Among the Enemy (15 page)

Matthias's head spun. He took off his headphones, but his ears still rang with the sound of the officials' applause.

Why are they so excited?
Matthias wondered.
They've been able to find fake I.D.'s before.
His weeks in Population Police
prison proved that

"Absolutely foolproof," Officer Barstow had said. He'd sounded smug and overwhelmingly happy, like he'd just found enough food to feed everyone or figured out a way to end all disease.

No,
Matthias reminded himself.
This is the Population
Police. They'd be overjoyed over some absolutely foolproof way to kill third children.

Third children. Matthias. Nina. Trey. Lee. And all the others.

It wasn't anywhere near dinnertime yet, but Matthias tore out of his room and raced for the cafeteria. The doors were locked, and a guard stood before them, looking bored.

"I'm hungry," Matthias announced. "Think there's any way I could sneak in there and get a snack?"

"Of course n—," the guard started to snap. Then he looked at Matthias more closely. "Oh. You're Tiddy's friend. Sure, go ahead. They'll do anything for you."

The guard opened the doors and Matthias slipped inside.

What if Nina's loaned out to housekeeping detail this afternoon? What will I do then?

But Nina was in the kitchen, chopping carrots alongside several other girls. How was Matthias supposed to get her away to talk to him alone? They should have worked out a code word, he realized. They should have worked out a whole coded language.

And then Matthias knew what to say.

"Excuse me." He tried to sound childish and innocent, like the little kid he'd been back when Samuel was alive. "I saw this really neato, interesting bug outside, and I don't know what it was, and I thought if someone could come look at it with me . . . It's the kind of thing Tiddy could have helped me with."

He saw the girls exchange glances at Tiddy's name.

"A
bug?" one of the girls said. "Outdoors? In January?"

Oops,
Matthias thought.

But "I'll go with him," Nina said, sighing heavily, like it was a big sacrifice. "I've got to hang out those wet towels anyhow."

"Be quick about it," a hatchet-faced woman said from behind Nina. "No dawdling over some silly insect that doesn't know enough to die in the wintertime." She punched down a huge lump of bread dough for emphasis.

Nina paused to pick up a big basket of towels, then Matthias followed her out a back door.

"Where's the bug?" she said in a bright, fake voice that was probably mostly for the benefit of the girls and women who might still be able to hear from the kitchen.

"There's one in my room, for starters," Matthias whis-pered back. "Not the insect kind. That's why I didn't want to meet anywhere inside. What if there's a bug in the bathroom, too?"

"What if there's a bug on your uniform?" Nina countered. "What if there's a bug in that tree?" She pointed up at a stunted, leafless branch overhead. "This is dangerous, us being seen together."

She plopped down her basket of towels before a makeshift clothesline.

"But I had to tell you what I heard," Matthias said. Quickly, he reported on the demonstration in the commander's office. The more Matthias talked, the more terrified Nina looked. Her face went pale and drawn. She dropped the towel she'd started to hang on the line. She gasped just at the mention of Officer Barstow's name.

'Are you sure it was Officer Jason Barstow?" she demanded.

"Yeah," Matthias said.

"But that's my Jason—I mean, the one who tricked me. It was his fault I ended up in Population Police prison. I'd heard he was involved in some big, secret project for the Population Police, but..."

Matthias kept talking. Nina began shaking her head violently when he got to the part about the sizzling sound, the officers' applause.

"No, it can't be true. They can't be ready so soon," she moaned.

'And they've got our I.D. cards," Matthias finished up. "Right? They took mine away when I joined the Population Police—well, a little after that, because Tiddy forgot. Do they have yours and Trey's and everyone else's, too? Do you think they'd use that Project Authenticity test on our cards, even though we're in the Population Police?"

Nina's eyes burned into his.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Then we've got to run away," Matthias said. "Leave the Population Police, go somewhere we can get other fake LD.'s... ."

He didn't know how it was possible. Even from the backyard, standing by Nina's clothesline, he could see the enormous wall, the stern line of Population Police guards by the gate.

Nina was shaking her head anyway.

"Matthias, it doesn't matter if we run away or not," she said sadly. "They're going to do that new test on every' body's I.D. Everybody's in the entire country."

Chapter Thirty

Matthias felt no surprise, just a growing sense of
\
dread. The empty tree branches above him clicked together ominously in the cold wind, as if they were counting off the final minutes of his life. His, and so many other children's.

"I think I can tell you this now," Nina said. "It's not really so secret anymore. Remember Project Exchange, that you wrote that note about earlier? The project they're supposed to finish next week? The Population Police ordered everyone in the country to turn in every I.D. card. That's what's been happening the past few weeks while you've been ..."

"Hanging out with the commander," Matthias finished for her. "Getting my food on trays."

Nina grimaced and nodded.

"People get receipts for their I.D.'s," she said. "The Population Police say they'll get their original I.D.'s back soon. But there have been all sorts of rumors going around about what the Population Police intend to do with all those I.D. cards in between. We heard about Project Authenticity, but we weren't sure ... we hoped ... we didn't want to believe it was true. But you just gave me the proof."

"Now they can catch every third child who has a fake I.D.," Matthias said. 'And no third child without a fake I.D. will ever dare to come out of hiding."

"Right," Nina said. "It'll be the Population Police's dearest dream come true."

Matthias stared out into the frozen landscape, fighting a sense of hopelessness.

"Why are they going to so much bother?" he asked. "To collect every I.D., from every person in the entire coun-try? Why didn't they wait until they were sure the authenticity test worked, then just go house to house, testing as they went?"

"We think they don't want the word to get out," Nina said. "They want to do everybody's at once, so nobody will know ahead of time what's going to happen."

She bent to pick up a wet towel and flung it over the clothesline. Matthias watched her red, chapped hands fumble with the clothespin.

"But you've got a plan, right?" Matthias asked.

"We did," Nina said glumly. "We've had lots of plans since we got here."

She kept hanging up towels.

"Do you know where the Population Police are keeping all the I.D.'s?" Matthias asked. "Can't you go and—I don't know—burn down the building or something?"

"We thought of that," Nina said. "We thought it was a brilliant idea. But you put a stop to those plans." She shook her head sorrowfully.

"Me?" Matthias was astonished. "What did I do?"

"You told us where the Population Police keep their extra food."

"So?"

Nina turned to face Matthias, tears glistening in her eyes.

"The food and the I.D.'s—they're all in the same place."

Chapter Thirty-One

For a moment, Matthias didn't understand. He'd had too much to try to make sense of, going back to Tiddy's death, Percy's and Alia's injuries, Samuel's death. No—going all the way back to his parents abandoning him. He still couldn't make sense of the earliest events of his life. How was he supposed to make sense of this?

"We think the Population Police did it that way on purpose. They must suspect there are saboteurs around who wouldn't strike if they feared destroying the food as well," Nina was saying.

"So the commander was using me, showing me the food," Matthias said, his panic growing. "He must suspect—that's why he bugged my room."

"You can't be sure of that," Nina said. "They have bugs in lots of rooms. The Population Police are bug crazy. Anyhow, after you told me about the warehouse, we heard the same story from other sources."

Matthias shook his head, trying to clear his mind.

"It's just spare food, in that warehouse," he said slowly.

"Maybe," Nina said. "I hear things sometimes, in the kitchen. There was a bad harvest this year—with the Government changing, too many people were out fight" ing and not enough people were out getting crops from the fields. So that food in the warehouse may be ... nec^ essary ... to get our country through the winter."

"May
be?" Matthias asked.

"How can we know for sure?" Nina said with a hopeless shrug. 'And yet—we have to know for sure before we make any decisions. Before we take any action."

The cold seemed to be seeping all the way into Matthias's soul. Or maybe it was just the despair in Nina's voice getting to him.

"Trey says this is irony," Nina said bitterly. "He says that we've got to make the same decision that the Government faced all those years ago, after the droughts and famines. Protect third children and take the chance that other people will starve. Or let the Population Police kill third children and make sure that other people live."

"Isn't there another choice?" Matthias whispered.

"You tell me," Nina said.

Matthias could only stare at her, openmouthed, his breath freezing right before his eyes. After a few moments, Nina whipped the last of the wet towels onto the line and headed back toward the kitchen.

"Come on," she said. "I'm going to get in trouble for staying out here so long."

He blindly stumbled after her. Neither one of them bothered to look at some pretend insect on the ground.

It didn't seem to matter anymore.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Matthias lay on his bed, his face buried in his pillow, I his headphones dangling around his neck. Ever since he'd talked to Nina, he'd been having trouble listen^ ing to what was going on in the commander's office. Every stray thump might be someone coming in, ready to report on a spy ring in their midst. Or the commander slamming a door, ready to confront Matthias about the bug he found under his desk. Or—

"Stop it," Matthias said aloud. Then he remembered the bug in his own room. "Stop, um, crying over Tiddy," he added, just in case someone was listening. "You're acting like a little boy."

I am acting like a little boy,
Matthias thought.
Hiding my head under my pillow, pretending all the bad news will go away if I don't hear it. . .

Resolutely, he jerked the headphones back over his ears.

"—grand ceremony?" someone was saying.

"Of course it has to be grand!" This was the commander's voice, roaring out so fiercely that Matthias winced. "We have to make the people remember this forever. All that food is theirs because we, the Population Police, got rid of all the illegals. The people must love us and hate the enemy."

"Okay. So the president will announce the successful completion of Project Authenticity, blah, blah, blah...."

"What kind of speechwriter are you—'blah, blah, blah'?"

"Hey, it'll sound good when he says it. Do you want him to read the names of everyone you dispose of? That kind of thing is always so dramatic."

Dispose of?
Matthias thought, shivering. They made it sound like they were just taking out the trash. He couldn't understand their jaunty tones, their high spirits. They were talking about killing people.

Samuel?
Matthias wanted to ask his old friend.
Why
didn't you tell me that evil could be so lighthearted?

Somehow that made it even more frightening.

“We have some issues to consider if he reads the names,” the commander said, and he at least sounded serious. “Do we read the traitor’s names, too?”

"Sure, why not? The more the merrier."

Matthias fought to hold in a gasp.

Someone cleared his throat, and Matthias had the feeling that it was the commander.

"It may seem that we are governing sheep who will believe and obey anything we tell them," the commander said. "But may I remind you that as recently as two months ago, one of those 'sheep' passed a poisoned I.D. card to one of our best officers."

The mention of Tiddy's death seemed to silence the more jovial Population Police officers. The commander continued.

"Even our most gullible subject will have trouble believing that—let's see"—the commander ruffled some papers and seemed to be reading aloud—"that 'Reginald Henry, age thirty-five' is an illegal third child."

Matthias didn't know how long the Population Law had been in effect, but he was pretty sure the oldest illegal third children were still teenagers. What was the commander talking about?

"Then we just won't announce the traitors' names," someone said carelessly. Matthias thought it might be the speechwriter again. "Or announce them separately from Project Authenticity."

"It's just so convenient to have everything under the Project Authenticity umbrella," the commander mused. "You have a fake I.D., you're the enemy, you die."

"Or you have a legitimate I.D., but we say the authenticity test came up negative," someone else said with a chuckle. "Because you're just not one of our best friends."

"All our enemies gone in one fell swoop," the commander said dreamily.

"And the people rewarded with a grand ceremony."

'A festival!"

"A feast!"

Matthias realized he'd clapped his hands over his ears. He barely stopped himself from ripping his headphones off and throwing them across the room. He thought he understood the Population Police plan now. They were going to use Project Authenticity as an excuse to weed out all their enemies: all the third children, all the people who were working undercover with fake I.D.'s, all the people who had ever opposed the Population Police. And then, when all the opposition was dead, the Population Police would bring out the food from the warehouse. And the ordinary people would think they were getting it because the bad guys were gone.

That was why the food and the I.D.'s were stored together.

"Evil," Matthias muttered. "Evil, evil, evil."

He understood now how happy Samuel must have felt to finally stand up, right in front of the Population Police, and shout out, "What you are doing is wrong!" What a relief that must have been, even though it had led to his death.

Matthias wanted to storm into the commander's office right now and shout out,
You're evil!
It wouldn't do any good, but they were going to kill him anyway, as soon as they found out he wasn't really Roger Symmes.

Why not go out shouting?
Matthias thought.

Because Nina was downstairs in the kitchen waiting for Matthias's reports on the commander's conversations.

Because Matthias coming clean might also endanger Nina and Trey and the mysterious "others."

Because there was still a chance ...

Matthias felt like he'd been in danger of plunging over some huge cliff and had just barely managed to step back from the edge. He forced himself to listen to the headphones again. He'd missed hearing what the decision was about reading the traitors' names. The officers seemed to be wrapping up their meeting.

"So the ceremony will be next Friday," the speechwriter was saying. "I'll have the president's speech ready."

'And I think the Power Commission will be able to work a little miracle of its own—we'll have all the elec-tricity back in service by then, so the entire country will be able to see the ceremony on
TV,"
someone else said.

"Perfect," the commander said. "Food distribution will begin Friday night."

If only all the TVs worked before next Friday,
Matthias thought.
If only we could use them to get the word out about the food before they start running Project Authenticity. If only we could tell the whole country the truth about what's going on. If only we could warn all the third children, all the rebels. If only we could just hand out all that food now.. ..

Matthias bolted upright on his bed, jerking up so quickly that he yanked the headphone cord out of the tape recorder. He didn't know how to accomplish all of those "if only's."