"Applegate, Katherine A - Animorphs - 23 - The Pretender" - читать интересную книгу автора (Applegate Katherine A)

Everyone in place. Everything was ready.

Still I hesitated. Not because the situation worried me. Not because I
was afraid. It's very comforting, knowing you have an on-call grizzly bear.

Mostly I was just nervous. What was I going to discover? What was I
going to learn? What temptations would I have to face?

Strange word, temptations. Strange concept. But that's what worried me
most. Temptation.

Okay, Tobias, I told myself, everyone can see you're dawdling. Get it
over with,

I swooped low over the roof of the strip mall and dropped swiftly down
into the space behind the Dumpster. A lovely place: beer cans, weathered
Dorito bags, candy wrappers, cigarette butts.

I landed on damp dirt and scraggly grass. And I began to morph.

It's funny, you know, because when Jake or one of the others becomes
human, that's demorphing. But for me, the human is just another animal
shape I can take on. Human DNA flows in my veins. My own human DNA,
thanks to some neat work by the vastly powerful creature called the
Ellimist.

20 On one of our first missions, I was trapped in the hawk body I now
thought of as my own. Some months later the Ellimist used me to help
some free Hork-Bajir escape. The Ellimist paid me for my services. But
as usual with that unfathomable creature, there was a complication.

I had asked him to give me what I wanted most. I had assumed he'd make
me human again. Instead, he left me a hawk but gave me back my morphing
powers. And by twisting time itself, he brought me face-to-face with my
old self and let me acquire my "own" DNA.

I could be my old human self. I could be that human boy for two hours
and keep my morphing powers. Or I could remain more than two hours, be
my old self forever, and forever lose my morphing ability.

Ax's people, the Andalites, know a little about the race or the
individual called "Ellimist." No one knows for sure whether there's just
one, or many, or whether it matters.

Anyway, the Andalites tell fairy stories of the Ellimists. They see them
as tricksters. Unreliable. Creatures who use their power in
unpredictable ways.

Well, the Ellimist had tricked me. He left me hanging, stuck between two
impossible choices: become human and stop being an Animorph. Or live the