Replica (14 page)

“Dr. Saperstein,” 72 said, naming him first. Lyra could only nod. The man in the pictures was unmistakably Dr. Saperstein, whom Lyra had always thought of a little like the humans thought about their God: someone remote and all-powerful, someone through whom the whole world was ordered.

Lyra could no longer hear Sheri talking. But after a minute, there was a quick burst of laughter from the other room and she knew they still had a little time.

“Quick,” she said. “Help me check the other frames.”

She flipped over the second picture. Like the first, its backing had been pulled away from the frame and then reglued. But this one had been done more carefully and was difficult to detach. 72 leaned across her, knife in hand, and neatly sliced the canvas, barely missing her fingers.

“It's faster,” he said, and leaned across her to slit open the back of the third picture.

They found, behind the second picture, a folded sheet of paper that looked at first glance to be a list of names and a typed document, although Lyra didn't have time to try and read it. She didn't have time to check the third picture frame, either. At that moment she heard a door
open, and Sheri's voice, suddenly amplified.

“I'll call you tomorrow,” she was saying. “I'm being rude . . .”

Sheri would only have to glance at the frames to know what they had done and to guess, probably, that something had been removed from behind the pictures. Without speaking, she and 72 stood up from the table and moved as quietly as they could to the back door, which opened out onto a little patio. Sheri was still trying to get off the phone. Lyra saw her pass momentarily into view and froze, one hand on the door handle.

“I have
guests
,” Sheri was saying. “But I was listening, I promise . . .”

Then Sheri, who was pacing, passed out of view again without looking up.

Lyra eased open the screen door, wincing when it squeaked on its hinges. 72 ducked outside onto the stone patio. One of the cats was still staring at her, unblinkingly, and for a terrifying second Lyra thought it might open its mouth and let out a wail of alarm.

But it made not a sound, and so Lyra slipped after 72, closing the door behind her.

Turn the page to continue reading Lyra's story.
Click here
to read Chapter 12 of Gemma's story.

LYRA HALF EXPECTED SHERI TO come running after them, and they were several blocks away before she thought that they were probably safe. They found another park, with several dirty sandboxes and a rusted swing set at its center. But there were trees here, and shade, and they were alone.

She examined the pictures again, one by one. She'd seen romance on the nurses' televisions, of course, and heard the staff at Haven talk about boyfriends and girlfriends and wives and husbands. She knew about it. But knowing about what humans did, the kinds of relationships they had on TV, was different from seeing and holding proof of this. Dr. Saperstein had struck her not so much as human but as some bloodless stone deity come to life. She had never once seen him smile. True, he wasn't smiling in these pictures, either, but he was dressed in T-shirts and striped shorts and
a baseball hat, like he could have been anybody. This made him more frightening to her, not less. She thought of the snakes at Haven that left their long, golden skins on the ground, brittle and husk-like.

Nurse Em was hardly recognizable. She looked so happy. Lyra thought again of the last time she'd seen her—sobbing into Dr. O'Donnell's arms. And she had killed herself, using a rope instead of a knife, as Pepper had.

What had happened?

Sheri had mentioned men in suits visiting Nurse Em before she died. Was Dr. Saperstein one of them? Before looking at the photographs, Lyra had never seen him in anything but a lab coat.

She unfolded the list. 72 leaned over her. He smelled sweet, as if he was sweating soap. “What does it say?” he asked impatiently, and she had the sudden, ridiculous urge to take his hand, to tuck herself into the space between his arm and shoulder, as Nurse Em and Dr. Saperstein were doing in the picture.

She read instead thirty-four names—all names she didn't know, nobody she recognized from Haven—in alphabetical order. Donald Bartlett. Caroline Ciao. Brandy-Nicole Harliss. She stopped. That name seemed somehow familiar, and yet she couldn't think why. But rereading it gave her the weirdest sensation, like when the
doctors used to bang her on the knee to test her reflexes and she would see her body jerk. Like something inside of her was
stirring
.

The second piece of paper, Lyra had trouble deciphering at first. It wasn't a list, but a full page of writing, and it picked up in the middle of a sentence. As Lyra began to read, she had the impression that Nurse Em was talking to
her
, to an invisible other body that existed beyond the page.

. . . eggs on my car,
it began. Lyra read the phrase several times, trying to make sense of it, before she decided there must have been a first sheet that had gotten lost. She kept reading, and both because it was easier for her to spell the words out and 72 was getting impatient, she read slowly, out loud.

“‘Mark tells me not to worry so much. I know they're kooks'”—Lyra stumbled a little over the word, since she'd never heard it—“‘but they aren't that far off. Someone stopped me the other day after I caught the ferry. They're raising zombies, aren't they? she said. A normal woman. Someone you'd see at the grocery store.” She continued reading.

It gave me chills, Ellen. I felt for a second as if she knew. Is it really so different, after all?

I tell you, I never thought I'd miss Philadelphia. I don't miss the winters, that's for sure. But I miss you, Elbow, and
I miss how simple things felt back then. I even miss that shitty apartment we found through Drexel—remember?—and that stupid ex-boyfriend of yours who used to throw cans at your window. Ben? Sometimes I even miss our coursework (!!). At least I felt like we were on the right path.

I know what you'll say. It's the same thing Mark says. And I believe in the science, I do. If a parent loses a child . . . well, to have that child back . . . Who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't try? When I think of people like Geoffrey Ives . . . All the money in the world and a dead baby that he couldn't save and all he wants is to make it better. To undo it.

But is it right? Mark thinks so. But I don't know. I can't decide. Dr. Haven wants to keep the NIH out of our hair, so he stays clear of dealing with the clinics, even though they've got fetal tissue they'll sell off for just the transportation fee. But already the funds are running thin. I don't think there's any way we'll last unless we get federal support, but if good old George W. outlaws spending on the research. . . .

Then there's the question of Dr. Haven. Ever since he went into AA, he's been changing. Mark worries he'll shut down the program, shut down the whole institution. He doesn't seem to be sure, at least not anymore, and if the donors' money dries up, we'll have to go in a totally new direction. Mark thinks there might be other ways, military research, cures—

The writing stopped. Lyra flipped over the page, but there was nothing more. She'd either been interrupted or the rest of what she'd said had been lost. Lyra also assumed from the reference to an Ellen, a name, that Nurse Em must have been intending the message for someone specific. She had never passed it on. But she'd felt it was important enough to hide—to hide well—and to deliver to someone before she died.

Was she hoping Sheri would find it?

What was Nurse Em hoping she'd see?

It was a puzzle. It was data. It was a
code,
like DNA was.

All codes could be read, if you only knew the key.

For a long minute, she and 72 stood there in silence, in the shadow of a construction of wood and rope and plastic whose purpose she didn't know. Codes everywhere. That was the problem with the outside world, the human world. The whole thing was made up of puzzles, of a language she didn't quite speak.

“What does it mean?” 72 asked finally, and she realized that that was the question: about standing in the park, about him and his moods and the way he sometimes rubbed the back of his neck as if something was bothering him there, about their escape and the fact that they were dying anyway but she didn't feel like she was dying. She didn't feel like dying.

What does it mean?

She had never asked that question.

She forced herself to reread, squinting, as if she could squeeze more meaning from the letters that way. She knew that Haven made replicas from human tissue, and she knew, of course, that it must have come from humans, people. She knew there were hospitals and clinics that did business with Haven, although she didn't know how she knew this, exactly. It was just a fact of life, like the cots and the Stew Pot and
failure to thrive.

And she knew what zombies were. The nurses had talked about them, about several zombie movies and how scary they were. Lyra explained what they were to 72 but he, too, had heard of them. The human world—or at least some of it—had penetrated Haven.

“Read it out loud again,” he said, and she did, conscious all the time of the sun on the back of her neck and 72 and his smell and that question—
what does it mean?
—all of it shimmering momentarily and so present and also so insubstantial, like something on fire, hot and at the same time burning into nonexistence.

She took her time with the sentences she thought were most important.

. . . he stays clear of dealing with the clinics, even though they've got fetal tissue they'll sell off for just the transportation fee . . .

When I think of people like Geoffrey Ives . . .

All the money in the world and a dead baby that he couldn't save . . .

And finally she understood.

“Dead children,” Lyra said.
Zombies
.
Is it so different?
“They were making replicas from dead children.” Was that how she'd been made? From the tissue of a child who'd been loved, grieved over, and lost? It shouldn't have made a difference and yet it did, somehow. It wasn't even the fact that the children had died as much as the fact that at one time they'd been cared for.

And yet the process of making their doubles—the
science
of it—had turned Lyra and the other replicas into something different. She remembered how sometimes the voices of the protesters had carried over on the wind, across the miles of snaggletoothed marshes.
Monsters,
they'd shouted.

But for the first time Lyra felt not shame, but anger. She hadn't asked to be made. She'd been brought into the world a monster and then hated for it, and it wasn't her fault, and there was no meaning behind that.

None at all.

“It doesn't make sense,” 72 said. “Why kill us, then?”

“Something changed,” Lyra said. She could hardly remember Dr. Haven. She may have seen him once or
twice. She could vividly recall his face, but then again she'd seen pictures of him her whole life: Dr. Haven in oils staring down at them from the framed painting at the end of the mess hall, Dr. Haven in black and white, pictured squinting into the sun in front of G-Wing.

They stood there again in silence. Had Lyra been intended originally for the human parents of a child who had died? But if so, why had they never come for her? Maybe they had, but found the substitute terrible.

Maybe they hadn't been able to stomach looking at her—the flimsy substitute for the girl they'd loved and had to grieve.

“She mentions a cure,” 72 said quietly. “Maybe you were right. Maybe she did know something that could help us.”

“Well, she's dead now,” Lyra said. Her voice sounded hollow, as if she were speaking into a cup.

“Lyra.” 72 touched her elbow, and she pulled away from him. His touch burned,
physically
burned, although she knew that was impossible. His skin was no hotter than anyone else's. She turned away from him, blinking hard, and for a second, looking out across the park and to the houses in the distance—all those parents, families, moms and dads—she transformed the afternoon sun striking the windows into white flame, and imagined burning the whole world down, just like they'd burned down Haven.

“On the bus you asked me why the cuts,” 72 said. This surprised her, and she momentarily forgot her anger and turned back to look at him. His skin in the light looked like something edible, coffee and milk. “When I was younger I didn't understand what I was.
If
I was.”

Lyra didn't have to say anything to show she understood. She had wondered the same thing. She had confused
it
for
I
, had pinched number 25 to see if she herself would feel it, because she didn't understand where she ended and the herd began.

“I started thinking maybe I wasn't real. And then I started worrying that I wasn't, that I was disappearing. I used to . . .” He swallowed and rubbed his forehead, and Lyra realized with a sudden thrill she
knew
what he was feeling: he was scared. She had read him.

“It's okay,” she said automatically.

“I got hold of one of the doctor's scalpels once,” he said, in a sudden rush. “I kept it in my mattress, took out some of the stuffing so that no one would find it.” Lyra thought of the hole in Ursa Major's mattress, and all the things they'd found stashed inside of it. She thought, too, of how Ursa had just stood there and screamed while her mattress was emptied—one high, shrill note, like the cresting of an alarm. “I used to have to check. I felt better when I saw the blood. I knew I was still alive, then.” He raised his eyes to hers, and in her chest she had a lifting, swooping
sensation, as if something heavy had come loose. “You wanted to know. So I'm telling you.”

She didn't know what to say. So she said, “Thank you.” She reached out and moved her finger from his elbow all the way to his wrist, over the ridge of his scars, to show him it was okay, and that she understood. She could feel him watching her. She could
feel
him, everywhere he was, as if he was distorting the air, making it heavier.

She had never
felt
so much in her life.

“We'll go back,” 72 said, so quietly she nearly missed it.

“Back?” she repeated. He was standing so close she was suddenly afraid and took a step away from him.

“The girl, Gemma. And Jake.” He hesitated. “You were right all along. They might be able to help. They know about Haven. Maybe they'll know about a cure, too.”

“But . . .” She shook her head. “You said you didn't trust them.”

“I don't,” he said simply. “But I don't trust anyone.”

“Even me?” Lyra asked.

Something changed in his eyes. “You're different,” he said, in a softer voice.

“Why?” She was aware of how close they were, and of the stillness of the afternoon, all the trees bound and silent.

He almost smiled. He reached up. He pressed a thumb
to her lower lip. His skin tasted like salt. “Because we're the same.”

Lyra knew they'd never be able to backtrack. They'd left the house in the middle of the night and they'd hardly been paying attention—they'd been thinking of nothing but escape—and she could remember no special feature of the house to which they'd been taken, nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors.

Fortunately, 72 remembered that Jake had written down his address and phone number. They couldn't call—72 had stolen Jake's phone, and besides, Lyra had never made a call before and, though she had often seen the nurses talking on their cell phones, wasn't sure she knew how to do it—and so they started the process again of asking strangers how to get to 1211 Route 12, Little Waller, Florida.

A woman with hair frosted a vague orange color directed them to a car rental agency, but almost as soon as they entered, the man behind the counter began asking for licenses and credit cards and other things neither one of them had. Lyra got flustered again, upsetting a small display of maps with her elbow so the maps went fanning out across the counter. 72 got angry. He accused the man of shouting.