The Eskimo Invasion (34 page)

 

 

Beneath his toothbrush mustache, the Recreation Officer forced a smile
as he flapped down a manila folder on the coffee table. "You wanted news
of the world, didn't you?"

 

 

"Get out." Dr. West stared at the folder with its projecting newspaper
clippings as if he were looking at a snake. Obviously it did not come
from the staff. It was from Outside.

 

 

"I'm sorry," the Recreation Officer's voice said. "I apologize for my
eccentric performance this morning. Nothing personal, really."

 

 

"Get out, and take it with you." Dr. West felt no desire to open the folder.

 

 

"I'm not trying to frame you, Doctor. I'm the one who should be disciplined
-- for bringing these clippings into your suite."

 

 

"You tried to trigger me to violence during your so-called search.
You tried to -- wash me out. I assume you're trying again. Get out!"

 

 

"It's a pity no one will leave you alone," the Recreation Officer remarked.
"Look, we can be frank. I've done two things at great personal risk.
One, during my search this morning I disconnected the audio bug to your
suite. Two, this noon in the basement I damn near electrocuted myself.
Your Ceiling Lens no longer is transmitting. Instead, I've spliced a
projector to your transmission line in the basement. If the Observer
should happen to inspect your TV screen, he'll see what you were doing
two days ago. Your screen is showing a replay of your old micro-video
tape forty-eight hours long. I hope you weren't doing anything suspicious
during the last 48 hours since I started my video tape recorder. I hadn't
time to review forty-eight long hours of tape."

 

 

The Recreation Officer pointed at the manila folder. "In any case now
you don't need to try to earn brownie points in here by claiming you
don't want to break the rules. No one is watching you. You -- sit down
and read a year's clippings. What has really happened during this year
you've been isolated in a series of jails? Weren't you the doctor who
was so concerned about the Esks increasing?"

 

 

"Right now, I don't give a damn what's happening Outside. Get out."

 

 

"She's all heart, Nona really is," the Recreation Officer said slyly.
"She's the best woman in Tower #3. I don't blame you for forgetting
your purpose in life."

 

 

"What are you trying to do? Goad me to break out of here?"

 

 

"I don't know. I'm not paid to think. I'm sure this tower is escape-proof.
You should be intelligent enough to get yourself moved." The Recreation
Officer began spreading clippings from
The New York Times
,
MacLean's Magazine
,
Life
,
Time
,
American
Medical Journal
,
Arctic Review
, completely covering
the coffee table. "I'm supposed to say to you: hospital or the Cold
Room. You're the one with brains!"

 

 

The Recreation Officer spread more clippings on the work counter and more
clippings on top of the insulated cage. "I didn't realize so much had been
written in the last year about the Esks," the Recreation Officer's voice
went on. "I suppose all of these are from a clipping service. That they -- "

 

 

"Get out!"

 

 

"They didn't tell me exactly why you were discharged from your position at
the University of California, or why you returned to the Arctic. But I'm
beginning to understand why you tried to infect the Esks. The newspaper
accounts at the time of your trial simplified you for the simple minds of
their simple readers as simply a murderous maniac. But now the
New York
Times
seems to be having second thoughts on the matter."

 

 

"Get out!" Dr. West's voice rose with alarm as the Recreation Officer
actually did walk out of the suite leaving Dr. West alone with hundreds of
clippings and articles staring whitely at him from the terrifying world
Outside.

 

 

Dr. West chewed his cheek in self-torment. Until today with Nona, he had
been preparing for an escape with almost suicidal calm. Now he didn't want
to take any risks. All he wanted was Wednesday, when Nona would return.

 

 

Swaying, Dr. West imagined himself gathering up the clippings, eyes averted.
Without reading, he would soak the clippings in the bathtub, tearing and
squeezing the paper into dying lumps. He would not read what other men
were thinking about the Esks, the research that must be going on, perhaps
the frightened admissions in scientific circles that he might be right,
that the terrible thing he had attempted was justified. "I won't read.
I'm a prisoner and safe. Tear them up and flush them down the toilet without
reading -- "

 

 

"That heartless son of a bitch." Dr. West was under such stress he was
speaking out loud. "Mysterious sons of bitches who're paying him --
I won't read. What do you want me to do? I can't hoist the world on my
shoulders. I already dropped it. Very funny." Dr. West stared down at
the clippings on the coffee table.

 

 

His flashing arm swept clippings fluttering onto the floor. "I refuse to
destroy myself. I will not read."

 

 

Dr. West dropped to his knees and hands on the floor, his head throbbing
as he read of the multiplying Esks. An estimated 16,000 divided between
China and Canada by next year, he thought. "Not very many yet." An agnostic,
he began to pray for guidance.

 

 

No one entered Dr. West's suite the next day, which was Tuesday. Not by
happenstance, the Recreation Officer had telephoned to the Tower from
Outside saying he had the flu and would not be reporting for duty for
a day or two.

 

 

Nona did not enter Dr. West's suite because of the exchange of his
Tuesday hour to her 11:00 to 12:00 man. She paused outside Dr. West's
suite and did not enter, and went on to the adjoining cell.

 

 

In the basement the Observer, monitoring the red-tagged screens, yawned
and glanced at a hockey magazine.

 

 

At 5:00 p.m., when Nona went off duty she hurried to the monorail because
the hairdresser's would close at 6:00. In the high-speed car suspended
above the city, as Nona found a seat she recognized the Man, the back
of his head, the Man.

 

 

A week before, this short-haircut Man had sat down beside her and at first
she hadn't realized his conversational ploy about the New Ottawa Reformation
Center was more than casual. Then she had become quite abrupt, because her
first loyalty, her life was tied up in the Reformation Center, and she was
afraid the Man might be someone preparing to bribe her. She had left the
car so she would not have to hear where his conversation was leading.

 

 

Now, the same Man, short-haircut, was sitting in front of her. When she
got off, and rode the escalator down to the ground level, she hoped he
wasn't following.

 

 

In the evening, after supper, Nona played jacks with her smallest daughter
on the floor, while the Tuesday TV news blared half-heard everyday topics,
neo-Maoists, unemployment, the third Mars Expedition, hockey fights,
the underprivileged Esks who had been resettled in China.

 

 

"Mommy, your new hairdo is so pretty."

 

 

At this, Nona laughed with pleasure. "Now go to bed." And soon she
slept herself.

 

 

Wednesday morning at 10:00, Nona entered Dr. West's suite with her hair up
and gleaming and her heart beating unexpectedly. She stopped.

 

 

Stripped to the waist, Dr. West was lying on his back on top of his bed,
his jaw sagging like a dead man's, his eyes closed as if he were sleeping.

 

 

"Student? -- He isn't breathing. His heart -- ?"

 

 

She rushed to telephone the Medical Officer. She ran back. Her frantic
hands shook Dr. West's body. The push of her hand against his terribly
cool chest stimulated a shallow gasping breath, then nothing.

 

 

"Please, please." She flung herself upon him, mouth to mouth, trying to
breathe for him, endlessly --

 

 

With exhaustion, her own heart was fluttering. Her fingernails were
fastened in his cold flesh.

 

 

"Keep going," hissed the Medical Officer's voice. "First I'm going to
give him a shot of adrenalin." After awhile the Medical Officer said:
"Get off. I'm going to attempt external heart massage."

 

 

A half hour later, sweating, the Medical Officer stood back. "This is
the man who feigned appendicits." He stared at the thermometer. "72.6
degrees, and only one or two shallow breaths per minute, if the room
temperature sank to 60 degrees, I suppose his body temperature would
follow it down. The crazy fool induced this somehow. For a reason -- "

 

 

"Do something for him!" Nona protested. "I'm going to telephone the
hospital."

 

 

"No, first telephone the Tower Administratrix. She's in command here."
For the first time, the Medical Officer looked around the suite and noticed
the shambles. '~Bloody butcher shop!"

 

 

On the work counter lay the opened squirrels. Beside them stood the
centrifuge and red-brown stained glass tubing. '~He was a murderous
maniac," the Medical Officer's voice croaked.

 

 

"No, he wasn't. They were hibernating. They didn't feel anything," Nona
gasped. "I don't believe he cut them open, I mean, he cut them open with
a purpose."

 

 

"He bloody well did," the Medical Officer muttered, stooping to pick up a
hypodermic needle from the floor. "No plunger. Used the rubber bulb from
his nose drops bottle. This is the needle from that missing hypo. May have
injected a sedative in himself to start the downward metabolic slide."

 

 

The Medical Officer's fingers turned the rubber bulb inside-out.
"A goo, an extract. Of course he would have been aware that massive
injection of any foreign protein in a human being should cause fever.
Quite odd, no fever, just the opposite."

 

 

"Do something!" Nona's voice persisted. "For all you know, he may die
any minute."

 

 

"This involves legal as well as medical decisions." The Medical Officer
appeared relieved when the Tower Administratrix arrived.

 

 

The Medical Officer laughed nervously. "Quite diabolically, this man has
trapped us between killing him or doing something he wishes." He tried
to explain. "Human life is sacred, we say, so we have to save him. We
have to take him from his cell to the hospital building."

 

 

"We have no right to increase his chances of escape. It would be unwise
to take him to the hospital building," the Administratrix replied. "I was
so long in arriving here because I received a telephone call from the
police at the border of the States. They searched the luggage of what
turned out to be our Recreation Officer from this Tower with his mustache
shaved off. They found $10,000 in small bills."

 

 

"Nevertheless, I believe the medical problem the former Dr. West has
prepared for us is this," the Medical Officer muttered. "If we leave
him as he is, he will die. Alternately, if we attempt to bring him out
of his hypothermal coma he will die."

 

 

"My god," Nona breathed. "You already shot him with adrenalin to bring him
out of it."

 

 

"A natural mistake. I'm hoping -- it already appears that he has not reacted
to it -- I hope. Perhaps he has buffered his system against such an
eventuality -- I hope. As I was saying, if we try to bring him out of it,
his metabolic activity will increase. His system will begin to react in
a typical defensive manner to the foreign protein and his temperature
will rise. This will increase the violence of his reaction to the protein.
Violently, his body will attempt to defend itself against the foreign
protein, raising his temperature higher and higher until he dies."

 

 

"No doubt he planned this in order to be taken to the hospital building,"
the Tower Administratrix asked. "Could we simply leave him here? Assign
a nurse."

 

 

The Medical Officer smiled at this. "Much more than a nurse is needed
if we really believe in saving human life regardless of cost. His life
processes should be electronically monitored. His veins should be connected
to the kidney machine, and a pacemaker to his heart, or he will die.
I suspect his body now is in a delicate equilibrium. His metabolism
is too sluggish to react to the foreign protein. No reaction, no disease.
What is needed is speedy consultation with experts in human hibernation
research, who may know how, who have the equipment to bring him out of
this condition, alive. In the States, hibernation research is being
conducted in connection with the space program, I believe at the
University of California."

 

 

"Strange coincidence," the Tower Administratrix said. "Not a coincidence.
According to his files this man formerly was director of a medical research
program at the University of California. Population Control. Do you think,
interlocking medical staffs with their hibernation space transit program
-- ? If he hopes we will fly his body to California, he is unreasonable.
An attorney in California may be waiting to file habeas corpus, legal
trickery, bail -- "

 

 

"I wasn't suggesting that," the Medical Officer said. "I simply was
suggesting we make a reasonably humane effort to keep this man alive.
Surely he can be adequately guarded in our own hospital building. I want
to telephone the University of California. Perhaps a complete change of
blood -- ?"