The Eskimo Invasion (17 page)

"You want me to agree there are too many of them," LaRue retorted.
"My uncle, at least he will help me fight your birth control. My uncle
he is old and crazy, but he still controls a few voters."

 

 

LaRue's face gleamed as if he were seeing the rising summer sun. "Mon dieu!
All these people will have votes."

 

 

As if stunned, Dr. West stared at Henry LaRue's gleaming face. Dr. West
stared at the blinding snow. For the Esks and for Canada if ignorant
politicians began using these people, Dr. West foresaw tragedy growing.
He limped away from LaRue toward the aircraft. He was afraid Henry LaRue
at age forty finally had become a man. This LaRue finally was seizing a
purpose for life. Henry LaRue was shouting after him: "I'll aid these
people. I, too, am a leader! I'll show that old bigot. I'll show my uncle
what I have become."

 

 

My god
, Dr. West thought,
if he can keep it up, he might --
On the snow beneath the wing of the aircraft, Dr. West stared at the
priest-pilot's body, face down on frozen blood. Peterluk's longest
shot -- Dr. West supposed the priest's rifle still must be hanging on
its straps inside the aircraft.
This priest is ended on this Earth
,
Dr. West thought dully.
And Henry LaRue has just begun -- to help these
Esks survive and spread from their Sanctuary. So many hungry mouths. Such
gentle people. Probably better than the rest of us.

 

 

The crying sound of a baby pierced Dr. West's conscience. More Esks were
coming from the new camp over the hill. Closer, muffled in tattered parkas
against the wind, they appeared indistinguishable. But Dr. West's heart
leaped. Running toward him --

 

 

"Marthalik!" He seized her, clung to her, and because he was so much
taller he looked down over her shoulder into the bulging back of her
parka, into the wide eyes of the baby.

 

 

"My son is well?" Dr. West laughed, squeezing her even closer as if she
could become part of him.

 

 

Marthalik gasped, breathlessly laughing with tears shimmering down her
cheeks. "He is growing strong, like you. This person will run back to
the camp and bring him to his father."

 

 

Dr. West blinked, staring at the round face of this baby in her parka,
who had begun to smile at him. "Who is -- this?"

 

 

"Your daughter," she laughed proudly, "this is your newest daughter."

 

 

"Two children!" he laughed more with excitement than surprise.

 

 

"My husband, this person is even stronger than that."

 

 

"Marthalik, we must hurry. We will travel to my country. Go back.
Bring my son."

 

 

"Only your son?"

 

 

"Hurry." Dr. West turned back to LaRue, who was scowling from the aircraft
to the dead pilot and muttering.

 

 

"For an inexperienced but courageous pilot as myself," LaRue was saying,
"two motors are too many to control."

 

 

"True." Dr. West limped back toward the igloo, seeng Eevvaalik vanish into
the entry tunnel from which she must have been watching. "Wait, Eevvaalik!"

 

 

He pursued her into the dimly arched igloo. "Eevvaalik, I am a doctor.
I will take you to -- to a hospital place, you remember? You are sick
from coughing. You will be made well. Please come to the airplane with
Peterluk."

 

 

"No!" She twisted free from his gentle grasp.

 

 

"Eevvaalik, you will travel with your husband; Peterluk is going in
the plane."

 

 

"No," she hissed, avoiding his grasp. "This person wants to stay here
until all the whitemen die! This person will rise to Grandfather Bear."

 

 

"But you don't believe those young people's legends? You said they are
stupid. Not Christians."

 

 

"This person," Eevvaalik gasped, "is deciding now what to believe!"
Struggling against him, she began to scream and cough, and Dr. West
gave up trying to carry away Eevvaalik into civilization --
for the moment.

 

 

He limped back down the slope to the aircraft, thinking ahead toward
LaRue, who would interfere with his plans.

 

 

"If we cannot fly this aircraft," Dr. West told LaRue, "I can operate
the radio."

 

 

"My idea exactly," LaRue laughed with relief. "We will radio the Order of
Pope John to fly here an experienced pilot to res- -- to aid us."

 

 

"Yes, that is a good idea." Dr. West instantly agreed, visualizing himself
seated at the radio, at the controls of the CL-284, and rising into the air
with Marthalik and his son and daughter, and with Peterluk bound and locked
in the baggage compartment, and LaRue in the cockpit, but violently
interfering when he discovered they were not returning to Churchill;
he would have to do something about Henry LaRue now.

 

 

" -- champion of these oppressed people." LaRue inter- rupted his thoughts,
"I, too shall be nominated to stand for Parliament. My uncle finally
will be shown I am a man of my own. The little people are my concern,
the hungry ones. I will not be simply a politician. From the beginning
I will be a statesman."

 

 

With deaf ears and darting mind, Dr. West stared at the aircraft and
beyond, visualizing Peterluk somehow flown out of Canada to Berkeley,
Peterluk strapped on a leather couch, being injected with sodium pentothal.
Now tell me the truth about the Burned Place. You are the one who knows
how the Esks began.

 

 

"Already today," LaRue laughed excitedly, "I have captured a murderer."

 

 

"True. Like a hero, if you stayed here in this icy wilderness to look after
these people," Dr. West suggested, "at least until tomorrow. I could return
to civilization first to tell the newspapers how you stayed behind to help
them. In spite of my pleas, heroically you stayed to help these oppressed
people in the blizzard," Dr. West expanded. "You stayed to study the
problems of these starving Eskimos so that all people throughout Canada
will learn -- that you are a hero, because that is what I will tell them."

 

 

"You mean you would try to pilot out this plane and leave me here in
the cold?"

 

 

"I would tell the news services how you seized that murderous Peterluk,
bravely, you personally captured him in order to save the lives of us
all. Tomorrow a whole planeload of newsmen would fly here to congratulate
you on the spot. With cameras for TV they would listen while you expose
this whole Sanctuary mess. On TV you would address the voters."

 

 

At this, Henry LaRue smiled shyly. "I think you are exaggerating my
contribution -- a little bit. I will alert the world to the plight of
these people. I will speak on the radio now. Now they can send another
aircraft with an experienced pilot -- to fly us out today."

 

 

"True." Dr. West grunted, trying to conceal his raging frustration as
he dragged the bound Peterluk to the aircraft. "Help me lift him in
so I can lock him in the baggage compartment. As their future leader,
give encouragement to all these Esks who are your friends. Two men have
died this day -- "

 

 

Beside Peterluk in the baggage compartment, Dr. West laid the body of
the priest-pilot, and looked down at the priest's softly dead face,
and then at Peterluk's wrinkled, frightened face, the narrow eyes,
the mouth a chapped scar.

 

 

"Eh! You think to frighten this person with the dead?" Peterluk's big teeth
gleamed. "Stronger whitemen than you have not been able --"

 

 

Dr. West slammed the aluminum door against Peterluk's voice because he heard
Marthalik's voice calling.

 

 

She handed up his son to him. Then she handed up the baby from her parka.
He saw Marthalik's face was frightened.

 

 

"A woman should not disobey her husband," Marthalik blurted, "but this person
could not leave behind our other daughter."

 

 

She handed up a third baby, who eyed Dr. West suspiciously. In his hands,
this baby felt heavier, larger than the baby from Marthalik's parka. But
it was smaller than his son and intermediate in size, Dr. West pondered,
and age. Stunned, Dr. West stared down at the three babies crawling
on the dented floor of the aircraft. The boy, he knew, was his -- that
first night. Precociously his ten-week-old son struggled erect. Dr. West
thought the second baby could have been conceived that last night before
he left Marthalik. Across the ice with Edwardluk and into the hospital,
he had been gone over two and a half months since the second baby was
conceived. This third little baby, the smiling baby from Marthalik's
parka, must have been conceived at least a month after he was gone. He
thought he could not be the father of this gleefully smiling baby
girl. Wearily, Dr. West helped Marthalik into the aircraft.

 

 

"Why are you putting in all these Eskimos," LaRue shouted up from the snow.
"You cannot fly."

 

 

"To protect them from the wind, Dr. West retorted, moving to block the entry.
"I'll radio ahead that you're the hero, the Savior of these Esks. Keep back!
Read the newspaper account of how I told what a hero you are before you
say too much. Be sure our stories agree. Look out!" He kicked at LaRue's
fingers. "I'm going to fire off the jets." With all his strength,
Dr. West closed the door of the aircraft against the yelling LaRue.

 

 

Out of breath, blinking at the control panel, Dr. West tried to review
from memory the intricate movements of the pilot's hands on the controls.
LaRue's fists drummed on the outside of the Canadair CL-284.

 

 

Experimentally, Dr. West operated the electric motor, tilting the wings
and engines to a horizontal position, and then returned them to the
vertical takeoff position. He stared at the autocontrols, hoping the
little electric-powered gyroscope inside the two-axis autopilot was
spinning with stability in relation to the planet Earth. "I can't fly
this beast by the seat of my pants."

 

 

As a warning for LaRue to step back, Dr. West fired off the propjet in the
opposite wing. It squealed, idling. "Marthalik," he shouted. "Sit down.
No, go back. With that rope, tie the babies on that seat. Wrap them, tighter.
Now sit here. With this strap I'll -- " He fired off the propjet on
LaRue's side, and let them both whine, while at the instrument panel he
wondered about the rpm's of the tail rotor.

 

 

Abruptly he reached for the paired throttles, feeding the propjets.

 

 

"Marthalik," he shouted, suddenly smiling with fear. "I love you.
You know what that means?"

 

 

With a screaming roar the CL-284 rose more reassuringly than his father's
copter.

 

 

Hands safely off the controls, Dr. West let the autopilot fly them up
slowly, almost straight up to 5000 feet. He wanted plenty of altitude
when he tried tilting the wings and propjets toward the horizontal and
attempted forward flight at 300 mph.

 

 

In triumphant forward flight in the direction of Churchill, Dr. West
waited until he was sure he was south of the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary
boundary before using the radio. Abruptly he identified his aircraft.
Dramatically he described Henry LaRue volunteering to remain behind to
help the Eskimos in the blizzard. "Single-handed he overpowered the --
the renegade Eskimo who shot the pilot."

 

 

"I say, then who is flying your aircraft?"

 

 

"Over and out." Dr. West pushed the aircraft into a shallow dive, which
should worry radar observers when he didn't pull out. As the little ice
ponds on the tundra loomed huge, Dr. West leveled off, skimming low
toward the west. Air rescue should search for his wreckage on a line
between his last radar blip and Churchill, he thought, deceptively flying
away southwest in the general direction of Lake Macdougall, but not too
near. Low over endless white tundra and nameless frozen lakes he flew for
nearly five hours toward the westward dying sun.

 

 

Even if he'd had enough fuel, he would have been afraid to turn south
all the way into the United States. "U.S. Border Patrol has more radar
along the friendly border, more VTOL interceptors to keep airborne people
out or in -- a super Cultural Sanctuary."

 

 

Flying west across northern Canada, he hoped to see the immensity of
Great Slave Lake. He hoped he had fuel to reach Yellowknife, where he'd
had friendly contacts. He supposed his bush pilot, the English expatriate,
was not only missing but dead.

 

 

That butcher bird, that Cultural Sanctuary Guard plane undoubtedly shot
or forced him down on the summer sea ice, bad ice, same as murdered him.

 

 

In the baggage compartment beside Peterluk was the body of the priest-pilot.
But I can't risk contacting the police. Dr. West felt trapped by his own
actions.

 

 

Probably he would be arrested at Yellowknife Airport. He had, in effect,
stolen this CL-284 aircraft which belonged to the Order of Pope John.
What LaRue tells his rescuers and the police will decide my fate.

 

 

Technically, Dr. West knew he also was guilty of kidnapping an Eskimo
woman and her three children from the Cultural Sanctuary.
What will
LaRue say about that? He'll hesitate to admit I tricked him, forced
him to remain with the Esks, if his rescuers already are telling him
what a hero he is. Over the radio, my last words were how heroically he
overpowered Peterluk.