Among the Free

speak' ers blame third children, all morning long?'

Philip Twinings sighed. His ancient eyes seemed to hold decades' worth of pain.

'I did sabotage the microphone, last night,' he said. 'But this morning — I was afraid. Things seemed to have changed. I was in exile for a very long time. I didn't want to go back. And — I was only one person.'

'Sometimes one person is enough,' Luke said.

'Yes,' Philip said. 'And sometimes it takes a kid to show adults the truth.'

Luke started to tell Philip, 'You did help me — you made sure I got a chance to talk. You risked your life too.' But he broke off because the crowd's uproar had reached a fever pitch. A group of men seemed to have come to a conclusion.

'We'll just get Oscar out here! He'll tell you!' Luke heard one of them shout.

'You do that! I want to hear what he has to say for himself.' someone else hollered back.

Luke watched the men rushing back toward the Population Police headquarters.

'Perhaps you should leave, young man,' Philip said softly. 'For your own safety.'

'Are you leaving?' Luke asked.

'No. Of course not.'

'Neither am I,' Luke said.

He remembered way back in the fall, after the Grants had died, how he'd longed for a day of truth, when he and his friends could stand up proud and tell the whole world their true names, their true stories. He hadn't revealed his name, but he'd told everything else. No matter what happened, he was glad he'd done that. He had no intention of hiding again, of cowering back in the stables, dreading every approaching footstep. He was done with that life.

Jenny whinnied behind him, and he went to stand beside her and stroke her mane.

'It's all right, girl,' he said. 'Don't be afraid. I'm not afraid anymore.'

He understood now how the old woman in Chiutza had been able to look so peaceful facing the gun; how Jen could have gone off so bravely to her rally. They'd made their choices. They'd been free.

And now so was he.

The mob that had rushed into the Population Police headquarters came rushing back out.

'He's gone!' the men were yelling. 'Oscar ran away!'

Out of the corner of Luke's eye, he saw the three former Population Police officials scrambling away from the screening committee table. He saw them slipping into the shadows, sneaking out the back door. He saw the security guards walking away from their posts. He saw the Oscar supporters in the crowd shrugging or slumping — giving up.

It was over.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Luke's friends showed up that afternoon, while he was with a crowd pulling down the signs opposing third children. The words their fault came off in his hands, and he was tearing them to bits when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

'Need some help with that?'

He whirled around to find Nina, Trey, and Mr. Talbot standing there, and they ran to him, hugging and exclaiming.

'Where were you guys?' he asked. 'I kept looking for you—'

'When the Population Police fell, we all went to Mr. Hendricks's house. We kept thinking you'd join us there. We didn't think there was anything else to worry about,' Nina said apologetically.

'But we turned on the TV this morning and heard the speeches and saw the signs — we came as fast as we could,' Mr. Talbot said. 'We just didn't know what we could do.'

'Then we turned on the radio in the car and heard this crazy kid telling his life story,' Trey said. 'You were great, Lee — you really were.'

The fake name sounded more jarring than ever, after everything Luke had been through. He looked around at the people tearing down the signs; at the noisy, still-arguing crowd; at Philip and Simone and Tucker standing before the cameras interviewing people again.

'I'm free now,' he said. 'You can call me Luke.'

He remembered how baffled he'd been all along, trying to understand freedom. In the beginning, all he'd wanted was a chance to run across his family's front yard or ride in the back of the pickup truck to town, the way his brothers did. He'd seen how the Chiutzans acted like freedom just meant getting to shoot anyone they wanted to shoot; how Eli and the others in his village thought they were free because they were ready to die. He'd watched the people celebrating at Population Police headquarters as if freedom were just a matter of getting free food.

But he understood now that freedom was more than that. In one sense, he'd been free all along.

'Is it safe to talk like that?' Mr. Talbot asked, glancing around anxiously. 'Have you heard — did they catch Aldous Krakenaur?'

'No,' Luke said. 'He escaped with Oscar.'

'Then he could come back,' Trey said. 'He could get the Population Police back together, consolidate his power again—'

'We're making sure that doesn't happen,' Luke said. He pointed at a bunch of people gathered around a table someone had pulled out onto the grass. 'That group is talking about writing a new constitution to guarantee everyone's rights.' He pointed to another table at the other end of the yard. 'They're talking about how to distribute food fairly until the next harvest.' He watched a man and two women setting up another table nearby. 'I'm not sure what they're going to talk about at that table, but this is our new government. The people.'

His friends stared at him in amazement.

'Good grief,' Mr. Talbot said. 'We've gone from ideologues to idealists.'

'Don't you think it will work?' Luke asked.

Mr. Talbot peered around at the crowd. Luke could see how he might be doubtful: Most of the people at the tables were pretty young; they were dressed in ragged clothes and had shaggy hair. They didn't look like a government.

But Mr. Talbot grinned.

'This is the best chance we have,' he said. 'Maybe I'll go check out that constitution they're working on…'

He wandered off, and Nina and Trey settled in with Luke, pulling down the signs. The adhesive Oscar's supporters had used was very strong; it was difficult erasing every trace of every hateful word. But Luke and his friends were persistent, working side by side.

'So I'm the only one who didn't go to Mr. Hendricks's house?' Luke asked.

'All our friends are there — and lots of other third children who didn't have anywhere else to go. Your brother's there too,' Nina said. 'His leg's still in bad shape, but Mr. Talbot said he was in charge of protecting the younger children if anything happened.'

If anything happened… Luke shivered, thinking about how easily Oscar's plans could have succeeded. How easily, even now, the new freedom could be stifled if people didn't guard it carefully, didn't use it wisely.

'Mark's disappointed that he never got to come back here and work undercover,' Nina said. 'He says he missed all the fun.'

'Fun?' Luke snorted. 'Right. I would have traded places with him in a heartbeat. He could have ridden Jenny for me. He could have stood up on that stage.'

'No,' Nina said, 'he couldn't have. It had to be one of us.'

A third child, she meant. In the end, only a third child could have stopped Oscar.

'Weren't you scared?' Trey asked, scrubbing at the shadowy backing left by the sign. 'Admitting you were a third child in front of that huge crowd — in front of the whole country, really—'