Among the Free (8 page)

Maybe he'd have to tell the truth.

“I—I'm running away from the Population Police,” he said. “I deserted. They wanted me to shoot someone and I . . . I didn't want to do that.”

He kept his body hunched over, cowering. He dreaded the moment when he'd have to look up and see how the people around him had reacted to his words. But nobody spoke for a long time. Luke heard a car engine approaching, then idling. He heard a familiar, growling voice shout out, “Population Police! Submit to a house-to-house search! Show all your identification papers! Turn in any unauthorized persons!”

He felt his body begin to quiver, his muscles turn to helpless jelly, his dread turn to paralyzing certainty.

Then he heard another voice, just as loud, coming from someone in the circle around him. This voice spoke only one word:

“No.”

T
he man with the whiskers linked his arm with Luke's right elbow; a woman did the same thing on his other side. Together they lifted him upright. Around them others were joining arms, shifting positions. The circle was transforming itself into a straight line, strong and true. Strong and true and facing a Population Police officer in a fancy car.

“Go away,” the man with the whiskers said. “You're not wanted here.”

“But—I have a gun!” the officer sputtered.

“Yes,” the man said calmly. “You have a gun. But there are just two of you, and there are many of us. You couldn't kill us all. Not when we are standing together. You have no control over us anymore.”

Luke felt the power in the man's words like something physical—a presence as distinct as the man and woman standing on either side of him, holding him up. The Population Police officer seemed to feel it too. He shrank back a little in his seat. He didn't seem inclined to shout
anymore about how the Population Police were still in charge.

“Hand over that boy, at least, and I'll leave you alone,” he offered finally. “That boy is not one of yours. He's nothing to you, I'd wager.”

Luke knew that the Population Police officer was talking about him. He was the only one with twigs in his hair, the only one panting, the only one wearing an inside-out Population Police shirt. How much did the officer know? That Luke had been in the abandoned village? That he'd been in Chiutza? Fear made Luke's legs weak; the whole world seemed to spin around him.

But the man and woman on either side of him kept a firm grip on his arms.

“He's one of ours now,” the woman said.

The Population Police officer stared at Luke, at the woman, at the man. His gaze seemed to take in the whole line of people united against him. Then he leaned forward and tapped his driver's shoulder.

“We'll go now,” he said.

The driver looked back, his face confused.

“You're letting them get away with this?” he asked. “You're not even going to shoot the boy?”

“I said go!” the officer roared.

The driver shrugged, then bent down and slipped the car into gear. It leaped forward, its engine noise loud and angry. As the car drove away, the noise faded into a faint buzz in the distance.

And then into nothingness. Silence. The Population Police were gone.

Luke stood shoulder to shoulder with a whole line of people—men and women, boys and girls—people he didn't even know who had just saved his life. Everyone stayed quiet, keeping their arms linked; it seemed like they, too, were having a hard time believing what had happened.

“Thank you,” Luke mumbled. “Thank you.” He swallowed hard. “But why—why did you help me?”

He looked up beseechingly at the man with the whiskers. The man was staring far off into the distance.

“It was the right thing to do,” the man finally said. “We let them bully us into doing the wrong thing much too often in the past. It was time for a change.”

The others in the line were nodding and murmuring in agreement. They dropped arms and broke off into little clumps, whispering and reliving the thrill of sending the Population Police away. Some of the younger children even began to giggle as they mimicked the official's panic.

These people were strangers, but they had become very precious to Luke. He worried that they were too innocent.

“What if the Population Police come back?” Luke asked. “They could bring hundreds of men, hundreds of guns. It isn't safe, what you did, showing that you disagree. You should leave now, while you have the chance, run away—”

“We won't run,” the woman on Luke's other side said. “Look at us. Don't you see that we're going to die anyway?
If the Population Police come back, we will die a little sooner. But our consciences will be clear.”

For the first time Luke noticed how thin all the people were. Their faces were gaunt, the hollows in their cheeks incredibly deep. The wrists and ankles that stuck out from their tattered clothes were little more than bone.

“You're starving,” he whispered.

“We don't have enough food to survive the winter,” the man said with a hopeless shrug. “We petitioned the Population Police for help, but they said it was our own fault, our own problem. We made a pact after that, that we would not listen to them anymore. We would not be . . . weak.”

“You're giving up,” Luke said in disbelief.

“We're free,” the man replied.

A
s little food as they had, the people insisted on sharing it with Luke.

“This was our declaration of independence,” the woman said. “We should have a celebration—a feast!”

The feast was hard bread served with broth that might have once had a passing acquaintance with a potato or two. But Luke sat in a warm room to eat it—these people had plenty of firewood. They clustered around him eagerly, telling him their names. The man who had done most of the talking was Eli; the woman was Adriana. Luke was also introduced to Jasper and Lett and Alice and Simon and Hadley and Sarah and Randall. He couldn't keep track of which identity went with which face, but he treasured the sound of the names piling up around him like so many golden coins. He hadn't known the name of anyone he'd met since he'd left for Chiutza.

“And you are . . . ?” Eli asked.

Luke hesitated. He had two fake names he could use. At
school he'd been Lee Grant; at Population Police headquarters he'd been Wendell Smathers. But each name came with baggage; each carried dangers of its own.

“Luke,” he said. “I'm Luke.”

As soon as he said it, he thought that he could easily have just made up a name—it wasn't as though these people were going to check for identity cards or papers.

But if the Population Police come back . . .

These people wouldn't turn him in. They'd already had their chance to do that.

They could have handed me over in exchange for food. Why didn't they think of that? What if they think of it now?

The room seemed too warm suddenly; the people were crowded in too closely, their bony elbows and shoulders and hips poking against him.
When I have nightmares tonight, I'm going to dream about skeletons,
Luke thought. The bread suddenly seemed too dry to chew and he began to choke.

Someone pounded him on the back.

“There, there,” Eli said. “You might want to eat a little more slowly. Savor it, you know?”

He sounded so wistful that some of Luke's panic slipped away.

I don't
think
they'd turn me in, even now,
he decided.
But I still have to stay alert.

“How is it that you showed up in our village?” Eli asked. “Except for the Population Police, we haven't had an outsider here in ages.”

Luke calculated what he could safely tell.

“I was running away from the Population Police. I wanted to go home. I fell asleep in an abandoned village over . . . ” Luke wanted to point toward the ruins, but he'd gotten disoriented.

Eli nodded anyway.

“Over there,” he said, pointing past the fireplace. “Yes. Go on.”

“When I woke up, I heard voices—the Population Police. I . . . I panicked and ran away, and they heard me, and so I ran more. . . . It was just luck that I ended up here.”

Eli kept nodding.

“Ah,” he said. “Then you've seen our true homes.”

“You mean that old village? The ruins?” Luke asked skeptically.

“They weren't ruins when we lived there,” Eli said, shaking his head slowly, his white beard swaying. “We had beautiful houses, lush gardens. Then the droughts came. The Government said we had to move. They said we were too far off their main supply lines. We didn't fit in their plans. We were inconvenient.”

“We thought they would save us from starving,” Adriana said, “so of course we did what they said.”

She poured more broth into Luke's bowl and watched him spoon it up to his mouth, as if she could get her nourishment from watching him eat.

Eli went on with his story. “Then they said we couldn't have gardens anymore, because it was an inefficient use of the land. They said we couldn't grow flowers, because that
was a waste. They said we had to grow soybeans instead of corn one year, corn instead of soybeans the next. There were rules on top of rules. Anything we grew had to go right back to the Government. Then they would give us what we were allowed to eat—if we met our quota.”

“We never grew enough,” Adriana whispered.

Luke thought about the cold, hard soil he'd fallen down on. Then he thought about the rich, dark, loamy dirt of his family's farm.

“Maybe your soil isn't right for corn and soybeans,” Luke offered.

“That's what we told the Government, but they never listened,” Eli said. “They weren't people who knew about soil. They'd just point at numbers on their forms and yell at us, ‘We have you down for this many bushels this year. Got it?' ”

Luke remembered how he'd pictured the Government as some big, fat, bossy man when he'd been a little kid. That image seemed so innocent now.

“Then they took away everyone they could to work for the Population Police,” Adriana said. “We haven't seen any of them since.”

“James,” Eli said. “Aileen. Twila. Sue. Peter. Robin. Jonathan. Detrick. Lester. Sal. . . . ”

It took Luke a moment to realize that Eli was listing all the people the village had lost to the Population Police. Luke wanted to yell out,
No, stop! Don't tell me!
With each name he heard, he could imagine yet another person crowded into the room—ghosts joining the skeletons.

Eli finished the listing of names, and a silence fell over the room. Now that he had a little food in his stomach, Luke was thinking more clearly. He realized that he was the only one still eating, the only one who'd been given more than a crumb of bread and a swallow of broth.

It's just like the Population Police always said,
he thought in horror.
If food goes to third children, others starve.

Luke put his spoon down.

“No, eat,” Adriana urged. “There is still hope for you.”

“But do you think . . . ” Luke had to be careful about what he said. “The Government always said that if people followed the Population Law, there'd be enough food for everyone. Do you think you're starving because some people broke the Population Law? Do you think illegal third children stole your food?”

The people all stared at him as if those questions had never entered their minds.

“We're starving,” Eli said, “because the Population Police don't care if we live or die. And they made our lives so miserable, we stopped caring too.”