| #31: The Conspiracy |
Detailed Plot: When Jake's great-grandfather "Grandpa G" dies, his dad demands that the family has to go out to his cabin for four days to participate in funeral arrangements, so of course his brother Tom--a Controller--is furious. He can't stay away from Kandrona rays for four days or he'll die. So he hatches a plan to make their father a Controller too, and Jake fails to see the signs until it's too late and Tom is already on his way to a Sharing meeting with their father. The cover story is that his dad is going to tell The Sharing why Tom can't participate in their next event, but of course Tom is just going to eliminate the threat of the person trying to keep him away from Kandrona rays. Jake becomes somewhat irrational because he doesn't want another one of his family members lost to the Yeerks, so Marco takes over being the decision-maker, having to correct Jake's risky actions several times while they're attempting to track and rescue Jake's father. Erek helps locate his dad, and Marco begins to work on a strategy to distract rather than attack the Yeerks who may be infesting his dad. Marco manages to make the Yeerks in the Sharing meeting run out to their cars by setting off a bunch of car alarms with the help of his gorilla morph. Jake stays in bird morph and watches, realizing based on his dad's comments that he couldn't have been infested yet. "Round 1" is over. Jake explains the problem to the rest of the Animorphs team, then he and the team have to keep surveillance on his dad to make sure no one gets him. Jake calls in sick to school, turns into a roach, and hitches a ride on his dad's pant leg as he goes to work. After a hiccup involving his dad trying to kill his roach morph, he manages to hide and gets to work with him. Unfortunately, a suspicious character with a beard appears to be stalking his dad, and though three of the team are watching and trying to provide protection, the bearded guy starts following when Jake's dad gets out of work. Turns out he's not a Controller; he was just angry that someone was parking in his parking spot. But during the window when Jake should have given marching orders, he ended up freezing in indecision and leaving his friends to act on their own (which involved bad decisions), so he's worried he will choke when the real battle begins. That night, his dad tells Tom and Jake to prepare for the funeral and pack their suits, and he goes out to water the lawn. Jake decides to take the edge off by doing some flying, but while he's up there talking to Tobias they see a car coming by and someone inside has a gun. To protect his father, Jake demorphs and runs over to take the watering hose from him, then sprays the car about to commit the drive-by, pretending it's an accident and apologizing. He "notices" Mr. Chapman and greets him, too. And all he can think of is that his father narrowly escaped death and Tom was forced to watch. He vows that he will kill the Yeerk in his brother's head someday. In order to stop having to play the defensive game, Jake develops a plan to distract the Yeerks from helping Tom with his problem. They decide to go on the offensive and kidnap Chapman, because his Yeerk is more important than Tom's Yeerk. They do so, unfortunately freaking his daughter out badly, and Ax plays the abductor and tormentor, interrogating Chapman for Yeerk information before abandoning him pretending they're going to let the Yeerk starve to death. Ax deliberately leaves glass on the ground so Chapman can cut himself free once he isn't being watched anymore, and they leave him to create his own escape. In the meantime, the damage is done; no one came to infest Jake's dad or save Tom's Yeerk before they all had to go to the cabin in the woods for Grandpa G's funeral. While they're out there, Jake doesn't really know what to do as far as a plan if Tom attacks, and Tom acts like his usual self. They come across Grandpa G's old footlocker and examine the medals and a dagger. Jake convinces Tom to put the dagger back even though he acts like he's going to take it. But of course, Jake wakes up from a bad dream and finds Tom not in his bed, with his dad also missing. They're sitting out by the dock, and Tom is pretending to apologize to his dad about how he's been acting. He has the dagger. Jake is about to just throw caution to the wind and attack Tom to stop the murder, but before he can finish his tiger morph, his friends come to the rescue. Cassie, as a whale (remaining unseen) destroys the dock they're sitting on so they fall into the water. Other team members drag his dad away and break Tom's leg in the water. Jake morphs back to human and runs out to help his brother get out of the water, and Tom's leg ends up injured in such a way that he needs to be airlifted to the hospital. Being that the hospital in their town is Yeerk-infested, Tom's Yeerk gets the Kandrona rays it needs and misses the funeral, but Jake is pleased that he can count on his friends to understand when he isn't able to carry out a mission with a clear head. And Jake understands now why his great-grandfather didn't really talk about the war. He understands what it feels like to earn medals and why it's not very pleasant to remember what a soldier does to earn them. Knowing how much like Grandpa G he truly is, he figures he will have to buy a footlocker.
Narrator: Jake New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: None Marco: None Rachel: None Ax: Osprey (maybe a mistake?) Tobias: None Notable: This book was ghostwritten by Laura Battyanyi-Weiss. Jake is said to have a "Grandpa G" in this book who identified him at a young age as having an "old soul." It's not clear whether the grandfather knew something he shouldn't have, but it's written as just an incidental comment about Jake's demeanor. Grandpa G was quite right. This book expresses that Jake and Rachel are related through Jake's father's side, which means Grandpa G was not Rachel's grandpa since he was related to his mother. Also, Jake's dad is a doctor. Ax uses an osprey morph in this book. Previously, his main bird morph has been a northern harrier, and he never uses an osprey morph before or after this book. More than likely this was an author mistake and Ax was supposed to use his northern harrier morph, but the text specifies that he was an osprey, so maybe he's incidentally supposed to have acquired it in this book or a previous one. Best lines: Ax: "I will gladly fight this Controller and even, in fair battle, kill him, but I am not a torturer." Jake: "Christmas, when they were all homesick in their foxholes, they sang 'Silent Night.' The enemy sang it, too, in German. Far off they heard it. Both sides lonely for their homes. Both sides wishing the war was over."
Tom: "You think everything is so simple, don't you? That it's all either right or wrong, black or white. A good guy, a bad guy, and nothing in between."
Jake: "You're my best friend, Marco. If you ever again tell me I'm losing it, getting too involved, can't lead--"
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