Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

Wearing only his trousers and still feeling wobbly — never before, in all the time he has worn the implants, have the signals from Genghis Mao had such an impact on him — he approaches the interface. “Shadrach Mordecai to serve the Khan,” he says, and waits, and nothing happens for nearly a minute. Dr. Mordecai repeats the password, more urgently. Still the door remains shut. “Come on!” he snaps. “The Khan might be dying in there, and I have to get to him, you idiot machine!” Lights flash, scanners scan, but nothing else occurs. Shadrach realizes that the interface system must have gone into emergency mode, under which the flow of personnel to and from the inner chambers is even more strictly controlled than usual. This supports the hypothesis of an assassination attempt. Shadrach shouts, gesticulates, pounds the interface with his fists, even makes faces at it; but the security system is obviously concerned with other matters, and it will not let him in. By the time the door finally does open, he estimates, four or five minutes have elapsed. The data coming from Genghis Mao holds firm, at least: the Khan’s signals indicate that he is still disturbed and overexcited but that he is slowly recovering from his moment of alarm.

Maddeningly, Shadrach is kept another minute or so in the inner holding chamber; at last it yields, and he lopes swiftly through Surveillance Vector One, which is deserted, to Genghis Mao’s bedroom. Here the secondary door scanner delays him no more than the usual microsecond, and he bursts in to find Genghis Mao alive and awake, sitting up in bed, surrounded by five or six servants and a dozen or more members of the Committee, all milling about in a frenzied excitement very much contraindicated at this phase of the Chairman’s recuperation. Mordecai sees General Gonchigdorge, Vice-Chairman Ionigylakts, Security Chief Avogadro, even Belá Horthy, looking horribly liverish and hung over after his excessive night in Karakorum. And more people are constantly arriving. Shadrach is appalled. He can hear the voice of Genghis Mao, clear but weak, cutting through the overall hubbub, but there is such a mob around the bed that Mordecai is unable to reach the Khan’s side.

“Terrible, terrible,” Ionigylakis says, shaking his head from side to side like a wounded bear.

Shadrach turns to him. “What’s going on?”

“Mangu,” Ionigylakis blurts. “Assassinated!”

“What? How?” “Out the window. Off the balcony.” Ponderously the big Greek pantomimes the action with great sweeps of his arm — the open window, trie draperies fluttering in the breeze, the curve of The body as it executes its swooping seventy-five-story descent, the abrupt ghastly termination of the graceful dive, the hideous impact at plaza level, the tiny final rebounding motion of the crumpled body.

Shadrach shudders. “When was this?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes ago. Horthy was just arriving at the tower. He saw the whole thing.”

“Who notified the Khan? Horthy?”

Ionigylakis shrugs. “How would I know?”

“They should have waited. The shock of news like that—”

“First I heard of it, I was at my desk in Committee Vector One and the lights flash emergency mode. Then people running around everywhere, crazy. Then everyone running in here.”

“Which is even crazier,” Shadrach says, scowling. “Making a lot of noise, upsetting the Khan’s nervous system, filling the room with potentially infectious bacteria — doesn’t anyone have any sense? We’re jeopardizing his life in this chaos. Help me clear the room.”

“But the Khan has sent for these people!”

“Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need tham all. I’m responsible for his health, and I want everybody out of here except, oh, Avogadro and Gonchigdorge and maybe Eyuboglu.”

“But—”

“No buts. The rest of you ought to return to Committee Vector One so you can handle more trouble if more trouble comes. What if this is the start of a worldwide revolutionary uprising? Who’s going to face the crisis if you’re all in here? Go.

“Go. I want to clear the room. Get everybody out, will you? That’s an order.”

Ionigylakis still looks doubtful, but after a moment’s hesitation he nods and begins pushing people enthusiastically toward the door, bellowing at them that they must leave, while Shadrach, catching the attention of the security chief, tells him to post his men in the hall to keep visitors out.

Shadrach approaches the bed. Genghis Mao looks drawn and tense, his forehead moist, shiny, his skin tone pallid and grayish. He is breathing shallowly and his eyes, always restless, move now with manic intensity. The life-support system has activated itself and is feeding the Khan a steady flow of glucose, sodium chloride, and blood plasma; Shadrach, glancing quickly at the readings on the instrument panel and integrating them with his own telemetered inputs, assesses Genghis Mao’s level of blood potassium and plasma magnesium, his capillary permeability, his arteriolar vasoconstriction, and his venous pressure, and makes manual adjustments in the rate of medication. “Try to relax,” he tells Genghis Mao. “Sit back. Let your limbs go limp.”

“They killed him,” the Khan says hoarsely. “Have you heard? They threw him from his window.”

“Yes. I know. Lie back, please, sir.”

“The killers must still be somewhere inside this building. I’ll supervise the investigation myself. Wheel me into Surveillance Vector One, Shadrach.”

“That won’t be possible. You’ll have to remain here, sir.”

“Don’t talk that way to me. Avogadro! Avogadro! Help me into the wheelchair!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Shadrach murmurs, signaling frantically behind his back to Avogadro to ignore the command of Genghis Mao. At the same time Shadrach nudges a pedal that sends a flow of tranquilizing 9-pordenone into the Chairman’s body. “It could be fatal for you to leave the bed now, sir. Do you understand me? It could kill you.”

Genghis Mao understands that. He sinks back against the pillow, looking almost relieved at being overruled, and as the drug takes effect his face relaxes, his demeanor becomes far less intense. Genghis Mao is much weaker, Shadrach realizes, than the instruments indicate. “They killed him,” the Khan says again, ruminatingly, absent-voicedly. “Only a boy and they killed him. He had no enemies.” And to Shadrach’s amazement the old man’s lips begin to quiver and his eyes fill with tears, Eh? What’s this? A show of some genuine emotion by Genghis Mao? A kind of quasi-paternal grief seizing the old man? But how can that be, considering the bleak fate Genghis Mao had himself intended for Mangu? Either yesterday’s surgery has so enfeebled the Khan that he has grown uncharacteristically sentimental, suddenly entering an inconceivable dotage, or else Mordecai is misreading the signs: not grief but fear, cognizance of personal peril, awareness that if assassins could reach Mangu they might well find a way into the sanctum of Genghis Mao. That must be it. The Khan is angry and afraid, but because he is so diminished physically by his operation, his anger and fear momentarily take the form of sorrow. And indeed, after a few moments more Genghis Mao grows calm again, and says, in a low, controlled, newly resonant voice. “This is the first successful attack against our rule that we have experienced. It is unprecedented and must be met with force to demonstrate that we have lost none of our vigor and that our authority will not be undermined.” He beckons Avogadro to his bedside and begins to dictate plans for mass arrests, wholesale interrogation of suspected subversives, tightened security measures both within the Grand Tower and in Ulan Bator in general. He sounds now less like a bereaved elder than a threatened despot. The loss of Mangu, it quickly becomes clear, means little or nothing to him personally, Mangu having been such a cipher, but it is a frightening omen of a breach in the power of his regime, and will require a reign of terror.