Shadrach in the Furnace

Shadrach sees where Buckmaster is heading, and he presses his hands to his temples in dismay. He wants more desperately than ever to escape from this conversation. Buckmaster is a fool, and his onslaught is cheap and obvious. Shadrach has thought all this through, long ago, considered the moral problems, and dismissed them. Of course serving an evil dictator is wrong. No job for a nice sincere dedicated black boy from Philadelphia who wants to do good. But is Genghis Mao evil? Are there any alternatives to his rule, other than chaos? If Genghis Mao is inevitable, like some natural force, like the rising of the sun or the falling of the rain, then no guilt attaches to serving him: one does what seems appropriate, one lives one’s life, one accepts one’s karma, and if one is a doctor then one heals, without considering the ramifications of one’s patient’s identity. To Shadrach this is no glib rationalization, but rather a statement of acceptance of destiny. He refuses to assume burdens of guilt that have no meaning to him, and he will not let Buckmaster, of all people, flagellate him over absurdities nor accuse him of misplacing his loyalties.

He notices that Nikki Crowfoot has come out of the transtemporalist’s tent and is standing to one side, hands on her hips, waiting for him, and he says to Buckmaster, “Excuse me. I have to go now.”

Nikki seems transfigured. Her eyes are aglow, her face glistens with ecstatic sweat, her whole body seems to gleam. As Shadrach strides toward her, she acknowledges him with a mere tilt of her head, but she is far away, still lost in her hallucination.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Buckmaster’s a little crazy tonight and he’s making a nuisance of himself.”

He reaches for her hand.

“Wait!” Buckmaster yells, ru

Mordecai shrugs and says, “All right. You can have one more minute. What do you want me to do, exactly?”

“Leave off tending him.”

“I’m a doctor, Buckmaster. He’s my patient.”

“Precisely. And that’s why I call you a guilty bahstard. Billions of people to care for in the world, and he’s the one you choose to look after. Dooming us all to decades more of Genghis Mao.”

“Someone else would serve him if I didn’t,” Shadrach says gently.

“But you do. You. And I must hold you responsible.”

Astonished, baffled by the force and persistence of Buckmaster’s attack, Shadrach says, “Responsible for what?”

“For the way the world is. The whole bleeding mess. The continued threat of universal organ-rot twenty years after the Virus War. The hunger, the poverty. Oh, don’t you have any shame, Mordecai? You with your legs full of machinery that tell you every twitch of his blood pressure so you can run to him even faster?”

Shadrach glances at Nikki, appealing to her to do something to rescue him. But she still has that far-off look; she does not appear to be aware of Buckmaster at all.

Angrily Mordecai says, “Who designed that machinery, Roger?”

Buckmaster recoils. He has been hit where it hurts. His cheeks blaze; his eyes glisten with furious tears. “I! I did! You bah-stard, I admit it, I built your dirty implants. Don’t you think I know I share the guilt? Don’t you think I understand that now? But I’m getting out. I won’t bear the responsibility any longer.”

“This is suicidal, the way you’re carrying on.” Shadrach Mordecai points to shadowy figures on the periphery of the path, high staffers who hover in the darkness, unwilling to come within range of possible spy-eyes while they enjoy Buckmaster’s juicy lunatic outburst. “There’ll be a report of all this on the Chairman’s desk tomorrow, Roger, more likely than not. You’re destroying yourself.”

“I’ll destroy him. The bloodsucker. He holds us all for ransom, our bodies, our souls, he’ll let us rot if we don’t serve.”

“Don’t be melodramatic. We serve Genghis Mao because we have skills and this is the proper place to employ them,” Mordecai says crisply. “It’s no fault of ours that the world is as it is. If you’d rather have been out in Liverpool or Manchester living in some stinking cellar with your intestines full of holes, you could have been.”

“Don’t goad me, Mordecai.”

“But it’s true. We’re lucky to be here. We’re doing the only sane thing possible in a crazy world. Guilt is a luxury we can’t afford. You want to walk out now, go ahead, go, Roger. But you won’t want to leave the Khan when you calm down in the morning.”

“I refuse to have you patronize me.”

“I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to get you to shut up and stop shouting dangerous nonsense.”

“And I’m trying to get you to pull the plug and free us from Genghis Khan Mao,” Buckmaster wails, flushed and wild-eyed.

“So you think we’d be better off without him?” Shadrach asks. “What are your alternatives, Buckmaster? What kind of government would you suggest? Come on. I’m serious. You’ve been calling me a lot of unpleasant names, now let’s have some rational discussion. You’ve become a revolutionary, right? Okay. What’s your program? What do you want?”

Buckmaster is beyond the moment for philosophical discourse, however. He glowers at Mordecai in barely controlled loathing, framing words that will not leave his throat except as incoherent guttural growls; he clenches and unclenches his fists, he sways alarmingly, his reddened cheeks turn scarlet. Shadrach, all sympathy long gone, turns from him and reaches toward Nikki Crowfoot again. As they begin to walk away together Buckmaster rushes forward in a clumsy flailing lunge, clamping his hands on Shadrach’s shoulders and trying to pull him down. Shadrach pivots gracefully, bends slightly to slip free of Buckmaster’s grasp, and, when Buckmaster hurls himself at him, seizes him about the ribs, spins him around, and holds him immobile. Buckmaster squirms, kicks, spits, sputters, but Shadrach is much too strong for him. “Easy,” Shadrach murmurs. “Easy. Relax. Let go of it, Roger. Let go of everything.” He holds Buckmaster as one might hold a hysterical child, until at length he feels Buckmaster go slack, all the frenzy leaving him. Mordecai releases him and steps back, hands poised at chest level, ready for a new lunge, but Buckmaster is spent. He backs away from Mordecai in the slinking heavy-shouldered walk of a beaten man, pausing after a few paces to scowl and mutter, “All right, Mordecai. Bahstard. Stay with Genghis Mao. Wipe his decrepit arse for him. See what happens to you! You’ll finish in she furnace, Shadrach, in the furnace, in the bloody furnace!”

Shadrach laughs. The tension is broken. “The furnace. I like that. Very literary, Buckmaster.”

“The furnace for you, Shadrach!”

Mordecai, smiling, takes Crowfoot’s arm. She still looks radiant, ecstatic, lost in transcendental raptures. “Let’s go,” he says. “I can’t take any more of this.”

Softly, in a dream-furry voice, she says, “What did he mean by that, Shadrach? About the furnace?”

“Biblical reference. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.”

“Who?”

“You don’t know of it?”

“No. Shadrach, it’s such a lovely night. Let’s go somewhere and make love.”

“Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. In the Book of Daniel. Three Hebrews who refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden idol, and the king cast them into a burning fiery furnace, and God sent an angel to walk with them in there, and they were unharmed. Strange you don’t know the story.”

“What happened to them?”

“I told you, love. They were unharmed, not a hair of their heads singed, and Nebuchadnezzar called them forth, and told them that their God was a mighty god, and promoted them to high office in Babylon. Poor Buckmaster. He ought to realize that a Shadrach wouldn’t be afraid of furnaces. Did you have a good trip, love?”

“Oh, yes, yes, Shadrach!”