Robert Silverberg: Shadrach in the Furnace

Thinking of Buckmaster’s newfound tranquility allows Shadrach to find a glimmering of it himself. This time he sustains it, voyaging inward to that clear bright place beyond the reach of storms. Buckmaster disappears; Genghis Mao disappears; Shadrach disappears. For hours he works peacefully at his bench, wholly at one with his tools, his lumber. When he departs from the chapel late in the day he is in a state near ecstasy.

He reaches Ulan Bator an hour after nightfall. As soon as he arrives he phones Katya Lindman. “I want to see you,” he says.

“I was hoping you’d call. I knew you were back.”

They meet in a recreation lounge on the fiftieth floor, a rendezvous favored by middle-echelon staffers. Service is discreet there. The room is a dazzling high-vaulted oval, decorated with shining golden metallic streamers only a few molecules thick that dangle from the ceiling and twirl gently in the currents of air. A giant portrait of Genghis Mao occupies the entice east wall of the lounge, and there is one of Mangu at the other end.

Katya is wearing what is, for Katya, an unusually slinky costume, a clinging tight-woven wrap of some soft rust-colored fabric, low-cut to display her strong broad shoulders and her heavy breasts. She may even have used perfume. Shadrach has never seen her make the slightest concession to conventional femininity, and he is surprised and disappointed to see her opting for such unsubtle seductiveness now. It is not at all in character for her, and not at all necessary. But perhaps Katya is weary of staying in character, hard eyes, sharp teeth, cruel mouth, cool efficient mind, brisk and capable woman of science. She has already confessed her love for him; perhaps now she wants to play at being the sort of woman for whom love is a plausible event. Foolish of her, if that’s her game: he much prefers the Katya he knows. Or thinks he knows. Love is not a costume party.

She says, “I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

“I never intended not to. I wasn’t trying to disappear. Only to get away for a while and think things out.”

“And did you succeed?”

“I hope so. I’ll know soon enough.”

“I won’t ask.”

“No. Don’t.”

She smiles. “I’m glad you’re back. Except that I worry about the danger you’re in.”

“If I’m not worrying, why should you?”

“I don’t need to answer that.” Her voice is husky, almost stagy. She leans forward and says, “I missed you, Shadrach. It amazed me how much I missed you. You don’t like me to say things like that, do you?

“What gives you that idea?”

“Your face. You look so uncomfortable. You don’t want to hear soft words from me. You don’t think it’s proper for mean, tough Dr. Lindman to talk that way.”

“I’m just not used to you that way. It’s a side of you that’s unfamiliar to me.”

“You probably don’t even like the way I’m dressed tonight. But I can be the other Katya again, if you want. Wait. I’ll go and change into my lab smock.” She sounds almost serious.

“Stop it,” he says. He takes her hand. “You look lovely tonight.”

“Thank you.” Her voice is steely. She withdraws the hand.

“Well, you do. And I’m supposed to say so, and I did; that’s how the game is played. Now you’re supposed to say—”

“Let’s not play any more games, Shadrach, Okay?”

“Okay. Did you dress like that for me or for you?”

“For both of us.”

“Ah. Just for the hell of it, right? Because you just felt like coming on sexy. Right?”

“Right,” she says. “Okay?”

“Okay. Okay.”

“Is it okay to tell you that I missed you? Don’t force me to be some kind of machine, Shadrach. Don’t make me be whatever your image of me is. I’m not asking you to tell me you missed me. But give me the right to express what I feel. Give me the right to be silly once in a while, to be soft, to be inconsistent, if I want to be. Without worrying about which one the real Katya is. I’m always the real Katya, whoever I am at the moment. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says, and takes her hand again, and she does not pull it away. After a moment he says, “What’s been happening here while I was gone?”

“You know about the Khan’s headaches, I assume.”

“Sure. That’s why I came back when I did. The moment I picked up the telemetering impulses from him, in Peking,”

“Is it something serious?”

“We’re going to have to operate,” he says. “As soon as some special equipment I’ve ordered is ready.”

“Is brain surgery especially risky?”

“Not as risky as you might think. But the Khan doesn’t like the idea of it at all, lasers poking into his skull, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve never seen him look so spooked about an operation. But he’ll be all right. What else has been going on here?”

“There was the funeral.”

“Yes. I know. I was in Jerusalem then, or Istanbul. I saw some photographs later.”

“It was monstrous,” Karya tells him. “It went on for days and days. God knows how much it must have cost. Everything stopped, practically, while we had the speeches, the parades, the brass bands, the planes flying in formation, all kinds of rituals and celebrations. And Genghis Mao sitting in the middle of the plaza drinking everything in.”

“What a pity I missed it.”

“I’m sure you were heartbroken.”

“Yes. Terribly.”

They laugh. He is beginning to think he rather likes the way she looks in that dress.

He says, “What else? How’s your project going?”

“Very well. Seventeen kinesic traits are equivalent now. We’ve made more progress in the past three weeks than in the previous three months.”

“Good. I want to see that automaton of yours finished fast. I want your project to be the first one ready to go.”

“Have you talked to Nikki since you’ve been back?”

“No,” he says. “Not yet.”

“I hear that Avatar’s been moving fast too. They say that they’re practically done converting from Mangu’s parameters to — to those of the new donor. Weeks ahead of schedule. It scares me, Shadrach.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“I can’t help thinking — what if — if they ever actually do—”

“They won’t,” he says. “It’s not going to happen. I’m much too valuable to Genghis Mao as I am.”

“ ‘Redundancy is our main avenue of survival,’ remember. How many other doctors do you think he has waiting? Complete with telemeter implants and everything?”

“None.”

“Can you be sure?”

“Buckmaster would know if a duplicate set of implants had ever been built. He never heard anything about that.”

“Buckmaster’s dead, Shadrach.”

He lets the point pass. “I know that there’s no duplicate Shadrach Mordecai waiting somewhere to take over when I go. I realize now how dependent Genghis Mao is on me, exclusively on me, irreplaceable me. And I have a notion I’m going to be a lot less redundable in the near future, a lot more indispensable. I’m not worrying about Avatar, Katya.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” he says. He gestures toward the lounge exit, just below the vast blank-eyed portrait of sad silly Mangu. “Let’s go upstairs,” he suggests, and she smiles and nods.

Now it is the morning of the operation. Genghis Mao lies face down upon the operating table, awake, fully conscious, occasionally turning his head to stare sourly at the doctors assembled about him — Shadrach, Warhaftig, and Warhaftig’s neurological consultant, an Israeli named Malin. There is no mistaking the Khan’s look: he is frightened. He is trying to cover his fear with his usual swagger, but he is not succeeding. In ten minutes the surgical lasers will be drilling into his skull, and the prospect does not charm him. But for the headaches — whose effects are visible now, as imperial grimaces and winces — none of this would be happening.