Once again, she wondered if 72 was just a little bit crazy.
Being in the kayak felt like being on a narrow, extremely wobbly gurney. The seat was wet. Her stomach lurched as 72 shoved the kayak into the shallows and then clambered in himself, refusing Jake’s help. She couldn’t believe they didn’t just sink. She was uncomfortably aware of the sloshing of the water below her, which seemed to be attempting to jettison her out of her seat. She was afraid to move, afraid even to breathe.
But miraculously, the kayak stayed afloat, and 72 soon got the hang of paddling. The muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out when he moved, and Lyra found him unexpectedly beautiful to watch. She began to relax, despite the painful slowness of their progress and the continued rhythm of motorboats in the distance, and the ripples from their wakes that sent water sloshing into the kayak.
She should be afraid. She didn’t know much about feelings, but she knew that Gemma was afraid, and Jake was afraid, and even 72 was afraid. But for some reason, for a short time, the fear released her. She was floating, gliding toward a new life. She had never thought she’d know what it felt like to be out on the water, had never imagined that a life outside Haven could exist. The outside world, constantly visible to her through the fence, had nonetheless seemed like the soap operas she sometimes saw on the nurses’ TV: pretty to look at but essentially unreal.
But the novelty soon wore off. The insects were thick. Gnats swarmed them in mists. They hardly seemed to be moving. Tendrils of floating grass made certain routes impassable and had to be manually separated or threshed aside with a paddle. Several times Gemma lost her footing in the water and nearly went under. Lyra wondered how long they would be able to go, whether they would make it. She wondered whether they would have to leave Gemma behind, and thought of Cassiopeia lying in the reeds while the sun burned away her retinas.
She felt a momentary regret but didn’t know why. Death was natural. Decay, too. It was another thing that made replicas and humans similar: they died.
Finally Gemma called them to a stop. Lyra was relieved for the break and the chance to get off the water, especially now that the midmorning sun was like an exposed eye.
They’d barely dragged the kayak out of the water when Jake yelled, “Get down.”
The hum of an approaching helicopter suddenly doubled, tripled in volume. Lyra’s breath was knocked away by its pressure. They went into a crouch beneath the fat sprawl of a mangrove tree as the helicopter roared by overhead. The whole ground trembled. Marsh grass lay flat beneath the wind threshed from the helicopter’s giant rotor. Looking up through the branches, Lyra saw a soldier leaning out of the open door to point at something on the horizon. Then the helicopter was gone.
They left the kayak behind and went the rest of the way on foot. The ground was soft and wet and they had to wade through tidal pools where the mud was studded with sharp-toothed clams and splinters of broken shells. The growth here was different, the trees taller and less familiar to Lyra. She felt as if they were moving deep in an undiscovered wilderness and was shocked when instead Gemma gave a cry of relief and the trees opened up to reveal a small dirt clearing, corroded metal trash bins, and various signs she was too tired to read.
“Thank God,” Gemma said. Lyra watched as Jake moved to a dusty car parked in the lot and loaded his backpack into it. She was afraid all over again. She knew about cars because she’d seen them on TV and Lazy Ass was always complaining about hers, piece-of-shit, but she didn’t think she wanted to ride in one. Especially since, according to Lazy Ass’s stories, at least, cars were always breaking down or leaking oil or giving trouble in some way.
But once again, they had no choice. And at the very least, being in the car felt better, sturdier, than being in the kayak, although as soon as Jake began bumping down the road, Lyra had to close her eyes to keep from being sick. But this only made things worse. The car was louder, too, than she’d thought it would be. The windows rattled and the engine sounded like a wild animal and the radio was so loud Lyra thought her head would explode. They were going so fast that the outside world looked blurry, and she had to close her eyes again.
To calm herself she recited the alphabet in her head, then counted up from one to one hundred. She listed all the constellations she knew, but that was painful: she imagined Cassiopeia’s face, and Ursa Major’s obsession with hoarding things from the mess hall—old spoons and paper cups, bags of oyster crackers and packages of mustard—and wondered whether she would ever see any of the other replicas again.
“Hey. Are you all right? It’s okay—we’re stopped now.”
Lyra opened her eyes and saw that Gemma was right: they had stopped. They were in what looked like an enormous loading dock, but filled with dozens and dozens of parked cars instead of boats—a parking lot, another idea she’d absorbed from the nurses without ever having seen it. Could all the cars belong to different people? Looming in the distance was a building three times the size of even the Box. W-A-L-M-A-R-T. Lyra flexed her fingers, which ached. She had been holding tight to her seat without realizing it.
“You guys can stay here, okay?” Gemma said. “Just sit tight. We’re going to buy food and stuff. And clothes,” she added. “Do you know your shoe size?”
Lyra shook her head. At Haven they were provided with sandals or slippers. Sometimes they were too big, other times too small, but Lyra so often went barefoot she hadn’t thought it mattered.
“Okay.” Gemma exhaled. “What did you say your names were again?”