40 Chapter 12

Tobias said later it was only ten minutes. But during that ten minutes, I was lost to the world.

I was being shown a small part of the whale's thoughts.

He had lived eighty migrations. He had many mates, many mothers, who had died in their turn. His children traveled the oceans of the world.

He had survived many battles, traveled to the far southern ice and the far northern ice. He re membered the days when men hunted his kind from ships that belched smoke.

He remembered the songs of the many fathers who had gone before. As others would remember his song.

But in all he had seen and all he had known, he had never seen one of the little ones become a human.

Marco, I realized. He means Marco. And little ones? Is that what the whales call dolphins?

We are not truly. . . little ones.

No. You are something new in the sea. But not the only new thing.

I wasn't sure what he was telling me. He spoke only in feelings, in a sort of poetry of emotion, without words. Part of it was in song. Part of it I could only sense the same way I could sense echolocation.

Something new?

He showed me a picture, a memory. It was a broad, grassy plain, with trees and a small stream. All of it underwater. And across the grass ran an animal that was part deer, part scorpion, part almost human.

Where is it? I asked him in a language of squeaks and clicks and mind-to-mind feeling.

And he told me.

Suddenly I woke up. That's how it felt, any way. The whale released me. It was like coming out of a dream.

"Are you okay?" Jake asked. "You were starting to worry us, but we had this feeling maybe the whale didn't want us to interferes " I'm fine," I said. " I'm beyond fine."

"Marco's ready to try remorphing," Jake reported.

"Uh-huh," I said, still lost in images from a mind larger and older and so utterly strange.

"Guys? You have about twenty-five minutes," Tobias reported. "And it's a long way back to shore."

41 I heard Marco say something, but he was speaking normally now, not in thought-speak, so it was hard to make it out with my ears under the water.

I stuck my head up and saw him begin to re sume his dolphin shape.

Halfway through, he slipped off the side of the whale and back into the water. His fins formed. His beak.

And his tail. Perfect and healthy and undamaged.

We headed for shore, tired but alive.

I felt strange, leaving the whale. 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.

I smiled inwardly. And of course, since I was a dolphin at the moment, I smiled outwardly, too.

"He doesn't sing for the little ones," I explained. "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."

"Marco, that big old guy realizes things you and I will never even be able to guess." 42 Chapter 13

T he next day I went to see Marco at his home.

He and his dad live in a garden apartment complex. One of the older ones, on the far side of the big neighborhood where Jake and Rachel both live. I'd only been over there a couple of times. I think Marco is kind of embarrassed be cause he doesn't have much money.

He used to live in a house just down the street from Jake. But that was when his mother was still alive, and before his father had a breakdown and quit his job.

I knocked on the door. From inside I heard Marco's voice. "Dad, there's someone at the door.

Put on your bathrobe, okay?"

There was a delay, and then the door opened. Marco looked annoyed.

"Cassie. What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"To me? What about?"

"About yesterday," I said.

He hesitated. "Look, I'm spending the day with my dad, okay? We're thinking maybe we'll . .

. you know, do something together."

"That's good," I said. Over Marco's shoulder I could see his father. He was wearing a bathrobe and sitting on the couch. He was staring at the TV. That was normal for any dad, I guess, on a weekend morning. But I had the feeling that Marco's dad was always sitting right there in front of the TV.

"Look, Marco, I just want to talk for a minute. Can I come in?"

"No, no," he said hastily. He stepped outside onto the concrete breezeway. Down below us was a swimming pool. It was drained and closed. Leaves covered the bottom.

"Marco, I wanted to talk to you about yesterday."

"What about it?"

"You could have been killed. It would have been my fault. This whole mission was my idea.

Jake asked me if we should do it and I said yes."

Marco rolled his eyes. "That's it? Look, it wasn't your fault. It's this whole thing we're doing, this whole Animorph thing. I mean, it's been dangerous right from the start. It's insanely dangerous. What else is new?"

I shrugged. "What's new, I guess, is that the other times it was always someone else's idea."

"Oh, I get it. You don't like responsibility?"

43 I winced. Was that it? Was I afraid of taking responsibility? "I don't want to get my friends killed."

"And let me assure you your friends don't want to get killed, either," Marco said with a laugh.

"I am completely opposed to getting killed." He grew serious, even sad. "But you know what? Sometimes bad things happen. That's the way it is."

I leaned against the rail, looking down at the dismal empty pool. "I see things die all the time, " I said. "Animals, I mean. Sometimes you can't save them. Sometimes we even have to put them down - end their suffering. But my dad makes those decisions. Not me. He's the vet. I'm just his assistant."

"Look, here I am, all alive," Marco said, tap ping his chest. "Get over it. I didn't have to go. It was my choice."

"Were you scared?"

For a while he didn't answer. He just came over and leaned on the railing beside me. "I'm scared all the time now, Cassie," he said at last. "I'm scared to fight the Yeerks, and I'm scared of what will happen if I don't. I look at Tobias, and what happened to him scares me to death. What if I get stuck in morph someday? And most of all, I am scared of ... of him."

I didn't have to ask who Marco meant by him. Visser Three.

"That first time, in the construction site, when he killed . . . when he murdered the Andalite."

Marco made a twisted smile. "I see that in my head every day. And the Yeerk pool." He shook his head. "That's something I would like to forget, too."

"Yes," I agreed. "There has been a lot of fear."

"So was I afraid yesterday? Bet on it. I was scared plenty. It was like, man, it's not bad enough we have to fight Hork-Bajir and Taxxons and Visser Three, we also have to fight sharks? Sharks?" He laughed, and hearing him brought the laughter out of me.

We both just stood there and giggled like idiots for a few minutes. It was that laughter you get after something really tense has happened. Relief laughter. "We're still alive" laughter.

"Urn, by the way, I was going to wait and tell everyone at the same time," Marco said, "but I think we have a problem."

"What problem?"

"It was in the newspaper this morning - two stories. One is about this guy who is going to be looking for some supposedly lost treasure ship off the coast. The other was this story about some big marine biologist guy who has a ship and is going to be doing some underwater exploration off our coast."