“You!” he’d bark. “Shovel all the manure from stall one into stall two. And then shovel all of that into stall three…”
Only the stupidest boy would protest that that method was inefficient and would take twice as long, that his time might be better spent doing some other chore. All the boys in this lineup had learned not to be that stupid. Once, a long time ago, soon after Luke had arrived at Population Police headquarters, a boy had dared to question a task: “Isn’t there a bigger shovel I can use? It’d go faster that way.” The boy had been beaten in full sight of all the other boys.
And then he’d disappeared.
Luke had not made any friends in the stable. The unspoken rule seemed to be Keep to yourself. But Luke spent a lot of time thinking about the boy who had dared to ask a question, the one who’d disappeared.
“Atten-tion!” It was the sergeant, arriving earlier than he ever had before.
“Yes, sir!” Luke shouted back with the other boys, snapping his arm up into a salute. He worried that his arm had come up too late, that his “yes, sir!” had been a split second too slow, that he’d be singled out for punishment. The sergeant narrowed his eyes, seeming to stare straight at Luke, and Luke’s heart pounded in his chest. But then the sergeant’s gaze fell on the next boy in the line.
“You are worthless stableboys,” the sergeant spat out. He glared at each boy in turn. “You’re no better than the manure you wallow in.”
“Yes, sir!” Luke and the other boys yelled. They’d been trained. They knew what they were supposed to say.
“But…” The sergeant paused. This was different. Usually he could go on berating them endlessly. “Some of you will have a chance to better yourselves.” A new tone had entered his voice. Slyness? Uncertainty?
For the millionth time since he’d left his home nearly a year earlier, Luke wished he could understand other people better, that he could see through their lies to hear what they were actually saying.
“Some of you will be called to a higher purpose,” the sergeant continued. “Some of you will be reassigned to a new task for the glory of our country.”
None of the boys dared to move, but Luke could practically feel the others around him wanting to exchange glances, to see if anyone else knew what the sergeant was talking about. Higher purpose? New task? What did that mean?
Another man strode up beside the sergeant. He was taller, more imposing. His uniform was more crisply pressed, and he had a row of medals on his chest.
“I’ll choose,” he said imperiously.
He walked up and down the row of boys, peering carefully at each one of them. Luke held his breath, as if exhaling might call too much attention to himself. He didn’t want to be reassigned. He liked working with the horses. They were…safe. The stables were a good place to hide.
I, for one, have had enough of hiding. Words a friend had spoken months ago echoed in his mind. Luke had not come to Population Police headquarters looking for safety; only a fool would want to hide there. Luke and his friends had had plans. They’d had dreams. But they hadn’t realized how big Population Police headquarters were, how difficult it would be just to pass a message from one person to another. Luke couldn’t be sure he and his friends had accomplished anything. Sometimes when he was brushing down a horse, he’d whisper into the horse’s quivering ear, “Maybe I am just a worthless stableboy. Maybe that’s okay.”
Luke had spent most of his thirteen years around hogs, not horses, and any hog would have looked back at him with its piggy eyes as if to say, So? You think I care? But the horses looked at Luke as if they understood. One horse in particular had a way of sliding her nose under Luke’s arm as if she were comforting him, as if she wanted to say, I know you’ve been through a lot. I know you’ve been hurt and hungry. I know you miss your family and friends. I know you’re scared. You just stay right here with me and you’ll be fine. Secretly, Luke called this horse Jenny, in memory of a friend of his, Jen Talbot. But deep down he knew that the human Jen would not have been so comforting. Jen probably would have screamed at him: What you are talking about? You’re not just some worthless stableboy. You’re important! Go out and change the world!
Luke was starting to feel a little dizzy from not breathing. He dared to ease a little air out of his lungs, to take another shallow breath.
The man with the medals on his chest was taking his time walking down the row of boys, staring into their eyes, reaching out to test their arm muscles.
“You,” the man said, picking out the tallest kid in the row and shoving him to the other side of the room. “And you,” he said, yanking the most muscular boy out of the line.
Luke allowed himself to take a deeper breath. He let himself notice how cold it was out here in the early morning chill, and think about how much warmer it would be back in the stables. Two down, only one to go—he was probably safe. Of the boys remaining, he wasn’t the tallest or the heaviest or the strongest. He was just a typical scrawny kid.
The man narrowed his eyes, examining the boys left in the lineup. He grabbed one boy’s head so he could stare into the boy’s ears; he studied another boy’s straw-colored hair. Luke half expected the man to reach into some boy’s mouth to look at his teeth, the way the head groom did with the horses.
Good thing Mrs. Talbot managed to get the braces off my teeth, Luke thought. He had a flash of remembering a light-hearted moment in the midst of sorrow and fear: him and his friends laughing in a cozy cottage while Mrs. Talbot tugged on metal bands and wires and protested, “Look, kids, orthodontia is not my specialty. What do they put these things on with? Cement?” In that moment, Luke hadn’t cared that the braces endangered him, linking him to a suspect past. He hadn’t even cared that all her tugging and scraping hurt. He’d just been happy to laugh with his friends.
Now something caught in his throat, and he had to swallow hard to fight back his memories, to hold back his sense that he deserved to be—no, that he was—more than a worthless, lonely stableboy. Maybe he made a little noise, deep in his throat. The man with the medals on his chest snapped his head toward Luke, focused the gaze of his narrowed eyes squarely on Luke’s face. The man gave Luke a cruel, thin-lipped smile. In horror, Luke watched the man slowly lift his arm—higher, higher, and higher, until it was aimed straight out from his body, the first finger extended.
“You,” the man said.
He was pointing at Luke.
Chapter Two
Luke sat numbly in the backseat of a huge van. He’d been given no explanation of where he was going, no chance to gather up his belongings or to say good-bye to anyone. Luke wasn’t sure he wanted to know where he was going, and he had no belongings to speak of anyhow. But as the car passed out of the gates of Population Police headquarters, he had to bite back a scream: No, wait—stop! I have to talk to Nina and Trey and Nedley and Matthias. And, oh, Mark—my brother—I don’t even know if he’s here! Please! I have to tell them—
The van zoomed on, and Luke kept silent. It wasn’t safe even to speak his friends’ names. It wasn’t safe to reveal that he knew them, that he’d ever had a life beyond shoveling manure for the Population Police.
“What’s wrong with you?” the boy beside Luke asked. Luke realized that he’d been wincing, that he’d failed to hide his anguish completely.
“I, uh—I’m going to miss the horses,” Luke said.
“Why? You still have their stink on you,” the boy said, and laughed rudely. He scooted away from Luke, closer to the boy on the other side of him, who laughed too. Luke heard them whispering about “stable rats.”
And then Luke really did miss the horses, particularly Jenny with her comforting gaze.
What am I going to do? Luke wondered. Nina and the others won’t know what happened to me. What if they think I’ve chickened out and run away? What if they’re counting on me for one of our plans, and I’m not there? What if the plan is ruined because of that and someone gets hurt or killed or—discovered?
&n
bsp; So many of their plans had gone wrong already. Luke and his friends had been terrified just stepping foot in Population Police headquarters. The Population Police had been created more than a dozen years ago, after a series of droughts and famines had made many people fear that their entire country would starve. The Government made it illegal for any family to have more than two children, and it was the job of the Population Police to hunt down and kill third children.
Luke was a third child. So were Nina and Trey and Matthias…all his friends.
Jen had been a third child too, but she’d been so brave and foolhardy that she’d organized a rally to ask for rights and freedom. She’d died at that rally. It had happened ten months ago, but the more time passed, the worse Luke felt about it.
That was just one of the reasons he felt capable of little more than shoveling manure.
If anyone can defeat the Population Police, it’s us. The words flickered in Luke’s mind like a lightbulb about to go out. That was what Trey had said back in the fall, persuading everyone to go to Population Police headquarters to try to sabotage the group from within. Trey was the smartest kid Luke knew. Why hadn’t he seen how that sentence could be flipped around?
If we can’t defeat the Population Police, nobody can.
Luke and his friends had tried to destroy certain Population Police documents, but there had been copies they hadn’t known about. They’d tried to protect rebels who were making fake identity cards for illegal third children, but the Population Police had killed the rebels anyway. They’d tried to pass out stockpiled food to starving people, but the Population Police had gotten it all back.
If we can’t defeat the Population Police…Truly hopeless words seemed to push their way into his mind: Why bother?
Luke closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. And then he surrendered himself to sleep.
When he woke up, the van was stopped and the man with the medals on his chest was yelling at all the boys to get out and stand at attention.
“We’re here! No time to waste! Out! Out, you lazy dogs!”
Luke was used to being yelled at, because of the stables. He knew that yells were quickly followed by swats and boxed ears and beatings if he didn’t obey instantly. He stumbled through the van door before he’d even glanced outside. An icy wind pushed at him the minute he landed on the ground; mud sucked at his boots and made walking difficult. But he lined up and snapped his arm into attention position. Only then did he dare to look around, letting his eyes dart from side to side.
They were parked before a long, low building, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but mud. No—there was more: A lineup of jeeps, more than Luke had ever seen before, stood idling just beyond the building. Uniformed men came rushing out of the building toward the vehicles. The man with the medals started counting off boys and shoving them in the direction of the jeeps.
“You two, go with Officer Ludwick. Over there. You two, with Officer Straley. You two—” The man pounded Luke’s back, almost knocking him to the ground. Between the wind and his struggle to keep from falling, Luke barely heard the man’s orders. Did he say Luke was supposed to go with Officer Hook? Or was it Officer Hawk? He hoped the other boy with him—the one who’d said Luke smelled like horse manure—had been paying attention. Luke scrambled off behind everyone else.
The mud still tugged at his boots, almost pulling one off. A memory flashed through his mind from childhood: Luke and his brothers running barefoot through mud. Barefoot was so much easier, but Mother always made them spray off their feet before they came into the house….
And then Luke shut that memory off, slamming a door in his mind. He couldn’t think about Mother or his brothers right now. He just had to concentrate on reaching the proper jeep, sliding in, pulling his feet away from the ground before the jeep leaped forward.
“Officer Houk signing out, jeep serial number 80256,” said one of the men in the front seat. He was speaking into a small phonelike object, maybe a walkie-talkie or some other kind of two-way radio. “With one driver and”—he glanced at Luke and the other boy in the backseat—“two assistants. Bound for Chiutza. Over.”
“Copy that. Mission approved,” a voice crackled out of the radio.
Chiutza? Luke thought. Is that a place? He’d never heard of it, but there was so much he’d never heard of before. He’d never even stepped foot off his parents’ farm until he was twelve years old. His parents hadn’t liked to discuss things beyond the edges of their property.
“Why talk of things that only make us sad?” Luke’s mother had explained once, tears glistening in her eyes.
Luke couldn’t remember what he’d asked her that particular day. He could remember asking only once about why he’d had to hide, why the Government thought it was wrong for him to be alive, why he couldn’t go around freely like his brothers did. He wished now that he’d asked lots of questions: What did you think my life would be worth, hiding like that? What did you think would become of me? Why didn’t you and all your friends and neighbors and the rest of the country do something to stop the Government, way back in the beginning? What would you do if you were in a speeding jeep and everyone thought you were on the Population Police’s side and you had to pretend to be, but really—
“Here.” The man holding the radio surprised Luke by tossing something into the backseat. “We’ve got at least an hour before we get there. Eat.”
Luke started to reach for the packet that landed between him and the other boy, but the other boy grabbed it first. The boy peeled back greasy paper to reveal two hunks of cornbread, which he instantly crammed into his mouth in one bite. He chewed with his mouth open, leering at Luke and dropping crumbs on the seat.
“But—” The wind carried away Luke’s protest. Luke clamped his teeth together, swallowing everything he wanted to say.
“You’ll need your energy in Chiutza,” Officer Houk said from the front seat. Now he turned around, now that all evidence of the other boy’s greed was out of sight. “You have to knock on every door and summon every resident to a meeting in the town square.”
“Why?” It was the other boy who asked this. Stealing Luke’s food must have made him cocky.
Luke flinched, waiting for Officer Houk to reach back and strike the boy, and maybe Luke, too, for good measure. But Officer Houk only frowned.
“We’re issuing new identification cards to every citizen in the country,” Officer Houk said. “We’re doing it all at once, in a single day. That’s where all these jeeps are going, to give out the I.D.’s in other towns and villages.” He gestured at the vehicles ahead of them and behind them, some already turning off the main road to smaller, rutted paths.
Luke knew better than to ask the next question. He knew about officers’ tempers. But he couldn’t stop the words bursting out of his own mouth: “Why do people need new I.D.’s? What’s wrong with the old ones?”
Officer Houk narrowed his eyes at Luke, studying Luke’s face. He really sees me now. He’ll remember me, Luke thought, fighting the familiar terror that had haunted him ever since he’d come out of hiding, the familiar desire to scream, Don’t look at me! Luke didn’t even bother to brace himself to be hit, because it didn’t matter. No punishment was worse than being stared at.
But Officer Houk only shrugged.
“There’s nothing wrong with the old I.D.’s,” he said. “The new ones are just better.”
And Luke, who had to fight so hard to read facial expressions, who had to struggle to interpret tones in strangers’ voices, watched carefully as Officer Houk turned back around to face the wind rushing at them.
He’s lying, Luke thought, hopefully. Then, with less certainty: If he’s lying, I think I know the truth. Could it be—?
Chapter Three
It had been one of their riskiest plans. At Population Police headquarters, Luke and his friends had heard rumors that the leaders were collecting identity cards for some big test,
to sort out legal citizens and illegal third children once and for all.
“They’re all in one spot,” Nina had whispered in Luke’s ear once when she’d brought food out to the stable. Nina worked in the headquarters kitchen; she was the only one of his friends that Luke ever saw. That day he’d blinked stupidly at her, not quite understanding until she hissed, “We can destroy them.”
Then Luke had wanted to ask, How? and What good would that do? and What if it’s all a trap? and What makes you think we have any prayer of succeeding? But Nina had stepped back quickly, gathering up serving trays, so he’d had no time to say anything after she told him what to do.
Luke’s assignment had been to place a particularly pungent glob of horse manure in the middle of a path, in order to delay an officer who was rushing to repair a security fence. Luke had taken the manure from Jenny’s stall; he’d arranged it carefully to look fresh and accidental and unplanned. After that he’d heard nothing more about I.D.’s, nothing more about the plan.
He thought it must have failed. Failed, like every other plan.
But if they’re issuing new I.D.’s to everyone in the country, maybe the old ones really were destroyed. Maybe…
Maybe it didn’t matter. And even if it did, how could Luke take any pride in the plan’s success when all he had done was arrange horse manure?
Luke shivered in the bitter wind pushing its way into the jeep. The bleak countryside flashed past him: leafless trees and lifeless fields.
Swashbuckling Fantasy Page 3
