The Eskimo Invasion (18 page)

So I'm also aiding the escape of a murderer. If I manage to smuggle
Peterluk, as well as Marthalik and her children, across the border into
the U.S., the legal charges against me should multiply. Unless LaRue
can hush things up for his own purposes, I'll be extradited back to
Canada. Violating the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary will be the least of my
legal troubles. "I've got to think my way out of this now."

 

 

Beyond snowbent forests he glimpsed islands in the immense whiteness
of what he hoped was Great Slave Lake. To his right, a glow against the
night sky might be the reflected city lights of Yellowknife beyond the
horizon. He banked the aircraft in the opposite direction, pondering how
he could make the CL-284 vanish. "Should unload Marthalik, Peterluk,
the babies, and taxi out on the lake and sink the evidence. Damn lake
looks frozen five feet thick. No holes in the ice."

 

 

Ahead, on an island he saw a speck of light from what might be an ice
fisherman's cabin. Banking over this island to a snow-white clearing
in the darkness, he successfully set down the CL-284. Leaving the engines
idling, he helped Marthalik and the children out into the deep snow
and handed her his rifle. Then he dumped Peterluk out, bound and growling.
Dr. West set the autopilot for vertical takeoff. Knocking both throttles
wide open, he lunged out of the rising aircraft onto the snow.

 

 

The CL-284 lifted itself straighter than if a human pilot had been at
the controls. As its propjet whining faded upward, he wondered what
would happen when the VTOL aircraft reached its ceiling. Would it
drift along in the high-altitude wind? Because its wings were twisted
in the vertical position, when its fuel was exhausted, when those two
straining propjets stopped, it should fall like a brick. That would end
the priest's body. He hoped the aircraft's smashed wreckage wouldn't be
noticed in the endless fir forests around Great Slave Lake.

 

 

They walked and walked, trying to find the lake. Peterluk walked ahead
and finally led, pulling at the rope, his hands tied behind his back, the
rope connecting him to Dr. West's belt. Dr. West followed, his rifle in
one hand, his son carried like a football in the other. Marthalik trotted
behind, one baby girl in her arms and the littlest baby girl inside her
parka. Dr. West glanced back at her. The force from the rope yanked him
to his knees as Peterluk tried to lunge away like a musk-ox, Dr. West's
belt broke. Peterluk crashed away through the dwarfish fir trees.

 

 

"Come back; you'll die," Dr. West shouted. "With your hands tied behind
your back, you'll die." Then he tried to arouse an ancestral Eskimo fear.
"This is the land of the Indians. Come back. The Indians will kill you."
Peterluk kept running.

 

 

Dr. West found the Indians by means of the music from their transistor
radio. Beside their cabin an Ice-Cat was parked under the canvas.
The two Indians were cool until they saw the money, which had the magic
effect. Pushing the blocks of frozen fish out of the trailer-sled,
they rolled in a fifty-gallon drum of gasoline. "It's a long way to Hay
River, man."

 

 

Dr. West's money was the carrot, his rifle the stick.

 

 

In time and exhaustion, the distance was much longer across Great Slave
Lake by Ice-Cat than across Canada by plane. "Hay River over there, man.
Hot cool town. Topless shows!"

 

 

But Dr. West paid the two Indians more money for them to go straight back
to their fish camp without entering the lively city of Hay River. Sourly
staring at all that money, they agreed, and their Ice-Cat growled away.
He hoped they would keep on going all the way back to their cabin without
telling anyone until spring, but that was too much to hope.

 

 

In the outlying slums of Hay River, Dr. West's money acquired clothing
for Marthalik and little snowsuits for the babies, even a couple of empty
old suitcases. In the brand new Hay River Municipal Airport Terminal,
no one seemed curious about a tall man, a short "Indian" girl and three
babies as he bought tickets to Edmonton.

 

 

From that crowded metropolis, they flew south to Calgary. But here
Dr. West was afraid to buy a ticket on a Western Airlines plane which
would cross the border to Great Falls, Montana, and continue on to Salt
Lake City. Dr. West smiled wryly. Entry inspection by the U.S. Immigration
and Welcoming Service would catch Marthalik as an alien invader, not
even a marriage license.

 

 

He knew the U.S. border was tight, in retaliation for Canada's irritating
new Border Regulations, which were in retaliation for the new 1812 orations
of U.S. Congressmen of the Pentagon Party, who were retaliating for something
which enraged them more each year.

 

 

Since a direct airline flight into the U.S. might end with Marthalik in
a cell, Dr. West and family traveled only as far south as Lethbridge in
southern Alberta, and took a bus to Coutts, a growing city subdivided by
the U.S.-Canadian border. Across the street stood a new chain-link fence
and a sentry box. The fence extended out of town in both directions
along the border line.

 

 

In a small hotel in Canadian Coutts, Dr. West signed the register:
John Smythe, wife and children. The three babies provided moral cover,
he thought. No one could accuse him of stealing a young Indian or Eskimo
girl for solely immoral purposes. The hotel dick never gave him a second
glance, and they went up to sleep, exhausted.

 

 

Before dawn, when the hotel detective was long gone from the lobby,
and the clerk had gone back to the sofa in the inner office, Dr. West
and family checked themselves out. Having left their empty suitcases in
their room, they were able to walk faster out of town.

 

 

In silvery darkness, crunching through an open field, Dr. West found
tracks and followed them south to a gulley and a suspiciously stretched
hole under the international fence. Entering the U.S., he was startled by
scrambling sounds approaching up the gulley, and a hollow-sounding clunk.
"Damn, damn, damn, dented my guitar. Dad, is this the way to Peace River?"

 

 

"Keep crawling north."

 

 

Dr. West and family hurried south down the gulley in time to find the
bearded one's auto.

 

 

"He make it?" the pale girl hissed, and drove them back to Great Falls,
Montana, where Dr. West finally had the pleasure of boarding Western
Airlines.

 

 

In a cloud of dust, the Boeing 797 skimmed from the runway on its
wheelless aircushion. More tailless than a bat, with systems assists,
it automatically maintained lateral and longitudinal stability. Its wings
folded inward, while Dr. West had a choice of coffee, tea or milk.

 

 

Pop-out control surfaces altered the Boeing 797's smoothly wingless fuselage,
changing its course as programmed, while they dropped in on Helena,
Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Salt Lake, Las Vegas and L.A., where Dr. West
was startled at how unimpressed Marthalik seemed by the vast Offshore
International Airport. "So many hunters and their families waiting and
waiting. But Grandfather Bear will not come for them."

 

 

More hopeless hunters were waiting in San Francisco's International Airport.

 

 

By copter, Dr. West and family rose across the Bay to Berkeley. "Look
Marthalik, past all those grass places and big igloos. See, up on the
hill, that low white igloo. Your husband used to work there. I was
Dir-rect-tor."

 

 

"Eh?" she laughed excitedly. "What did you hunt?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. BERKELEY CAMPUS, 1990

 

 

Dr. West asked Steve Jervasoni to be his best man, because Steve turned
out to be his only loyal former graduate student.

 

 

When Dr. West returned unannounced from the Arctic, striding past the
startled Security Guard into what formerly had been his own Oriental
Population Problems Research Building, he caused more embarrassment than
if he were a leper. Smiling, he forced handshakes from his former grad
students and professional colleagues.

 

 

Dr. Fred Gatson, boy wonder bacteriologist and newly appointed Director,
popped out of what had been Dr. West's office to pump Dr. West's hand.
" -- just like old times, Dr. West -- Joe. Just because your security
clearance has been canceled by Washington doesn't mean we don't want to
see you here -- "

 

 

"But you're in secret session," Dr. West interrupted satirically, laughing
as if he were kidding, "conferring whether to save or destroy mankind?"

 

 

"Joe, when they appointed me Director," Fred Gatson blurted in this
gleaming building created by Dr. Joseph West, "there was nothing personal.
I didn't -- "

 

 

Dr. West tried to grin. "I'm glad to be out of it. Screw the Pentagon!"

 

 

Steve Jervasoni was the only one of Dr. West's former grad students
with guts to follow through on Dr. West's invitation to visit the big
ramshackle second-story apartment Dr. West had moved into with Marthalik,
whom Dr. West coolly described as his bride-to-be. Steve Jervasoni
"volunteered" to be his best man.

 

 

At the courthouse, Phyliss stood with Marthalik. Phyliss had selected
Marthalik's full-hipped skirt and flowered blouse. Phyliss's svelte
presence was embarrassing to Dr. West, but Phyliss had insisted on
helping their wedding. "Believe me, Joe, I've always felt more like your
-- mother."

 

 

She had eyed him with what appeared to be disapproval rather than jealousy.
"I still can't understand you -- bringing this sweet kid down here into
this mess we call civilization. You -- she can't be that sexy. Can she?"

 

 

In the judge's chamber, Phyliss stood behind Marthalik, towering behind her.

 

 

"Do you take this man -- " the old judge was intoning.

 

 

Anxious to help the whiteman's magic work, Marthalik correctly responded:
"I do!" so emphatically in English that the judge smiled and coughed.

 

 

Marthalik peeked up cautiously at this old angakok, this black-robed
magician, then glanced up at Dr. West for reassurance. He squeezed her
warm hand, and Steve Jervasoni poked him with the ring.

 

 

"With this ring I thee wed." Dr. West lifted Marthalik's moist hand,
with her small fingers spreading like all of nature to him, and his
throat hurt with a startling emotion, more confusing to him than joy.

 

 

As he slipped on the ring, she inhaled audibly, peering up at him as if
worried whether she had done right in this whiteman's ceremony. He nodded.
Her smile blossomed like a little girl's, and Dr. West thought he'd
written her age on the license as twenty-one. He could just as well have
written eighteen or another guess.

 

 

"I now pronounce you man and wife," the judge intoned.

 

 

Marthalik closed her eyes, prettily tilting up her lips. In a smiling
instant, Dr. West guessed Phyliss had coached her as to this whiteman's
ending to the ritual beginning. Feeling her mouth in trust beneath his,
Dr. West humbly hoped he had done the right thing not to use good sense.
Marrying Marthalik was beyond good sense. Hand in hand, they hurried
out to the car, laughing.

 

 

"You're my wife," he said happily in English.

 

 

"I'll boil your tea!" She seemed to be learning English more quickly
than a child.

 

 

"You're my wife," he repeated as they slid onto the back seat.

 

 

"I'll boil your tea!" Where she'd picked up or assembled this useful
sentence, he didn't know -- Phyliss or television.

 

 

In modern Eskimo, he announced proudly: "You are the wife of my house.
You will boil much meat when I bring home a fat seal," he laughed, "or a
grad-u-ate stu-dent. If I'm lucky on the hunt, I'll bring home
full
pro-less-ors
more powerful than walruses."

 

 

"This person herself thinks," Marthalik murmured in Modern Eskimo,
rubbing her face against his shoulder, "you are joking with her.
He is a
grad-u-ate stu-dent
." She pointed her small nose toward Steve Jervasoni,
who sat alone in the front seat, driving, and Dr. West finally realized
that Phyliss was gone.

 

 

"This person herself thinks," Marthalik's soft voice ventured, "that you
should speak always to her in your own language so that she will learn.
The man speaks. The woman must learn to understand."

 

 

"Then you'll boil my tea?" he laughed in English.

 

 

"I'll boil your tea," she answered proudly in English.

 

 

As she peeked out of the automobile past the huge new Regional Shopping
Center along Telegraph Avenue, she clutched his hand. He tried to imagine
how confusing the whiteman's world must be to her. In this strange world
she had only him to cling to.
My god, what am I doing to her?

 

 

As they ran upstairs to their apartment, playfully she elbowed him.
Laughing and gasping on the porch, they struggled. As he picked her up,
her accidentally swinging tennis shoes banged open the door of their
wedding igloo.

 

 

The baby-sitter, a co-ed from Free U., stood up with her mouth open.
Dr. West dumped Marthalik on the couch. "Boil tea!"

 

 

The co-ed stared at him as if he were a brutal monster.

 

 

"I'll boil your tea," Marthalik gasped happily in English and scurried
into the kitchen.