The snake house looked about like it always did, though some of the display areas were dark. I guess snakes are low maintenance.

  The snake I was staring at looked about a foot thick and so long I couldn’t begin to guess at its total size. It had a clearly delineated head and a sort of rough-edged diamond pattern to its scales.

  It was either asleep or dead. Or very relaxed.

  “The anaconda is part of the python family,” Cassie said. “One of if not the biggest snake species on Earth. It hunts live prey, but snakes are far from the kind of hunger a Taxxon knows. They have very slow metabolisms. They can go a long time between meals.”

  I peered at the informational plaque. “Native to the Amazon jungle?” I laughed. “You’re thinking ahead.”

  Cassie looked embarrassed, like I’d caught her doing something dishonest. “If we agree to give the Taxxons a place to live in freedom here on Earth, why not the rain forest? The agreement would stop destruction of the rain forest dead in its tracks.”

  I nodded. “Yes, it would. But is this …” I jerked my head toward the snake. “Is this the morph that would appeal to a Taxxon?”

  Cassie shrugged. “I guess I don’t figure Taxxons are big on imagination. I think they’d want something fairly close, as you said, to what they are now. But not some helpless worm or bug: They’re used to a certain relative size.”

  “Uh-huh. You sure that snake isn’t dead? I haven’t seen it move yet.”

  “Well, you see what I mean: It would be different from the relentless demands of life for a Taxxon. There’s a lot of sitting in the sun involved.”

  “Florida retirement for Taxxons.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, let’s get this over with,” I said reluctantly.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Cassie said condescendingly.

  “It’s a snake. It’s a snake the size of a palm tree.”

  “Come on.” She put her arm through mine and drew me away toward the access corridor behind the cages.

  We both went in and I knelt and touched the dry scales. Not slimy at all, but still creepy. I acquired the snake. Its DNA joined the DNA of how many species floating around in my blood? I couldn’t even remember them all.

  “When you do this morph your biggest problem will be staying awake,” Cassie said.

  I stood up, and for a moment tried to figure out how to say what I wanted to say.

  “Cassie, you ever wonder what happens if we win? You ever think about that?”

  “All the time.”

  “Nothing will ever be the same. People will know the galaxy is full of life, full of intelligent species. We’ll have this huge rush of technological change. There’ll be nothing to stop us from being a space-traveling species. Humans on the moon, on Mars, maybe colonizing planets all around the galaxy. And there’s the morphing technology. Can you imagine what that’s going to mean?”

  Cassie nodded. “I guess I don’t think about that stuff so much. I guess I think more about us. You and me. And all of us.”

  I took her in my arms. The anaconda’s habitat was probably not the most romantic place on Earth, but it felt safe. “You know I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Jake,” she said, and put her head on my shoulder.

  “I guess if we win, if we survive, maybe we should, you know, get married and all. I mean, eventually. I know we’re young, but man, we’ve been through enough that it should count for a few extra years, shouldn’t it?”

  I don’t know what I expected her answer to be, but I didn’t expect her to start crying. And not tears of joy, either.

  “I would like that … eventually,” she said.

  “But. But what?”

  She sighed. “But, Jake, what are you going to be? What are you going to do?”

  “Guess I thought I’d go to college,” I said.

  “And study what, Jake? Me, I’ll go to college, I’ll become a doctor. I’ll never forget what’s happened, I’ll never even try, but I’ll be able to slip back into a normal life. But you, Jake?”

  I shrugged and released her and stood away a bit. “I’m not Rachel, you know. I didn’t fall in love with the fight. I don’t need it like she does. I do it, I try and do it well, but it’s just a job, a duty.” I tried to make a joke of it. “I mean, what do you think? The Pentagon is going to call me up and make me Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? I’m not even old enough to enlist as a private.”

  She didn’t laugh. She just looked at me.

  “Look, Cassie, when this is over I’ll be done with it forever. I’ll go back to school, get an education, go to basketball games, get a driver’s license, go to college, figure out what it is I really want to do. And be with you. You and me.”

  She forced a smile. “A year after it ends, if it ends, if we win, a year afterward if you want to be with me, we’ll talk about that again, okay?”

  “I have to wait a year? Kind of harsh, isn’t it?”

  “Hey, if we get married, Marco isn’t going to live with us, is he?” Cassie said, trying her best to jolly us both out of our dark moods.

  It didn’t work.

  For the first time I could taste the faint possibility of actual victory, despite the probable Andalite betrayal. The Taxxons might be joining us! For so long I’d fought with no hope at all.

  I should be excited.

  I should be happy.

  Arbron had given me the place: a spot more than a mile away from the site of the new Yeerk pool. He had not told me positively, absolutely, to come alone. So, I brought backup, though not in any visible form.

  I flew with fleas nestled deep in my feathers. Only Tobias remained in his true form, flying “cover.”

  I found the spot easily enough: a used car lot just outside the blast area. It was abandoned, of course. About half the cars had been stolen by looters, and of those that remained maybe a third were damaged in some way. But there, just as Arbron had told me, waited a yellow VW Beetle.

  I landed and demorphed. It was a chilly night, especially for someone in nothing but morphing clothes. I was glad to climb into the VW. I sat behind the steering wheel and looked around, not knowing what to expect. The little bud vase was empty.

  Marco asked from his location somewhere on my body.

  “We’re sitting here looking like a suspicious car thief,” I answered. “Where are you guys, anyway? Where on my body did you end up after I demorphed?”

  Rachel answered,

  “Mmmm. Good point.”

  Ax reported.

  “There’s a pleasant thought,” I said.

  Marco suggested.

  I punched the power switch. It was set to a news channel. The announcer sounded tired. “… are saying at this hour that the looting has diminished in intensity. Numerous fires are still burning, but fire departments from as far as a hundred miles away are sending trucks and crews to —” I pushed preset buttons and tried for some music.

  There was a rumbling. I turned off the radio. “Um … you guys feel that?”

  Cassie said.

  Tobias called down from high above.

  “Buckle your seat belts.”

  The ground vibrated beneath the car and I followed my own advice, drew the shoulder belt across, and clipped it just as the ground opened up and the car began to roll forward, down a sloping tunnel into the ground.

  It was elegantly done: The tunnel had an almost flat floor, the walls close enough to make steering unnecessary. The car rolled free, scuffing the dirt walls from time to time. How far down, I couldn’t be sure. Then I glanced in the rearview mirror: The tunnel was being collapsed behind me.

  If it was a trap after all, it was a very good trap.

  All at once I emerged into a huge open space. A cavern, tall and arched, and lit by dim artificial lights high overhead.

  The car rolled to a halt. I closed my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I opened them again and had an impression of restless movement all around. I closed my eyes and opened them once more and this time I saw the Taxxons, everywhere, all around the car, pressing close, red jelly eyes staring.

  “We’re here,” I muttered.

  Marco said.

  “I’m going to get out,” I whispered.

  I opened the door slowly. I stood up.

  They were everywhere, a wall of Taxxons. More Taxxons than I could have imagined in my worst nightmare. Not dozens, hundreds.

  Arbron — at least I hoped it was him — danced forward on his needle legs. He raised his upper third and loomed high above me.

  I knew, or at least hoped, it was a friendly gathering. But these were Taxxons, after all. Taxxons, not even Taxxon-Controllers. In their natural state they were insane with hunger, and I was food.

  Arbron invited me and I noticed for the first time a sort of rock-and-dirt mound maybe ten feet high. I scrambled up, trying not to look scared, and moving very, very carefully so as not to scrape a knee or cut a finger.

  Arbron rose part of the way behind me. Then he spread his upper rows of Taxxon arms wide and began addressing the crowd in the Taxxon speech.

  I didn’t understand a word of it, but the Taxxon multitude did. They hissed and slithered and made a trilling sound that could either be approval or rage.

  From atop the mound, and with my eyes adjusted to the near-darkness, I could see them all. A sea of Taxxons. A huge underground cavern reeking of ammonia and seething with oversized, murderous centipedes.

  Then Arbron began to speak to them in thought-speak, presumably for my benefit.

 

  I must have gone several shades more pale at that. It seemed a strange way to introduce me.

 

  The crowd liked that. They murmured in true Taxxon form, hissing and spitting and writhing. Impossible not to feel that I was sitting on some gigantic piece of rotting meat surrounded by huge maggots. Impossible to shake that image.

  — he pointed at me with three of his arms —

  Now the crowd grew quieter, more attentive, less excited, but very, very focused.

 

  I recognized my cue. I was about to start speaking, but it occurred to me that a visual aid would be helpful. So I spread my arms wide and reached deep inside myself for the DNA that would form the tiger.

  I morphed slowly, slowly so they could all see. They watched the claws grow from my fingers, saw the orange-and-black fur rush across my body, muttered as I dropped forward onto all fours.

  Rachel complained.

  Then, I began to demorph more quickly. And once I was human again I focused my thoughts on the dragonfly. I shrank, fell toward the ground like a man diving off a skyscraper. The dirt and rock rose to me, gravel becoming boulders. Gossamer wings sprouted from my back. Articulated insect legs erupted from my chest. Massive eyes swelled like balloons, popping out of my eye sockets, overwhelming my face. I could actually see the fleas clinging to my body.

  I notified my friendly fleas.

  I fired my wings and zoomed just over the heads of the Taxxons. Then back, to land atop my podium. I demorphed. And now, if Cassie was right, the pièce de résistance.

  I formed a picture of the anaconda in my mind. The changes began. I saw my skin harden, dry out, crack into thousands of interlocked scales.

  My eyes moved around my head but remained forward-focused. My face bulged out, stretched, out and out. My arms were shriveling at a shocking pace. I was a weird creature, half snake, half human, standing erect but armless. Then my legs went weak and I dropped flat on my belly before I could fall. My legs melted into the tail that was stretching out and out and out from my elongating spine.

  I was ten feet long and still growing. Longer and longer, and without thinking I shortened the muscles on one side of my body and brought my length up to form a loose coil.

  The anaconda’s senses replaced my own. Vision faded, color dimmed, but awareness of motion intensified. It was like when you set your computer cursor to show trails: everything, anything that moved was infinitely more interesting than color or shape.

  My tongue tasted the air and I received a download of data — temperature, humidity, the scent of Taxxon exhalations.

  I let the Taxxons take a good, long look.

  I said.

  The chamber was silent. The Taxxons stared, stared holes in me with their red jelly eyes.

  Arbron said privately to me.

  Human once more, I addressed the Taxxon multitude.

  “My name is Jake. I am the leader of the Animorphs. As Arbron told you, we have killed many Taxxons using the morphing power. But we are not the enemies of the Taxxons. We are the enemies of the Yeerks. And we have killed many Yeerks.”

  They liked that okay.

  “The Andalites are our friends.”

  Rachel said in private thought-speak.

  “The Andalites are coming, and there may be a great battle. The Andalites may win. The Yeerks may win. If we and the Andalites win, you will be given the choice — to remain as you are, or to change, to find a new form, and live in peace and contentment here, in a special place. A homeland for the Taxxons … for Taxxons who are no longer haunted by the desperate hunger, no longer prey to the Yeerks.”

  I was lying. At least in part. Arbron was an Andalite, or had been: He had to know that the Andalites would resist ever turning the morphing power over to the hated Taxxons.

  I cringed a little as I spoke, waiting for him to interrupt, to call me a liar. But he let me go on. And I painted the picture for the Taxxons: life without hunger, a life of safety and security, where they would live in peace among themselves, no more cannibalism.

  And Arbron let me go on speaking.

  “The question is: Can we and our Andalite friends defeat the Yeerks and bring on this new day?”

  They waited for the answer. I gave it to them, feeling weirdly like a presidential candidate delivering a stump speech.

  “We can defeat the Yeerks … if you join us. Animorph, Andalite, and Taxxon together, we can win.”

  The Taxxons didn’t cheer, exactly, but they did send up a creepy whistling sound that reverberated around the chamber.

  Arbron slithered up beside me and, to my surprise, dismissed them, told them all to get back to their work. Hundreds of Taxxons obediently turned away and began filing out of side tunnels like a football stadium crowd after the game.

  I probably looked puzzled as I turned to Arbron. “Well?”

 

  “Okay, then I guess we should get down to specifics,” I said. “You know the Pool ship is here on Earth, on the surface. It’s there to feed the Yeerks until they can finish —”

 

  That stopped me. But there was no point in trying to lie. “Yeah, I guess they would.”

  Fleas leaped away from me, unseen by either of us, and moments later my friends began to appear, growing out of swollen, vile, armor-plated flea bodies.

  Arbron said.

  I heard footsteps and peered into the darkness of an access tunnel.

  “Well, good evening, everyone. It’s an awfully pretty night to spend it all in a filthy Taxxon tunnel.”

  I knew the voice. I’d heard it every day of my life. My brother. Tom.

  My brother, the human-Controller, head of Yeerk security.

  “Oh, calm down, Rachel,” Tom said genially, giving her a “chill-out” wave. She had begun to morph to grizzly. “No need to go all hostile.”

  “Keep morphing, Rachel,” I told her. “Ax?”

  Ax moved quickly to Tom’s side. His tail blade was against Tom’s throat. Tom stood still. He made a mocking face, exaggerated fear.

  “I’m alone, unarmed,” Tom said, holding his arms up in surrender. “Hey, I’m morph-capable now, you know. If I wanted trouble I’d use this really cool jaguar morph I have.”

  “Let him go, Ax,” I said.

  Ax removed his tail but stayed within striking distance. A word from me and Tom’s head would be rolling across the cave floor like a bowling ball.

  “So, this is the whole team, huh?” Tom nodded. He shook his head ruefully. “Crazy cousin Rachel. I always knew you were too much for your own good.”

  she said.

  “Snail? Oh, I’m wounded,” the Yeerk inside Tom answered. “And there’s Cassie. Marco. Your pet Andalite, of course. Hey, where’s the bird?”

  “How about we cut the crap?” I said.

  “Absolutely, Killer.” His eyes were cold, hostile. He was making no effort to pretend to actually be Tom. He knew that I knew what he was.

 

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