Collected Short Fiction, page 983
“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.”
TO BE CONTINUED
Shadrach in the Furnace
Part Two of Three Parts
George Bernard Shaw pointed out that a fanatic, who is willing to give his life for his cause, thinks nothing of giving your life for his cause.
SYNOPSIS
Shadrach Mordecai, born in Philadelphia in 1976, is thirty-six years old, tall, slender, agile, and black. His current place of residence is Ulan Bator, Mongolia, which in the year 2012 is the capital of the world. By profession he is a doctor. Shadrach Mordecai has just one patient: Genghis II Mao IV Khan, Prince of Princes, Chairman of the Permanent Revolutionary Committee, ruler of the earth.
Shadrach has been Genghis Mao’s personal physician for several years. It is a taxing job, for the Chairman, a lean and charismatic Mongol, is a man of great age—some say 80, some say he’s past 100—whose body, although amazingly tough and resilient, is a patchwork of artificial and transplanted organs that is constantly in need of surgery. Genghis Mao wishes not to die until his work of organizing mankind is complete, that is to say, never. In order better to look after his extraordinary patient, Shadrach has consented to have an array of subminiaturized sensors implanted in his body: they bring him a constant flow of telemetered data, minute-by-minute reports on the state of Genghis Mao’s health. It is a taxing round-the-clock responsibility, but there are advantages. Shadrach, as a member of the elite surrounding the Khan Genghis Mao, is entitled to be treated with the Roncevic Antidote, which makes him immune to organ-rot, a loathsome disease that plagues the rest of the world’s population-two billion survivors of the Virus War of the 1990’s. It was the Virus War that let the organ-rot loose on the world, destroyed the traditional structures of government everywhere, and opened the way for the coming to power of Genghis Mao.
Another of Shadrach’s responsibilities is to oversee the three projects by which Genghis Mao hopes ultimately to cheat death. The old warlord, a believer in redundancy as the main avenue of survival, knows that he can last only so long on constant organ transplants, and so he has established these parallel programs:
Project Phoenix, which seeks a body-renewal technique that will allow rejuvenation of the living cellular matter of Genghis Mao. Its director is Irayne Sarafrazi, a Persian gerontologist.
Project Talos, which is attempting to develop a mechanical analog of Genghis Mao operated by a digitalized equivalent of the Khan’s mental process. It is led by Katya Lindman, a somber and fiery woman with whom Shadrach is always uncomfortable, though he has had brief affairs with her.
Project Avatar, the goal of which is to perfect a personality-transfer technique that will permit the consciousness of Genghis Mao to be transplanted into another, younger boy. In charge here is Nikki Crowfoot, a handsome woman of Amerindian ancestry. She and Shadrach are lovers.
Of the three projects, the one closest to success is Avatar. Preliminary experiments have worked well, and matters have gone so far that the future recipient of Genghis Mao’s spirit has already been chosen. He is Mangu, Genghis Mao’s young, athletic, amiable viceroy. This is a secret known only to a few, and known not at all to Mangu, who confidently expects to succeed Genghis Mao, and will, but not in the way he is expecting: the consciousness of the Avatar donor-body will be extinguished before Genghis Mao’s mind is transplanted into it.
At the Grand Tower of the Khan, Genghis Mao’s skyscraper headquarters, Shadrach and a team of surgeons perform a successful liver transplant on Genghis Mao on the morning of May 14, 2012. For relaxation afterward, he and Nikki Crowfoot go off to Karakorum, the pleasure-city of the ruling elite. There they indulge in transtemporalism, a popular cult of the day, a kind of drug-induced spell taking the participant into history. Shadrach finds himself witness to the eruption of Cotopaxi, an Ecuadorian volcano, whose spectacular explosion in 1991 served as symbolic herald of the apocalyptic war that destroyed civilization; Crowfoot experiences the burning of Joan of Arc. Afterward, still in the grip of his powerful experience, Shadrach is harangued by Roger Buckmaster, the microengineering expert who designed his telemetering implants. Buckmaster, evidently now in the grip of revolutionary urges, assails Shadrach for helping to prolong Genghis Mao’s life, calling him a Judas. Shadrach, defending his role as the Khan’s doctor, breaks free at last and returns to Ulan Bator.
Where he is awakened, the next morning, by a tremendous internal jolt: Genghis Mao’s body is telemetering a furious alarm reaction. Rushing to the Khan’s side, Shadrach discovers him surrounded by underlings and struggling against severe shock touched off by a surprising event. Mangu, Shadrach learns, has just fallen from his 75th-story bedroom window in the Grand Tower.
Or was he pushed? Genghis Mao, tense and trembling, is positive that the viceroy was assassinated and that Ulan Bator is honeycombed with conspirators out to get him next. Even as Shadrach struggles to restore the Khan’s tranquility, Genghis Mao is ordering mass arrests, wholesale interrogations, tightened security measures.
After leaving Genghis Mao, Shadrach talks briefly with Avogadro, the cool, ironic security chief. Avogadro sees no way that assassins could have reached Mangu. It must have been suicide, he says. Nevertheless, Avogadro will follow orders: arrests will be made. In fact, within minutes the first suspect is taken into custody. He is Buckmaster, the microengineering man. Tapes of his inflammatory outburst at Karakorum have been recorded; his hostility to
Genghis Mao, so freely expressed, makes him a likely scapegoat for Mangu’s death.
Shadrach is summoned by Avogadro to Buckmaster’s interrogation. The Karakorum tape is played. Buckmaster agrees that he spoke out against Genghis Mao, but denies any connection with the supposed assassination of Mangu. Shadrach believes he is sincere. So does Avogadro; but Genghis Mao’s wrath must be appeased. Shadrach’s pleas on Buckmaster’s behalf leave Avogadro unmoved. The interrogation ends. Buckmaster will be sent to the organ farms—where he will be dissected so that his organs will be available for transplant use. “Go and relax,” Avogadro tells Shadrach. “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.”
PART TWO
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’ 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 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 little 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. Kvrie 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.
