Shadrach in the Furnace
The irrelevance of the question catches Buckmaster off balance. He is lost in holy reveries, shrouded in mystic serenity and transcendental joy, and Shadrach’s words bring a gasp of amazement from him, as though he has been jabbed in the ribs. He coughs and frowns and says, obviously baffled, “I suppose I could. It’s never entered my mind.”
“I have work for you now.”
“Don’t be preposterous, Doctor.”
“I’m being altogether serious. I’ve come to you because there’s a job that you and only you can do properly. You’re the only one I’d trust to do it.”
“The world has expelled me, Doctor. I have expelled the world. Here is where I dwell. The concerns of the world are no longer my concerns.”
“You once were concerned about the injustices perpetrated by Genghis Mao and the PRC.”
“I am beyond justice and injustice now.”
“Don’t say that. It sounds impressive, Roger, but it’s dangerous nonsense. The sin of pride, isn’t it? You were rescued by your fellow men. You owe your life to them. They took risks for you. You have obligations to them.”
“I pray for them daily.”
“There’s something more immediately useful you can do.”
“Prayer is the highest good I know,” Buckmaster says. “Certainly I place it higher than microengineering. I fail to see how any microengineering job you give me can help my fellow men.”
“One job can.”
“I fail to see—”
“Genghis Mao is soon to undergo another operation.”
“What’s Genghis Mao to me? He’s forgotten me. I’ve forgotten him.”
“An operation on his brain,” Shadrach continues. “Fluid now accumulates within his skull. Unless it’s drained, it could kill him. Shortly we’ll install a drainage system with a valve through which the fluid can be removed. At the same time a new telemetering implant will be installed in me. Which I want you to design for me, Roger.”
“What will it do?”
“Allow me to control the action of the valve,” Shadrach says.
Two hours later Shadrach is in the great carpentry chapel at the far end of the Karakorum pleasure complex, surrounded by chisels and mallets and saws, trying to enter into the initial meditative state. He is not doing well at it. Now and then he feels just a bit of it, the beginning of the proper degree of concentration, but he holds it no more than an instant and then, as he congratulates himself for having attained the state at last, he loses it, again and again he loses it. It is Buckmaster’s fault. Buckmaster will not recede from the forefront of Shadrach’s consciousness.
If Buckmaster had had his way, Shadrach would not be among the carpenters at all right now, but rather still would be in the transtemporalists’ tent, lying drugged and limp while his soul journeyed back through the millennia to attend the bloody rite of Calvary. “Take the cup with me,” Buckmaster had urged. “We will visit the Passion together,” But Shadrach had declined. Some other time, he told Buckmaster gently. Transtemporal jaunts consume too much energy; he needs all his strength for the difficult enterprise that lies just ahead. Buckmaster had understood, or at least was willing to forgive him for not caring to make the journey just then. And Shadrach went forth from the tent, with Buckmaster’s promise that he would have the design of the new implant ready in a day or so. And still Buckmaster haunts him.
How astonishing it was to see Buckmaster’s monkishness fall away from him the moment he grasped the implications of Shadrach’s request—his breath quickening, color coming to his cheeks, eyes bright with the old frenzy. Asking a hundred questions, demanding specifications and performance thresholds, size parameters, preferred bodily placement for the device. Scribbling notes furiously. Half an hour was all it took him to work out the rough schematics. He would need computer assistance to do the final, he said, but that would be no problem: Ficifolia could hook up a telephone relay for him, keying right into Genghis Mao’s own master computer. And Buckmaster laughed stridently. Abruptly his expression shifted. Serenity returned. He had put microengineering aside; suddenly he was a monk again, calm, remote, glacial, saying, “Take the cup with me. We will visit the Passion together.”
Poor crazy Buckmaster.
Shadrach, struggling to regain his own serenity, picks up an awl, lays it down, picks up an auger, runs his fingers along the curved blade of a chisel, presses a bastard file against his forehead. Better. A little better. The touch of cool metal soothes him. Poor crazy Buckmaster has drained the cup by now, no doubt. And has gone off on wings of dream to see them put the crown of thorns in place, hammer in the nails, ram home the spear. Crazy? Buckmaster is a happy man. He has placed himself beyond all pain. He has outsmarted the minions of Genghis Mao. He has emerged out of his torment into holiness, and he will walk daily with the apostles and the Savior. To Buckmaster, the Palestine of Jesus is more real than the Mongolia of Genghis Mao, and who can quarrel with that? Shadrach might make the same choice, if he could. Of course, reality will eventually intrude on Buckmaster’s fantasy: a time will come, and come soon, when Buckmaster’s most recent Antidote treatment will cease to be effective, and he is not likely to be able to obtain a booster dose. But plainly he does not worry about that.
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 entire 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.”
&n
bsp; “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,” Katya 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.
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 the 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 o
n 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.