Animorphs

"I hated the way they all felt sorry for me. All they could see was that I was not what I used to be. All they saw was that I had no home. But they didn't really understand. I hadn't had a real home since my parents died. I was used to being alone. And I had the sky."

"Look, these aren't people we know," Marco argued. "They aren't my friends. Or my family." He shot a guilty look at Jake. "And we did everything we could for Tom. So why should I get killed for strangers? We can't stay lucky forever. Sooner or later, we'll slip up. Sooner or later we'll be standing around here crying because Jake or Rachel or Cassie or Tobias is gone." "You know something?" Rachel exploded. "I'm tired of trying to talk you into this, Marco. You want out? Fine, you're OUT!" "Hey, Rachel, you're not just doing this to help save the human race," Marco yelled back. "You get off on the danger. That's why you went with Tobias to free that bird. That wasn't about saving the world. That was about rescuing some stupid bird."

"Oh, come on, Marco," Cassie chided gently. "It's an opportunity to try out a new morph!" "Yeah," Jake chided. "Instead of being home doing math homework, you get to turn into a wolf. Are you going to tell me you'd rather be doing equations?" "Let's see," Marco considered. "Math? Or becoming a wolf and going off to find aliens? Maybe I should ask the school counselor what she thinks. It's such a common problem. I'm sure she'd have some good advice."

"Be happy for me, and for all who fly free."

"Marco: No, I haven't had any weird dreams about the sea," Marco said. "I've had weird dreams about my sheets trying to strangle me. I've had weird dreams about falling from way up high and when I finally land I'm in Mister Rogers's Neighborhood talking to King Friday. I've had weird dreams about that woman on Baywatch... hmm, well, that does kind of involve the ocean, I guess."

"Rachel: You have dreams about King Friday?"

"Marco: What's wrong with dreaming about King Friday?"

"Rachel: Nothing, I was just going to say maybe you should see a counselor before your condition worsens."

"I figure this ship is going like, what, twenty miles per hour? Figure an hour, and that puts us twenty miles out, right?" Rachel pointed a finger at her forehead and said, "Jake's a total mathematical genius. One hour at twenty miles per hour. Right away he figures out that's twenty miles."

"How long until your people return to Earth?" I asked. He hesitated. "Two years!" Jake looked stricken. I went to his side and slipped my arm through his. "Five kids against an enemy that has destroyed half the galaxy? Five of us?" Ax gave that smile, the one he did with his eyes. he said. "Six. Well then," Marco said with grim sarcasm, "with six it shouldn't be any problem."

"An Andalite may think that humans are simple, open, trusting creatures. But they are more subtle than they seem to be at first. Possibly this is because of their spoken language, where no one word ever means just one thing. —From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill"

""Hello?" I turned around. It was an older human. He was paler than Marco, but other features were similar. Marco had warned me to say nothing to his father but "yes" and "no." "No," I said to Marco's father. "I'm Marco's dad. Are you a friend of his?" "Yes." "What's your name?" "No," I answered. "Your name is 'No'?" "Yes." "That's an unusual name, isn't it?" "No." "It's not?" "Yes." "Yes, it's not an unusual name?" "No." "Now I'm totally confused." "Yes." Marco's father stared at me. Then, in a loud voice he yelled, "Hey, Marco? Marco? Would you... um... your friend is here. Your friend 'No' is here." "No," I said. "Yes, that's what I said." Marco came running down the stairs. "Whoa!" he cried. "Um, Dad! You met my friend?" "No?" Marco's father said. "What?" Marco asked. Marco's father shook his head. "I must be getting old. I don't understand you kids." "Yes," I offered."

""Give me liberty or give me death." A human named Patrick Henry said that. I wonder if the Yeerks knew before they came to conquer Earth that humans said things like that. I wonder if the Yeerks knew what they were getting into. —From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill"

"Ax asked. "All animals are sacred to Cassie," Marco said. "She's Doctor Dolittle and that animal guy who comes on Letterman all rolled into one." Ax pointed out. "We don't eat dogs!" I said. We had given Ax a World Almanac to help him learn about Earth. Ever since then, he'd become an expert on useless information. He could tell you you the per capita income of Tanzania, or the long jump record at the Olympics. "Well, we don't eat dogs in this country," Rachel said. "Um...excuse me?" Jake interrupted."

"I, Elfangor, was going to become a great warrior, a prince, a hero."

"<An exo-datologist, eh?> Alloran said with a slight sneer."

""We just had a war," Loren said. "That's ... that's what happened to my dad He was in it. He didn't get killed or anything. But he kind of . . . I don't know. After he came back I guess he couldn't cope with reality. So he left."

"<Be careful what you accuse me of, Aristh Elfangor,> Alloran said harshly. <You're a child, so I forgive your impertinence. This time. But you are here to learn, not to question orders. And one of the things you'll learn, my idealistic aristh, is that war is not about striking brave poses and playing the hero. War is about killing.>"

"<My name is Elfangor, Yeerk,> I said. <Remember the name. You'll be hearing it again. But you will never take me alive.>"

"How could he imagine that anything to do with Taxxons could ever be a good cause? These Taxxon were no less cannibalistic. No less murderous. And yet, if they opposed the Yeerks, could I refuse to offer that help?"

"<Elfangor, there's no future for me anywhere.>"

"<They are defenseless,> I said as calmly as I could."

"<The entire species of Ellimists just vanished.>"

""Is this going to work?" Loren asked anxiously."

"And then it came to me, in a moment of clarity: I had no choice. When Arbron had been in utter despair and had wanted to die, I stopped him. Because without life there is no despair, but without life there can also never be hope. I had no right to erase Loren's hope, no matter how bad I felt."

"<And I know too many secrets. I know that my own people did use a Quantum virus in the Hork-Bajir war. What might they do if they suddenly had the Time Matrix?>"

"I met a lot of humans who were working in the computer field. My human friend Bill used to come over to my room and we would exchange ideas. It was hard for me to simplify my knowledge enough for him to follow. Everything had to be explained in simple human terms, using words like "window" to explain a childishly simple concept. And my human friend Steve thought it was a huge breakthrough to use symbolic icons and a simple pointer rather than a lot of complex language."

"Am I really an Ellimist?" the man asked, mocking. "Let's see. I know that Arbron still lives in the tunnels of the Living Hive. I know that you made a universe once, you and the human and the Yeerk called Visser Three."

"There's nothing I can do," I said at last. "I tried my hand at being a hero. I failed."

"What do I want? Nothing. But I can tell you that you have twisted and distorted time. Things are not as they should be. Battles are lost that should have been won. What should be safe is now endangered."

"Once, a long time before, I had explained to Loren what it must be like to see the universe as the Ellimists saw it. And now, as the Ellimist lifted me up out of the everyday world of three dimensions of space and one of time, I saw what he saw. When I had used the Time Matrix I glimpsed the lines of time interwoven. But now I saw a thousand times more. It was beyond sight. Beyond sound. It was some new sense, some new awareness. I could feel the lines of time flowing through me. I could see and taste and hear and touch and smell a billion possibilities, all flowing through me. I saw the Ellimist himself, as he really was. An indescribable being of light and time and space. Huge, but without a place. Alone, but not the only one of his kind. I saw and understood the vast power that trailed the lines of time through his grasp. And yet, against the enormity of all that had ever been and all that would ever be, I saw his limits, too. The Ellimist was mighty. But not all-powerful. I saw a young Andalite who looked like I had once: so serious, so determined to prove himself. I heard his name in my mind: Aximili- Esgarrouth-Isthill. Hello, little brother, I said silently. I saw Arbron, still alive on the Taxxon world. I felt his Taxxon hunger. But I also felt his Andalite pride. Hello, Arbron. You have become the hero I always wanted to be. I saw Loren, and wrapped around her time line now was another human who would be her mate. I had been written out of her memory. It tore at my heart to realize that I was now a stranger to her. And yet, I saw that some part of my own time line still intersected her own. I still touched her future in some way. My line and hers converged, and then from those two lines came a new line, just emerging, just beginning to grow. I cried. YOU ARE AWAY, ELFANGOR-SIRINIAL-SHAMTUL. WHAT WAS BROKEN HAS BEEN REPAIRED. YOU ARE WHERE YOU MUST BE. THE CHILD WILL BE RAISED AS THE SON OF ANOTHER."

"I asked him. the Ellimist asked. And then he laughed a huge laugh that reverberated through all the tendrils of space and time. the Ellimist said, all laughter silent now."

"Erek didn't mean anything bad. You know that," Jake said. "He just meant —" "I know what he meant," I snapped. "He meant if it came to crunch time, would I destroy my own mother to protect the mission? That's what he meant." Jake grabbed my shoulder and turned him around. "And?" I was still mad. But I knew why I was mad. It wasn't that Erek had insulted me somehow. It was that Erek was right. "I don't know, Jake," I said. "I don't know."

"I realized I had grown very serious. I don't know why, but I wanted Jake to agree with me. It was important to me. We flapped side-by-side back to the others. Jake said wearily. <Yeah. Well, I'm me, no matter what,> I said defiantly."

"I have a picture of my mom next to my bed. I look at it every night before I go to bed. I can never decide what I want to see when I look at it. I don't know if I see the mother I lost, or the mother I want to rescue somehow. I don't know anymore."

"my father cried. Alloran quoted from the regulations. my father demanded.> Alloran said harshly."

"Have you fought in many battles, Aldrea?" I was surprised by the question. "Have you ever killed a fellow Andalite?" "You ask me to kill my own people today and to lead my people in killing their brothers," Dak said. "You say they are not Hork-Bajir, but Yeerks. But when the dead have given up their souls to Mother Sky, there will be Hork-Bajir bodies lying dead." I exploded. "Be quiet, Aldrea," Dak said. He didn't shout. He said it calmly, in a low voice. "These are my people who will die today. Be quiet, Andalite. Be quiet."

"They pulled back reluctantly from the slaughter. But they obeyed. Obeyed. Me. Hork-Bajir who had never known the word "obedience" now obeyed me. Why? Because I was the seer? Because I was wiser than they? No. Because I had destroyed their past and now they had no choice but to follow me into a future they could not imagine. The monsters in our valley were destroyed that day. Only a very few survived. But that was all right, because we didn't need monsters anymore. We had become them."

"You almighty Andalites. There is no limit to your arrogance, is there? Well, let me tell you something: We may be simple people. But we don't use biology to invent monsters. And we don't enslave other species. And we don't unleash a plague of parasites on the galaxy, endangering every other free species, and then go swaggering around like the lords of the universe. No, we're too simple for all that. We're too stupid to lie and manipulate. We're too stupid to be ruthless. We're too stupid to know how to build powerful weapons designed to annihilate our enemies. Until you came, Andalite, we were too stupid to know how to kill."

"A fool is strong so that others will see. A wise person is strong for himself."

"Get pushed, push back. Toby had already seen it. She knew that the Hork-Bajir would need to be strong to defend themselves against humans once the Yeerks were defeated. Get pushed, push back. The only way. No, not the only way. There was another way. Don't push to begin with. It's the aggressors who start the cycle. It's the guy who wakes up in the morning and decides he can't get through the day without finding someone to attack, to insult, to hurt. But where does that leave you? Letting jerks dictate your reactions? Always sinking to the level of whatever creep comes along?"

"Great. I have a nut for a father and a fake for a cousin." I turned my back on them and walked away. "Tobias," Aria said. I turned back to face her. "What?" "I…I knew your father. We were, shall we say, on the opposite sides of certain issues. But he was no fool." Suddenly Aria/Visser Three smiled. It was a faraway smile, like she/he was remembering something from long ago. "Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul was no fool. And the galaxy will not soon see his like again." I threw up my hands. "Good grief, you're just as crazy as he was."