"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 02 - The Visitor (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)

"What in the world was Ч " the mechanic cried.
I knew what it was. It was Rachel. Pretty, blond Rachel. Although right at the moment she wasn't pretty Ч impressive, but not pretty.
BOOM! Cr-u-u-u-nch!
"Oh. My. Lord," Dealin' Dan gasped. "Forget the bird! There's an elephant stomping over the convertibles!"
I would have smiled. If I'd had a mouth.
I finished turning the lock. I yanked open the cage door.
The hawk was wary. She was a true hawk, with only a hawk's mind and instincts to guide her. But she did know an open path to the sky when she saw one.
Out she came, in a rush of gray and brown and white feathers. She didn't know that I had freed her. That kind of concept was beyond her thinking. And she felt no gratitude.
But she flapped her wings and rose into the air.
Free.
And right then I had the strangest feeling. Like I should go with her. Like I should be with her.
Rachel asked.
She was bellowing loudly, tossing her big trunk around and stomping various cars. Having a very good time, by elephant standards. But it was time for us to leave. For, Rachel to resume her human form.
I looked up again. I saw the sunlight shine through the hawk's red tail. She flew toward the setting sun.


CHAPTER 2

I said urgently.
Rachel snapped.

We had reached a patch of woods behind Dealin' Dan's car dealership. It was really just a few scruffy trees between the car place and a convenience store.
I watched from a low tree branch as Rachel morphed back to human again. If you've never seen someone morph, you have no idea just how incredibly weird it is.
When she began, she was a full-grown African elephant. Ten feet tall. Almost twice that from head to tail. She weighed at least six thousand pounds. I say "at least" because we've never exactly tried to stick her on the bathroom scale.
She had two curved tusks, each about as long as a child. And a trunk that dragged the ground when she walked and could pick up a big slashing, yelling, dangerously angry Hork-Bajir warrior and throw him twenty feet.
I'd seen her do it.

I said.

Controllers. There's a word you need to know. A Controller is anyone with a Yeerk in his head. Yeerks are alien parasites. They are evil little slugs who live in the bodies of other species and enslave them. All the Hork-Bajir are Controllers. So are the Taxxons.
So are more and more humans. Human-Controllers.
As I watched, Rachel began to shrink. The ropy tail was sucked up like a piece of spaghetti. Her trunk grew smaller.
Blond hair began to sprout from her massive gray forehead. Her eyes wandered across her face toward the middle. The vast leathery ears became pink and small and perfectly formed.
I said.



She was small enough now that she could stand on her hind legs. As she did, her front legs grew smooth and human. Her back legs lost their clunkiness and became her own long, coltish legs.
Her morphing clothes, a skintight black leotard, emerged.
The tusks shlooped back into her mouth and divided into sparkling teeth. She was a very pretty girl, beautiful even, except that she still had a two-foot-long gray nose.
At last the trunk seemed to roll up and became a regular nose.
She was a girl again. Barefoot, because no one had figured out how to morph shoes. Her mouth was back to normal. She spoke in her normal voice, no longer in my head. Thought-speech is only for morphs.
"Okay, I'm back. Let's bail!"
The siren sounds were coming ever closer.
"I hope they have some flip-flops for sale in there," Rachel grumbled. "This shoe situation is a pain."
The elephant was gone. The girl had emerged.
See? I told you it would be hard to believe.
It began at a deserted construction site, when we found the crashed spaceship of an Andalite prince. He was the last surviving Andalite in our solar system. He and his fellow Andalites had fought a great battle to drive away the Yeerk mother ship.
They fought and lost.
And now the Yeerks are among us. And they are now trying to enslave the human race.