Replica (Replica #1)(37)

“How do you know that?” 72 said. He took a step forward, and Lyra nearly tripped trying to get away from him. She didn’t want to be anywhere near him, not after what had happened. Even standing several inches away she felt a current moving through her body, something warm and alive, something that whispered. She hated it.

“I just know,” she said. “She left Haven. She wanted to help us.” In her head she added, Because Dr. O’Donnell believed in her. Because Dr. O’Donnell was always right. She wished, more than anything, that she knew where Dr. O’Donnell lived, and imagined once again the feel of Dr. O’Donnell’s hand skimming the top of her head. Mother. She thought Dr. O’Donnell’s house must be all white and very clean, just like Haven. But maybe instead of being on the ocean it was in a field, and the smell of flowers came through the open windows on the wind.

Another car went by, this time with a punch of music and rhythm. Then another car. This time the window went down and a boy had his head out of it, yelling something she couldn’t make out. An empty can missed her head by only a few inches.

For a long time, 72 just stared at her. She wondered again whether she was ugly, whether he realized that now, the same way she knew now that he was beautiful. As a replica it had never mattered, and it shouldn’t matter now, but it did. She wondered if this was the human world rubbing off on her, whether she might become more human by becoming uglier, by accepting it.

She didn’t want to be ugly in his eyes.

Finally he said, “We should get off the road and find somewhere to sleep for the night.” She thought he almost smiled. “Well, we can’t sleep here. And you heard him. There are no buses until morning.”

They moved off the road and walked instead through a scrum of crushed paper cups, cigarette butts, and empty plastic bags. Soon they came to an area of buildings groveling under the lights that encircled them, including a sign in neon that read Liquorz. Lit as they were in starkness and isolation, they reminded Lyra briefly and painfully of Haven at night when, sleepily, she would get up to use the bathroom and would look out and see the guard towers and floodlights making harsh angles out of the landscape.

One of the buildings’ pitched roofs tapered into the form of a cross and so she thought it must be a church, although otherwise it was identical to its neighbors: shingle-sided and gray, separated by a narrow band of cracked pavement from a gas station and a diner, both closed for the night. Lyra saw that someone had written I was here across the plywood and wasn’t surprised. In a world this big, it must be easy to get lost and need reminders.

Behind the church was a weed-choked field that extended toward another road in the distance, this one even busier. Headlights beaded down the thin fold in the dark like blood along a needle. But the noise was transformed by all the space into a constant shushing, like the sound of ocean waves. They shook out their blanket here, and Lyra was glad that they’d decided to sleep so close to the road and the lights. The space in between, the nothingness and distance, frightened her.

The blanket was small, and when they lay down side by side, on their backs, they couldn’t help but touch. Lyra didn’t know how she would sleep. Her body was telling her something again, urging her to move, to run, to touch him. Instead she crossed her arms tightly and stared at the sky until the stars sharpened in her vision. She tried to pick out Cassiopeia. When she was little, she’d liked to pretend that stars were really lights anchoring distant islands, as if she wasn’t looking up but only out across a dark sea. She knew the truth now but still found stars comforting, especially in their sameness. A sky full of burning replicas.

“Do you know more stories?”

Lyra was startled. She’d thought 72 was asleep. His eyes were closed and one arm was thrown across his face, so his voice was muffled.

“What do you mean?”

He withdrew the arm but kept his eyes closed, so she was free to look at him. Again, his face looked very bare in the dark, as if during the day he wore a different face that only now, with his eyes closed, had rubbed away. She noticed the particular curve of his lips and nostrils, the smooth arrangement of his cheekbones, and wanted to touch and explore them with her fingers. “You can read. You told that story on the marshes. About the girl, Matilda. You must know more, then.”

She thought of The Little Prince and its soft cover, creased through the illustration, its smudgy papers and its smell, now lost forever. She squeezed her ribs hard, half wishing she would crack. “Only one more good one,” she said.

“Tell it,” he said.

Again she was surprised. “What?”

This time he opened his eyes, turning slightly to face her. “Tell it,” he said. And then: “Please.” His lashes were very long. His lips looked like fruit, something to suck on. Now he did smile. She saw his teeth flash white in the dark.

She looked away. The stars spun a little, dizzy above her. “There,” she said, lifting an arm to point. “See that star?”

“Which one?”

“That one. The little twinkly one, just next to the one that looks almost blue.”

It didn’t matter whether he was looking at exactly the same star as she was. But after a moment he said, “I see it.”

“That’s Planet B-612,” she said. “It’s an asteroid, actually. And that’s where the Little Prince comes from.” She closed her eyes, and in her head she heard echoes of Dr. O’Donnell’s voice, smelled lemon soap, watched a finger tracking across the page, pointing out different words. “It’s a small planet, but it’s his. There are three volcanoes on the surface, one active, two inactive. And there are baobab plants that try and overgrow everything. There’s a rose, too. The Little Prince loves the rose.” This was the part of the book that had most confused her, but she said it anyway, because she knew it was important.