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.