Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

“I shall explain the method of our rite, if you wish,” says the transtemporalist. Deep slurred Mongol voice, monolithic face, all nose and cheekbones, the eyes hidden in shadows.

“Not necessary,” Mordecai tells him. “I’ve been here before.”

“Ah. Of course.” An obsequious little bow. “I was not sure of that, Dr. Mordecai.”

Shadrach is accustomed to being recognized. Mongolia is full of foreigners but very few of them are black. The sound of his own name, therefore, gives him only the most fleeting jab of surprise. Still, he would have welcomed more anonymity here. The transtemporalist kneels and beckons to him to do the same. They are in a private little cubicle, formed by thick carpets draped over ropes, within the vast dim tent. A thick yellow candle set in a pewter cup on the earthen floor flickers between them sending a heavy spiral of dark sour smoke toward the tent’s sloping top. In Mordecai’s nostrils are all sorts of primeval Mongol odors, the reek of shaggy goatskin walls, the stench of what might well be a cow-dung fire somewhere nearby. The floor is densely strewn with soft wood shavings, a luxury in this land of few trees. The transtemporalist is busy at the chemistry of his vocation, mixing fluids in a tall pewter beaker, an oily blue one and a thin scarlet one, stirring them around with an ivory swizzle stick that makes lively swirl patterns, adding now a sprinkle of a green powder and a yellow one. Hocus-pocus, all of it: Mordecai suspects that only one of these substances is the true drug, the others being mere decoration. But rites demand mystery and color, and these dour priests, claiming all of time and space for their province, must heighten their effects as best they can. Shadrach wonders how far from him Nikki is now. They were parted at the entrance to the transtemporalists’ maze of a tent, each led separately into the shadows by silent acolytes. The time voyage is a journey that one must take alone.

The Mongol concludes his pharmaceutics and, holding the cup tenderly in both hands, passes it above the candle’s sputtering flame to Shadrach Mordecai.

“Drink,” he says, and, feeling a bit like Tristan, Shadrach drinks. Surrenders the cup. Sits back on his haunches, waiting. “Give me your hands,” the transtemporalist murmurs. Shadrach extends them, palms upward. The Mongol covers them with his own short-fingered wide-spanned hands and intones some gibberish prayer, unintelligible except for scattered Mongol words that have no contextual coherence, A faint dizziness is beginning in Shadrach Mordecai now. This will be his third transtemporal experience, the first in nearly a year. Once he visited the court of King Baldwin of Jerusalem in the guise of a black prince of Ethiopia, a Christian Moor at the swaggering feasts of the Crusaders; and once he found himself atop a stone pyramid in Mexico, robed all in white, slashing with an obsidian dagger at the breast of a writhing Spaniard spread-eagled on the sacrificial altar of Huitzilopitchli. And now? He will have no choice in his destination. The transtemporalist will choose it for him according to some unfathomable whim, aiming him with a word or two, a skillful suggestion as he is cut loose from his moorings by the drug and sent adrift into the living past. His own imagination and historical knowledge, coupled with, perhaps — who knows? — whispered cues from the transtemporalist as his drugged body lies on the floor of the tent — will do the rest.

Mordecai sways now. Everything whirls. The transtemporalist leans close and speaks, and it is a struggle to comprehend the words, but Shadrach must comprehend, he needs to hear—

“It is the night of Cotopaxi,” the Mongol whispers. “Red sun, yellow sky.”

The tent disappears and Shadrach is alone.

Where is he? A city. Not Karakorum. This place is unfamiliar, subtropical, narrow streets, steep hills, iron-grilled doorways, twining red-flowered vines, cool clear air, grand fountains in spacious plazas, white-fronted houses with wrought-iron balconies. A Latin city, intense, hectic, busy.

— ¡Barato aquí! Barato!

— Yo tengo un hambre canina.

Honking horns, barking dogs, the shouts of children, the cries of vendors. Women roasting bits of meat over charcoal braziers in the cobbled streets. A thousand strident people-sounds. Where is there a city with such vigorous life? Why does no one show signs of the organ-rot? They are all so healthy here, even the beggars, even the paupers. There are no such cities. No more, no more. Ah. Naturally. He is dreaming a city mat no longer exists. This is a city of yesterday.

— Le telefonearé un día de éstos.

—Hasta la semana que viene.

He has never spoken Spanish. And yet he recognizes the words, and yet he understands them.

— ¿Dónde está el teléfono?

— ¡Vaya de prisa! ¡Tenga cuidado!

—¡Maricón!

— No es verdad.

Standing in the middle of a busy street at the top of a broad hill, he is stunned by the view. Mountains! They rim the city, great snowcapped cones, gleaming in the midday sun. He has lived too long on the Mongolian plateau; mountains such as these have become unfamiliar and alien to him. Shadrach stares in awe at the immense glaciered peaks, so huge they seem top-heavy, they seem about to rumble from the sky to crush the bustling city. And is that a plume of smoke rising from the crest of that most enormous one? He is not sure. At such a distance — at least fifty kilometers — is it possible to see smoke? Yes. Yes. Beyond any doubt, smoke. He remembers the last words he heard before the dizziness took him: “It is the night of Cotopaxi. Red sun, yellow sky.” The great volcano — is that it? A flawless cone, swathed in snow and pumice, its base hidden in clouds, its summit outlined in numbing majesty against the darkening sky. He has never seen such a mountain.

He halts a boy who darts past him.

— Por favor.

The boy is wide-eyed, terrified, but yet he stops, looks up.

— ¿Si, Señor?

— ¿Cómo se llama esta montaña?

Shadrach points toward the colossal snowcapped volcano. The boy smiles and relaxes. His fear is gone; obviously he is pleased by the notion of knowing something that this tall dark-skinned stranger does not. He says:

—Cotopaxi. Cotopaxi. Of course. The transtemporalist has given him a front row ticket to the great catastrophe. This is the city of Quito, then, in Ecuador, and that trailing smoke to the southeast is Cotopaxi, the world’s loftiest active volcano, and this day must be the nineteenth of August, 1991, a day that everyone remembers, and Shadrach Mordecai knows that before the sun touches the Pacific tonight the world will be shaken as it rarely has been shaken in all the time of mankind, and an era will end and a reign of fire will be loosed upon civilization. And he is the only person on earth who knows this, and here he stands below great Cotopaxi and he can do nothing. Nothing. Nothing but watch, and tremble, and perhaps perish with the half million who will perish here tonight. Can one die, he wonders, while one is traveling this way? Is it not only a dream, a dream, a dream, and can dreams kill? Even if he dreams an eruption, even if he dreams tons of lava and brimstone descending on his broken body?

The boy is still standing there, staring at him.

— Gracias, amigo.

— De nada, señor.

The boy waits, perhaps for a coin, but Shadrach has none to give him, and after a moment he runs off, pausing after ten paces to look back and stick out his tongue, then running again, sprinting into an alleyway, disappearing.

And a moment later there is a terrible noise from Cotopaxi and a white column at least a hundred meters thick rises straight up like a scepter from a secondary cone on the volcano’s sloping flank.