Shadrach in the Furnace

24

Two robed acolytes bring Roger Buckmaster to Shadrach out of the depths of the tent of the transtemporslists in Karakorum. Buckmaster is robed too, but not in the coarse black horsehair garb of a transtemporalist. He wears a heavy hooded cassock of thick brown wool, smoothly woven. His feet, bare, are clad in open sandals. A massive cruciform pendant dangles at his throat. He pushes back his hood to reveal a tonsured scalp.

Buckmaster has become some sort of monk.

His new asceticism of clothing is not the only change in him. Before, he had been a blurting, impatient, angry man, with some kind of sullen furious energy circulating within him that seemed dammed at every plausible point of exit. Now he is eerily calm, self-contained, a man inhabiting an unfathomable kingdom of solitude and peace. He is pale, very thin, almost spectral. He stands silently before Shadrach, fingering his beads but otherwise motionless, waiting, waiting.

Shadrach says at last, “I never expected to see you alive again.”

“Life brings many surprises, Dr. Mordecai.” Buckmaster’s voice is different too, deeper, sepulchral, more resonant, all the sputter and frenzy burned out of it,

“Word went around that you’d been sent to the organ farm. Dissected, dismembered.”

Piously Buckmaster says, “The Lord chose to spare me.”

His piety is hard for Shadrach to take. “Your friends saved your skin, you mean,” he retorts, instantly regretting his bluntness. Not a wise way to talk to someone whose services you need.

But Buckmaster does not seem offended. “My friends are His agents. As are we all. Dr. Mordecai.”

“Have you been here the whole time?”

“Yes. Since the day after you saw me under interrogation.”

“And the Citpols haven’t come sniffing around for you?”

“I am officially dead, Doctor. My body has officially been distributed to ailing members of the government: the computer will tell you so. The Citpols don’t search for dead men. To them I’m no more man a set of scattered parts — a pancreas here, a liver there, a kidney, a lung. Forgotten.” For a moment mischief gleams in Buckmaster’s oddly solemn face. “If you told them I was here, they would deny it.”

“And what have you been doing?” Shadrach asks.

“The transtemporalists regard me as a holy man. I take their cup each day. Each day I retrace the days of the life of our Lord. I have attended His Passion upon Calvary many times. Doctor. I have walked among the apostles. I have touched the hem of Mary’s robe. I have beheld the miracles: Cana, Capernaum, Lazarus raised at Bethany., I have watched Him betrayed in Gethsemane. I have seen Him brought before Pilate. I have seen it all, Dr. Mordecai, everything of which the Gospels tell. It is all true. It is literally the truth. My eyes bear witness.” The unexpected intensity of conviction in Buckmaster’s eyes, the unearthly sound of Buckmaster’s voice, leave Shadrach speechless a moment. It is impossible not to believe that this scruffy little man has strolled through the Galilee with Jesus and Peter and James, that he has heard the sermons of John the Baptist and the lamentations of the Magdalene. Illusion, hallucination, self-deceit, fraud; no matter. Buckmaster has been transformed. He is radiant.

With deliberate bluntness Shadrach asks, “Can you still do microengineering work?”

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 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.

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!”

And the woman plucks at his sleeve, and he sees that she is Katya, and he says, “What do you want?” She says, It’s too late. He says, “The next donor’s already been picked?” Yes. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me his name.” I don’t think! should. “Who is he?” You, she says.The world erupts in flame and flood. The laughter of Genghis Mao rolls through the heavens, shattering mountains. Shadrach awakens. He sits up. He clenches his fist and holds it tightly clenched. Out of Ulan Bator, four hundred kilometers to the east, comes the terrible jolt of Genghis Mao’s agony, the silent scream of the sensors reporiing the wave of pain that is sweeping through the Khan.

Shadrach approaches Interface Three and announces, “Shadrach Mordecai to serve the Khan.”

He is scanned. He is approved. He is admitted.

It is close to midnight. Shadrach goes at once to the Khan’s bedroom, but Genghis Mao is not there. Shadrach frowns. The Khan has been strong enough to leave his bed for the past several days, but it is odd that he should be wandering around this late at night. Shadrach finds a servitor who tells him that the Khan has spent most of the evening in the secluded study known as the Khan’s Retreat, on the far side of the seventy-five-story compound, and is probably there now.

Onward, then. Into the Khan’s office — he is not there — and thence to the private imperial dining room, empty, and then Shadrach goes into his own office, where he pauses a moment, collecting himself amid his familiar and beloved possessions, his sphygmomanometers and scalpels, his microtomes and trephines. Here, in a flask, is the authentic abdominal aorta of Genghis II Mao IV Khan. Surely a treasure of medical history, that one. And here, the newest addition to Shadrach’s museum, is a lock of Genghis Mao’s thick, rank, preternaturally dark hair, an exhibit perhaps more fitting for a museum of witchcraft and voodoo than one of medicine, but yet appropriate, for it was removed in the course of preparations for brain surgery carried out successfully in the celebrated patient’s ninetieth (or eighty-fifth, or ninety-fifth, or whatever) year of life. And so. Onward. He presents himself to the door of the Khan’s Retreat and asks entry.

The door rolls back.

The Khan’s Retreat is the room least used on the floor, accessible only through Shadrach’s office and insulated against the intrusion of even the loudest external distractions. Its ceiling is low, its lights are dim, its furnishings are ornate and oriental, running toward thick draperies and elaborate carpets. Genghis Mao lies on a cushioned divan along the left-hand wall. Already his shaven scalp is coveted by a thin black stubble. The vitality of the man is irrepressible. But he looks shaken, even dazed.

“Shadrach,” he says. His voice is thick and scratchy. “I knew you’d get here. You felt it, didn’t you? About an hour and a half ago. I thought my head was going to explode.”

“I felt it, yes.”

“You told me you were putting a valve in me. To drain off the fluid, you said.”

“We did, sir.”

“Doesn’t it work right?”

“It works perfectly, sir,” Shadrach says mildly.

Genghis Mao looks confused. “Then what made my head hurt so much a litlle while ago?”

“This did,” says Shadrach. He smiles and stretches forth his left hand and clenches his fist.

For a moment nothing happens. Then Genghis Mao’s eyes widen in shock and amazement. He growls and clamps his hands to his temples. He bites his lip, he bows his naked head, he drives his knuckles against his eyes, he mutters anguished guttural curses. The implanted sensors that report on the bodily functions of the Khan tell Shadrach of the intense reactions within Genghis Mao: pulse and respiration rates climbing alarmingly, blood pressure dropping, intracranial pressure severe. Genghis Mao coils into a huddled ball, shivering, groaning. Shadrach lets his fingers relax. Gradually the pain recedes from Genghis Mao, the tense crumpled body uncoils, and Shadrach ceases to feel the broadcast of shock symptoms. Genghis Mao looks up. He stares at Shadrach for a long moment.

“What have you done to me?” Genghis Mao asks in a harsh whisper.

“Installed a valve in your skull, sir. To drain away the dangerous accumulations of cerebrospinal fluid. However, I should tell you that the action of the valve has been designed to be reversible. Upon telemetered command it can be made to pump fluid into the cranial ventricles instead of draining it from them. I control the action of the valve, here, by a piezoelectric crystal implanted in my palm. A twitch of my hand and the fluid ceases to drain. A harder twitch and I can pump it upward. I can interrupt your life processes. I can cause you instant pain of the kind you have now experienced twice, and in a surprisingly short span of time I could cause your death.”

Genghis Mao’s facial expression is entirely opaque. He considers Shadrach’s declaration in silence.

Eventually he says, “Why have you done this to me, Shadrach?”

“To protect myself, sir.” The Khan manages a glacial smile. “You thought I would use your body for Project Avatar?”

“I was certain of it, sir.”

“Wrong. It wouldn’t ever have happened. You’re too important for me as you are, Shadrach.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“You think I’m lying. I tell you that there was never any possibility we would have activated Project Avatar with you as the donor. Don’t misunderstand me, Shadrach. I’m not pleading with you now. I’m simply telling you how things really stand.”

“Yes, sir. But I know your teachings concerning redundancy, sir. I feared I was about to be made dispensable, I have made myself indispensable now, I think.”

“Would you kill me?” Genghis Mao asks.

“If I felt my life was in danger, yes.”

“What would Hippocrates say about that?”

“The right of self defense is allowed even to physicians, sir.”

Genghis Mao’s smile grows warmer. He seems to be enjoying this discussion. There is no trace of anger on his face.

He says calmly, merely raising a speculative hypothesis, “Suppose I have you seized by stealth, immobilized before you can clench your fist, and put to death?”

Shadrach shakes his head, “The implant in my hand is keyed to the electrical output of my brain. If I die, if I’m mindpicked in any way, if there’s any sort of significant interruption in my brain waves, the valve automatically begins pumping cerebro-spinal fluid to your medulla. The moment of my death is the automatic prelude to your own, sir. Our fates are joined. Guard my life, sir, for your own sake.”

“And if I have the valve removed from my head and replaced by one that isn’t quite as — ah — versatile?”

“No, sir. There’s no way you could enter surgery without my implant system notifying me of it. I’d take defensive action, naturally, at the first moment. No. We have become one entity in two bodies, sir. And we’ll remain that way forever.”

“Very clever. Who built this mechanical marvel for you?”

“Buckmaster did, sir.”

“Buckmaster? But he’s been dead since May. You couldn’t have known then—”

“Buckmaster is still alive, sir,” Shadrach says softly.

Genghis Mao considers that. He grows extremely thoughtful. He is silent for a long while. “Still alive. Strange.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. ” Shadrach makes no reply. After a time Genghis Mao says, “You’ve planted a bomb in me.”

“So to speak, sir, I have.”

“I have power over all of mankind. And you have power over me, Shadrach. Do you realize what that makes you? You are the true Khan now! All hail, Genghis III Mao V!” Genghis Mao laughs savagely. “Do you understand that? Do you know what you have achieved?”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Shadrach admits.

“You could force my resignation. You could compel me to name you as my successor. You could kill me and assume the Chairmanship, perfectly legitimately. You see that? Of course you see that. Is that what you mean to do?”

“No, sir. The last thing in the world I want is to be Chairman.”

“Go ahead. Wiggle your hand at me, stage a coup d’etat. Take power, Shadrach. I’m old, tired, bored, crumbling. I’m willing to be overthrown. I admire your shrewdness. I’m fascinated by what you’ve done. No one has ever fooled me so thoroughly before, do you know that? You’ve accomplished what thousands of enemies have utterly failed to do. Quiet Shadrach, loyal Shadrach, dependable Shadrach — you have me beaten. You own me. I am your puppet now, do you see that? Go on. Make yourself Chairman. You’ve earned it, Shadrach.”

“It’s not what I want.”

“What do you want, then?”

“To continue as your physician. To protect your health and strive to extend your life. To remain by your side and serve you according to my oath.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. No, there’s one thing more, sir.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I request a place on the Committee, sir.”

“Ah.”

“Specifically, I want authority in the sphere of public health. Government medical policy.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“Control over distribution of the Antidote, sir. I mean to develop a program for immediate worldwide treatment of the healthy population,” Shadrach says. “And expansion of whatever programs currently exist for research into a permanent cure for the organ-rot. That is, a total reversal of what I undersiand is existing PRC policy.”

“Ah!” Genghis Mao begins to laugh. “Now it emerges! You do intend to be Khan, then! I keep the Chairmanship, but you call the tunes. Is that it, Shadrach? Is that what you’ve engineered? Very well. You have me. I’m yours, Shadrach. You’ll join the Committee at the next meeting. Draw up your policy statements and submit them.” He glances somberly at Shadrach’s left hand. “All hail,” the Chairman cries, “Genghis III Mao V!”

When he leaves the Khan’s Retreat, Shadrach’s route back to his own suite takes him through his office, through Committee Vector One, and into Surveillance Vector One, where he halts awhile, as is his habit, to watch the show on the winking screens. All is quiet in the Grand Tower of the Khan. It is the depth of night; all Asia sleeps. But across the planet, out there in the Trauma Ward, life goes on, and also death. Shadrach stands before the multitude of screens, following the random flow, the suffering, the striving, the struggling, the dying. The walking dead, wandering the streets of Nairobi, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Rome, San Francisco, Peking, shambling across all the continents, the procession of the damned, the lost, the tortured, the condemned. Somewhere out there is Bhisma Das. Somewhere, Meshach Yakov. Somewhere, Jim Ehrenreich. Shadrach wishes them joy and good health for such of life as is left to them. To all, joy! To all, good health!

He thinks of the laughter of Genghis Mao. How amused the Khan seemed at his predicament! How relieved, almost, at having the ultimate authority stolen from him! But the Khan is beyond comprehension; the Khan is alien, mysterious, unfathomable, ultimately inscrutable. Shadrach does not really know what will happen now. He cannot imagine what counterploy Genghis Mao may already have conceived, what traps he is even now devising. Shadrach will walk warily and hope for the best. He has planted a bomb in Genghis Mao, yes, but he has also seized a tiger by the tail, and he must be careful lest he stumble between the metaphors and be destroyed.

He stands mesmerized before the dazzling dance of the screens of Surveillance Vector One. It is the fourth of July, 2012. Wednesday. Gentle rain is falling in Ulan Bator, which next week shall be renamed Altan Mangu in honor of the slain viceroy, who already has been forgotten by most of mankind. In this night death will travel the globe, harvesting his thousands; but in the morning, Shadrach Mordecai vows, things will begin to change. He stretches forth his left hand. He studies it as though it be a thing of precious jade, of rarest ivory. Tentatively he closes it, almost but not quite clenching his fist. He smiles. He touches the tips of his fingers to his lips and blows a kiss to all the world.