Africa! Already the telemetered signals from Genghis Mao blur and fade as Shadrach approaches the thousand-kilometer boundary. He still picks up data, feeble clicks and bleats and pops out of the implant system, but as the plane streaks south-westward it becomes harder and harder for Shadrach to translate them into comprehensible analogues of the Chairman’s bodily processes: Genghis Mao, his kidneys and liver and pancreas, his heart and lungs, his arteries, his intestines, have become remote, are becoming unreal. And soon the signals are gone altogether, dropping below the threshold and leaving Shadrach suddenly, amazingly, alone in his own body. That crash of silence! That absence of subliminal input! He had forgotten what it was like, not to have those steady burbling pulses of information flowing through his consciousness, and in the first moments after leaving telemeter range he feels almost bereft, as if he has lost one of his major senses. Then the inner silence begins to seem normal and he relaxes.
The plane is comfortable — a wide rump-gripping cushion of a seat, plenty of leg room. Probably it is about twenty years old; certainly it is pre-Virus War. Many industries have disappeared since the War, and the aircraft industry is one of them. The greatly reduced postwar population can easily make do, given a proper maintenance program, with the planes it inherited from the crowded, hectic world of the 1980s, when the old industrial economy was going through its last great period of convulsive expansion amid, paradoxically, dreadful shortages and dislocations. Not that the War and the organ-rot have brought an end to technological progress: in Shadrach’s time fusion power has rescued the world from its energy crisis, subterrene borers have created an entirely new mass-transit-tunnel system for most urban areas, communications systems have become immensely sophisticated, the computerization of civilization has been well-nigh completed, and so on. Progress continues. Things are different but not utterly different. Even corporations and stock exchanges have survived. There has not been a total break with the old days, merely because two thirds of the former population has perished and a wholly new quasi-dictatorial political structure has been imposed upon the remnant. But this is a contracting society, daily diminished by the inroads of organ-rot and oppressed by a certain sense of stagnation and futility that the regime of Genghis Mao does not appear to know how to dispel, and such a society does not need new jet transports while the old ones still can fly.
June 1, continued
If the ruler of the world is schizoid, doesn’t this have serious consequences for his subjects? I think not. I’ve studied history closely. Throughout all of history people have gotten the rulers they deserved, the appropriate rulers. A sovereign mirrors the spirit of his times and expresses the deepest traits of his people — Hitler, Napoleon, Attila, Augustus, Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, Genghis Khan, Robespierre: none of them accidents or anomalies, all of them organic outgrowths of the needs of the time. Even when a ruler imposes his will by conquest, as I have not, the historical imperative is at work: those people wanted to be conquered, needed to be conquered, or they would not have fallen to him. So too now. Schizoid times demand schizoid government. The people of the world are dying lingering deaths of organ-rot; an antidote exists but we do not put it into widespread distribution; the people of the world accept this situation. I define that as madness. A mad government, then, for a mad citizenry, a government that offers promises of antidotes but never delivers. Of course there isn’t enough of the Antidote to go around. But there’s some to spare. We do not give priority to expanding the supply. We offer hope but no injections, and this somehow sustains our subjects. Madness. A world that destroys itself with cloud-borne antigens is mad; one that gives itself over to an oligarchy of strangers is mad; fitting then that the oligarchs themselves are mad.
But are we? Am I? I have done more research into the symptoms of schizophrenia this morning, consulting Shadrach’s medical library in Shadrach’s absence. Here I have a text that says that two of the most common symptoms are delusions and hallucinations. “A delusion,” I am told, “is a persistently held belief, contrary to reality as it is perceived by most people, that is not dispelled by logical arguments. Delusions in schizophrenia often hove a grandiose or a persecutory theme: the individual may express a belief that he is Jesus Christ or that he is the object of a worldwide search by a supersecret organization.” I have never expressed the belief that I am Jesus Christ. I do frequently believe with great conviction that I am Genghis II Mao IV Khan. Is this belief delusive? I believe that this belief is congruent with reality as it is perceived by most people. I believe that my belief in this belief is founded in reality. I believe I genuinely am Genghis II Mao IV Khan, or that at least I have genuinely become Genghis II Mao IV Khan, and that therefore this belief is not schizophrenic, not delusive. On the other hand, I also believe I am in imminent danger of assassination, that there is a worldwide conspiracy against my life. Classic schizoid delusion? But Mangu is really dead. They pushed Mangu from a window seventy-five stories above the ground. Do I imagine Mangu’s death? Mangu is really dead. Do I misconstrue it? I know there are those who believe he committed suicide. This is delusive. Mangu was murdered. They might come for me at any time. Despite all my precautions. Am I deluded? Then I accept my delusions. As appropriate to my position in history. And if the danger is real, how wise of me to have barricaded myself behind the interfaces!
Let us go on. Hallucinations. “A hallucination is a perception of sight, sound, smell, or touch that is not ‘real.’ In schizophrenia, hallucinations most frequently take the form of voices.” Aha!’ “A patient may be tormented by voices ordering him to jump out of a window or accusing him of heinous crimes.” What’s this about windows? Could Mangu have been schizoid too? No. No. It doesn’t apply. Mangu wasn’t intelligent enough to be schizoid. I’m the one who hears voices, and my voices don’t advise lunacy. “Sometimes the hallucination consists only of noises or isolated words, or the patient may seem to ‘hear his thoughts.’ Other hallucinations include frightening visions, strange smells, and odd bodily sensations. ”
I think this applies. If so, I accept it freely. But there’s more. “Delusions and hallucinations are not limited to schizophrenia,” it says. “They may occur in a wide range of organic conditions (e.g., infections of the brain substance or a decreased flow of blood to the brain caused by arteriosclerosis).” Is that the explanation? When Father Genghis whispers to me, it’s nothing but a bug in my cerebellum ? When Mao whispers in my ear, it’s merely a clotted artery? I should speak to Shadrach about this when he returns. He worries about my arteries. He might want to do another transplant. After all, I still have some of my own original blood vessels, and they’re getting old. I’m, what, eighty-seven years old? Eighty-nine, ninety-three? Yes, perhaps ninety-three. So hard to keep the numbers straight. But old, very old.
Great Father Genghis, am I old!
In Nairobi the air is clear, dry, cool, not at all tropical although the city is only a degree or so from the equator, just about the same latitude, indeed, as fiery Cotopaxi and ravaged Quito. Quito, high in mountainous country, was cool also, but that was only a dream, a transtemporal illusion. Whereas Shadrach actually is, so far as anything is actual, in Nairobi. “We are much above sea level,” explains the taxi driver. “It is never too hot here.” The taxi man is hearty, outgoing, talkative: a Kikuyu. he says, this being his tribe. He wears huge dark sunglasses and a blue uniform that looks fifty years old. He seems healthy, although Shadrach had been half expecting to find everyone outside Ulan Bator afflicted with organ-rot. “I speak six languages,” the driver announces. “Kikuyu, Masai, Swahili, German, French, English. You are British from England?”