Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

“How long will you do experiments in human implants,” Shadrach asks, “before you’ll be ready to — to—”

“To transplant the Chairman?”

“Yes.”

Shrugging, Nikki says, “That’s hard to answer. It depends on the problems we encounter in the early human transplants. If there are unexpectedly difficult problems of psychological adaptation, if transplant leads to psychotic freak-outs or cerebral breakdown or identity bleed-throughs or anything like that, it might be months or even years before we dare shift Genghis Mao to a new body. Our animal experiments haven’t indicated that such things are going to happen, but human minds are more complex than spaniel minds, and we have to allow for the possibility that complex minds will react in complicated ways to something as traumatic as a shift of bodies. So we’ll proceed cautiously. Unless, of course, the imminent bodily death of Genghis Mao makes an emergency mind-transplant necessary, in which case, I suppose, we’ll just have to plunge ahead and see what happens. We’re not eager to do that, of course.”

“Of course,” Shadrach echoes dryly.

“We’d much rather be orderly about it. A period of experimentation with human subjects, and then, if all goes smoothly there, we’d like to do two or three preliminary Genghis Mao transplants before we—”

“What?”

“Yes. Insert the Genghis Mao construct into several temporary host bodies, simply to find out how the Chairman reacts when transplanted, what adaptations may be required in order to—”

“And what will you do with all these extra Genghis Maos?” Shadrach asks. “It’s beautiful redundancy, I know, to keep a stockpile of them around. But if they all start giving orders at once we might—”

“Oh, no,” Crowfoot says. “We don’t intend to let the Genghis Mao material remain in any of the experimental subjects. That sort of redundancy is absolutely not wanted here. We’d expunge each subject once we were done testing him. We’d do a complete mindpick after we’ve run our tests.”

“Ah. Yes. Assuming the subject will let you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember, you won’t be dealing with a helpless flunky, once you’ve done your transplant. You’ll be dealing with Genghis Mao wearing a new body. You’ll be up against the dominant spirit of the age. You might have problems.”

“I doubt it,” Nikki says breezily. “We’ll take precautions. Come this way, will you?”

She leads him forward, to a vast computer bank, a wall of gray-green metal studded with incomprehensible apparatus. In here, she tells him, the coded essence of Genghis Mao is stored, everything that has been recorded so far, a nearly complete digital persona-construct that is capable of responding to stimuli precisely as the living Genghis Mao would, to a probability of seven or eight decimal places. Nikki offers to demonstrate the constructs Genghis Mao-ness with a few quick simulation runs, but Shadrach, suddenly disheartened, shows little interest; she marches him on to some of the other Avatar wonders, to which he reacts with no greater enthusiasm, and, as though at last noticing that Shadrach has ceased to pretend to be delighted by her technological miracles, she ushers him into her private office and locks the door.

They stand facing each other, less than a meter apart, and he feels sudden surprising excitement, physical, intense. The intensity astounds him. He had thought all desire for her had gone from him forever, once he discovered how she had betrayed him. But no. Still there, strong as ever. The lore of her sleek tawny body, the memory of her fragrance, the glitter of her huge piercing dark eyes. His Indian princess, Pocahontas. Sacajawea. Even now he is drawn to her, even now. He ceases to see the ingenious woman of science whose ingenuity has altogether undone him; he sees only the woman, beautiful, passionate, irresistible. He feels the pull of her body and he is sure she feels the pull of his.

It ought not to be such a surprise. Here they are, man and woman; they have been lovers for many months; they are alone, the door is locked. Why should desire not come over them, despite everything? But still, this sudden shifting of gears into the erotic mode amazes him. Somehow sex, unexpectedly obtruding itself against this background of betrayal, depression, impending doom, seems irrelevant and inappropriate, bizarre and unwelcome. He pretends he feels nothing. He makes no move.

“How are you managing, Shadrach?” she asks tenderly, after a moment. “Is it very bad?”

“I’m holding on.”

“Are you frightened?”

“A little. More angry than frightened, I guess.”

“Do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate anyone. I’m not a hater.”

“I still love you, you know.”

“Quit it, Nikki.”

“I do. That’s what’s been ripping me apart for weeks.”

The force of Crowfoot’s concern for him is like a tangible presence in the small office.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” he says.

“You do hate me.”

“No. I’m just not interested in your remorse.”

“Or my love?”

“Such that it is.”

“Such that it is.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t want my head messed up any more than it already has been.”

“What will you do, Shadrach?”

“What do you mean, what will I do?”

“You aren’t going to stay in Ulan Bator.”

“Everybody’s been telling me to run.”

“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t do any good.”

“You could save yourself,” Crowfoot tells him.

He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t get away. The whole planet’s bugged, Nikki. Watch Surveillance Vector One for fifteen minutes and you’ll realize that. You know that already. You’ve told me yourself that escape’s impossible. There’s a tracer on everyone. Anyway, it would spoil your project again if I disappeared.”

“Oh, Shadrach!”

“I mean, I’m the key man, right?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“You’d have to find another host for Genghis Mao. Then you’d have to recalibrate all over again. You—”

“Stop it. Please.”

“All right,” he says. “At any rate, it’s futile to try to escape from the Khan.”

“You won’t even try?”

“I won’t even try.”

Crowfoot regards him levelly for a long silent moment. Then she says, “I should feel relieved about that, I suppose.”

“Why?”

“If you won’t take responsibility for saving yourself, then I don’t have to take responsibility for — for—”

“For what’s going to happen to me if I stay here?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right. You don’t need to feel any guilt at all. I’ve had fair warning, and nevertheless I freely choose to stay and face the music. You’re absolved, Nikki. Your hands are washed of my blood.”

“Are you being sarcastic, Shadrach?”

“Not particularly.”

“I can never tell when you’re being sarcastic.”

“Not this time.” he says.

They stare at each other strangely again. He still feels that mysterious sexual tension, that grotesque and inappropriate lust. He suspects that if he reached for her and dragged her down on the carpeted floor, down between the desk and the filing cabinets, he could have her right here, right now, in her own office, one last crazy and frantic screw. Then he thinks of Eis and his colleagues running around on the other side of the locked office door, busy with their computers and their chimps, doing simulated transfers of the persona of Genghis Mao into the bodily hull of Shadrach Mordecai, and his ardor cools a little. But only a little. Nikki laughs.

“What’s funny?” he asks.

“Do you remember,” she says, “that time we spoke about the concept of you and Genghis Mao being one life system, one self-corrective information-processing unit? That was before any of this happened. Mangu was still alive, I think. I talked about how the chisel and the mallet and the stone are aspects of the sculptor, or, more precisely, that the sculptor and his tools and materials together make up a single thinking and acting entity, a single person, and how you and Genghis Mao—”