jumping around, chasing, playing, and making an odd

  CHUK

  CHUK CHUK that must have been

  laughter.

  The scene around me changed, like a movie

  doing a flash-forward. Now, mingled in with the Pemalites, were androids like Erek. The androids looked vaguely like their canine creators.

  "We were toys, originally," Erek said. "The Pemalites made us to play with. They called us the Chee. It's a word that means "friend." They also had work for us to do, but they created us mostly to be their companions. An artificial race,

  yes, but not a race of mechanical slaves." Erek looked at us and I swear there were tears in his holographic eyes. "We were their friends and equals and companions. They taught us to

  laugh and play. They loved it when they were able to create androids who could tell a joke. There was a celebration that lasted a year."

  Then . . . ZZZZZZZAAAAAAAARRRRPPPP!

  I jerked back. A monstrous beam of light

  sliced the ground open right in front of us, like some insane plow tearing up the earth. It inciner ated the pink Brillo pad trees and the huge mushrooms.

  "Then the Howlers came," Erek explained. "They suddenly popped out of Zero-space, thou

  sands of powerful ships. They had come from clear outside this galaxy. The Pemalites had no

  idea who they were. And they never found out what the Howlers wanted. The Howlers made no demands. They just attacked. Maybe that's all they wanted: to destroy."

  What Erek showed us next was like one of those horrifying films from World War II.

  Pe-malites hunted from the air. Pemalite

  space stations blown apart. Pemalite ships

  sliced open, and helpless Pemalites left

  to drift through cold, dead space. The scenes of massacre just went on and on.

  I noticed Cassie was crying. I think I was crying, too. It was too horrible.

  "Almost the entire race of Pemalites was wiped out," Erek said. "A few hundred Chee and a few hundred Pemalites left the planet, escaping in a single ship just seconds ahead of a new wave of Howler attacks.

  "We escaped into Zero-space. We had no plan, no idea what to do."

  "Why didn't you fight back?" I demanded.

  "I mean, you talk about how advanced the Pemalites were. If they could create androids, they could create weapons."

  Erek looked at me and nodded, like he agreed.

  "The Pemalites had forgotten the ways of conflict and war. They were creatures of peace. They'd forgotten that there could be such a thing as pure evil." That answer just frustrated me. It made no sense. But I let Erek tell the rest of his grim story.

  "As we ran for our lives through Zero-space, we discovered that the Howlers had achieved a special revenge. The Pemalites began to become sick. They began to die. The Howlers had unleashed germ weapons. The Pemalites were doomed. But we

  Chee, we androids, were unaffected."

  The scene around us became the inside of a space ship. A scene of Chee, looking on helplessly while one of their creators writhed in pain.

  "Then we remembered a planet. A

  planet similar to our own, but very far from our home and the Howlers. It had only one sun and the light was pale, but there were trees and grass and wonderful oceans."

  "Earth," Cassie said.

  "Earth," Erek said. "The Pemalites had not visited Earth in fifty thousand years, and in that time, everything had changed. The wandering tribes of primates had created cities. They had

  domesticated animals. They were planting crops.

  "We landed on Earth with just six Pemalites still clinging to life."

  The hologram disappeared, and the underground cavern was back to its normal self --a wide park of

  Earth trees and Earth plants, with dogs everywhere.

  "We could not save the Pemalites. They would die. But we could try and rescue some

  part

  of them. We hoped we could keep their hearts, their souls alive somehow. We looked for an Earth species we could use to harbor the essence of the Pemalites. Their decency. Their kindness. Their playfulness and love."

  "Wolves," Cassie said, once again way ahead of me.

  Erek looked surprised, but he nodded his

  holographically projected human head. "Yes. They looked most like the Pemalites themselves. We grafted the essence of the Pemalites into the wolf species. And from that union, dogs were cre ated. To this day, most dogs carry within them the essence of the Pemalites. Not all, but most.

  Wherever you see a dog playing, chasing a stick, running around barking for the sheer joy of life, you see the remnants of the race of Pemalites."

  "That's why all these dogs are here," Jake said. "They're your. . . what, friends? Creators?"

  "They are our joy," Erek said, "because they remind us of a world without evil. The world we lost. We Chee are all that is left of Pemalite

  tech

  nological genius. The dogs of Earth are all that is

  left of Pemalite souls."

  i. don't think I would have believed any of it. Except for the small fact that we were in a huge underground park. And there were androids walking around. Plus, there was the fact that my entire life had become one long, incredible, unbelievable story. So who was I to laugh at Erek's story?

  "So you all pass as humans?" I asked Erek.

  He nodded. "Yes. We live as humans.

  We play the role of children and then grow older, and eventually our hologram is allowed to "die" and we start again as children."

  "How long has this been going on?" Cassie asked.

  Erek smiled warmly. "I helped to build the great pyramid."

  "You designed the pyramids?"

  "No, no, of course not. We have never interfered in human affairs. I was a slave. I helped

  to quarry the stone. It was a challenge, because I was new at pretending to be human. I had to hide my real strength, of course. The Pemalite home world had a gravity four times stronger than Earth's. Naturally, we were designed for that gravity, which means we are quite powerful by human standards."

  "And you stayed as a slave?" Jake asked. "You could have taken over Egypt. You could have taken over the world."

  "No. We are not the Yeerks," he said coldly. "You see, when our creators made us, they hardwired us for nonviolence. We are

  not capable of hurting another living being. No Chee has

  ever

  taken a life."

  Just then, I noticed a group of four Chee walking quickly toward us.

  Erek saw them, too. Even though I know his

  "face" was just a hologram, it seemed to me he was annoyed.

  "What have you done?" one of the Chee demanded.

  "What have you done, you fool?"

  The four Chee came up and glared at us with robot eyes. "Humans? An Andalite? Here?

  What have you told them?"

  "Everything," Erek said defiantly. "These are the ones, these humans and this Andalite, who have been resisting the Yeerks. They're the ones who can morph." His voice rose. "They are the ones who are fighting the battle

  we

  should fight."

  "We are Chee. We do not fight," one of the androids said. It turned on its holographic projector. A human body appeared. The body

  of an old woman, maybe eighty years

  old.

  "I am Chee-lonos. My human name for now is Maria," she said. "I did not mean to seem angry toward you humans, or you, my Andalite friend. My dispute is with this Chee called Erek and some of his friends."

  "We stood by helplessly as the Howlers annihilated our creators," Erek said to Maria.

  "We can't stand by helplessly and watch this world be destroyed, too. Dogs and humans are intertwined. They have evolved a dependency. Dogs cannot survive without humans. If the humans fall to the Yeerks, we, the last great masterpieces of the Pemalites, and the dogs, their spirit-homes, will all die, too."

  I gave Jake a look. That's why the Chee

  wanted to help humans? To save dogs? Jake

  shook his head slightly in amusement.

  "We do

  not

  fight," Maria said heatedly. "We do not

  kill. You know that, Erek. Yet you bring these outsiders here. You blurt the secrets we have kept for thousands of years. Why? What good can come from it? We cannot fight to save the humans."

  "That's where you're wrong," Erek said softly.

  "We

  can

  fight. While you and the others merely hope everything will work out, my friends and I have been infiltrating the Yeerk organizations here on Earth. The Yeerks even think that I am one of

  them."

  Maria and the three unhologrammed Chee just stared.

  "The Yeerks have been busy. They control a computer company called Matcom."

  It took me a couple of seconds to remember that name.

  Erek went on. "The Yeerks are working on a master computer to infiltrate and rewrite all the software in all the computers on Earth. When they have achieved sufficient force among humans, they will launch this computer bomb, and in a flash, control all computers."

  "What does this have to do with us?" Maria asked.

  "The heart of this system is a crystal the Yeerks obtained from a Dayang trader. The

  Dayang didn't know what he had. But the Yeerks did. The crystal is a processor more

  sophisticated than anything even the Andalites could create. And it is more than fifty-thousand Earth years old."

  "A Pemalite crystal!" Maria gasped.

  "Yes. A Pemalite crystal. If we had

  it, we could rewrite our own internal systems. Do you understand now? We could erase the prohibition against violence. We could be free! Free to fight!"

  "A Pemalite crystal," Maria whispered.

  "You can't do this, Erek. You can't!" But Erek just turned away. "If we can get the crystal, there is very little we can't do. Our strength, joined with these Animorphs? The Yeerks would have to double their forces just to contain us."

  Ax asked him.

  Erek turned off his hologram and became a machine once again. And then the front of his head split open. Inside his steel and ivory head was a chamber, just a few inches in diameter.

  And inside that chamber was a gray slug,

  helpless, unable to escape. Tiny wires, no

  thicker than hairs, wrapped around it.

  Ax hissed.

  "Yes," Erek said. "The Yeerks believe I am human. I accepted infestation. But of course the

  Yeerk cannot make a Controller of me. I made a place for him instead. He sees nothing. Knows nothing. I tapped

  his

  memory, not the other way around. And now I can pass among the Yeerks like one of them."

  I had two reactions. One, I was sick at the thought of that Yeerk, trapped inside a steel cage. As much as I hated Yeerks, it seemed harsh just the same.

  But another reaction was much stronger. We had an ally! A powerful ally. An android who could pass as a Controller, who could enter Yeerk society. And an android with many powers of his own.

  "How do you keep the Yeerk alive without Kandrona rays?" Cassie asked.

  See, every three days a Yeerk has to return to the Yeerk pool to absorb Kandrona rays. Without that, they die.

  "I am able to use my own internal power to generate Kandrona rays to keep this Yeerk alive," Erek explained. "When I go to the Yeerk pool I am able to trick the Yeerks

  into believing that my Yeerk is swimming in the pool. I generate a hologram of a Yeerk leaving my ear and dropping into the pool. Later, I create a hologram of it returning. The Yeerks never

  notice that they don't encounter this Yeerk actually in

  the pool. Yeerks communicate very little in their natural states."

  "How do we fit into all this?" Jake asked. "I mean, what do you want with us, Erek?" Erek resumed his human appearance. He stepped toward us, eager, excited. "We could fight together against the Yeerks. We could be allies. If only

  ... we need that Pemalite crystal. But the

  Yeerks have created a maze of defenses like nothing you can imagine. That crystal is in a room at the heart of the Matcom building. There are

  Hork-Bajir everywhere. Elite Hork-Bajir

  warriors, the best.

  "And the crystal itself is guarded by an ingenious system. It is concealed in a room of absolute darkness. Absolute darkness. The slightest, faintest light, ultraviolet, infrared, any

  light, will set off alarms. Within the darkness are wires that are set off by the slightest

  touch."

  "So to get to the crystal you'd have to be able to find it without seeing it, and avoid the wires that are also invisible in the darkness," I said.

  "It's like finding a needle in a haystack when you're blindfolded and can't touch a single piece of hay. The walls, ceiling, and floor are all

  pressure-sensitive, so you can't touch them. It may be impossible," Erek said.

  "How are we supposed to do that?" I demanded.

  "How can you find something you can't see? It's not like it'll smell or call out to us."

  "Urn . . ." Cassiesd.

  "Excuse me?" Jake asked in surprise.

  "It can be done," Cassie said. "I mean ... if we

  want

  to."

  "Of course we want to," I said. "With these guys on our side, we actually have a chance of winning. Of

  course

  we want to. Animorphs and Chee together? Our morphing ability, their strength and holographic tricks? We'd kick Yeerk butt."

  "No," Maria cried. "You don't understand. Chee do not hurt. Chee do not kill. No Chee has ever taken a life." She grabbed my arm and looked right in my eyes. "While humans and Yeerks and Andalites and Hork-Bajir and a

  million other species on a million worlds

  warred and slaughtered and conquered, we remained at peace. Would you end all that? Would you make us killers, too?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I guess I would," I said, a little coldly. "We're in a fight for our lives here. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our friends

  --they are all going to be slaves of the Yeerks, if we don't win. So I'll do whatever it

  takes. If you'd fought all those thousands of years ago, the Pe-malites would still be alive. And you wouldn't be living with dogs in a big underground kennel."

  I didn't mention the sudden interest The Sharing had in my father. I didn't want to make this personal. Maria let me go, and Erek nodded.

  "A big underground kennel," Erek said bitterly. "Exactly."

  "We'll get your crystal for you," Jake said.

  "Tell us all you know about this Matcom, and we'll get your crystal." He looked at the Chee called Maria. "Sorry, but Marco is right. The Yeerks have my brother. There's nothing I won't do to get him back."

  We rode the fake basement back up, leaving the eerie golden world of dogs behind.

  "S. Do we have a deal?" Erek asked. "You'll help us get the Pemalite crystal? And then

  we'll fight alongside you to defeat the Yeerks."

  "Sounds good to me," I said quickly.

  "Unless anyone has any objection -" Jake started to say.

  That's when Cassie interrupted. "Erek, let us talk it over. It's a big decision."

  I was surprised, but not as surprised as Jake was.

  Then we heard a noise coming from directly above us.

  "HhhhrrrAAAAWWWWRRRR!"

  "Oh, man," I said. I knew that sound. We all knew that sound.

  "Rachel," Cassie said under her breath.

  "We were down there a long time," Jake said.

  "Erek, I think a friend of ours may have come in to rescue us."

  Erek shrugged. "I don't think it's going to be a problem."

  "You don't know our friend," I said. The basement had settled back into its normal place. I tore up the stairway. "Rachel!

  Chill!"

  I burst back into the utterly normal kitchen and raced into the utterly normal living room.

  The front door of the house had been ripped off its hinges. The couch was thrown against one wall. And there, in the middle of the room, standing so tall its head scraped the ceiling, was a full-grown grizzly bear.

  "HhhhRRAAAAWWRRR!" Rachel roared in rage and frustration.

  Frustration, see, because the Chee who passed as Erek's father had her in a full nelson. His human-holograph arms were wrapped around the unbelievably massive shoulders of the grizzly, and he was actually holding the great bear still. He had pinned a grizzly so powerful it could literally turn a Toyota into an aluminum can.

  "Okay, now I've seen everything," I said.

 
  strong.> Ax commented.

  This was the understatement of all time.

  Rachel

  demanded.
  I figured you were dead or something. And if you don't have a good explanation, you

  will

  be dead!>

  "Oh, we have a story, all right," Cassie said.

  Rachel had calmed down and stopped roaring when she saw us. Now the Chee slowly released her, and she began to change back out of morph.

  Jake looked embarrassed and started to pull the couch back down. "Urn, Erek, this is our friend Rachel."

  "It was smart of you to keep a reserve," Erek commented. To Rachel he said, "I hope you weren't hurt."

  "How come you can wrestle a grizzly if you have to be nonviolent?" I asked Erek.

  "Of course, my "father" here knew she was not a true bear. And he only held onto her. He

  did not destroy her. If Rachel had been strong enough to win, my "father" would have had no choice but to allow himself to be destroyed." I laughed. "I see why you want to change that." I expected Erek to agree. Instead, he

  looked a little sad. "Yes," he said. Just that one word.

  We started to leave. I let the others get a few steps ahead of me. I pulled Erek over.

  "Hey,

  Erek. You were at my mom's funeral. I don't think I said thanks at the time."

  Erek looked away and bit his lip. "Marco .

  . . there's something I have to tell you."

  "I think I already know. My mother isn't dead. She's a Controller. She's Visser One." It was Erek's turn to be impressed. "You guys have learned a lot."

 

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