The Eskimo Invasion (31 page)

 

 

"You're a disgusting example of futility. Do you know, if you'd simply
applied for a hypo, if you needed a hypo, I would have purchased you
a dozen. But during your second or third night in the tower you didn't
know that yet, did you? So you stole one."

 

 

Dr. West did not reply. He was wondering if the Recreation Officer had
just planted a hypo in the bathroom. From a friend, the Recreation Officer
inexplicably had turned into tormentor.

 

 

"I brought you scalpels, didn't I," the Recreation Officer persisted.
"Enough scalpels to butcher a dozen women."

 

 

"Please, sir," Nona protested.

 

 

"Don't you approve of humor?" the Recreation Officer asked her. "You and I
are both on the staff -- to assist in therapy, to make the students happy.
Isn't that right?"

 

 

The Recreation Officer strode across the room toward the entry and kicked
Dr. West's bed. "What do they expect me to do, split the mattress to find
your hypo?"

 

 

"I haven't got the hypo." Dr. West stepped forward, his sweating face
twisted in an answering smile. "From what I've been told, the policy of
this prison, excuse me, educational institution, toward the so-called
student is -- "

 

 

" -- to treat the disturbed student with respect," the Recreation Officer
interrupted in a singsong voice. "Make him feel this is home. Rebuild
his feeling of inner worth. Nona, have you been reciting our
Staff Book
to this filthy murderer?"

 

 

"No, she hasn't, Dad," Dr. West retorted, smiling harder, losing control.
"You did, remember? Where's your warm father image today? The student is
to be drawn into a warm familylike relationship and, I quote, encouraged
to lower his defensive barriers. In the New Ottawa Reformation Center
he is considered reborn. It is the purpose of the staff to offer the
student so warm and reassuring an emotional environment that he will
find the inner support he failed to feel in his childhood. Strengthened,
basically changed, he can return to society. Isn't that right, Dad?"

 

 

"Back off!" The Recreation Officer spoke like an angrily barking dog.
"Because you're younger, stronger, more sarcastic doesn't mean you can't
be spanked, figuratively spanked, no, literally spanked ." He walked
away from Dr. West, lifted the top of the insulated hibernation cage
and plunged his arm into it.

 

 

The one conscious squirrel squalled with fright.

 

 

For the last minute, Dr. West had been considering goading the Recreation
Officer to such anger he would stop the search and rush out of the suite.
But now Dr. West's heart was hammering, his fists clenched, and he realized
his own self-control was so uncertain that the Recreation Officer might be
successfully goading him. Perhaps the Recreation Officer's strange behavior
was intended to goad him to violence. Then would he be transferred? Was that
the Recreation Officer's intent?

 

 

Nona, her face pale, her lips narrow, was shaking her head in warning at
Dr. West. Silently they watched while the Recreation Officer distastefully
lifted out a handful of sawdust.

 

 

"What a stench! I noticed it as soon as I entered your suite. Are you sure
they're not decaying instead of hibernating?" The Recreation Officer reached
deeper into the cage. "The stench, is it to discourage us from looking for
the hypo? -- Is this little beggar dead?"

 

 

By the tail, the Recreation Officer raised a hibernating ground squirrel.
"Since you formerly were an expert on Arctic ecology, among other things,
I would have expected you to play with something more typically Arctic
-- such as those beastly little lemmings which you reputedly compared
to Eskimos."

 

 

"To Esks. I explained to you the difference between Eskimos and Esks.
I talked for hours when you listened so sympathetically, Dad," Dr. West
added savagely. "You ought to be intelligent enough to differentiate
between Eskimos and Esks. As for lemmings, they don't hibernate."

 

 

The Recreation Officer shrugged, dropped the limp squirrel back into
the cage. "Dear me, you're right. You told me no Arctic animal truly
hibernates -- except these putrid ground squirrels. I'm not going to
search through this stinking mess for the hypo. I'm going to recommend
that the contents of this cage be emptied down the incinerator."

 

 

"I haven't got the hypo," Dr. West repeated, watching the Recreation
Officer step to the wider outer end of the suite, where the compressor
chugged erratically.

 

 

Concealed under the compressor was the dissected squirrel. The compressor
unit vibrated against the white concrete wall.

 

 

The wall was smooth concrete, slightly concave because it also was the
outer wall of the tower. Like a cylindrical concrete grain elevator, the
tower had no windows, and its exterior construction was both economical
and escape-proof, and functional in other ways.

 

 

The Recreation Officer glanced from the compressor to the concave white
wall spread out behind it like a wide-angle screen. "This noisy compressor
must intrude into the corner of the picture, or do you never turn on
the projector any more? For emotionally disturbed students, for you,
I recommend a minimum of two hours per day." The Recreation Officer
smiled infuriatingly at him.

 

 

Dr. West stepped violently toward the compressor, the Recreation Officer
and the blank wall. At first, while recovering from his appendectomy,
he had lain for hours watching the moving scenery on that wall, his only
substitute for a window. Trying to ignore the subliminal cartoons pressing
him back against childhood, his favorite escape had been following movies
of the surf flashing white along the northern California coastline on
the wall. At first he'd stared helplessly. The artificial window had
been his only release from claustrophobia.

 

 

"Nona, don't leave," Dr. West said, without looking back, knowing she was
still sitting on the coffee table. This caused the Recreation Officer
to glance back at her.

 

 

Dr. West's hand darted into the compressor case.

 

 

The compressor unit consisted of an electric motor humming at high rpms
and revolving a series of larger and larger gears, the largest turning
least rapidly and most powerfully, forcing the piston of the air
compressor in and out no faster than a frightened heart. Last week,
when Dr. West had assembled this jerry-built contraption, he had set an
oiling can to drip at five-second intervals on the moving elbow of the
compressor, and now, in this instant, his hand reset the nozzle of the
can to dribble rapidly.

 

 

As the Recreation Officer turned back to the compressor, a fine mist
of oil rose against his blue uniform. Dr. West already was walking
away. There was a moment of silence as if the Recreation Officer had not
yet realized what had happened. "Your damned machine is leaking. There's
little droplets all over my coat."

 

 

At this, Dr. West turned back. "Either oil or coolant. If it's coolant --
the coolant is strongly alkaline, irritating to the lungs." He wrapped his
handkerchief protectively around his hand and rushed at the compressor,
turning his head aside, as if from poison gas, holding his breath while
he readjusted the oiler to its former rate of one drop of oil every five
seconds. "The coolant will decompose cloth. It should be soaped off the
skin as soon as possible."

 

 

The Recreation Officer sniffed the back of his hand and glared from Dr. West
to Nona. "The least you could do is help me search," he accused her.
"Damn, my hand is burning!"

 

 

Seated on the low coffee table, Nona stared down at her own hands,
cupped on her lap. "Sir, my job is to maintain a close relationship with
my students. The Administratrix never asks us to involve ourselves in
searches -- "

 

 

"You have the soul of a -- they let anybody into civil service these
days!" The Recreation Officer dashed out of the suite, scrubbing his
hand with his handkerchief, and the elevator hummed.

 

 

"I'm sorry," Nona murmured. "He's never acted before as if making a search
was -- beneath his dignity. Normally, he's a nice man. Maybe he's having
problems Outside -- "

 

 

"Oh, sure -- Nice man." Dr. West sat down on the sofa in order to stop
shaking. "The staff has to stick together."

 

 

"I'm telling you the truth. I've never seen him like this." Suddenly she
smiled. "On duty, we're supposed to be saints and let you students have
all the tantrums."

 

 

Perched on the low coffee table, she pressed her legs together and tugged
down at her skirt. She was peering toward the compressor. "Is that a
Christmas present underneath? Sort of green shiny paper."

 

 

"You'll have to wait till Christmas to find out," Dr. West said and reached
forward, seizing her hand before she could stand all the way up and escape
to look under the compressor.

 

 

Pulled forward off-balance, she raised her eyebrows as she smiled down
at him, and plumped down beside him on the sofa. "You didn't need to
let go of my hand."

 

 

Dr. West grinned with embarrassment, knowing he should try to get her
to leave the suite as quickly as possible, so he could dispose of the
squirrel. "Do you think my ex-buddy, the Recreation Officer, is likely
to pop back in here unannounced?"

 

 

She shrugged, jiggling her shirt-waist. "He might." She smiled, glancing
at him from the corners of her eyes. "I don't think he will though.
He probably went down to the basement to wash and gulp coffee and brood.
This was supposed to be his free hour. That's why he was assigned to help
search. Next hour he has to be smiling again and sympathetic because
he must face his next appointment with another one of you exasperating
students."

 

 

"Exasperated is the word. I feel like I'm in a fishbowl." Dr. West jerked
his head at the Ceiling Lens.

 

 

Nona looked up, then down as if she were staring through thirty floors
to the basement. "Privacy is mostly in your head. There are 240 screens
down there but only one Observer on duty since the budget cut. Mainly
the Observer keeps his attention on the red-tagged screens, the new
admissions. After all, they're the men most apt to set their suites on
fire or slash their wrists or -- uh, develop appendicitis."

 

 

Dr. West almost smiled at that. Then he asked a leading question. "When the
clock says it's night, and the luminous panels dim, and finally I turn out
my reading light, there s still a dim red glow in the dark. I deduce I'm
also spied on by infrared transmission?"

 

 

"You are a bashful one! The night Observer has only one set of eyes. He's
worked here for years. and he's seen everything. He's so bored he's slyly
wired one TV to watch Outside hockey games." She giggled. "It takes my own
inside alarm system to get any protective reaction from him."

 

 

Dr. West laughed in surprise. "Inside alarm? Don't tell me, if a buxom
member of the staff is grabbed by a student and squeezed, does that set
off her built-in electronic alarm button, gongs clanging, red lights
flashing -- "

 

 

"You tease! That depends on the member of the staff." Nona stood up
unexpectedly.

 

 

As if in pain, Dr. West leaped to his feet, reaching for her elbow. But
her other hand pressed lightly against his chest, and her gaze shifted
from his eyes to someplace over his shoulder.

 

 

"The clock says your time's up."

 

 

"Listen, Nona, seriously, I need you now." He was startled that he
was begging.

 

 

"I wish I could stay, but I'm hired to look after my students equally.
I wish I could stay, but my 11:00 till 12:00 man is expecting me. It's
his hour. He's a terribly nervous, disturbed old man. He has no inner
resources at all. He's sitting there expecting me -- "

 

 

"But what about
my
hour? That damned Recreation Officer used up my
whole hour bumbling around in here. Listen, you wouldn't understand but
I've been hung up in -- hell -- a glass wa -- dead until today and now
I need you."

 

 

She stepped closer to him. "I'll be back tomorrow. Since you're described
in the files as a cerebral type, you can get along," she teased, then added
seriously: "I'm so happy you came out of your withdrawal." She smiled again.
"Some sillybillies on the staff were making bets you would turn into
a vegetable."

 

 

"A vegetable? Listen, tell your 11:00 to 12:00 man I'll trade my whole hour
tomorrow for thirty of his minutes today, now."

 

 

"I'm flattered -- I think. But he's unadaptable. I'll dicker with him
for you, but don't hold your breath. I won't be back for at least a half
hour, if at all -- lover -- "

 

 

"Dammit, Nona," Dr. West almost grabbed for her, then laughed wryly,
trying to hide himself behind a sense of humor. "You're playing with
dynamite. Nona, is that what you love -- playing with human dynamite?"

 

 

"That's my job. I'm supposed to civilize -- " She winked and went out
through the hissing door.

 

 

Alone, but perhaps not unseen, Dr. West was careful not to glance at the
Ceiling Lens. To conceal what he wanted to do, he knew that turning off
the lights in the suite during waking hours would be the wrong move. That
simply would attract the attention of the Observer. Innocently he ambled
toward the compressor, knelt and removed the gleaming green package, and
walked to the sink. He went through the motions of washing the dishes
Nona had neglected to wash, and in the sink he cut the ground squirrel
into quarters and ground it down the disposal, all the while bending over
the sink, obscuring his actions from the Observer, who might be watching,
but more likely was not.