Dark Matter Read Online Free PDF

other eye, he
examined the one he had drawn. Its detail surprised him: the thickness of the
lower lid, shot with clusters of highlight that ran along its length till it
met the marbled iris; the inner corner of the eye, an inlet whose waters were
girt by twin strands of lid that terminated in the dark bowl at the wall of the
nose; and the haphazard tangle of eyelashes sprouting from the top lid, clumped
in irregular sheaves.
    He wondered, as the second eye emerged from
his pen, how it was that two objects so different could ever be called a pair.
    As he drew the nose, beginning with the
negative space made by the cheek and puffy underside of the eye, he realised
with a start that his mental self—the one standing within the carpark—was
touching the boy’s face. Rasputin’s finger was tracing the contour of the boy’s
nose, feeling its shape, conjuring its substance, so that he could express it
in two dimensions.
    His was the only movement in the otherwise
frozen scene. His hand spidered over the face, his touch that of the sculptor
testing his art—wondering if he had caught the likeness, fearing to mar the
stone further.
    He drew straddled between two worlds—the
mental and the real—until he had coaxed the portrait into the hospital room’s
seventy-watt light. The face emerged, beginning in the centre of the serviette
and growing outward, as if it had been submerged in water then brought to the
surface by its own buoyancy.
    When he at last lifted the pen from the
serviette, he did not scuff or shade to amend a stroke or obliterate an error,
as in the past. There was nothing to remove and nothing to add.
    He grasped the serviette in both hands and
appraised it in the whole. Seen through a slight squint, it could have been a
black and white photograph. It was immaculate.
    Only then did he hear the ticking of the
clock again. It was the only sound he could hear.
    Everyone was staring at him.
    He tossed the serviette into Bert’s lap
with a flippancy only skin deep. It folded in flight, and Bert’s mottled brown
fingers did not move to open it.
    Rasputin broke the silence. “Why don’t we
run with that.”
    Faraday was the first to pop. “Why didn’t
you bloody well say—” Hysteria bubbled through his professional mien. He
crossed his arms and sat back so quickly the cushion on his chair hissed.
    Rasputin was caught without an answer. He
spluttered, “I can’t remember the last time I drew—”
    Dee cut over him. “You’ve never drawn like that.”
    He met her gaze but couldn’t read it. Or
perhaps he could. It was something he had never seen in her green eyes: awe.
    Jordy knitted his brows and his gaze made
laps between the serviette still folded in Bert’s lap and Rasputin.
    Bert’s eyes remained on the folded
portrait. He rubbed his nose with a finger.
    From somewhere within Rasputin a surge of
fury welled up. Its heat prickled his skin as though he had stepped from shadow
into full sun.
    “I don’t know where the hell that came from.
But it saved us another hour staring at a bloody screen. You should all be
happy. I’m tired. My head hurts. And—”
    He caught the sharp tone in his voice like
the whiff of something dead. With effort he reined in his anger. “Maybe I
needed today to do that, a prod.”
    He changed tack, petitioned Bert. “Isn’t
that how it goes? In spurts? Years of practice with nothing to show, then bang:
you crack it.” Bert lifted his gaze as though it weighed a ton to meet Rasputin’s.
His smile was a shadow of its winning best.
    “Monk,” Jordy said, and paused, gathering
all attention in the room. “You’re left-handed.”
    Rasputin took a moment to comprehend. He
lifted his right hand, turned the palm up, and splayed his fingers. The tips of
his thumb, index and middle finger were smudged with ink.
     
    * * *
     
    When José Raúl Capablanca of Cuba,
world chess champion of the 1920s, was asked how he decided his next move—how
deep he delved in the labyrinth