The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  6. THE MODERN PENITENTIARY

  Alone in the comfortable apartment which was his cell, Dr. Joe West chewed the inside of his cheek in self-torment. Quivering, his scalpel exposed the tiny pituitary gland of the Arctic ground squirrel on his work counter.

  "Blind fools!" His real guilt was so much worse than the angry orators in the United Nations General Assembly had shouted.

  Racial murder? Unpredictably, twenty-two Canadian Eskimos had died. The Ottawa court convicted him of murder.

  "I'm guilty of worse ." His face twisted. Apparently less than 20% of the Esk women had developed any significant infection or even temporary swelling in the tubes from their ovaries. A few of the Esk children and men had a day or two of mild fever. Not a single Esk died. Their resistance to human pathogens was so much stronger than he'd expected. While Eskimos died, Esks had continued happily eating and breeding and breeding and breeding --

  "Damn me! Instead of my controlling their birthrate, I'm their Santa Claus!"

  It was his murder trial which attracted worldwide attention and aid to the hungry Esks. Ironically, it was his trial which awakened humanitarians and politicians to the plight of the overcrowding Esks. Rapidly multiplying Esks starving --

  During the year of his arrest, while his trial dragged on, the counted number of Esks increased from 4500 to 8000.

  Both the malicious Chinese Government and the embarrassed United States Government were air-delivering food, baby clothing, portable barracks.

  "Blind fools! Like providing food and shelter for lemmings." Dr. West's youthful face winced, gaunt as a pensioner's.

  The first rumor Dr. West had overheard as he was led to his bulletproof glass booth in the Ottawa courtroom for sentencing: a Chinese VTOL aircraft had "evacuated" more than one hundred starving "Eskimos," surely Esks, from Canada's Boothia Peninsula. Like an infectious boil, the population pressure of the Esks finally had burst.

  The last rumor he had heard before he was delivered to this prison: hundreds of Esks had asked to be permitted to emigrate to China. "We are loved in that free country." Evidently Chinese agents had been planted among the Esks. In the Canadian Parliament there was a Great Debate. Esks if they so desired would be permitted to go. "Few will, I say. Let the few malcontents go, and relieve our taxpayers of a few Family Allowances." When the huge Chinese VTOL jet transports began landing, to the amazement of Canadians not a few Esks but 4000 Esks opted for China. This was fully half the total Esk population at that moment.

  "God! What's happening out there?" Trapped in the New Ottawa Reformation Center, Dr. West knew he should make a second attempt to escape -- at once.

  His cell was frighteningly comfortable. "Safe as a womb."

  Already the friendly staff were changing him. Outside, the Esks would change the world.

  The hiss of increasing air pressure alerted Dr. West that the outer door to his suite was being opened. Ignoring the Ceiling Lens, Dr. West hastily wrapped the dissected squirrel in metallic-green Christmas paper; he was not allowed newspapers. Dropping to his knees, he hid the squirrel under the compressor.

  As he lurched to the sofa, his abdominal incision tugged. His heart thudded more quickly than the compressor pumping coolant through frosty copper tubes past his work counter to the huge insulated cage.

  It was an ingenious but scary means of escape.

  Peering out through the double glass window of the cage, a single chilled Arctic ground squirrel (Citelus undulatus) still resisted hibernation. The other squirrels slept under the sawdust. This lonely squirrel shrank back as the inner door to Dr. West's suite moved open. With her upswept hair and neat blue uniform, Nona walked in with a therapeutic smile.

  Dr. West stiffened, his face twisting. Every time he saw a woman in here he wanted to cry -- Marthalik . Or shout with rage. Marthalik, where are you? Not even during his trial, his last months in the outside world, had Marthalik or Steve contacted him. Not even tried to contact me. Sometimes as he lay in his cell he imagined Marthalik making love with Steve, and pounded his fist against the mattress. That's why she went with him. Not to have an operation. Marthalik and Steve had vanished as if from the face of the Earth. But when he saw a woman, there was Marthalik for an instant.

  His pulse racing, Dr. West couldn't remember whether he'd shaved, as Nona walked toward him. Every day for a week, at 10:00 a.m. she had entered his suite, made his bed, done his dishes and tried cheerful conversation.

  Her blue uniform no longer reminded Dr. West of a guard or airline stewardess. Through his insane glass wall, he was staring at her eyes.

  "Merry Christmas, Student." Nona laughed, but her self-assurance visibly fell away. "This is supposed to be a present to you from the staff. But I don't know what's in this package." She wasn't smiling now. "I didn't have anything to do with it."

  Dr. West reached for the package, which was wrapped in grinning Santa Claus paper. He felt as if he could almost reach Nona through his imaginary glass wall. His fingers closing around the bottle-shaped package touched her hand. His muscles tightened. After a year alone in Territorial Prison, and then in the bulletproof glass booth while on trial, and then in Classification Prison, always alone and cutoff, Dr. West could not quite break through the illusion that there was a glass wall --

  "Gurgles like a fifth of rye," he remarked with a weak smile, cautiously shaking the package.

  "I doubt that." Nona sat herself down on the coffee table, still breathing hard as if she had been hurrying to her hour-a-day appointment with him. Always she seemed to be perched on the coffee table, her knees pressed together, her hand tugging down her blue uniform skirt.

  "That's Christmas on your head," Dr. West stammered, not sure what he meant to say.

  Her silvery flower-shaped hair decoration of foil, tinsel and yellow-green mistletoe rustled as she raised her face with dimpled pleasure. "Thank you," she said.

  After a moment she said, "There's still a package in your hand -- "

  Dr. West's fingers stripped down the red and white Santa Claus paper, exposing the clear glass neck, and laughed with confusion. "A fifth of gin?" He stared at something worm-shaped and pink drifting back and forth in the alcohol. "I'll be damned! It's my appendix."

  "I'm sorry!" Nona blurted. "What a horrid thing for the Medical Officer to send."

  At her upturned face, Dr. West blinked, more surprised by her shocked reaction than by the fact the Medical Officer would send him back his appendix for Christmas. Dr. West's smile hardened as he silently read the note:

  Mr. West, our pathologist reports --

  That first night in his suite, Dr. West had lain waiting for his fever to rise. The dull pain spread. His abdominal muscles became rigid. He vomited, crawling toward the bathroom. As he had hoped, the Ceiling Lens was transmitting, and thirty floors below in the basement where 240 TV screens were banked, the Night Observer noticed and telephoned the Medical Officer.

  Dr. West had expected to be rushed out of his solitary cell into the elevator, and down, then out through the icy Canadian night to the hospital building. Apparently that was someone's plan. Perhaps an orderly had been bribed. The rectangular hospital seemed to have more escape possibilities than these tall cylindrical towers of the New Ottawa Reformation Center.

  From a distance the towers had resembled concrete grain elevators. His return glimpse, as the armored car had delivered him toward the penitentiary, had shifted from the towers to the Canadians massing in the sleet. PRESERVE OUR ESKIMOS a placard read.

  Flailing their signs, the screaming mob broke through the police line and halted the armored car with their bodies. SAVE OUR ESKIMOS. A sign hammered against the bulletproof window. HUMAN LIFE IS SACRED. A contorted face pressed against the glass, recognized Dr. West. "Kill the bastard!"

  Dr. West had closed his eyes. They were right.

  Shivering inside warm Tower #3 that first night, finally alone in his solitary suite, still shivering Dr. West had hung up his gray denim trousers, and the capsule fe
ll out of his cuff. He had blinked at it. On the pink gelatin was scratched HOSP-APP. At first he did not realize what the APP stood for. With irony he thought the capsule might contain cyanide from his billions of TV admirers who had witnessed his trial and conviction for genocide and were outraged there no longer was a death penalty in Canada. Their dead Eskimos were lovable people, easily idealized. "Tool of capitalist genocide!" -- "Communist fiend!" the confused Canadians had shouted after him.

  Swiftly, willing to accept whatever it contained, Dr. West had gulped the capsule and lain down. His actual crime, his ineffectiveness was more terrible than the billions knew.

  The numbing of death did not come. As his temperature rose and his symptoms proliferated, Dr. West realized that APP stood for appendix. Someone was trying to get him out. Someone must believe him.

  Fever engulfed him in delirium. A potent capsule! He imagined he saw Eskimos entering his suite, and he shouted with terror.

  The Medical Officer's fingers were pressing his rigid abdomen. "Nurse, best take a rectal thermometer reading from this chap."

  The massive whiteness of a polar bear loomed over the Medical Officer's shoulder, and Joe West had yelled.

  To his dismay, instead of carrying him out to the hospital, gauze-masked monsters wheeled a portable operating table into his suite. "Best give the patient a spinal."

  Mirrored in the reflector of the portable overhead light they were turning his body. Their yellowish rubber hands gleamed. A grease pencil marked a line from his navel to his hip. He felt the numb tugging of the scalpel.

  When the appendectomy was complete, a masked face had bent over him. "I say, West, your appendix appears remarkably healthy. In retrospect, your symptoms all seem rather odd. You've made me feel the fool. Was this another one of those unnecessary operations?" The Medical Officer had turned away. "Best deliver his appendix to the pathologist."

  Now, for a Christmas present, or a warning, the Medical Officer had returned his appendix in a bottle with a note.

  Mr. West, our pathologist reports that a foreign substance, probably ingested, raised your white blood count and induced other symptoms typical of peritonitus. As a former medical man, you may have a more specific explanation?

  Why not feign a brain tumor next time. We would welcome the exercise. Merry Christmas from the staff, New Ottawa Reformation Center.

  P.S. Looking forward to your continued presence during the New Year.

  Dr. West's bitter grin sagged while he turned his head from side to side as if searching for a window to the Outside. Windowless concrete. He stared past Nona at the concave wall and violently stiffened, his fist crushing the note.

  Her voice intruded: "Did he write one of his funny-type notes?"

  "Funny? My sense of humor's dead. I'm dead. Don't waste your hour in here with me. Don't waste the taxpayers' money. Get out, dammit!"

  Instantly he was sorry. Terribly lonely.

  She looked up at him. To his surprise, she moved toward him, smiling. Her hand --

  He stiffened. "Get out. While you can, go!" he shouted. "Get out. I can't stand your -- is it sympathy?"

  She edged toward the door but turned around, her face solemn. "If you want, you can apply for someone else, a different Social Therapist ."

  "No! What choice has a rat in a trap?" He looked her up and down. "Bait, is that what you are? Get out."

  "After you've been here a while," she answered softly, "you'll realize this is like your home. You'll feel differently. Please, if you want to -- you can apply for a different -- "

  "No, dammit, I want to get out of here! At least you -- get out!"

  After he had caught his breath, he realized she was still standing there. Trying to hold his voice from trembling, he said: "You don't scare very easily do you?"

  "Sometimes. But I'm not scared of you."

  "I'm sorry. But I've got to get out of here. I forget you have problems, too. Here you are a woman alone all day with us murderers and maniacs."

  "I'm not alone."

  "Do you mean that physically or spiritually? Outside, they'd lynch me," Dr. West said finally. "In here you people try to make me feel comfortable, but won't even tell me the news."

  Wryly he smiled. "There was a prophetess named Cassandra. Now I know why she wailed. A man, a prophet, would have battered his head against a marble pillar. Cassandra could foretell what was going to destroy Troy, but no one would listen. She warned them not to drag the wooden horse into Troy. No wonder she wailed. Helplessly knowing what is going to happen, but not being able to do anything is so much more painful than -- "

  "Aren't you being rather dramatic," she remarked. "That wooden horse, isn't it in a school book about Greece?" Turning away from his tormented face, she walked into the kitchenette and opened the sliding doors which concealed his sink and electric stove. She boiled water. "Instant coffee?"

  "So you're the unshakable type," he laughed bitterly. "Must help in a madhouse like this."

  "I believe in living along from day to day." She sat down on the other end of the sofa and smiled at him over her steaming cup. "Now that you've had your tantrum for this day, I'm going to tell you something which may give you a second one."

  "No, I'm through," he said, smiling faintly. "Your child psychology has overpowered me."

  "The Pharmacist asked me to ask you ," she put down her coffee cup. " -- if a hypodermic was, shall we say, overlooked and left in your cell. During the first three nights after your appendix operation the nurse gave you sleeping injections. In a government institution like this everything has to be accounted for even if it's all used up like a one-shot disposable hypo. Anyway, the nurse must have become confused in her equipment count. A used hypo is missing. Of course she had other patients to visit, but you're the newest in this tower and this has never happened before, so the Pharmacist wonders, if you still have the hypo, would you return it -- "

  "I haven't any hypo."

  "Good. I'll ask the Recreation Officer if he'll start the search in someone else's suite. The Adniinistratrix has told him to search, so he has to search."

  "That's all right." Dr. West leaned back on the sofa. "The Recreation Officer can start here. I won't feel persecuted. He's my buddy," Dr. West bluffed, and nodded at the insulated cage, the compressor, the centrifuge, the gleaming glass equipment, all of which the Recreation Officer cheerfully and ingeniously had acquired for him -- with Dr. West's own impounded funds.

  Dr. West's heart palpitated as he remembered the dissected squirrel concealed under the compressor. But he went on talking. "The Recreation Officer showed the Administratrix my hibernation study proposal. I may be repeating old metabolic and glandular research, but it's more therapeutic for me than weaving baskets. He says he got her approval by suggesting Tower #3 surely must be more enlightened than Alcatraz, San Quentin -- some prison where they once let an old lifer raise canaries. So the Recreation Officer's my buddy, and I raise squirrels. He's welcome to search. When is he likely to -- ?"

  "He'll probably start someplace else." She put down her coffee. "At least two students who've been sick and visited by the nurse are former drug addicts and might steal hypos, I suppose -- " She looked solemnly at him, and he was surprised how small she really was. Her hand on the couch was fragile compared with his. "The truth is," she laughed, "some men in this tower are -- rather scary. That's why in your suite I feel so much better -- with you."

  Dr. West recognized the pitch, the helpless bit, and he almost smiled with pleasure. He not only felt protective, he felt almost possessive. From the sofa, she looked up at him, smiling with her eyes as if she knew that he knew, and he felt his imaginary glass wall dissolving.

  "What are you smiling about?" she said.