Shadrach in the Furnace

by Robert Silverberg

  “Tell him again!” Buckmaster cries. “Oh, God, tell him!”

  “Please,” Avogadro says. Buckmaster’s outburst appears to give him pain. He signals to his man, and Buckmaster is unstrapped, freed of the electrodes, helped to his feet, led from the room. At the door Buckmaster pauses and looks back, face bleary, distorted with fear. His lips tremble; in a moment he will be sobbing. “I’m not the one!” he cries, and the security aides haul him away.

  “He isn’t,” Shadrach says. “I’m sure of that. He was out of his mind last night, ranting and screaming, but he’s no assassin. A malcontent, maybe. But no assassin.”

  Avogadro, sinking limply into the interrogation chair, plays with the electrodes, winding the snaky leads around his fingers. “I know that,” he says.

  “What will happen to him?”

  “The organ farm. Probably before morning.”

  “But why?”

  “Genghis Mao’s reviewed the tape. He regards Buckmaster as dangerous.”

  “Christ!”

  “Go argue with Genghis Mao.”

  “You sound so calm about it,” Shadrach says.

  “It’s out of my hands. Doctor.”

  “We can’t just let him be murdered!”

  “We can’t?”

  “I can’t.”

  “If you want to try to save him, go ahead. I wish you well.”

  “I might try. I might just.”

  “The man called you a black bastard,” Avogadro says. “And a Judas.”

  “For that I should let him be vivisected?”

  “You aren’t letting anything. It’s just happening. It’s Buckmaster’s problem. Not mine, not yours.”

  “No man’s an island, Avogadro.”

  “Haven’t I heard that before somewhere?”

  Shadrach stares. “Aren’t you at all concerned? Don’t you give a damn about justice?”

  “Justice is for lawyers. Lawyers are an extinct species. I’m only a security officer.”

  “You don’t believe that, Avogadro.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “Christ. Christ. Don’t come on with that I’m-just-a-cop routine. You’re too intelligent to mean it. And I’m too intelligent to take it at face value.”

  Avogadro sits up. He has coiled two of the leads around his throat in a bizarre clownish way, and his head is tilted to one side, like that of a hanged man. “Do you want me to play you the Buckmaster tape? There’s a place on it where you tell him that it’s not our fault the world is the way it is, that we accept our karma, that we all serve Genghis Mao because he’s the only game in town. The alternative is organ-rot, nez-pah? Therefore we dance to the Khan’s tune, and we don’t ask questions of morality, neither do we unduly search our souls over matters of guilt and responsibility.”

  “I—”

  “Wait. You said it. It’s on tape, Dottore. Now I say to you. I’ve forfeited the luxury of having personal feelings about the righteousness of sending Bucky to the organ farm. By entering the Khan’s service I’ve given up the privilege of having qualms.”

  “Have you ever seen an organ farm?”

  “No,” Avogadro says. “But I hear—”

  “I’ve seen them. Long quiet room, like a hospital ward, but very quiet. Except for the burble of the life-support machinery. Double row of open tanks, wide aisle between them. One body in each tank, floating in warm blue-green fluid, a nutrient bath. Intravenous tubes all over the floor, like pink spaghetti. Dialysis machines between each pair of tanks. Before they put a body in its tank, they kill the brain—spike through the foramen magnum, zap—but the rest stays alive, Avogadro. Vegetable in animal form. God knows what it perceives, but it lives, it needs to be fed, it digests and excretes, the hair grows, the fingernails, the nurses shave and groom the bodies every few weeks, and there they lie, arranged neatly by blood type and tissue type, available, gradually being stripped of limbs and organs, a kidney this week, a lung the next, sliced down to torsos in easy stages, the eyes, the fingers, the genitalia, eventually the heart, the liver—”

  “So? What’s your point, Doctor? That organ farms aren’t pretty places? I know that. But it’s an efficient way to maintain organs awaiting transplant. Isn’t it better to recycle bodies than to waste them?”

  “And turn an innocent man into a zombie? Whose only purpose is to be a living storage depot for spare organs?”

  “Buckmaster isn’t innocent.”

  “What’s he guilty of?”

  “Guilty of bad judgment. Guilty of bad luck. His number’s up, Doctor.” Avogadro, rising, lays his hand lightly on Shadrach’s arm. “You’re a man of conscience, aren’t you, Dottore? Buckmaster thought you were a cynical fiend, a soulless servant of the Antichrist, but no, no, you’re a decent sort, caught in a nasty time, doing your best. Well, Doctor, so am I. I quote your own words of last night: Guilt is a luxury we can’t afford. Amen! Now go. Stop worrying about Buckmaster. Buckmaster’s done himself in. If you hear the bell tolling, remember, it tolls for him, and it doesn’t diminish you or me at all, because we’ve already diminished ourselves as much as possible.” Avogadro’s smile is warm, almost pitying. “Go, Doctor. Go and relax. I have work to do. I have a dozen more suspects to question before dinner.”

  “And the real murderer of Mangu—”

  “Was Mangu himself, nine to one. What’s that to me? I’ll continue to find his killer and interrogate him and ship him to the organ farms until I’m told to stop. Go, now. Go. Go.”

  12

  Word circulates, the next day, that thirteen conspirators have been sent to the organ farms, including Roger Buckmaster, the ringleader. Such rumors generally have a way of being accurate, but Shadrach Mordecai, still finding the idea unpalatable, goes to the extent of keying into the master personnel register to find out where Buckmaster is. He tries the engineering department code, but is told by the master computer that Buckmaster has been reassigned to Department 111. Shadrach tries that code next, though he knows what it is likely to be, and yes. Department 111 is the euphemism for the organ farms. Buckmaster has joined the human stockpile. Spike through the foramen magnum, zap. Poor silly red-faced fool.

  Dr. Mordecai chooses not to bring up the subject of Buckmaster when he pays his morning call on the Chairman. Buckmaster’s fate seems beside the point now. “The conspiracy is crushed!” Genghis Mao declares vehemently as Shadrach enters. “The guilty have been punished. The threat to our regime has been met. The principles of centripetal depolarization will not be challenged.” His eyes gleam with lunatic satisfaction. His ancient patchwork body throbs with triumphant good health, reverberating in Shadrach’s implants as furious freshets of resurgent energy.

  Shadrach takes blood samples, administers medicines, checks reflexes; the Khan pays no more heed to him than if he were an orderly changing the bed linens. He is altogether preoccupied, it appears, with his proliferating schemes for the deification of Mangu. Already blueprints for Mangu monuments have been drawn up, and they are spread everywhere in rustling heaps across the Chairman’s bed, over his bony upjutting knees and on both sides of him and tumbling to the floor. Humming tunelessly, Genghis Mao turns the documents this way and that, nodding, scribbling marginal notes, muttering private observations.

  “Hah! I like this!” Genghis Mao exclaims sharply. “Patterned after the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, but twice the size, with statues of Mangu twenty meters high rising out of each of the four faces. What do you think?” He shoves the blueprint toward Mordecai. “It’s Ionigylakis’s idea. He’s trying to improve on antiquity, like everyone else. How do you like it, Shadrach?”

  “The statues, sir. They—ah—tend to break the line of the pyramid, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Pyramids are so graceful,” Shadrach says. “So compact.”

  “The original pyramid is an exhausted concept,” the Chairman snaps. “What I like about this is the contrast in angles, the slope of the pyramid’s face
versus the upright statue working against it, do you see? Mangu is rising upward, outward, away from the center—it’s centripetal, Shadrach! Do you see?”

  “Centrifugal, I’d say, sir.”

  Genghis Mao gapes as though his doctor has struck him. “Centrifugal? Centrifugal? Are you serious?” He breaks into frantic laughter. “A joke! My earnest Shadrach makes a joke! Tell me: do you think Mangu was in great pain?”

  “He must have died instantly. I doubt that he was conscious as he fell. The acceleration—”

  “Yes. Look at this one, will you? A helical spire, it says here, nine hundred meters high, a great metal coil through which a magnetic field flows, and a perpetual bolt of lightning flickering at the tip—”

  “Sir, if you would, the tritetrazol injection—”

  “Later, Shadrach.”

  “The absorption levels are already slightly above optimum. If I could have your arm—”

  “—and here, yes, I like this. A giant sarcophagus of alabaster, inlaid with onyx—”

  “—clench your fist, sir—”

  “—build a tomb worthy of—”

  “—if you’d hold your breath, count to five—”

  “—a scale befitting Alexander the Great, Tut-ankh-Amen, even Genghis Khan himself. Yes, why not? Mangu—”

  “—and relax now, sir—”

  “—Ch’in Shih Huang Ti! There’s our prototype! Do you know him, Shadrach?”

  “Sir?”

  “—Ch’in Shih Huang Ti.”

  “I’m afraid I—”

  “The First Emperor of China, the Unifier, the builder of the Great Wall. Do you know how they buried him?” Genghis Mao scrabbles through the documents on his bed and comes up with a sheaf of pale green printouts, which he brandishes wildly in Shadrach’s face. “A great hill of sand, south of the River Wei, at the foot of Mount Li. Or was it Mount Wei, River Li? Wei. Li. In the mound a palace, and the palace contained a relief map of China modeled in bronze, depicting the rivers, mountains, valleys, plains. The Yangtze and the Huang Ho had channels four meters deep, filled with quicksilver. Models of cities and palaces along their banks, and a great dome of bright copper overhead, yes, with the moon and the constellations engraved on it. The coffin of the First Emperor, then, floated on one of the quicksilver rivers, Shadrach! An endless journey across China. Silent, slippery—oh, bathe me in quicksilver, Shadrach, let me sleep on quicksilver! Do you see the coffin? And a powerful bow mounted at the coffin’s side, ready to hurl an arrow at any intruder. Trapdoors and hidden knives waiting for the grave-robbers, too, and thunder-making machines—and hundreds of slaves and artisans buried in the mound with Ch’in Shih Huang Ti to serve him, yes. Grandeur! What do you think? Should I build this for Mangu?” The Khan blinks, frowns, moistens his lips. Shadrach Mordecai perceives changes in skin temperature and blood pressure. “On the other hand—if I build such a tomb for Mangu, what could I provide for myself? Surely I deserve something finer. But what—what—” Genghis Mao breaks into a broad grin. “There’s time to plan it! Twenty, fifty years! Why should I think now of tombs for Genghis Mao? It’s Mangu we bury. I’ll give him the finest!” The old man pushes the blueprints into a heap. “Forty-one guilty conspirators to the organ farms so far, Shadrach.”

  “I had heard thirteen.”

  “Forty-one, and we’re not finished. I’ve told Avogadro to bring in at least a hundred. Think of the livers going into storage! The kilometers of intestine. How beautiful the farms are, Shadrach. I hate waste of all kinds. You know that. To conserve. It’s a kind of poetry. Forty-one more tanks filled. And the threat to the government is put down.” Genghis Mao’s voice grows dark, hollow. “But Mangu—what have they done to Mangu? My other self—my self-in-waiting—my prince, my viceroy—”

  “Sir, perhaps you’re becoming overexcited.”

  “I feel fine. Shadrach.”

  “But some rest—”

  “Rest? I don’t need to rest. I could get out of bed now and run from here to Karakorum. Rest, for what? Are you worried about me, Shadrach?” The Chairman’s laughter bursts forth, booming, resonant. “I feel fine. Never better. Stop worrying. What an old woman you are, Shadrach. Are you a Christian?”

  “Sir?” Shadrach says blankly.

  “A Christian. A Christian. Do you accept the Only Begotten Son of God as your Savior? What? Can’t you hear? The ears going bad? I’ll ask Warhaftig to give you new eardrums. I asked you, Are you a Christian?”

  Baffling. “Well—”

  “You know. You know. Pater noster qui art in heaven. Ave Maria full of grace. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day, says the Lord. Yes? You know of this? Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, Ite missa est. Well?”

  “Well, my parents sometimes took me to church, but I can’t really say that I—”

  “Too bad. Not a believer?”

  “In the narrow sense of the word, perhaps, but—”

  “There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me.”

  “I don’t think I’m a believer, then.”

  “Well, hallowed be thy name. Would you like to be Pope anyway?”

  “Sir?”

  “Is that all you can say? Sir? Sir?” Genghis Mao mimics his obsequiousness with devastating ferocity. The Khan’s pulse is rising; his face is flushed. “The kingdom and the power. Oh, and the glory. You Christians, you understand. I am the way, the truth, and the life, says the Lord; no one comes to the Father, except through me.” This manic volatility disturbs Dr. Mordecai, who surreptitiously boosts the Khan’s tranquilizer intake, hitting the 9-pordenone pedal while pretending to examine the base of the life-support system. Genghis Mao, sitting up, shouting now, cries, “Answer yes, answer no, but no more sirs! Pope! I asked you, would you like to be Pope? The Pope is dead in Rome, old Benedict. The cardinals will meet this summer. I am invited to offer a nominee. I’ll send them the name of my doctor, my beautiful black doctor, yes? Le Pape Noir. Il Papa Negro. There have been black saints, why not a black Pope? Pick your own regnal name. It’s one of the idle dividends of the power and the glory. What do you say to Papa Legba? Eh? Eh?” Genghis Mao claps his hands. “Papa Legba! Papa Legba!”

  The new liver, Shadrach thinks. Could it have been the liver of a madman?

  He says mildly, “I’m not Roman Catholic, sir.”

  “You could become one. Is that so hard? A week of coaching and you’d know how to mumble the right words. Kyrie eleison. Credo in unum deum. Om mani padme hum.”

  There is something ominous in all this crazy talk of poping. Genghis Mao’s lightning shifts of subject, his hectic flow of fantasies, his volcanic verbal outpour, do not inspire confidence in Genghis Mao’s mental stability. This is the man who rules the world, Shadrach reflects. Such that it is.

  Shadrach says, “If I became Pope, who would be your doctor?”

  “Why, you would, Shadrach.”

  “From Rome?”

  “We’d move the Vatican to Ulan Bator.”

  “Even so, I don’t think I could do justice to both jobs, sir.”

  “A young man like you? Of course you could. What are you, thirty-five years old, thirty-eight, something like that? You’d be a splendid Pope. I’d become Catholic myself, and you could hear my confession. Don’t refuse the offer, Shadrach. I think you don’t have enough to do as things are now. You need distractions. You spend too much of your time doctoring me, because your days are otherwise idle. You fill me with needless medicines. Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “I’d prefer not to become Pope, sir.”

  “Final decision?”

  “Final.”

  “All right. I’ll name Avogadro.”

  “At least he’s Italian.”

  “You think I’m insane, Shadrach?”

  “Sir, I think you’re overtaxing yourself. I prescribe two hours of total rest. May I give you a sleep tab?”

  “You may not. You may
leave and amuse yourself in Karakorum. Gonchigdorge will be Pope, yes, a Mongol, do you like that? I like that. You, up there, sainted old Father Genghis, old Temujin, do you like that? Leave me, Shadrach. You annoy me today. I am not insane. I am not overtaxing myself. The death of Mangu distresses me. I grieve for Mangu. I will make the world remember Mangu forever. Forty-one to the farms, and it’s only morning! Will you take yourself to Karakorum?”

  The metabolic levels are rising on a dozen fronts. Shadrach is alarmed. He manipulates the tranquilizer pedal once again. The old man must be awash in 9-pordenone now, but somehow Genghis Mao overrides it, remaining in the manic mode despite the drug. It is at last taking effect, though. At last, some sign of calming. The Khan subsides. Shadrach departs, troubled, but confident that the Khan’s temperament will stabilize for a time. As he goes out, Genghis Mao calls after him, “Or King of England! What do you say? There’ll be a vacancy in Windsor soon.”

  13

  He goes to Karakorum with Katya Lindman. Ordinarily he spends his free evenings with Nikki Crowfoot, but not always; they are not husband and wife, there is no monogamy between them. He loves Crowfoot, or believes he does, which amounts to the same thing for him. But he has never been able to escape Lindman for long. Now she is in the ascendant, like baleful Saturn rising into the house of Aquarius. This night will be hers. Nikki is elsewhere, anyway, he knows not where; he is free, accessible, vulnerable.

  “You’ll do the dreams with me tonight?”

  Why not? Her harsh forceful contralto has maimed his will. He shall allow himself finally to be indoctrinated into the mysteries of dream-death. Her dark eyes sparkle with savage succubal glee as he nods his agreement.

  The dream-death pavilion is a wide many-poled tent, black cloth with trim of rusty orange stripes. Over its entrance is mounted a great jutting image of a ram’s head, heavy, glowering, aggressive, spearing the chilly spring air with massive superprepotent coiled horns. Shadrach knows the ram is Amon-Re, lord of fear, king of the sun, patron of dream-death; for this cult is said to be derived from Pharaonic Egypt, secret rites never lost since first they were practiced along the shores of the sluggish, sweltering Nile in the time of the Fifth Dynasty. Within the tent, surprisingly, all is light. The place is ablaze with glowing fixtures from floor to ceiling—hanging lamps, floor-poles, spots, cascading lavalieres of radiance, so that the air burns with a numbing blue-while brightness and all shadows are obliterated. Shadrach, remembering the murky atmosphere of the transtemporalists’ tent, is taken aback by this intense luminosity. But in the realm of Amon-Re a solar brilliance must prevail.