Click, Mao III's hands moved at the console, and the computer howled: "INSUFFICIENT DATA REGARDING PRISON STAFF FOR DATA RE: PRISONER DR. JOSEPH WEST REFER TO -- " Mao III switched to the next item. "FOR DATA PRISONER PETERLUK ESKIMO BOOTHIA REFERENCE 85234." Mao III's fingers moved. "85234 PETERLUK BOOTHIA DIED NEW OTTAWA REFORMATION CENTER MINUS SEVENTEEN YEARS SELF-HANGING."
"So Peterluk was dead before I even entered the Reformation Center, and they wouldn't tell me," Dr. West muttered. "Dead, and he was perhaps the foster father of all Esks. His own lying statements must have contained evidence of their origin. Dammit, they're not human!"
Mao III laughed contemptuously. "Many in the United States agree with you on that. To relegate Esks to subhumanity justifies buying and selling." Mao III's voice softened. "The unanswered question to me is why the Canadians finally in self-defense did not massacre enough of their Esks. Because there was some confusion due to interbreeding as to who was an Esk is no explanation. Human beings have been willingly massacring each other since the beginning of our species. But so inefficiently in Canada -- "
Click, a jiggling film of men with axes and shotguns showed Esks being herded like rabbits against a fence corner, the axes rising and falling. "LYNCH MOB, BRITISH COLUMBIA," the vocoder howled. "MINUS FIVE YEARS." A close-up showed a Canadian farmer retching and staggering away.
"It should have been so easy to exterminate them when there were only a few million," Mao III mused. "Nowhere have Esks put up violent resistance. When the first rumors of the failure of Canadian rioters to accomplish anything substantial reached me, I ordered my 8th Route Army here in Peking to carry out an experimental massacre of one small commune of Esks who had been planted on the dust desert west of Peking -- as a scientific experiment. Using machine guns, the number of Esks had been reduced about 10% when it began to rain. Surprisingly, tough Chinese troops sought shelter from the rain. The commanding general also had other excuses. Machine guns overheated and jammed. After I removed him and ordered the massacre completed, the new commander, my former aide, General Chen Yung, had difficulty with trucks bringing replacement troops to the scene. Finally an air attack with napalm was successfully carried out and I believe a good portion of those Esks eventually were eliminated, although now there seem to be more Esks out there in the desert than ever. To superstitious troops the unexpected mental difficulties of the execution were disturbing -- "
"Damn right they are disturbing!" Dr. West yelled. "Here you are letting Esks increase to a billion in China, and you don't even know if you're capable of eliminating them."
"It could be done, it could be. Mass executions become simple matters when competently organized," Mao III replied. "With historically scientific logic, Maoism can solve any problems of mankind."
"Then do it, dammit. Now!"
"Tapeworm, you forget that you are in command, not I."
Dr. West closed his eyes. What did those bastards in the CIA instruct me to do?
"Nothing that our interrogation could locate," Mao III taunted. "Squirm, tapeworm, squirm with all the problems of the world, which wiser men than you have only made more complicated each generation until -- "
"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.
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 sm
iling Esk servant, then walked back to Mao III's bed.
The Eskimo Invasion Page 39
