The Eskimo Invasion (21 page)

 

 

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no."

 

 

"If some women did not sleep with other men while their husbands were
away, did they miss having a baby?"

 

 

"Why should they not have babies? Babies come because the woman has
thought faithfully about Grandfather Bear -- and even if she hasn't."

 

 

"No men are needed?" Dr. West smiled at this startling innocence as to
the facts of life.

 

 

"Yes, this person thinks a man is needed -- the first time. Young girls
do not have babies until they have known a man. After that, perhaps a
man is not needed if a girl continues to think good thoughts."

 

 

"Or even if she doesn't," Dr. West murmured, realizing with relief
that he was the physical father of all six of her children. She had
been physically faithful to him. Even Little Martha and Baby Eva, who
apparently were conceived and growing in her womb during the two months he
was 2000 miles away in Ottawa imprisoned in a hospital, were his children.

 

 

Nervously he thought of tropical fish he owned when he was a boy,
multiplying until his little aquarium was overcrowded with red platys.
Forced to buy a second aquarium, shrewdly he had transferred only the
swollen female to the new aquarium. To avoid being overwhelmed by more
platys, as the female gave birth he netted out her babies and guiltily
flushed them down the toilet. Momentarily the lonely female platy
appeared slim. With relief he had thought he was freed from killing any
more babies. But in a month, she was swollen again. Without any contact
with males, miraculously she was giving birth. Swimming weakly above the
gravel were more baby platys. In defeat, he had traded both aquariums
to another kid for a telescope.

 

 

"Marthalik," he muttered, stroking her arm, "you are a fountain of life."

 

 

There seemed two possibilities. Either his male sperm survived much longer
than the normal two to three days in her uterus and Fallopian tubes; this
seemed unlikely. Or on up in the narrow Fallopian tubes, perhaps into the
ovaries themselves, his sperm that first night had impregnated all her
partially developed ova. Did some hormone delay their growth? Hundreds of
ova still might be waiting their turns to ripen and descend through her
Fallopian tubes. As if from a savings bank for babies, these prefertilized
but undividing ova were descending into her vacated uterus at monthly
intervals. Triggered there, each grew from cell to embryo to fetus.

 

 

After a month each baby emerged smiling into the world.

 

 

With five little children already crowding the apartment, a sixth on the
way, and Little Joe tackling his leg, loudly shouting like a two-year-old
although he was barely five months old, Dr. West had no intention of
finding out how many more babies his wife could have. "Dammit, I'm not
trying to breed a touch football team."

 

 

They needed a bigger apartment, but his last sabbatical paycheck was
devoured by grocery bills, even though the kids were small eaters like
Marthalik, and by clothing bills, even though each child's clothing
was passed down to the next younger one. The oldest, Little Joe, seemed
to be outgrowing his overalls overnight. And there were overdue bills
from the hospital for the delivery room. Until now, Dr. West hadn't
comprehended how expensive marriage could be. Bills were piling up so
fast it was terrifying.

 

 

In his letter to his former Harvard school buddy, Tom Randolph, he inquired
about a position at Duke University where Dr. Tom Randolph now was Director
of a new research project reportedly rich with Pentagon money. Tom's reply
was friendly but so vague.

 

 

Tom had been so cautious in mentioning his own project that Dr. West
suspected Tom suspected the Defense Department had rescinded Dr. West's
security clearance. Although Tom didn't say so, obviously he couldn't
or wouldn't help Dr. West meet the Dean of the Demography Department at
Duke. In spite of the help Dr. West had given Tom at the beginning of
his career, Tom wasn't going to stick his neck out one inch for Dr. West.

 

 

"Screw you, Tom." Dr. West mailed off his hurried report: "A Preliminary
Analysis of a Population Growth Trend on the Boothia Peninsula" to the
Journal of American Population Scientists.

 

 

"When this is published, recruiters from a dozen universities will be
phoning me," he muttered, hoping against hope.

 

 

Trying not to think of the weeks he would have to wait in torment while
not hearing whether the
Journal
had accepted or rejected his paper,
Dr. West wondered if he ought to start a popular article in simple but
terrifying language aimed at one of the newsstand magazines. Perhaps he
should be aiming at the
New Saturday Evening Post
or even at one of the
thick women's magazines like
Good Apartment-Keeping
. Even publication
here might help him get a grant from some government agency. He knew
the cancellation of his security clearance had been simply because
he no longer was in a Defense Department funded project. He hoped it
wasn't a permanent cancellation because a certain general considered
him insubordinate. Hoping for a grant from the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, he daydreamed of returning to the Boothia
Peninsula as director of a major project. He would name his project:
Institute for the Study of the Shortened Gestation Period. "Vitally
significant research if this shortened gestation period is a trait which
might also appear in other parts of the world."

 

 

He thought the Canadian Government might let him enter the Sanctuary.
Right now, a Parliamentary Committee was questioning Hans Suxbey,
embattled Director of the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary. The elder LaRue
was chairman of the vilifying committee. Old LaRue must have Hans Suxbey
sweating.

 

 

"I'll bet, within a year, the whole Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary will be
abolished by Parliament." Dr. West leaned over his coffee cup toward
Dr. Darwin. "I've got to get back into Boothia with cameras, grad students
for census takers, and tape recorders, before the Esks' myths are altered
even in their own minds by loudmouthed newspaper interviewers. I've got
to beat
Life
."

 

 

"You have the advantage of being married to Marthalik."

 

 

"Yes,
Life
's bringing out our picture-story in the next issue,
and this may help me get a grant. I've got to get back to Boothia."

 

 

"I hear through the grapevine that ethnologists over at the State
University in Palo Alto," Dr. Darwin remarked, "have snitched a copy of
that synopsis you submitted to Cal. They are applying to the Canadian
Government for a -- "

 

 

"Damn! Spies from that diploma farm won't get into Boothia yet.
Of course Henry LaRue, the younger LaRue, candidate for public office,
has been in and out and in again."

 

 

"Oh, the hero?" Dr. Darwin laughed. "I saw the rebroadcast of that CBC
program. LaRue dramatically translates for this young Eskimo man whose
babies are starving."

 

 

"That was Edwardluk, the Esk who dragged me to the Sanctuary Guard Station."

 

 

"Then all this talk about babies starving is true?" Dr. Darwin asked.
"There's a solid reason a chapter of the SAVE THE ESKIMOS LEAGUE is
being formed here at Free U.?"

 

 

"The Canadian Government already is air-dropping Family Allowances.
The Esks should survive this summer ok, and they'll be a bigger problem
each winter."

 

 

"You have a growing family problem yourself," Dr. Darwin thrust.
"You can still pay for your own cup of coffee, but next month, who knows?
I invited you here for coffee to tell you I'm confident the Student Hiring
Council will accept you as a lecturer in population problems."

 

 

Dr. West stood up, abruptly pushing a dime beside his coffee cup.
"I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it." He was worrying that some
weird things had happened to teachers at Free U. He still was hoping to
find a job elsewhere in some graduate university.

 

 

"Did you know the Defense Department has blacklisted you?" Dr. Darwin said.
"They even mail Free U. copies of their latest blacklists. We throw them in
the wastebasket."

 

 

Dr. West went home and tried to balance his checkbook, but his hand was
shaking, so that he got a different answer every time. All answers said:
not enough money. Another month and he'd be overdrawn.

 

 

"Even if my professional journal article is published, there'll be no
cash payment, no quick money." He stayed up late, hammering into the
typewriter a first-person article: "Population Explosion in the Arctic,"
aimed at the
New Saturday Evening Post
. "When you think about it, future
Esk numbers could become -- overwhelming -- if the Canadian Government --
for political and religious reasons -- does not attempt forcible birth
control of the Esks. That's what's needed -- "

 

 

In the bedroom, Dr. West studied Marthalik's sleeping face. Even in her
sleep she was smiling.

 

 

My love
, he thought,
are you dreaming of me or of Grandfather Bear?

 

 

As she turned restlessly, under the sheet the bulge was there. His face
twisted in mental pain. He couldn't ask her to have an abortion now. But
this sixth baby had to be the last.

 

 

When this baby was born, he thought, he could hardly ask her to undergo
a hysterectomy. Even severing her Fallopian tubes was a major abdominal
operation. The safe abortifacient pill he had given her three weeks ago
without explanation hadn't aborted the ovum, or the microscopically
shapeless beginning embryo. Evidently her hormonal balance was more
stable or adaptable than a human woman's.
Something's got to be done --
which won't hurt her, won't frighten her, won't turn her against me.
"I do love you, Marthalik."

 

 

 

 

On Saturday morning when Marthalik had gone on an exciting expedition to
the supermarket all by herself, and Dr. West was playing with his five
children on the living room rug, Steve Jervasoni dropped by. "Thought
you'd be interested to hear, we've finally evaluated those tests we
began at Sierra Women's Reformatory while you were -- Very interesting."

 

 

"So?" Dr. West didn't want to listen, but what could he say? While he was
Director, he had arranged for the test. Now it seemed weird to him how
his originally broad proposal, which won a Defense Department research
grant and erected a white concrete building on the hillside behind Cal
with gleaming brass letters over the open door spelling out: Oriental
Population Problems Research, had been narrowed.

 

 

The door to widespread basic research on the social-religious-physiological
approaches to population control had been slammed. From the original staff
he had recruited, all the sociologists were fired due to pressure from
the Pentagon. The social psychologists and mass communications experts
were gone. The ethnologists were gone. The religious experts were gone,
Taoist, Maoist, Marxist, Buddhist, Moslem, Protestant, Catholic, Cao Dai,
Animist. Some had gone even before Dr. West was fired. But their empty
desks had been refilled so quickly. Enlarging the edifice, a specialized
lab was being erected by the ever-generous Defense Department.

 

 

Dr. West's original proposal for Oriental Population Problems Research
had been a study of all avenues toward control of the population explosion
in the Orient. Advertising, psychological, religious, chemical and bacterial
approaches to population limitation were to be pretested. Then the most
humanely promising approaches were to be evaluated in the Orient.
Efficiency of population control was to be only one of the criteria for
evaluating any proposed approaches. The effect of any method upon the
people as human beings with social and psychological traits as well as
physiological plumbing was to be evaluated. Each nation and within each
nation each identifiable social or religious group and within each group
each individual should be considered.

 

 

What will be the long-term effects of this particular approach to
population limitation upon this woman -- and her husband? With fewer
children, will they fear there may be no one to care for their graves,
to worship their bones after they become ancestors? What substitutes can
be offered for these truly human needs? At the end of the first year,
Oriental Population Problems Research still had been a diversified and
hopeful program.

 

 

But someone in the project evidently was reporting continuously to the
Pentagon, because the pressure already was on Dr. West.

 

 

On the telephone, the General said: "Dr. -- uh, West, explain to me why
we're spending money for this crap."

 

 

Dr. West tried, and the General's voice brightened: "I get it! Attack on
all fronts."

 

 

But the phone calls from the Pentagon became more frequent. "Dr. -- uh,
West, I hear only your bacteriological boys have been making real progress.
Seems to be your only effective attack."

 

 

"That's just one approach," Dr. West had insisted, "and it hasn't been
tested even in a controlled environment. There are so many implications -- "

 

 

Theoretically, a nation might become able to control another nation's
birthrate without that nation's consent, perhaps even without that
countiy's knowledge. Only after several years might its leaders become
frantic at how rapidly the birthrate curve was falling. Belatedly they
would begin trying to find out why. Was it disease, or malnutrition, or
declining national morale, or a change in social and religious attitudes,
or the result of foreign propaganda urging birth control? They might
not discover who had attacked their country with a genocidal weapon as
deadly as nuclear bombs, or had intervened with humane wisdom.