The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  "Mommy, your new hairdo is so pretty."

  At this, Nona laughed with pleasure. "Now go to bed." And soon she slept herself.

  Wednesday morning at 10:00, Nona entered Dr. West's suite with her hair up and gleaming and her heart beating unexpectedly. She stopped.

  Stripped to the waist, Dr. West was lying on his back on top of his bed, his jaw sagging like a dead man's, his eyes closed as if he were sleeping.

  "Student? -- He isn't breathing. His heart -- ?"

  She rushed to telephone the Medical Officer. She ran back. Her frantic hands shook Dr. West's body. The push of her hand against his terribly cool chest stimulated a shallow gasping breath, then nothing.

  "Please, please." She flung herself upon him, mouth to mouth, trying to breathe for him, endlessly --

  With exhaustion, her own heart was fluttering. Her fingernails were fastened in his cold flesh.

  "Keep going," hissed the Medical Officer's voice. "First I'm going to give him a shot of adrenalin." After awhile the Medical Officer said: "Get off. I'm going to attempt external heart massage."

  A half hour later, sweating, the Medical Officer stood back. "This is the man who feigned appendicits." He stared at the thermometer. "72.6 degrees, and only one or two shallow breaths per minute, if the room temperature sank to 60 degrees, I suppose his body temperature would follow it down. The crazy fool induced this somehow. For a reason -- "

  "Do something for him!" Nona protested. "I'm going to telephone the hospital."

  "No, first telephone the Tower Administratrix. She's in command here." For the first time, the Medical Officer looked around the suite and noticed the shambles. '~Bloody butcher shop!"

  On the work counter lay the opened squirrels. Beside them stood the centrifuge and red-brown stained glass tubing. '~He was a murderous maniac," the Medical Officer's voice croaked.

  "No, he wasn't. They were hibernating. They didn't feel anything," Nona gasped. "I don't believe he cut them open, I mean, he cut them open with a purpose."

  "He bloody well did," the Medical Officer muttered, stooping to pick up a hypodermic needle from the floor. "No plunger. Used the rubber bulb from his nose drops bottle. This is the needle from that missing hypo. May have injected a sedative in himself to start the downward metabolic slide."

  The Medical Officer's fingers turned the rubber bulb inside-out. "A goo, an extract. Of course he would have been aware that massive injection of any foreign protein in a human being should cause fever. Quite odd, no fever, just the opposite."

  "Do something!" Nona's voice persisted. "For all you know, he may die any minute."

  "This involves legal as well as medical decisions." The Medical Officer appeared relieved when the Tower Administratrix arrived.

  The Medical Officer laughed nervously. "Quite diabolically, this man has trapped us between killing him or doing something he wishes." He tried to explain. "Human life is sacred, we say, so we have to save him. We have to take him from his cell to the hospital building."

  "We have no right to increase his chances of escape. It would be unwise to take him to the hospital building," the Administratrix replied. "I was so long in arriving here because I received a telephone call from the police at the border of the States. They searched the luggage of what turned out to be our Recreation Officer from this Tower with his mustache shaved off. They found $10,000 in small bills."

  "Nevertheless, I believe the medical problem the former Dr. West has prepared for us is this," the Medical Officer muttered. "If we leave him as he is, he will die. Alternately, if we attempt to bring him out of his hypothermal coma he will die."

  "My god," Nona breathed. "You already shot him with adrenalin to bring him out of it."

  "A natural mistake. I'm hoping -- it already appears that he has not reacted to it -- I hope. Perhaps he has buffered his system against such an eventuality -- I hope. As I was saying, if we try to bring him out of it, his metabolic activity will increase. His system will begin to react in a typical defensive manner to the foreign protein and his temperature will rise. This will increase the violence of his reaction to the protein. Violently, his body will attempt to defend itself against the foreign protein, raising his temperature higher and higher until he dies."

  "No doubt he planned this in order to be taken to the hospital building," the Tower Administratrix asked. "Could we simply leave him here? Assign a nurse."

  The Medical Officer smiled at this. "Much more than a nurse is needed if we really believe in saving human life regardless of cost. His life processes should be electronically monitored. His veins should be connected to the kidney machine, and a pacemaker to his heart, or he will die. I suspect his body now is in a delicate equilibrium. His metabolism is too sluggish to react to the foreign protein. No reaction, no disease. What is needed is speedy consultation with experts in human hibernation research, who may know how, who have the equipment to bring him out of this condition, alive. In the States, hibernation research is being conducted in connection with the space program, I believe at the University of California."

  "Strange coincidence," the Tower Administratrix said. "Not a coincidence. According to his files this man formerly was director of a medical research program at the University of California. Population Control. Do you think, interlocking medical staffs with their hibernation space transit program -- ? If he hopes we will fly his body to California, he is unreasonable. An attorney in California may be waiting to file habeas corpus, legal trickery, bail -- "

  "I wasn't suggesting that," the Medical Officer said. "I simply was suggesting we make a reasonably humane effort to keep this man alive. Surely he can be adequately guarded in our own hospital building. I want to telephone the University of California. Perhaps a complete change of blood -- ?"

  The Tower Administratrix shook her head. "Look for a note," she said sharply to Nona. "Suicide. A note."

  On the coffee table lay a manila folder. Nona opened it. Empty. Swiftly she looked around the suite.

  Something white showed under the huge insulated cage and Nona knelt down, reaching under. A single newspaper clipping had fallen behind the cage, and her cold hand drew it out. "FURTHER ESKIMO INCREASE NOTED."

  "You didn't smuggle this in, did you?" the Administratrix asked Nona. "The Recreation Officer!" The Administratrix answered her own question and turned back to the Medical Officer. "If people outside could bribe the Recreation Officer so easily, how much easier to bribe the underpaid orderlies in the hospital. You yourself determined that this student's so-called appendicitis attack was feigned in order to get him out of my Tower and into the hospital."

  The Medical Officer shrugged. "He'll die here."

  Nona's hand clamped on the Administratrix's arm. "You're not going to let him die!"

  "Is that a question? I'm sure it's not intended as an order," the Administratrix replied. "Nona, this is my responsibility. I know you. I know you're thinking somehow you failed him. You didn't. This man's urge to escape was too strong. He has taken too big a gamble. He can't escape."

  "You can't let him die," Nona repeated.

  "The best guarded building outside of the Tower," the Administratrix murmured, "is the Cold Room. There, no decision would be irrevocable. It starts a new problem, but -- "

  "That would be the place for him, the safest place." The Medical Officer stared down at Dr. West. "He ignored my warning when I sent him back his appendix in a bottle. Such powerful motivation is driving him. Alive, conscious, he would try again to escape. I think we are agreed this student has shown himself not amenable to therapeutic reformation. The Cold Room -- "

  "But he's not an incorrigible psychopath," Nona protested. "He hasn't attacked the staff." She turned from the Administratrix to confront the Medical Officer. "You both want to evade -- "

  "I'm wholly in agreement with the Administratrix," the Medical Officer continued. "The man has shown himself to be dangerous, suicidal. No regard for his own life. How much regard would you expect him to show fo
r yours?"

  "I believe he is essentially a good man, better than you," Nona retorted, but they weren't listening.

  "To preserve his life in the Cold Room," the Administratrix addressed the Medical Officer, "I assume he should be cryofiled as quickly as possible. The legal steps can be justified post-factum."

  "Yes, before irreversible physical deterioration takes place," the Medical Officer apologized in Nona's direction. "In five or ten years when we learn how to thaw them out -- "

  "You can't do this without a court hearing," Nona cried. "The two of you standing there can't convict, sentence and execute him."

  "Execute is an unfair word." Instead of growing angry, the Administratrix put her arm around Nona. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry you're emotionally involved with this man, but then you're emotionally involved with so many of them. That's why you are so good."

  "Please!" Nona stepped back.

  "Nona, there's nothing you can do," the Medical Officer said. "Nona, you still have five. Do your best for them."

  "You damn weak bootlicker," Nona cried at him. "Would you tell that to a mother whose baby has died? Would you say, so what? You still have five?"

  "If you need to shout, Nona, do so at me," the Administratrix said, lowering her head. "Forget that I am your superior. If you want to accuse me, do so. It is I who must bear the responsibility."

  "Please," Nona gasped.

  "You did your best for him. You only had him -- was it two weeks?" The Administratrix's hand closed around Nona's wrist. "Now go home, take the rest of the day off, tomorrow off, all week off. You are our best. All I can hire is an untrained substitute to take care of your students until you return. Don't feel guilty about your absence."

  Without looking at Dr. West's body, Nona walked out of the suite. She went to her 11:00 to 12:00 man as if nothing had happened. The day, the night --

  That night on TV a politician stated that the anticipated increase of Eskimos would be a blessing. They could be trained as government nurses and guards. Eskimos needed less pay from the taxpayers. Increase would be good for Canada, which still had plenty of room. Nona could not sleep remembering Dr. West.

  In the morning when she entered the Tower, Nona went to the office of the Administratrix.

  "Nona, you're looking unwell." The Administratrix stood up behind her desk.

  "I couldn't sleep, thinking he may have tricked us," Nona said slowly. "How do you know the body in the bottle-drawer in the Cold Room is his? Perhaps his real plan was a switch of bodies."

  "Well, surely -- " the Administratrix blurted.

  "The Cold Room is guarded," Nona pressed on: "the drawers are locked, but last night who worked in the cryogenic preparation room; who prepared the body?"

  "I don't know. One of the orderlies!" The Administratrix grabbed the phone.

  "I want to go with you to identify the body," Nona said.

  The Cold Room consisted of tiers of numbered drawers containing huge metal thermos bottles of liquid nitrogen maintained at minus 196 degrees centigrade.

  As the Guard unlocked the drawer, Nona memorized the number. When she looked down through the periscope at Dr. West's rock-hard white face, Nona shivered. "Yes, that is the man."

  Now she could tell exactly where he was.

  That night in the monorail car, to her alarm the Man with the short haircut was not there. The night before, still frantic from the terrible scene beside Dr. West's body, she deliberately had sat down beside the short-haircut Man. Surprised, he had seemed perceptibly disturbed, trapped, hiding behind his newspaper while she told him she didn't want money, she wanted Dr. West to be removed from the Cold Room.

  "There are thousands of drawers in there," he had murmured. "Find out the drawer number." And he had left the monorail car at the next stop.

  Tonight he was not in the monorail car, nor waiting at her stop. As she walked past the magazine rack and the soda fountain, a dark young man tried to pick her up. She kept walking. "What is the number?" he was murmuring.

  She paused in the crowd by the bus stand. "I won't tell you the number of his cryodrawer until you show proof," she said slowly, "that there is someone qualified to bring him out of the Cold Room and then out of his -- hibernation."

  The dark young man seemed startled. "I'll find out," he said, and walked away.

  Nona watched him thread his way through the crowd into the icy night. Her face felt old with determination. Dr. West or whoever he was -- the man who built the tent with chair and blanket -- he was hers, still in her care.

  Her jaw hardened. Her teeth felt as if they were about to crack. It was even possible that these two men, short-haircut and dark young man, were maneuvering to kill Dr. West. They might be some of those emotional Canadians who waved SAVE OUR ESKIMOS signs and wanted to lynch Dr. West. Or might be inadequate rescuers. She knew she must deal with them with great caution.

  As Nona stepped out into the razor-sharp Canadian night, the stars were glittering like ice. She tipped her head high. Invisible up there, she knew U.S. astronauts were supposed to be coasting on the long voyage to Mars, sleeping all the way in their hibernation capsules.

  At that moment Nona did not differentiate between their chemical hibernation in which their bodies rested at 45 degrees, safely above freezing, and Dr. West's totally different protoplasmic condition, frozen rock-hard in liquid nitrogen, from which no man had been thawed without horribly self-destroying rebirth defects.

  "It truly is possible to rescue a man from hibernation," Nona murmured in vaguely misplaced hope.

  In the cold she hugged her arms across her body feeling hope as when she had carried each of her unborn children.

  Breathing hard, Nona stared in the direction of the New Ottawa Reformation Center.

  "You'll get out," she whispered. "I'll get you out."

  Dr. West became aware that he was alive. Blindly engulfed in the prickling of his spreading nervous system, he was aware of intensifying light. His eyes must be open. Out there, a granulated blur moved, but Dr. West was unable to move.

  Totally paralyzed, he lay trapped within his body prison, increasingly frantic as his consciousness increased, like a white mouse writhing faster and faster within the prickly hot oven-cage which was his unconnected body. From his eyeholes, his granulated vision signaled to his brain a gridlike pattern. His memory darted. His consciousness steadied as the wire grid reminded him of a shortwave heating grid he had noticed in restaurants to cook huge roasts of beef evenly and almost instantaneously from within. He was burning.

  Failing to raise his head, he realized his chest was encased in a thoracic respirator. Into his neck a tube was gurgling. Two tubes extended to a gleaming machine at the edge of his vision and he realized it must be a new design of recirculating arterial machine he hadn't seen before. Although he hadn't known it before, evidently, they already knew how to drain the DMSO-Ringer's solution from the thawing body and replace it with blood so swiftly his revived brain cells apparently had not been damaged by temporary oxygen starvation. Until now, he had not known it already was medically possible to revive cryocadavers to complete consciousness.

  He could move his jaw.

  A pleased face peered down at him. "Can you hear me? Move your jaw again if you can hear me."

  "Yes, I can hear you," Dr. West's joyous laugh gurgled. "So good to be alive."

  The face raised its eyebrows in surprise.

  "So quick," Dr. West laughed. "You freed me from my thermos bottle and thawed me so quickly."