Children of Jubilee

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  No, no, no, no . . . , my brain screamed.

  “Dig!” the voice said.

  My hand snapped out in front of me. A shadow crossed my face—from the Enforcer walking past, probably. But again I couldn’t raise my head to look at him directly. I could only look down, at the shovel he placed in my hand.

  What are we digging for? I wanted to ask. And why? If you can travel between planets and control other people’s bodies, surely your technology is advanced enough that you could have robots do this work. Wouldn’t that work better?

  My body took five steps forward, and I drove the shovel into the ground, as deep as I could. I brought up a shovelful of dirt that included three pea-shaped pebbles that were an odd, mottled grayish blue. I stood there with the shovel aloft, and Rosi’s hands reached into the dirt and pulled out the pebbles. She dropped them into a bucket that materialized beside us. Once she’d wiped away the top layer of dirt, she found four more pebbles. This continued until my shovel was empty. Then she stood back, and I brought up a second shovelful of dirt.

  Beside me, Enu and Edwy were following the same process, at the exact same pace.

  Oh, I thought. Oh no.

  The Enforcers didn’t need robots to mine this planet. Because as long as they could control our bodies, we were their robots.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We worked for hours without a break. Not a real one. We each got a chance to go to the bathroom, but even that was automated: We’d finish a hole, and three of us were forced to go on to the next section, while one of us stayed behind to pee.

  So . . . is the urine important to whatever we’re mining here? I wondered. Are we mining, or are we growing and harvesting some sort of living minerals?

  Was there such a thing in the universe as a living mineral?

  My hand ached with the desire to reach back into my pocket for my phone, to check out everything I could find about other planets. Our schools back in Refuge City hadn’t included much information about the rest of the universe, and I’d always had my own reasons for avoiding the topic. So I needed the Internet.

  I couldn’t get my hand to do anything but twitch. And, anyhow, I already knew that my phone couldn’t connect.

  If only I’d fiddled more with it last night, to see if I could adapt it to the local system. If only I’d held on to the Enforcer communication device, back on Earth, and brought that with me. . . .

  While my brain got stuck on regrets and if-onlys, my hands propelled the shovel into the dirt, again and again.

  The sun climbed higher and higher into the sky, then began to sag down toward the horizon again. Periodically Rosi and I switched off chores: I dug and she hunted for pebbles; then she dug and I hunted for pebbles. I got blisters on my hands from the shovel; the blisters rubbed raw and broke and bled. The open sores got filthy from the hours of pebble hunting.

  That’s how wounds get infected! I wanted to scream at the Enforcer. Even if you don’t care about me as a person, don’t you care if your robots all get gangrene and our hands rot off?

  By midafternoon, my hands hurt so bad I wanted to sob. But even this was out of my control. My tear ducts stayed dry. My face stayed smooth and untroubled. My mouth stayed silent. I kept digging.

  I will go insane if I can’t do something, I told myself.

  I remembered how I’d gotten my hand to twitch, trying to reach for my phone; how I’d gotten my fingers to sway ever so slightly when I wanted to wipe my face.

  Try moving parts of your body that don’t have anything to do with shoveling. Or with staying silent.

  It took maybe an hour of trying, but I managed to wiggle my right ear a millimeter up, and then another millimeter down.

  Oh, and that’s so useful! I thought scornfully. One wiggling ear—that’s going to help me signal for help! That’s going to enable me to escape and rescue the others!

  I passed another hour too demoralized and too much in pain to do anything but bend forward, dig the shovel into the dirt, lift the shovel, wait for Rosi to search for pebbles, and then do it all over again.

  Then some of the dirt dribbled onto my sandals.

  Look at me now, you stupid Enforcer! I wanted to scream. I could be buried in dirt, and you wouldn’t even notice! I can’t do anything about it! What if the dirt trips me and I fall over—and then Enu digs a shovel into me, because he can’t stop himself?

  It was a horrible image. I wanted to scream and cry and rage, but of course I could do nothing but keep digging.

  What if I just tried to wiggle my toes? What if I could clear away the dirt that way?

  I needed my toes for balance, each time I drove the shovel into the ground. But when I was just standing and waiting for Rosi to sort through the dirt, it didn’t matter so much if my toes were clenched or relaxed.

  I managed to twitch the little toe on my right foot, sending a tiny clump of dirt off the side of my sandal.

  Victory! I told myself.

  Or, at least, an infinitesimally small step in the right direction.

  I had to look down the next time I dug the shovel into the ground, and what I saw then made me want to gasp.

  It wasn’t that I’d cleared away that much dirt. I could barely even tell the difference between the level of dirt beside the little toe and the amount beside the toe next to it. What stunned me was what was left behind:

  One of the pea-size pebbles lay between my toes.

  Oh, hold on to it! I told myself. Keep it, and then tonight . . . tonight you can figure everything out!

  Maybe it was a crystal that could be used to build some sort of communication device. Or . . .

  Oh, right. There’s no Internet to tell me how to build something like that. No Internet to help me analyze it.

  My heart sank, but I did my best to press my toes together the rest of the afternoon. I did my best to think through anything I’d ever learned about precious minerals.

  They wouldn’t have us mining all these pea-shaped pebbles for nothing, would they?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sun was setting the last time I stabbed the shovel into the ground—and this time, rather than immediately lift it up again, my hands let go. I stepped away from the shovel and Rosi straightened up before me, and both of us marched toward the concrete doorway alongside Edwy and Enu.

  I wanted to scream at the others, We’re done! They’re finally letting us stop! But my mouth still wouldn’t move; my throat wouldn’t release so much as a peep. I couldn’t even look directly at any of them to see if they were as filthy as I was, to see if they were as blistered and bloodied and sore. All I could do was try to clench my toes tightly together, to hold on to the one pebble I’d managed to keep there the entire afternoon.

  As soon as I stepped through the concrete doorway, I was hit with a blast of water. First, it just struck my mouth, and I swallowed and swallowed and swallowed, gratefully. Then a sudsier spray covered me from head to toe. The force of the water jerked my head back; it seemed strong enough to scour the skin off my face and arms and hands.

  I was glad that my phone—still in my back pocket—was waterproof and buttoned in. But no matter how hard I tried to keep my toes pressed tightly together, I could feel them splaying outward, just as my fingers spread wide to be cleaned thoroughly. The water zapped away all the dirt.

  But not the pebble! Try to hold on to the pebble! my brain screamed.

  Finally the blast of water stopped, and my dripping body began descending the stairs. A blast of hot air hit me, drying me and my clothes instantly.

  My right foot shifted in its sandal. Was there the tiniest lump under the ball of my foot? Could it be that all that water and hot air had only driven the pebble into a better hiding place?

  It drove me crazy that I couldn’t bend down and check. My feet kept climbing down. My whole body ached so badly from the day of hard labor that I wondered how my legs didn’t just crumple beneath me.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs again, and once a
gain we were in total darkness. Just as we had the night before, we all turned left, and once again I heard the clang of a gate or a prison door slamming shut behind us.

  That means they’re going to let you have control of your body again. Right . . . Right . . .

  No matter how I tried to lock my knees, I still fell. Once again I landed on Enu, but I quickly rolled away and reached for my foot.

  “I’m going to kill that Enforcer! I will!” Enu raged in the darkness. “Nobody treats me like that and gets away with it!”

  “At least Bobo and Cana and Zeba didn’t have to do that,” Rosi said. “All day long, that’s what I kept telling myself, to be grateful that they’re safe and far away from here. . . .”

  I could hear the tears in her voice.

  Edwy sniffed.

  “We need a plan,” he said.

  “Shh,” I said. “I have the start of one.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tell us!”

  “Did you figure out how to get out of here?”

  Their questions came so thick and fast, I couldn’t even tell who asked what. All I had was a pebble. Maybe I shouldn’t get the others’ hopes up.

  “Maybe the Enforcers are listening,” I said. “I’ll show you when I can. But did any of you notice anything useful while we were working?”

  “Are you kidding?” Enu snarled. “They wouldn’t let me turn my head to look at anything but rocks and dirt!”

  While he talked, I pulled the pebble from my sandal. I kept both hands over top of it, just in case the Enforcer was watching us with some sort of night-vision goggles.

  “Did anybody else notice the other work groups?” Rosi asked softly.

  “What?” Edwy and I said together. I was so stunned I almost dropped the pebble.

  “I could only see them out of the corner of my eye,” Rosi admitted. “Maybe a kilometer away. Eight people? Ten? I think they were all adults.”

  “What if this whole planet is full of prisoners?” Edwy asked.

  “We could join together and rebel,” Enu said.

  “Sure we could. If the Enforcers didn’t control us every minute of the day,” I said, then instantly wished I hadn’t.

  The other three fell silent.

  “What are the pebbles for?” Edwy asked. “How many Enforcers are guarding us? Where do they go during the day while we’re working?”

  “Why don’t you ask some important questions?” Enu asked. “Like when are they going to feed us next?”

  I felt around the entire surface of the pebble. It was round and smooth—it might as well have been a smaller version of the glass marbles my father talked about playing with as a child. Still keeping it sheltered with my left hand, I tried to dig my right thumbnail into the center of it.

  My thumbnail broke.

  Automatically, I reached for my phone. I could take a picture of the pebble and ask the Internet to identify it for me, and then . . .

  No connection, remember?

  I pulled my phone from my back pocket anyhow. At least I could shine the light from the phone’s screen onto the pebble, still keeping it under the cover of my hand. At least I could use the phone somehow.

  I tapped the phone to turn it back on. Nothing happened. I tapped again. Still nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing . . .

  “It won’t work!” I gasped. “My phone won’t work!”

  “So? It didn’t work last night, either,” Enu said almost accusingly.

  “No, this is worse! It won’t even turn on! It’s dead! I’ll never be able to do anything with it! How can this be happening?”

  I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I’d believed, all day long, that I would be able to get my phone to work again, that I would be able to use it somehow to save us all from this horrible place, that my brilliance with technology would get us all out of here.

  But I couldn’t even use the flashlight app. My phone was worthless. My brilliance was worthless. Being able to think didn’t even matter.

  My life might as well be over right now.

  I realized I was wailing.

  “Kiandra, calm down,” Rosi begged. “Maybe . . . just tell us what you were planning to do. We’ll help. I’m sure we can all work together to figure this out, without the phone.”

  Her voice trembled. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t any more certain of anything than I was.

  I stopped caring that the Enforcers might overhear us. Because there wasn’t any hope anyway.

  “It doesn’t matter!” I snarled at Rosi. “None of us can do anything! I smuggled one of the pebbles down here with my foot, but—”

  “Well, that’s kind of cool,” Edwy said admiringly. “I didn’t even think of trying that. How did you do it?”

  “Don’t you get it? I worked so hard to hold on to the pebble with my toes, and so what?” I screamed. “That didn’t do any good. I don’t even know what it is. I can’t even look at it! And it’s not like we can throw a lot of pebbles at the Enforcer who watches us, and kill him like Enu wants, because, duh, the pebble’s too small, and anyhow, during the day we can’t do anything the Enforcer doesn’t want us to do—”

  “Except you managed to pick up a pebble,” Rosi said quietly. “And hide it until we got down here.”

  “But that doesn’t matter!” I screamed, throwing all my fury and fear into yelling at Rosi.

  “Let me see that pebble,” Enu said.

  I felt his hand on my arm, jerking my hand toward him.

  I felt the pebble slip between my fingers.

  I heard it hit the floor.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” I yelled at Enu. “You made me drop it!”

  “We can find it again,” Rosi said, like she was talking to a little child. Her brother, maybe. “We’ll all look.”

  I began sliding my hand across the floor. I needed to get a grip. No matter how annoying she sounded, Rosi was actually right. Maybe the pebble was right where I heard it land. Or no, maybe it had bounced or rolled a little . . .

  Something snagged in a small crack under my little finger. Was it just loose mortar? I pressed down hard, bringing my fingers together. It was the pebble under my fingertips! But I felt it give way, like chalk on concrete.

  “It’s breaking!” I shrieked. “It’s broken!”

  I heard a sound like the striking of a match.

  And suddenly there was light everywhere.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I scrambled back, my brain shooting isolated words at me: Explosion! Danger! Watch out!

  But nothing exploded. Nothing changed—nothing had changed—except that we were all bathed in warm, glowing light. I could see the furrows in Enu’s forehead, the eyelashes surrounding Edwy’s widened eyes, the chipped fingernails on the hand Rosi clapped over her mouth.

  I slapped my hand back over the pebble, and instantly we were plunged into darkness again.

  “When the guard comes, let me do the talking,” I told the others, hoping they understood: We’ll make him think we don’t know anything about the pebble. We’ll make him think it stayed on our clothes by mistake, and it’s gone now, and . . .

  And how would I hide it if he insisted on searching us and our cell?

  “What was that?” Edwy asked.

  “Shh!” I hissed.

  My heart thumped so hard against my chest. I waited.

  Nothing happened.

  “Kiandra, I don’t think the guard is coming,” Rosi whispered. “I don’t think he’s watching or listening to us now.”

  “We’re already in a cage. Why would he bother watching us?” Enu asked.

  My heartbeat slowed down ever so slightly.

  “Can you please let us see again?” Edwy asked. “Before the light burns out and we’ve wasted it all?”

  Oh, no—what if I’ve already wasted it all?

  I pulled my hand back, and we were lucky: The light glowed out from the pebble once again, clear and beautiful. Rosi grinned. Edwy raised his eyebrows. Enu blin
ked in astonishment. I could see them all perfectly well.

  I could also see the hard gray walls that surrounded us on three sides—stone, maybe? Something synthetic that was even stronger than stone? The floor and ceiling seemed to be made of the same substance as the walls, and any hopes I might have had of tunneling out died instantly.

  The fourth side of our prison cell was lined with thick bars that could have been iron or steel or whatever counted as this planet’s strongest metal. Even if we’d had the right tools, I don’t think we could have sawed through those bars.

  Then I saw that some of the bars were already missing.

  “Quick! That way! Let’s get out of here while we can! While the light still works!” I pointed at the section of our cage that was completely open. Beyond it was a blank wall—and the hallway we’d walked down before.

  Enu, with his athlete’s instincts, sprang up immediately and sprinted toward the gap in the bars. He leaped out of the cell like a runner crossing the finish line. He raised his arms in the air, victorious.

  Edwy, Rosi, and I were a little slower. The other two paused to glance around cautiously. I waited to scoop up the pebble, to carry it with us. And just in the few moments we’d been crouched in the prison cell, my muscles had gone stiff from the long day of work. It hurt to step forward.

  But by the time we reached the gap in the bars, it was gone. The bars from the other side of the cage slid silently in front of us, blocking our way.

  “So that’s how this works,” Edwy said. “They were lazy. They didn’t think they had to build a whole cage because they didn’t think we’d ever have enough light to see it.”

  “And they didn’t think anyone would run as fast as Enu,” Rosi agreed.

  “Well, nobody would, in the dark,” Edwy said.

  “We have to split up,” I said.

  I jogged over to the other side of the prison cell, and the bars followed me. Quickly, Edwy and Rosi stepped out of the cage, joining Enu out in the hall.

  “Now you just have to run as fast as me,” Enu told me.

  His eyes shone like they always did when he’d been playing basketball. It was like he’d forgotten that we were on another planet, forgotten that the Enforcers had taken over Earth and could take over our bodies. For him this was just another sport.