The Eskimo Invasion (38 page)

 

 

Dr. West's mouth twisted with the quick pain of his thoughts. The Major
had just stated that the Colonel and he had "decided" to complete the
spraying mission. But the aircraft was flying itself, as predestined
as a missile. It would be too cruel to point out to the Major that no
room had been allowed for human decisions. Plainly, the Major needed to
believe he had "decided." The Major still was clinging to his illusion
of free decision.

 

 

"I would like to blow your brains out," the Major repeated, and savagely
hand-operated the slide mechanism, ejecting an unfired cartridge from
the automatic pistol.

 

 

Dr. West looked away. He wondered if other military personnel still wore
.45 automatics. His own grandfather had kept one beneath his folded
T-shirts in the top drawer. Way back in World War II, his grandfather
had carried it at Kasserine Pass. He said he never fired it. Vaguely,
Dr. West remembered that the .45 Colt Government automatic was -- had
been Model 1911. 1911? Four generations of officers must have carried
these hand-cannons. Before the First World War, this very heavy caliber
automatic had been designed to knock down charging bolo-waving Moro
tribesmen, or so his grandfather had said --

 

 

The spraying aircraft bucked savagely, whether from an antiaircraft
missile explosion or a mountain updraft Dr. West did not know. The Major
cursed, and Dr. West smiled because it felt good to know that someone
else was more frightened than he was. The Major was quite a character --

 

 

The Major appeared to be about forty years old, and obsolete. He had
picked the wrong armed service. There now were five armed services
competing for younger men. The most clean-cut young men who wanted to
completely leave this crowded world volunteered for the Space Corps,
and made world-televised crash landings on the Martian craters. More
subtle young men with a flair for foreign languages joined the CIA,
which had acquired its own submarine navy and VTOL air force to deliver
its armored vehicles and heavily armed guerilla war experts. The Navy
still owned shoals of old nuclear subs and one hulking aircraft carrier
and the arrogant Marines. The Army had enlarged its aerial cavalry,
aggrandizing with its SST aerial delivery system the delivery of "iron"
bombs, and triumphantly skimming its GEM tanks over BOTH land and sea,
while politically seizing the Air Force's latest obsolete ground-launched
antimissile system. The poor old Air Force was left with its BAMBI
space-launched antimissile system, its vast seedbeds of ICBM silos,
a few transport planes for senators, 900 triple-purpose VTOL swing-wing
FBA-211 three-pilot interceptor-bombers, plus only a dozen of these big
intercontinental SCRAMjet bombers, and the Major and his .45.

 

 

"If by any chance you CIA turncoats have rigged the autopilot to deliver
our aircraft to the Chinks," the Major blurted, "I
will
blow your brains
out."

 

 

"If we land anywhere, we'll be too lucky," Dr. West retorted. "Right now
we're spraying across the interior of China. The people down there have
been indoctrinated for three generations that we bring germ warfare.
They'll greet us with yells and shrieks and fingernails and sharp hoes."

 

 

At this, the Major showed his big teeth. "You're full of fun and games."
He thudded his .45 automatic against his knee. "Chinks won't make me
apologize and curse my country on international television. Your two CIA
jerks, what were their names, Johnston and Mitsui? Pitiful performances.
Doesn't the CIA issue cyanide capsules? Couldn't those two jerks swallow?
In the Air Force we don't need cyanide capsules." He waved his .45 like
a magic wand. "If we crash, I'll use the first five bullets on Chinks."

 

 

Dr. West remembered that his grandfather's .45 automatic contained a
seven-shot clip. The Major would be hoarding two final shots.

 

 

Dr. West remembered the tortured face of Johnston replayed on TV tape.

 

 

The televised faces of Johnston and Mitsui had been bounced off the
Telstar satellite confessing to everything from dropping virulent
hepatitus bombs to potato bugs. Their agonizing scenes had set record
Nielsen Ratings for their nonpaying sponsor, the Chinese Federation of
Nations, and sold American mothers on some advantages of isolationism.

 

 

The aircraft quivered. The red light on the black box on Dr. West's lap
flickered out. The spray run was complete. As if on cue, the bomber exploded.

 

 

Dr. West, who had rejected life, who had willingly faced the mob, who
had made the hard moral decision for Eskimo genocide, who had faced
his conviction and the angry fist of world opinion, Dr. West screamed
for life.

 

 

In total darkness his body was whirled, slower and slower. He floated
in his nylon safety harness, weightless as a drowned man.

 

 

An abrupt jolt whiplashed his neck. The swooping side-to-side revolving
swinging rocking slammed his head against the wall of the capsule.
Dr. West finally realized the capsule had been ejected from the bomber,
and the capsule's parachute already had opened.

 

 

In the hoarse breathing descending pendulum silence of the capsule,
Dr. West's hand crept to his slippery mouth. He bit his hand. The capsule
was descending regardless of what he did. The explosion, the ejection
from the bomber had been programmed. The smiling faces in the Harvard
Circle of the Central Intelligence Agency had delivered him to China.

 

 

"Why me?" Those smiling sons of bitches, what had they planned for
him to do? "I never volunteered for this!" he gasped. "You sons of
bitches, my narcohypnosis has worn off. You may think you conditioned
my responses like an experimental animal's. I've got news for you. It's
worn off. I'm free!" Whatever program was in his skull, as it emerged,
Dr. West determined he would snafu it, foul it up.

 

 

"I'll sell out, I'll bug out, I owe no allegiance to a country who would do
this to a man. I've got one ambition, to save my neck and to hell with you!"

 

 

The capsule struck the earth. His head slammed down. Dr. West raised
his head in the blinding darkness of the capsule. He shook the Major's
slack shoulder. A gurgling sound --

 

 

With shock, Dr. West felt his foot was wet. He groped down. Too much liquid
to be blood. The gurgling sound was more distinct when he stopped breathing.

 

 

Water was leaking into the smashed bottom of the capsule.

 

 

A one in a million spot landing, Dr. West wondered. Instead of striking
the mountainsides in this formerly desolate western interior of Szechwan
Province, had the capsule descended into a precipitious river valley
where water was -- Szechwan Province?

 

 

"Those sons of bitches!" Until now he had not remembered the landing
was to be in Szechwan Province. "Memory -- triggered!" He realized the
landing of the capsule had unblocked data the CIA had drilled into his
memory. Now he could even visualize the map. The terrain, changing sets
of spy-in-the-sky photographs were riffled before his inner eyes.

 

 

The slender fingers of Dr. George Bruning had paused beside an oval dot
on the aerial photo. "Another new irrigation reservoir." Dr. Bruning's
calmly intelligent face smiled across the table at him.

 

 

"You son of a bitch," Dr. West said to the darkness of the capsule.

 

 

Dr. George Bruning was no medical doctor. He was a former boy wonder,
a former geophysicist, a former scientific astronaut whose two lovable
children and smiling wife and publicity in
Life
mag had resulted in
his election to the House of Representatives. His political defeat by a
movie star two years later resulted in his appointment to the President's
Scientific Advisory Staff. He was photographed playing croquet with the
President. He was promoted to Chief Scientific Advisor.

 

 

The unexpected defection of Australia to neutralism resulted in wholesale
firings in the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

 

Dr. George Bruning was appointed by the President as Deputy Director of
the CIA. George might be inexperienced in the use of cloak and dagger
but he soon showed himself to be an organizer. His own agency emerged
within the Agency and gained the newspaper label "Harvard Circle."
By a noncoincidence, not only had Dr. George Bruning and his four top
assistants attended Harvard as undergraduates, so had the President of
the United States.

 

 

"So what's the big deal?" Dr. West hissed, struggling to unbuckle his
nylon safety harness, while no explanation, only odd details, emerged
from the outer layer of his memory -- instructions.

 

 

He remembered that there was a special landing kit attached under the seat.
A detail, but it was a remarkable feat of memory because he had never looked
under the seat. His hand felt it though. He could visualize its contents
laid out on a white table. Total partial recall.

 

 

"You sons of bitches, you're rationing me details." Dr. West's hands
lifted the metal kit and attached it to a prearranged hook inside the
voluminous padded jacket of his Chinese commune worker's costume.

 

 

"You're all very stupid if you think I can pass for a Chinese just because
I'm a student of Oriental population problems." Dr. West knew his laughter
was freighted with hysteria. Plainly he was outfitted in this agricultural
commune costume for some reason other than to pass as a Chinese during
interrogation by Chinese.

 

 

Water continued to gurgle into the capsule. Dr. West's nostrils detected
the faint yet fetid odor that emanates from streams polluted by humanity.
There were no sounds of people outside the capsule.

 

 

Not even a frog croaked in what must be night outside.

 

 

From his escape kit, Dr. West's hands detached a small, heavy, no larger
than a woman's compact, radio. He remembered it was an automatic signal
sender. In order to extend the aerial his hands were trained to locate the
upper air vent in the darkness, to twist it open and project the aerial
like a collapsible fishing rod into the Chinese night. Dr. West crouched
in the blackness of the capsule with his legs in the rising water and his
thumb on the signal-send switch of the miniaturized ionospheric-ricochet
radio beacon. He knew it was broadcasting a continuous signal to someone.

 

 

He supposed his body had been trained in a mock-up of this ejection
capsule, but he couldn't remember that yet. "You chose me, didn't you
trust me? Only part of my memory, part of my conditioning has been
unblocked. But I won't wait for the cues like a trained dog. I'm going
to tear apart your conditioning, Sammy, you son of a bitch."

 

 

He remembered Dr. Sammy Wynoski inserting a needle into his arm.

 

 

He remembered before that, the first face he recognized after his rebirth
out of the cryothermos bottle from the New Ottawa Reformation Center had
been Dr. Sammy Wynoski's vulpine face, startlingly aged. Not so startling,
thirty-three years had passed for Sam since they said good-bye, each
clutching his graduation award from Harvard's School of Medicine.

 

 

While Dr. Joe West returned to California, and finally achieved the
exalted position of Director of Oriental Population Problems Research
at the University of California, was canned, discovered the Eskimo
population explosion, lost Marthalik, and was imprisoned for "attempted
genocide," Dr. Sammy Wynoski said he'd been quietly specializing in
chemopsychiatry. He had an increasing number of weekend jobs as a medical
interrogation consultant for the Central Intelligence Agency. When fellow
Harvardman George Bruning was appointed Deputy Director of the Agency,
Sammy Wynoski had answered his country's call, his Harvard buddy's phone
call, and became a full-time member of the Harvard Circle of the CIA.

 

 

Thus when Dr. Joe West and Dr. Sammy Wynoski parted consciousness this year
in the basement of CIA headquarters, they were at opposite ends of a
hypodermic needle which Dr. Sammy Wynoski was apologetically inserting
into Dr. Joe West's arm.

 

 

"Joe, you haven't aged like -- uh, I -- have -- " Sammy muttered.

 

 

Passing out, Dr. West had been in no condition to reply then, but now --
"You bunch of amateurs," Dr. West muttered, crouching in the flooding
capsule. "Have you got any rational plan for me? What do I do next?"

 

 

Beside him, the Major groaned. Dr. West's pulse rate jumped. His wrist
gave a nervous jerk of its own volition.

 

 

"Where's my gun?" the Major's voice blurted, and then he whispered,
"Any Chinks out there? What you doing?"

 

 

"Nothing," Dr. West's voice replied soothingly. "Our best hope is to stay
in the capsule." For some reason, his fingers twisted his wristwatch to the
underside of his wrist.

 

 

"Damn capsule -- flooding," the Major grunted. "We got to get out of here
fast." From the thrashing, it sounded as if the Major was having difficulty
disengaging himself from his safety harness and assorted intercom wires and
oxygen tubes.

 

 

"We stay here!" Dr. West's voice stated, his pulse rate accelerating as
if readying his body for violent combat. He realized -- he remembered,
when he tipped back his wrist as he was doing now, an injection needle
emerged from his wristwatch.

 

 

"If the faceless airman becomes uncooperative," a disembodied voice
had explained, "simply prick him with the wristwatch needle." Otherwise
Dr. West was to wait. He was not to kill the purposely "faceless" airman
until the proper strategic moment. Dr. West began to shiver. He had not
remembered this until now.