The Eskimo Invasion (24 page)

 

 

When he noticed the stocky student standing, swinging his watch back and
forth by its wescot chain, he realized his hour was over. "Next meeting,
old Thomas Malthus, his Theory still haunts us."

 

 

Students stood up, but Dr. West compulsively raised his voice, talking
faster. "I hope you'll all be here next meeting. Young Thomas Malthus
from his eighteenth-century essay became the most influential population
-- uh, philosopher.
The power of population
, Tom Malthus said,
is greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
Do you believe that -- ?"

 

 

But the students were hurrying out; not one left a dollar.

 

 

Dr. West stood openmouthed.

 

 

"Good beginning," the stocky student said. "Bet you win at least half of
them. Bet you draw at least a hundred dollars into the boxes next meeting
when formal enrollment begins."

 

 

"Oh!" Dr. West laughed. He was in a cold sweat.

 

 

"We grade you at the end of each month," the student leader said. "You'd
better improve your enunciation by then. And I think you'd be rated D
or F in Looks at His Audience. Maybe a C in Organizes His Material in
a Comprehensible Manner. But you certainly rated at least a B today in
Sincerity, and that's most important with some of us."

 

 

Dripping wet, Dr. West still had two more lectures to deliver that day.

 

 

When he trudged home, he grinned weakly at Marthalik, and maneuvered
among his clinging children and collapsed on the couch. This went on for
several weeks, while Marthalik's loud dreams kept him awake at night.
In the daytime, she had become strangely withdrawn, not even cheering up
when Steve Jervasoni visited.

 

 

"I hear you're drawing bigger audiences than Dr. Darwin," Steve said,
and lowered his voice when Marthalik went into the kitchen. "Seriously,
why don't you let me take Marthalik to a doctor with a psychiatry
background -- since you just keep putting off -- "

 

 

"You'd put her under sedation?" Dr. West whispered from his blurry weariness,
for he had been trying to rewrite his article for the
New Saturday Evening
Post
at night after grading papers while trying to make sense from
Marthalik's nonverbal nightmares. "And interrogate her -- the origin of
the Esks, is that the real reason you -- "

 

 

"No, you're overtired. I just want to help Marthalik," Steve protested,
his face pained.

 

 

"I already tried pentothal with her -- and LSD," Dr. West whispered.
"Neither exposed what she's seeing -- in her dreams."

 

 

"I don't care about that," Steve retorted. "It's Marthalik I care about."

 

 

"You think I don't care about her?" Dr. West stood up, waiting for Steve
to leave.

 

 

 

 

One day when Dr. West wearily wandered back from class to the apartment,
there was a strange middle-aged baby-sitter with the kids.

 

 

"Where's my wife?"

 

 

"Was she your wife?" The baby-sitter looked embarrassed.

 

 

Dr. West saw the strange envelope on his desk, read the note and told
the baby-sitter to get out. Then he telephoned the police. "Is there a
Missing Persons Bureau?"

 

 

Marthalik had vanished from Berkeley. So had Steve. The police couldn't
find them anywhere in California.

 

 

Marthalik, are you all right? I deserve -- suffering. But Marthalik,
please -- he thought each night.

 

 

"Find my wife." But he did not show the police the note.

 

 

His life seemed shattered like an Arctic ice floe. Every day at Free U.
he had to lecture to keep the money coming in to pay two shifts of
baby-sitters and a housekeeper. At night he played with his children.
"When Mama come home?"

 

 

"She's gone on a long vacation, Little Joe." Dr. West couldn't believe
that the police were unable to find Marthalik or Steve in the United
States. "Steve wouldn't take her back to the Arctic -- "

 

 

"He didn't even leave you a note?" Dr. Darwin stirred his coffee.

 

 

"No," Dr. West lied with shame. "The police located Steve's folks in Detroit.
They said they hadn't seen much of him since high school. Then he went to
a junior college, and then into the service, four years in the Bacterial
Warfare Section, came out as staff sergeant, and studied bacteriology at
L.A. State." Dr. West stared out across Berkeley at the fog shrouding
San Francisco Bay. "He wasn't outstandingly bright for a grad student,
no scholarship grant-in-aid, but Steve was my most dependable team member.
He was the only one who remained -- loyal to me -- after I was -- canned
as Director."

 

 

"So where did his money come from?" Dr. Darwin asked, smiling cynically.
"Did he have an outside job?"

 

 

"No. Any spare time, he used as Treasurer and then President of the
Graduate Students' Forum."

 

 

"A grad student can't live without money on top of his G.I. Bill checks."

 

 

"Don't tell me you're one of those paranoid professors," Dr. West began,
"who still suspects every student is a -- "

 

 

"Conveniently planted inside your Oriental Population Problems Research
program," Dr. Darwin interrupted triumphantly. "There he was. Every day
he could report."

 

 

"Our Government didn't need reports from Steve. Behind my back, Fred Gatson
and three or four more of my so-called colleagues continuously were bitching
about me to the Pentagon. Steve at least stuck with me. Until he stole
my wife -- "

 

 

"Was that in character?" Dr. Darwin laughed dryly. "Was Steve the passionate
type?"

 

 

"How can we know -- even ourselves?" Dr. West's face twisted in pain.
"I hope he is in love with her. I hope he's looking after her."

 

 

"In this neatly numbered population," Dr. Darwin persisted, spreading
his arms, "where computers should be able to trace any man, cooperation
from within Government is necessary if a man wants to disappear."

 

 

"Bullshit! We're not animated IBM cards yet. A man and a woman still can
disappear together." Dr. West's voice rose. "At least I believe he loves
her and is looking after her. You, you're practically implying Steve
Jervasoni is a Government employee such as CIA, who stole my wife
following orders as cold-bloodedly as if she were a dog for vivisection.
God! I hope he does love her."

 

 

Each day, each night, Dr. West listened for the phone. In another shattered
part of his life he worried about the care of his children. Now that old
Peterluk had been located in Yellowknife, Dr. West was worried that he
himself might be extradited to Canada as a witness against Peterluk.
No charges had been filed against Dr. West for violating the Sanctuary or
perhaps kidnapping Marthalik. Evidently someone in Canadian politics
preferred to give Dr. West no publicity.

 

 

Peterluk was tried for shooting the priest-pilot of the Order of Pope John
solely on the dramatic testimony of the younger LaRue. This Hero of the
North was running for Parliament, where his uncle was demanding abolition
of the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary. In newspaper accounts, Dr. West wasn't
even mentioned. When Peterluk was convicted of murder and given an
indeterminate sentence at the New Ottawa Reformation Center, Dr. West
breathed more easily. He needed to stay here in Berkeley to help his
motherless children grow up.

 

 

What do you do with six children growing so fast their clothes have
to be let out or exchanged every month? At one year they looked like
six-year-olds, but talked like three-year-olds. Physically they looked
old enough to be starting school.

 

 

Although Dr. West hired a retired schoolteacher as a reading readiness
tutor, he knew eventually he'd be contacted by an Attendance Administrator
from the Public School System. Already a woman from the Child Welfare
Bureau had visited. "We're concerned about these children -- without
their mothers. Where are their mothers?"

 

 

When Dr. West maintained that he was the legal father of all six children,
the woman's thick eyebrows rose as if she thought he was a bigamist,
and rose higher when he insisted Marthalik had been the mother of all six.

 

 

"Didn't you see the
Life
article?" he asked.

 

 

Physically all six children now appeared to be between three and six
years of age.

 

 

"None are twins," she muttered, lowering her eyebrows in a thoughtful
squint. "The older children should be enrolled in school. Where are
their birth certificates?"

 

 

The Public School System pounced. "In spite of the apparent validity of
their birth certificates, physiological readiness for school increasingly
has been recognized as the most important criterion for admission.
The larger three children obviously should be given placement tests."

 

 

The tests showed Little Joe, Little Martha and Eva had the approximate
mental ages of three-year-olds. "Because they are physically ready but
not mentally ready, they must be placed in the Special Class."

 

 

"You mean for retarded children?" Dr. West protested. "They're not retarded.
They're advanced for their ages. Show me another eighteen-month-old child
who knows his addition combinations. Little Joe does."

 

 

"But surely he's really at least five years old. The operative from
the Child Welfare Bureau informs us the birth certificates and
Life
article may have been a publicity stunt. A Guidance Administrator will
investigate your noncooperation. Surely, your children need to associate
with other children."

 

 

"They do. After their lessons. In the park." Dr. West spent hours playing
catch with them.

 

 

Soon Little Joe was as large as a nine-year-old boy. When he tried to
play baseball with other boys his size, he couldn't hit the ball.

 

 

"You will. You will," Dr. West kept reassuring him. "You just haven't
had as much practice as they have."

 

 

By the time Little Joe's coordination was as good as a nine-year-old's, he
looked like a twelve-year-old. Finally placed in an ungraded classroom in
the regular neighborhood school, Little Joe seemed embarrassed surrounded
by "little kids." But his reading level was only third grade. He was
two years old. By the time he was two and a half, he was reading and
doing arithmetic at a sixth-grade level, but he was as large as a
fifteen-year-old who should be in junior high.

 

 

"Joe, please believe me. You'll catch up, Joe." Dr. West had dropped the
"Little" from his son's name.

 

 

The boy stood a massive five feet three inches tall, appearing muscular
like a giant among grade school children. But he was no bully. Even when
he was unhappy, Joe smiled.

 

 

Dr. West couldn't smile. Within six months, Joe would be three. At the
calendar age of one he had looked like a six-year-old, at two like a
twelve-year-old. Physically he had matured six times as fast as a hu-
-- as other children, Dr. West thought. In six months, when he was three,
Joe might be looking at girls as if he were an eighteen-year-old. "Nothing
but trouble! But he's such a good kid." Dr. West thought all Joe needed
was time for his mental age to catch up with his physical growth. Joe
had been promoted three grades in the last year, but he had grown six
years physically.

 

 

At what might be physically eighteen, Joe needed scissors rather than the
electric razor he bashfully asked for, but his voice had deepened and he
was a powerfully built young man five feet nine inches tall. Smiling,
he appeared like a football prospect in junior high but he didn't block.
When he was knocked down, he stood up smiling while smaller boys tittered.
But suddenly Joe became "a star" in basketball and then baseball, and he
was very popular in junior high school. He laughed and joked with budding
girls.

 

 

It was Little Martha who was overtaken by trouble. Dr. West's housekeeper
had purchased her a bra the month before, and now she was in junior
high school and giggling a great deal. Whenever Dr. West looked at her,
he was reminded of his wife. He felt like crying. How old had Marthalik
been when he married her?

 

 

Already high school age boys shouted at Martha. She wasn't a "Little"
Martha anymore. A brash high school boy telephoned her at home, asking
her for a date. Smiling with pride and hope, she asked Dr. West. He said
no. Her smile faded while he tried to explain why she was too young to
go out on her first date, why she wasn't like other girls.

 

 

"Daddy, I can't believe I'm only three years old."

 

 

What problems we create, Dr. West thought in anguish, bringing children
into the world. Alone he thought:
No, my bringing my children to Berkeley
was what caused the problems. On the Boothia Peninsula, they would have
grown up at the same rate as other children there and entered smoothly
into a simpler life as Eskimos.

 

 

But his children couldn't go back and squat in frigid tents gnawing at
seal bones. "They don't even speak Eskimo. They're -- Americans."

 

 

 

 

Marthalik and Steve seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth.
Dr. West had finally shown the police Marthalik's note, the Missing Persons
Bureau had what seemed a good way of tracing her, but found no record of
her. If Steve had taken her back to the Boothia Peninsula, Dr. West was
sure he would have heard about it. Dozens of eager-beaver ethnologists,
gynecologists, social workers and professional journalists had entered
the former Sanctuary. Dr. West's own first-person article had been
purchased and rewritten by