Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

You can replace a crumbled kidney, I will tell him; surely you can repair an old man’s frostbit nose. Yes. Yes. I will go. I will. I must escape from this boredom.

Is this what I had in mind when I seized the reins ?

What did I have in mind?Did I have anything in mind, except that everything was falling apart, and It was my task to hold it together? I think that was it. The world had descended into chaos. How I abhor disorder! Such turmoil, such confusion: the dying people, the dead nations, hordes of wild men sweeping across the land, nothing simple, all simplicity gone from the world. I love simplicity, a neatly organized structure, harmonious and satisfying, one nation, one government, one code of laws, everything one, onward to the horizon, I was seventy-three years old, and strong. The world was millions of years old, and weak. I could not bear the chaos. I think all those who have ruled the world were basically haters of chaos rather than mere lovers of power. Napoleon, Attila, Alexander, great Genghis, even poor crazy Hitler, all of them wanted things to be neat, to be simple, they had a vision of order, that is, and saw no other way to attain that order except to impose it themselves upon the world. As did I. Of course, most of them eventually spawned more chaos than they were removing, and they had to be removed themselves. Hitler, for example. I have not made that mistake. To the end, I do battle against entropy, I offer myself , Genghis II Mao IV. as the symbol of oneness, the focus of worldwide energy, the crystal of simplicity. But oh, Father Genghis, these plenary sessions, this droning, these dung-flies. Father Genghis, did you have a Horthy to harangue you ? Did you sit idle, dreaming of a swift horse and an icy wind, listening to a Partator and a Blount? Oh! Oh! Was it for this that I took upon myself the chaos of the crumbling rotting world?

Shadrach rises. He can sit here in reverie no longer; he has responsibilities, obligations, reports to file, projects to oversee.

To begin with, he must update the Genghis Mao dossier with a concise account of today’s aorta transplant, which means collating a vast sheaf of printouts and selecting from that mass of raw and fragmentary data the significant outlines of a useful medical profile. Very well. He taps keys, summoning the outtakes of this morning’s operation. But as he works, he finds his mind invaded at times by the spurious voice of Genghis Mao, dictating stray shreds of imaginary memoir:

May 27, 1998.

The People’s Republic is leaderless this morning and I think the government will collapse before noon. Shirendyb, the fifth prime minister in the past six weeks, succumbed to the organ-rot late last night. No one is left in the politburo; the presidium has been decimated; the streets of Ulan Bator are choked with refugees, a slow steady stream of oxcarts and dilapidated trucks heading — where? It is the same everywhere. The old society is dying. Only ten years ago I thought fundamental change was impossible; then came the volcano, the terror, the uprising, the Virus War, the organ-rot, and three billion human beings are dead and institutions are crumbling like shoddy buildings struck by earthquakes. I will not lea ve Ulan Bator. I think my time is at last at hand. But the government I will proclaim will not be called a people’s republic.

November 16, 2008.

To celebrate the tenth year of my reign I journeyed to Karakorum and dedicated the new pleasure complex. They invited me to experience the amusements they call “dream-death” and “transtemporalism. ” I chose dream-death. The irresistible fascination of the morbid. Especially the illusion of the morbid. It takes place in a tent full of pseudo-Egyptian motifs. The ugly old monster-gods hovering like gargoyles over the place; you can practically smell the reek of Nile mud, hear the buzzing of the flies. Attendants with masks. Bright lights. Much fuss made over me. Naturally I was the only one having the experience at that time. I allowed myself to be hypnotized behind a phalanx of picked security guards. A sensation as of dying, very convincing, I think. (What does any of us know about it?) And then a dream. But in my dream the world was exactly as it is when I am awake. They promised me gaudy illusions and surreal fantasies. None. Have they deceived me? Are they afraid to let Genghis Mao taste the true experience?

June 4, 2010.

Today the new physician began his duties. Shadrach Mordecai, a strange name. American, bright, earnest. He is terrified of me but that may pass. He holds himself so stiffly when he is with me! His training is in gerontology and he has been on the staff of Project Phoenix for several years. I told him this morning: “We make a deal, you and I. You keep me healthy, I keep you healthy, all right?” He smiled but behind that he was plainly upset. Too heavy-handed of me, I suppose.

Somehow Shadrach finishes dictating the profile and moves along to the next task, which is to look over a project report from Irayne Sarafrazi. Nothing much new there; her project continues to wrestle with the brain-cell-deterioration problem and, as Shadrach has foreseen, is getting nowhere. All the same, he must read the report through and find some encouraging comment to make. Still the insidious voice resonates in his head, distracting him with bursts of fantasy. Doggedly he works on, trying to ignore the mental static.

May 15, 2012.

The most terrible news. Assassins have murdered Mangu. Comes now Horthy, bleating hysterically about falling bodies. How could this have happened? Into Mangu’s bedchamber, silently, seize him, to the window, out! Oh, my fury. Oh, my bitter grief. What will I do now? My plans for Mangu thwarted. Shadrach tells me Project Phoenix is stymied, probably forever, on biological problems. Project Talos moves slowly, and Talos I have never really liked. Which leaves Avatar, and Avatar without Mangu is—

Ah. I will use Shadrach. A fine body — I’ll be happy in it. And black. A novelty. I should experience all the varieties of humanity. Perhaps when Shadrach’s body is old I should move on into a white one — even a woman, perhaps — perhaps a giant someday, or a dwarf — all possibilities—

Shadrach has been a good doctor and a pleasant companion. But there are other doctors, and companionship becomes ever less important to me. Shall I feel guilty about snuffing him out? For a while, perhaps a day, two days. But I must put myself beyond such feelings.

May 16, 2012.

More thoughts on the choice of Shadrach to replace Mangu. Obviously some residual guilt lurking in me. But why? I propose not to murder him but to ennoble him by making his body the vehicle for immense power. Of course he might object that what I propose for him is, if not murder outright, then at best a form of slavery, and his kind has endured slavery enough. But no: Shadrach is not his ancestors, and all old debts have been canceled by the Virus War, which destroyed slaves and masters indiscriminately, struck down generals as well as babes, and left those who survived in the condition of pure survivors, pastless, liberated into a new dispensation in which history is born fresh and virgin each day. What do the sins of the slavemasters mean to anyone today? The society, the network of relationships, that evolved under the stimulus of slavery and its consequences, even of emancipation and its consequences, is wholly gone. And I am Genghis Mao and I require his body. I need not vex myself with the guilt of others. I am not German; I can send Jews to the oven if the need arises, without making apologies for past sins. I am not white; therefore I am free to enslave a black. The past is dead. History is blank pages now. Besides, if historical imperatives do still exist, I am a Mongol: my forefathers enslaved half the world. Can I do less? I will have his body.