Animorphs - The Entire Series

quote:

I rolled over. The Visser cried out in pain. He tried to get up, but he couldn't use his hands; they were held together by the handcuffs.

Tobias lay bleeding.

<Tobias! Demorph!>

But then, to my amazement, he simply sat up. The bullet holes in his chest were gone!

<It's true,> he whispered, touching his chest with a Hork-Bajir claw. <Just Jake. The rest of us ... we can't be killed.>

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

I felt the bullets hit me. Neck. Head. Shoulder. Head.

I felt the impact, power blows. I felt sharp, overwhelming pain. And then ...

I was still alive.

The tank column rolled by. Infantrymen rushed up alongside the tanks to surround us. They waved guns at a wolf and a monster, scared of both, unsure what to do.

Visser Four tried to crawl away but one of the soldiers gave him a kick in the stomach that dropped the Controller on his face.

An officer pulled his pistol from a holster, walked cautiously up to me, held the barrel against my head, and ...

BLAM! BLAM!

I fell over.

I stood up.

"C'est pas possible!" the officer gasped in French.

"Es ist ein wolfman," one of the soldiers said in German.

French and Germans together. Not Germans alone.

I looked at the insignia on the epaulet of the officer. It was a shield, slashed down the middle at an angle, half of it the French tricolor, blue, white, and red, the other half a stylized black eagle.

<What is going on?> Tobias wondered, as confused as I was. <This isn't the way it was! This isn't right!>

The soldiers, the French and German soldiers, kept their guns trained on us. They were confused and afraid.
I could identify.

I looked at the soldiers. They were a mix of old men and young kids, some who looked no more than fifteen. Some of the older ones could have been my grandfather.

The French officer said something about "le capitalne." The captain. The Germans agreed with whatever he'd said. I think he'd said they should all wait for the captain to get there.

Several of the soldiers broke out cigarettes. Some drank from their canteens. The tanks rolled slowly by.

Visser Four raised himself to a sitting position. The jeep hauling the Time Matrix had pulled off the road. He was edging, ever so slowly ...

<Don't let him reach that thing,> Tobias said in thought-speak.

The French officer understood immediately. He jerked his head and two of his men dragged the Controller back to where we sat in our weird little standoff.

"I just want to know one thing, Andalites: How did you follow me? I have the Time Matrix! How did you follow me? And why, why, why don't you die?"

<Visser Three's been trying to kill us for some time, now,> Tobias said. <We're hard to kill.>

The Controller made a face of hatred and resentment. "I should have used the Time Matrix to destroy Visser Three. That bungling fool!"

<We'd have helped you,> Tobias said with a laugh. Then, privately, to me, he said, <Cassie, if we can't be killed, we don't need to worry about these soldiers. We can take the Time Matrix right now.>

<Yeah. I ... I guess that's true. But, I don't know, it's weird. I mean, I guess we are sort of immortal for now, but who knows? A gun is still a gun. Are you a hundred-percent sure?>

Tobias made a Hork-Bajir smile. <Ninety-nine percent. The remaining one percent says if we push it we're toast.>

Suddenly another jeep-type car came rumbling up along the line of tanks. An officer, a German, jumped out and trotted over to us.

In a mix of French and German the soldiers and their officer explained this exceedingly unusual situation. The captain was a middle-aged man with a lined, scarred face and tired eyes. He obviously knew about the big, glowing globe. He seemed to know, too, about the prisoner, Visser Four.

But seeing a Hork-Bajir sitting there beside a seemingly tame and unkillable - wolf was new. He leaned close to Tobias and gingerly touched his wrist blade.

<I won't hurt you,> Tobias said.

The captain answered in German. Then tried French. Finally, excellent English. "Do you understand English?"

<Yes, we do,> I said.

He snapped his head around. There was a quick burst of German including a word that sounded like "wolf" and another that was very recognizable: "Frankenstein."

<He thinks you're a monster, Tobias.>

Then, in English once more, he said, "I do not know how a monster and a talking wolf come to be here. Explain."

I started to answer. Not to explain, because explaining would have been utterly impossible. Or at least it would have taken a solid week.

But then, I saw the old man who'd been driving the captain's jeep climb down from behind the wheel. He was in his fifties, at least, although his uniform indicated a low rank. He was stocky, not very tall. His black hair was parted high on his head. His eyes were dark and intense. He wore a small mustache.

A style of mustache known everywhere as a Hitler mustache.

quote:

Far below us, Tobias and Cassie seemed to be chatting with Nazi soldiers guarding Visser Four. They were problem number two, as far as I was concerned.

Problem number one? The tanks that were rolling toward the beach. Huge, clanking monsters armored to withstand a direct hit from a cannon.

I have several powerful morphs. But none that would so much as annoy a tank.

However, the tank hatches were open. Their officers or drivers or whatever stood with heads and shoulders visible. No one was shooting at them. They had not reached the battle.

When they did, the invasion of Normandy would end in utter defeat for the invaders.

<We have to stop them,> I said.

Marco snorted angrily. <How? Morph to elephant and go one-on-one with a tank and you'll end up roadkill.>

<Our morphing ability is a potent weapon, Rachel, but useless here,> Ax said.

<We're stopping them,> I said flatly. <That road is narrow. It's cut deep. Kill one tank and the others will have a hard time going around it. At least we'd slow them down.>

<Yeah, then one of us gets to the ships offshore and directs them where to fire,> Marco said. <Great in theory. Just one problem: How do a bunch of birds kill a tank?>

<I don't know, all right?> I admitted. <I just know we have to!>

<I may have an idea,> Ax said. <I have been observing your primitive human weapons. Several are fascinating. Most could be very easily improved upon, and ->

<Get to the point!> I yelled.

<The small, hand-held explosive devices. They are roughly spherical in shape with a ludicrously crude priming device. They are thrown and ->

Marco said, <Hand grenades?>

<They are very weak explosives,> Ax said. <However, within the confined space of a tank's interior they could ->

<If I had lips and you had a mouth I'd kiss you!> I said. <Hand grenades! That's it! We'll drop hand grenades down the hatch of the lead tank.>

<How do we carry one? How do we pull the pin?> Marco demanded.

I laughed. <Details, Marco. Minor details. Let's find some grenades.>

We flew back over the bluff. I wasn't going down to the beach if I could avoid it. The bodies down there were so thick on the ground that in some places we could have stepped from body to body without ever touching the sand.

Fire was still pouring down from the protected positions on the bluff. Landing craft were still disgorging men. It was a second wave, I suppose. A whole new assault, adding new victims. Like cattle going down the chute to the slaughtering floor.
But, of course, cattle don't know what's corning. Humans do. They saw the bodies of their fellow soldiers. They heard the explosions. They smelled the death. And they still came.

War is obscene, the worst thing humans do. But warriors, the individual men, are the very best of humanity. Not because they are willing to kill. But because they are willing to risk death, to sacrifice themselves for others.

I was high in the air, not safe, but so, so much safer. I felt like a coward.

<Over here!> Marco said. <They're issuing grenades to some guys down at the base of the bluff. There's an open case of them.>

<Okay. I'm biggest,> I said. <I'll do it.>

<Are you confident that you can carry the weight?> Ax asked.

<I don't know. Bald eagles snatch whole salmon out of the water. How much can a hand grenade weigh?>

<How much does a salmon weigh?> Marco answered rhetorically.

I floated on a high breeze coming off the water. My wings were filled by warm June thermals. I wondered if the warm updrafts were strengthened by the heat of red-hot gun barrels.

A dozen guys were huddled together at the base of the bluff. Americans. Or at least, I reminded myself, they should have been Americans.

They looked lost and scared and exhausted. Their sergeant had a steel ammunition box open between his knees. He was handing out grenades, two at a time.

It would take speed and precision. And a distraction.

<Marco? Ax? I need that guy to look away.>

<Yeah. We're on it.>

Marco and Ax, an osprey and a harrier, formed up beside me. We'd have looked weird and out of place. If anyone had had time to bird-watch.

<Now!>

Ax and Marco spilled air, narrowed their tails, and plunged.

Down, down, down!

I went after them, twenty feet behind. I could feel the air turbulence from their wings.

No problem, I told myself. Marco and Ax swoop close, the sergeant looks away, I snatch the grenades out of his hand, and -

CRUMPF!

The mortar shell landed in the middle of the men.

The shock wave knocked Ax and Marco down like they were flies hit by a giant swatter.

freebooter posted:

I think it's a common and intellectually dishonest way of thinking. (On KA's part, not just Rachel's, because I suspect it's what she also thinks).

freebooter posted:

On a story note here - this chapter really falls flat because the stakes are gone. They've already established that they're going to have to use the Time Matrix to go back to the start and set history on the "correct" path again, so dicking around with tanks and grenades is a waste of time.

freebooter posted:

I think it's a common and intellectually dishonest way of thinking. (On KA's part, not just Rachel's, because I suspect it's what she also thinks). If you are going to argue that risking death to protect others is valorous - and it is - then you can't just fall back on cliches about how war is the worst thing, the most obscene thing humans do. If it's a just war, then it's a just war. It's not pleasant but it's no less valorous for the nation to fight fascism on a grand scale than it is for the individual soldier to fight it on a personal scale. Would it not be more obscene to sit back and argue that nothing is worth fighting over, when the issue at stake here is aggressive expansionary Nazi fascism and the Holocaust?

The flipside of this is the lies that society then tells itself when engaging in wars that are plainly unnecessary and unjust - continuing to valourise the individual soldier even if you object to, say, the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. If the war itself is evil and wrong then signing up to fight it is also not exactly a noble deed.

Ravenfood posted:

I think some of it is that they've already established that the French and germans are working together and that Hitler is some low-ranking soldier and not, well, Hitler. So now it's an open question as to who the aggressors are in this war and why, and there's a good chance our heroes are going to murder a bunch of people fighting against an invasion of american fascists. I don't know, I could see that causing anxiety to me as a kid.

Epicurius posted:

I mean, I will say I think the argument here is that, even if the war is unjust and unnecessary, the soldiers are willing to die to protect their fellow soldiers, and there's something noble about the willingness to die to protect another person. It's the whole bible quote that "There is no greater love than this, that a man be willing to lay down his life for his friends."

quote:

I think I agree with you. We, and the Animorphs, don't know what the war is about at all (although Marco, Rachel and Ax think they do). History has been changed to the extent that the war has no significance to us. Are the Franco-Germans the bad guys? Are the British Americans the bad guys? Are there any bad guys? What does it even mean in this case to be a bad guy? We don't have the context to understand what's going on here or pass judgement.

freebooter posted:

Although that gets into the whole philosophy of time travel etc which is confusing so I can see why they (and especially Rachel) just have an emotional reaction instead and decide to kill Nazis.

freebooter posted:

Even if Marco, Rachel and Ax haven't twigged that the French are fighting alongside the Germans,

Fuschia tude posted:

To play devil's advocate, Vichy France was a thing.

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Thats about the only counterfactual I could think of that leads to the French and Germans putting aside their long, long history. It's plausible that WWI never happened in that scenario.

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Thats about the only counterfactual I could think of that leads to the French and Germans putting aside their long, long history. It's plausible that WWI never happened in that scenario.

freebooter posted:

I always thought the British and the French had a much longer history than anyone does with the Germans, who weren't taken seriously until they amalgamated in the 1800s. (I still remember my history teacher - in Australia, in the 90s! - who tried to convince us that it would have been more "natural" for the British to side with the Germans because they were more racially similar.)

Cythereal posted:

That and a large part of Britain's alliance network leading up to WW1 was aimed at containing Russia, with whom the British Empire shared a huge border in the Middle East and Asia. Germany was largely disregarded by Britain as a nonentity and irrelevant to the Empire's security, so they were largely left out of the diplomatic calculations that lead to the Entente Cordiale and the Anglo-Russian Alliance.

freebooter posted:

Hang on... how does allying with Russia contain Russia?

quote:

<Is that ...>

<Yeah. I think so,> I said.

<Oh, my God.>

<A long way from God,> I muttered.

Adolf Hitler. The most evil man in a long history of evil men.

Tobias was up. He moved like lightning. The squat man with the funny mustache was jerked back, yanked around, and pinned against Tobias's Hork-Bajir body.

Tobias's wrist blade was at his throat.

<NO!> I yelled.

The soldiers dropped cigarettes and canteens, swung around, and leveled their guns at Tobias,

<You know who this is? You know what he is?>

<No. And neither do you! Look at him. He's like some old corporal or something!>

<He's Hitler. He dies. End of story,> Tobias said grimly.

Hitler was frozen with fear. Trembling with a Hork-Bajir blade pressed against his jugular.

<Tobias, it's all different,> I said. <Visser Four changed it. All of it. No one is where they should be, doing what they did in our reality. We don't even know if these guys are the bad guys or the good guys in this reality.>

<He's still Hitler!> Tobias said.

<Is he? I don't know. Jake, in that other reality, the reality that comes from all this, was Jake still Jake? Was Marco still Marco?>

<You've got to be kidding! You're going to compare Jake to this walking piece of scum?>

<He's not evil for who he is, no one is. You can't be evil for being someone. It's what you do. And this guy's just a driver!>

From behind us, a new and sudden sound.

BOOM! BOOM!

The first tanks were firing down on the beach.

<Tobias, you can't do this,> I said. <You can't execute someone for what he might have done or even what he might do.>

"Release my driver, please," the German captain said tersely to Tobias.

Visser Four leaped, shackled hands outstretched for the Time Matrix. I bounded after him.

He took three steps. I took two. I clamped my jaws on his leg.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The captain fired. Point blank at Tobias.

Tobias jerked in reflex. His wrist blade cut deep.

The driver - Hitler - fell to the ground.

Visser Four rolled with me on top of him. Rolled over, pulling me with him into a shallow ditch.

And overhead I saw the surreal vision of a bald eagle, six feet from wingtip to wingtip.

quote:

Ax and Marco were down. But not for long. They fluttered up out of the sand, fluffing their feathers, all damage repaired.

It was true. We could not be killed.

The same was not true of the soldiers. Two lay crying in pain. The others were silent.

I swooped down to land beside my friends. I suppose we must have looked like vultures arriving at the scene of death.

I closed my right talon around a grenade. I lifted it experimentally. It was heavy. Not as heavy as a salmon, though. I would be able to fly with it.

Marco and Ax each tried to lift one as well, but they were much smaller birds.

<One is all it will take,> I said. <Or at least one at a time.>

I grabbed the grenade firmly and began to fly. Taking off was hard, not impossible, but hard. I scooted across the bloody sand, flapped hard, turned into the breeze, and still barely became airborne.

But once I had wind beneath my wings, once I had clearance, I soared. The breeze lifted me up.

Above the dead. Above the beach of slaughter. Out of line of the whizzing bullets. Too high for the shattering explosions of artillery.

Up I rose. Up and up, over the bluff.

The first tanks were lining up, depressing their main guns to fire downward.

<Forget them,> Marco advised. <We need to block the road. Keep the others from coming up.>

<Thank you, General,> I said, laughing. <l think I got it. Just need to pull the pin.>

<Not too early,> Marco pointed out. <How do we pull it?>

Ax said, <I can reverse direction. If I come back toward you and catch the pin in my talons, I believe the combined momentum will be sufficient to remove it.>

<Good plan,> I said. I turned into a tight circle, one wing low, the other high, tail spread wide to give me all the lift I could get.

Ax's harrier body flapped away, twenty, forty yards ahead of my flight path.

<This looks good,> I said.

<Rachel, how do you know how long that thing is fused for?> Marco demanded. <You could blow yourself up!>

<Hah-hah!> I laughed. <We're immortal, Marco. Jake was the death. We can't be killed!>

<That's not a bullet, it's a grenade. If it blows there won't be enough of you left to put back together.>

Ax turned back, flying straight for me. I flew straight for him. I held the grenade as low and far from my body as I could. I twisted it carefully, bringing the round ring out and forward.

<Just grab the ring, Ax. Just grab the magic ring.>

The distance closed with shocking speed. The harrier, the eagle, racing toward collision.

Closer ... Closer ...

Ax spun over on his back, reached, a sharp yank against my talons and a loud "Pop!" The grenade top dropped away.

I glanced back and saw the ring and pin hanging from Ax's talon. I looked ahead. A tank rolling past Cassie.

I had perhaps three seconds.

I was giddy. Filled with wild joy. I wanted to scream and laugh all at once. Maybe I did because as if from far off I heard Marco say,
<She's crazy, Ax-man. Look at her. She loves this stuff.>

I looked toward my target. The hatch was open. The young, cocky soldier was shoulders up and out of the armored safety. He was turning a swivel machine gun toward the side of the road. Aiming at-

Only then did I realize that Tobias had grabbed a German soldier. That he was holding him and -

A sudden rush of movement. Visser Four, Cassie, an officer firing.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Blood sprayed from the throat of Tobias's hostage.

The tankman's finger tightened on the trigger of the machine gun. I saw it all, every detail, every nuance of movement as though it were inches, not feet, away.

The hatch.

The trigger.

I released the grenade.

Cythereal posted:

I'd guess that yeah, WW1 probably never happened in this timeline. A victorious French Empire under Napoleon probably precludes the formation of a recognizable modern Germany, and the presence of Hitler here as part of the Franco-German forces suggests that Austria-Hungary is either gone entirely or also part of this new continental bloc. I'd assume that this war, then, is the Mega-British Empire versus a European continental bloc, either as a single unified power or an alliance of powers that incorporates what we know as France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary (almost certainly Italy as well). Which leaves Russia as potentially going either way, maybe still Tsarist or maybe the Soviet Union having arisen one way or another despite all the butterfly nonsense.

freebooter posted:

I think Tobias killing Hitler has to be the series' craziest moment.

quote:

If the US is still part of the British Empire I wonder how that played out with slavery, which still exists in the Bad Animorphs Timeline, since in real life the British abolished it long before the US Civil War. I guess maybe retaining the Southern states as part of the empire puts a lot of internal political and financial pressure on the British to not abolish it after all?

Also IIRC Einstein fled Germany because of the Nazis, so if he's stayed put in this timeline that does suggest the Europeans are more of the good guys than the UK/US are.

Epicurius posted:

The driver - Hitler - fell to the ground.

Visser Four rolled with me on top of him. Rolled over, pulling me with him into a shallow ditch.

And overhead I saw the surreal vision of a bald eagle, six feet from wingtip to wingtip.

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

I love your post, there's just one thing throwing me off. That French-German insignia. I could be wrong, but im reasonably sure that during WWII each nation wore their own uniforms and all. I have to think you've wound up with some Franco-German Empire somehow - who knows, maybe Hindenberg chose that option since Hitler wasn't around to be Chancellor. Or following Napoleon's adventures, maybe Germany became an equal and willing partner, or something.

Either way, it's definitely an interesting thought experiment!

OctaviusBeaver posted:

In this timeline Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo by morphing into a bear and eating Wellington.

freebooter posted:

I would actually love to see the alternate timeline where Visser Four got his hands on the Time Matrix and the morphing cube...

quote:

Bullets hit me in the face.

I staggered back. I felt my wrist blade cut. Cut deep.

A flash of movement overhead. I was still hawk in my mind and I knew that movement intimately well.

An eagle!

Flying low and slow, dropping ...

FWUMP!

A muffled explosion.

The German officer jerked in surprise.

Then, the ammunition inside the tank caught fire.

Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!

BOOOOM!

Flames shot from the tank hatch. Flames shot from the tank's gun barrel.

It stopped moving.

Flames erupted from the engine in the rear.

I climbed to my feet. A flash of Cassie with her jaws on Visser Four, holding him as he stretched futilely to reach the Time Matrix.

And then, a second explosion.

BOOOOM!

The tank's turret blew off. It twisted once in the air and landed.

It took a split second. Time enough for a wolf to react, to jerk back.

Not time enough for a human. Or a Yeerk.

The turret landed. It crushed Visser Four from the waist down.

The driver ... the man who would, in another timeline, have been the most evil creature in human history, lay dead.

Soldiers lay dead or wounded, slammed by the explosions.

Rachel came circling down through the smoke. She landed on a dead tree branch. I expected her to be exultant. She wasn't. She said nothing.

Marco and Ax landed seconds behind Rachel. We were almost alone, the five of us. Alive, uninjured, surrounded by death and destruction of our own making.

The wounded moaned.

Cassie began to demorph. As soon as she had hands she went to the wounded soldiers. One French, one German.

"You'll be okay," she told the French soldier. "It's not bad." She ripped a few strips of the man's uniform, grabbed a stick, and made a tourniquet.

The other man, the German, died before she could even offer comfort.

"Humans?" Visser Four gasped, seeing Cassie. "Humans all the time?"

<That guy, that dead guy, the one with his throat all ... he looks like ...> Marco stammered.

<He is,> Cassie replied. <Or was. Or wasn't. I don't know.>

<These guys aren't wearing swastikas or anything> Rachel said.

There was blood all over my arm. I began to demorph. It was the only way to remove the blood from my Hork-Bajir blades.

<It's all different,> I said. <It's D-Day, but it's not.>

<But these are the bad guys, right?> Rachel demanded. <I mean, these are the bad guys, right?

Right?>

<I don't know, Rachel.>

<French and German allied? Hitler's some ordinary old soldier? This isn't the way it was,> Marco said. <This is messed up, man. The Germans conquered the French, and then the British and Americans invaded on D-Day.>

<There are no Americans,> I said. <There never was a United States. And Adolf Hitler was just an old man driving a jeep.>

<It is we who have now altered history,> Ax said. <In ways we cannot Comprehend>

I slipped out of my Hork-Bajir body. The blades gave way to feathers. The T-rex talons became my own smaller talons. I shrank and shrank and the bloodstains dripped away as they found less and less to cling to.

<The Time Matrix,> Ax said. <We have it now.> He was already halfway back to his own Andalite form.

My own hawk eyes returned, so superior to the Hork-Bajir vision. I turned my gaze on Visser Four. The head moved. He was still alive.

Then I saw a smaller movement. I fluttered my wings and hopped over. I darted my beak down and snapped up the gray slug that was crawling down the doomed man's cheek.

<The Yeerk,> I said.

The others came over. Cassie was human. Rachel mostly so. Marco as well. Just kids now, in a ditch, behind a burning tank, surrounded by bodies.

<What should I do with him?> I asked.

Marco held out his hand. He took the Yeerk. "We can't let him get a new host. Can't take him back to our own time. He knows now that we're humans. We leave him here, he dies slowly of Kandrona starvation."

"They say it's a horrible way to die," Cassie said.

Marco held the Yeerk out to Ax.

<No,> the Andalite said. <I have enough to answer for.> Ax looked at Rachel, then looked away.

"No," Rachel said as Marco offered the Yeerk to her.

<Not me, either,> I said.

"I see," Marco said, nodding slightly. "No one's anxious to add another stain on their conscience? Everyone's had enough?"

He flipped the Yeerk almost casually through the air. Threw it into the flaming hulk of the tank.

"Starve or burn," Marco said, trying in vain to sound tough and indifferent. "His only choices. This is quicker."

"We have to end this," Rachel said, sounding sad and sick.

"No. Not yet," Cassie said. "There's still the Time Matrix. And there's still Jake."

<How do we do it?> I wondered. <Go back to each place we went and ...>

<We need to cut the chain of causality early,> Ax said. <If we can stop this Controller from finding the Time Matrix in the first instance ...>

No one said anything. We stood listening to the massacre on the beach. The roar of tanks trying to

force a path around the far side of the burned-out hulk. Good guys or bad? Had we turned the battle for better or worse?

"My turn, I guess," Cassie said softly. "I guess none of us will get through this without some terrible sin. This will be mine."

<What are you going to do?> I asked her.

She walked over to the former Controller. Now just a human being. "What's your name? I ... someone told us, but I've forgotten it. Who are you?"

quote:

"John," he gasped. "John Berryman. I'm ... Is he dead? The Yeerk? Is he dead?"

"He won't bother you again," I said. I knelt down and wiped sweat from his forehead. It was running down into his eyes.

"You're humans," John Berryman said. "The Yeerks don't know."

I nodded. "We know. Yeah, we're humans. Mostly."

"Kids."

I nodded again.

"I'm going to die, here." It wasn't a question. I didn't deny it. He could not possibly survive the massive injuries.

"Mr. Berryman ..."

"John. You kids. You're heroes, you know that? The Yeerks, they hate you so bad." He laughed.

He coughed and choked up blood.

"Don't know how you did it," he rasped. "Following him through time. He was trying to change the world. Bitter, very bitter. Change time, make humans weaker, easier to conquer, then replace Visser Three. But it was too complicated for him. He didn't realize. Landed here. Expected Nazis. Told the Germans this was the main invasion, rushed the tanks forward. Only ... different Germans. They arrested him. Too complicated, see?"

"It was too complicated for us, too."

"Wanted to kill Washington. Wanted to change Trafalgar. Kill Einstein. Push the allies back into the sea at D-Day. Other plans, too, but you made him rush. Panicked him."

<Why Agincourt?> Tobias asked.

John Berryman laughed. "That was for me. It was to shut me up. I never gave up, see. I fought him. All night I'd keep it up. Keep it up in his head."

"Keep what up?" Marco asked.

"Shakespeare. I played Exeter in the play. But I memorized all the lines."

I shook my head. "I don't get it."

"Henry the Fifth. I know it by heart. Shakespeare wrote a play about Henry at Agincourt. Visser Four couldn't figure out how or when to intercept Shakespeare. Not enough definite data. So he was going to kill Henry to silence Shakespeare, to silence me."

"That's insane!"

Berryman nodded weakly. "Insane. That's what he used to feel: that I was driving him insane. Wouldn't give up."

"'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er -'"

Oh, God. I'm not going to be free. I'm dying. Oh, God."

"Mr... . John. I ..."

He looked up at me, exhausted. Beyond anything but pain. "What is it? Ask me your question."

I wiped tears from my eyes. "John. I'm so sorry. But ... John, do you know, did your parents ever tell you ... How did they meet? When and where?"

I saw puzzlement. Confusion. Shock. And finally sad acceptance.

"San Francisco. 1967. My dad's name was John, too. My mom is Theresa. She was Theresa Knowlton."

I could feel my friends draw back from me.

Cassie, the killer with a conscience, the Drode had sneered. Kill 'em and then cry over them.

I wasn't going to kill John Berryman.

John Berryman would never exist.

quote:

“Henry the Fifth. I know it by heart. Shakespeare wrote a play about Henry at Agincourt. Visser Four couldn’t figure out how or when to intercept Shakespeare. Not enough definite data. So he was going to kill Henry to silence Shakespeare, to silence me.”

Pwnstar posted:

John Berryman assuredly owns.

WrightOfWay posted:

Hosts driving their Yeerk insane is incredible.

Comrade Blyatlov posted: