Replica (Replica #1)(44)

“‘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.