Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

“Yes. I remember.”

“It’s going to be even truer now, won’t it? In the most literal sense. That seems awfully ironic to me. Your nervous system and his, entwined, interlocked, indistinguishable. When we spoke then, you said no, it wasn’t a true analogy, that Genghis Mao can send data to you but you can’t send it to him, so that there’s a limitation on the information flow, a discrete boundary. That’ll change, now. It’ll be impossible to tell where one of you leaves off and the other begins. But even then, I wanted to tell you that you weren’t really grasping the idea — that the marble can’t design a sculpture but is nevertheless part of the total sculpture-making system, and that you can’t feed metabolic data into Genghis Mao but are nevertheless part of the total Genghis Mao system; there is an interaction, there is a feedback relationship that links you to him and he to you, there is—” She has been talking very rapidly, a torrential flow of words. Now she halts and in an altogether different voice says, “Oh, Shadrach, why don’t you want to hide yourself?”

“I told you. It’s useless. I keep telling people that, but they don’t seem to want to believe me.”

He thinks about himself as part of the total Genghis Mao system. He considers the analogies. No doubt of it, his sensors and implants link him to the Khan in a very special way. But he is no more — and no less — important to the total Genghis Mao system than Michelangelo’s lump of marble was to the total statue-making system. Michelangelo, if he fell that a given lump of marble was no longer necessary to the needs of the total system, would casually discard it and introduce another into the system.

Nikki is trembling.

“If you won’t try to save yourself,” she says, “then nobody else can do anything for you.”

After he and Genghis Mao come to share one body, they will truly be an integrated information-processing unit. Of course, such a unit needs only one biocomputer, one brain, one mind, one self. And that self will not be the self of Shadrach Mordecai.

He says, “I know that. We’ve already discussed that. I take full responsibility.”

“Don’t you care?”

“Maybe not. Not any longer. I don’t know.”

“Shadrach—”

She starts to reach toward him, a tentative gesture, perhaps sexual, perhaps merely some sort of reflexive grab at a sinking man. He pulls back. There is a wall between them, an impermeable barrier of words and fears and doubts and hesitations and guilts. He does not mind that. He takes refuge behind that wall. But still there is that sexual pull between them, that taut hot line of erotic tension, spanning the barrier, drilling through it, eroding it, breaching it. And then the barrier is gone. He loves her, he hates her, he wants her, he loathes her. He makes a tentative gesture toward her and halts. They are like two adolescents, absurdly unsure of themselves, feinting foolishly, making silly false starts and finicky nervous withdrawals. He smiles tensely. So does she. She is obviously as conscious as he is of the minute shifts of balance that are rapidly occurring within them and between them. It is as though they are voyagers aboard an ocean liner that is struggling through turbulent, stormy waters, and they are trapped together in a tiny cabin with a massive metal safe that slides wildly about, careening across the floor with every convulsion of the waves, crashing into the walls as they jump about, threatening to crush them if they do not succeed in scampering out of its way as it bears down on them. There is something undeniably comic about their predicament, but the peril is real, too, and not at all funny. How much longer can they hold out? The safe is so heavy, the sea so rough, the cabin so small, and they are getting weary—

And suddenly they come together, embracing, grappling, mouth seeking mouth, fingers digging furiously into flesh. He is terrified by the power of the blind, irrational force that has been unleashed in him, that he has unleashed in himself. “No,” he mutters, even as he claws at her clothes, even as he pushes himself against her, even as he finds the fullness of her breasts beneath the sexless lab smock. “No,” she whimpers, seemingly equally appalled. But neither of them resists. They stumble about ridiculously, sway, topple to the floor. On the carpet, between the desk and the filing cabinet.

Neither of them undresses. Down with zipper, up with skirt; this is no tender act of love, this is not even a display of sexual athleticism, this is mere savage coupling, a desperate and unsophisticated cleaving-together of flesh. His hands slide along the smooth firm columns of her thighs and his fingers find and probe the secret slit between them, already hot and moist, and she gasps and thrusts her pelvis at him and, quickly, blindly, he drives himself into her. There is barely room for their bodies to move on the floor; she tilts herself upward, feet pointed at the ceiling, and he reaches below to grasp her buttocks, supporting her, and rams himself against her with lunatic vigor. Almost at once, so it seems to him, she comes with unfamiliar little shivers and giggles, and moments later so does he, in wild galvanic spasms that wrench a hoarse strained cry from him. Inelegantly Shadrach slumps down on her chest, exhausted, and she holds him tightly, with loving rocklike patience, as if she would be willing to hold him this way for hours or weeks, but after two or three minutes he pulls free, stunned, dazed, hardly believing what has just passed between them.

They look at each other. He blinks; so does she. There are thin faint smiles of embarrassment.

Shakily he rises. Nikki lies there, her legs lowered now but still spread wide, her rumpled skirt pushed up around her hips, her face shiny with sweat, her eyes bloodshot, unfocused. Shadrach averts his glance from her body in peculiar fastidiousness: he is not exactly repelled by the sight of her exposed loins, but somehow he does not want to look. Perhaps he is frightened by the power that that dark hairy humid cavern has over him, the primordial female chasm, irresistible, all-engulfing. At any rate he adjusts his clothes, coughs self-consciously, stoops to offer Nikki a helping hand. She shakes him off gently and gets to her feet unaided, and they stand facing each other. He has nothing to say. It is a sticky moment, but she rescues them from it by taking his hand, by giving him a warm loving smile, by pulling him toward her for a quick chaste kiss, lips lightly brushing lips, a kiss that simultaneously acknowledges the intensity of what has just taken place and brings down a curtain on it. It is time for him logo.

“Save yourself,” she whispers. “No one can do it for you.”

“I need to think about things some more.”

“Go, then. Do your thinking. I love you, Shadrach.”

He knows what he is supposed to reply to that, but the words are impossible. He squeezes her fingers instead. And swiftly leaves.

He has been saying for days that he will not run away. He has said it to Ficifolia, to Horthy, to Nikki, to Katya, to all of the well-meaning friends who want him to try to save himself. But then he decides to get out of Ulan Bator after all.

It is not exactly an escape attempt, for Shadrach still believes there is no way ultimately of avoiding the spy-eyes of Genghis Mao. He will not try to be secretive about it: he intends even to notify the Chairman himself that he is going. No, it is more like a holiday trip, a vacation. Shadrach is going to go because of that remark of Horthy’s — some people think better when they’re on the run — and because Nikki, once again bringing up her notion that he and Genghis Mao constitute a single system, has given him some ideas. He is not sure how useful the ideas may be, and he needs to consider them at length. Perhaps he really will think better on the run. He will go, at any rate. He looks forward to the trip. It will be a diverting entertainment, and possibly instructive as well. He feels buoyant and cheerful. Shadrach the Glorious, striding splendidly from continent to continent in what may very well be the last great adventure of his life.