Among the Imposters

Luke’s knees went weak with relief. Finally! Someone who could explain.

“Mr. — ” Luke began.

But Mr. Talbot shook his head warningly He waved a long bar in front of Luke’s chest and his legs, then behind his back. Finally he leaned back and announced, “He’s clean. No bugs.”

“I hate all this technology, don’t you?” the man in the wheelchair said, leaning back as though Mr. Talbot’s announcement had freed him to relax. He stirred a cup he held in his hand. Luke thought he caught a whiff of something like the chicory coffee his parents had sometimes drunk as a special treat. “But now I can introduce myself. I’m Josiah Hendricks. You know my friend here, I presume.”

Luke could only nod.

“Sit down, sit down,” Mr. Hendricks said. “No need to stand on ceremony.

Luke noticed that Mr. Talbot, always so much in charge every other time Luke had seen him, obeyed instantly Luke quickly sank into an armchair as well.

Mr. Hendricks sipped his drink.

“You are an inquisitive young man,” he said to Luke. “You wish some explanations. No?”

“Yes,” Luke said eagerly He looked over at Mr. Talbot, expectantly But Mr. Talbot was staring pointedly at Mr. Hendricks.

“Once I was a very rich man,” Mr. Hendricks said. “I spent my money foolishly — who doesn’t when they have more money than they know what to do with? There is a long and not particularly attractive story about how I spent my younger days. But suffice it to say that I was given reason to develop compassion by the time of the Great Famines.” He looked down quickly. Luke saw for the first time that both of his pants legs hung empty below the knee. “I am not disguising anything for you tonight,” Mr. Hendricks said softly.

Luke shifted uncomfortably in his chair. What was he supposed to say? Evidently nothing. Mr. Hendricks went on with his tale.

“You know the Government was considering letting the ‘undesirables’ starve, do you not?” Mr. Hendricks asked. “When there is not enough food, who deserves to eat? The blind girl? The deaf boy? The man missing his legs?”

The anger in his voice was unbearable. Luke stumbled over his own tongue, ready to say anything to move the story along.

“Jason — I mean, the one taken away this morning — he told me about that. At school.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Hendricks said. He seemed lost in thought, then roused himself to continue. “My family— and I — spent millions on bribes, to convince the Government to have a heart They left the disabled alone. And passed the Population Law instead.” He frowned, stirring his coffee. “And how compassionate had I been? I saved my own kind, knowing that others would likely be killed. So I set up the schools. As penance.”

“Mr. Hendricks foresaw what others did not,” Mr. Talbot said. “He understood that hundreds of illegal children would be born, and hidden. And he knew they’d need safe places to go if they were able to come out ofhiding.”

“But I thought your schools were for autistic kids, kids with phobias, the ones who—” Luke stopped. “Oh,” he said.

Mr. Hendricks chuckled.

“So my charade fooled you?” he asked. “Who can tell if a child rocks because he has autism or because he is terrffied out of his wits? Who can tell if agoraphobia is caused by oddities in the mind or lifelong warnings, ‘Going outdoors is suicide’? In the beginning, yes, I accepted children whose problems stemmed from other causes. I nurtured a reputation as a schoolmaster who would take on any troubled child. And when the first illegal children began emerging, they came here, too.”

Luke tried to grasp it all.

“So everyone’s an exnay? And everyone knows?” he asked. “The teachers, Ms. Hawkins in the office, the nurse, all the other boys—”

“Oh, no.” Mr. Hendricks shook his head emphatically “My charade is complete. I don’t even know for sure which boys are which. I don’t want to know. There is the possibility of—”

“Torture,” Mr. Talbot said grimly.

“Those I don’t know, I can’t betray,” Mr. Hendricks said. ‘And I hire only employees who seem uniquely capable of ignorance. Teachers so enamored of their academic disciplines that they can’t even recognize the students who sit before them for an entire year. Administrative staff whose incompetence is of such towering magnitude that they can’t input records into computers, won’t notice when files are faked or replaced… There’s a certain charm to my system, is there not?”

Luke remembered how Jason’s portable phone had disappeared, how the doors had been locked, how the files under his four friends’ new fake names had magically appeared.

“But someone knows,” he insisted. “There has to be someone who oversees it all.”

Mr. Hendricks shifted in his wheelchair.

“Oh, yes. I have my compatriots. Mr. Dirk, as you probably suspect, has been useful upon occasion, although his knowledge is limited. I will tell you no other names.”

Luke should have felt relieved to finally get an explanation. For that matter, he should have been ecstatic to have an adult at Hendricks acknowledge his existence. But all he could think about, suddenly was how lonely and isolated he’d felt his first few weeks at Hendricks, how invisible. How low he’d sunk, that he’d almost looked forward to Jason picking on him each evening. He felt a surge of anger.

“You think you’re so great,” he said before he could stop himself “Don’t you know how it feels to be an exnay? And then you just abandon us, among people who don’t care. Or can’t care. It’s a wonder we don’t all run back into hiding.”

“Oh, no,” Mr. Hendricks said, seeming totally unruffled by Luke’s outburst. “You were never abandoned. I can assume you have never been deep-sea diving, correct?”

Luke shook his head, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes as well.

“But you understand the concept?” Mr. Hendricks didn’t wait for a reply “When a diver resurfaces, he has to go gradually so his body can get accustomed to the change in pressure. Children coming out of hiding need that, too. They need places to adjust to the outside world. Somewhere that their extreme fear of the outdoors does not seem out of place. Somewhere that they can act antisocial and not stand out Somewhere — well, like Hendricks. And then when they’re ready they move on.”

“You mean — leave?” Luke asked, his voice squeaking in spite of himself

“Yes,” Mr. Talbot said. ‘And Mr. Hendricks and I agree:

The events of the past twenty-four hours prove that your time has come. You’re ready to go.”

Thirty Seven

“Huh?” Luke said. He had not anticipated that turn in the conversation at all.

Mr. Hendricks leaned forward.

“My schools had never been infiltrated before,” he said, with a sharp glance at Mr. Talbot.

Mr. Talbot frowned apologetically

“The Population Police have always pretended that it’s impossible for an illegal child to get a fake I.D.,” Mr. Talbot added. “But after the rally—” His eyes clouded. Luke could see the effort he was making to continue without emotion. ‘After the rally, all the rules changed.”

“So you see, we never expected betrayal,” Mr. Hendricks said. “In the beginning yes, we tiptoed and looked over our shoulders. And, fortunately we kept habits of… strong security. But we were not prepared for the Population Police to plant impostors in our midst, to gather names, to encourage indiscretion.”

Luke frowned.

“But Jason — he said there’d been raids before. He said—” Mr. Talbot had a sarcastic smile on his face. Mr. Hendricks raised one eyebrow.

“My dear boy,” Mr. Hendricks said. “He lied.”

Luke grimaced. He didn’t like them acting like he couldn’t figure that out on his own. But he’d learned a lot