Replica (Replica #1)(26)

“Okay,” Lyra said, because 72 had just opened his mouth, and she was tired of being spoken for, tired of letting him decide for her. He wasn’t a doctor. He had no right to tell her what to do. But she had followed him and she had to make the best of it.

Besides, she didn’t think Gemma wanted to hurt them, though she couldn’t have said why. Maybe only because Gemma was Cassiopeia’s replica, although she knew that was stupid—genotypes often had different personalities. Number 120 had tried to suffocate her own genotype while she slept, because she wanted to be the real one. The only one. Cassiopeia was nice to Lyra, but Calliope liked to kill things. She had once killed a bird while Lyra was watching. And 121 had never spoken a single word.

“Okay, we’ll go with you,” she said a little louder, when 72 turned to look at her. She was pleased when he didn’t argue, felt a little stronger, a little more in control. Cassiopeia’s replica would help them. They needed to know what had happened to Haven and why. Then they could figure out what to do next.

Jake and Gemma had come on a boat called a kayak. Lyra had never seen one before and didn’t especially want to ride in it, but there was no choice. Gemma and Jake would have to go on foot, and there might be places so deep they’d have to swim. Neither 72 nor Lyra had ever learned to swim, and she nearly asked him what he had meant by trying to escape Haven, how he’d expected to survive. When she was little she had sometimes dreamed of escape, dreamed of going home on the launches with one of the staff members, being dressed and cared for and cuddled. But she had learned better, had folded that need down inside of her, stored it away. Otherwise, she knew, she might go crazy, like so many of the other replicas who’d chosen to die or tried to sneak out on the trash barges with the nurses and been killed by exhaust in the engine room.

Once again, she wondered if 72 was just a little bit crazy.

Being in the kayak felt like being on a narrow, extremely wobbly gurney. The seat was wet. Her stomach lurched as 72 shoved the kayak into the shallows and then clambered in himself, refusing Jake’s help. She couldn’t believe they didn’t just sink. She was uncomfortably aware of the sloshing of the water below her, which seemed to be attempting to jettison her out of her seat. She was afraid to move, afraid even to breathe.

But miraculously, the kayak stayed afloat, and 72 soon got the hang of paddling. The muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out when he moved, and Lyra found him unexpectedly beautiful to watch. She began to relax, despite the painful slowness of their progress and the continued rhythm of motorboats in the distance, and the ripples from their wakes that sent water sloshing into the kayak.

She should be afraid. She didn’t know much about feelings, but she knew that Gemma was afraid, and Jake was afraid, and even 72 was afraid. But for some reason, for a short time, the fear released her. She was floating, gliding toward a new life. She had never thought she’d know what it felt like to be out on the water, had never imagined that a life outside Haven could exist. The outside world, constantly visible to her through the fence, had nonetheless seemed like the soap operas she sometimes saw on the nurses’ TV: pretty to look at but essentially unreal.

But the novelty soon wore off. The insects were thick. Gnats swarmed them in mists. They hardly seemed to be moving. Tendrils of floating grass made certain routes impassable and had to be manually separated or threshed aside with a paddle. Several times Gemma lost her footing in the water and nearly went under. Lyra wondered how long they would be able to go, whether they would make it. She wondered whether they would have to leave Gemma behind, and thought of Cassiopeia lying in the reeds while the sun burned away her retinas.

She felt a momentary regret but didn’t know why. Death was natural. Decay, too. It was another thing that made replicas and humans similar: they died.

Finally Gemma called them to a stop. Lyra was relieved for the break and the chance to get off the water, especially now that the midmorning sun was like an exposed eye.

They’d barely dragged the kayak out of the water when Jake yelled, “Get down.”

The hum of an approaching helicopter suddenly doubled, tripled in volume. Lyra’s breath was knocked away by its pressure. They went into a crouch beneath the fat sprawl of a mangrove tree as the helicopter roared by overhead. The whole ground trembled. Marsh grass lay flat beneath the wind threshed from the helicopter’s giant rotor. Looking up through the branches, Lyra saw a soldier leaning out of the open door to point at something on the horizon. Then the helicopter was gone.

They left the kayak behind and went the rest of the way on foot. The ground was soft and wet and they had to wade through tidal pools where the mud was studded with sharp-toothed clams and splinters of broken shells. The growth here was different, the trees taller and less familiar to Lyra. She felt as if they were moving deep in an undiscovered wilderness and was shocked when instead Gemma gave a cry of relief and the trees opened up to reveal a small dirt clearing, corroded metal trash bins, and various signs she was too tired to read.

“Thank God,” Gemma said. Lyra watched as Jake moved to a dusty car parked in the lot and loaded his backpack into it. She was afraid all over again. She knew about cars because she’d seen them on TV and Lazy Ass was always complaining about hers, piece-of-shit, but she didn’t think she wanted to ride in one. Especially since, according to Lazy Ass’s stories, at least, cars were always breaking down or leaking oil or giving trouble in some way.