The Eskimo Invasion (19 page)

 

 

Little Joe wandered sleepily out of a bedroom and tried to climb Dr. West's
leg. "Wha-wha? Daddy."

 

 

Dr. West picked him up and walked toward the crib in the dining room in
which Little Martha already was standing up, holding on with only one
hand and grinning two teeth with accomplishment.

 

 

Steve Jervasoni was knocking bashfully on the half-open apartment door
as if he didn't know whether he should bring in Marthalik's forgotten
corduroy coat or not. "Sir -- Joe, you want me to drive to a supermarket
and buy you folks some groceries?"

 

 

"Come inside and entertain my daughter," Dr. West commanded, paying off
the slack-jawed co-ed, who fled. "Just pick her up," he challenged Steve.
"Already she weighs nineteen pounds."

 

 

Steve squinted down cautiously at Little Martha's diapered toplessness.
"I guess she's more accustomed to being carried in her mother's parka?"

 

 

"She won't wet you. Pick her up. These last two weeks I've discovered what
fatherhood is," Dr. West laughed faintly, worrying whether the University
would renew his contract, worrying how he was going to support a wife and
children and baby-sitters and a tutor for his wife.

 

 

"Soon-soon! I'll boil your tea," Marthalik called happily from the kitchen.
"Hello Steve."

 

 

"Maybe I should get married," Steve laughed. "Marthalik have a sister?
You know, seriously, just being around her makes me feel good. Maybe Eskimos
are better than other people. When she smiles, I almost feel an aura,
a radiation, almost like love -- for all humanity."

 

 

At that moment Steve looked more like nineteen than twenty-nine. After
junior college, he'd served his four years in Army Biological Warfare,
followed by two years at State College, and now was in his third year
of graduate work at the University of California.

 

 

Like the perfect housewife, Marthalik bustled from the kitchen
carrying a tray with the steaming teapot and four paper cups. Dr. West
noticed a slight wiggle or waddle to her walk which had increased since
yesterday. Soon her next pregnancy would be noticeable. Sooner, her hot
tea would melt the waxed seams of those paper cups if she poured --

 

 

"It is the custom in this big village," Dr. West said quickly in Modern
Eskimo, anxious not to embarrass her in front of Steve, "we drink hot
tea only from heavy cups, the big cups with flowers, the cups on the
ledge above where the stream flows out. These thin cups of
paper
are for cold water. The heavy cups are for hot tea."

 

 

"Eh-eh," Cheerfully she picked up the tray again. "A woman does as her
husband wishes."

 

 

As she hurried back to the kitchen, Steve looked at Dr. West. "Translated?"

 

 

"Learn Eskimo yourself," Dr. West laughed, for it was a difficult
agglutinative language, as complex but more consistent than English.
"Learn Eskimo. Then go up to Boothia and steal your own bride."

 

 

"The Canadian Government might not approve," Steve laughed, "nor might
the Eskimos."

 

 

"Marthalik isn't an Eskimo." Dr. West watched Steve blink.

 

 

"Quit your kidding, sir," Steve grinned with embarrassment and looked
down at his shoes, expensive appearing cordovans for a nonscholarship
grad student. "Sir, when you get a new research grant, I hope you'll
acquire my contract from Dr. Gatson. We don't seem to be attempting
really basic research since you were -- since you resigned."

 

 

 

 

The next morning Dr. West entered the office of the Dean of the Demography
Department at the University. He had two purposes in mind.

 

 

First he picked up his next to last sabbatical paycheck and turned in
a required synopsis of his proposed sabbatical research report. It would
analyze any population growth trends he observed within the Boothia
Peninsula Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary. Deceptively, his synopsis indicated
his report merely would be another age-sex census. From the synopsis,
the report promised to be of only academic significance, merely confirming
he'd been earning his sabbatical paychecks through required self-development
in his approved field of study. He smiled. When he'd collected enough
evidence from Marthalik, the real report would startle the Dean of the
Demography Department into orbit! Dr. West would become a boy wonder
again in a candy store of rich research grants, he hoped.

 

 

Second, Dr. West was anxious to see if the University's offer of contract
renewal was in his professorial mailbox. He knew this time the University
would offer him less than his bonanza negotiated three years ago. Then
he'd just won that huge grant from the Defense Department for his proposed
Oriental Population Problems Research program. He had been a hero.
Consequently, with the University he had negotiated what was termed a
Koufax contract, his paychecks reflecting in a small way the 1.8 million
dollars he had attracted from the Pentagon to the Berkeley Campus.

 

 

Now he was out as Director. He had offended the Defense Department's
cornucopia. His three-year University contract had expired. His bargaining
power was gone. If he failed to turn in a sensational sabbatical report,
he thought his last year's high pay probably would suffer the maximum cut,
25%. Even so, he still would be one of the most highly paid members of
the faculty, so highly paid it was possible the University would try to
trade him off to another university which had a lot of money but a weak
Demography Department.

 

 

The annual ninety-day negotiating period had begun in the U.S. If he refused
to report to another university campus, he thought his university might
stall along in negotiations with him until the ninety-day negotiating
period was almost over. Then it would be too late for him to start
applying for positions elsewhere. He would have to take the 25% cut
anyway. So he decided to sign his contract at once. But his mailbox was
empty. No contract yet.

 

 

He was sure they would offer him one. In fairness to him, after all that
Defense Department money he had brought in, the University would offer
him some sort of contract renewal, he thought. They wouldn't declare
him a free agent. At worst, they would try to trade him.

 

 

The University might try to trade him to another university for
a lower-salaried man but they wouldn't simply drop him during the
ninety-day negotiating period, he thought. This once-a-year negotiating
period applied to all universities and to all professors who wanted to
continue doing business with the Defense Department. Three years was
the unbreakable length of such contracts. A former Secretary of Defense
had devised these regulations for academic salary negotiations, trading
and recruiting, after remarking that some research professors most vital
to the national interest were job jumping or being recruited to rival
universities so frequently their productivity was impaired. "They spend
more time traveling from coast to coast, pursued by moving vans, than in
trying to straighten out their disorganized commitments to the Defense
Department."

 

 

Dr. West stared into his empty mailbox and hoped the University would not
cut him. As a free agent now, with less than ninety days for him to locate
a comparable position elsewhere, he might have to accept a minor position.

 

 

"You ever teach?" The scratchy voice startled him because it belonged to
Dr. Darwin; that academic outlaw was standing behind him here in the Dean's
outer office with a recruiter's smile.

 

 

"What are you doing on campus?" Dr. West laughed; at one time Dr. Darwin
had been his buddy here in the Demography Department.

 

 

Although highly regarded by his graduate students, and after working
hard through three three-year contracts as an Assistant Professor,
Dr. Darwin had failed to be promoted to Associate Professor, and struck
out. Too few of Dr. Darwin's population research papers had been accepted
for publication by the professional demographic journals, and he was
out. Released as a free agent, no graduate university had offered him
a contract. He was an outlaw from organized academics, and was teaching
lecture classes in Berkeley at Free U., where there were young and unruly
students known as undergraduates.

 

 

"I'm recruiting you, that's what I'm doing," Dr. Darwin said.

 

 

Dr. West laughed again, not meaning to sound contemptuous. "I'm surprised
our Kampus Kops even permit a talented talent raider like you to enter our
Demography Building," he kidded, "or even drive through Savio Gate."

 

 

"Oh. the University police never bother me," Dr. Darwin laughed, "unless
I park my car in an administrator's space. Now if you were at Free U.,
we've no monthly parking fee."

 

 

"I'd have to look for a space along the streets and in distant alleys?"

 

 

"No, the kids set out sawhorses to guard a teacher's parking space.
We need another teacher of General Population Problems who can also teach
Physiological Aspects of Reproduction -- doctor."

 

 

"If you mean me lecture to a big class," Dr. West laughed, for he had
been more the research-executive type, working with small groups of
respectful grad students while he was Director of Oriental Population
Problems Research, "I've had no experience as a dramatic performer."

 

 

"If I can, you can. On my recommendation, I think the Student Hiring
Committee would agree to give you a one-semester tryout," Dr. Darwin
persisted. "If you draw big crowds, there's big money. If you're good,
every day those kids will be dropping their dollar bills in the entry
boxes, and you'll know you're being appreciated."

 

 

"You're still lecturing in that former furniture warehouse?" Dr. West smiled,
inwardly wincing at the thought of being graded by his students every day;
he wanted nothing to do with Free U.

 

 

Free U. was making another comeback. When Dr. West was in the last class
of undergrads on the Berkeley Campus, Free U. already had been growing.
The year after he departed east for Harvard's Graduate School of Medicine,
undergrad education at Cal. had been discontinued for financial and other
reasons. As a consequence, Free U. had blossomed until it encompassed
10,000 students during the 1980s, spreading to old rented buildings
all over Berkeley. So many idealistic professors were attracted and
such ambitious young student administrators were elected each year
that the undergraduate curriculum became more substantial than at the
state colleges.

 

 

The examination schedule was solidified, eliminating the relaxed amateur
students. National-standard courses were instituted and eventually required,
driving away any eclectic searchers after Truth and other eccentrics. Free
U. achieved B.A. degree granting stature. It became an accredited springboard
to all the important graduate schools except the University of California,
where there was professional jealousy because --

 

 

The Health, Education, and Welfare Department had granted Free U. a fifty
million dollar credit for acquisition of land for a permanent campus.
The student body voted to accept the slum clearance land on both sides of
Telegraph Avenue, which the Housing and Redevelopment Authority offered
to them at a bargain price of fifty million dollars. The student body
president signed over the credit and accepted the deed. The student
body had voted to use this potentially valuable commercially zoned
land as security so that a major insurance company loan could finance
construction of the permanent campus buildings. But a developer of
regional shopping centers offered Free U. 100 million dollars for the
cleared land. The student body sensibly voted to accept. A hundred million
dollars divided equally among 10,000 students is $10,000 for each student.
Some got married, combining their capital for a sound financial start
in life. Irritated by outcries from Washington, more idealistic students
flew away to the international Human Be-In in Paris. "The sensible time
to enjoy money is when you're young enough to enjoy it."

 

 

Gutted of its wealthy students, retaining few of its disillusioned faculty,
overwhelmed by the annual influx of new students from high schools into
the same old overcrowded Free U. rented buildings throughout Berkeley,
Free U. was making another comeback.

 

 

"Sure, I'm still lecturing in a warehouse," Dr. Darwin retorted to Dr. West.
"Who needs a billion dollar concrete edifice? A college is for the students
and teachers. At least we don't have professionally entrenched
administrators. If your contract isn't renewed, visit the former beer
parlor that's our administrative headquarters. Visit our classes. These
are real live kids again. They want to interact with a real live teacher
instead of a ghost on TV."

 

 

But Dr. West was edging out the door, worrying why Dr. Darwin seemed so
sure his university contract might not be renewed. "Your lecture classes
are so big," Dr. West murmured, "even bigger than the 1970s."

 

 

"They wouldn't be so big if we had more teachers," Dr. Darwin pursued him.

 

 

"Ha!" Dr. West struck back. "If there were more teachers, there'd be less
student dollars per teacher. The kids won't go above a dollar per lecture."

 

 

"They might, they might. We plan to negotiate with the kids. But what
the hell! Regardless of the $1.00 or any future $1.25 per lecture, the
real satisfaction in life is having an audience if you're a real teacher."