Replica (Replica #1)(2)
“Ungrateful,” she said, before she, too, let herself out. Even then they could see her through the windows overlooking the hall, moving back and forth, occasionally touching her cross.
“What’s Code Black?” Rose asked, hugging her knees to her chest. They’d run out of stars ever since Dr. O’Donnell, the only staff member Lyra had never nicknamed, had stopped giving them lessons. Instead the replicas selected names for themselves from the collection of words they knew, words that struck them as pretty or interesting. There was Rose, Palmolive, and Private. Lilac Springs and Tide. There was even a Fork.
As usual, only Cassiopeia—number 6, one of the oldest replicas besides Lyra—knew.
“Code Black means security’s down,” she said. “Code Black means someone’s escaped.”
Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 1 of Gemma’s story.
TWO
H-U-M-A-N. THE FIRST WORD WAS hu-man.
There were two kinds of humans: natural-born humans, people, women and men, girls and boys, like the doctors and staff, the researchers, the guards, and the Suits who came sometimes to survey the island and its inhabitants.
Then there were human models, males and females, made in the laboratory and transferred to the surrogate birthers, who lived in the barracks and never spoke English. The clones, people occasionally still called them, though Lyra knew this was a bad word, a hurtful word, even though she didn’t know why. At Haven they were called replicas.
The second word was M-O-D-E-L. She spelled it, breathing the sounds lightly between her teeth, the way that Dr. O’Donnell had taught her. Then: the number 24. So the report was about her.
“How are you feeling today?” Nurse Swineherd asked. Lyra had named her only last month. She didn’t know what a swineherd was but had heard Nurse Rachel say, Some days I’d rather be a swineherd, and had liked the sound of it. “Lots of excitement last night, huh?” As always, she didn’t wait for a response, and instead forced Lyra down onto the examination table, so she no longer had a view of the file.
Lyra felt a quick flash of anger, like a temporary burst in her brain. It wasn’t that she was curious about the report. She had no desire in particular to know about herself, to find out why she was sick and whether she could be cured. She understood, in general terms, from things insinuated or overheard, that there were still glitches in the process. The replicas were born genetically identical to the source material but soon presented with various medical problems, organs that didn’t function properly, blood cells that didn’t regenerate, lungs that collapsed. As they got older, they lost their balance, forgot words and place names, became easily confused, and cried more. Or they simply failed to thrive in the first place. They stayed skinny and stunted. They smashed their heads on the floor, and when the Suits came, screamed to be picked up. (In the past few years God had mandated that the newest generational crops be picked up, bounced, or engaged in play for at least two hours every day. Research suggested that human contact would keep them healthier for longer. Lyra and the other older replicas took turns with them, tickling their fat little feet, trying to make them smile.)
Lyra had fallen in love with reading during the brief, ecstatic period of time when Dr. O’Donnell had been at Haven, which she now thought of as the best months of her life. When Lyra read, it was as if a series of small windows opened in the back of her mind, flooding her with light and fresh air and visions of other places, other lives, other, period. The only books at Haven were books about science and the body, and these were difficult and full of words she couldn’t sound out. But she read charts when they were left unattended on countertops. She read the magazines the nurses left behind in their break room.
Nurse Swineherd kept talking while she took Lyra’s blood pressure with Squeezeme and stuck Thermoscan under her tongue. Lyra liked Squeezeme and Thermoscan. She liked the way Squeezeme tightened around her upper arm, like a hand holding on to lead her somewhere. She liked Thermoscan’s reassuring beeps, and afterward when Nurse Swineherd said, “Perfectly normal.”
She added, “Don’t know what it was thinking, running that way. Breathe deeply, okay? Good. Now exhale. Good. It’ll drown before it gets past the breaks. Did you hear the surf last night? Like thunder! I’m surprised the body hasn’t turned up already, actually.”
Lyra knew she wasn’t expected to reply. The one time she had, in response to Nurse Swineherd’s cheerful question, “How are we today?” Nurse Swineherd had startled, dropping one of the syringes—Lyra hated the syringes, refused to name them—and had to start over. But she wondered what it would be like to come across the dead body on the beach. She wasn’t afraid of dead bodies. She had seen hundreds of replicas get sick and die. All the Yellows had died, none of them older than twelve months. A fluke, the doctors said: a fever. Lyra had seen the bodies wrapped and prepared for shipping.
A Purple from the seventh crop, number 333, had simply stopped eating. By the time they put her on a tube, it was too late. Number 501 swallowed twenty-four small white Sleepers after Nurse Em, who used to help shave her head and was always gentlest with the razor, went away. Number 421 had gone suddenly, in her sleep. It was Lyra who’d touched her arm to wake her and known, from the strange plastic coldness of her body, that she was dead. Strange that in an instant all the life just evaporated, went away, leaving only the skin and bones, a pile of flesh.