74 The humans the tiger had smelled. ... My friends.
Then I felt it again. The sensation that filled me with a grim sort of pleasure. I felt the Yeerk's fear.
It was good to know that he was afraid.
It was very good.
75 Chapter 19
I could feel the Yeerk opening my memory like a book again. He was checking through the list of all the morphs I had ever done.
Dog. Fish. Flea. Seagull. Dolphin. Ant. Wolf.
I knew what he must be thinking. Which could he use to evade the watchful owl in the tree above us? The owl who saw through the night like it was day, and heard the sounds no human could hear.
"She can't stay in owl morph forever," the Yeerk said. "She has a two-hour time limit. Just as I do."
"But of course there's Rachel and Marco and Ax. You don't know how many of them are here.
You don't know where they are or what they are."
"Can the owl watch a flea? I doubt it. Or an ant?" The Yeerk smirked.
"True. But how far can a flea travel in the two-hour time limit? Twenty yards? Thirty? Then you have to demorph and my friends will have no trouble finding you."
"Shut up!" he yelled, losing patience.
I reveled in his anger. It meant he was scared. It also meant something else. I could not control my arms or legs. I could not even keep my mind closed from him. But he could not stop my thoughts. He could not stop me from talking to him.
And I had the power to annoy him. To distract him when he should be focused on escaping.
"You think you can harass me?" he said, reading my thoughts as soon as I had them. "You overestimate yourself."
"You underestimate us, Yeerk. You thought you'd just morph and walk away. You guessed wrong. And your three days is less than two and a half already. Tick tock, Yeerk. Tick tock."
"Let's see whether your owl friend can handle a wolf as easily as she handled the falcon." He began morphing. The wolf form was one I had enjoyed. Wolves are not subject to much fear.
And their instincts are easily manipulated. Not like ants. Or the lizard that was one of my earliest morphs.
I watched as my body sprouted gray fur. As my face bulged out to become a long snout. As my ears slid up the side of my head to rest on top.
"I see our owl friend is keeping her distance" the Yeerk said. "l thought as much." 76 He set out at a fast trot. Unlike tigers, wolves are long-distance travelers. They can cover amazing distances at a run. And worse, the wolf brain seemed to have some interior sense of direction. It knew which way was deeper into woods, and which way led to the city.
We ran through woods, through a night as dark as night can be. Clouds hung low over the forest, allowing only the palest glow from the moon.
"A quick jog back to what passes for civilization on this planet, demorph to human, and your friends will be powerless to stop me," the Yeerk said.
I wondered who he was trying to convince. Me, or himself?
"You're an arrogant bunch, aren't you? You Yeerks, I mean."
"Arrogant? Why wouldn't we be? We are the most powerful race in the galaxy. Overlords of the Taxxons. Conquerors of the Hork-Bajir and the Ssstram and the Mak. Soon to be conquerors of the humans."
"Don't count the humans just yet," I said. "And there are still the Andalites."
"We'll save the Andalites for last," he hissed.
He stopped moving and pricked up his wolf's ears. There came a distinct howling sound. Loud and not very far away, it rose and warbled and rose again before dying away.
A second wolf voice howled.
"Another wolf. Two," the Yeerk said. I felt him contact the wolf's own submerged instinctive mind. What was the meaning of the howling?
A notice. A warning to any other wolves that we are here. Don't come around, unless you want to risk a fight.
Suddenly I realized what it meant. I laughed.
"This is an area we were in before," I said. "As wolves. We discovered - "
"Silence! I know what you found. When will you figure out that I can read your memory as well as you can?"
"We found another pack of wolves. They think this is their territory," I went on, enjoying the fact that I was bothering him. "Those howls you hear? Those are my friends. They're calling to the other wolf pack. Better run faster, Yeerk. That big male who runs the other pack is tough." The Yeerk began running all out, pushing the wolf body for all the speed and endurance it had.
The dark tree trunks were a blur as we ran through the night, followed by the howls of wolves who were not wolves.
77 Then, a smell on the wind. The smell of an other wolf. A male wolf.
"I believe that's my old friend now," I said, laughing.
The Yeerk stopped running.
Ahead, through the trees, a pair of glittering yellow eyes glared at us. Other eyes appeared. Five wolves - five real wolves - waited for us to try to move forward.
"Go ahead?" I taunted the Yeerk. "Go kick his butt. Of course, that's a realwolf there. An alpha male. Leader of his pack, which means he's probably been in a dozen fights and won them all.
Go on, Yeerk. Tell him how the Yeerks are masters of the galaxy. I'm sure he'll be very impressed."
I could sense the Yeerk's hesitation. His uncertainty.
"So many species on this planet," he said to himself. "So many balances and connections.
Everything preying on everything else. Every power is checked by some other power. Every ad vantage is canceled by some disadvantage."
"Yeah. Earth. It's a tough neighborhood."
"When we take this planet, we will eliminate these species. We will simplify. Things should be simpler. Yes, much simpler."
"I have a news flash for you, Yeerk. I don't think you're going to take this planet. I think this planet is going to take you."
Just then, a human voice. "So. You about done playing games? Ready to come back to the shack?"
It was Marco. He was shoeless and wearing his morphing outfit. He had been one of the wolves who'd led us straight into the enemy pack.
Marco shivered. "Look, Mr. Yeerk, it's cold and I'm freezing. I always knew this situation with the morphing outfits was going to be trouble some day. So come on. Let's go back to the shack."
For a moment the Yeerk was so enraged he was ready to leap at Marco and tear out his throat.
But then, lumbering up behind Marco came Rachel. The very large version of Rachel with the trunk, the big leathery ears, and the two huge tusks.
Marco seemed to guess what had gone through the Yeerk's mind. "Go ahead. Try some thing. A wolf pack ahead. A very large, surprisingly fast African elephant behind you. And more surprises in the woods all around you. Oh, and one more thing . . . Cassie is nestled down in your fur. Sucking your blood, I imagine. She did the flea thing."
78 I realized then that there is a very basic difference between Yeerks and humans.
A human will fight even when he knows he can't win. Maybe our species is just a little crazy.
But human history is full of cases where a handful of guys would fight an entire army. They'd get stomped, but they'd fight anyway.
That's not the way it is for Yeerks. They are ruthless. They will do anything, absolutely anything to win. But when the situation is impossible, totally impossible, they stop fighting. They figure that other Yeerks will carry on the fight for them.