get chomped in half, I'm a flea and I almost get stuck in morph. I don't have a good record with bugs."

  "I got slapped as a fly," Jake offered, like that was helpful.

  In the end, after some debate, four Hork-Bajir headed stealthily down toward the secret Yeerk facility. On board them was a collection of in-

  125 sects. A flea, a mosquito, two cockroaches, one housefly, and a wolf spider. Marco was the spider.

  I went ahead and did the flea morph. They're gross, mostly blind, bloodsucking, brainless little things, but have you ever tried to kill one? You could swat it all day and it would just laugh.

  Unfortunately, I couldn't see anything from my vantage point at the base of Jara Hamee's front horn. I mean nothing. But I could listen to a running, thought-speak description courtesy of Marco. He, after all, had eight eyes.

  «0kay, we're sneaking.»

  A few minutes later: «l think we see Bek. He's in a cage, right out in the open. But no one's guarding him.»

  Then, «Man, the Yeerks have no respect for the Hork-Bajir. I mean, a two-year-old would look at this and think "trap!" Come on, put some effort into it. Post some expendable guards. Something.»

  I felt a sudden, violent jerk that translated itself up through Jara Hamee's body. «Let me guess. We're caught.»

  «Yep. We are caught,» Marco said, sounding satisfied.

  126

  «Okay, here's the deal, as well as I can tell with a mix of simple and compound eyes,» Marco reported. «We're in a cage. Big, thick bars. But a very conventional lock. A human lock. Bek's here, hugging Jara Hamee.»

  «How strong are the bars?» Cassie wondered.

  «How strong would you make the bars if you wanted to lock up Hork-Bajir?» Marco asked.

  «Ah. Strong, then.»

  «We need to unlock the lock,» Marco said.

  «Do you think?» Rachel mocked. «With your intellect, maybe you could be our "seer."»

  «Hah. Hah. And also, hah,» Marco said.

  «We need the Hork-Bajir to hide whoever de-morphs,» Jake said.

  127 «That'd be me,» I said. «I'm smallest. Easiest to hide.»

  No one argued. It was obviously true. I fired my springy flea legs and hurtled, somersaulting into the air. I fell for what felt like a very, very longtime. Then I hit.

  Pht!

  I had probably just fallen a thousand times my own height. The equivalent of a human being leaping off a building five times the height of the World Trade Center. And when I hit it was like, "Okay, what's next?"


  I began to demorph. Very slowly. I grew to about an inch across, then stopped. «Jara Hamee? Do you see me?»

  "Jara sees bug."

  «That's me.»

  "Tobias? Tobias is bug?"

  I found myself wishing we had let Toby come along. Although she was too valuable to risk.

  «Yes. I am the bug. Jara? You have to get the other Hork-Bajir to hide me. Form a circle around me.»

  "Jara do."

  I demorphed some more. Till I was a six-inch monster with pinfeathers growing out of rust-red flea armor. Not a pretty sight. Trust me. You don't want to see what a cross between a hawk beak

  128 and a skin-piercing, bloodsucking flea mouthpart looks like.

  But I had eyes now. Dim, weak ones, but eyes. I looked around and sighed.

  «No, Jara. You want to turn outward. This way it's kind of obvious you're shielding something.»

  The Hork-Bajir turned outward and I finished demorphing. I was easily hidden by the forest of tree-trunk legs and tails all around me. All I had to do now was open the lock. Without benefit of fingers.

  There were guards now. Now that the trap had been sprung. Six big Hork-Bajir armed to the teeth stood outside and around the cage.

  But the entire prison was in the shadow of a sharp escarpment leading up to the weapon. It was maybe fifty feet high, almost vertical. A mound in the center of the scooped-out bowl.

  I could see occasional glimpses of Hork-Bajir and Taxxon workers at the top of the slope, but they'd have had to look almost straight down to see us.

  A road had been cut into the escarpment, wide enough to accommodate human trucks. We had to go up that road to reach the weapon.

  I hawk-walked out the back of the cage. We hawks aren't fast on our talons, but we do know how to walk. I walked right through the gap between the bars.

  129 A Hork-Bajir-Controller looked down at me, puzzled, but then looked away. I looked at him, equally puzzled. Just how was I supposed to get a key from this guy? Walk up and ask him?

  Actually . . .

  I hawk-walked around behind a toolshed. It's always weird when you find the Yeerks using normal, human stuff. This looked like one of the backyard toolsheds you buy at Sears.