Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

“But some rest—”

“Rest? I don’t need to rest. I could get out of bed now and run from here to Karakorum. Rest, for what? Are you worried about me, Shadrach?” The Chairman’s laughter bursts forth, booming, resonant. “I feel fine. Never better. Stop worrying. What an old woman you are, Shadrach. Are you a Christian?”

“Sir?” Shadrach says blankly.

“A Christian. A Christian. Do you accept the Only Begotten Son of God as your Savior? What? Can’t you hear? The ears going bad? I’ll ask Warhaftig to give you new eardrums. I asked you, Are you a Christian?”

Baffling. “Well—”

“You know. You know. Pater noster qui art in heaven. Ave Maria full of grace. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day, says the Lord. Yes? You know of this? Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world. Ite missa est. Well?”

“Well, my parents sometimes took me to church, but I can’t really say that I—”

“Too bad. Not a believer?”

“In the narrow sense of the word, perhaps, but—”

“There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me.”

“I don’t think I’m a believer, then.”

“Well, hallowed be thy name. Would you like to be Pope anyway?”

“Sir?”

“Is that all you can say? Sir? Sir?” Genghis Mao mimics his obsequiousness with devastating ferocity. The Khan’s pulse is rising; his face is flushed. “The kingdom and the power. Oh, and the glory. You Christians, you understand. I am the way, the truth, and the life, says the Lord; no one comes to the Father, except through me.” This manic volatility disturbs Dr. Mordecai, who surreptitiously boosts the Khan’s tranquilizer intake, hitting the 9-pordenone pedal while pretending to examine the base of the life-support system. Genghis Mao, sitting up, shouting now, cries, “Answer yes, answer no, but no more sirs! Pope! I asked you, would you like to be Pope? The Pope is dead in Rome, old Benedict. The cardinals will meet this summer. I am invited to offer a nominee. I’ll send them the name of my doctor, my beautiful black doctor, yes? Le Pape Noir. Il Papa Negro. There have been black saints, why not a black Pope? Pick your own regnal name. It’s one of the idle dividends of the power and the glory. What do you say to Papa Legba? Eh? Eh?” Genghis Mao claps his hands. “Papa Legba! Papa Legba!”

The new liver, Shadrach thinks. Could it have been the liver of a madman? He says mildly, “I’m not Roman Catholic, sir.”

“You could become one. Is that so hard? A week of coaching and you’d know how to mumble the right words. Kyrie eleison. Credo in unum deum. Om mani padme hum.”

There is something ominous in all this crazy talk of poping. Genghis Mao’s lightning shifts of subject, his hectic flow of fantasies, his volcanic verbal outpour, do not inspire confidence in Genghis Mao’s mental stability. This is the man who rules the world, Shadrach reflects. Such that it is.

Shadrach says, “If I became Pope, who would be your doctor?”

“Why, you would, Shadrach.”

“From Rome?”

“We’d move the Vatican to Ulan Bator.”

“Even so, I don’t think I could do justice to both jobs, sir.”

“A young man like you? Of course you could. What are you, thirty-five years old, thirty-eight, something like that? You’d be a splendid Pope. I’d become Catholic myself, and you could hear my confession. Don’t refuse the offer, Shadrach. I think you don’t have enough to do as things are now. You need distractions. You spend too much of your time doctoring me, because your days are otherwise idle. You fill me with needless medicines. Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I’d prefer not to become Pope, sir.”

“Final decision?”

“Final.”

“All right. I’ll name Avogadro.”

“At least he’s Italian.”

“You think I’m insane, Shadrach?”

“Sir, I think you’re overtaxing yourself. I prescribe two hours of total rest. May I give you a sleep tab?”

“You may not. You may leave and amuse yourself in Karakorum. Gonchigdorge will be Pope, yes, a Mongol, do you like that? I like that. You, up there, sainted old Father Genghis, old Temujin, do you like that? Leave me, Shadrach. You annoy me today. I am not insane. I am not overtaxing myself. The death of Mangu distresses me. I grieve for Mangu. I will make the world remember Mangu forever. Forty-one to the farms, and it’s only morning! Will you take yourself to Karakorum?”

The metabolic levels are rising on a dozen fronts. Shadrach is alarmed. He manipulates the tranquilizer pedal once again. The old man must be awash in 9-pordenone now, but somehow Genghis Mao overrides it, remaining in the manic mode despite the drug. It is at last taking effect, though. At last, some sign of calming. The Khan subsides. Shadrach departs, troubled, but confident that the Khan’s temperament will stabilize for a time. As he goes out, Genghis Mao calls after him, “Or King of England! What do you say? There’ll be a vacancy in Windsor soon.”

He goes to Karakorum with Katya Lindman. Ordinarily he spends his free evenings with Nikki Crowfoot, but not always; they are not husband and wife, there is no monogamy between them. He loves Crowfoot, or believes he does, which amounts to the same thing for him. But he has never been able to escape Lindman for long. Now she is in the ascendant, like baleful Saturn rising into the house of Aquarius. This night will be hers. Nikki is elsewhere, anyway, he knows not where; he is free, accessible, vulnerable.

“You’ll do the dreams with me tonight?”

Why not? Her harsh forceful contralto has maimed his will. He shall allow himself finally to be indoctrinated into the mysteries of dream-death. Her dark eyes sparkle with savage succubal glee as he nods his agreement.

The dream-death pavilion is a wide many-poled tent, black cloth with trim of rusty orange stripes. Over its entrance is mounted a great jutting image of a ram’s head, heavy, glowering, aggressive, spearing the chilly spring air with massive superprepotent coiled homs. Shadrach knows the ram is Amon-Re, lord of fear, king of the sun, patron of dream-death; for this cult is said to be derived from Pharaonic Egypt, secret rites never lost since first they were practiced along the shores of the sluggish, sweltering Nile in the time of the Fifth Dynasty. Within the tent, surprisingly, all is light. The place is ablaze with glowing fixtures from floor to ceiling — hanging lamps, floor-poles, spots, cascading lavalieres of radiance, so that the air burns with a numbing blue-while brightness and all shadows are obliterated. Shadrach, remembering the murky atmosphere of the transtemporalists’ tent, is taken aback by this intense luminosity. But in the realm of Amon-Re a solar brilliance must prevail.

A costumed figure approaches, a slender Oriental female who wears nothing but a twist of white linen around her hips and a huge gilded lioness-mask that rests ponderously on her slim shoulders. Between her dainty breasts hangs a pendant, the crux ansata, in fiery gold. She does not speak; but with expressive gestures she leads Mordecai and Lindman through the crowded tent, past scores of sleepers who lie on fluffy mattresses of white cotton surrounded by high barriers of golden rope strung through ebony stanchions, to a vacant cubicle that is to be theirs. Within the ring of rope lie two thick mattresses side by side, a neatly folded dreaming costume beside each one, and an ornate wooden trunk which, their guide indicates, is for their street clothes. Katya immediately begins to strip, and Shadrach, after a moment, does the same. The guide stands aside, showing no interest in their nakedness. Shadrach feels foolish in his costume — a single handkerchief-sized square of linen to cover his loins and thighs, a beaded belt with which to fasten it around his hips, and two narrow strips of cloth, one green, one blue, which the guide helps him fasten crosswise over his chest.