Among the Free

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Luke turned to the people sitting around him. He wanted to tell them, Listen — we're in big trouble. But everyone else was clapping and cheering.

"We're back now, broadcasting live from the former Population Police headquarters," Philip Twinings was saying up on the stage. "We're ready to begin our accounting of the Population Police era. We'll be broadcasting as long as people are willing to talk."

The crowd cheered again.

They're doing what Oscar suggested, Luke thought, still horrified.

But what could be wrong with people telling their stories? What evidence did Luke have that Oscar was under Aldous Krakenaur's control? What could Luke do about it, anyhow? Who would listen to him?

Luke sat, paralyzed, letting the voices from the stage wash over him. A man talked about how the Population Police had refused to replace his grain when he accidentally spilled it. A girl talked about how the Population Police had confiscated the strawberries she grew in her own backyard. A woman talked about how much she missed her husband when he enlisted in the Population Police to earn food for his family. Luke started to relax a little.

This is just people telling how awful the Population Police were, he thought. This won't bring them back into power. Maybe I'm wrong about everything. Maybe I misunderstood what Oscar and Krakenaur meant.

He kept listening, the stories as soothing as a balm. The worse the horrors the speakers described, the better Luke felt.

Nobody would want the Population Police back in power after hearing this, Luke thought again and again, during tales of beatings, maimings, cruelty, contempt.

One boy painstakingly hobbled up to the stage, almost losing his balance. The crowd grew silent as they watched him slowly mount the steps, his upper body supported by crutches, his legs twisted and practically useless.

"The Population Police did this to me," he said into the microphone Philip Twinings held out to him. His eyes, caught in the bright light from the camera, were wide and terrified. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. "I joined up because my family was starving. They assigned me to shovel manure. I thought I was being. . helpful. I suggested a better way to shovel, and they. . they attacked me. I almost died. I would have died… if the rebels hadn't found me… if they hadn't fed me and nursed me. You can. . look at me and see. . what the Population Police did to our country."

He moved away from the microphone and began his slow descent down the stairs.

He worked for the Population Police shoveling manure? Luke thought. He was in the stables, then. That's the boy I always won-' dered about, the one who asked for a bigger shovel. The one who disappeared. This is what happened to him.

Luke watched the boy leaning down, lowering first his crutches, then the weight of his whole body, from one step to another. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if he didn't quite trust the crutches or his legs to hold him up.

He would be an ally, Luke thought. He was in the stables with me. He knows what the Population Police are capable of. I could tell him about Oscar and Krakenaur.

Luke stood up and began fighting his way through the crowd, toward the stage. The mood of the crowd seemed to have changed under the onslaught of sad stories. Instead of having people call out, "You there! Come dance with us!" or "Sing along!" the people Luke passed now muttered, "Watch it! You stepped on my foot!" or "Stop shoving!"

Luke ignored the complaints; he didn't want to waste any time finding the boy on crutches. When someone said, "Stop shoving!" he moved to the side and dodged around. But as he neared the stage, the crush of people began to seem impenetrable. Every time he tried to dart between people, the gap would suddenly close. He moved to the right; he moved to the left; he tried a diagonal approach toward the stage. Nothing worked. A line of bodies always blocked him.

"Excuse me," he finally said to a man who would not move out of the way. "I'm trying to get through."

"Nobody's allowed through," the man growled.

"But I'm trying to get to a… friend," Luke said, stretching the truth a little because it sounded so comforting to have a friend. "He was up on the stage just now. I want to talk to him."

"Nobody's allowed through," the man repeated, as if Luke had simply been too stupid to understand the first time. "We're protecting the people who go on stage."

Luke looked around and realized that the line of people blocking him from the stage wasn't just a random, acci' dental formation. These people were security forces. Bodyguards. All of them were tall and muscular, with stern expressions. They only needed black uniforms, and they'd look just like Population Police prison guards.

"Why?" Luke asked. "I thought everybody was free now."

The guard looked at Luke as though he were crazy.

"Would you be brave enough to go up there on the stage and talk about the Population Police, knowing that some of the Population Police officials are still on the loose? Knowing they might be out there in that crowd, hiding, even now?" he asked. "People are still scared. And they should be. Free doesn't mean safe."

"Oh," Luke said. "I guess not".

He stood on tiptoe to look past the guard's shoulder: He caught a quick glimpse of the boy with the crutches disappearing around the back of the stage.

"Look," Luke tried again, "I just want to talk to that kid over there. I promise I won't do anything to him. I wouldn't hurt anyone. I just—"

"Sorry," the guard said. "Rules are rules."

"But who made the rules?" Luke asked, trying not to sound desperate. "I thought the government was gone, I thought there weren't laws anymore—"

"Listen, kid, there's a new government now. Get lost!" The man shoved Luke away, and Luke's head slammed into the face of the person behind him; his body struck the shoulder of another man. This set off even more indignant complaints: "Ouch! You could have broken my nose!" and "Hey! Watch where you're going!"

"Sorry," Luke said. "Sorry, sorry, sorry…"

He struggled back through the crowd, to a vantage point where he could see where the boy with the crutches had gone. But it was too late.

The boy had disappeared once more.