Esks: The Complete Stories by Hayden Howard

Author:Hayden Howard [Howard, Hayden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

3.

WHO

IS

MORE

HUMAN?

THE MOANING SOUND OF THE AIRPLANE ENCLOSING HIM bumped down. He was carried out feet first.

Under a modern surgical-green ceiling he lay in delirium as a blinding light moved above him and a phantom bear’s teeth gnawed his leg. “Scalpel. Suture,” a disembodied voice snapped, and years later another voice remarked: “They say a sled dog did this to his leg?”

Writhing feverishly, Dr. West heard the savage howl of a diesel train. With a revolving clarity he decided he must be a thousand miles south of Boothia in the city of Churchill on Hudson Bay at the northern end of the railroad. He opened his eyes.

Now he seemed to be lying in an Intensive Care room. There was an oddly familiar wheezing sound.

“Welcome to Ottawa, sir.” On the other bed lounged the blue-and-white uniform of a Cultural Sanctuary Guard.

“Ottawa?” Dr. West blurted in surprise. “Ottawa?”

“Ottawa?” the leathery face of the Cultural Sanctuary Guard mimicked. “Because you’re from the States, sir, you’ve not bothered to learn we Canadians have a capital too?” The Guard’s sarcastic smile widened in triumph. “Welcome to the New Ottawa Reformation Center.”

“My trial! When was my trial?”

“I expect you’re looking forward to the Pasteur injections for rabies, sir? They stick the needle in your stomach and——.”

“I’m in prison without a trial!”

“No, sir. This is the finest hospital in Canada. For serious illness, sir, the Cultural Sanctuary always uses this hospital. The prison is outside. Around us.”

Dr. West tried to sit up, entangled in drainage tubes, and in wires presumably transmitting his heartbeat and blood pressure to the monitor beside his bed.

The nurse materialized through the revolving one-way glass wall. “You’re disturbing the patient.”

“Never did a thing,” the Cultural Sanctuary Guard retorted weakly, his leathery old face seeming out of place in this hospital room 2000 miles south of the Boothia Peninsula, and he slumped back on his own bed, wheezing.

“You’ve been smoking again,” she sniffed. “I can smell it. The doctor should take away your uniform. In a hospital gown, you should be guarding this gentleman. From your bed, you should be——.”

“Pranging you!”

“You old dreamer. Is this how you earned your pay in your Cultural Sanctuary? Lying around boasting and smoking. Going outside to take away transistor radios from poor little Eskimos. Or stealing their fishhooks. Or shooting down newspaper gentlemen.” She winked at Dr. West inaccurately.

“I know which party you belong to—my lass,” the Cultural Sanctuary Guard’s voice wheezed. “Asinine women like you think they understand more than important scientists and statesmen. Your asinine party would solve Canada’s problems with her unprepared minorities by making the Eskimos disappear. We’ll save a few Eskimos from your melting pot.”

“Please stop disturbing the patient.” She pressed her cool hand on Dr. West’s forehead between his taped-on encephalogram sensors and winked at him.

One day when the Guard was asleep, she asked Dr. West if Marthalik was his wife.

“Marthalik?” Dr. West realized he must have done a lot of talking those first days while he was delirious. “Yes, my wife.”

He lay

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