THE OPERATING room gave the impression of being makeshift and primitive, as though it had been prepared in haste to take care of the victims of some catastrophe: unopened cardboard boxes, equipment shoved in a corner, a plastic bucket full of dirty cotton balls.
To his astonishment, Daniel wasn’t especially worried. He assumed this was because of the injection Doctor Kalpak had just given him. The surgeon had whipped the syringe out quickly, without any warning, as if he’d had it up his coat sleeve, and in the middle of a gentle, lilting sentence he had plunged it into Daniel’s arm. It must have contained the same substance he had previously been given in tablet form, because once again he had a sense of swimming or treading water. He was docile and obedient and the two guards hardly had to use their muscle at all as they pushed him down into what looked like a modern dentist’s chair placed at the center of the operating room. It was covered with green paper, which didn’t seem to have been replaced since the last patient, because it had dark stains on it and was torn in a few places, as if the patient hadn’t been able to keep still.
Doctor Kalpak moved a buzzing object toward Daniel, who actually burst out laughing with relief when he saw it was just an ordinary electric shaver. Doctor Kalpak laughed too, revealing a snow-white row of teeth as he ran the shaver over Daniel’s scalp, sending tufts of his newly grown dark hair falling to the floor.
“Just like at the barber’s, eh?” he called out breezily.
Karl Fischer appeared on the other side of Daniel. Between his thumb and forefinger he was holding a small metal rod, about two inches long. Daniel looked at it in bemusement.
“What have you got there?” he asked.
Fischer twiddled the rod between his fingers as he appeared to think about a suitable response. Finally he said, “See it as the hand that’s about to fill you up.”
Daniel wasn’t happy with that answer, but before he had time to say anything else a rumble like thunder rolled through the ground, making the instruments and bottles rattle on the shelves.
“Dear God, they’re blasting again,” Doctor Kalpak cried. “We’ll have to wait. I can’t operate when everything’s shaking.”
“It’s already stopped. No problem,” Doctor Fischer said calmly.
“No vibrations! Absolutely no vibrations!” Doctor Kalpak insisted anxiously. “It mustn’t be out by even a millimeter!”
“And it won’t be. You’re going to put it in exactly the right place.”
The two doctors looked at each other from either side of the chair while they waited. The only sound was the hum of the air vent.
Fischer nodded in encouragement and Kalpak shaved the last of Daniel’s hair from his scalp. With a beelike buzz the backrest was lowered until he was lying flat, then the whole chair was raised to a comfortable working height.
Doctor Kalpak folded something down across Daniel’s forehead—a sort of metal frame that fixed his shaved head and kept him from turning it to either side.
The doctors looked at each other again. Fischer’s left eyelid flickered in an almost imperceptible wink.
“What are you planning to…?” Daniel began.
A moment later his head exploded in a shower of sparking pain. He heard a scream, possibly his own, and his consciousness was torn apart like a strip of burned film.