The Eskimo Invasion (51 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

 

 

Awakened by tee cautious movements of an Esk with his breakfast tray,
Dr. West sat up, blinking. Gradually he remembered he was trapped 4000
feet beneath Peking. He got up, wandered over like an early morning
drunken bum, and stared down wonderingly at Mao III's sleeping face.

 

 

"When I wake up too soon," Dr. West muttered, "I see these Esks as something
else." For breakfast he was surprisingly hungry. He ate ravenously.
Rubbing his head, he thought he'd dreamed he was a polar bear. Bear or man,
he was trapped. He stared at the smiling Esk servant, then walked back to
Mao III's bed.

 

 

Mao III did not open his eyes.
Why your hatred of our gentle Esk comrades,
they who feed us?
Mao III's dagger-sharp thought incised,
if you had
been born in the closeness of a Chinese commune, you would be an open man
instead of a closed man. Can't you love Esks who feel only love for you?

 

 

"I don't hate them. I have never hated them." Dr. West was wide awake
now. "But as they increase, crowding me everywhere, I feel my elbows --
my teeth grating. Why is that light blinking?"

 

 

"Activity outside the surface entry door," Mao III said quickly, his
face blooming in a smile. "My generals have come to rescue me."

 

 

Pushing the proper combination of buttons on the console Dr. West focused
a picture of workmen welding the steel frame for a new door approximately
one foot outside the surface entry door. The Chinese up there were working
directly under the warning lens, so that Dr. West was looking down at the
tops of their heads. When he shifted to a second lens at an oblique angle,
he saw military officers in black uniforms standing, watching the work
from further away within the great concrete blockhouse which he knew
was encased within the ancient Winter Palace.

 

 

"Who are they?"

 

 

"They are too small for me to recognize their faces," Mao III muttered
from his bed. "It seems our surface door will become a door within a door."

 

 

"Instead of simply welding our door shut ." Dr. West carried Mao III's
slack body to his chair. "Why are they enclosing us with a second door?"

 

 

"Historically, Chinese are cautious because they are so intelligent,"
Mao III said unselfconsciously. "Those who possess the key to the new
outer door will be able to reach me quickly enough if events so guide
them." He smiled. "Welding my door permanently shut would have seemed
too irrevocable. There is more artistry in a door within a door. I may
be needed tomorrow."

 

 

A fading illusion, Dr. West thought. We are being permanently sealed
down here with the Esks. "There are too many Esks down here to be fed,
and on the surface Esks are being allowed to multiply as if the nations
of the world have less foresight than ants." Dr. West's voice rose. "At
least ants recognize that many intruders in their nest as enemies! I've
got to get out of here."

 

 

"You fear even my Esk servants?" Mao III asked and smiled. "Since I, too,
once placed great value on survival when I was younger, there are freezers
full of supplies in this vault for myself and for fifty Esk servants
for twenty years. The vault was constructed and stocked during a period
when I thought the American hawks were suicidally sincere in their talk
of preventative war. Breathe this sweet air. It is a recirculating system
which cannot be poisoned by surface assassins, either Chinese or American.
We can wait, self-sufficient, safer and years longer than in a submarine.
My vault is protected by 4000 feet of solid rock. If the United States
warmongers had attacked, and won, amusing word, I could have waited down
here like a seventeen-year locust and then emerged with my own personal
Esks to repopulate the world."

 

 

An Esk carried away the breakfast tray.

 

 

"You were looking at one of my sons," Mao III said proudly. "Until my stroke
three years ago, I was extremely functional. The historical duty of a great
man is to pass on his seed."

 

 

In the concrete corridors which surrounded the inner vault, neatly
uniformed Esks wandered, as if there was not enough work to do. Dr. West
noticed a few young Esks dressed in what appeared to be bedsheets, as
if there no longer were enough uniforms for the increasing number of
Esks. Hordes of naked children skipped gaily ahead in the corridor.

 

 

Beside Dr. West, an Esk pushed Mao III's wheelchair.

 

 

"Already you are plotting how you can murder my children," Mao III said
pleasantly, as they passed the steel door to a tunnel which led down to
the atomic-electric power source.

 

 

"Speculative force of habit," Dr. West replied as calmly. "Yesterday,
I showed one of your -- sons or grandsons how to conduct a census by
touching each Esk with a dab of red paint so he wouldn't count the same
child twice. I showed him how to make counting marks on a tablet. There
are twenty-eight mature males, twenty-two breeding age females and --
prepare yourself -- 396 children and babies."

 

 

"So? Under normal conditions the excess children are sent to the surface,"
Mao III replied as if undisturbed. "It has been convenient that babies
need to be breast-fed for less than a month."

 

 

"Sixty-two of the children would reach breeding age if we were down here
a year," Dr. West remarked. "Of these, thirty-two are female."

 

 

"It is unlikely we will be down here a week," Mao III replied. "My generals
will need me, as they always have needed the line of Maos."

 

 

"Then this is purely a theoretical problem," Dr. West shrilly laughed.
"The thirty-two future breeding females added to the twenty-two females
now adult, means there would be fifty-four breeding females within another
year. Suppose we're optimistic and estimate two menstrual failures
or miscarriages per mother during the next twelve months, each of the
fifty-four women would give birth to only ten children instead of twelve,
for a total of 450 more mouths to feed. And I'm forgetting to add children
born to the twenty-two existing mothers this year."

 

 

"You're talking as if we could be left to stagnate down here for two
years," Mao laughed. "The generals will free me and kill you within
a month."

 

 

"In two years, counting existing Esks, mainly children now, plus babies
who will be born, the total number of mouths to feed will be more than 1000."

 

 

"You are intimating I lacked foresight because there are only supplies
for fifty Esks for twenty years."

 

 

"Supplies for fifty Esks for twenty years equals supplies for 1000 Esks
for one year." Dr. West walked toward the myriad sounds of babies.

 

 

"I am as familiar with arithmetic as you are," Mao III's voice retorted
triumphantly. "I also am familiar with birth control pills."

 

 

"I can see from the age distribution of your Esks and the terrible
preponderance of children, that no birth control pills are being used,"
Dr. West said softly; as he stepped into the crowded sleeping dormitory,
his nose wrinkled.

 

 

"These are my grandchildren," Mao III replied. "So there has been no reason
to stifle my own ancestral line with pills. Do not panic. My generals will
free me in a few days, and if the generals procrastinate and you become
frightened of all these harmless Esks, there is a whole closet full of
birth control pills."

 

 

Dr. West blinked. He smiled fleetingly.

 

 

"It might be wise to start testing these pills," Dr. West remarked, as if
it were of no importance.

 

 

He had glanced into the steam-blurred kitchen where Esks were boiling rice
and freeze-dried vegetables. "Unless the birth control pills are effective,
their food will be gone in less than two years."

 

 

"We will not be down here three months." Mao III's tone of voice was a
verbal shrug. "But you are a medical person, and it might add to your
medical knowledge if you begin testing the quality of those pills. They
were manufactured in the United States."

 

 

When Dr. West opened the closet, he saw the old labeled bottles of pills.
They were an abortifacient put out by an American pharmaceutical company,
based on research begun years ago while he was Director of Oriental
Populations Problems Research. The original abortifacient pills had been
intended for humans. Dr. West hoped these had been tested on Esks. Only
one abortion-inducing pill a month was necessary. In Canada it had been
found impractical to force Esk women to take the daily pills.

 

 

Taken only once a month, ideally before the woman had grown large from
her monthly pregnancy, these abortifacients might do the job if the Esk
women would swallow them.

 

 

Dr. West smiled grimly, thinking:
That brilliant mathematician, Mao III,
has stocked twenty large jars of 300 pills each. That's 6000 pills.
Mathematically, enough pills for twenty-five women for twenty years.
Assuming the pills are 100% effective, by the time all the existing 396
children mature, even assuming no new births, in three years we will have
a total of 220 females of breeding age. They will need 2640 pills each
year.
"There won't be enough pills to complete the fourth year. Chemical
birth control will cease. Soon we'd be jammed shoulder to shoulder,
except for one lucky circumstance. We already will have starved to death.

 

 

"But I'm ever the hopeful experimenter." Dr. West wondered if he would
be more successful than the Canadians in inducing the Esk women to
swallow monthly pills. "I can't use force. Too many Esks. I can try
deception." He slipped one bottle under his coat and carefully locked
the closet. He frowned.
Why did the Canadian government fail?

 

 

He waded through naked children romping in the thermostatically heated
corridor.

 

 

The abortifacient pills so strongly contradict the Esk women's instinctive
purpose in life , he thought,
what insidious things can happen when we
trick their instinctive urge to give birth?

 

 

His face twisted with grief as he thought of Marthalik, his wife --

 

 

In the crowded dormitory, he stared at an Esk woman sitting on the edge
of a cot, hunching over her baby. Her strong hands were steadying her
newborn baby, who was hungrily suckling her breast.

 

 

Genetically formed in both of you, Dr. West thought,
is such an
overwhelming urge to multiply. Even stronger than ours --
He knew within the uterus of this blissful woman, the next fertilized ovum
already was clinging, growing, already an embryo, efficiently growing
without wasted energy or unnecessary gills or prehuman tail, and in
less than a month it would emerge into the world.
Your whole being,
all of those smiling instincts, your inoffensive survival instincts were
designed by -- something to help your rapid multiplication. And you help
each other. Unlike men, you don't kill.
Uneasily he smiled down at the
woman, who cradled her baby protectively in her arms.
Mother
, he thought,
would anything you suspect of interfering with your
purpose in life cause you to -- But I've never heard of Esks deliberately
killing anyone
, he thought.
I should be safe enough.

 

 

He gave twenty-two pills to the steward, who seemed unusually intelligent.
Although his Esk characteristics were dominant, the steward undoubtedly
was one of Mao III's sons. He listened placidly to Dr. West's instructions.
"You understand," Dr. West repeated, "these twenty-two calcium pills must
be given only to each woman. That is, one to each woman."

 

 

"Eh?" The Esk smiled.

 

 

"One pill for each woman in her rice," Dr. West said. "Tonight. Good
calcium pills to make bones strong," he lied.

 

 

"For babies?"

 

 

"No, for the mothers! Give the pills to the mothers."

 

 

As Dr. West returned to the Control Room, Mao III was leaning toward
the telescreen, his skeletal face twisting in a comedy of outrage and
black humor.

 

 

"I am reported to be dying. A national year of mourning is being prepared.
This same day Chu-Ti's personal aircraft has exploded in flight,
accidentally, the teleannouncers say. Lin Po died last night at a banquet,
of indigestion. Here in Peking, Chen Yung's 8th Route Army has canceled
all leaves."

 

 

"In the south," Mao III laughed nervously, "Peng Huai's troops have
entered Canton to calm a very little disturbance caused by less than a
dozen ancient reactionary revisionists who drank too much wine. To put
them down, his troops temporarily have occupied all the airfields and
the television station." Now Mao III laughed as faintly as the ghost of
a man. " -- the Cantonese dogs say they are preparing for democratic
elections. No doubt the general with the most troops hopes to receive
the most votes."

 

 

Dr. West wondered if this revolution would help him.

 

 

"When their armies have bloodied the streets," Mao III muttered,
"and still the fighting continues, they will remember me, their Saving
Star." He laughed faintly. "I can rise from the dead?"

 

 

After a silence Mao III opened his eyes and announced: "The survivors
will unlock my steel door, and I will permit them to come down in my
elevator, and bow down before me. Humbly the surviving generals will
beg me once more to command all China ."