Robert Silverberg - Shadrach in the Furnace

In the evening he visits Genghis Mao. The Khan is making his usual magnificent recovery from his latest surgery. He looks a little feverish, a trifle flushed, his keen narrow eyes unnaturally glossy, but generally he appears hale, vigorous, alert. He has spent much of the day going over the plans for the spectacular state funeral of Mangu, postponed on account of the aortal transplant and now scheduled for ten days hence. As Shadrach runs through his brisk diagnostic routines, the palpation and the auscultation and all the rest, Genghis Mao, shuffling documents and paying no attention to his physician’s earnest probings, speaks with bubbling boyish enthusiasm of the great occasion. “Fifty thousand troops massed in the plaza, Shadrach! Rockets going back and forth overhead, flights of military planes, a thousand flags, six separate marching bands. Lights, color, excitement. The whole Committee on the dais under a tremendous purple-and-gold spotlight. The catafalque drawn by thirteen wild Mongol mares. Platoons of archers, a canopy of fiery arrows. An immense pyre on the very spot where Mangu fell. Teams of gymnasts who — ” The Khan pauses. “You aren’t going to find something new to slice out of me, are you? I don’t want any more surgery just now. The funeral mustn’t be postponed a second time.”

“I see no reason why it should be, sir.”

“Good. Good. It’s going to be an event to be remembered for centuries. Whenever a great man dies, they’ll talk about giving him a funeral as great as the funeral of Mangu. You’ll sit beside me on the dais, Shadrach. At my right hand. A special mark of my favor, and everyone will know it.”

Shadrach takes a deep breath. This may be difficult.

“With your permission, sir, I intend not to be in Ulan Bator when the funeral takes place.”

The imperial eyebrows lift in surprise, but only for a moment.

“Oh?” says Genghis Mao, finally.

“I want to get away for a while,” Shadrach tells him. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

“You do look pale,” The Khan says dryly.

“Very tense. Very tired.”

“Yes. Poor Shadrach. How devoted you are.”

“You’ve grown much stronger since the liver transplant, sir. You won’t be needing me on a day-by-day basis in the weeks just ahead. And of course I could get back to Ulan Bator in a hurry if there’s any emergency.”

The beady eyes study him calmly. The Khan is oddly undisturbed by Shadrach’s announcement, it would seem. There is something mildly disquieting about that. Shadrach does not want to be indispensable, with all the burdens that indispensability entails, but on the other hand he wishes the Khan would think of him as indispensable. His only salvation now lies in indispensability.

“Where will you go?” Genghis Mao asks.

“I haven’t decided that yet.”

“Not even tentatively?”

“Not even tentatively. Away from here, that’s all I know.”

“I see. And for how long?”

“A few weeks. A month, at most.”

“It will be strange, not having you at my side.”

“Then I have your permission to go, sir?”

“You have my permission. Of course.” The Khan smiles serenely, as if very satisfied with his own graciousness. And then a sudden mercurial shift, a darkening of the face, furrowing of the forehead, a tense fretful gleam coming into the eyes. Second thoughts? Yes. “But what if I do fall ill? Suppose I have a stroke. Suppose my heart. My stomach.”

“Sir, I can return at once if—”

“It worries me, Shadrach. Not having you close by.” The Khan’s voice is hoarse, ragged, almost panicky now. “If organ rejection starts. If there’s some intestinal obstruction. If my kidneys begin to fail. You know of trouble so soon, you react so swiftly. If — ” The Khan laughs. His mood seems to be shifting again; the fears of a moment ago vanish abruptly, and a strange blank smile plays across his face. In a new, sweet voice he says, almost crooning, “Sometimes I hear voices, Shadrach, did you know that? Like the saints, like the prophets. Invisible advisers come to me. Whispering, Whispering. They always have, in time of need. To warn me, to guide me.”

“Voices, sir?”

Genghis Mao blinks. “Did you say something?”

“Voices, I said. You were telling me that you sometimes hear voices.”

“I said that? I said nothing about voices. What voices? What are you talking about, Shadrach?” Genghis Mao laughs again, a low, harsh, baffling laugh. “Voices! What madness! Well, let’s not trouble ourselves with such foolishness.” He cranes his neck and peers straight up at Shadrach. “So you’ll be having a vacation from the old man and his complaints soon, will you?”

Shadrach is sweating. Shadrach is terrified. Is this some kind of psychotic break, or merely one of Genghis Mao’s games?

“A short vacation, yes, sir,” he says uncertainly.

The Chairman looks momentarily wistful. “Yes. But to miss the funeral, though — such a pity—”

“I regret that,” Shadrach says. “But I do need to get away,” “Yes. Yes. By all means. Take your trip, Shadrach. If you do need to get away. If you do. Need to get away.”

There. Done. Shadrach sighs. An uneasy moment or two, but he has his permission to depart. Strange. That wasn’t really so difficult at all.

May 29, 2012

Such a long face on Shadrach when he came out with the business about his vacation. Terrified of me. Afraid I’d refuse, I guess. What would he have done if I’d said no? Go anyway? He might. He seems desperate. Had that look in his eye, trapped man fighting in a corner. One must always be wary of those. Control your opponent, yes, but don’t trap him in corners. Give him plenty of space. That way you give yourself plenty of space, too.

I wonder why he’s going.

Tired, he said. Tense. Well, maybe so. But there’s more to it than that. It has to have something to do with Avatar. Is he thinking of disappearing? He’s too bright for that. Must know he can’t disappear. What then? Rebelliousness? Wants to see what happens if he walks in and tells the old man he’s taking off for a month to points unknown? Naturally I wouldn’t refuse. Much more interesting to let him go and see what he does.

First flicker of independence poor Shadrach’s ever shown. About time, too.

What if I get seriously ill while he’s gone? Heart. Liver. Lungs. Kidneys. Cerebral hemorrhage. Pleurisy. Acute pericarditis. Toxicuremia. So fragile, so flimsy, so vulnerable, this body, just chunks of meat strung together. Capable of falling apart overnight.

Mustn’t worry about that. I feel fine. I feel fine. I feel fine. I am in extraordinarily good health.

I am not dependent on Shadrach Mordecai.

I am not dependent on Shadrach Mordecai.

And what if he knows some way of actually disappearing? I suppose there’s at least a slight chance of that. What becomes of Avatar then? Find another donor? But I want him. Whenever I see him, I think of how fine his body is, how agile, how elegant. I mean to wear that body someday, oh, yes!

Should I therefore let him get out of my sight? No one can get out of my sight. Right.

Anyway, I know Shadrach. It doesn’t worry me, this trip of his. He’ll go, he’ll have his fling, and then he’ll come back to me. Of his own free will. He’ll come back, all right. Yes. Of his own free will.

It is time to think of the choosing of destinations. Shadrach can go anywhere in the world, and no concern for the cost; he is a member of the ruling elite, is he not, Antidote-blessed, an aristocrat in a world of rotting pieces. But where shall he go? He heads for Surveillance Vector One to consider his options. Though he has often paused before the screens of Surveillance Vector One for a random dip into the activities of the outer world that he calls the Trauma Ward, this is the first time that Shadrach has actually seated himself in the imperial throne from which the great spy-eye apparatus is controlled. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of colored buttons confront him: a bank of red ones, a wedge of green ones, yellow, blue, violet, orange. His hands hover above them like those of a novice organist approaching a full keyboard for the first time. Nothing is labeled. Is there a system? All about the room, images whirl and flit on the myriad screens, zipping by at unfathomable variable rates. Shadrach pokes a green button. Has anything been accomplished? The screens still seem random. He covers dozens of green buttons with both palms outstretched. Ah. Now there seems to be a detectable pattern of response. One slice of screens high up and to his right is showing unmistakably European cities — Paris, London, maybe Prague, Vienna, Stockholm. The color-coding, then, may be keyed to continents.