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A nimor p h s Ch r onicl e s 04
The Ellimist Chronicles KA Applegate
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*Converted to EBook by scherzando
*Edited by Dace K
Pr ol og ue
The human child called to me. The human child was dying, and nothing I could do within the rules of the game would change that fact.
The human child, one of those who called themselves Animorphs, asked me to explain. In thatfinal moment, the human wanted to know: Was it all worth it? The pain, the despair, the fear. The horror of violence suffered, and the corrupting horror of violence inflicted, was it all worth it?
I said I could not answer that. I said thatthe battle was not yet done.
"Who are you?!" the child raged. "Who are you to play games with us? You appear, you disappear, you play with us, you use us, who are you, what are you? I deserve an answer."
"Yes," I said. "You do. To this question I will give all the answer I know. And when you know me, you will ask another question. And I will answer that question, too. And then..."
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Ch a pt e r 1
F ir st Lif e
My full name is Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension Two, Down-Messenger, Forty-one. My chosen name is Toomin. I like the sound of the word, which is all the reason you need for a chosen name.
My "game" name is Ellimist. Like Toomin, it doesn't mean anything in particular. I just thought it sounded breezy. Never occurred to me when I chose the name that it would follow me for so long, and so far.
The Pangabans were an interesting race well adapted to their unusual world. They lived beneath an eternally gray, clouded sky. They had never seen their own sun dearly, had no notion of stars or other planets. This was particularly ironic because their own planet was in fact a moon that orbited a much largerplanet well suited to life.
Had they been blessed with an occasional break in the clouds they might have become a very different race. It is hard to imagine that any species could have lived beneath the sky-filling arc of the main planet, with all its obvious lushness, and not become obsessed with a desire to learn space travel.
But the Pangabans knew nothing of this, nothing at all of anything beyond their own damp and gloomy world.
The Pangabans were six-legged, which is a common enough configuration. They carried their heads high above the slender, muscular body that was little more than a junction of the six long legs.
They were skimmers. Their feet were large, webbed, and concave, which allowed them to walk on the water that covered most of the planet aside from a few soggy islands. They fed by lowering a sort of net from their body down into the water and trolling for microscopic plants and animals of which there was an abundance.
They were intelligent. Not Ketran intelligent, perhaps, but self-aware. They knew who they were. Knew that they existed. Had a language. A culture, mostly involving amazing water dances, feeding rituals, and a religion that centered on belief in underwater spirits thateither gave them food or withheld food.
DNA analysis indicated a potential for development. The Pangaban world received a decent dose of radiation, nothing deadly, justenough to cause a respectable rate of mutation. And despite their awkward physiques and the limitations of their planet's natural resources, I believed they could be brought to a level of technology equal to, say, the Illaman Confederation.
