The Visitor (8 page)

S
uddenly Visser Three vanished. The room was dark again. Chapman sat hunched over the desk, with his head in his hands. It was a while before he opened the door and we both went back up the stairs.

Ms. Chapman was there, waiting. “What are the Visser's orders?” she asked in a whisper.

Chapman looked at her like he'd just seen a ghost. “He wants the Andalite bandits. He … he morphed into a Vanarx. A
Yeerkbane.”
He kept his voice low, too. He glanced toward the stairs. I guess he was checking to see if Melissa was around.

Ms. Chapman shuddered. “I'd heard that he
acquired a Vanarx. I always thought it was just another story to frighten his underlings.”

“He showed me … he showed how he destroyed Iniss One-Seven-Four.”

Ms. Chapman looked shocked. “He used a Vanarx on an Iniss of the second century?”

“That Andalite-Controlling scum,” Chapman said viciously. “I wish the Council of Thirteen
would
find out what kind of a mess he's making on this planet. Let them take that Andalite body from him and throw him back in some distant pool on the home world.”

“Don't wish for that,” Ms. Chapman said grimly. “Long before Visser Three loses power, he will surely have destroyed you for failing him.”

My cat ears noticed the sound before either of the Chapmans. Movement. Human feet pounding. I cocked my ears toward the stairs.

“Hey, Mom? Dad? Can one of you help me with this math problem?”

It was Melissa. She was halfway down the stairs. She stopped and glanced hopefully at her parents. Or at least at the people who had once been her parents.

“We're busy right now, Melissa,” Chapman snapped.

“Besides, dear, you should do your own work. That's how you learn,” Ms. Chapman said. “If you
still can't figure it out later, your father will help you.”

Melissa's face fell. She forced a smile, but there was no happiness there at all. “I guess you're right, Mom. It's just this square root stuff.”

She hesitated, like she was hoping her parents might change their minds and go back upstairs with her.

Ms. Chapman smiled. It was a smile as empty as Melissa's. “Square roots are hard to understand, aren't they? But I know you can do it.”

“I'll come up and check on you before you turn in, sweetheart,” Mr. Chapman said.

The words were normal enough. I guess my own mom or dad could have said exactly the same things to me. “Dear.” “Sweetheart.” But the way they were said … There was something missing. Humanity. Love. Call it whatever you want. The words were right, but they were completely wrong.

It was horrible. Horrible in a totally different way than the monsters we had fought in the Yeerk pool. This was the kind of horrible that made you want to cry instead of scream.

And suddenly I found myself running after Melissa as she headed back up the stairs. When I reached her room, Melissa sat down on the bed and began sobbing.

Melissa flopped on her face on the bed. She pulled a pillow over the back of her head and just cried.

I said.

I went over to the bed. As small as I was, the side of the bed looked like a wall. It could have been the side of a two-story building. I settled back on my haunches, gathering energy in my leg muscles. Then I sprang up, effortlessly, to land with perfect grace on the bed.

I walked over to Melissa and sniffed her hair sticking out from under the pillow. I heard a sound coming from somewhere. It was a sound that reminded me of my mother.

It reminded me of
both
my mothers, the human woman, and the cat who had licked my fur and carried me around in her mouth.

I recognized the sound. It was purring.

I was purring.

Melissa put her arm around me and drew me close. The physical contact made me a little anxious. It made the cat in me want to leave. But then she started scratching my neck and behind my ears. I purred a little louder and decided to stay for a while.

“I don't know what I've done,” Melissa said.

It startled me to realize she was talking to me. Did she guess the truth? Did she know I was human?

No. She was just a girl talking to her cat.

“I don't know what I did,” Melissa repeated. “Tell me, Fluffer McKitty. What did I do?”

I had stopped purring. Probably because I was preoccupied, arguing with Tobias. I started purring again. I felt Melissa needed me to purr.

She was still crying. Still scratching slowly behind my ears.

“What did I do, Fluffer?” she asked again. “Why don't they love me anymore?”

I felt like my own heart would break right then. Because I knew now why Melissa had stopped hanging out with me. I knew why she had become more withdrawn. And I knew how little hope there was for her.

My stomach turned and twisted.

Next time Marco asked why we were fighting the Yeerks, I knew I would have a whole new answer. Because they destroy the love of parents for their daughter. Because they made Melissa Chapman cry in her bed with no one to comfort her but a cat.

It was a small answer, I guess. I mean, it wasn't some high-sounding answer about the entire human race. It was just about this one girl. My friend. Whose heart was broken because her parents were no longer really her parents.

I said angrily.

I purred as loud as I could. Melissa cried. And it came to me, like a vision: All the children all over, whose parents had been made into Controllers. And the parents whose children had been taken from
them to be turned into Controllers. It was a terrible image. I wondered how it must feel to see your parents stop loving you.

After a while, Melissa fell asleep. I got up and padded down the stairs to the pet door.

It was chilly outside. My friends were all waiting. They were also a little mad at me for making them wait and worry.

“You only have ten minutes to spare, Rachel,” Jake said. “I hope it was worth scaring us all half to death. Did you at least discover something useful?”

decided
something, too.>

“What?” Cassie asked me.

T
hat night and the next morning, I barely got any homework done. In math class that day I got the first C I'd gotten in a long time. My grades were starting to fall because I was busy trying to save the world. Or at least to save my old friend.

I knew now what had happened. Why Melissa and I weren't friends anymore, at least not close friends. Something had gone terribly wrong in her life. Her parents no longer loved her. They pretended to, they sounded like they did, but Melissa knew it was all wrong.

Every time I thought of it, I felt like my insides were burning up from the anger. I guess I knew a
little bit about what she was feeling. When my parents got divorced, I worried that maybe that meant they didn't love me anymore.

I was wrong. They still did. I don't see my dad as much as I would like to, but he does love me. My mom loves me. Even my sisters love me. Love is pretty important. It's like wearing a suit of armor. It makes you strong.

On my way out of math class, Jake came sidling up next to me. “Meeting later, okay?”

“Yeah. Whatever. Where at?”

“The church tower, where we were the other day.”

“Okay. But it's a long walk.”

He turned around to face me, walking backward and grinning. “So, don't
walk,”
he said. He waved and headed off down the hall.

Two hours later I was in the air. Let me tell you something: Getting that big eagle body off the ground isn't easy. It is definitely work. I wondered if my human body got any of the aerobic benefits of the exercise.

Once I got clear of the ground, I was able to catch little gusts of wind to climb higher. But it wasn't till I made it above the trees and the school buildings that I started getting a good, solid breeze that helped lift me up.

When I finally got high enough, I spotted Tobias. His reddish tail feathers were like a beacon.

I said when I got close enough.

I said dreamily.

Tobias agreed.

He didn't sound like he was feeling sorry for himself. Just like he was mentioning something that happened to be true.

Tobias said. Ten minutes later I had morphed back into my human body.

“You know what we need?” Marco said. “We need to coordinate these morphing outfits. I mean, Cassie's wearing green patterned leggings and a purple stretch top, and Jake's got on those awful bike shorts, and Rachel is stylish, as always, in her black tights. Put it all together and we look pretty scruffy.”

“What do you want?” Jake asked him. “You want us all to wear blue with a big number four on our chests? Become the Fantastic Four?”

plus
the amazing Bird Boy,> Tobias added.

“No way,” Marco said. “Not Fantastic Four. I'm thinking more an X-Men kind of thing. It's not about being identical, it's just about having some
style
. Right now, if anyone saw us, they wouldn't think ‘Oh, cool, superheroes,' they'd think ‘Man, those people do not know how to dress.'”

“Marco,” I said, “I think it's time to get over this fantasy of yours. We are not superheroes. This is not a comic book.”

“Yes, but I really, really want it to be a comic book. See, in a comic book the heroes don't get killed. I mean, okay, they get killed, but usually not the big ones, or it's only temporary.”

“Can we deal with reality here?” Jake asked. “We have business to discuss.”

“What's the matter with combining green and purple?” Cassie asked Marco.

“It's a major fashion no-no,” Marco said.

“Been reading
Vogue
again, Marco?” I teased.

Jake put his hand over Marco's mouth. “People? And I use the term loosely. We need to decide what we're doing next.”

Marco pried Jake's hand away. “I want to decide what we're
not
doing next. I should be spending more time with my dad. You know, he's still messed up over my mom….”

Marco's voice always cracked whenever he mentioned his mom. He'd start out sounding tough and all, but his voice would end up with that little break, that little wobble. It had been two years since his mother disappeared. They said she drowned, although they never found her body. His father had fallen apart. It was the main reason Marco was so reluctant to be an Animorph. He was worried that if anything ever happened to him, his dad would just give up totally.

I could see that Jake was about to say something impatient. And I was feeling the same way, like Marco just needed to deal with reality.

But Cassie put her hand on Marco's arm. “Don't ever let any of this get in the way of spending time with your dad,” she said earnestly. “He needs you. We need you, too, Marco, but your dad comes first.”
She looked at Jake, then at me. “There isn't much point in doing any of this if we forget
why
we're doing it.”

I thought about Melissa. And I thought about my mom and dad and how great it was to have them, even when they got on my nerves.

“Cassie's right. When you get home, tell your dad you love him, Marco.” I blurted it out without thinking about it. It wasn't the kind of thing I normally say.

“Thank you, Doctor Rachel,” Marco said.

He said it snidely, but I could see he knew what I was talking about. Then he was suddenly all business. He rubbed his hands together. “Okay, let's get serious here. How are we going to go about getting ourselves killed next? Turn into flies at a frog convention? Morph into turkeys at Thanksgiving?”

“I want to go back in,” I said. “Back into Chapman's.”

“Why?” Jake asked. “We learned a lot already. We —”

“We didn't learn the location of the Kandrona,” I pointed out. “That's what we need to do, sooner or later. The Andalite made it pretty clear to Tobias that the Kandrona is the weak point for the Yeerks. The Kandrona sends out the rays that are concentrated in the Yeerk pools. If we destroy the Kandrona, we hurt them bad.”

Marco raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Excuse me, Rachel, but what
is
a Kandrona? I mean, we know what it
does,
but what does it look like? How big is it? For all we know, the Kandrona could be the size of a lighter and be in Visser Three's pocket.”

Tobias said.

“Whatever,” Marco said impatiently. “The point is: How do we destroy something when we don't even know what it is?”

“That's why we have to follow the one lead we have,” I said. “Chapman. Chapman communicates with Visser Three. The two of them know where the Kandrona is. If I can spy on them, maybe I can figure it out.”

They were all staring at me. Marco looked at me like I was crazy. Jake looked thoughtful. Cassie looked worried, like she wasn't sure about what I was saying.

Tobias turned his fierce, intimidating hawk's stare on me. he asked me privately.

“I don't think you should go back in there alone,” Jake said.

“How is anyone else going to go in with me?” I asked. “We can't have
two
cats running around. I mean, as Fluffer I can go anywhere without any of them being suspicious.”

See … I hadn't told anyone about Visser Three telling Chapman to kill me. I knew it was wrong to keep secrets like that from the group. But if I'd told them, they would have never let me go back in.

Unfortunately, although Jake may not be all that perceptive, Cassie is.

“Are you
sure
nothing went wrong while you were in there, Rachel?” Cassie asked me. She was looking at me with this kind of sideways look Cassie gets when she's trying to figure someone out.

“It was scary,” I said. “But nothing happened.” It wasn't exactly a lie. Kind of a lie, but not exactly.

Cassie thought for a moment. Her eyes went blank. Suddenly I knew what was going on: Tobias was talking to her privately. He was telling her something. She nodded like she was agreeing.

Tobias didn't know what happened with Visser Three. But he did know that I was pretty freaked when I came up out of that basement.

“I think we should find a way for someone to go along with Rachel,” Cassie suggested.

“What are you going to do, turn into a flea and ride on my back?” I asked her.

She smiled and gave a little shrug. “I'm just saying we should think about it.”

“Okay then,” Jake said. “Rachel goes in one more time. Maybe we'll get lucky.”

“We haven't gotten lucky since we walked through that construction site and met our first alien,” Marco said.

“Maybe that's going to change,” I said. “I'm going in and I'm finding a way to hurt those creeps.”

Tobias said in my head.

“Same thing,” I said. I guess the others wondered who I was talking to.