Ringer

  “Kill you?” He actually laughed. “Last time I checked, that was still illegal in this country. I’m going to make some calls, and sort out some details, and get you home to your father. Then I’m going to hope he doesn’t kill me.”

  He didn’t sound like he was lying. “What about Pete?” she asked. She thought, though she couldn’t be sure, that for a split second he froze, and a sour panic rose in her throat. “If you don’t let him go, I’ll tell everyone. My dad will track you down and murder you—”

  “Gemma, please. Of course Pete will go home.” If he’d hesitated before, now he spoke easily. “I know you think I’m some kind of monster, but I’m not. I’m a geek from Bethesda, Maryland, who fell in love with science and has loved it my whole life. I have a cat at home. Did you know that? He’s a thirteen-year-old tub named Copernicus. Copper for short. I’m a Dodgers fan, God help me.”

  Could she have been wrong about Dr. Saperstein? Was it possible that Haven’s work was, if not right, then at least justified? The idea made her head hurt.

  “But what you’ve done is monstrous,” she said. “What you’re talking about doing is monstrous. It’s murder.”

  “It’s euthanasia,” he said, a little more forcefully. “And it’s standard practice. Labs all across the world do chemical testing on live animals. Cancer researchers inject rats with cancer cells. Ebola researchers shoot monkeys up with Ebola. Test subjects are routinely euthanized.”

  “But we’re not talking about rats,” she said. “Or monkeys.” She thought of strange Calliope and her enormous eyes, Gemma’s color exactly, only bigger in her thin face; she thought of the girl who’d nearly stabbed her with a syringe and the children who spent their days crawling around in oversized diapers, sucking their fingers and wailing if a nurse tried to touch them. How many graves would they need? Would they even be buried? Lyra had mentioned that the replicas at Haven were either burned or packaged up and dumped into the ocean, but there were no oceans here. Perhaps they would be stacked like fish fillets in refrigerated trucks and shipped off to the coast. “We’re talking about people. Human beings.”

  Saperstein squinted at her as if trying to see her from a distance. “You’re what—sixteen? Seventeen? I remember being your age. Everything seems so certain. Black and white. Wrong and right. Good guys and bad guys. But the real world isn’t like that, unfortunately.” He leaned forward again, putting his elbows on the desk. His sweater, Gemma saw, was in fact filmy with a surface of cat hair, and it made her want to cry again. “Let me ask you something. What makes a human? Do you think it’s our eyes, our ears, our capacity to walk upright?”

  She nearly said, All of those things, when he went on, “It can’t be. What about the blind, or people missing their ears, or paralyzed from the shoulders down? What about people whose faces have been burned off, deformed by war or birth? You would say that those people are humans, too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course,” Gemma said quickly, embarrassed she had been on the verge of agreeing to something so stupid. “Being human isn’t a trait, like having hair.”

  “Okay. So what is it?”

  “That’s a dumb question.” But she realized she couldn’t actually answer him. “It’s how we think,” she said finally. “It’s our brains and what we do with them.”

  “But what about humans who’ve lost their capacity to think and reason?” he asked. He sounded almost apologetic, as if he hadn’t meant to trap her. “And what about computers, which can think and reason as well as any human? Are they people? Do they deserve to have rights and freedoms?”

  “You’re trying to confuse me,” Gemma said.

  “No, Gemma. I’m not. I’m trying to understand.” Dr. Saperstein sighed and took off his glasses. Suddenly he looked strangely exposed, like a half-blind mole coming up from the ground. There was a splotchy ink stain on his cheek, and more on his fingers. “If it isn’t legs or eyes or even how we think, what? Might it be the capacity to love, to be loved, to grieve and be grieved for by others? Friendship, connection, the ability to empathize, to walk in someone else’s shoes?” She could see, now, why he had been the one to take over after Dr. Haven’s death, why people had trusted him to lead. His voice was hypnotic, almost comforting—like the drumming of rain on a window. You wanted to curl up and go to sleep, let his voice do all the work.

  “You’re talking about a soul,” she said. Suddenly, she was exhausted. She remembered, all at once, being at church when she was a kid, leaning against her mom, drowsy in the sunlight, while the priest droned on and on.

  “Soul, sure. It doesn’t really matter what you call it.” Saperstein was still watching her. She felt he almost knew what she was thinking. He spoke so softly she nearly missed what he said next. “Whatever it is, the replicas don’t have it.”

  “So what? That gives you the right to use them how you want?” When had they stopped going to church, and why? It seemed important, suddenly, to know. Had her parents believed, like the replicas did, that because she wasn’t made by God, she didn’t belong to him? That she was excluded? “What about the Home Foundation? You stole kids. And you can’t pretend they weren’t loved by someone, somewhere. You can’t pretend they aren’t people.”

  For the first time, Dr. Saperstein looked uncomfortable. And this, more than anything, gave her a small jolt of pleasure. She sat up a little straighter.

  “You didn’t think I knew about that?” She thought of poor Rick Harliss, his stale breath and face rutted by years of desperation and loss, that shitty motel room when he’d first told her about how she’d been born, made, at Haven.

  “What happened at the Home Foundation was wrong,” he said firmly. Once again, she was surprised. “You have to understand, I had no idea what was happening until later. We were on the verge of shutting down. I was on a plane twenty, twenty-five hours a week, in different states and even different countries, trying to raise funds. I trusted the wrong people to manage. And believe me, I put an end to it as soon as I found out.”

  Was it possible? In the letter Emily Huang had written to her friend, she’d made it sound as if it was all Dr. Saperstein’s idea. But what if she’d lied? What if she was ashamed of her own role?

  What if she had killed herself after all? Out of guilt and shame and a sense of remorse?

  “You covered it up,” Gemma said. “You lied and you made everybody else lie, too.”

  “What else was I supposed to do? We would have lost everything. Then there would have been no reason for any of it.” He leaned forward and his eyes screwed onto hers like metal caps. “We’re talking about research that directly impacts Alzheimer’s research, research into what makes the brain deteriorate, how to stop it. We’re talking about research that could have spared the lives of thousands of civilians stuck in hellish war zones, that might have been used in targeted attacks to prevent the horrific casualties of innocent people. We’re talking about research critical to modern food supply. I regret some of the things we did—and some of the things done in our name. Of course I do. But we were fighting a countrywide campaign against reason—against research.”

  “That still doesn’t give you the right,” Gemma said.

  He ducked his head and sat for a few seconds with his eyes closed, almost as if he were praying. When he raised his head again, he looked even older, as if several years had elapsed. “Do you use shampoo?”

  She was so startled by the question she couldn’t even nod.

  He went on anyway. “Do you take cold medicine when you’re sick, or Advil when you have a headache? How about vaccinations? Been vaccinated for mumps, rubella, tetanus? Vaccinations are diseases, you know. They’re nothing more than weak concentrations of the exact disease they’re designed to prevent.”

  “What’s your point?” She felt shaky, almost dizzy, as if she’d stood up too quickly, although she was still sitting across from him.

  “How do you think those drugs came to market? How did the Advil get into your bathroom
cabinet? How did the Sudafed land on your bedside table? How did we cure polio? Tuberculosis? Smallpox? How did we save hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, from diseases big and small?” His smile was thinning. “Hundreds of thousands of mice, rabbits, primates killed. Humans, too, of course—volunteers, desperate people, sick people. Some of them dead because of side effects, unpredictable responses, bad science, or just bad luck. I’m one of only thousands of scientists and researchers doing similar work, dangerous work, work that requires living people to die, so that in the future, people can keep living. A terrible paradox, but there you go. Did you know that a former staff member of mine is up and running in Allentown, Pennsylvania? All our funding will go to her. And the cycle continues.”

  The name registered dimly in Gemma’s memory, but she didn’t know why.

  Saperstein wasn’t done. “And those are just the medical casualties. Noble, really, by comparison to what we do every day, in thousands of places across the globe, all for cheaper products and more of them, new clothes every season, new cell phones, faster cars.”

  “That’s different,” Gemma said. But she couldn’t think how.

  “Is it?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Everything we have, everything we know, everything we own, has been paid for in someone’s blood. Once you understand that, you understand we’re just talking about ratios. Percentages. Math.”

  He was confusing her, like her father always did, twisting things around somehow.

  “How many people have to benefit from a cure before you risk the life of a single test patient? Ten? One hundred? How many people might live easier lives because of a new technology before you can justify disrupting the livelihoods of those who benefit from the old one? What does help have to look like? Do you have to help them a little, or a lot? Help them now, or in the future? Tell me. If you have the formula figured out, tell me.”

  Of course she couldn’t. There was no answer; she didn’t know.

  “What about all those children who work backbreaking hours for pennies at factories across the globe to make the T-shirts you and your friends wear, who die early of tumors caused by fumes, smog, chemicals? How about boys sold into slavery on fishing boats to haul smelt and plankton so that we can eat fresh shrimp all year round, how about girls half your age helping to make your shoes, your lip gloss, your phone covers, your accessories? What about children blown up mining minerals we use for the memory chips in your cell phone, and children eviscerated by drone strikes in countries we spent decades squeezing for their oil, whole countries decimated, populations starving to death slowly? What about them? Who’s crying for them?”

  Gemma was crying. She couldn’t help it.

  “We never cloned people at Haven. That’s what you have to understand. That’s impossible and always will be. We cloned genetic composition, fetal cells, structure.” Gemma could tell by how easily and quickly the words came how often he had repeated them to himself. She could tell he really believed them. “You can’t make people with science. We’re all born a collection of cells and senses and chemical patterns. We have to become human.”

  Gemma thought of Calliope, and the bulwark of her ribs beneath her skin, the way her hand, slick with sweat, had held to Gemma so tightly. A terrible sadness touched her.

  “The replicas can’t feel loss, or love, or empathy. When they die, no one grieves for them, and they grieve for no one else. Any one of them would kill you, or me, if it suited them, if they needed to. Any one would lie or cheat or rob you, and never feel bad about it. They wouldn’t even know the difference. To them there is surviving and not surviving, and that’s it.”

  Was any of it true? Did it even matter? “You make them sound like robots,” she said.

  “Not robots,” he said. And for a brief second, a look of terror moved like a hard storm across his face. “Animals.”

  Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 14 of Lyra’s story.

  FIFTEEN

  THERE WERE DIFFERENT SOLDIERS ON duty outside the bathrooms that night, a young man and woman, maybe early twenties. The card table was gone: it must have been packed up and shipped off. Gemma had lost count of how many vans had left throughout the day. Though the airport was still crowded with clutter, medical equipment, and mattresses, curtained-off alcoves and makeshift break stations, it felt incalculably emptier. It felt like being sunk at the center of an old ship while it was hollowed out by bottom-feeding fish.

  The rain, still drumming the windows, filled the terminal with hollow echoes.

  As soon as the female soldier saw them approaching, she stood up abruptly and vanished, as though by prearranged signal. The guy was older, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, with a blunt jaw and a prominent forehead that made his eyes appear to be hiding out in his face.

  “That’s Wayne,” Calliope said. She had taken Gemma’s hand again, and Gemma was both glad of and frightened by her grip. “Wayne was the one who told me about Pinocchio and how he got spitted up by the whale.” A strange expression pulled briefly at Calliope’s face: if Gemma hadn’t known better, she would have called it joy.

  They had to wait for Wayne—an ugly name, she’d always thought, made even uglier now by him—to acknowledge them. Calliope didn’t tense up or even seem uncomfortable when he stared baldly at her breasts and legs, at the space between her legs. She was used to it, Gemma knew, and that was the most terrible thing of all: her body had never belonged to her, not for a second.

  Animals, Dr. Saperstein had said. But animals had the urge to protect themselves, to protect one another. The replicas were like human photo negatives: like they weren’t alive at all, only giving the impression of it, but always just a little bit off. Even tonight, moving through the darkened puzzle of bodies, Gemma had the strangest feeling that none of the replicas were sleeping at all—that this, too, was illusion, bodies laid down to rest while their spirits roamed elsewhere, hungry and awake.

  “All right,” Wayne said finally. “But quick. Fifteen minutes.” As soon as they started toward the bathroom together, he called them back. “See me after,” he said to Calliope.

  Gemma was surprised and relieved to find Pete already waiting for her, leaning heavily on the counter, head bowed. For a second, she hung back. His face was so serious, so sad, it made her ache.

  But when he caught sight of her, his face rearranged into the one she knew so well, and it was like two plates slid together deep inside her and sealed off a rift. Her anger went, and so did her fear. If she could just stay with him, everything would be fine.

  She was grateful that Calliope let her go, and even hung back when Pete hugged her, and kissed her gently, lips, nose, forehead, and lips again. It was funny: as soon as Pete had become her boyfriend, she had started being more careful about her looks, not less. She put on lip gloss and mascara; she always made sure her hair was blown straight; she agonized about what she wore. She told herself she wanted him to be proud of her, but it wasn’t that, not exactly. Really, she wanted to make sure he wasn’t embarrassed.

  But here, in this place, even though she hadn’t showered—a ritual that, like laundry day, occurred once a week, in which replicas were shuffled in and out by the dozen to hose off in a dim concrete room with open holes for drainage—even though the toothbrush she’d been given had disappeared earlier that morning, even though she was braless, her breasts sticky-heavy beneath her shirt, she realized it didn’t matter at all. She loved him and felt, in that moment, truly loved: the feeling of being saved, of coming home after a long night at a terrible party, and getting to wipe your makeup off and take off uncomfortable tights and slip into a pair of worn pajamas.

  “Another day in paradise, huh?” Pete said, touching her face.

  She could feel Calliope watching them, and was struck by Calliope’s stillness, her complete absorption. She was reminded, then, of the way her cats, Bean and Ender, sat in the window seat to watch the geese that landed on her lawn on
their way south. It was as if Calliope’s whole body was funneled into her eyes, and the desire to consume.

  She was going crazy. She was going to lose her mind in this place.

  “You okay?” he asked. She tried to smile but saw her reflection thrown back at her, ghastly.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I saw Dr. Saperstein today.” She lowered her voice, hooked her fingers into the neck of her T-shirt. Hers, familiar, real. “It’s all over. They’re shutting down.”

  “Yeah, I kind of got the idea. I’m surprised they haven’t shipped out the toilets yet.” Then, unexpectedly: “Three replicas died today. I saw them packed up. They were loaded onto a gurney like—like meat or something. All bundled in plastic.” His voice was too tight, like fabric stretched thin by too much use. “There are children tied down in place. One of the nurses said that otherwise they’ll try and chew their own fingers, or scratch themselves until they bleed. And the nurses . . .” Finally, the fabric snapped. His voice cracked. “Nurses, doctors, soldiers . . . everyday people, good people. It’s like they’ve all gone blind. It’s like this place has blinded them. How can they stand it?”

  “Pete.” She couldn’t make it better. She couldn’t explain. There was no explanation. They had to get out of here before they were poisoned. She took his hands. They were very cold. “Pete, listen to me. Dr. Saperstein is making arrangements with my dad,” Gemma said quietly. “He’s going to let us go.”

  His eyes were like windows, suddenly shuttered. She was aware of a strange tension, not just here but everywhere, as if an enormous underground rift was slowly widening, as if they might all drop.

  “We don’t have a choice,” she added. She seemed to smell smoke. Memories that weren’t even hers flowed to her, of Haven on fire, of the island burning and bodies bleeding out into the marsh. Maybe Calliope wasn’t feeding off her. Maybe she was feeding from Calliope, collapsing into her. “But the important thing is that we’re getting out of here. They’re letting us go.”