Spark: A Novel (18 page)

Lying on the bed, I tried to come up with a plan for finding Jafar Desai and his family. But gradually these practical thoughts were pushed away and images of India floated through my mind. I was sitting in the back of the Ambassador, leaving the airport for downtown Delhi. The driver turned his head, and I realized that it was Mr. Pradhani.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

I knew that the little girl was tapping on the window, but I refused to turn my head and see her.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Mr. Pradhani nodded and I saw a revolver lying on the seat beside me. It had a long barrel and an ivory handle and looked like an old-fashioned six-shooter from a cowboy movie. I realized that Pradhani wanted me to pick up the gun, cock the hammer back with my thumb, and shoot the child on the other side of the glass.

Tap-tap.

But now my eyes opened and I realized I was lying on a bed in a hotel room. I fumbled around in the darkness for my phone and Laura responded immediately:

“Good evening, Mr. Underwood. How can I help you?”

I wondered what my Shadow would say if I described the situation. Most speech-recognition systems listened carefully to your statements and then repeated them back to you using different phrases. Dr. Tollner, the hospital psychiatrist, followed the same pattern.

“Laura …?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Should I kill a child?”

“It sounds like you’re feeling uncertain about killing a child. So why do you feel that way, Mr. Underwood?”

“I’m not uncertain at all,” I said, and switched her off.

If Miss Holquist refused Pradhani’s request, then I would kill Jafar. If she agreed to his request, then I would neutralize all three members of the family. I could think of no logical reason why I should refuse this assignment. Both Good and Evil were only words swirling through my thoughts like dead leaves pushed by the wind.

But I found it difficult to sleep. Back in New York, I could have walked across the Brooklyn Bridge or followed a straight line up Sixth Avenue, but this was a foreign city with narrow, crooked streets. I needed thoughts that were powerful enough to push away the image of the child, so I propped myself up with pillows and entered the shadow land of memory.

After the motorcycle accident, I was in a coma for three weeks and two days. According to my medical file, I was breathing, my heart was beating, and there was neural oscillation—which meant that my central nervous system was generating electrical activity that followed a silent rhythm.

But my thoughts were lost in a darkness that was constant and
absolute. My Spark was buried alive, trapped in a tomb, while my Shell was static, unmoved.

The record shows that my case was discussed every two or three days by the staff of the hospital’s intensive care unit. Was I in a permanent coma? Should I be moved to a convalescent facility? During this entire period, there was only one inexplicable moment recorded in the “Staff Comment” section of my chart:

Did the softness of the dog’s fur and the warmth of its skin touch some primitive core within my brain? Did the dog’s energy somehow enter my body? It’s only past a certain point that I can recall what happened. First I saw fragments of scattered light that flashed within dark clouds and then disappeared:

As time passed, these fragments melted into lines, became connected, and formed a rotating wheel of luminous energy.

The wheel moved faster and faster until it was condensed into the Spark—a single point of light contained within a Shell.

Have you ever seen a spark explode from a campfire? Pushed upward by the hot air, it darts, then drifts, then rises up above the flames. A spark is a brief event, a fragment of fire that is absorbed by the darkness.

But my Spark—

Remained.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a plastic IV bag hanging from a steel pole near the edge of my hospital bed. The bag seemed alive at that moment, like a translucent jellyfish floating in the sea.

Although it was painful to move, I could see objects clearly and could smell the hospital around me. The different way I perceived scent was the first sign of my Transformation. Yes, I could identify smells like a living person—the stench of dry blood and
spilled urine not quite masked by the bleach-laundered sheets and the pine-scented disinfectant they used to mop the floors. But now these smells combined into a color that I could see in my mind. And the color wasn’t yellow like urine or red like blood. When I closed my eyes, I saw an ash gray.

Darkness. And when I opened my eyes again, a middle-aged woman with wavy hair and a thin, pointed nose stared down at me.

“Mr. Davis? Are you awake? Can you hear me, Mr. Davis?”

I was looking at a human face, but there was no meaning there. I could perceive the physical movement of the woman’s lips and eyebrows and the subtle adjustments of her head. But this Human Unit was as indecipherable as a water pump or a sewing machine. Although my Shell was numb with drugs and pain, my Spark instantly perceived this limitation and realized that some sort of capability had been lost.

“Mr. Davis, can you hear me?”

When I didn’t respond, the woman leaned over the bed so that her face was only a few inches away from mine. “You’ve been in a serious accident and you’ve been unconscious for many days. I’m Eva Grasso, one of the nurses taking care of you. If you can hear me, blink two times.”

No response.

“If you can hear me, blink two times.”

No response.

“If you can hear me—”

I moved my mouth, but no sound came out. So I blinked. Twice.

Nurse Grasso’s face changed. She pulled away from me and quickly left the room. When I opened my eyes, Nurse Grasso and a young East Asian man wearing a white lab coat were standing by the bed.

“Mr. Davis? I’m Dr. Sahid. Can you hear me?”

“Ask him to blink,” the nurse said.

“Can you blink for me, Mr. Davis? Blink or say something.”

I didn’t want to speak. Unlike the two faces in front of me, I saw the world clearly. Reality had no meaning. The hospital room was simply a random assembly of objects. And I knew—knew with total
certainty—that the act of speaking, the words themselves, would obscure the clarity of my vision.

“I know you can hear me,” the doctor said. “It’s important that you try to speak. It tells me a great deal about your injury. Can you—”

I wanted both of them to go away, so my Spark tossed a single word into the air.

“Dead.”

The faces in front of me changed and a quick, throaty sound came out of their mouths. “Oh, you’re alive, Mr. Davis!” the doctor said. “Very much alive! Considering the extent of your brain injury, I might even call it a miracle.”

After this first conversation, I drifted in and out of darkness. Whenever I opened my eyes the nurses were checking the heart monitor, changing the IV bag, or cleaning my body with sponges as if it was a fixture attached to the hospital bed. This is when I realized that I hated to be touched. My Shell was fragile, and sometimes it felt as if they were cracking me open with their gloved fingers.

I could have stayed on the IV drip forever, but the nurses insisted on feeding me solid food—oatmeal, rice pudding, and small cubes of cooked chicken. My tongue could distinguish between sweet and sour, hot and cold. But there was no pleasure in the consumption of these substances. The nurses could have cooked the bedsheet and served it to me with a spoon.

One morning a hospital volunteer gave me a pair of earphones that was attached to a media channel. I could choose different styles of music by moving a small dial. The music was as tasteless as the rice pudding. People sang about losing love instead of something important—like losing their car keys. Finally I discovered that the classical-music station scheduled one hour every evening when they played only Bach. His music didn’t cause emotions, but it kept my Spark steady and bright. Bach’s notes were like bricks and nails and solid oak beams; they created structures with straight lines and balanced proportions.

There was a three-inch gap between the two window curtains, and this was the only indication of night and day. The sliver of light was growing dim when I opened my eyes and discovered two men standing at the foot of the bed.

Both of them wore leather jackets and carried motorcycle helmets. It was only much later—after I read the police report—that I realized that these men were Gerald Tannenbaum and Brian Farrell, the two friends who had watched me skid and smash into the stalled truck. All I knew was that Gerald showed his teeth when he talked and Brian spoke softly as if loud noises might injure me.

“Hey there, tough guy,” Gerald said. “How you feeling?”

For the first time since my Transformation, I considered the question:
How do I feel?
And the answer came instantly, without effort. Aside from boredom and curiosity, I no longer felt any emotions.

I raised my hand and touched the EEG sensors pasted to my skull. “I’m connected to machines.”

“The doctors say that you’re getting better,” Brian said. “Swear to God, when Gerald pulled off your helmet, we thought you were dead.”

“
You
thought he was dead,” Gerald announced. “Remember what I said? ‘Don’t touch him. Maybe he’s got a spinal injury.’ ”

“But your spine is okay. You’re going to walk again,” Brian said. “But the doctors told us you had a brain injury.”

“But
that’s
okay,” Gerald said. “Because you were always the smartest guy in the room. You’ve got brains to spare, Jake. Brian and me … hell, we can’t afford to lose brain cells.”

“Don’t joke about his injuries,” Brian said.

“I’m trying to be
positive.
That’s all. Jake understands. When the hospital called and said you were talking, we both left work and came here.”