Among the Hidden

She hit another key, and the words appeared right up with everyone else's. They were followed quickly by another line:

Sean: Good morning to you, too, Jen. Glad to see you're still among the living.

Jen typed quickly: 'No, just among the hidden. Not the same thing at all!!!!' Then she sent it, too.

'What is this?' Luke asked. 'Some sort of game?'

He remembered Jen mentioning a Carlos before, and never explaining who he was. Were these some sort of computerized imaginary friends?

'Carlos, Sean, Yolanda-they're all other third children. Sean's even got a brother, Pat, who's a fourth child. This is how I talk to them.'

Luke watched the next line of type appear:

'Carlos: Thanks for the sympathy, Jen.'

'But how-?' Luke asked, still doubtful.

'Oh, you know. It's the Net,' Jen said. 'If you've got a spare hour or two sometime, I'll give you the technical gobbledygook to explain it. All I care about is that it works. I'd die without someone to talk to.'

She was typing even as she talked. Luke craned his head to see what she wrote: 'Guess what? The kid I told you about, Luke, is here with me.'

Quickly, three 'Hi, Luke''s appeared on the screen.

Luke fought down panic.

'But the Government-' he said. 'They'll find me-'

Jen playfully slugged his arm. 'Chill, okay? Nobody from the Government can get in this chat room. We all use a password. Just third children know it. And, anyhow, even if someone else read this, what would they know? Just that somewhere in the world, there's a kid named Luke. Big deal.'

'But they can trace you through the computer, and then they'd find me, too.' Luke's heart was still pounding.

'Look, if they could trace people through the computer, or through this chat room, wouldn't they have found me a long time ago?' Jen asked.

Luke tried to think clearly. 'Your parents,' he said. 'You said they bribe people. So you're safe. But mine-'

Jen was shaking her head.

'No, I'm not safe,' she said grimly. 'Even my parents couldn't bribe the Population Police if they found me. Maybe to keep them from looking-but maybe not even that. The Population Police get some ridiculously big reward for every illegal they find. Why do you think I hide at all? Why do you think we have to have the rally? Everybody ought to be safe. And nobody should have to use bribes just to walk down the street or go to a mall or take a ride in a car…'

Luke glanced back at the computer screen, where the conversation continued.

'How did all those people find out the password?' he asked. 'How did you?'

'Well, I created the chat room, so I made it up,' Jen said.

'And I knew a couple other shadow kids, and I got my parents and their parents to get the password to them. And then some of those kids spread the password to other kids they knew. Last time I counted, I had contact with eight hundred kids.'

Luke shook his head. He didn't think even his parents knew that many people.

'So what is the password?' he asked.

' 'Free,'' Jen said. 'It's 'free.''

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Luke left Jen's that day with a pile of books and computer printouts clutched to his chest.

'Some reading material for you,' she'd said. 'So you'll understand.'

Back in his own room, Luke sat down on his bed and opened the first book. It was thick and carried its title in ominous black letters: THE POPULATION DISASTER. The type inside was small and closely spaced. Luke read a sentence at random: 'While debate continues over the carrying capacity of the earth-' He skipped ahead. 'If the Total Fertility Rate in industrialized countries had remained at or below 2.1-' Luke saw that reading this book would be like puzzling out the letters Dad got from the Government. He glanced at the other two books: The Famine Years Revisited and The Population Reversal. They looked no easier. The computer printouts were at least brief, but both 'The Problem of the Shadows' and 'The Population Law: Our Country's Biggest Mistake,' were full of big words.

Luke sighed. He was tempted to put the books aside and just ask Jen to explain them to him. And he might have, except for what she'd said as she'd begun handing them to him. 'Oh, my gosh! I didn't think-you can read, can't you?'

'Of course,' Luke had answered stiffly. 'I was reading in the chat room, wasn't I?'

'Yes, but you could have been-oh, never mind. I've offended you again, haven't I? Me and my big mouth. It wouldn't have been anything to be ashamed of, even if you couldn't. Oh, I'm making things worse. I'll shut up. Here.'

And it had seemed to Luke that she'd pulled even bigger books off the bookshelves after that.

Now he resolutely turned to the beginning of The Population Disaster and began reading: 'Since some elements of the overpopulation crisis were foreseen in the 1800s, an uninformed observer could only wonder why humankind came so near to total annihilation. But-'

Luke reached for the dictionary and settled in for the long haul.

It rained for the next several days, so Luke read constantly, not even tempted to race over to Jen's instead. He could hear Dad banging around downstairs, stomping in and out from the barn or the machine shed. Now that the harvest was in, Luke thought Dad might be bored without the pigs to take care of. So Luke read cautiously, always ready to shove his population book under his pillow and replace it with one of his adventure books. The preparation paid off on the fourth day, when he heard Dad's footsteps on the stairs.

'Hey, Luke, what're you up to?'

'Nothing,' Luke said, turning Treasure Island right side up at the very last moment. Dad didn't notice.

'Want to play cards?'

They played rummy on Luke's bed. Luke could feel the corner of The Population Disaster poking his back throughout the entire game. And he kept wanting to ask Dad about what he was learning. He spent most of the first game biting his tongue. Dad won.

'Again?' Dad asked, shuffling the cards.

'If you don't have any work you've got to do.'

'In November? With no livestock? Only work I've got now is figuring out how we're going to pay our bills once the hog money runs out.'

'Isn't there some way to grow stuff inside during the winter? Like down in the basement, with special lights, lots of water and extra minerals. And then you could sell it?' Luke asked without thinking. He'd just finished reading a chapter in the population book about hydroponics.

Dad squinted.

'Seems I did hear tell of that once.'

Luke won the next hand. Dad didn't seem to be concentrating. At the end, Dad said, 'Mind if we quit now?'

Luke was terrified Dad would ask where he'd heard of hydroponics. So he just said, 'No problem.'

Dad left muttering, 'Growing food inside… hmmm…'

Luke wished he'd had the nerve to ask about the Population Law, or the famines, or even some family history.

Once he got past the dense language, the books Jen had loaned him were full of revelations. As best he could understand it, the world had simply gotten too full of people about twenty years earlier. Poor countries had it particularly bad, and people there often starved or were malnourished. But then something worse happened: