The Visitor (6 page)

W
e couldn't go to the Chapmans' the next night because Marco and I both had papers we had to write. And the night after that was Cassie's dad's birthday.

But finally, there we were again on the street outside the Chapmans' house. It was a little before eight.

Fluffer was out of the house, smelling a fence post four blocks over, where another cat had left his scent. At least, that's what Tobias reported.

“Are you ready?” Jake asked me.

I nodded.

“Are you sure?” Cassie asked. “You can put this off if you want. We don't have to do this tonight.”

“The sooner the better,” I said. “We all know something is wrong in that house. Melissa is still my friend. Maybe somehow I can help her.”

“Your job is not to help Melissa Chapman,” Marco pointed out. “You're supposed to be spying on Chapman. You're supposed to be finding some way for us to get at the Yeerks, so that we can all turn into wild animals and get ourselves killed.”

“I know why I'm doing this, Marco,” I said.

He nodded. “Okay. Well, take care of yourself in there. That's an assistant principal you're dealing with. He finds out you've turned into a cat and gone sneaking around his house, that will be after-school detention for, like, a year.”

We all laughed. As if detention were the thing I had to fear. Marco can be obnoxious, but on the other hand, he can make you laugh right when you really need to.

“I'm ready,” I said. I waved my arms at the dark sky above. Tobias swooped down, opened his wings to slow his speed, and settled on the fence beside us.

“How does it look up there, Tobias?” Jake asked.

“You know, you have quite a future in burglary,”
Marco said to Tobias. “You and I can burglarize places, and Jake can be Spider-Man and catch us.”

“Okay, I'm ready to do this,” I announced. “As ready as I'm going to get, anyway.”

Tobias sent me a private message.

I prepared to morph. I concentrated on Fluffer. It was easy to do. I had a very clear mental image of Fluffer dropping down out of that tree, ready to kill me when I was a shrew.

Inside my own body, Fluffer's DNA was stored, ready to be used. All I had to do was concentrate … concentrate….

Each morphing is different. Especially the first time, when you can't even think about controlling how it happens. Even Cassie can't control the first morph.

In the case of Fluffer, it started with fur. Black fur came first, and then the white fur began to grow. The fur had almost completely grown in while I was still mostly human. I had luxurious fur on my arms. On my legs. On my face. Fur and whiskers, with everything else pretty much the same.

“Oh, that is cool!” Cassie said. She was staring at me and grinning this huge grin. “That is way cool. You look great.”

Marco and Jake nodded agreement.

“It's kind of weird, but also kind of pretty,” Marco said. “I'm thinking you could do commercials for cat food. You sing a little song, maybe dance a little. You would rule.”

I began to shrink. But it was strange, because as I shrank and my outer clothing slithered off me, I didn't feel like I was getting smaller. I felt more like I was getting stronger.

It was like I was shedding all this unnecessary stuff, these clumsy long legs, these ridiculous weak arms. I felt like I'd been boiled down to my absolute essentials. Like I wasn't even made out of plain old flesh and bones anymore.

I felt like liquid steel.

I didn't feel the fear of the shrew. I didn't feel the total confidence of the elephant, either, or of the eagle.

This was different. There was fear, sure. But underneath the fear was confidence. The cat knew there were enemies out there, but he also knew he could handle it.

I felt … tough. That was it—tough.

Then the cat's senses started sending messages to my brain.

I yelled in surprise.

“A cat's vision at night is about eight times stronger than a human's,” Cassie said helpfully. “I looked it up.”

“Eight
times?” Marco repeated. “Not seven, or nine? How do they measure that?”

But it wasn't just how
well
I saw that was strange. It was
what
I noticed.

A human being will notice colors, for example. Now, a cat can see colors, more or less. He just isn't interested in colors. It's like, okay, that thing is red. Who cares?

What cats really notice is movement. If anything moves, even the tiniest bit, the cat sees it. I was standing there on the grass, looking around with my big cat eyes, and I saw nothing but movement.

I saw every blade of grass that moved in the breeze. I saw every bug that crawled across those blades of grass. I saw every bird in every tree as it fluffed its wings. And, boy, did I see the mice and the squirrels and the rats.

There was a mouse no more than twenty feet away. I could see the individual whiskers on his little snout when they twitched.

Things that were not moving were boring to me. If the mouse just stayed completely still, I would forget he was even there.

“How are you doing?” Jake asked me.

I had no trouble at all hearing his voice. But it was irrelevant. It had no meaning. The mouse was making a tiny little scratching sound as it worked its little teeth around a nut, trying to chew it open.

I cared about that sound. I cared about that sound a lot.

“Rachel, can you hear us? It's me, Cassie.”

“Well, at least she's not running around out of control,” Marco said.

Suddenly I sensed something over my head, a shape, a shadow, a figure. Lightning-quick, I turned my head. My ears flattened back against my skull. The hair on my back stood up and my tail puffed out to three times its normal size. My claws extended. I drew back my mouth and showed my teeth.

It all happened in a split second. I was ready for battle.

And whatever this was attacking me, I wanted it to know it would be sorry it messed with Fluffer McKitty.

“Hhhhhiisssss!”

I
was ready to fight. I was
pumped
. Kill or be killed.

It is so cool when you feel the razor-sharp claws sliding out of your delicate-looking pink pads.

“Rachel, chill out, girl, it's just Tobias,” Cassie said soothingly. “Tobias? I think maybe you'd better stay away,” she called up to the sky. “Cats are genetically programmed to be afraid of large birds.”

She was right. The shadow of Tobias scared me pretty good. It was strange, because it was a fear I shared with the shrew.

But it was a different type of fear than the shrew's. This was more like I was angry, too. Only that wasn't
quite it, either. I guess it wasn't a real emotion at all. Basically, when I'd hissed I was just trying to communicate. And the message I was trying to communicate was, “Don't mess with me. You may be bigger than me, you may scare me, you may make me run away, but if I have to I am ready to fight.”

That was my whole cat message to the world: Don't mess with me. Don't get in my way, don't try to touch me if I don't want to be touched, don't try to keep me from getting what I want.

I was self-contained. I was complete. I didn't need anything but myself. It seemed lonely to my human self, but at the same time, it was all very calm somehow.

I said.

“What's it like?” Cassie asked.

“Can you do this, do you think?” Jake asked me. anything.>
“Don't let the cat's arrogance get you in trouble,” Marco advised. “Keep a little of your good old human
fear.” He paused. “Oh, I forgot, mighty Rachel doesn't have any good old human fear. So here's what you do: Borrow some of
my
good old human fear. I have plenty to spare.”

“He's right, Rachel,” Cassie agreed. “Keep focused. Between your own natural attitude and the cat's ‘tude, you could get cocky.”

I cast a glance back toward the mouse. He had broken into the nut at last. I could kill him. I was sure of that. He was a plump little mouse, and I would catch him easily. But I wasn't hungry. So he'd get to live a while longer.

I said.

“We're here if you get into a mess,” Cassie reassured me.

But the truth is, I was lying, just a little. See, I wasn't completely in control of the cat. For some reason I didn't
want
to completely control the cat. I kind of liked his arrogance. It made me feel more sure of myself. And despite what the others thought about me, I needed all the confidence I could get.

“The morph clock is ticking,” Cassie said. “It's quarter of eight. Remember that.”

I headed at an easy trot down the sidewalk toward the Chapman home. As soon as I started moving I
thought,
Oh, man, if I could just keep some of this for my next gymnastics class
.

It was like grace beyond any grace you can imagine as a human. I passed a wooden fence. There was a railing up high, maybe three feet up. I looked up at it and then, before I could even think about it, I leaped. My powerful hind legs coiled up and released.

I sailed through the air. Three feet straight up, and I was an animal that stood only about twelve or thirteen inches tall. It was the same as a human being just leaping to the top of a two-story building.

And it was totally
nothing
. It was just automatic. I wanted to jump, so I did. I wanted to stick the landing on a narrow two-inch-wide rail, and of course, no problem.

Compared to a cat, the best gymnast who ever lived is like a big staggering cow or something.

“Um, Rachel, what exactly are you doing?” Jake asked.

They were all standing there looking at me. I had totally forgotten they were still around.

I said. I jumped back down to the grass.
Okay, get the job done first,
I ordered myself sternly.
You can worry about the Kitty Olympics later
.

I started again toward the house, but this time something forced me to stop. It was a telephone pole. The smell that emanated from it was overpowering.
I went over to it. I sniffed it again and again in short snorts of air. The air was trapped in a series of chambers above my palette. It would be held there even while I went on breathing. That way I could get every possible bit of information from that smell.

It was definitely a tom's scent. A tomcat had marked this pole by peeing on it. He was a dominant cat. Very dominant. His smell made me nervous. Not afraid, just a little less arrogant than I had been. If this cat appeared, I would have to submit. I would have to make myself smaller and less threatening and accept his dominance.

Or I could fight him and get my butt kicked.

It was just the way things were. It was all there in the smell of his urine, where any cat could read it.

I resumed trotting toward the Chapman home.

Tobias's voice was in my head.

I said.

he said doubtfully.

That got my attention. It was like a dash of cold water in my face. I focused my human mind and took
greater control over the cat's mind. But it wasn't easy. The cat's mind did not even understand the notion of obeying.

So I used something the cat would respond to. I conjured up the memory of the big tom's smell. That triggered the cat's submissiveness. I felt my part of the collective mind grow larger.

Tobias said.

Chapman's
. And Chapman belongs to Visser Three. Don't forget that.>

I trotted to the cat door. Chapman. Visser Three. Big deal. I was a combination of Rachel and Fluffer. What did I care about Chapman and Visser Three?

The light inside the house was bright. My eyes adjusted instantly. My nose picked up the smell of cat food, too dry and old to interest me. I also smelled the humans: Melissa, Mr. Chapman, and Ms. Chapman. Don't ask me how I knew that what I smelled were those three people. I just knew.

I spotted a cockroach in the dust balls in the dark beneath the refrigerator. No interest to me. Roaches made interesting scratchy noises sometimes, and they were fun to watch run. But they smelled wrong. They were not prey.

Swift movements!

Feet. Human feet. I didn't bother looking up. It was Ms. Chapman.

High-pitched sounds coming from the motor of the refrigerator. They were annoying. There were also the sounds of birds outside. They had a nest up under the eaves.

Then the sound of Melissa's voice.

Where was she? I didn't see her anywhere. The sound was muffled.

I tried to focus. My ears moved to point toward the sound. It came from above me. Above and far away.

She was in her bedroom, that's where. I couldn't hear the words clearly, but I knew that she was muttering to herself.

I trotted across the kitchen floor. I knew—as
Rachel
— I knew I
should
be afraid. But I couldn't be afraid. Everything here smelled like me. My scent glands had left their marks all over—on that door, on that cupboard, on that chair. It reassured me.

The big dominant tomcat's smell was not in here. No, there were no other cats in here at all. Only human smells, and those were not very important.

I left the kitchen and paused at the corner between the hallway and the family room. Chapman was there, in the living room. I could smell him. He
was just sitting on the couch. I glanced at him and walked on.

But then I stopped. My human brain sensed something wrong with the picture. Chapman was just sitting on the couch. No TV. No music. He wasn't reading a book or a newspaper. Just sitting.

I turned back to the kitchen. I looked up at Ms. Chapman. She was doing something at the sink. Maybe washing dishes. No, she was cutting vegetables. But again, no TV. No music. She wasn't humming to herself. She wasn't talking to herself the way my mom does when she's working in the kitchen.

Not right. Something was not right with either of the Chapmans.

I went back to the hallway. There were stairs leading up to the bedrooms. From the hallway I could hear Melissa more clearly. I concentrated, trying to ignore the fascinating sounds of the birds under the eaves. I focused on the human sounds of Melissa's voice.

“… divided by the square root … no, wait. No, square root times … Is that right?”

She was doing her homework. Her math homework, obviously.

Like I
should
be doing, I thought. I had a pang of guilt. Instead of doing my homework, I was creeping
around my friend's house spying on her and her parents.

I tried to find a clock. I had to watch the time. At nine forty-five my two hours would be up. I wanted to be out of morph and back in my normal body long before then. Hopefully, I could still get home and do my math homework and at least do some of the reading for social studies class.

I spotted a clock. It was over the mantel, between pictures of the Chapmans and Melissa. The clock said three minutes until eight. I had plenty of time.

Sudden movement!

Oh, just Chapman standing up.

The cat part of me wasn't interested in Chapman one way or the other. But I forced myself to pay attention. It was important to watch him. That was why I was here.

Is he prey?
The cat brain seemed to be asking.

Yes. Yes, I told the cat brain.

Chapman is our prey.