The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  In the United Nations General Assembly, the Oriental bloc seized upon my guilt and twisted it into the guilt of Canada and the United States. The Chinese and other nations sent massive aid. Evacuation of surplus Eskimos to any country willing to accept them and pay the transportation costs began. Huge Chinese jet transports swooped down. The Esks spread --

  This is my crucial guilt, that my own actions aided the spread of Esks. My trial attracted attention to them, so the Chinese "rescued" them. I should have killed myself in prison. I should not have lived to see a billion Esks in China alone.

  The helicopter veered, and far below was exposed the gray overcast that shrouds any modern city. The copter pilot chattered through his radio to the ground.

  Baring his teeth, Dr. West lunged at the door of the helicopter. As his skull rammed the door outward, his eyes glimpsed nothingness.

  Surprisingly strong hands dragged his head and shoulders back into the helicopter.

  "Liu, this one would have fallen to his ancestors -- but he paused."

  The blades of the helicopter whirled through the thickening smog. The continuous squealing agony of its jet engine lowered. With a bounce that slammed Dr. West's face against the floor, the copter landed, and the Maoist policeman kicked the door open.

  "You're my responsibility no more," the young policeman laughed with relief, and Dr. West was dragged out of the copter by noisy black-uniformed young Chinese. "The Interrogator must think this Big-Nose is a big fish," a girl's voice excitedly laughed. Another voice asked: "Has proper caution been taken to telephone Peking, Capital of the World, Praise be to Mao III?" A second girl's voice laughed: "Liu, you handsome pilot, where are you studying tonight?"

  An inhaling gasp quieted the black-uniformed crowd on the heliroof of the massive concrete police headquarters.

  "Has no protection been taken against infection?" an authoritative voice demanded. "You are all quarantined! Orderly, place the assassin on the cart. No, don't wheel him this way. Take him down through the freight elevator."

  Dr. West was to recognize this cold voice again after he had been stripped, sprayed, fumigated, and pricked for a blood sample.

  He lay on a cold operating table.

  "Cover him with a sheet." It was the voice of the Interrogator.

  The ceiling was enameled white.

  "Make him comfortable with a 2 cc injection."

  Dr. West began to relax. He felt warmer. The effect was similar to a narcotic the Harvard Circle had administered.

  "You will be interested to know," the disembodied voice said smoothly in English, "a large proportion of the working people in the United States, and the intellectuals such as yourself, as you no doubt know, are in sympathy with the peace-loving aims of the Chinese Federation of Nations. When I say interested, I mean you will be interested to know that we already had been notified of your war-mongering flight by many highly placed sources in the United States. The exact flight plan of your intruding aircraft was known to us, and proper authorities had been notified, and of course your obsolete aircraft was tracked by our radar and our excellent interceptors, which could have shot it down at any time had such an order been given."

  Dr. West listened to the intense voice, but had difficulty following its meanings.

  "You will be interested to know that in a few hours our excellent medical technicians will have positively identified the aerosol spray which descended from your aircraft, and no doubt they already have several cures for it. You need not fear symptoms from your own exposure to the spray. We will inoculate you against its effects. To confirm our already excellent diagnosis, please tell us what virus is involved."

  Dr. West awakened slightly. He had assumed, guessed, that a bacterial agent of the staph-strep group had been used. This bacterium should be easily recognizable by culturing and microscopic inspection. Why was the Interrogator talking about a virus? Pathologists and technicians tend to blame a virus when NOTHING can be found.

  "What virus were you forced to spray against your will upon helpless women and children? Each word you speak will save the life of a child -- "

  Dr. West knew that the only effective resistance when undergoing interrogation is to say nothing. As in a psychological test, anything you say, lie or truth, will be filed and cross-filed, so that the more you lie, the more clearly the watery rings of truth will rise through the pooi of lies.

  Dr. West tried to say nothing.

  But his mouth opened. As his mouth began to speak, Dr. West realized that this would not be a two-way dialogue between himself and the Interrogator. Three points of view were present. The third was speaking from his mouth now. The Harvard Circle had entered the interrogation room -- in spirit, a damn treacherous spirit!

  "I am Dr. Joseph West," his mouth announced. "I am the man who attempted to exterminate the Eskhnos." What was the Harvard Circle trying to do to him?

  "We are aware of who you are." Then the Interrogator whispered something aside to someone else. "Answer our questions please," the Interrogator continued. "Do not volunteer extraneous information. We know everything already. Answer our questions quickly," the Interrogator's voice rose. "What is the viral agent?"

  "I am Dr. West," his mouth repeated, "Dr. Joseph West. This can be easily checked. No doubt there are photographs of me in your news archives. Dr. Joseph West, I was convicted of Eskimo genocide. I am acknowledged to be the greatest expert on the Esks, Eskimos, Dream Persons as you term them."

  "Answer the question! What is the virus?" The Interrogator sounded nervous. "What's the virus?"

  Dr. West stared at the ceiling grill. Something had winked, reflected light, a glass lens behind the grill. No doubt they were filming and recording --

  He tried to move his arm, but it was strapped, and something was pressing into his wrist. No doubt his pulse and perspiration reactions were being taped --

  Those sons of bitches! The Harvard Circle really might have notified Chinese Communist agents in the United States that his aircraft was coming over!

  "Your Mark III dagger is a forgery! Your pulse becomes abnormally fast," the Interrogator's voice said. "You feel guilt and fear -- but be assured we will do nothing to harm you. We bow down before the immortal thoughts of the Spirit of our Grandfather Mao: All men should be treated both with justice and mercy. Therefore feel free -- to tell us the virus! -- Then begin by telling why you murdered your companion."

  What speeded Dr. West's pulse rate was grief growing to rage. Those CIA sons of bitches callously had prepared him to murder the Major. One minor maneuver. The spraying, their ejection in the capsule, the dagger, the signal sender, the stabbing, he thought all were intended to increase his chances of being taken alive by the Maoist police. All were intended to give him an aura of importance.

  "I am Dr. Joseph West," his mouth repeated with sickening fatuousness.

  "Damm it!" Dr. West shouted. "How the hell do I know what was in that spray. They let me think it was a bacterial agent to sterilize the Esks, to demonstrate to you that selective sterilization of the Esks is possible. And it may be possible!"

  "Good, we are glad to hear that you will cooperate. In typical fashion, your Central Intelligence Agency has tricked you. What virus do you think the spray contained?"

  "Why do you keep saying virus?" Dr. West retorted. "In English translation, can't you differentiate between virus and bacteria? Tell me in Mandarin Chinese."

  "Ah?" And in Mandarin the Interrogator painstakingly tried to describe a virus.

  "Still a virus?" Dr. West said impatiently. "If you want a virus, I'll give you three guesses. One, a virus with a long incubation period. In about twenty-one days the Esks will undergo interesting changes. Personality reversal. Cute. Changed into what they really are. They'll tear you apart." Dr. West gasped for breath, unsure whether he or the Harvard Circle was lying now. Sometimes he had a vicious sense of humor.

  "Number two," he laughed. "The spray could consist of distilled water. No wonder your medical person
nel are baffled. But don't let it baffle you. It means the spray run was a decoy. The CIA wanted to use an Air Force plane to attract your attention to something or distract your attention from something. But the State Department in Washington did not want the CIA Warhawks to use a real bacterial spray that would force you toward retaliation. So, distilled water? Does that make Peking feel safer?"

  "Number three," Dr. West laughed in confusion. "This is the possibility to worry you tonight. You'll never sweat it out of me because I don't know what it is -- except to say that those sons of bitches in the Harvard Circle get up very very early in the morning, and when they go to this much trouble to deliver a man to China, they must have one hell of a reason."

  The Interrogator made a sad sighing sound. "Please, but you must tell us the truth, Dr. West. You are a brilliant man, a scientist who searches for Truth. Many years ago when you made your decision to eliminate the Dream Persons, you acted freely because you believed it was an act of Truth. In China you would never have been considered a criminal because you believed in Truth, even mistaken Truth, because mistakes can be so freely confessed. You could -- you still can live here freely to work and study. In the Chinese Federation of Nations, we give honor and assistance to all searchers after Truth. As our Grandfather Mao once said: 'May a thousand flowers bloom, a thousand schools of thought contend.' Only in China are you free to speak the Truth. What virus did your Central Intelligence Agency force you to spray upon the peace-loving people of the world?"

  This soothing flow of words continued until Dr. West began to drowse. He was physically exhausted. The third party to the triogue, the Harvard Circle, refused to feed new answers into his mouth.

  It was as if the start of the interrogation had cued from his skull his oral self-identification as Dr. Joseph West, famous genocide expert on Esks. Now the Harvard Circle wanted to say no more at this time. Or he had forgotten what he was supposed --

  "You can sleep as soon as you tell the future symptoms of the virus, Dr. West. When do they begin?" The Interrogator resorted to flashing lights and buzzers and, after an indeterminate period of time, to small electric shocks.

  Once or twice Dr. West tried to argue, vaguely aware that his voice was incoherent. Suddenly he screamed, his breath squawled, God what were they doing to him?

  "Message for Mao III," he heard his voice squawk. Torture had cued the next communication from the Harvard Circle.

  "I must be taken to Mao III," his hoarse voice repeated over and over. No matter what they did to him, try as he could, he was unable to tell the Interrogator what the message was. "Stop them, stop them. I don't know."

  "Of course we cannot actually take him to our beloved Chairman," the Interrogator's voice agreed with someone equally invisible. "Apologies that so much time has been spent; a little more time will be needed; electrocranial accupuncture is required if we are to free the core of truth in this man -- It seems that rigid blockades have been placed in his memory, perhaps hypnotically."

  Oblivion.

  There were black silk slippers on his feet at the other end of him. He lay in a different room. He was wearing a coarse gray cloth uniform. His head ached. When he raised his fingers to his head, he found his hair had been shaved off and there were a number of bumps, little knobs, on his scalp. He could find no evidence of torture on his body. His legs ached and appeared swollen, but this probably was due to -- he knew but couldn't remember what had caused his swollen legs. Perhaps the unaccustomed exercise of struggling up and down mountain rice terraces?

  An intense-faced Chinese hurried into the white room. The man inhaled, standing very straight in his gleaming black dacron robe, which was the traditionally Chinese costume Maoist officials had reassumed in recent years. Dr. West recalled that the color black symbolized virtue, and the embroidered dragons: good luck and power.

  Evidently, coarse blue cotton uniforms were only for the troops.

  "Time is flowing past." The man's familiar voice suggested with a typical interrogator's ploy: "Everything is known."

  In remembrance of the pain with the Interrogator's voice, Dr. West's body winced, and it was with a drying mouth that he tried to answer back like a punished adolescent. "If you know everything -- you are too prescient to be the -- Interrogator. You should be God -- or Mao III."

  "That is a sacrilegious statement to your God and to Mao III, who sits in judgment here at the center of the world."

  "Then I have been flown to Peking?"

  "You have been disinfected both externally and internally," the Interrogator replied. "You have the honor -- "

  But a man in a thick leaden apron with goggles on his forehead resembling a second set of eyes interrupted. "Ah -- we need him for an hour now."

  Dr. West recognized the man's profession as X-ray technician. Very funny. Did they intend to X-ray his internal organs for bombs?

  "Later! It is too late. The time has been set." In the Interrogator's voice there was irritation and strain, and he turned back to Dr. West and managed a conspiratorial smile.

  "You are the first foreigner in three years to be so honored. This you will remember and cherish. You can drink your tea later." The Interrogator stiffened, straight as a bamboo.

  "Ta-tung!" the Interrogator shouted.

  The eastern sky reddens, The sun rises And in China the line of Maos has come! They strive for the welfare of the people. They are the great saviors of the people!

  Two men dressed in black silk who appeared to be minor officials trundled in on a low vehicle with four padded seats. Dr. West thought it resembled an electric cart for a golf foursome. The golf cart was followed by half a dozen bored soldiers. They stood scratching inside their padded blue uniforms while the two men in black bowed unenthusiastically toward the Interrogator. "Ready? We only have the office for ten minutes."

  "He can understand everything you say," the Interrogator snapped.

  One official glanced at his wristwatch, then wearily rolled his gaze to the ceiling. "You should have notified me of that fact in writing."

  It was plain that the Interrogator had much less influence here in Peking.

  As the electric cart trundled along endless concrete corridors, the soldiers lagged further and further behind, and Dr. West realized the building must cover acres of ground, a veritable Pentagon.

  Even seated in the cart, he was in pain from his swollen legs. The electric cart whirred on and on. His head felt as if a fist were tightening inside. Apparently the Interrogator's electric needles had failed to discharge any messages intended for Mao III. The Harvard Circle must have planned one sight, one reaction which would cue a synapse in the recesses of his brain, releasing the message to his conscious mind. It seemed obvious whom he was being taken to see, face to face.

  His pulse was racing, as if his body expected to be cued to violent action. If there was a message in his skull, Dr. West thought it must be a dandy, to justify the maneuvers of the Harvard Circle.

  Again, he remembered the blue eyes of the Major widening. Good God , the Major's voice cried. What was intended for me? And Dr. West thought: What is intended for me?

  Those callous sons of bitches! Dr. West began to shiver uncontrollably. He wanted to jump off the cart. The smiling faces closed in on him: Dr. George Bruning, Deputy Director of the CIA; Dr. Sammy Wynoski, chemopsychiatrist; Dr. Fred Gatson, bacteriologist; Dr. Einar Johansen, neurosurgeon. But there had been another member of the Harvard Circle, a disembodied voice.

  Tom Randolph, a narrow-eyed man who chain-smoked cigarettes as if he had a death wish, had become a full professor of parapsychology at Duke University at age twenty-six. In the basement of CIA headquarters, Dr. West had recognized Tom's off-kilter face. While Joe West had been a graduate medical student at Harvard, Tom Randolph had been the undergrad who led the protest march which culminated in the dynamiting of the Quad.