Replica (Replica #1)(29)

When the gate closed behind them with a loud clang, Lyra truly felt safe for the first time since leaving Haven. Contained. Controlled. Protected.

Next to the pool was a miniature version of the big house. Sliding doors opened into a large carpeted room that was dark and deliciously cold. The house was mostly white, which Lyra liked. It was like being back in Haven. Goose bumps ran along Lyra’s arm, as if someone had just touched her. Where the carpet ran out was a kitchen alcove that Lyra identified only by its stove: it looked nothing like the kitchen in Stew Pot, a vast and shiny space filled with the hiss of steam from industrial dishwashers. Through an open door she saw a large bed, also made up with a white sheet and blankets and so many pillows she couldn’t imagine what they were all for. And lined up on bookshelves next to the sofa: books. Dozens of books, four times as many as she’d seen in the nurses’ break room, so many that in her excitement the titles blended together and she couldn’t make out a single one.

She wanted to touch them. Their spines looked like different-colored candies the nurses exchanged sometimes, like the sugared lozenges the replicas got sometimes when they had coughs. But she was almost afraid to, afraid that if she did they would all blow apart. She wondered how long it would take her to read every book on the shelves. Months. Years, even. Maybe they would be allowed to stay here, in this clean and pretty room, with the sun that patterned the carpet and the soft hum of hidden air-conditioning.

At W-A-L-M-A-R-T, Gemma had bought Lyra and 72 new clothes—“nothing fancy, and I had to guess how they would fit”—soap, shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste, and more food, including cereal and milk, granola bars, cans of soup she said she could show them how to heat in the microwave, and at least a dozen frozen meals. She showed them where the shower was—a single shower stall, the first Lyra had ever seen—and apologized that there was only one bed.

“So, you know, you’ll have to share, unless one of you wants to take the sofa,” she said. Lyra felt suddenly uncomfortable, remembering Pepper and her unborn baby, and how she’d been found with her wrists open; the Christmas parties when the doctors got drunk and sometimes visited the dorms late at night, staggering on their feet and smelling sharply of alcohol swabs. That was why it was better for males and females to stay apart. “I know you must be exhausted, so we’re going to leave you alone for a bit, okay? Just don’t go anywhere.”

Lyra didn’t bother pointing out that they had nowhere to go.

“Get some sleep,” Gemma said. The more Lyra looked at her, the less she resembled Cassiopeia and her other genotypes. That was the funny thing about genotypes, something the nurses and doctors, who could never tell them apart, had never understood. If you looked, you could see differences in the way they moved and spoke and used their hands. Over time, their personalities changed even the way that they looked. And of course Gemma was much heavier than Cassiopeia, and had long hair to her shoulders that looked soft to the touch. Gemma was nicer than Cassiopeia. More prone to worry, too. But they had the same stubbornness—that Lyra could see, too.

As soon as they were alone, Lyra went to the bookshelves. She could feel 72 watching her, but she didn’t care and couldn’t resist any longer. She reached up and ran a finger along the spines, each of them textured differently, some of them gloss-smooth and hard and others soft and crumbly like dirt. L-I-T-T-L-E W-O-M-E-N. Little Women. T-H-E G-O-L-D C-O-A-S-T. When she thought of The Little Prince, lost somewhere on the marshes, she still felt like crying. But these books made up for it, at least a little.

“You were telling the truth,” 72 said. He was watching her closely. “You can read.” He made it sound like a bad thing.

“I told you. Dr. O’Donnell taught me.” She kept skipping her fingers over the titles and, as she did, read out loud: “The Old Man and the Sea. The Long Walk. The Hunger Games.”

He came to stand next to her. Again she could smell him, an earthy sweetness that made her feel slightly dizzy. She’d never found out which of the males Pepper had been with, although Cassiopeia had said a male doctor, because of what happened at the Christmas party, because Pepper had been chosen. But she wondered, now, whether instead it was 72.

“Is it hard?” he asked.

“At the beginning,” she said. She didn’t know why she was thinking of Pepper. She took a step away from 72. “Not so much when you get the hang of it.”

“I thought only people could read,” he blurted out. When she turned to look at him, surprised by the tone of his voice, he turned away. “I’m going to get clean.”

A moment later, she heard the shower pipes shudder and the water start in the bathroom—a familiar sound that lulled her once again into exhaustion. She didn’t understand 72 and his rapid changes of mood. But he’d chosen to stay with her. He hadn’t left her behind. Maybe this complexity was a feature of the male replicas—she didn’t know, had never been allowed to interact with them.

She removed the file she’d taken from its filthy pillowcase and placed it carefully on the desk below the windows. Although she had a roomful of books now—a room full of books, an idea so exciting it made goose bumps on her arms again—the folder, and the single sheet of paper it contained, was her final tether to home. She recognized an old patient report—she’d seen enough of her own reports to recognize a version of the form still in use. But she was too tired to read, and she left the folder open on the desk and returned to the shelves, no longer trying to make sense of the words, just admiring the way the letters looked, the angles and curls and scrolled loops of them.