Animorphs Book 13: The Change-Chapter 3
quote:
I spent the day drifting around on the breeze and checking everything I had learned in the last couple of weeks.
See, we knew the Yeerk pool was a gigantic underground complex beneath the school. We knew it extended at least as far as the mall. But we had never figured out where all the entrances and exits were.
That's what I'd been doing with my days - following people we knew were Controllers, watching them come and go. From them I learned the extent of the Yeerk pool.
Maybe I should back up and explain. I know you're probably someone living a nice, normal life.
You go to school, hang out with your friends, have dinner with your family, watch a little TV. Normal. And if I told you that maybe your teachers aren't really your teachers anymore; and maybe your friends aren't your friends at all; and maybe even your parents have become something totally different, well, you might think I was nuts.
I understand. You wouldn't believe how often I have these dreams that maybe none of it's real. That there is no Yeerk invasion. That Yeerk slugs are not inside the heads of so many people. That maybe I have my own hands and toes ... .
It all started when Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and I took a different way home from the mall. In a dark, eerie, abandoned construction site we saw the spaceship land. And we met the strange part-deer, part-scorpion, part-humanoid creature called an Andalite.
His name was Elfangor. Much later we found out he was Ax's big brother.
He told us about the Yeerks, the race of parasitic slugs. The Yeerks, who, like some awful galactic disease, are spreading secretly from planet to planet.
They steal bodies. They make other creatures into Controllers - absolute slaves. The entire Hork-Bajir race has been enslaved. As well as the incredibly gross Taxxons, although they went along voluntarily. They've gotten the Gedds and other races, too.
And now, it's our turn.
They are here. The Yeerks are among us. Inside the people you least suspect. Cops. Teachers. Friends. Parents. Reporters. Pastors and priests. Your own brothers and sisters.
The Andalite Prince Elfangor warned us. And he gave us the weapon - the power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and acquire.
There was just one big drawback, see. You can't stay in a morph for more than two hours. After that you stay in morph forever. That's what happened to me.
The Yeerks also have a weakness. Every three days they have to return to the Yeerk pool. They drain out of the heads of their host bodies and swim in the sludgy liquid of the pool. There they soak up the Kandrona rays that they must have for nutrition.
So, this is the summary of the Yeerk threat. It's also, I think, more succinct than in previous books.
quote:
We've been to the Yeerk pool. It's not a place you want to see. Trust me. The screams that we'd heard in that place will be with me forever.
The Yeerk pool was where I lost my humanity. Where I passed the fateful two-hour time limit. Someday, somehow, we will destroy that place. But first, we have to understand it better. That's what I was doing. That's why I spent my days trying to discover every possible way in and out of it.
I was in the air over the mall at just about two-thirty in the afternoon when I spotted the big bald eagle floating, serene and powerful, on the thermals. The brown body stood out against the clouds, while the white head seemed almost invisible.
It was an odd place for a baldie. They usually like the shore.
I flapped hard to change direction and gain speed toward the eagle. I knew this eagle.
<Is that you, Rachel?> I asked.
<Sure. Who else would it be? Is this great flying weather, or what?>
<It's perfect. You up for a little cruise?>
<Of course. What's up?>
<Well, while you and the others have been off saving the world, I've been busy, too.>
I shot by, just beneath Rachel's big eagle wings, and swung out past her, then turned and moved in front of her. I was showing off. I'm more agile in the air than a bald eagle is. Although a baldie is quite a bit bigger than me. Kind of like comparing a turkey to a chicken. Rachel made a sighing sound in my head. <Tobias, just because you can't come along on every single mission doesn't mean you need to do extra work.>
<Yeah, well, whatever,> I said. <The point is I've been watching known Controllers from the air. I started with Chapman and his wife and the reporter and the policewoman we know about. And Tom, of course.>
Chapman is our assistant principal. He's a very big deal Controller. Tom is Jake's brother. He's a Controller, too.
<I followed them and watched them and now I've found four separate ways into the Yeerk pool. Besides the one we know that goes through the mall.>
<Cool. When we know the Yeerk pool entrances, we can start figuring out who more Controllers are.> Rachel sounded impressed. Even though all I'd done was fly around and keep my eyes open.
<I have a lot of free time,> I said. I knew I shouldn't say what I was about to say next. But it was out before I could stop myself. <So. Congratulations, I guess, huh? Packard Foundation Outstanding Student.>
Rachel was silent for a few seconds. <Did someone tell you? Oh, no, of course not. You saw the letter in my notebooks>
<Just call me old hawkeye,> I said lightly.
<Tobias ... you know how much I wish you could come. I mean, Cassie will be there, and she's great. But you know Marco will just be making snide remarks, and Jake will be trying not to laugh.>
<No big deal,> I said. <The only thing is, don't hide stuff from me because you think it will hurt my feelings, okay? I can't handle you feeling sorry for me.>
<I don't feel sorry for you,> Rachel lied.
Ouch.
quote:
<Good. Because, you know, how you think about me is sort of important.>
I winced. I'd sounded way too sincere.
I mean, what was I thinking? Rachel's a human. A real human. I'm a hawk. You think Romeo and Juliet were doomed, just from being from families that didn't like each other? Well, you can't get any more doomed than caring for someone who isn't even the same species.
<Anyway, congratulations,> I said as breezily as I could. <Now follow me, and I'll give you a little tour of the Yeerk pool entrances.>
<On a day like this, I'd follow you anywhere,> Rachel said.
First off, he's wrong, as we learned in the last book. But, it's just really sad. The thing is, Tobias has been different and felt left out his entire life, and now he's finally with people who he cares about and who cares about him, and he's still left out because he's now a hawk.
Chapter 4
quote:
<We're not going far. Just to the car wash.>
<They're using the car wash? No way.> Rachel laughed. <You have to admit, they are ingenious.>
We flew. Not side by side, because that would have looked suspicious. Hawks and eagles don't exactly fly in formation like geese. We kept a hundred yards apart. But with our incredible vision and thought-speak, we might as well have been next to each other.
We rose higher and higher on the thermals, then thermal-hopped. That's where you rise to the top of one pillar of warm air and glide to the next. Then you rise again and drift to the next. It's an easy, lazy kind of flying. You don't get where you're going very fast, but you don't get tired out, either.
It was awfully nice, flying just under the bellies of the clouds with Rachel. I may have lost my human body. But I've gained wings. And flying is ... well, I'm sure you've daydreamed about it. I know I used to. I'd sit in class, gazing out at the sky, or lie back in the grass, looking up, and wonder what it would be like to have wings. To be able to fly up and up and away from all the stupid little problems of life.
Flying is as wonderful as you'd think. It has problems, too, like anything else. But oh man, on a warm day with the mountains of fluffy white clouds showing the way to the thermal updrafts, it's just wonderful.
<So where are we going? We're not heading toward the car wash,> Rachel pointed out.
I snapped alert. I looked down at the ground, spotting the familiar road grids and buildings I knew so well from this angle. We were in an area bordering the forest. Not far from Cassie's farm.
<What am I doing here?> I asked. <I must have spaced. Sorry. This way.>
I cranked a hard left turn and beat my wings to gain some speed. Rachel has to deal with the two-hour limit. We'd wasted a lot of that time. I couldn't believe I'd spaced out so badly.
We flapped hard for a while.
<Um ... Tobias? Am I crazy, or are we right back where we were?>
I looked down at the ground. She was right. We were right back in the same area by the edge of the forest.
I felt a cold chill. <No way,> I whispered.
<Are you lost?>
<Lost? Of course not,> I said. <I don't get lost. We're heading just south of east. I know exactly where we are. But this isn't where I was heading.>
<Is there something going on here?> Rachel asked.
<This makes no sense,> I said. <I was heading for ->
And that's when I saw it happen.
We were gliding over the edge of the forest. Farmland on one side, all green and perfectly squared. Then a band of scruffy brush and fallen-down wire fence. Then the trees - elms, oaks, various pines.
The trees extended in a long sweep right, from the farmland up into the far-distant mountains.
With my hawk's vision I could even see snow on those far-off peaks.
But that's not what I was noticing right then. What I was noticing right then was that a single huge oak tree was sliding to one side.
Just sliding. Like it had no roots. Like it was on a skateboard or something. A huge oak tree just slid over.
And beneath the oak there appeared a hole in the ground.
<What is that?> Rachel demanded.
<You got me,> I said.
<That whole tree is just ... moving.>
<And the hole under it isn't natural,> I pointed out. <It's too round. It's man-made.>
<Or else not man-made,> Rachel said darkly.
<Something's down there! I saw something moving. It's coming up! Coming up out of the ground!>
<I see it,> Rachel said. <What is it? Can you see?>
I had a better angle than Rachel. And I could see what was coming up from underground. I saw a snakelike head with huge forward-swept horns.
I saw powerful shoulders and arms that were armed with blades at the elbows and wrists. I saw the big Tyrannosaurus feet and the short, spiked tail and the blades at the knees.
I saw seven feet of razor-bladed death.
<Hork-Bajir,> I said.
So wierd direction finding on Tobias's part aside, it's a Hork-Bajir, which means its time to get into the meat of the book (and probably talk some more about thermals).
how does that even work