Replica

For the last test, Go Figure distributed papers and pens—Lyra held the pen up to her tongue surreptitiously, enjoying the taste of the ink; she wanted another pen badly for her collection—and asked that the replicas write down the five letters they’d memorized, in order. Most of the replicas had learned their numbers to one hundred and the alphabet A through Z, both so they could identify their individual beds and for use in testing, and Lyra took great pleasure in drawing the curves and angles of each number in turn, imagining that numbers, too, were like a language. When she looked up, she saw that Lilac Springs’s paper was still completely blank. Lilac Springs was holding her pen clumsily, staring at it as though she’d never seen one. She hadn’t even remembered a single letter, although Lyra knew she knew her numbers and was very proud of it.

Then Lazy Ass called time, and Nurse Go Figure collected the papers, and they sat in silence as the results were collected, tabulated, and marked in their files. Lyra’s palms began to sweat. Now.

“I forgot the letters,” Lilac Springs said. “I couldn’t remember the letters.”

“All right, that’s it.” Lazy Ass hauled herself out of her chair, wincing, as she always did after testing. The replicas stood, too. Only Lyra remained sitting, her heart clenching and unclenching in her chest.

As always, as soon as Lazy Ass was on her feet, she started complaining: “Goddamn shoes. Goddamn weather. And now my lazy ass gotta go all the way to Admin. Take me twenty minutes just to get there and back. And those men coming today.” Lazy Ass normally worked the security desk and subbed in to help with testing when she had to. She was at least one hundred pounds overweight, and her ankles swelled in the heat until they were thick and round as the trunks of the palms that lined the garden courtyard.‎

“Go figure,” said Go Figure, like she always did. She had burnished brown skin that always looked as if it had been recently oiled.

Now. Most of the other replicas had left. Only Lilac Springs remained, still seated, staring at the table.

“I’ll do it,” Lyra said. She felt breathless even though she hadn’t moved, and she wondered whether Lazy Ass would notice. But no. Of course she wouldn’t. Many of the nurses couldn’t even tell the replicas apart. When she was a kid, Lyra remembered staring at the nurses, willing them to stare back at her, to see her, to take her hand or pick her up or tell her she was pretty. She had once been moved to solitary for two days after she stole Nurse Em’s security badge, thinking that the nurse wouldn’t be able to leave at the end of the day, that she would have to stay. But Nurse Em had found a way to leave, of course, and soon afterward she had left Haven forever.

Lyra had gotten used to it: to all the leaving, to being left. Now she was glad to be invisible. They were invisible to her, too, in a way. That was why she’d given them nicknames.

Nurse Go Figure and Lazy Ass turned, staring. Lyra’s face was hot. Rosacea. She knew it all from a lifetime of listening to the doctors.

“What’d it say?” Lazy Ass said, very slowly. She wasn’t talking to Lyra, but Lyra answered anyway.

“It can do it,” Lyra said, forcing herself to stay very still. When she was little, she’d been confused about the difference between I and it and could never keep them straight. Sometimes when she was nervous, she still slipped up. She tried again. “I can bring the files to Admin for you.”

Go Figure snorted. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said.

But Lazy Ass kept staring, as though seeing Lyra for the first time. ‎“You know how to get to Admin?”

Lyra nodded. She had always lived at Haven. She would always live at Haven. There were many rooms locked, forbidden, accessible only by key cards and codes—many places she couldn’t enter, many closed doors behind which people moved, helmeted, suited up in white. But she knew all the lengths of the hallways and the time it took in seconds to get from the toilet to the Stew Pot and back; knew the desks and break rooms, stairways and back ways, like she knew the knobs of her own hips or the feel of the bed, number 24, that had always been hers. Like she knew Omiron and latex, Invacare Snake Tubing and Red Caps and the Glass Eyes.

Her friends, her enemies, her world.

“What’s Admin, Lyra?” Lilac Springs asked. She was going to ruin everything—and she knew where Admin was. Everybody did. Even Lilac Springs wasn’t that dumb.

“I’ll be quick,” Lyra said, ignoring Lilac Springs.

“Dr. Sappo won’t like it,” Go Figure said. Dr. Sappo was what the staff called God, but only when he couldn’t hear them. Otherwise they called him Dr. Saperstein or Director Saperstein. “They ain’t supposed to get their hands on nothing important.”

Lazy Ass snorted. “I don’t care if he do or don’t like it,” she said. “He ain’t got blisters the size of Mount St. Helens on both feet. Besides, he won’t know one way or the other.”

“What if it messes up?” Go Figure said. “Then you’ll be in trouble.”

“I won’t,” Lyra protested, and then cleared her throat when her voice came out as a croak. “Mess it up, I mean. I know what to do. I go down to Sub-One in A-Wing.”

Lilac Springs began to whine. “I want to go to Admin.”

“Uh-uh,” Nurse Go Figure said, turning to Lilac Springs. “This one’s coming with me.” And then, in a low voice, but not so low both Lilac Springs and Lyra couldn’t hear: “The Browns are going like flies. It’s funny how it hits them all differently.”