The Eskimo Invasion (50 page)

 

 

"Shut up!" Dr. West visualized U.S. ramjets spraying China not with
distilled water or an ineffectively safe bacteria, but with a savagely
virulent gynecological bacteria which would slightly infect the Esks --
and of course totally sterilize the Chinese.

 

 

Dr. West smiled bemusedly. This might be carrying measured escalation too
far. He thought the Chinese would strike back with more than birth control
biological warfare.

 

 

Even the Pentagon wouldn't launch that preemptive spraying attack,
he thought,
unless the retaliatory Chinese counterstrike against America
could be disorganized from within China?
"Dammit, I can't have, been sent
here for that."

 

 

"Your aggressor-indoctrinated thoughts are of the type which continually
disturb my military," Mao III sighed. "As long as the Asian continent
must defend itself from imperialist invaders, our larger population is
our main defensive weapon. My military will never agree to unilaterally
massacre our Esk population while an uninspected Esk population continues
to increase in the United States."

 

 

Mao III's voice rose. "The United States is using its own irresponsibly
increasing Esk population as an aggressive threat to world peace. If the
United States should outnumber China, and this could happen because your
Esks are multiplying unchecked, then 5000 years of Chinese cultural
heritage would be threatened. Tapeworm, can't you understand that my
military cannot agree to any limitation of our Esks while -- "

 

 

"Shut up!" Dr. West's face contracted, concentrating all his frustration
against Mao III, and the paralyzed man toppled to the floor with a
brain-blinding thud. Blackness!

 

 

Dr. West clawed at his own eyes, momentarily unable to see. His vision
glimmering, he crawled to Mao III and shook him, then groped for his
faint pulse.

 

 

As he sat there wondering if Mao III ever would regain consciousness,
Dr. West remembered the smug faces, the excited faces in the Harvard Circle
of the CIA.
You smart sons of bitches
, he thought, right now you must be
thinking you've almost scored your biggest one, if you're trying for
birth control negotiations. You've planted a monomaniac named Dr. West
in Peking. You've used me to set up a teleconfrontation with Mao III.

 

 

The Secretary of State had reacted too quickly.
The ready response
through Warsaw must have been prepared even before you parachuted me
,
Dr. West thought.

 

 

But even if the teleconfrontation takes place and the President verbally
destroys Mao III, you'll be falling into a new box of problems with the
Chinese military -- and the Esks still will be increasing -- including
the increasing millions of Esks in the United States.

 

 

Dr. West blinked, and then his eyebrows rose.
What if you CIA geniuses
are two steps ahead of me? Could it be the President will support Mao
iii? Try to make him look good in the negotiations? That way the Harvard
Circle hopes population control of the Esks in China will begin. After
all, Mao III is supposed to be controlled by me, Dr. West, monomaniac
hater of the Esks. If China limits its Esk population, then public
opinion in the U.S. may permit the U.S. government to limit the number
of Esks belonging to individuals and corporations in the United States.

 

 

In realization, Dr. West began to shake with excitement. "Do you hope
that I, the population expert, hopefully the controller of Mao III, will
initiate China's first population limitation offer? And I did? You hope
this will allow public opinion in the U.S. to follow. Are you indirectly
trying to control the Esk population explosion in the U.S. which you're
now politically unable to do anything about?"

 

 

Dr. West propped up Mao III's head and desperately sought his pulse.
"The teleconference is tomorrow!"

 

 

A red light flashed on the telescreen. Dr. West didn't know what to do.
Evidently the broadcast was of such high priority it contained a code-servo
override. The screen switched itself on.

 

 

Across the television screen, gracefully stroking lines of ink converged
to form a calligraphic dove of peace. A dissolve into living color
showed ranks of red-neckerchiefed Chinese children marching across the
Great Square. Their red balloons and golden balloons bobbed above their
heads. En masse the balloons rose into the blue sky. Dr. West recognized
this as the standard introductory film clip used by the New China News
Agency in its worldwide telecasts. Magically, all the golden balloons
drifted in front of the gigantic silver rocket which protruded from the
pink-walled courtyard of the Winter Palace. All the red balloons drifted
over the ancient marble curve of the Jade Rainbow Bridge. "China is a
bridge of peace to all people," a soft voice hummed, and Dr. West knew
translations were soothing televiewers in Afghanistan, Algeria, America.

 

 

The Chinese Foreign Minister bowed to the television audience, his hands
pressed together in a gesture of peace. "Friends throughout the world,
our reverenced Chairman, our Saving Star, regretfully will be unable
to appear in the teleconference which he proposed and the President of
the United States seemed to have accepted. It is well that the Chinese
Federation of Nations clings to peace in this moment of imperialist
aggression. Last night a black aircraft of the warmongering United
States Central Intelligence Agency made an unprovoked attack upon
Szechwan Province."

 

 

The Foreign Minister smiled humbly at his teleprompter. "Of course the
imperialist aircraft was shot down by our ever-vigilant civilian defense
militia." He nodded his head, and a film of several girls with rifles
standing beside massive wreckage strewn across mountain rice terraces
was projected, while his peaceful voice rose to outrage: "Unfortunately,
those genocidal murderers of the Central Intelligence Agency of the
United States were able to parachute a capsule loaded with a murderous
virus upon peaceful Szechwan Province. The shock of this treachery has
caused a relapse in the health of our beloved Chairman, and he will be
unable to appear on television to confront the guilty President of the
warmongering United States!"

 

 

The film showed an oddly familiar terraced mountainside. Across the
stair-step rice paddies sprawled a gigantic parachute. Dr. West blinked
in recognition. In the mud lay a standard aircrew ejection capsule from
a U.S. Air Force ramjet bomber. Dr. West blinked. Was this the viral or
bacteriological capsule?

 

 

" -- until such time as the United States can show a sincere desire
for peace," the Foreign Minister s voice was crooning, "the Chinese
Federation of Nations democratically and unanimously believes that an
international teleconference would be futile."

 

 

"You fraud," Dr. West gasped aloud at the smug face on the telescreen.
"That parachute, that terraced mountain, that's my old ejection capsule.
That film was taken over six months ago after I -- we came down in
Szechwan Province."

 

 

Dr. West moaned in frustration and banged his fist on the floor, and shouted
at the telescreen. "Liar! Chinese generals invented this incident to get off
the hook of a teleconference."

 

 

Beside him, Mao III's eyes had opened.

 

 

"Did you hear that, you prematurely senile-brained idiot?" Dr. West shouted,
his futile rage hammering his heart. "Your Foreign Minister announced
you've had a relapse. Now the generals are calling all the shots. You're
finished as Chairman. You blob of dead flesh, you were nearly useless
even when I took control of you. Now you're nothing! I've ended as nothing.
We're both nothing!"

 

 

Mao III writhed on the floor from Dr. West's radiated anger, and Dr. West
grabbed his wrist, felt for his erratically shivering pulse. Dr. West tried
to calm himself, and gradually Mao III's pulse regained a semblance of
a rhythm.

 

 

A brilliant stratagem. All are loyal to the line of Maos, Mao III's
erratic thoughts seeped.
China is Maoism, and I am Mao, and all is well.

 

 

Dr. West stared in frightened fascination at the Command Microphone on
the console. He couldn't endure waiting. He had to know. Could he or
Mao III still broadcast orders from this vault? IS THE POWER DEAD?

 

 

"Dead?" Mao III's voice chirped with startling cheerfulness. "I am nearly
dead. But I have patience. Help me up, my tapeworm. I will die peacefully
in my bed. No man expects more." His personality seemed altered. "My generals
will have to wait. I have a headache. Perhaps they may need
me tomorrow."

 

 

Dr. West dragged him to the console and ordered him to contact any place
on the surface. "The Interrogation Room."

 

 

Mao III did not respond.

 

 

In Dr. West's arms, Mao III was a frail sack of bones, smiling blissfully,
as if unaware of Dr. West's order.

 

 

"I have patience," Mao III sighed, "this is how I control my generals,
patting one dog, then another until they snarl at each other in jealousy.
Because I have patience, they will fail to negotiate their differences.
Power is Mao. All will be well."

 

 

Dr. West emptied him on to his bed, and Mao III's face sagged in a smile
like melting wax.
All will be well.

 

 

Mao III's personality seemed so softened that Dr. West surmised another
hair-thin vein within his cerebrum painlessly had ruptured. Another
tiny area of his brain tissue was dying. Mao III had undergone another
little stroke.

 

 

"I am Chiu Hsing, the Saving Star," Mao III sighed dreamily. "Grandfather
Mao and I are history. I am the unifying symbol for China, power and love
and forgiveness. When my generals bow down before me, I will ask that you
be painlessly shot."

 

 

Dr. West made no comment.

 

 

Mao III closed his eyes.

 

 

While Mao III sank easily into the smiling sleep of the pure in heart,
Dr. West glared at the oppressive ceiling. Sleepless, Dr. West writhed.
He sat up and stared at the Control Console.

 

 

With surprisingly mnemonic power, Dr. West remembered from watching Mao III
the pattern of push buttons which should open a command line to the surface,
in this cautious instance to the Interrogation Room. On the telescreen,
the white Interrogation Room appeared, empty except for the modernistic
electronic interrogation table and an old Chinese on his knees, scrubbing
the floor by hand, as if he had remained in the seventeenth-century.

 

 

On the console in front of Dr. West glowed the light indicating the
Command Microphone was live. It dazzled with power. Dr. West whistled
into the microphone. The old man did not look up.

 

 

"Summon your superior," Dr. West commanded in impeccable Neo-Chinese,
and still the old man went on scrubbing. "Stand to attention or be shot!"
Dr. West snapped in Mandarin, beginning to sweat with anxiety as the
old man continued wearily sloshing his big handbrush back and forth on
the wet floor, as if he had not heard.

 

 

"Deaf fool!" Dr. West shouted in frustration, while the old man sloshed
his brush in the bucket.

 

 

Dr. West knew he didn't hear. The military already must have disconnected
the vault's command transmission lines. For the moment the Command Vault
still retained its exterior television eyes. The telescreen showed Chinese
troops climbing into armored trucks as if --

 

 

The military has silenced Mao III, Dr. West thought.
Mao III's --
my ability to broadcast is finished. No more commands to the outside --
What do I do now?

 

 

Numbly sitting, Dr. West felt amputated.
No more commands to the outside.
Dr. West felt himself shriveling.
My purpose is gone.

 

 

"Gone! Got to get out." He could feel the ceiling pressing down, 4000 feet
of rock and subsoil and earth crushing him into thickening claustrophobia
as he walked, not ran, to the elevator.

 

 

His face twisting with pain, he turned around and ran back to his bed
and covered his head.

 

 

Even if they don't shoot me when I appear at the surface, I'd be powerless.
Free on the surface I'd be nothing. I would see the billions of Esks
increasing while I did nothing, having lost my chance for power to
stop them.

 

 

Dr. West turned over on his back.

 

 

I'm lying here in the vault of power. The power's off but my hope --
He tried to open his memory, to search through the shambles left by
Chinese electrointerrogation.

 

 

He visualized the faces of the Harvard Circle bending over him in the
basement of the Central Intelligence Agency building.

 

 

Bunglers, each subliminal instruction was to be cued by predicted events.
But this is a terminal event. Please let an alternate plan rise to the
surface of my memory. Oh God, how I need -- Have you deserted me?

 

 

As if those distant faces had become his gods, Dr. West prayed for a vision,
and felt only the endless emptiness of the Universe.

 

 

What was my purpose? Dr. West lay on his back feeling waves of universal
time curving back to the edge of sleep.

 

 

Suddenly he smiled.
Perhaps I am all-important. I am the seed of life
in this buried vault.
He slept, and dreamed he arose with power over the
world: "The Esks are to be sacrificed to me." He was huge and snow-white
as a polar bear.