Among the Enemy sc-6 Read online

  "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 u
p 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."

  But one of them just might be possible.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Nina saw plenty of holes in Matthias's plan, but she didn't shoot it down entirely.

  "Maybe we can work with that," she said thoughtfully.

  They were hiding in a walk-in freezer at the back of the giant kitchen. It was the middle of the night, and Matthias had told the guards outside his room that he needed a midnight snack. He didn't know what excuse Nina had used, but he wished it were one that involved a warmer location.

  "Can I go with you when you explain the idea to everyone else?" Matthias asked as he tried to hold back his shivers.

  Nina frowned. In the ghostly light of the freezer, this cast ghoulish shadows across her face.

  "It's not like I'm going to call a meeting," Nina said. "I'll pass a note to — well, my contact. My contact will pass a note to his contact. And so on."

  "But who'll make the final decision?" Matthias asked.

  "It's safer if I don't tell you," Nina said. "Safer for you, safer for us."

  The shadows of Nina's eye sockets frightened Matthias. The chill of the freezer reminded him of running through snowy fields in search of help for Percy and Alia. An act of desperate hope that he now knew had been all for nothing.

  "Nina," he began, but the words he wanted to say were frozen inside him. He couldn't tell her how badly he wanted this plan to succeed, because everything else he'd tried to do had failed.

  "I'll get back to you as soon as I can," she said, her hand already on the door latch. "It might be a day or two."

  "A day or two?" Matthias repeated incredulously. "The ceremony's next Friday."

  "All this passing notes takes a while," Nina said, and she slipped out the door.

  Matthias went back to bed, but he couldn't sleep. He stared into the darkness, missing Percy, missing Alia, missing Samuel.

  Can I trust Nina? he wanted to ask them. Am I doing the right thing?

  The next few days seemed unbearalby long. Matthias haunted the cafeteria, but Nina looked straight through him as she handed him nothing but bowls and plates. He forced himself to listen to the headphones as much as possible, but all the commander’s planning seemed to be finished; Matthias heard little but the scratching of pen on paper, the soft rustle of papers being shifted from side to side.

  What if all the interesting conversations are taking place when I'm not listening? Matthias tortured himself wondering. What if they've finished Project Exchange early and the ceremony's this week and we don't even know?

  The commander visited Matthias every night, right before bedtime, and it was all Matthias could do not to blurt out, I hear there's some big ceremony coming up soon. When is it? What's it for? But it was safer to act dumb, to pretend there was nothing on his mind except grief.

  "How are your studies coming along?" the commander asked one evening as he sat on the edge of Matthias's bed.

  "Huh?" Matthias said.

  The commander pointed to the headphones and tape recorder on the bedside table.

  "Your classes? Remember?"

  "Oh." Matthias thought fast. "I try to listen, but I start thinking about Tiddy and then I miss half the tape so I have to start it all over again."

  The commander touched Matthias's cheek.

  "I understand," he said sorrowfully.

  Matthias lowered his eyes and mumbled, "I'll try harder."

  The next morning he did slip a cassette into the recorder, but it started out, 'All our country's problems can be traced to the evil of the third children, those who harbor this scourge, and those who provide fake identification to encourage their prodigal ways…."

  Matthias couldn’t bear to listen to any more. He clicked off the recorder and went down to breakfast.

  And this time when Nina handed him a bowl of Cream of Wheat, he felt a thin edge of paper under the rim. It was so hard not to drop the bowl and read the note, right there in front of the entire cafeteria. He managed to walk to his table with studied carelessness, but once there he couldn't help unfolding the paper in his lap, glancing down quickly: When you get back to your room, you'll find your weapon on your bed.

  "Hey, little buddy, mind if I sit with you?"

  It was Tiddy's friend Mike. Quickly, Matthias crammed Nina's note into his pocket.

  "S-Sure," Matthias stammered, but inside he was thinking, Did Mike see the note? He couldn't have, he's on the other side of the table. But what if he did? What if he knows all about me and the plan? Then, Weapon? WEAPON? Would Samuel approve of me using a weapon?

  "Haven't seen you around much," Mike was saying. "I've been out on patrol a lot. Man, it's cold out there. It'll be nice when spring gets here…."

  "Uh-huh," Matthias said, and "You're right," but he wasn't really listening as Mike rambled on.

  Then Mike said, "I see you've got your eye on one of the serving girls. Cute one, huh?"

  "What?" Matthias asked, suddenly panicked. He realized he had been looking toward Nina, but he hadn't meant to. "I'm not — I mean—"


  Mike laughed.

  "Hey, didn't mean to embarrass you. You're blushing. It's okay, she's not bad-looking. But I'll warn you: I've seen her passing love notes to other guys. Slips it into their, hands with their soup bowls. Very clever. She passing love notes to you yet?"

  Matthias froze. How much did Mike know? How could Matthias possibly answer that question?

  Oh, please, God, help me, Matthias prayed silently as beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Suddenly Matthias knew what to say.

  "Is she passing love notes to you?" he challenged Mike. "Did you come over here to warn me away from your girl' friend?"

  "I wish," Mike said, laughing again. And then he changed the subject.

  Matthias finished breakfast as quickly as he could. He wanted to warn Nina that Mike had seen her passing notes, but he didn’t how he could do it without attracting more attention. And he was worried about having a weapon lying out on his bed. He raced up the stairs and burst into his room. A large orange sphere sat in the middle of his comforter.

  His "weapon" was a basketball.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  No!" Matthias wailed at Nina. This time they were hiding in a closet just inside the cafeteria in the middle of the night. With his elbow jammed into a stack of dishtowels and his feet planted in a scrub bucket, Matthias knew he was going to have a hard time getting Nina to take him seriously. He tried anyway.

  "This was my idea! I don't want to be just a… a decoy!" "Shh," Nina said. "Someone's going to hear you." She shook her head and pulled the door completely shut. Now they were in total darkness. Nina bent over and whispered directly into Matthias's ear. "You can't just think about what yew want. Everybody notices you, because of Tiddy. If you disappeared, it'd make a big stir. Besides, if your plan works, we need you to keep eavesdropping on the com' mander's office."

  Matthias imagined his future as Nina saw it: He'd lie on his bed for the rest of his life listening to the bug from the commander's office. No — eventually the commander would expect Matthias to start attending the meetings. Eventually Matthias would have to start acting like a true member of the Population Police. Start hurting people, killing people — joining in their evil.