#6: The Capture

With the fifth book, we've completed a full cycle of Animorph narration. The original five members have all gotten a chance to show things from their perspective; we've established the setting, the characters and their motivations, and the war. Books six through ten expand the universe with new allies, insights, and complications. Already in The Capture, you see the kids start to get more cautious: Jake tries out a cockroach morph in his bedroom before using it on a mission - and even that level of carefulness isn't enough. He gets chewed out by the group for doing it alone. Clearly, they've learned from past experiences. They've all come terrifyingly close to death the past three books in a row - and in the last book, they were flat-out captured by Visser Three. If they're going to be even halfway successful at fighting this war, amateur hour needs to end yesterday.

So they get together in Marco's sweet new apartment (now that his dad is back at work, they got to move to a nicer place - and also his dad works late a lot, leaving Marco free to have all his friends and a hawk and an alien over) to morph cockroach and learn how to tell what someone's saying based on vibrations in the floor. They'll need this skill because Jake has figured out from spying on his Controller brother that the Yeerks have taken over a hospital, which they're presumably using to infest patients. Jake's still dealing with the fact that his brother is a Controller, and that he may have to face him in battle. Or that if the Animorphs succeed in shutting down the Yeerk hospital, Visser Three might kill Tom along with the Yeerk in his head. He's been having dreams where he hunts Tom as a tiger, but as soon as he catches him, Tom becomes the tiger and Jake the prey. So that's totally not metaphorical at all.

They use their new roach morphs to spy on a meeting of The Sharing. Visser Three shows up (of course) in human morph (maybe he learned something from Visser One in the last book) and announces that the governor of their state will be checking into their front hospital for minor surgery - and will check out a Controller. As if that wasn't terrifying enough, Rachel points out that their governor is planning to run for president next year. I like to imagine that Rachel knows so much about current events because her dad is a local news anchor, and she and her sisters watch his show every night. He probably gives them a little signal, like Carol Burnett tugging her earlobe.

Anyway, the Yeerks see the roaches and Visser Three figures out that they could be Andalites, so there's a massive rush to kill them. Jake is sprayed with bug spray and almost dies, but Tobias picks him up and flies him to a rooftop so he can demorph. I am getting guilty flashbacks to every house centipede I ever killed with Raid. I'm not sure how I could have done that after reading this chapter.

Even though Jake almost died from bug spray, the kids figure out when the governor's going to be there and morph flies to sneak into the hospital. That's another part of their growing up: even though they still think bugs are gross, even though insect morphs have almost killed them multiple times, they're far more willing to morph them because they know you can't beat a bug for spy work. Hence, two new bug morphs in one book. They get into the hospital and find a room where the Yeerks have turned a Jacuzzi into a mini-Yeerk pool. Jake decides to turn up the heat, boiling alive the hundred or so Yeerks that are in there. Cassie stands back and says nothing about this, because they still don't really think of Yeerks as people. But it's still kind of disturbing.

While Jake is committing mass murder, two Controller doctors walk in on them. A battle ensues, and before you know it, Jake is plunged, unconscious, into the boiling Yeerk pool. He wakes up with a massive headache. The others eventually cover his face (seriously, how have they not been found out yet?) and Marco carries him out in his massive gorilla arms (aww). But what they don't know is that Jake has been infested. And not just by any Yeerk - by Tom's former Yeerk, Temrash 114. Tom's been given to a lower-ranking Yeerk and Temrash has been promoted. He'd been intended for the governor.

After spending five books hearing about Yeerks, this is the first time we get to experience first-hand what it's like to be a Controller. And it is every bit as disturbing as you think. Luckily, Ax realizes what's happened basically as soon as he sees Jake. They decide to tie him up for three days in an old shack in the woods. If he's a Controller, the Yeerk will die of Kandrona starvation. If not, Jake will understand the need for carefulness. The fact that this all happens so quickly is fortunate for the Animorphs, but unfortunate for the story: it would have been nice to have at least a few chapters of tension, where maybe Jake's Yeerk starts to lead them all into a trap, and the reader worries that all the Animorphs will soon be infested. Of course, the only reason the plan works is because none of the other Yeerks know that Jake's been taken - or that Temrash isn't dead in the Jacuzzi with all the others. Really, this is the ideal scenario in which to get infested - insofar as there is such a thing.

Ax acquires Jake's DNA and the others coach him in Jakeology so he can pose as him for the three days. Which is incredibly risky - even if Ax manages to mimic Jake perfectly, he'll have to morph back to Andalite form every two hours. In the same house as a Controller. Will he sleep as an Andalite, risking discovery if some accident happens in the middle of the night? Or will he set an alarm every two hours throughout the night to demorph and morph back, which seems like a recipe for exhaustion and sleep deprivation? It would have been interesting to see these events from Ax's perspective: he pretty much just arrived on Earth and is still getting used to food and speaking with his mouth. Now suddenly he has to perfectly imitate a human. That's got to be an interesting learning experience. Unfortunately, all we get of this is a couple of throwaway jokes in the very last chapter about Ax-as-Jake eating everything and playing with words. So clearly he's not very good at pretending to be Jake, but Tom's new Yeerk doesn't seem to question it.

Anyway, as soon as Ax touches Jake to acquire him, Temrash freaks out and calls him "Andalite filth." That's all the confirmation the others need. But Temrash continues to try to convince the Animorphs that Jake isn't a Controller, focusing on Cassie because of her feelings for Jake. He also taunts Jake, replaying his embarrassing fantasies and making fun of them. Of course, because this is a children's book, the fantasy is of baskeball stardom instead of sex with Cassie, which is what Jake would probably be thinking about virtually nonstop if he was a real thirteen-year-old boy. Then he shows Jake Tom's memories and feelings. He reveals a broken teenage boy, sobbing inside his mind, begging the Yeerk to leave his little brother alone.

Several times Temrash tries to use Jake's morphing power to escape, but the Animorphs use what they've learned from past missions to thwart him. He morphs wolf, Cassie rides on his back as a flea like Jake did Rachel in book two, and then they lead him into the territory of the rival wolf pack from book three. He morphs ant, he runs into an ant colony that tears him apart, a la book five. Meanwhile, the knowledge that his friends are behind him fills Jake with hope, and he takes every opportunity to distract and annoy Temrash.

Temrash's arrogance gradually subsides; as he starves, he grows more confused. He gets weaker and weaker and starts thrashing in pain. Jake starts seeing flashes of Temrash's memories, involuntarily shared. He sees the Yeerk homeworld through the eyes of a Gedd, the Yeerks' first host and Temrash's too. He sees how Tom got infested. And then, just as Temrash dies, he sees something else:

A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high.

Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly... left... right...

I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way.

And then it saw me.

The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me.

It saw me.

It SAW me!

This is our first tantalizing glimpse of a major villain who won't be properly introduced for another twenty books. But his appearance here sets up a new character to appear in the very next book, although readers won't find out that they have anything to do with each other, again, for another twenty books. For now, feel free to shit your pants.

The dead Yeerk falls out of Jake's ear and shrivels away, and he is free. The Yeerks close the hospital down. And Jake calls Tom, disguising his voice by half-morphing wolf, to tell him not to give up. He uses Cassie's dad's cellphone for this, which would probably put Cassie's dad in an enormous amount of danger if Tom ever dialed *69. (Which he doesn't, for some reason.) I don't think K.A. understood how cell phones worked; just because they're wireless doesn't mean they're untraceable. They could at least call him from a payphone in the middle of the night. Oh well. Even if he'd covered his tracks better, it was still kind of a dumb thing to do. They're getting better at this, but they're still kids.

Commentary:
It's early on in the series, so the Yeerks are still pretty one-dimensional. Temrash doesn't have any of the depth or complexity we'll see from certain Yeerks we'll meet later on. Still, it's wonderfully creepy to have a firsthand look at what it's like to be a Controller. You really feel what it's like to be a prisoner in your own body, watching helplessly as you are used as a tool to destroy your friends. It's a real shame that Jake doesn't get infested until halfway through this book. That's the most interesting part, but instead of jumping right in we get a filler scene of Jake playing basketball with two friends who have never been seen before and will never be seen again, and an entirely pointless chapter where Rachel helps him shop for a birthday gift for his mom. Not only do these scenes not advance the plot, they don't even provide character development - which Jake could still sorely use. Those are pages that could have been put to much better use showing Temrash manipulating the other Animorphs, or slowly coming to terms with his mortality, or digging into Jake's thoughts and memories to reveal more character depth.

Even so, this book is an improvement over past books. The repetitive rhythm of the first four books - plan, scope out the location, get hurt, run home, re-plan, go back to the same location, get hurt, run home, re-plan again, come back again, kind of succeed this time - doesn't show up in the fifth and sixth books. There are different locations, different morphs, different strategies to liven things up. And even though Jake got infested, they managed to shut down that Controller factory of a hospital: a concrete victory in the war, only the second they've ever had and certainly the more significant of the two. (The other one was destroying the water transport ship in book three.)

This victory will embolden them - maybe a little too much - in Animorphs #7: The Stranger. (Next week on 'Political Animorphs'! Check your local listings!)