CHAPTER SIX: TOBIAS
It was too late to go to the Gardens that night, and we couldn't go the next day because Rachel had that awards ceremony for her mom and Jake had that paper to write and the rest of us had homework. Maybe homework doesn't seem important under the circumstances, but I knew that missing too many assignments was a surefire way of drawing the attention of exactly the sort we didn't want. So I did my homework, even though all I could think about were the waves...and the way Chapman had looked at me on that beach, daring to stand next to the indomitable Berensons and sweet, non-troublemaking Cassie. Like I was some kind of disease who was going to infect them with my outcast weirdo-ness just by getting too close…
I mean, I know how social popularity works even though I'm stuck outside it. So I knew he had a point. But it wasn't a point I liked thinking about.
Mom and I combed the beach again after school on Wednesday, but the only thing we found were people in Sharing shirts who snickered behind their hands whenever they saw us. It made my temper rise, but I thought about the people trapped in their own heads while Yeerks raised their hands and curled their lips to laugh at us, and my anger turned to pity and disgust and leached away into the sand.
I still wanted to punch somebody, but it's hard to punch a slug that's hiding in someone else's skull.
Mom was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to help her keep looking on Thursday, but she cheered-up when I told her I'd been invited to go to the Gardens with my friends. She dug a handful of crumpled bills out of her purse and told me to have fun and get some snacks and she'd let me know what she found when I got home.
I spent the day imagining how great it would be to be able to tell the other Animorphs that mom had discovered the clue we needed while we were off acquiring dolphins, but all she came home with was an interestingly-shaped piece of driftwood she had plans to paint. I tried to hide how crushed I was and talked vaguely about having had a good time at the park without mentioning that I now had the ability to turn into a marine mammal. I also didn't say anything about Marco's new haircut; I couldn't help wondering if the sudden cut had anything to do with having been potentially spotted hanging-out with me and my "crazy" mom by Darlene. I did tell her that one of Cassie's mom's friends had introduced us to the dolphins, though, which mom thought was one of the coolest things she'd ever heard.
I felt a little guilt at not telling her everything, but less than I used to. I knew I was taking advantage of my mom's bad memory and poor focus to get away with only sharing bits and pieces that a more coherent person would have insisted on following-up on, but I told myself that telling her bits and pieces was better than telling her nothing. And maybe I was lying to her, but at least I wasn't doubting her anymore. So that was better than things used to be, right?
Friday was teacher conferences, so we had the whole day free. I expected mom to invite me to the beach again, but she'd apparently forgotten that school was canceled. She kissed me goodbye, told me not to miss my bus, and headed off to the beach to get an early start on the search.
I swallowed my cereal and my guilt and joined my friends at the river where we'd decided to begin our dolphin morphs. They'd chosen a little park near a bridge. A good place for fishing, Cassie announced, and I shrugged agreement because the only thing I'd ever gone fishing for was UFO wreckage.
About a half a mile away from the park, the river empties into the ocean. The river is lined with trees along most of its length. Here and there are homes and residences and private docks, but the spot they'd chosen was hidden from the bridge and from any houses.
Cassie was the last to arrive. She claimed that she'd been busy with chores, but I wondered if she'd just been wrestling with her moral qualms over morphing something as intelligent as a dolphin. I didn't ask; I didn't think I had the right to pry. I had enough moral qualms of my own about other stuff.
I wondered if there was something wrong with me that this wasn't one of them. But it wasn't like I would be Monica the dolphin; I was just going to turn into a copy of her for a while. It wasn't the same thing.
Right?
Anyway, we hid our clothes and waded out into the river. Cassie went first, because we all knew she was the best at morphing. (Except maybe Cassie, who may have been overly modest or may have been insecure; I had yet to figure that out. I guess I could have asked Rachel, but that seemed like a weird thing to ask somebody about their best friend.) Anyway, I thought it was a little unkind to make her go first, given that she was the one who was the most worried about whether or not it was okay to morph a dolphin, but on the other hand it had been her idea to morph dolphins in the first place. So maybe it was right that Cassie be the first.
We stripped down to our leotards and bike shorts and followed her into the cold water.
It was, as usual, a horrifying thing to watch. First Cassie turned pale and rubbery, then her bones started shifting under her skin, and then her nose bulged out into the dolphin's...muzzle? Snout? I realized I had no idea what dolphin anatomy was called, which felt rude. Maybe I should look into getting some kind of animal encyclopedia. It seemed disrespectful to turn into something without knowing the words I should use to describe its body that I was borrowing.
Her arms shrank to flippers at the same time that the dorsal fin sprouted from her back, but somehow she'd managed to keep her legs through most of the morph. She was already three-quarters dolphin when they finally shriveled-up and she fell forward into the water.
We all flinched at the splash, then watched in nervous excitement as Cassie-the-dolphin kicked forward into deeper water.
What if she did find a fully-formed dolphin mind in there? What if we had to choose between taking-over a sentient creature and letting an Andalite die?
"Cassie?" I asked.
She didn't seem to hear me. "Cassie! Are you okay?" I tried again.
"Cassie!" Rachel was loud enough to make the rest of us glance over our shoulders, instinctively worrying about drawing attention, although surely if anyone was near enough to hear her shout they would have been more interested in the sight of a stocky, pretty black girl turning into a full-grown dolphin in the middle of the river.
"How do you feel? Are you okay in there?"
Rachel waded forward deeper into the river, ignoring the bite of the cold water on her thin human skin, and reached out for Cassie's tail.
Suddenly the dolphin rolled over and smacked its tail, splashing all of us but mostly Rachel.
{Come on, everyone!} Cassie's voice called in our heads, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. {Come on! Come in and play with me! Let's swim to the ocean! I want to play!}
I followed Rachel into the water with a deep sense of relief and concentrated on the dolphin, beginning my own morph. It was weirder than turning into a cat or a hawk. Dolphins are mammals - air-breathers - but they're a lot more like a fish physically than anything else any of us had ever turned into, and trading hands and feet for flippers was disconcerting. Maybe it shouldn't have been weird, after having wings - but it was.
Water was different, somehow, and I didn't like it. Or maybe it was just the memory of the last time I'd gotten soaked, paddling desperately away from armed Controllers with Marco clutched between my big cougar teeth, trying not to chomp him in half or drop him in the waves and wondering when a bullet was going to put an end to all my worries…
The river water wasn't cold on my thick dolphin skin, though. And as the dolphin's instincts bubbled up beneath me, my worries faded. It was silly to be afraid! What was there to worry about? I was a dolphin, I was with my pod, and the ocean was nearby!
We raced through the water, and the taste of salt as we breached the ocean's borders was like an explosion of fireworks under my skin. Everything was awesome!
I saw my friends around me, swift, pale shapes in the water. Sleep gray torpedoes as they rose to breathe.
I lived in both worlds - the sea and the air. It was like being the hawk, only land was suddenly irrelevant. My world was an endless up connected to an endless down , the pale blue and white of the sky jutting up against the blue-green of the ocean. I slipped back and forth through the bright barrier that separated them.
Jake went zipping by, shooting up from beneath Cassie to explode into the air. I heard the slap of his belly as he landed. Cassie followed him, repeating the jump. It was a game! I dove deep, down to where the sandy floor sloped toward depths even I could not explore. Then I powered my tail, steadied my flippers, and drove hard towards the surface. Above me, I could see the shimmering, silver border between water and air.
{Yah-hooooo!"
{Is this cool, or what?} Marco laughed in my head.
{This is cool,} Cassie answered.
{This is beyond cool,} Rachel chimed in.
{Let's all do it at the same time!} Jake said.
The five of us dove deep. The ocean floor was still far below us, rippling sand dotted with rocks and clumps of seaweed.
Near the ocean floor we leveled off, practically scraping our bellies on the bottom. And then, aiming at the silver barrier one again, we shot upward, racing each other, ecstatic from the joy of our own bodies' strength.
We launched into the air like a well-trained team of acrobats.
We flew, side by side, exhaling and refilling our lungs with warm air.
Life was joy. Life was a game. I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance through the sea.
So I did.
My body was a wonder, amazing. There was nothing I could ask of it that it would not give me. This was my element, and I fit here, perfect and seamless and strong. I felt like the whole ocean had come to embrace me, stretching out across the globe with perfect clarity and comfort. It was right. I belonged. It was…
It was maybe too good to be true. I wasn't used to feeling like this, to feeling like I belonged. To feeling like I fit into my own skin, fit into my environment; to feeling right.
The effervescent joy of the dolphin was still there, laughing at the corners of my brain like a mass of bright bubbles, but Tobias-the-boy slipped back into the spaces in between.
{Guys?} I said. {Guys, hey, I think...I think we need to focus.}
{Focus?} Cassie laughed. {Focus on what, Tobias? Focus on everything!}
{No, guys, there's a reason we're here. Remember? Look, I think the dolphins are affecting us…}
{I'll affect you!} Rachel said, and swam over to spiral around me like a firepole.
I grinned both with my dolphin face and inside my head, and twirled to meet her - but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else, something...something we needed to find…
{The Andalite spaceship!} I blurted. {Remember? We're supposed to find the Andalite spaceship!}
How could I have forgotten? But I knew how: the dolphin wasn't just happy, it was content. There was nothing in the whole ocean that could bother the dolphin. Its life was perfect…
But mine wasn't. And that was a reality that no amount of dolphin-joy could shake loose from my head for long.
{We have to find the spaceship,} I insisted. {And we can't stay too long looking for it, or else-}
{Find the spaceship,} Rachel interrupted me. {Cool. I bet I can find it first!}
{No way!} Jake said instantly. {I'll find it.}
{Where is it? Let's go look!} Marco said.
It was like trying to run-herd on a bunch of five-year-olds, but at the same time, part of me just wanted to join them. Would that be so bad? To just let go and...swim? To play?
{Hey,} Cassie said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. {Can you guys do this?}
A series of loud, rapid clicks burst from her dolphin body, almost like loud static.
{Whoa! What was that?}
Echolocation, I realized - but before I could try and pull my thoughts together enough to explain, Cassie spoke again.
{You guys?} Her voice was different suddenly, more like her usual self. {I know this is crazy, but I feel like there's something out there. Something...I don't know. But I don't like it.}
The rest of us began firing off our own clicks, exploring the ocean around us with a sort of underwater radar.
{Yeah,} Marco said. {Now I see it. I mean, I don't see it, but you know what I mean.}
I concentrated, trying to see...well, not see, but "see" what I was "looking" at. I didn't like it, but I couldn't quite tell why…
{I know!} Cassie cried, sounding excited again. {It's a shark!}
A new instinct swam-up from the dolphin brain, something different from the giddy delight I'd felt before. This one was full of fierce certainty and I knew: dolphins didn't like sharks.
We didn't like them at all.
# # #
It took only seconds for a consensus to form: there was a great one under attack by sharks, and we were going to stop it.
The five of us lanced forward, faster than ever, toward the whale in distress and the five sharks surrounding it.
My dolphin heart wasn't full of hate for the sharks, but the emotion I did feel - a combination of excitement for the hunt, outrage at the audacity of someone attacking a great one - was probably as close to a feeling that dark as a dolphin could come. Maybe I didn't hate the sharks, but I was going to fight them as though I did.
The other Animorphs launched into battle alongside me, slamming into the sharks like torpedoes. The ocean around the whale dissolved into chaos and furious, flapping tails and teeth.
The sharks were as fast as we were, as maneuverable as we were, and the sharks had one terrifying advantage - they did not know fear.
{He's on me! He's on me!}
{Aaaaarrrrggghh!}
{Marco!}
{I can't see! Where is he?}
{Cassie! Below you, lookout! Look out!}
It was no longer a game. We had gone rushing into the fight full of confidence and determined to help the whale. But now we were in a war. The sharks were killing machines. They seemed to be nothing but armored skin and razor-sharp fins and wide jaws with row after row of serrated teeth.
The water was boiling with twisting, turning, speeding sharks and us dolphins, locked in a high-speed battle to the death.
Teeth grazed my flipper, taking off a chunk of flesh. I screamed.
The water was dark with blood, billowing from our wounds and from the gills of the sharks we'd managed to injure. I powered my tail, aiming for depth, trying to build the thrust necessary for a good blow...
Suddenly two of the sharks turned away. They just turned and swam away.
{What?} I said stupidly. {Where are they going?}
Bullies don't run, not unless they're losing - or they see a better target.
That was when I realized why they were leaving. They were following the trail of blood from one of their own, a shark that we had managed to injure enough to drive away.
I guess he looked like a more tempting target than five angry dolphins, because the rest of the sharks followed the carnage as the first two attacked, ripping into the injured shark with wild, uncontrolled fury.
Robbed of their meal of whale meat, they would feast on their brother instead.
{Everyone okay?} Jake asked.
{I have some cuts, but I'm okay,} Cassie said.
{Same here,} Rachel said. She sounded tired, but not scared.
I was scared. I tried to tilt my head to look at my fin, to figure out how badly I was hurt. All I could see was blood.
{Marco? Tobias?} Jake asked.
I hesitated, not wanting to sound like a wuss. Maybe I could quietly ask Rachel to swim by and take a look before I told the others…
{I...I think I'm hurt.}
Marco's thought-speak voice was weak enough to make me forget the pain of my fin.
I looked around and found him. He was drifting in the water, almost motionless, twenty yards away. We all swam over, crowding around him.
Suddenly, my injured fin was no big deal. Marco's tail had almost been bitten off. It was hanging by a few jagged threads. It was useless.
We were miles out in the ocean. And Marco could not hope to swim back.
We panicked for a little bit. I don't think anyone could have blamed us, especially not Marco.
{Oh, man, I don't want to die as some fish,} he cried. {I don't want to die out here. My mom drowned. I'm going to die just like she did. My dad…}
{Morph!} Cassie yelled at him. {Morph back to human!}
{He'll drown,} Rachel argued.
{Jake, buddy. You know I can't swim.}
{I know, Marco. But we'll take care of you.}
{Okay. Yeah, okay. Might as well die in my own body,} Marco said, and I felt a chill that no amount of dolphin-euphoria could dissipate. Were these the sort of choices we would eventually be forced to make? Not whether or not we would die, but only how.
We formed a circle around him, the four of us, and the big humpback resting alongside. I'd almost forgotten the whale was there. We'd fought the sharks to save him, but now Marco was all that mattered.
Slowly, he began to change. Arms sprouted from his flippers. His face flattened down, with his wide, grinning dolphin mouth shortening to form Marco's own lips. His skin turned pink and his morphing suit appeared.
His shattered, injured tail split in two. Legs formed from the halves, toes appeared. Human toes. At the end of human legs.
{He did it!}
"Yeah, I did it. And now I'm drowning!}
{Here,} Cassie said, swimming beside him. {Grab onto me.}
He wrapped his arms over Cassie's back and she kicked up to hold him in the air.
I felt the water current change and looked down. What I saw froze me motionless for a moment. It was like the ocean floor was rising to meet us.
No. It was the humpback. He had dived beneath us, and was rising slowly, slowly to the surface.
{Look out! The whale!} Rachel yelled.
We thrashed around a little, trying to figure out what to do. We couldn't fight a whale even if we'd have wanted to, but Cassie couldn't swim fast enough to get away without risking Marco slipping off, and if the whale ran into them he would fall and drown and-
{Back away,} Cassie said. Her voice sounded strange, awed. {It's okay.}
And then I felt it too, and I understood.
{Yeah,} Rachel agreed, sounding amazed. {I hear it, too. Or feel it. Or whatever.}
It was the whale. It wasn't speaking to us, but it was...it was feeling at us. It filled my head with a voice that was somehow both huge and silent, a voice that filled my head with one simple emotion.
Gratitude.
We had saved the whale, and it was grateful. Now it would save our schoolmate.
The humpback rose beneath a sputtering Marco. The broad leathery back lifted him up, out of the water. I bobbed up to watch and saw him sitting nervously on what could have been a small island, high and drive above the choppy waves.
{Wow,} I said.
And then Cassie...I don't know how to describe it. The whale called her, somehow. She swam to it and they...spoke, somehow, without speaking. I don't know. I could feel only the faintest echoes of whatever was passing between her and the whale, but it was enough to awe me into respectful silence.
I don't know if Marco could feel what was going on in his human form, but he didn't say anything either. Maybe he was too shaken by his brush with death.
We hovered in the water and we waited with patience that felt alien to the dolphin minds, but somehow fit the moment so well that none of us could even think about interrupting or moving.
After a while, Marco said tentatively, "Hey, uh, guys? What's going on?"
His voice was so small compared to the voice of the whale that I barely heard it.
{Cassie is...Cassie is talking to the whale,} Jake replied distantly.
"Oh."
Water lapped at the whale. Marco shook spray out of his eyes. We waited.
After a while, Rachel whispered, {Is she okay?}
{Yes,} Jake answered with certainty, and somehow I knew he was right. {Just...just wait.}
{Yeah,} I said, somehow equally as certain as Jake, {the whale has her.}
"Okay, that's cool," Marco said, sounding nervous. "Hey I, uh, I might be ready to try morphing again...do you guys think I should…?"
{Wait,} Rachel said confidently. {Wait for the whale.}
Marco muttered something that didn't matter, and we waited.
Suddenly Cassie shivered and turned, and her dolphin eyes fastened on us again.
{Are you okay?} Jake asked, echoing Rachel in a way that probably would have gotten his arm punched if we had been in our regular bodies and not half under whatever spell the whale had cast. {You were starting to worry us, but we had this feeling maybe the whale didn't want us to interfere.}
{I'm fine,} Cassie said. Her voice was strange still, but bright and strong. {I'm beyond fine.}
{Marco's ready to try remorphing,} Jake reported.
{Uh-huh,} said Cassie. She sounded distracted.
{How much time do we have left?} Jake asked. {Anyone know?}
None of us knew. How long had the fight with the sharks taken? How long had we spent playing in the water before that? How long had Cassie been talking to the whale?
{Maybe we should all demorph for a second,} Rachel suggested. {To reset our time, you know?}
{That's a good idea,} Jake said. He was trying to sound confident, but I could tell he was rattled. What if we'd trapped ourselves in dolphin morph without even realizing it? This power was dangerous. We needed to figure out a way to tell how much time we had left in a morph.
{We'll take turns supporting each other like we did with Marco,} Jake said. {Cassie, you morphed first, you should go first. Marco, go ahead and morph back so you can help.}
{No,} Cassie said, still sounding dazed, {No, the whale...the whale will help us. He'll stay while you...I mean, while we...morph. But I...I want to...I want to think a little bit...someone else go first.}
{Okay,} said Jake, but he didn't sound like he was happy about it. {Rachel, then, you go first. Then Tobias, then Cassie.}
{And you,} I said.
{And me,} he agreed. {I'll go last.}
I had a feeling he was saying that so he could use his own time-limit to prod Cassie into morphing if she stayed reluctant, but I didn't say anything. I was a little jealous that she'd been the one chosen by the whale to share whatever it was he had wanted to share with us. I told myself I was being silly and petty, but I couldn't help feeling a little wistful. Being touched by the voice of the whale even in passing had been incredible. What must it have been like for her?
One by one we went through the demorphing and remorphing process - a lot more uncomfortable and slightly scary out here in the middle of the ocean than it had been in the nice, safe, shallow river, even with the reassuring bulk of the whale beside us - and when it was Cassie's turn, she didn't protest. She still seemed distracted, though.
I couldn't blame her. This had been quite a day.
We headed for shore, tired but alive.
I felt strange, leaving the whale. I could only imagine how Cassie had to feel. But when we were a mile away, I heard his song - slow, mournful, haunting notes.
{Why didn't he sing more when we were with him?} Jake wondered.
{He doesn't sing for the little ones,} Cassie explained. She sounded incredibly wise just then. {He sings for the mothers.}
{What?} Marco asked.
{He sings for a mate.}
{Ahh. Cruising for chicks. Got it. I wonder if the big old guy even realizes that he helped save my life.}
I snorted.
{Marco,} Cassie said, {that big old guy realizes things you and I will never even be able to guess.}
Suddenly I no longer felt jealous that Cassie had been the one to speak to the whale. As cool as it must have been to connect with a creature like that, I wasn't in a hurry to share my private thoughts with anyone - not even a great one.