Robert Silverberg: Shadrach in the Furnace

The Chairman’s head has been shaved. Without his thick black mane he looks, strangely, much younger, more vigorous: that sturdy knob of a skull, bare, speaks of the immense strength of the man, the intensity of the driving forces within him. The musculature of his scalp is powerful and conspicuous, hills and valleys outlined in bold relief, a rugged landscape of cords and ridges nurtured and developed through nearly ninety years of ferocious talking, thinking, biting, chewing. The surgeons’ angles of entry have been marked on his skin in luminous ink.

Warhaftig is ready to make the first incision. The strategy of the operation has evolved during three days of conferences. They will not go near the cerebral centers. The skull is to be opened high on the occipital curve, and the drainage device is to be inserted in the brain stem, the pons, just below the fourth ventricle near the medulla oblongata. This, everyone has agreed, is the optimum site for the valve, and not incidentally will keep the lasers away from the seat of reason — though any surgical slip could do damage to the medulla, which controls vasomotor and cardiac functions and other vital autonomic responses. But Warhaftig is not one who slips.

The surgeon glances at Shadrach. “Is all well?”

“Fine. Go when ready.”

Warhaftig lightly touches Genghis Mao’s neck. The Khan does not react, nor does a sharp pinch at the base of his skull bring any response from him. He is under local anesthesia, induced as customary through sonipuncture. “Now,” Warhaftig says. “We begin.” He makes the initial cut.

Genghis Mao closes his eyes — but, Shadrach’s inner monitors tell him, the Khan is still at full awareness, tense, poised like a wary leopard on a high branch. The skin is peeled back and clamped by retractors. Warhaftig steps aside and allows Malin to make the cranial incision. The neurosurgeon’s touch is not as deft as Warhaftig’s, but Malin has spent thirty years slicing into skulls, and he knows as Warhaftig cannot possibly know just how much margin for error his cuts can have. There, now: there is a window into the Khan’s head. Shadrach, peering on tiptoes, stares in awe at the very brain that conceived the theories of centripetal depolarization, that hatched the Permanent Revolutionary Committee, that carried mankind out of the chaos of fhe Virus War. There, there, right there, in that mysterious gray lump, it all was spawned, yes.

They are searching now for a site for the drainage valve. Warhaftig has resumed command. Instead of a laser, he uses at this point a hollow needle filled with liquid nitrogen, cryostatically cooled to a temperature of –160° C. The needle, sliding to the depths of the Khan’s brain stem, freezes the brain cells on contact, and if contact is prolonged it will kill them. While Malin calls off instrument readings and Shadrach supplies telemetering data on the state of Genghis Mao’s autonomic activities, Warhaftig, reassured that he is not destroying vital neural centers, opens a space for insertion of the drainage device. Everything goes smoothly. The Khan continues to breathe, to pump blood, to generate the normal array of electroencephalographic waves. There is lodged within him now a tube to shunt excess cerebrospinal fluid into his circulatory system, a valve through which the fluid can be drawn, and a telemetering implant that will relay to his physician constant reports on the functioning of that valve and the fluid levels of his cranial ventricles. Bone and skin are restored to place; the Khan, haggard and pallid but smiling now, is wheeled to the recovery station.

Warhaftig turns to Shadrach. “As long as we have everything set up, let’s proceed to the next operation immediately. Yes?” He reaches for Shadrach’s left hand. “You want the telemetering implant to go here, is that correct? Embedded in the thenar muscles. But not at the base of the thumb, eh? Over here, closer to the center of the palm, do I have it? All right, Let’s scrub you up and get along with it, then.”

Shadrach and Nikki, meeting for the first time since his return, are ill at ease with each other. He tries to smile, but he doubts that his face is doing a very good job of it, and her cordiality seems equally forced.

“How is the Khan?” she asks finally.

“Healing,” Shadrach says. “As per usual.”

She glances at his bandaged left hand. “And you?”

“A little sore. This implant was larger than the others. More complex. Another day or two and I’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad everything went well.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

They go through the ritual of forced smiles again. “It’s good to see you,” he says. “Yes. Very good to see you.”

They are silent. But though the conversation has faltered, neither begins to depart. He is surprised how unmoved he is by her beauty today: she is as splendid as ever, but he feels nothing, nothing at all, only a kind of abstract admiration, as he might feel for a marble statue or a spectacular sunset. He tests it. He summons memories. The coolness of her thighs against his lips. The solidity of her breasts cupped in his hands. The little grunt as he thrusts himself into her. The fragrance of her dark torrent of hair. Nothing. The all-night conversations, when there was so much to tell each other. Nothing. Nothing. Thus does treason carbonize love. But she is still beautiful.

“Shadrach—”

He waits. She is groping for words. He suspects he knows what she wants to say: to tell him once more that she is sorry, that she had no choice, that although she betrayed him it was only out of a sense of the inevitability of what would befall. It is an endless awkward moment.

At last she says, “We’re doing well on the project.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I have to go on with it, you know. There’s no other way for me. But I want you to realize that I hope it never is used. I mean, it’s valuable research, it’s a tremendous breakthrough, but I want it to remain just a laboratory achievement, just a — a — ” She falters.

“That’s all right,” he tells her, and hears an odd tenderness creeping into his voice. “Don’t torment yourself about it, Nikki. Do your work, do it well. That’s all you need to think about. Do your work.” For an instant, only an instant, he feels a flicker of what he once felt for her. “Don’t worry about me,” he says gently. “I’m going to be all right.”

On the third day the bandage comes off his hand. There is only a faint pink line to mark the place where the implant was inserted, a barely perceptible furrow against the darker pink of his palm. Like his master, Shadrach is a swift healer. He flexes his hand — slight muscular soreness, he notes — but is careful not to clench it into a fist. He is not ready to test the new device.

At the end of the week, with Genghis Mao rapidly mending, Shadrach allows himself an evening in Karakorum. He goes alone, on a mild summer night with the scent of new blossoms and the hint of rain in the air, and hires a cubicle in the dream-death pavilion, strips and dons the loincloth and the chest bands, takes the polished talisman from the lioness-headed guide, looks upon the pattern of spiraling lines, disappears into the hallucination. Once more he dies. He gives up hope and fear and striving and dismay and anxiety and need, he gives up breath and life, he dies to the world and is reborn in another place, rising above his hollow outworn husk, looking down upon it, that long brown empty form with its spidery sprawl of limbs hanging out uselessly, and floats out, out into the fragrant void, where time and space are cut loose from their moorings. Everything is accessible to him, for he is dead. He enters a city of ox carts and aileyways and low wooden buildings strung out in rambling impenetrable mazes, a place of picturesque squalor and medieval filth, and sees the lords and ladies in their green and scarlet brocaded robes tumbling in the unpaved streets, howling, sobbing, trembling, sweating, crying to the Lord, clutching at the throbbing swollen places under their arms and between their legs. Yes, yes, the Black Death, and Shadrach goes among them saying, I am Shadrach the healer, come from the land of the dead to save you, and he touches their fiery swellings and lifts them to their feet and sends them forth into life, and they sing hymns to his name. And he moves on to another city, a place of bamboo and silk, of gardens rich with chrysanthemums and junipers and small contorted pines, and in the stillness of the day a fireball bursts in the sky, a great mushroom cloud bellies toward the roof of heaven, houses break into flame, the people rush into the blazing streets, small folk, almond-eyed, yellow-skinned, and Shadrach, standing like an ebony tower among them, tells them in soft tones not to be afraid, that it is only a dream that afflicts them, that pain and even death may yet be rejected, and he spreads forth his hands to them, soothing them, draining the fire from them. The sky fills with ash and soot and pumice and it is the night of Cotopaxi once more, the volcano rumbles and hisses and drones, the air turns to poison, and the young black doctor kneels in the streets, breathing in the mouths of the fallen, raising them, comforting them. And he moves on. The howling Assyrian hordes ride through the streets of Jerusalem, slashing without mercy, and Shadrach patiently sews together the sundered bodies of the fallen, saying. Rise, walk, I am the Healer. The great woolly beasts flee as the glacial snows melt beneath the suddenly colossal sun, and the people of the caves grow thin and feeble, and Shadrach teaches them to eat grasses and seeds, to collect the berries of the newly sprouted thickets, to string weirs across the streams to snare the frisky fishes, and they worship him and paint his image on the walls of the holy cave. He takes Jesus from the cross when the Roman soldiers go off to the tavern, slinging the limp body over one shoulder and hurrying into a dark hut, where he wipes the blood from the maimed hands and feet, he applies ointments and unguents, he mixes a healing draft of herbs and juices and gives it to Him to drink, telling Him, Go. Walk. Live. Preach. He seines the fragments of Osiris from the Nile, he rejoins the severed members, he breathes life into the fallen god and summons Isis, saying, Here is Osiris. I, Shadrach, restore him to you. The sky grows green with strange cloudbursts, and the Virus War breaks above the cities of mankind, and the alien rot enters the bodies of mankind, and as the people groan and fall. Shadrach raises them, saying, Fear nothing. Death is transient. Life awaits you. And in the heavens is the smiling face of Genghis Mao. Shadrach drifts across the centuries, moving freely in space and time, and gradually he becomes aware that he is no longer alone, that there is a woman beside him, plucking at his sleeve, trying to tell him something. He ignores her. He hears celestial choirs singing his name: “Shadrach! Shadrach!” And the heavenly voices cry, “O Shadrach! You are the true healer, you are the prince of princes! Shadrach who was, Genghis to be! All hail Shadrach!” And a voice like thunder cries out, “You henceforth shall be known as Genghis III Mao V Khan!”