Death Thieves (28 page)

“You don’t think anyone’s smart here in this time.”

“Sure I do. Lots of people are smart: Professor Raik, Professor Modesitt Jay and Jen, Tag—”

My hands tightened on my tray, and in spite of trying to seem at ease, I felt the blood drain from my face as I strangled on the last word I had not meant to say aloud.

“Taggert?” Eddie asked.

“Who? I didn’t say—”

“Taggert,” he repeated. “The soldier who rescued you. The one who built the Orbitals.” His eyes narrowed as though he knew I already knew this.

“Well, if he built the Orbitals, then he
is
smart.” I set my tray on the counter in front of me to try to stretch out my fingers and bring blood back into them. Eddie obviously had no intentions of making this interchange short.

Eddie laughed as though I’d told a joke. “Smart. That’s why they keep him, even if he is a crazy.”

“He’s not crazy!” I couldn’t stop myself from defending Tag—even if it did confirm that I’d been thinking about him when listing people I deemed as smart. I’d have blackened Eddie’s eye, too, if it wouldn’t have interfered with the “lie low and fit in” mantra. I hurried to think, to save the slipup. “The laws would never allow him to last into adulthood if he couldn’t pass the tests. Don’t you have any faith in your system?” Shifting the defensive position to him seemed my only hope of surviving this attack.

“The system is flawless. Taggert’s only here because his inventions are needed. He was almost ex-ed, you know? There’s rumors that he only barely passed the crazy tests. And no one else wanted him after his family got executed. It seemed easier to put him out of his misery and ex him, too.”

I worked to keep my face smooth and uncaring.
His family executed! What?
“Why? What happened?”

“His whole family traitored the law. His mom faked his crazy sister’s death and then hid her so they wouldn’t get caught. His dad went home from work early to try to get his family out of the city, but the soldiers got there first. They ex-ed him and the wife and the crazy, too. Taggert was there when they ex-ed his mom and the crazy. He watched the whole thing happen. Whole family of traitors.”

“That’s horrible!” The declaration burst out of my lips along with the horror that must have been written all over my face. I hurried to cover it up—to appear compliant. “A whole family betraying the law like that. I can’t imagine they thought they could get away with hiding a crazy.” My own words sickened me. How I had to play their games in order to remain free enough to move around. “If the soldier was crazy, why wouldn’t they have ex-ed him with the rest of his family?” I couldn’t allow myself to say Tag’s name out loud again; I couldn’t allow myself that kind of familiarity while confronted with such accusation in Eddie’s eyes.

“He could do things, make things work. Like I said, Professor Raik, and apparently you, think he’s smart.”

My heart pounded, rushing the blood past my ears until Eddie’s words sounded like little more than static. Eddie spent a lot of time chasing the heels of Professor Raik, like some dog continually seeking validation from an uncharitable master. Had they discussed Tag in such depth? Had that discussion included me? And if it had, how could such a thing be possible? We’d been careful. I hadn’t seen Tag with my own eyes since the day I broke into the barracks. How long ago had that been? Ten months? Had I been here that long?

“Why won’t you go out with me, Summer?”

I blinked—the thoughts in my mind hitting the brakes. “What?”

“How’s this—this Friday, Professor Raik is having a dinner party. He invited me and a date to join him. I’d like you to come with me.” He picked up a plate with cookies stacked on it.

I shook my head in confusion. “I’ll be at the nursery on Friday.”

“I thought you’d say that. You spend a lot of time working to save crazies. It doesn’t look good for you to care so much for an inferior people.” Eddie puffed out his chest, lifted his chin, and strutted away with dessert in his hand and a desert in his heart and intellect.

An inferior people? The babies I’d held in my arms were far from inferior.

I didn’t bother with adding anything else to the tray. I’d lost my appetite. Tag’s family, murdered in front of him. How old had Tag been when his whole family had been taken from him so violently? What would that do to a person? Tag played the part of grateful for his life as one of Professor Raik’s soldiers. He acted loyal to the world and their cause to eradicate the crazies entirely, yet he said things and did things that led me to believe he’d only given me the advice he followed when he told me to just fit in, lie low, figure out the system, and cheat it.

Had he figured out the system yet? Would we be able to cheat it? Or was he really not pretending? Seeing his family killed in front of him had to leave some major scars in a young boy’s mind. Then to have Professor Raik and his flattering words add further confusion, what did Tag really think? What went on in his mind? Who was he loyal to—if anyone? At that moment I wished I’d saved his notes, wished I could have some tangible proof that Tag was my friend. Thursday, and another note from Tag, could not come soon enough.

“Summer!”

I looked up, realizing I was standing in the middle of the dining hall and holding my tray. “Hey, Alison.”

She flashed her dimpled smile at me. “Don’t just stand there! Come sit with us!” She waved an overexcited arm at me, beckoning me to their table.

One more chance to practice my ability not to roll my eyes. The whole thing gave me a headache. I took a deep breath and went to their table, settling my tray down in front of me.

Their conversation floated around me until—

“Did you hear what happened to poor LeAnn?” Mita asked.

Gossip. Everyone loved gossip, especially when that gossip involved the marrieds of our group. All eyes turned to Mita, waiting like hungry dogs for a scrap of leftovers.

Mita’s dark-ringed eyes showed her dread with the news she had to share. This was not ordinary gossip but instead something very serious. “She miscarried her baby.”

Silence. No one saw that coming. And then the explosion from everyone at once.

“But they were watching her so carefully.”

“But she was almost full term.”

“But she couldn’t have . . .”

Our table seemed full of “But how?” sorts of questions.

“Heather miscarried, too.” Mita announced, as though she were the grim reaper slicing her scythe through the posterity of the New Youth elite. Heather had been six months along. She’d been carrying twins.

I didn’t explain that anything after four months was considered stillborn, not a miscarriage. Calling the tragedy by a different name didn’t make it any less terrifying—especially for those girls who were on the verge of their own marriages.

Most of the girls dropped their utensils to their trays with clatters. Some of them began to cry. All of them were terrified. The somber mood at the table ruined anyone’s desire to eat.

With the meal completed, or at least abandoned, everyone shuffled out of the dining hall with their faces lost to contemplation of how our triumph of repopulating the dying world had faltered.

I went to my historical and current events class feeling not nearly as much pity for Heather or LeAnn as I did for Tag, who had watched his family die. How could anyone expect me to muster the ability to feel more than brief pity for my classmates when my conversation with Eddie was still so raw?

I mulled over Eddie’s words, tasting them from all angles in my mind, ignoring the teacher and her digi-board rantings of world events until she played a current news clip.

I sat up straighter in my chair, the hairs on the back of my neck raising as the video footage played on the digi-board. Three of the world’s regents had decided to set examples for their communities by adopting babies from the public nurseries. The footage showed the regents going into their local public nurseries, and then showed them walking out with an infant in their arms.

The news of the regents’ adoptions was rebroadcasted over all the vids all day long. Kathleen had a mug of something steaming in her hands as she stared up at the image projected in the casual room as I walked through to the second level to meet a biology study group, where I was the only one who would study and the others would flirt and play footsies.

“Strange things,” Kathleen muttered.

“What?” I halted my movement toward the stairs.

She frowned, “Nothing, just—” Her frown deepened. “The regents have never adopted before. Three miscarriages? Three adoptions. Seems . . . never mind. Forget I said anything.” She looked horrified that she actually had said anything that sounded as treasonous as her line of reasoning.

“Already forgotten,” I said. My heart beat faster as I continued to the stairs. None of the regents
had
ever adopted from a nursery before—making claims that the people populating their territories were their children. Why now? What changed?

You’re being paranoid.
I chided myself.
The regents didn’t have anything to do with the recent tragedies of the New Youth.

But even with my self-chastisement, I couldn’t help but shudder at the possibility.

2-26-2114

You’ve never told me about your family, Yourit. I want to know their names. Who are the people who raised you? Did you have siblings? Did you grow up in Washington, California, or somewhere else? Why do you never talk about you?

Sunny

2-28-2114

I have no family. I have no last name as is the tradition of the soldiers. To be a soldier is to give up the life you knew before and remember it no more.

Yourit

3-1-2114

You’re so irritating. You didn’t answer my questions. And don’t tell me you remember it no more. You don’t forget anything.

Sunny

3-7-2114

My father’s name was Shaw. Don’t ask any more.

Yourit

My lapdesk beeped when I entered the room, which meant someone had sent me a message. I liked that the message notification didn’t come until the lapdesk sensed my IDR. This kept Alison from asking questions and snooping into my life more than she already did. It had been a few weeks since the news of the regent’s adoptions and the New Youths miscarriages had swept through the New Youth dormitories—enough time for everyone to move on to their shallow conversations of pedicures and grades on history exams.

I waved my ring over the desk—bringing it to life. Even after all the months of living here, I still felt like a Jedi waving my hand over things to make them work. It seemed weird not to have to touch the screen in any way for the programs to open. The IDR and the pulse of my thoughts were enough for simple tasks to be accomplished.

I opened my messages and felt joy in seeing one from Jen Savage.

Dear Summer,

The pregnancy has been going great. I had my ultrasound today and found out we’re having twins! Twins! Can you believe it? I don’t remember anyone in my family having twins. Jay nearly passed out when he heard, but you should see him. I don’t think he’s stopped smiling—even in his sleep! I admit that I’m worried. Mita wrote me about the miscarriages some of the others have had. I am going on a strict health food diet. Nothing is going to hurt my babies.

Stay in touch. It’s lonely down here in Southern California. Jay did take me to Disneyland. It’s not even close to what I remembered it being. It totally spins! You’ll have to visit and come with us.

Miss you.

Jen

I missed her, too. Jen and Jay had been moved to LA. All of the marrieds had been moved to places where the temperature was far warmer than the icy cold of the Bay Area. Some had been moved to other parts of the world, where they were under the direction of different regents. I thought that was strange. If their goal was to have us create a clean-blooded race, wouldn’t they keep us all together so our children could grow up and intermarry?

But worrying over the regents didn’t help me get any closer to helping the babies growing in the cradles at my nursery. Jen’s pregnancy was going well, which made me happy. But the public nurseries couldn’t boast such luck. Some babies were born with the HTH infection so prominently that the doctors euthanized them that same day—though they always waited until I was gone. I understood why the slang term for the infection was the shakes. Those babies quaked and tremored so violently that they wailed over their own lack of control.

I’d become used to the dark room with its rhythmic heartbeat. I found comfort there most of the time, but those wails and shivering little bodies gave me anything but comfort. They fed my urgency to study longer and harder—to figure out the problem.

But even after arriving at the nursery and logging all the activity of the cradles for the last twenty-four hours, Jen’s message still echoed in my mind. She’d had the ultrasound. She’d be having twins. I looked into the dark watery cradle of a child due for birthing in the next week.

Jen had no history of twins in her family. Heather had been pregnant with twins, too. I’d heard one of the other couples was expecting triplets. Odd. Multiple births were rare. Being a twin, this was something I understood intimately. Back in my time, they were becoming more common due to fertility drugs, but what would be the driving force behind so many unrelated multiple births now?

I checked the cradle’s temperature, marked it as stable on the digi-chart and moved to the next one. In some ways I thought the instability in the cradles came from the fact that they were just cradles, in spite of everyone telling me that a far greater instability existed when they tried to inject the fetuses into real wombs that allowed women to carry their babies naturally. A mother’s womb was different. In the womb, the child was embraced by the love fed from its mother every second of the pregnancy. I remembered Aunt Theresa saying that a baby recognizes its mother’s voice after it’s born. What did the cradles provide in the way of memories for these babies? These babies never had a chance to listen to their mothers hum or giggle or cry. These babies didn’t get the chance to learn how emotions and moods fluctuate. The cradles were cold, sterile things. These babies were vastly deprived in comparison to Jen’s twins.