"Confusing, isn't it?" Visser Three sneered. "I don't know how the Ellimists keep it all straight."
"Let's leave," Cassie said suddenly. "I don't like this place, and I don't like these two . . .
creatures."
66 "But Cassie, I'm your best friend," my older self said mockingly.
"No, you're not. Maybe Rachel is still alive in there somewhere. But what you are is a Yeerk.
" Cassie started to turn away. As she did, she tripped. She fell against me. Suddenly the older Rachel was there. She grabbed me and held my arm steady so I didn't fall.
But to Ax it must have looked like she was lunging at me. His tail whipped forward in the blink of an eye.
Ax's quivering blade was pressed against the older Rachel's throat.
Her eyes went wide with fear. She shot a glance at Visser Three. And to my amazement, Visser Three seemed frozen. He was confused.
His main eyes narrowed. He looked from Ax, to the older Rachel, to me.
Suddenly I knew. "This wasn't in the script, was it?" I asked him. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Something has changed! It's Ax, isn't it? You said 'six humans" before. That's what you expected to find. That's what Rachel told you would happen. But the future has changed, hasn't it?
Something is different."
Visser Three glared at me, and now he dropped the pretense of politeness.
"Do you know what I did when I finally caught you and your little band of Animorphs? Do you know what I did? I gave each of you to a trusted lieutenant. And once you belonged to us, once you were MINE, I killed your bird friend here, and we roasted his body. " Visser Three leaned close to me. "He was tough and stringy, but we added a sauce you humans have. Barbecue, I believe it's called. And then your friend Tobias was delicious. You had a leg, as I recall. You ate it and laughed. "
I really wanted to morph right then. I really wanted to become the grizzly and tear Visser Three a few new holes. But there were hundreds of Controllers around. And while I was morphing I would be vulnerable.
Ax still had his tail blade pressed against the older Rachel's throat. "He can't hurt us." Ax said. "He can't do a thing to us. If he does, he would change history. He doesn't know how that would work out. "
"Good point, Ax," Jake said. He met my gaze. He had a dangerous, angry look in his eyes.
"He can't hurt us. But the reverse . . . well . . . "
"Excellent point," I agreed. I focused my mind on the grizzly bear. "So, Visser Three. You killed my friend Tobias and roasted him over a fire."
I was beginning to change. So was Jake.
"I have a hundred Hork-Bajir I can call!" Visser Three said.
67 "So call them," Marco said. "Maybe one of them will get careless with a Dracon beam and kill one of us. How do you suppose that will change the past? Hard to tell, isn't it?"
Claws had sprouted from my fingers. Coarse brown fur was covering my body. I could feel the surge of power as I became more bear than human.
"Visser," the older Rachel said tersely. "What do we do?"
"We?" Visser Three said. "We do nothing. I retreat. " Visser Three began backing away. But I wasn't about to let him go. I had him. After all the pain he had caused, I had him. After all the damage he had done, he was now powerless.
68 CHAPTER 17
I did not wait until the last of my human features was submerged. I was bear enough. I charged.
Bears are very large and look sort of clumsy. But they can be very fast.
"Now, you filth, let's see who eats who. "
I barreled toward him. He turned to run. But he had turned too late. I hit him. Eight hundred pounds of fast-moving bear hit Visser Three in the flank and brought him down hard.
I drew back one huge claw and swung with all my might.
My hand slapped the trunk of a tree. My human hand.
"Owww!"
I was human again. I was in the woods behind Cassie's farm. The others were all there as well. Tobias, once again a hawk, perched in a branch overhead.
"No! I'm sick of this!" I yelled. I slammed the tree again in sheer frustration. "I'm sick of this!
Cassie came over and put her arm around my shoulders. "It doesn't matter. That's a Visser Three who doesn't exist yet."
"I'm so sick of this," I said again, a little more softly. "What's the point? What's the point in anything? We know the future now. We know what happens if we decide to stay and fight."
I felt lost. The last ounce of energy just seeped away from me. It was too much. Too many things to deal with. And what was the point? What did it even matter what I did?
I flopped down onto the grass and pine needle-covered ground, and rested my head in my hands. I was done. Done trying to make sense of a world where I could be jerked back and forth like a puppet.
The six of us just lay there on the floor of pine needles for a while. Staring. Thinking. Letting it all sink in.
It was over.
The war was done. And we had lost.
"It could all still be an Ellimist trick." Ax said halfheartedly.
"No," I said flatly. "You know it's not a trick, Ax. At least not the way you mean. If the Ellimist wanted to force us to do something, he has more than enough power."
"We need to think this through," Jake said wearily.
I shrugged. "You think it through. I'm tired of thinking: I was just about to vote when the Ellimist dragged us off for his little show-and-tell. I was about to be good old Rachel and 69 vote no. I was going to be tough, one more time. But I'm changing my vote. I'm not going to end up as a Controller. That's not going to happen. Not to me. If that means I'm running away, too bad. I change my vote."
You know what? At that moment of surrender, I felt good. I wish I could say I didn't. But I felt a wave of relief wash over me. No more hard decisions. No more danger. No more having to be brave.
"That makes it Cassie, Rachel, and me, in favor," Marco said. "Three to two, unless Ax is voting."
"I follow Prince Jake." Ax said.
"Maybe . . . " Tobias began. "Maybe if some of the human race survives on some other planet. . . . Maybe it will be like when they brought wolves back to live in the National Forest. I mean, maybe someday we can return and take Earth back. "
"Are you changing your vote, Tobias?" Jake asked him.
"Jake, you know I would never run from a fight. . . . "
We all just sat there, staring at nothing.
We were going to do it. We were going to abandon the fight. We all knew it.
Jake hung his head. "Ellimist?" he said softly to the air, "We have decided. The answer is yes."
The Ellimist had said we would be transported immediately, once we decided. I expected my next breath to be drawn on some distant planet.
But nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
J. can't tell you how weird it was, going to school the next day. Sitting in class, trying to pay attention while my teacher, Ms. Paloma, talked about what led up to the Second World War.
"Maybe if the United States had been ready to fight earlier," she said, "the war would have ended earlier and fewer people would have been killed. But our country wanted peace."
I just kept looking at her and wondering, Was that your skeleton draped across the desk?
What was the point of going to school? What was the point in anything? I had seen the future. I knew how it all turned out. The human race was done for. Finished. That was where all our long history led - to a Yeerk pool.