| #34: The Prophecy |
Detailed Plot: Cassie and Rachel go on a secret mission to steal a love note Cassie accidentally turned in to a teacher. The next day, they find out that a new kind of alien has landed on Earth: one representative of the Arn race (first encountered in a previous book). The Arn are the creatures that actually created the Hork-Bajir, and this particular representative--named Quafijinivion--has tracked the free Hork-Bajir to this planet. The Arn is there because he wants to take the Hork-Bajir's DNA and re-create them on their own planet, so they can take it back from the Yeerks. But the Animorphs are wary of the Arn exploiting the Hork-Bajir. The Arn explains that before they died, Toby's great-grandparents--Dak Hamee and Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan--did a lot of damage to the Yeerks and managed to steal some of their weapons. The cloned free Hork-Bajir that the Arn wants to make would have access to these weapons against the Yeerks, and they all agree that anything that hurts the Yeerks is good for them, but they don't know where these weapons are hidden. To answer that, the Arn brings out something called an Ixcila--the essence and personality of a dead person--which belonged to Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan. He needs volunteers to become this dead Andalite's vessel so they can talk to her and find the weapons. Rachel and Toby Hamee volunteer, but when the ceremony to reactivate Aldrea is performed, she unexpectedly chooses Cassie as a receptacle mind. Cassie has to deal with an alien presence in her head, and realizes Aldrea doesn't know what's going on and doesn't realize she's dead. With some coaxing--and some disorientation--she manages to get Aldrea communicating with her and talking to the others. They brief her and she argues about whether she "counts" as an Andalite or a Hork-Bajir, what the Arn want with her, and whether it's fair to ask her to support starting another guerrilla war on her adopted home planet. She gets to meet her great-granddaughter, Toby, and everything Toby does reminds her of Dak because he was also a seer. Aldrea eventually agrees to do what she must, but Cassie worries that being a vessel might end up being permanent if Aldrea doesn't agree to release her. Because the Animorphs team is planning to go into space and accompany Cassie/Aldrea while trying to find the weapons, they decide to contact the Chee to pose as them again, and Rachel goes along with Cassie so they can let Aldrea train with Cassie's morphs. They experiment by letting Aldrea pilot a wolf morph, and Cassie worries about being a prisoner in her own body. She tries to move her wolf tail just to see if she can, and is only able to have a small effect on it. She wonders if she was chosen as Aldrea's vessel because she is weak. Cassie acquires Jara Hamee's DNA so she can have a Hork-Bajir morph, and they get ready to go off in the Arn's stolen spacecraft to the Hork-Bajir world. She finds that Aldrea is still grieving over the news that Dak died and that her son became a Controller. Cassie knows that what's history to her seems like the present to Aldrea. The Arn suggests that this is a mission of redemption for him. They travel on the ship, and Jake makes it clear that he is the leader of this mission, even though they are trusting Quafijinivion and Aldrea. Aldrea agrees to follow Jake as her prince even though it's unclear whether she means it. While on the journey, Aldrea has a nightmare about losing Dak and losing her son Seerow, noting the irony of a dead person dreaming about death. They end up being attacked by an Andalite doing patrol, and they have to cripple the ship in order to avoid getting destroyed by it. Unfortunately other Yeerk ships come and are dangerous to the crippled ship, and they can't just let the Andalite warrior take their fall, so they help him out and destroy the other ships, passing safely to the Hork-Bajir world. Since they have a Yeerk ship it's easy to get through the defenses, and Aldrea watches through Cassie's eyes as they see what's become of the planet. It's been ravaged, of course, since the Yeerks tend to destroy anything that's not useful to them. Little Toby Hamee is also interested to see the world her species is from. Seeing what's become of it, Aldrea is angry all over again and is ready to make the Yeerks pay. When they arrive, Aldrea has to admit she does not actually know where the weapons are stored; she just has an idea of where she would have hidden them. Jake realizes she is not to be trusted because she has not been completely honest with them. When they've morphed to Hork-Bajir and gone up the trees to see where Aldrea used to live with Dak and her baby, they can see that where there used to be a forest that was familiar to her, there is now a big clearing that's been turned into a Yeerk pool. The group comes up with a way to open the door and get in to get the weapons, but the plan sounds suicidal and ridiculous to Aldrea, and she begs Cassie not to follow Jake into this mission. Especially since it's Cassie herself who will be undertaking the most risk. She becomes a bird and lets the others, morphed as insects, stay in her beak. Then she has to fly up into the sky, morph to human and keep her wings throughout it, and then begin to morph into a whale, while getting shot at. Somehow she manages to keep the wings through the whole process, which makes no sense to Aldrea and earns her some respect for Cassie's abilities. But she also believes Cassie is waiting too long to get rid of her wings, and she tries to wrestle Cassie for control of her body. Cassie wins and Aldrea has to accept it. Once they hit the water of the Yeerk pool, Cassie lets the others demorph in her mouth, and though they don't have much air it works out fine. Cassie asks Aldrea to help, through echolocation, to find the door she reported as leading to the weapons. She has to surface and let them breathe, though, and as soon as she does the firing from the enemy resumes. She releases Ax and Tobias in Andalite form and they leap out of the water, while Jake and Rachel have to deal with pursuing Taxxons while in hammerhead shark mode. Marco, morphed as a Hork-Bajir, runs around "warning" the other Hork-Bajir guards that there are "thousands" of Andalites, which spooks them. Finally they manage to get down to the door and open it, and inside there is air--and a stolen Yeerk ship, just like they'd suspected. Aldrea knows the codes to enter the ship because she usually used passwords based on Seerow's birth dates. Cassie has had to give control of their body over to Aldrea because she's just too exhausted after all the morphing and fighting, so it's Aldrea who discusses the plan with Jake and Ax, and they decide to shoot holes in the walls to burn their way out, which will have a side effect of killing some Yeerks. No one objects, but Cassie, still exhausted, regrets that they must die. They deliver their weapons to the old Arn who will be creating and training Hork-Bajir to use them. Aldrea and Ax discuss the future of Toby, and though she seems to want to stay and help the war on the Hork-Bajir planet, they feel she needs to return to Earth. Cassie and Aldrea have time to talk about why Aldrea chose her, and it becomes clear that actually she was chosen for her strength. They discuss how to get Toby to agree to leave the planet, and they stage an act in which Cassie pretends Aldrea is trying to take control of her. Ax pretends to take Toby as a hostage, saying he'll kill her if Aldrea doesn't leave Cassie. Aldrea "promises" to have the Arn make her another body and claims she'll come after them, so Ax in turn says Toby will be taken as a hostage to use against her if she does return. With that, Aldrea actually does depart, knowing that sometime soon Toby will figure out that it was a trick. She evaporates and knows no more. Narrator: Cassie New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Hork-Bajir (Jara Hamee) Marco: Hork-Bajir Rachel: None Ax: None Tobias: None Notable: This book is ghostwritten by Melinda Metz. Toby, the daughter of free Hork-Bajir Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak, is referred to as "Toby Hamee," which suggests that "Hamee" is kind of like a last name; it's unclear whether her second name being the same as her father's indicates a paternal naming convention, but it's possible. In this book it is stated that the Hork-Bajir are from a different galaxy. Ax says so when they have to go through Z-space to arrive "somewhere in the galaxy of the Hork-Bajir planet," and when Aldrea awakens Cassie wonders whether she has any idea that she's on "a planet in a different galaxy." But in The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, it's said over and over that the Yeerks, the Andalites, and the Hork-Bajir are from the same galaxy. The concept of the Ixcila is introduced in this book: it's a person's essence and memories, and can be accessed through a "receptacle mind." Typo: One of Ax's lines says "And if she doesn't chose to release her hold?" Should be "choose." Cassie's narration has her describing climbing a tree as going "Up and up, toes and blades biting the bark, racing straight toward 'Father Sky,'" as if this is how Hork-Bajir think of the sky. In every other place, it's "Mother Sky." The "father" here is "Father Deep." It's curious that despite Cassie's never attempting a maneuver like keeping wings from a previous morph on through to her natural form and onto another morph, she is somehow confident that she can do it. No testing, no understanding of whether it's possible; they just banked on it working. And because of her morphing talent, it does. There doesn't seem to be an Andalite science-related reason for this. Best lines: Cassie: We very seldom ended up refusing to do what was insane. Cassie: Sometimes, in war, even the "good guys" do awful things. Cassie: "She wants to know why she should have chosen you. Should I explain to her that you are the mighty, the powerful, the ultimate Yeerk-killer, Xena: Warrior Princess, whereas I am merely an ambivalent, animal-loving, tree-hugging wuss?" Cassie: I could have pointed out that my friends and I were probably the galactic morphing champions. But I didn't feel right. I felt . . . I don't know. Aldrea was a hero right out of history. And I was the girl with the raccoon enema bag. Cassie: I wondered again why Aldrea hadn't chosen Rachel as her receptacle. But maybe the answer was all too clear: Maybe I'd been chosen because she sensed that I was the weakest. Ax: "Let us agree, then, that all civilized species must share a hatred of war."
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