Of course there is no such diary. Ordinary thieves and felons may compulsively jeopardize their own safety, but Shadrach knows Genghis Mao well enough to realize that if he wants to live in secrecy, he will leave no hidden memoirs around for others to find. The private Genghis Mao is just as secretive as the public one: open one empty box and another, even more empty, lies within. No matter. In his fantasy role as the biographer of Genghis Mao, Shadrach will fantasize the Khan’s memoirs as well, inventing the source material that Genghis Mao has neglected to provide. He closes his eyes. He lets his imagination slip free of the leash. Recreates the diary of the Khan within the crucible of his own throbbing brain.

November 11, 2010.

My birthday. Genghis Mao is eighty-five today. No. No. Genghis Mao is — what — twenty years old? About that. It’s Dashiyin Choijamste who is eighty-five today. Dashiyin Choijamste, whom I carry about within me like an internal twin. Who remembers him, that fat little babe in his proud father’s arms? So long ago, in the village of Dalan-Dzadagad on a snowy night in 1925. That’s down in the province of Southern Gobi, Dalan-Dzadagad. I haven’t been there in fifteen years. My birthplace, but who knows that? Who knows anything? I know. Dashiyin Choijamste is eighty-five today. How many others are still alive, of those born on 11 November 1925? Not many, no. And those who remain are ancient doddering wrecks. Whereas I am still in my prime, I Dashiyin Choijamste of Dalan-Dzadagad, son of Yumihaghiyin Choijamste, director of the camel-breeding station at Bogdo-Goom. I Genghis Mao. I feel strong today, oh, yes, eighty-five and robust. Not altogether because of the transplants, either. It’s heredity that does it. The good old Tatar blood. Don’t forget, you were almost seventy when the Virus War broke out, and yet not at all old, tremendous vigor, all your teeth, jet-black hair, twenty-kilometer hikes every week; you hadn’t had any transplants yet. You were still Dashiyin Choijamste then. Strange syllables, awkward now on the tongue, though that was your name for more than six decades. And I lived right through the Virus War untouched by the rot. People fell apart all around me. Sickening to behold. I didn’t go in for transplants until later, much later, natural ravages of time, eventually, but not until after the power had come to me. The power. I have attained the highest power. And now clever doctors aid my natural Tatar vigor. I might live another fifty years.

I might live much longer than that.

Do I remember my childhood? How much snow piles up in eighty-five years! I think I can see my father’s face, lean like mine, strong eyebrows, strong cheekbones. Yumzaghiyin Choijamste of the camel-breeding station at Bogdo-Goom, Hero of the Order of Lenin, later. Wounded at the battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, afterward third secretary of the Agricultural Agency — see, Father, I remember, I remember! The father of Genghis Mao killed in 1948 in a plane crash, between Moscow and Ulan Bator, coming home from a wheat conference. Those miserable Soviet jets, forever falling from the sky. Or was it a jet? So long ago: The jets were already in service then, weren’t they, the Ilyushins, the Tupolevs? I could look it up. You are dead sixty-two years, Yumzhaghiyin Choijamste. Babies born the night your plane fell are old people now. And I am still here, Father. I am Genghis Mao. I remember you at the camel station. I am standing in new snow and my father tugs on a camel’s halter. The camel looms above me like a mountain, long homely face, rubbery lips, sweet dull eyes with undertones of subtle contempt. The camel leans toward me and its enormous tongue slurps across my cheeks, my lips. A kiss! Its sour breath. My father’s laughter. He scoops me in his arms, gives me a crushing hug. How huge he is! Bigger than the camel, to me. I am three, four years old.

And my mother? My mother? I never knew her. Trampled by yaks in a wild snowstorm when I was an infant. I have forgotten your name, Mother. I could look it up, But where… where…?

Shadrach pauses, reflects, reconsiders. Is it plausible? Does it have internal consistency? The tone is right, but what about the “facts”? He will test them. Shall he alter some significant details? Will that make any difference? Let’s see—

October 17, 2012.

My birthday. Genghis Mao is ninety-two today, though officially I am said to be a mere eighty-seven. On the other hand, some of them believe I’m well over one hundred. Meaning that I was born in 1905 or so. Can they believe that? Isn’t 1920 bad enough? Wilson, Clemenceau, Henry Ford, General Pershing, Lloyd George, Lenin, Trotsky, Sukhe Bator… men of my time. And I am still here, anno domini 2012, I, the former Namsan Gombojab, born in Sain-Shanda, youngest son of the yak-herder Khorloghiyin Gombojab, who—

No. Changing the details is trivial. Let his original name be Choijamste, Gombojab, Ochirbal, whatever; let him have been born in 1925, 1920, 1915, even 1910; let him have spent his career in the Ministry of Defense, the Agency for Agrarian Redistribution, the Commissariat of Telecommunications; slather on any kind of factual decoration you like; none of it will make any difference. The essential patterns of the soul of Genghis Mao run deep and heavy, and they, his perceptions, his world view, are your subject, Shadrach. Not the trivia of time and place.

May 14, 2012.

Just two hours ago the liver transplant was finished, and here lies Genghis Mao, old and leathery, not dead yet, no, not by much; he is alert, full of energy, wide awake. I am proud of him. The unquenchable vitality of him. The insufferable resilience of him. I hail you, Genghis Mao! Ha! I feel pain in my abdomen, but it’s nothing to moan about. Pain is the signal that we live, we feel, we respond to stimuli. The heaviness that came over me when the old liver began to fail is already going. I feel my system flushing itself clean. It is as if I float two meters above my own bed. Hovering over all the beautiful machinery that pumps healing fluids into my earthly husk. How beautiful is the pain. That throb, low and to one side… boom, boom, boom, a bell tolling within old Genghis Mao, urging him on to long life. Ten thousand years to the Emperor! My clever doctors triumph again. Warhaftig, Mordecai.

My doctors. Warhaftig is a mere machine. He bores me, but he is perfect. I love to see his hands disappear into the hole in my belly. And come forth grasping some limp red lump full of disease, throw it aside, stitch a new organ into its place. Warhaftig never fails. But he is ugly, with that flat nose, those downturned lips. Sick dead white skin. A genius, but ugly and boring, a mere machine. Was Warhaftig ever young? Crouching behind a bush to spy on the naked women bathing in a stream? Not him. Oh, no, not him. Laughing, tumbling on the grass? Warhaftig? Never!

Shadrach is more interesting. Graceful, witty, a fine strong body, a clear cool mind. He is pleasing to look at. His black skin. I never saw a black until I was forty and a delegation from Guinea visited my department. Their shiny faces, almost purple, their dense knotty hair, their tribal robes. Dazzling white eyes, pink palms like gorillas, deep voices, strange, strange. They spoke French. Shadrach is not like those Africans except that he has the same sort of keen, serious intelligence. He is brown, not black, very tall, very American, nothing of the jungle about him. Sometimes he lectures me as if I am a child, a naughty babe. Always worrying about my health. Conscientious, he is, earnest, dedicated, boyish. He is too sane for us here. He lacks — what? Darkness, can I say that of him? Yes. Interior darkness is what he lacks: there are no demons in him. Or do I underestimate him? There must be demons in everyone, even the robot Warhaftig, even the calm and good-humored Shadrach Mordecai. He is very young. I like that. He is at least fifty years younger than I am, and yet we are contemporaries, we are both men of the present moment, both of us unknown until relatively recently, though I waited so long to become who I am and he became himself so young. He smiles well. There is nothing cynical about him yet. He has lived through the Virus War and all the ugly things that followed and yet he is tranquil, he has faith in the future, he thinks only of healing people. He would heal those who enslaved his ancestors, even. Whereas I would avenge myself against the oppressors a thousand times over; but then, I am of Tatar stock, and we are fierce, we are Gobi wolves, while he is the child of placid jungle farmers. Every morning he goes into Surveillance Vector One and stares at the rotting people all over the world. Thinks I don’t know. I watch him watching. His lean mobile face, his sad intelligent eyes. He feels such sorrow for the rotting ones. A man of compassion. Childlike. Not saintly, but he has the stuff of martyrs in him.