The Eskimo Invasion (39 page)

 

 

He had no intention of murdering the Major. He had no intention of
murdering anyone, not even a Chinese.

 

 

"Those sons of bitches!" Dr. West blurted, in his memory studying Dr. Sammy
Wynoski's apologetic face.

 

 

"Yeah," the Major wheezed, probably also referring to the CIA, and the
two men collided in the darkness.

 

 

Dr. West realized he almost had jabbed the Major with the needle watch.
With his other hand, Dr. West tried to unbuckle the wristband.

 

 

His fingers struggled against his orders. His fingers wouldn't obey him.
He felt as frustrated as a spastic as he gasped and sloshed about in the
water. The wristwatch fell off his wrist. Success! One victory against
the Harvard Circle.

 

 

"You all right?" the Major demanded.

 

 

"Yes, fine. I feel much better. Let's get out of here. You're in command,
Major."

 

 

"I'm going to unbolt the hatch."

 

 

"Hadn't we better wait in the capsule?" Dr. West's smooth voice suggested.

 

 

"But you just said for us to -- let's get out," the Major hissed;
Dr. West was contradicting himself.

 

 

"The ignorant Chinese peasants can't reach us, can't torture us if we stay
in the capsule." Dr. West's mouth talked fast. "Yes, they'll think the
capsule is one of theirs. Our best hope is for the People's Militia to
reach us. Still better is for the Maoist police to find us before the people
lynch us. The capsule isn't sinking anymore. The water isn't rising.
Probably we're mired in a rice paddy. Our only hope is to stay in the
capsule."

 

 

"You gone crazy or something? A minute ago you wanted out -- Get out of
this capsule!" The Major bodily shoved Dr. West through the hatch into
the mud.

 

 

Under Dr. West's submerged hands was the bristly feel of newly transplanted
rice seedlings.

 

 

He lifted his gaze up a steeply terraced mountainside to the night sky.

 

 

Behind him, the Major thrashed out of the capsule into the mud and sloshed
about in the darkness. With a gasp and a curse, the Major slipped off
the crumbling edge of the narrow terrace into the rice paddy below. These
terraced rice paddies were little wider than a man's arm span.

 

 

The capsule had not descended into a river valley. Dr. West saw that they
had landed on a mountainside so steep that all this terracing would have
been uneconomic for man. Immense labor would be required for the limited
number of catties of rice the mountain could produce.

 

 

The odors of the terrace-makers permeated the night air.

 

 

"Stinks like human -- fertilizer," the Major scrambled back up the hand-
packed mud slope. "Millions of Chinks!"

 

 

"Not Chinese." In his memory Dr. West visualized photographs of only five
years ago showing these mountains desolate and dry, completely uneconomic
for rice cultivation. During the last two or three years, incredible energy
had been expended on these mountain terraces. The mountains were too steep,
the terraces too small for efficient use of machinery. Human cultivators
would consume too much rice, more energy laboring here than the submarginal
rice harvests would replace. Yet these mountains had been laboriously
terraced, magically irrigated, freshly hand-planted with bristly new
rice seedlings.

 

 

"The moon is rising." Like glittering liquid steps, the terraced rice
paddies shimmered down the mountainside into the dark canyon.

 

 

"I smell smoke," the Major whispered. "Millions of Chinks down there."

 

 

Dr. West did not bother to disagree with him. Turning, he looked for
the dim whiteness of another giant parachute, but there was no sign of
Colonel Meller's escape capsule.

 

 

The Major held up his shining wet hand, feeling for the direction of the
night breeze. "Bad! I'm afraid the wind is coming from where we sprayed.
Hell of a note if we get infected by our own spray. Got to move out of
here fast!"

 

 

Again, Dr. West did not bother to disagree with him. Dr. West's hand
reached into his nylock flying suit and groped into his commune worker's
rags, where his fingers closed around the handle of a dagger he had not
known was sheathed there.

 

 

The Major pulled at his shoulder. "Move out! You may be inoculated against
-- whatever it is, but I'm not."

 

 

"You don't need to be terrified of this microbiological," Dr. West's voice
replied smoothly. "Probably it is a bacterial infection of the staph-strep
group -- "

 

 

"Let's go, let's go!" the Major interrupted.

 

 

"A mild infection may settle in the Fallopian tubes and in the spermatic
ducts."

 

 

"Sterilized," the Major grunted in partial understanding. "Kill 'em before
they're born. Yeah, kill Chinks before they're conceived. Yeah, typically
CIA. Let's get the hell out of here."

 

 

"I'm just guessing about the bacterial spray." Dr. West was remembering
the young-old face of Dr. Fred Gatson, bacteriologist.

 

 

Harvard grad Fred Gatson had been even younger than Dr. West when they were
the big wheels in Oriental Population Problems Research. When Dr. Joe West
was fired as Director, amazingly, Dr. Fred Gatson had been appointed to
replace him.

 

 

Dr. West thought. Fred had no compunctions about breeding more virulent
"birth control" bacteria in those days, even though they had potentialities
for sterilizing the human race, exterminating mankind. They were more
menacing than atomic war.

 

 

When the CIA "freed" Joe West from his life sentence and imprisoned him
in the basement of CIA headquarters, Dr. Fred Gatson reappeared with a
receding hairline. It turned out Fred had left Cal and scrambled still
higher up the ladder of success. Dr. Fred Gatson now was a member of the
Harvard Circle of the CIA. Facing Dr. West, Fred appeared uncomfortable
but determined. In Dr. West's memory, Fred opened his mouth. He was
speaking, presumably about his latest accomplishments, but he appeared
unhappy.

 

 

In his memory, Dr. West could see Fred's lips moving, but he couldn't hear
his voice. What Fred was telling him seemed blocked out of his memory.
In frustration and hope, Dr. West wondered if a bacterial mutation
finally had been developed which would sterilize or even kill Esks
but not humans. If so, this spraying flight over China should be the
culmination of his life. Had they finally begun bacterial control of
the Esk population explosion before it overwhelmed the world?

 

 

Suspiciously, Dr. West felt no happiness. He didn't believe such an
Esk-selective bacteria finally had been developed. He didn't believe this
was what Fred Gatson's silently moving mouth had said. Fred's words had
been censored from his surface memory. Why had the CIA delivered him
to China?

 

 

"This spray doesn't affect people," Dr. West's voice said reassuringly to
the Major. "You don't need to fear personal sterilization. The bacterial
mutation is quite specific." Dr. West couldn't believe what his mouth
was saying. "It only affects Esks."

 

 

"Eskimos? They're people. Same species. So it will affect me. You're lying
so I won't panic," the Major blurted. "But I have no intention of panicking.
Let's get away from this capsule! Double-time! If Chink peasants catch us
here where we sprayed, I mean -- we won't father anything. They'll butcher
us. Right now I'm not worried about my virility. Let's get out of here."

 

 

The Major's heaving chest made a close target but Dr. West managed to uncurl
his own fingers from the handle of the concealed dagger. Those CIA sons of
bitches were determined he should kill someone. Dr. West was equally
determined he would not kill anyone.

 

 

"We'll have to take the escape radio," Dr. West's voice said.

 

 

"What radio are you talking about?"

 

 

"Continuous signal sender." Dr. West removed it from the capsule. It barely
filled the palm of his hand.

 

 

Hope returned to the Major's voice. "The CIA
is
looking out for us! Is a
CIA snatch plane going to pick us up? Or is this a guerrilla wavelength?"

 

 

"Guerrilla ," Dr. West lied; it was the communications wavelength of the
Maoist Police.

 

 

"Let's go!" The Major was pulling at him again, making Dr. West's
involuntary nervous system clench as if he had been conditioned to kill --

 

 

"Doc, our best chance is to get far far away from this capsule before
daylight shows it to the Chinks down there." The Major needed to clutch
at any hope. "Then we hide and wait for the guerrillas."

 

 

Dr. West tried to keep up with the Major as he lumbered and splashed along
the terraces. Joe West suspected there were few, if any, Chinese asleep
down there in the canyon. His legs dragged. His legs felt so heavy --

 

 

His hand refused to let go of it, but he wanted to throw away the signal
sender. Why should he obediently give himself up to the Maoist police?
"Those CIA sons of bitches!" Dr. West couldn't make his fingers let go
of the signal sender. "They really conditioned the carrying of this radio
into my skull."

 

 

"What?" The Major looked back.

 

 

"Nothing." Joe West staggered on.

 

 

With devilish energy, the Major began clambering up the sides of terraces,
ascending the mountain like a monkey up a giant staircase. Dr. West's
legs grew heavier and heavier, and he gasped for breath, dragging himself
up over terraces mainly by the strength of his arms. His legs felt like
swollen corpses. "Mental elephantiasis? Imaginary heavy legs? Hell!"
Dr. West wondered when he would remember exactly what they had done to
his legs.

 

 

"Hurry up," the Major hissed from far above.

 

 

But Joe West was already exhausted. He gasped for breath, and his heart
thudded unevenly. As he struggled to climb over the lip of a terrace into the
next paddy, the muddy signal sender slipped out of his hand. The tiny radio
slid back down the terrace wall. Dr. West clung there, then triumphantly
bellied over into the rice paddy, leaving the radio.

 

 

His hands wanted to scramble back down and search for the signal sender.
"Oh, but you can't make me do it," he whispered. "No CIA assassins sitting
safe in Washington give me orders." He crawled forward across the paddy
and struggled up the terrace above, leaving the radio lost in the darkness.
"To hell with Harvard! I'm free."

 

 

The Major came sliding back down. "Let me help you. That's OK, you're not
in shape. Let's go. I won't leave you, Doc."

 

 

The Major unmercifully hoisted Joe West to his feet. Supporting him,
urging him, dragging him, the Major hauled Joe West up the terraced side
of the mountain. Dr. West's legs kept sagging.

 

 

"That's OK, do your best," the Major gasped. "We're Americans.
We'll stick together."

 

 

Dr. West wondered what the Major would say if and when he discovered
Dr. West was wearing a Chinese commune worker's clothes under his nylock
flying suit.

 

 

"Doc, Doc! Hey, where's the little radio?" The Major began to shake him,
to search his outer pockets.

 

 

"In my hand. No, I dropped it."

 

 

"You dropped it?" the Major shrilled. "You just dropped our only chance."

 

 

The Major scrambled back down the terrace, leaving Dr. West lying in the
mud listening to the Major sloshing about below him. There was not one
chance in a million that anyone could find that signal sender in the dark.

 

 

Dr. West lay there listening to his own uneven heartbeat. His heart
sounded like a candidate for an electronic pacemaker.

 

 

"Best way to beat the Harvard Circle -- for my heart to stop." Dr. West
stared up at the moon: the Harvard Circle peered down at him from his
imagination.

 

 

Dr. George Bruning -- Deputy Director, CIA.

 

 

Dr. Sammy Wynoski -- Chemopsychiatrist.

 

 

Dr. Fred Gatson -- Population control expert; bacteriologist.

 

 

But there were two more members of the Harvard Circle: Dr. West's
irregularly beating heart cued one of them out of his blocked memory.

 

 

Dr. Einar R. Johansen had not been a direct acquaintance of Dr. West's,
but Dr. West had recognized him in the basement of the CIA headquarters.
The eccentric Dr. Johansen was so easily recognizable. He was only
slightly withered by the thirty years which had passed since Dr. West
regularly saw his protruding face in medical journals. In those days
Dr. Johansen had been the nation's most inventive surgeon.

 

 

More recently Dr. Johansen had earned a Ph.D. in bioelectrical engineering
from Harvard. He was better known now as an inventive neurosurgeon than as
a heart surgeon, and still better known for his press conferences.
Reportedly he was the doctor who said: "The older I get, the softer my
head, so the more I soak up. I learn more now than when I was a kid of
forty. At this rate, when I'm eighty I'll revolutionize medicine." This
enraged the A.M.A.

 

 

On pop-science TV shows, Dr. Johansen played with electric eels --
without wearing rubber gloves. He was ingeniously grounded against
electrocution. He was the first surgeon to design and install an
electronic heart pacemaker which was powered by the patient's neuron
electricity. No internal batteries to wear out, no wires to fray. "My
pacemaker lasts as long as the patient. Yes, longer!"