“I didn’t come this far to be a toy,” he said. “I could have gone back to Haven for that.”
Lyra didn’t know what he meant, exactly, but she could guess from his tone of voice. “They’ve been good to us,” she said. “They helped us. They fed us. They gave us clothes and somewhere to sleep.”
“Exactly. So what do they want? They must want something. They’re people,” he said. “That’s what they do. Don’t you see? That’s all they ever do. They want.”
Was that true? She didn’t know. What had Dr. O’Donnell wanted from her? Or Nurse Em, who always smiled at the replicas, who had once told Lyra she had pretty eyes, who saved up her old ferry tokens to give to the young kids to play checkers with?
But maybe that was why they had left Haven: they did not fit in. She still didn’t understand what made people so different from replicas, had never been able to understand it. And she had wanted things too, in her life. She had wanted to learn to read. She had been hungry, cold, and tired, and wanted food and her bed. But it was true she had never hurt anyone to get what she wanted.
Was that what made her less than human?
“Is that enough for you?” 72 said. He scared her when he looked this way, and reminded her of the statue in the courtyard at Haven, whose face, deformed by rain, was sightless and cold. “Someone to feed you and order you around, tell you when to sleep? Like a dog?”
She stood. “Well, what’s the difference?” she said, and she could tell she’d surprised him, because he flinched. She was surprised, too. Her voice was much louder than she’d expected. “We’re replicas, aren’t we? We might as well be dogs. That’s how they think of us anyway. That’s what we were made for. To be dogs—or rats. You weren’t pretending all those years ago. You were a roach.”
He stared at her for a long second. She could see his chest rising with his breath and knew that beneath his skin hundreds of tiny muscles were contracting in his face even to hold it there, still, watching her. The idea of him and what he was made of, all the different fragile parts spun together, made her dizzy.
Finally he looked away. “That’s why I ran,” he said. “I wanted to know whether we could be good for anything else. I wanted to try.” To her surprise, he smiled, just a little. “Besides, even roaches run away. Rats, too.”
They went through the guesthouse, looking for anything that would be useful. In a bedroom closet beneath extra pillows they found an old backpack, which they filled with the remaining granola bars and bottles of water, plus the bathroom things that Gemma had bought for them. Lyra knew they likely wouldn’t need soap but couldn’t stand to leave the pretty, paper-wrapped bars behind, so different from anything she’d ever owned.
Jake had left his cell phone charging in the corner and 72 took it, although they had no one to call. It excited Lyra to have it in their possession, to touch the screen and leave fingerprints there. Only people had cell phones.
They took knives from the kitchen, a blanket from the otherwise empty cabinet by the bed. She didn’t feel guilty about stealing from Jake and Gemma, who had helped them. She felt nothing at all. Maybe, she thought, the nurses had been right about replicas. Maybe they didn’t have souls.
By then the main house had gone dark. 72 suggested they turn the light off too, so in case Jake and Gemma were looking out for them, they would believe Lyra and 72 had gone to bed. They waited there, in the dark, for another twenty minutes just to be sure. They sat again on the sofa side by side, and Lyra thought of her dream of entanglement, all those inches and inches of exposed skin. She was glad he couldn’t see her.
Finally he touched her elbow. “It’s time,” he said. His face in the dark was different colors of shadow.
Outside, the sound of insects and tree frogs startled Lyra: a rhythmic and almost mechanical thrumming that recalled the throaty roar of Mr. I.
“Wait.” 72 nudged her. Gemma was curled up on a plastic deck chair, still wearing her clothes, using several colorful towels as blankets. Lyra was confused. Had she been watching them? Trying to make sure they didn’t escape? She couldn’t imagine why she would have otherwise chosen to sleep outside.
Before she could stop him, 72 was already moving closer, stepping very carefully. Lyra followed him with a growing sense of unease. Gemma’s face in the moonlight looked so much like Cassiopeia’s, she wanted to reach out and lay a hand on Gemma’s chest, to feel her breathing and believe Cassiopeia had come back to life. But she didn’t, obviously.
Lying next to Gemma on the pool deck was an open notebook. A pen had rolled into the binding. As always Lyra was drawn to the words scribbled across the page. They appeared to glow faintly in the moonlight. Gemma’s writing, she thought, was very beautiful. The words reminded her of bird tracks, of birds themselves, pecking their way proudly across the page.
Then a familiar name caught her attention: Emily Huang. Nurse Em.
She placed a finger on the page, mouthing the words written directly beneath the name. Palm Grove. The words meant nothing to her. There were other names on the page, all of them unfamiliar except for Dr. Saperstein’s, which was joined by a small notation to the Home Foundation. She didn’t know what that was, either, but beneath it was at last another word she recognized: Gainesville. This, she knew, was a place. A big place. Jake and Gemma had argued about whether they should be getting off at the highway exit to Gainesville and Jake had said, No one wants to go to Gainesville, and then Gemma had said, Except the half a million people who live there. She figured that Palm Grove might be a place, too.