Yes, I skipped two books.
Yes, I'm fine with that.
******************************************************************************
May 28, 1999 12:52 PM
"Girl, no, he did not!" I said incredulous
"Fo' real, Big Mama." said my new friend Shaqueen. Her husband was a total scrub. I tell ya', I wouldn't put up with any of that bullshit! I told her so too.
"You're right, Big Mama!" Shaqueen said as she adjusted her towel and tossed her hair out of her face. It was hot in this sauna. "When he gets home, I'm given Jawan a piece of my mind."
"You know, I never have problems with my husband! He's just like, a total saint, ya know?" said another woman in the sauna. She was one of those ditzy, blonde, beautiful, confident, trophy wife, white women. She was on the wrong coast. She really belonged in the other California. By some awful coincidence, her name was Rachel. Her arrogance was so apparent in the fact that she wouldn't wear a top in the sauna.
"Like yesterday night, he came in real late cause he was at a Sharing meeting helping the poor and stuff."
"Mmm-hmm." I remarked. A typical remark from a woman like me.
"Ohmygawd! There is a skunk in the SAUNA!!!! AAAAAAAAAH!" Rachel screamed all of the sudden. All of the girls ran out leaving me alone with the skunk. With the skunk was a rabbit.
"Mmmm-hmmm." I said to the two woodland animals
David, what are you doing in here? said the rabbit.
Steaming?
David, get out of that morph and let's go.
"Uh-uh, Featherhead." I said as I went into full swagger. "I'm big. I'm black. And I'm beautiful. And no man tells Big Mama where to go or what to do!"
Demorph. Now.
You know, ever since the boy found out Elfangor was his father, he's gotten more bossy. I mean, who fucking died and made him Quetzalcoatl, huh? Anyways, the three of us were walking down the street in our human morphs. Me and Aximili were the "Composite Brothers" having each taken our morph from pieces of Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco. Since our morphs had the same 'parents', we looked like brothers. Tobias was in his human morph.
"You know you can't just acquire human morphs as you want, David." Tobias started. "We have rules."
"I haven't acquired one, since 'Big Mama'. Technically, 'Big Mama' is a composite morph from the six large African women I met at the YMCA. She came pretty handy when Rachel and I were hanging out in the Laundromat, just in case DeGroot turned out to be a baddy."
"He did turn out to be a baddy, David." Tobias pointed out. "What were you doing in there?"
"I was relaxing." I said very defensive. "In the two months I've been here, I've been on more alien ships than I would have cared for. Heard the story of the Hork-Bajir War. Found out my human friend trapped as a hawk has an Andalite for a Dad. I morphed an alien that made fleas look like Great Danes. Then, I got shrunk to that size and morphed an animal, who was, relatively, the size of the fucking moon! Then, I get whisked away to the North Pole, no, not to visit Santa Claus, to fight monsters made of frozen chlorine. Excuuuuuuuse me if I want to fucking relax for two fucking hours!"
"Yes, you have had a big life adjustment. Ad-JAA. Ad. Just. Ment." Aximili added.
"Adjustment? Two months ago, I didn't know if aliens existed. Now, I'm up to my ass in extraterrestrial life! Andalites, Yeerks, Gedds, Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, Dayangs, Arn, Helmacrons, Venber, The Five. Did I miss anyone??!"
A stranger in a trench coat cleared his throat. He turned around. I recognized him. At least this particular form.
"Who are you?" Tobias asked, defensively.
I brought to my friends' attention, a dog across the street who had jumped in the air. He was still in the air. The couple walking the dog had stopped in mid-step. The clock in the window next to them had stopped ticking. "Two guesses." I said.
"Ellimist." Aximili said, his human voice dripping in suspicion.
"Very good, Andalite. In a few minutes you will find yourself with your friends at the Western High School Auditorium."
"What the hell for?" I asked.
"We're playing a little game."
All of the sudden, I was face-to-face with a man dressed as a lion. Dark-yellow make-up. Very Artsy. Very Disney.
"What is this, Lion King Live??" I shouted.
Aaaah! Tobias shouted as he suddenly appeared. He landed himself on the lip of the stage. Is he here yet?
Cassie and the others came to the stage. Aximili suddenly appeared amidst several of the performers. His tail was raised immediately and stalk eyes darted. The Ellimist apparently made him very jumpy.
"It's okay, Ax." Jake reassured. "I think."
The Ellimist. Tobias said.
Marco agreed. "I don't know anyone else who can just stop time whenever he wants. Unless it's that new math teacher."
"So where is he?" Rachel demanded.
"Wherever he wants to be." Marco grumbled.
"David, you're about to meet the Ellimist we warned you about." Jake warned me.
"We've already met." I said, shooting a look at Cassie. Jake followed my look to a confused Cassie, both of whom curious as to the circumstances of my introduction to the Ellimist.
Aximili and I stepped off the stage and joined our comrades, at the same time a girl got up.
"Yes, it is I." said the girl.
"The Ellimist?" Cassie asked. The girl nodded.
"Where's the Big Voice and the quick-change bodies and all?" Rachel asked.
"I have chosen this form for a reason," said the Ellimist in a girl's voice. "I come today on a humble mission. I wanted a humble form. One that would not evoke feelings of dread or awe or reverence from you."
"So be a puppy." I said.
"Okay, so you're just a regular girl," Rachel said bitchily. Made me think of the other Rachel in the sauna. "No big show, aside from the fact you froze time and all."
"This is as humble as I know how to be. I come to . . ." He/she/whatever hesitated. "I come to tell you a story, and to see how you will choose to react."
"Oh, good, a story." Marco said. "Is it a musical, too? Will there be any Hakuna Matata involved?"
"I will tell you a story. You will tell me the ending."
"Oh, no." I protested. "I'm still recovering from the last Choose Your Own Adventure Book you stuck me in."
Ellimist continued uninterrupted. "Once I . . . we had hands. Not much different from these, but that was a long time ago. About a billion of your years. We evolved as all living things do, some faster, some slower. We were among the first sentient species, even slow change can become profound. Back when all Earth could boast were a few simple single-celled organisms, we were beginning to watch the night sky and understand the movements of our own planet. We learned and we grew powerful. By the time worms first crawled in the mud of Earth, we were traveling in faster-than-light ships. And when the first dinosaurs walked we . . . we had become much as I am today."
"You'd become a girl with braces?" Marco said.
Ellimist gave a steely smile. "The Andalites could do with some of the human sense of humor." He/she/whatever said as Aximili scuffed a hoof on the stage. "And if the Yeerks had any sense of humor at all they wouldn't be the scourge they are."
Marco looked more flustered than proud of his smartass remark. Were they afraid of this guy?
Ellimist continued his story. "We watched the rise of other species throughout the galaxy. Helped at times, when we could. We wanted companions. We wanted to learn. We imagined a galaxy filled with millions of sentient species, each with its own science and art, its own beauty, but it wasn't that simple.
"Approximately a hundred million Earth years ago, we became aware of a new force in the galaxy. Not a species, an individual. He was a fugitive from another galaxy, chased out of that galaxy by a power even greater than he. Greater than me."
"He was banished here?" I asked.
"I thought you were all-powerful." Rachel accused.
"No." Ellimist answered. "I only seem so only from your limited perspective. This new force, this individual began to make his presence know in our galaxy. And he had different ideas from ours. He sees a universe of conflict, pain, and terror. He craves fear. Not his own, of course, but the fear of others. He is a strange perfectionist, in a way."
"He's a terrorist." I said.
"He wants a galaxy cleansed of creation. His goal, I soon realized, is to destroy life. His method is to use one species against another, strong destroying weak, and then strong in turn being destroyed by the stronger still."
"He's a Caucasian."
"He believes that there should be only one species. A single sentient race, which would be subjugated by him."
"He's a Nazi." Cassie said.
"In the moral sense, yes, but he has different visions of what constitutes total power. He wants to be able to control the strands of space-time itself. Not merely to see them and understand them, but to hold them in his fist and dictate the very laws of physics and nature, to recreate the galaxy in his own image, and someday to spread his power throughout all the galaxies and destroy the one power greater than himself."
"Can we go back to The Lion King now?" Marco complained.
"He is called Crayak." the Ellimist said as he looked to Jake. "You have seen him. And he has seen you."
One by one, the six of us looked to our leader. "Jakie? Is there something you're not telling us?"
"When the yeerk died in your brain," Ellimist continued. "You peered across the line between life and death. You broke the dimensional hold that binds humans to things beyond themselves, and in that moment, Crayak saw you. He saw that I would make myself know to you soon. That I had touched you. And he knew that you must, therefore, play some part in my plans. A hundred million years ago, we fought, Crayak and I."
Suddenly the auditorium was gone. We stood in black empty space with stars. Very bright stars.
"Whoa. Like IMAX and shit."
I wanted to stop him, the Ellimist said in thought-speech, to stop his destruction. He wanted to eliminate me.
One by one, stars extinguished prematurely.
The result was something neither of us could tolerate. The battle was fought destroyed a tenth of my galaxy, millions of suns, millions of planets, a dozen sentient races.
In my head, images of otherworldly creatures flooded my brain. Amazing shapes, sizes, colors. Massive vertebrates and tiny insects, species from the land, sea, and sky. All gone.
A dozen sentient species, and more who could have achieved sentience, all destroyed, destroyed for nothing! The Ellimist said in the same panicked voice he used when he ranted at me for kissing Cassie. But Crayak was damaged as well. The fabric of space-time, the software as you humans would say, the software that runs the galaxy was damaged, twisted by the sudden explosion of our power.
Again, we suddenly shifted locations. This time into a something I could not quite get. I was in some kind of space where everything was . . . . . . . visable. I mean it was like back, front, up, down, inside, outside, any of those directions, anything that you could possible see in those directions was now laid right out in front of you. I could see myself. I could see my heart. I could see Marco's heart. Plus all of Aximili's. I saw with shocking intimacy every fiber of Tobias's feathers. Every muscle of Jake's jaw. Every marrow of Rachel's bones.
One anatomy lesson I could have done without.
But I also saw . . . . threads. Trillions upon trillions of threads. It was the time-space of this universe. An insanely complicated quilt of life and nature.
All Crayak's knowledge of space-time was now shattered. The few threads he had gathered to him were yanked from his grasp. Millions of years of effort wasted. We fell back, back from our test of wills, our war.
We materialized in normal space again.
We knew then, Crayak and I, that we could never make war again. Not open war, at least. The conflict would have to be carried on by different means. No longer a savage battle. Now it must be a chess game. There would be rules. Limits.
Floating around us were holograms of times the Ellimist interfered with my comrades. The time he "showed" them where the Kandrona was. The time he helped Tobias, Jara, and Ket. The time he took Elfangor, Tobias's father and Aximili's brother, away from his human life and put him back into the Andalite-Yeerk war. And to my surprise, the time he put me on the Dayang ship was also there.
Terra Firma is part of our game, Crayak's and mine. He would have the Yeerks absorb humans and later be absorbed by some still more vicious species, but Terra Firma is not the reason I have come to you now.
We were back in the auditorium now. Ellimist was the chick with braces.
"For millions of years we have played our game." The Ellimist said. "And we have lived within the rules, more or less. But now war threatens again. There is an impasse. A species I will not let Crayak take. A species he will not let me save. The species occupies a unique location in space-time. It is a turning point, and if Crayak can annihilate them, his power will grow, his goal become much closer, his forces become more deadly than ever."
"Including the Yeerks." Jake asked.
"Yes, including the Yeerks, who will benef-" Ellimist stopped in mid-sentence and looked at me, "benefit from changes we . . . I . . . cannot explain."
So what happens? Irresistible force and immoveable object? Tobias asked. Who gives? You or him?
"I will finish the story, and you will decide."
"Us?" Cassie asked.
"Crayak and I have reached an agreement on a way to decide the issue. To decide the fate of the Iskoort race." The name sounded familiar. I think he mentioned them in his "you kissed Cassie" rant. "If Crayak wins, they will be attacked, subjugated, and annihilated by another species."
What species? Aximili asked.
"The Howlers. You've heard of them before."
"The guys who destroyed the Pemalites?" I blurted.
The Ellimist nodded. "Crayak and I have agreed to decide the issue by a contest of champions. His against mine. He has named the Howlers themselves, a group of eight. I am to pit my eight champions against his."
"What is this, a football game?" Cassie demanded.
"No, that would be eleven guys on the field, not eight."
"There are eight pawns in a chess game." I commented.
"Eight Howlers against my eight. The winners-the survivors-will determine the outcome."
"And this has to do with us?" Rachel asked ignorantly.
"Oh, come on, Rachel." Marco said. "One . . . two . . . three, four, five, six, seven." He said as he counted each of us.
"That's seven." Cassie said. "He needs eight. We're just seven. That's not what he means. Is it?"
Ellimist was silent.
"Fuck." Cassie said. Cassie cursed! I'm rubbing off on her. "You want us, us to be your champions? To save these Iskrats?"
"Iskoort." the Ellimist corrected.
"I'm either honored or ticked off, I don't know which." Marco said hotly. "Oh, wait. I do know which, and it's not honored."
"Come on, Marco. This could be fun. You take things to personally." I said.
"To quote another insane individual. 'Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You're black.'"
I hate it when your own words are thrown back at you.
"This must be your choice." the Ellimist said. "Yours alone."
With that, Tobias, Aximili, and I found ourselves at The Scoop.
I had an hour to kill before Jake and the others got back from school. I had heard about the time that Jake was taken. Obviously, none of us knew what had really happened when his captor died. He saw this Crayak individual. Or at least one of its forms. It must have been frightening.
I turned my attention to my little project. I had acquired a program that turned binary computer language into C++, or at least a mixed-up version of it. At least now I could actually read the damn thing. Unfortunately, this required a lot looking through the programming and deciphering Draque words written in phonetic English. My translator still worked, so I just said the words aloud and I understood them. Some of the major words I had to say were 'foker', 'maddafoker', and 'cauntfoker'. They always got looks from Tobias and Aximili.
By the way, they mean respectively 'input', 'audio input', and 'visual input'.
It lacked a sentience program, I noticed. I knew I couldn't write one, so I would have to somehow download it off of a Chee.
I would have to worry about that later. At two-thirty, the three of us flew to the Fortress of Attitude and waited for the others. Aximili and I waited in our human morphs. Tobias was Tobias. Once Cassie and the others arrived, Aximili demorphed and Tobias reported everything was clear. Marco decided to speak first.
"This is nuts! The most powerful creature in the galaxy, a guy who could make Earth disappear by just thinking about it, needs us to fight his battles for him?"
"Like we don't have enough to deal with?" Rachel agreed.
The only possible reason for doing this is if it helps us in some way. Aximili said. Enlightened self-interest.
"Despite his Skrit Nu like tendencies to put people on different planets or alien ships, the Ellimist seems to be rooting for us." I said.
I think you mean Skrit Na. Aximili stated politely.
"What's this about you and the Ellimist, David?" Marco asked.
Just give them the Cliff's Notes version. "He didn't like that I joined you guys, so he tested me on some ship full of Dayangs. I passed and I was sent home."
Dayangs? Aximili wondered. Not a controller species, but they often do business with the Yeerks.
"They were the ones who sold the Yeerks that Pemalite crystal. The one we busted our asses to get, remember?" Marco said.
"Can we stay on the subject, please?" Jake said exasperated. "The Ellimist approves of David. Yippie, the Ellimist is here to help us."
"He only helps himself. He's tricked us before." Rachel began. Jesus, I hate it when she rants. She sounds like Veruca Salt sometimes. "Told us one thing and done another. We know nothing about him. We don't know if the Ellimist is one guy or more than one. Half the time he says 'we', then he says 'I'."
I noticed that too. "Maybe he's like Venom or Legion." I commented.
"Who?"
"Venom is from Spiderman." Marco explains. "He calls himself 'we' because he's bonded to an alien symbiote."
Rachel and Cassie exchange glances.
"Don't ask. I don't know who Legion is though."
Legion is from the Bible. He called himself that because he had a legion of demons inside him. Jesus cured him. Tobias explained.
"Oh my God." Marco said to Tobias, then turned his gaze to me. "What the hell were you doing reading the Bible?"
"Listen, I really don't care what the Ellimist is." Rachel said with a look of annoyance at Tobias. "It's just that he's tricked us."
"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.
"He said he would give Tobias what he wanted most. Instead he just gave him his morphing powers back. That's not what he wanted." Rachel yelled.
My God, she's deluded. "Right." I said sarcastically.
Rachel then gave me a very evil look. It's the same look Brett Taggart used to give me everytime I called him 'dickless'. She looked like she wanted to strangle me.
"Hey!" Jake yelled. "Blondes with Bad Attitudes. In case you didn't notice we have to make a decision to make. The eight of us might be going against eight howlers before the day is done."
"Eight? I count seven." Marco noticed.
"I think I know who our seventh would be." Jake said.
"Erek?" Marco said with an eye-roll.
"Payback. Who else would care as much about hurting the Howlers?"
"He can't fight! He's an android programmed never to hurt anyone. He'd be a dead weight. And why are we talking about this like it's time to choose up teams?"
We hurt this Crayak, we hurt the Yeerks. Tobias said. The Ellimist loses, we lose.
"Wait a minute, Tobias." Rachel said. "You know I don't run from a fight-"
"To a fight maybe." Marco quiped.
"-but are we supposed to believe we're the Ellimist's only choice here? There's no one else in the entire galaxy who can go pound on these Howlers? Why us?"
Yes. Why us? Aximili agreed. Why not eight battle-trained Andalite Warriors?
"Excuse me? Like Andalites are badder than we are? What are we, wimps? Me in gorilla morph, you as you, let's go. We'll see who kicks whose butt."
"Marco," I started. "Before you get the chance to rip Aximili's arms off, which granted is like pulling tissues out of a carton, he'll turn your head into a really furry bowling ball, and you know it." Marco then started giving me a dirty look. Geez, I'm pissing off everyone today.
"Could we win?" Cassie asked suddenly. Drawing our focus on her and bringing the seriousness back to the debate, succeeding where Jake failed. "Could we win? Could we save an entire sentient species? And maybe help ourselves, too? Maybe weaken the Yeerks in some way only the Ellimist understands? Seems to me that's the question. I mean, you know, I'm not Rachel. I hate fighting, but the Ellimist put an entire species on the scale. An entire race. Maybe millions, maybe billions. And we're even asking ourselves if we should? How do you not at least try?"
"Iskoort." Marco said disgustedly. "Now it's our job to save Iskoort? What the hell is an Iskoort?"
We looked to Aximili. He shook his head. I've never heard of the Iskoort.
"I think," Jake started. "I think there may be something else going on here, with the Ellimist choosing us."
"The Ellimist said something about you seeing this Crayak." Marco said.
"I saw him. When the Yeerk died in my head, I saw him. And he saw me. And since then . . . since then I've had dreams."
"Dreams-dreams? Or Night-terror-scary-ass-wet-your-bed-nightmare-dreams?" I asked.
"Look, I . . . you know, dreams are weird. Like who knows if they're ever real? But these feel real. And in the dreams I see him. Crayak. I know this sounds crazy."
"Uh, Jake?" Marco said. "We've been over the line into crazy since Elfangor said, 'Hey, kids, wanna turn into animals?"
"I just feel like these dreams aren't totally dreams. I see him. And he sees me. And he says the same thing each time."
"What?" Cassie put a comforting hand on Jake's arm. Residual jealousy pecked at my stomach. "What does he say?"
"'Soon'. He just says 'Soon'."
And then all jealousy in the stomach fell in the pit that had just formed.
"Oookay." Marco said. "I felt that chill go up my spine."
"So what does all this tell us?" Rachel demanded. "This Crayak already doesn't like us, so we go and fight his handpicked team? Maybe win? Then he loves us? I don't think so."
Side bets. Tobias said. The Ellimist and Crayak have their main event: Do the Iskoort live or die? But maybe there's some action on the side. Us. Maybe that's why he chose us. Maybe there's another level.
"What other level?" Rachel yelled frustrated.
"Read between lines, Psychobitch! Stop thinking about the Calvin Klein Summer line and pay attention." I yelled. I had pet names for all of them. "Obviously the Ellimist has gone through a lot of trouble to make sure the Animorphs exist. Somehow Elfangor's brother and son hook up with four other humans, one of whom is the son of Visser One's host. Coincidence? Fuck that! I don't think so. He's probably trying to prove how much of a fighting force he has. Conversely, Crayak already doesn't like Jake. He backs the Yeerks and the Howlers. Two very nasty races. If we, the Animorphs, are Ellimist's 'crowning achievement' as I'm starting to suspect we are, or at least you six are, Crayak will want to prove how full of shit Ellimist is. It's the Twelve Apostles versus Satan's demons. Whose gonna win?"
"David's right." Marco said. "We're talking Jedi versus Sith here."
"You always result to Star Wars references?" I asked.
"This from the guy who just two week ago referred to the North Pole as being 'Hoth cold', and the proceed to suggest we cut up Rachel's elephant morph and crawl inside like in Empire."
"Fuck you, man. It was cold. It was just an idea."
"I say we vote." Rachel said. "Go."
"Go." I said.
"Go." Cassie said.
Go. Tobias said.
Go. Aximili said.
"Go." Marco said.
"Go." Jake said.
"Unanimous." Marco said.
"No." Jake said, shaking his head. "We're going to be eight. It's not unanimous till Erek votes."
"Go." said a new voice. Erek.
"Well, if it isn't C3PO." I said. Marco gave me a look. "Ok, you're right. I do it too."
"You know what this is about?" Jake asked.
"I know what it's about." Erek said. The Android seemed to be emitting rage from his body. Orbin was right, this machine was engineered just like a real person.
He must have some computer program for sentience. I thought. I would worry about that later.
"The Ellimist has brought me up to date." Erek continued. "If you'll have, I'll go. I want to go. I . . . I have to go."
"You can't fight." Rachel said. "No offense, but I'd rather go get Jara Hamee or one of the other free Hork-Bajir. Or like Ax said, an Andalite warrior. We need firepower."
"Yes, but that won't be enough." Erek argued. "You won't defeat the Howlers in one-on-one combat. They are too deadly. You'll need more than your morphs. You'll have to outthink them. And I know them. I know the Howlers."
Have you chosen?said a huge voice.
"Yeah, but can you give us a few days to-" Jake started.
Strangers! Strangers! Sell me your memories, strangers! Sell them to me, I beg of you.
A pyramid-shaped vulture head peered at me.
"What the fuck is that?" I asked.
That's an Iskoort. said the Ellimist. Your families will not know you have gone, but if you die . . . .
"We get the idea."
"When does this fight start?" Jake cried.
It has begun.
"I feel like-"
"Throwing up. We know." Rachel and Marco said simultaneously.
***************************************************************************************