"Maybe. But you won't be there to see it," I said. "It must be four in the morning. Five hours left. Ticktock."

"You're a cruel little human, aren't you?"

"I don't think so, no."

"You know I am dying and you laugh at me."

"What do you expect? Pity?"

He laughed. "No. We don't offer pity. And we don't expect pity. We are the masters of the galaxy. Conquerors of the Hork-Bajir and - "

"Yeah, yeah, I know. The mighty Yeerk empire."

After that he said nothing to me for a while. It was impossible to sleep. He sat with my eyes open. He was too hungry to rest. The hunger infiltrated his mind. It twisted his thoughts.

"The Yeerk home world is a simpler place than this planet. Simple and elegant. No more than a hundred animal species. What do you have on Earth? A million species? More? What does a planet need with a million species?"

I didn't answer. His time was running out. Let him talk.

"We Yeerks evolved as parasites, not predators. Unlike you humans, we did not kill to eat. We were peaceful. We took many different species as our hosts. And as they evolved, so did we.

Over time, the Gedds evolved. They were a sort of ... like a monkey, I suppose. We were in the Gedds till the Andalites first came. Some of our people still have nothing better than Gedds for hosts."

"What about the Andalites?" I asked. "What happened when they came to your world?"

"Of course. The Andalite has not told you their story, has he? What a pity. It's such a fine story.

Ask your pet Andalite Ax sometime. Ask him about the story of the Andalites and the Yeerks."

"Maybe I will," I said. I hoped the Yeerk would keep talking, but he fell silent.

The hours passed. An owl left and was replaced by another. The moon went down. Dawn was coming. I could feel it.

"Yes," the Yeerk said, having read my thoughts. "Dawn. Just a few hours left. Ahhhh!" He cried out in silent pain. "The fugue. It begins."

"The fugue?"

81 "The final hours. You will not enjoy it, although you may learn a great deal, human. You may learn more than you want to - aaaahhh!"

I was watching his pain from far away. I was an observer. Close enough to know what he was feeling, but feeling none of it myself.

At first it was wave after wave of pain. Starvation and death by thirst. All rolled into one agony.

The sun came up. Cassie stepped into the shack from the woods outside. She looked at me and nodded. "It's happening, isn't it?"

I wanted to answer, but even now, my voice was not my own.

Cassie came and sat down beside me. Beside us.

"Ax says this part is pretty rough. Just remember, when it's all over, I'll be here."

She slipped her hand into my hand. I could feel it. So could the Yeerk. But he did not reject this small bit of comfort, even though it was intended for me and not him.

His mind was deteriorating. His thoughts were becoming more visible to me. Like a movie that kept drifting in and out of focus.

I saw images from a strange place, as seen through strange eyes. Liquid all around. Shapes, like squids, shooting through the liquid. Yeerks. Swimming in the Yeerk pool. Soaking up Kandrona rays.

And there were images of the first host. A Gedd. So, I thought - that's what a Gedd looks like. I had seen a few aboard the Yeerk mother ship but had not known what they were. They were humanoid, short and stooped, with webbed feet and three clumsy fingers.

I saw the world as the Yeerk had seen it, through Gedd eyes. The vision was dim. The hearing was better. The Yeerk had been excited at getting his first host. He had subdued the Gedd mind with ruthless ease, crushing it with his superior intelligence and will.

The memory made me sick. The Gedd's bewilderment. His fear. And the Yeerk's fierce arrogance.

I turned my attention away from the memory and back to the world around me. To my surprise, I noticed that my arms were shaking. My legs were shaking.

Cassie had put her arm around my shoulders.

"Jake, if you can hear me, it's almost eight. One hour to go. Jake ... the Yeerk in your head is dying."

"Yes," I wanted to say. "He is."

82 Chapter 21

The fugue.

The final hours of the Yeerk's life. I was watching him die.

A lot has happened to me since I first saw the Andalite prince land in that construction site. More strange things than happen to most people in their entire lives. But the strangest was this. And the saddest.

The Yeerk cried in pain, again and again. And the visions came floating up, crystal clear, as if they had just happened.

Visions of the good times in the Yeerk's life. And of bad times. The emotions were strange.

Alien. I guess that's the word for them. There was no memory of love. I guess Yeerks don't do love.

But there was affection. Pride. Fear. Regret. Those I could understand.

And along with the Yeerk's own memories, I began to see the minds of his hosts. The Gedd who had a name no human could hope to pronounce. The Hork-Bajir warrior who had fought the Yeerk in his head every day of his life.

The Hork-Bajir, who had been forced to attack his own kind, to destroy his own friends, as an unwilling slave of the Yeerks.

But it was more than just memories. It was more. The Yeerk had carried with him some small part of that Hork-Bajir warrior's being.

Like a computer transferring a document onto a floppy disk, I realized. Part of the Gedd and part of the Hork-Bajir had been transferred permanently to the Yeerk.

And to my shock, I knew that those parts were now being transferred to me.

And then ... the memories I feared most.

Tom.

He had joined The Sharing for a simple, silly reason. A pretty girl he liked was a member. He had wanted to get close to her. He had gone to meetings. He'd played along with them, never guessing the truth. All he had cared about was the girl.

He had stumbled, accidentally, into a secret leadership meeting. He thought the girl was seeing another boy. But she was one of them.

He had followed her, wandered into the meet ing and seen Visser Three. Visser Three in his Andalite body.

83 I saw the Controllers grab a yelling, punching, kicking Tom. I saw as they tied him up. Carried him through secret passageways to the great, underground Yeerk pool.

I saw him scream as he realized what was happening. I felt his fear. I felt his rage as the Yeerk slug crawled into his ear and wrapped itself around his brain. I felt every ounce of his despair.

And like the Gedd and the Hork-Bajir, this human, my brother, became a part of me.

The Yeerk was no longer in pain. It was beyond pain.

I opened my eyes and looked at Cassie. It happened so naturally. I opened my eyes. By my own will.

I don't know how she knew, but I guess she did. She nodded slightly and met my gaze.

For the first time in more than an hour, the Yeerk spoke. "So. You win . . . human." The Yeerk shuddered. I could feel it. A physical spasm. My vision changed. I felt. . . it's hard to describe. I felt as if I were seeing through things, intothings. Like I could see the front and back and top and bottom and inside of every thing all at once.

And then I saw it.

A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high.

Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . .

I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.

And then it saw me.

The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.

It saw me.