Death Thieves (11 page)

I shrugged. “You will never have any need to apologize to me for anything.” I threw his words from the previous night back at him.

He gave me a dry look but said nothing. I joined him on the ground. For a while we just listened to the water rumble over rocks as it pushed toward the Puget.

“Did you love him?” Tag asked abruptly. He had a way of looking at me that made me decidedly nervous.

I almost asked who he meant but knew as soon as the question formed in my mind. He meant Nathan. “I don’t know.” I shifted uncomfortably, positioning myself so my hand could graze over the water next to us. I didn’t love Nathan—not like that. He’d been my friend, my co-conspirator. “He was fun to kiss.” I gave over a lopsided smile that Tag did not return. My smile dropped.

“I am sorry for your loss.” It seemed to take an effort for him to look away from me and instead fix his gaze on the water. He looked miserable and guilty. He looked as though he’d broken something he couldn’t fix.

“We were just dating, you know? It wasn’t like we were planning on getting married or anything. I cared about him. I care about what happens to him, and I love him as much as I love any of my friends—maybe a little more, but not love like I love Winter or love like I would imagine loving someone I planned on marrying.”
Why the need to make him feel better about Nathan’s death?
I shook my head. Nathan’s death wasn’t exactly Tag’s fault. It’s not like Tag caused the accident or anything like that. Yet, I didn’t think it was Tag’s fault he hadn’t pulled Nathan out, either. That blame fell on whoever sent Tag to me in the first place.

“Yesterday, you said we’d finish our conversation in the morning. Since we’ve got nothing but time right now, tell me the rest.”

Tag stiffened but finally nodded. “Where did we leave off?”

“We won the crazy war. Wait a minute. Is the crazy problem worldwide?”

He leaned back on his elbows, nodding at the same time he said, “Yes. There are rumors of small groups of people with no HTHBI taint, and no crazies, but no one has ever produced evidence. They say the government is hiding these groups in the center of some mountain, waiting for the rest of us to kill ourselves off. It’s a petty conspiracy theory.”

“Whose government?”

“The world’s government.” He sat up and pushed up the sleeves to his jacket as though about to deliver a lecture. “In order for the war on crazies to be won, the countries all had to band together or face annihilation. Each country worried that the crazies would lead us to the use of nuclear weapons, so they went to the United Nations and signed treaties to band together under one regent. Each country elected its own official regent to speak for them under the supreme regent. After the war was won, no one could see a reason to defect from the rule of the regents. The system worked well enough, and the voice of the people unanimously voted to keep the rule of regents until such time as it proves ineffective.”

“So you won the crazy war and people still have babies in—what did you call them? Public nurseries?”

“Yes.”

I thought about this for a moment, watching where the river disappeared around a bend. The future sounded confused and ugly to me. “I don’t see what kidnapping people from the past will do to help the future. Your war is over; the countries are united. It’s not like I can do anything to help. You can already have babies in your public nurseries, so why am I here?”

“The people of the world are sick. Everyone. No one in the future is immune. Their blood holds impurities that they cannot control or cure. Everyone is born with the HTH infection.” His eyes locked with mine with such intensity I was afraid to look away. “Do you know what crazy law is?”

I shook my head.

“A baby brought home from the public nursery cannot be named or officially recognized until its third birthday. On its third birthday, the government has the baby evaluated. If the child is found unstable, then it is euthanized. It’s the law.” His voice cracked. “Some parents have a hard time letting go of the child they raised. For the greater good, anyone who tries to harbor an illegal child without testing them is . . . removed.”

“You mean killed?”

“You must understand. The government and the people cannot afford another crazy war. If you believe your neighbors to be harboring a possible crazy, you’re rewarded for outing them. People fear the government’s retaliation if they bond too much with their child and become unable to turn them over. And people fear loving a child they might not get to keep. So many have given up on the hope of raising a child. The regents have offered incentives—bigger homes, tax credits—things that will entice people to create a child no matter the outcome. But the people are giving up. Fewer people every year are willing to partake of the nurseries. In another generation, there won’t be anyone left.”

My mouth had dropped open in horror. “Yeah. What did the government think was going to happen when they make people kill their own babies?”

He snorted. “The people don’t. The doctors do the euthanizing.”

With the heel of my hand, I shoved hard at his shoulder. “Are you crazy?”

Tag caught my hand in his. “Summer, I know it’s in your vernacular to utter the word crazy in reference to many different things, but please, for your sake, try to be cautious in its use.”

I yanked my hand free of his. “But what you’re saying
is
insane! You don’t kill your own little toddler just because he might not be as smart as the kid down the street!”

“You don’t understand. This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about stability. It’s for the greater good.”

“You’re right I don’t understand. I know a lot of people who aren’t mentally balanced, and I
like
them. Good people don’t kill their kids. Good governments don’t make them. And you want me to go and be a part of all this?” I jumped to my feet, a little wobbly on my makeshift shoes.

Tag was quick to his feet, too. “Summer, don’t. Don’t run away again. Remember, you wanted to know the truth. You asked me to tell you, and I am not in a position to deny you that truth you desire.”

“Okay, fine, so tell me what your infanticide has to do with me.” I still hadn’t decided against running. I wanted to. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and run away screaming, “Naaaaaaa, naaaaaaa, naaaaaaa! I can’t hear you!”

“Professor Raik created the Orbital so we could seek out those who were untainted, whose blood was clean to make babies that are also clean.”

Professor Raik.
So the one responsible for my nightmare life finally had a name. “What about you? Are you one of the infected?”

His jaw tightened. “I am.”

Tag took a step toward me. For his one step forward, I took one back, almost landing myself in the river. Mud squished up and over my aluminum shoes, between my toes. I barely noticed it.

“Professor Raik had no intentions of altering the past. He’s far too clever to unbalance time in that way.”

“Clever? How do you know he isn’t a crazy? If he’s from your time then he has the disease.”

Tag looked horrified I would even suggest such a thing. “He
is
clever. He took people who died in their prime, who died before they had a chance to really live—people like you. He’s going to build up society by creating a clean, pure-blooded generation—a generation who will never have to turn their children in for testing—one who will grow and develop normally and whose children and posterity can start over with a world gone quite literally
mad
.”

Incredulity filled me. “So what’s to keep them from getting the same blood poisoning you guys have? Did you get it from toxins in the air? Or some chemical plant meltdown? Did you get it due to some aftermath of a nuclear holocaust? How are you going to keep my blood clean? What’s to keep me from getting your diseased blood, Tag?” I took a ragged breath, trying to hold back tears, thinking of all those little curly-headed toddlers being led to their deaths.

“The HTH infection isn’t passed through the air.”

“Then it’s probably in your water—or your food. You won’t be able to keep me from getting it.”

“It’s not like that at all.”

“Then what is it?” I took another step back, splashing into the water.

Instead of advancing on me as he had been, he also took a step back, as though purposely dividing us. “It’s a sexually transmitted infection.”

I narrowed my eyes. The current unbalanced me. To catch myself, I plopped my other foot down into the water. “Sexually transmitted? What, like AIDS?”

“Sexually transmitted as in it is transferred through sexual relations.”

“I know what sex is, Tag.”

He waited then, standing back apart from me. He waited while I pieced together the jumbled thoughts.

“But you said something about being able to have babies. How can I have babies if I’ll just get your disease?” I hadn’t meant to say “your” as in
his
. I meant it as in the collective people of the future. Tag’s face hardened and he looked away. “You and I will never be anything more than we are. I am a soldier. While we’re together, I am your protector. You are the New Youth, the beginning of a new mankind. You are meant to find one of your own kind to . . .” He turned away and stomped back to his pack.

I grunted. “Don’t act all insulted. I was so
not
propositioning you.”

He didn’t respond. He looked intent on organizing things in his backpack, which didn’t need organizing. I stood in the water until the flash of the Orbital glinted in the sunlight. Without realizing it, I’d slogged my way toward Tag and his Orbital as if the device had its own gravity.

“It needs to be recharged,” he said, laying it out in the sun next to several other things that he’d pulled out of the pack. I understood then that he hadn’t been organizing things but setting them out to collect solar power. Tag didn’t look at me or turn in my direction. It was as if by telling me the future problems, he remembered that we were not meant to be friends.

After a long, hungry look at the Orbital, I wandered off a few feet and sat down, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at Tag and all his future wonders soaking up sunlight. “It’s not like I wanted to be friends anyway. I’m not going Stockholm, Wineve.” I mumbled the words under my breath, and even though I felt certain Tag couldn’t hear them well enough to understand them, I felt better having said them out loud. Out loud . . . and not true. Over the last twenty-four hours, Tag had become the only human I could depend on. A lump of disappointment welled up in my throat at the understanding of how completely cut off I’d become to the world. You had to be cut off when you started to consider your kidnapper your friend.

Alone.

No Winter . . . and now no Tag—not if he was only to be my protector, if he wasn’t really allowed to even consider himself my friend.

Alone.

They killed little kids, kids who could walk and talk, who were learning to tie shoes and wash their hands before dinner.

Alone.

Crazies.

I pulled my knees up under my chin and wrapped my arms around them. At the moment nothing made sense. Would they consider me crazy just because I disagreed with their actions?

“What did the crazies do that was so bad that they deserved to die?” I asked loud enough for Tag to hear.

“Their crimes are more numerous than the stars in the skies. You could look at a crazy the wrong way and he’d scratch your eyes out with a pencil just to teach you a lesson. They didn’t blend into society but stood apart from it and in many ways considered themselves above it. They were detached emotionally so that it didn’t bother them to kill an animal on the street or another child or even their own parents. Crazy.”

I shuddered and hugged my knees tighter. The confusion of such things battled inside my mind. On the one hand, I couldn’t imagine living in fear of people who might harm you just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. My sense of justice battled with my belief in mercy. Killing little toddlers because they
might
grow up to be frightening? I shuddered again.

How could they know the child tested for instability would be instable in a harmful way? What if they were instable like an eccentric old aunt—crazy but harmless, and maybe even endearing?

I couldn’t do this. I had to go back home. “So is the Orbital working now? Will we be able to jump to your future?”

I called it his future in the same way he’d labeled it mine. Neither of us felt any inclination to lay claim on it.

“It seems like it will be fine. It needs to be recharged, and I wasn’t able to do that at the house since the electrics were off. We’ll see after it charges.”

Tag smoothed out the sides of the wristband so that every centimeter of the Orbital received full sunlight. He then went and found a place under a tree to rest. As his eyes drifted closed, I shifted to view the Orbital better. Tag was far enough away that I could snatch it and jump out of this time to another one—all before he’d even have time to sit up. I would have to wait a little bit so he’d fall asleep, so it had time to recharge . . .

“Summer?”

I jumped upon hearing my name. “What?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” The innocence in my voice sounded exactly like the lie it was.

“Don’t touch my Orbital. I coded it. You can’t make it work. It’ll only work when it reads my ring and hears my password, which you wouldn’t guess in a million years. And even if you did guess, you’d have to steal my ring off my finger, and my finger with me still attached to it since it needs my living tissue to be effective. And then you’d have to figure out how to make your voice sound like mine.”

“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this. It’s not like I—”

“I’m telling you to save you the trouble of trying. Now we can both relax and get a nap. Don’t think about wandering off, either. Crazy law hasn’t been implemented yet. You wouldn’t want to run into someone who doesn’t like the way you look and decides to rearrange your face. Especially since you can’t seem to stop yourself from calling people crazy.” He rolled to his side, away from me.