Spark: A Novel (20 page)

It made no difference to me if nubots sat in subway booths or walked around wearing lingerie. But they did remind me of Dr. Noland’s view of humanity. When I was at the clinic, he told me that human beings were organic machines that thought they were real. And that fact, according to the doctor, was either “very funny or very tragic.”

The store had placed a placard on the wall of the imaginary bedroom. I photographed the words with my phone and Laura translated them into English.

I returned to my hotel and checked my e-mail, but the message box was still empty. There was nothing to do until Miss Holquist decided if I should neutralize Nalini and her son. Back in New York I could have remained in my loft, but my hotel room in Paris was a busy, jagged environment. Although I had covered up the mirrors, there were too many pieces of furniture and the ballet dancers screwed to the wall stared at me when I sat on the edge of the bed.

Durée de vie mécanique.
Mechanical life. I liked that phrase, and was curious about the other facts mentioned in the department store placard. That night, Edward helped me find articles about the mechanical toys called
automates
popular in eighteenth-century France and the Frenchman named Jacques de Vaucanson, who built machines with a whole new level of sophistication.

As a young man Vaucanson was expelled from a religious order in Lyon for creating mechanical servants that could serve dinner to the monks. He moved to Paris, found wealthy patrons to finance his work, and, in 1738, displayed a large wooden man, painted white like a statue. This
automate
had lips and fingers and leather lungs that breathed out air when it played the flute. A year later Vaucanson caused another sensation with a Mechanical Duck that gulped down food with its beak and excreted it a few minutes later.

Louis XV was impressed with Vaucanson’s creations and offered to fund the construction of a mechanical man with a beating heart and blood in its veins. Vaucanson returned to Lyon and set up a secret laboratory where he began to build the “Bleeding Man.” The King rewarded his new servant with a patronage job: Royal Inspector of Manufactured Silk. Within a few years, Vaucanson modernized all the looms in France, destroying the jobs of thousands of people. Some of the textile workers rioted and tried to destroy the new machines, but the rebellion was crushed by the authorities.

So where was the Flute Player and the Duck and, above all, the Bleeding Man? Late that afternoon I crossed over to the right bank of the Seine and visited the Conservatoire National des Arts et
Métiers. If any of Vaucanson’s
automates
had survived, they would probably be stored there.

I expected the conservatory to be a glass-and-steel box, but the government had placed both the school and museum in the former priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. The complex of buildings looked like a medieval fortress with a church, a manor house, and several towers with slit windows. Passing through a turnstile, I wandered down corridors gazing at rusty machines and faded portraits of French inventors.

I asked a guard in English, “Where are the
automates
?” He pointed me down a corridor lined with water pumps and steam-powered looms. When I turned the corner I found myself standing in line with a mob of children and their parents.

Another guard appeared and pulled open a large oak door with brass fittings. Following the crowd, I found myself in a windowless lecture hall with tiers of wooden seats facing a black marble table and a wall of display cabinets. The only available seats were on the top row, so I climbed up the tiers and looked down over the heads of the French families. Small painted faces, grinning or solemn, peered out from the glass cabinets; I was looking at forty to fifty mechanical creatures—the
automates.

At exactly 1700 hours, the door creaked open and a small man wearing a light blue smock and white cotton gloves marched in and took his position behind the table. The man’s face was free of sags and wrinkles. His hair glistened with some sort of pomade or cream; it looked as if each follicle was plastered to the top of his skull.

This was the Keeper of the Automates. He bowed to his audience, and then gave a little speech in French. I had no idea what he was saying but assumed that he was talking about the machines waiting behind him. The Keeper spoke slowly and each word was separate and precise.

After he had finished his introduction, he pulled out a ring of old-fashioned keys and began to open the doors of the cabinets. As he removed each
automate
—a peasant clutching a flail or a mother in a rocking chair with a baby—he announced the name of the machine’s inventor and the date of its creation.

The twelve
automates
were placed in two equal groups at opposite ends of the table. The Keeper bowed again and made them perform. First he would insert a little key or turn a crank that wound up a hidden spring. He would pause for several seconds, then flick a lever and the
automate
would suddenly come alive. An acrobat swung on a pole. A cavalry officer drew his sword and rode a horse around a little track. And, as the children giggled and shrieked, a condemned man placed his head in a guillotine and a hooded executioner pulled a cord and chopped off a painted head.

The Keeper made another speech, then returned to the cabinet and came back with a blond-haired girl in a golden gown who was seated in front of a dulcimer. Once again, he turned a key and flicked a lever. The girl began to play, striking the strings with two small hammers. The Dulcimer Player’s chest moved in and out as if she was breathing. After a minute of playing, she gracefully turned her head to smile at the audience. Even the most restless child was still and silent as the music rose up and drifted through the room. One last smile. And then the tune ended and the machine stopped moving.

Everyone in the audience waited for a few seconds, breathless and silent, expecting the
automate
to stand up and dance around the room. But no, the performance was over and the two little hammers remained motionless above the strings. The Keeper bowed, and the crowd applauded the presentation and quickly left the lecture hall. Mothers and fathers glanced at the mechanical creatures and then touched their children, as if somehow these ancient machines were going to jump off the table and attack someone.

I remained in my seat as the Keeper picked up each mechanism and carefully returned it to the cabinets. When he had put away everything but the Dulcimer Player, I left my seat and approached him.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you speak English?”

The Keeper locked a cabinet with a little brass key, then turned and faced me.

“Yes. A little.”

“I have been reading about Jacques de Vaucanson. He sounds like a great man.”

The Keeper smiled and nodded rapidly.
“Oui … Oui … Il était un génie.”

“So what happened to the Lute Player and the Duck and the Bleeding Man? Are they somewhere in France? Can I go see them?”

The Keeper placed the palms of his hands on the table as if he was continuing his presentation. “
Non, c’était une tragédie.
Vaucanson wants money, so he sells the Flute Player and the Duck. The two
automates
tour Europe for many years. The Flute Player is lost in a shipwreck near Sicily. The Duck perishes in a fire in Kraków in 1879.”

“And the Bleeding Man?”

“L’homme saignant,”
the Keeper said, as if this creation was too important to be translated into English. “There are rumors that Vaucanson discovers the secret of mixing rubber with sulfur and sealing it with heat. He uses this substance to create a heart and veins for his Man. Louis Davout … one of Napoleon’s generals … sees the Man use a knife and fork at a private dinner in Rome. Thirty years later, Gerhardt Steiner, the German industrialist, shows his friends an
automate
that resembles the only drawing we have of the Man.”

“So where is he now?”

“Many treasures vanished because of the Second World War. There are no sightings of the Man after 1937. But perhaps …”

“Perhaps what?”

“Perhaps other inventors added … inventions … modifications.” The Keeper of the Automates smiled. “Remember, Monsieur, unlike
humains fragiles,
Vaucanson’s creation cannot die. He could be in Paris at this moment, walking down the street.”

“Or perhaps he was destroyed.”

The Keeper bowed and picked up the golden-haired Dulcimer Player. “The
idea
was not destroyed. Ideas are the true
automates.
”

I left the museum, walked a few blocks, and found myself in what appeared to be the Chinatown of Paris. There were vendors selling fake designer handbags, Chinese restaurants, and open-air markets
selling food. I passed a mound of yellow musk melons, a bucket filled with mussels, and a live chicken pulled squawking and struggling from a wire cage.

Instead of taking the Metro, I walked across the river Seine and Laura guided me back to my hotel. I didn’t want to sit in my room and stare at the ballet dancers, so I took my computer and went down to a café. I ordered a bottle of mineral water and watched a soccer match on the café’s television.

Was the Bleeding Man cheering at the stadium? If he could disguise himself as an ordinary person and get the right ID card, then he could lose himself in the crowd. Like the
automates
in the Keeper’s museum, most Human Units obeyed hidden clockwork that controlled their movements and guided their reactions.

But I was in a different category. I was sure of that fact. It was all because of the Transformation.

The staff at Marian Community Hospital had decided that I was a patient with severe neurological damage. But I realized that the accident had allowed me to see all existence in a profoundly different way. The Spark within me was as pure as light. It transcended time.

Most Human Units saw time as a linear progression.

But now I realized that time curved back on itself.

All moments exist simultaneously. They don’t disappear.