The Eskimo Invasion (25 page)

The New Saturday Evening Post
. He used
all that money to pay bills. Before he could expand it to a book, a
professional journalist who "parachuted on the spot" had published a
book complete with ferocious attacks by hordes of spear-hurling Esks
and other nonsense. Dr. West's own manuscript dragged on, not completed.

 

 

In the three winters since Dr. West had carried Marthalik away from the
Boothia Peninsula, the Canadian Government had forestalled starvation
with larger and larger food deliveries.

 

 

"So their Public Health nurses still are having difficulty teaching family
planning. That's Canada's problem," Dr. West told Dr. Darwin. "I've enough
problems here. My kids -- Joe wants a car. Already he's talking about a
college education."

 

 

Dr. West was grossing $20,000 a year from his lectures. After paying
his share of rent, lights, janitorial services in the former furniture
warehouse, and miscellaneous expenses, such as printing of course outlines
and tests, he netted $16,000. This was about a plumber's take-home pay
in the continuous price-wage inflation. It was about what he would be
making if he started at the bottom again as an Assistant Prof at the
University of California.

 

 

"You keep talking about the satisfaction of teaching Undergrads," he
accused Dr. Darwin. "But at Free U. we lecture to such large classes
we have so little time for face-to-face two-way communication with
individuals. Teaching was more satisfying for me, I was doing more real
teaching, when I was a research professor at Cal working closely with
only a dozen grad students. That was real teaching, the ideal method of
education for both professor and student." He was restless. He felt the
world had passed him by. He dreamed of Marthalik.

 

 

Dr. West's biggest problem was Little Martha, who was not little.
His housekeeper snidely reported Martha was pregnant. Evidently someone
reported this to the Child Welfare Bureau, because a woman with bushy
eyebrows appeared with a sternly satisfied expression and a photostat
of Little Martha's birth certificate. "This proves you're not a fit
father, Dr. West. Your daughter is only three years old, and she's
pregnant! You failed to give these little three-year-old children the
parental protection they deserve. You're not a fit parent."

 

 

At the hearing, Dr. West lost his temper and his six children. "I tried!
You think you can do better?" he shouted up at the judge. "Little Martha
will have another baby in a month. What will you do? Put the baby out
for adoption?"

 

 

"Please sit down," the judge asked gently.

 

 

"In a few years," Dr. West shouted, "how will you feed their thousand
grandchildren?"

 

 

"Dr. West, I should hold you in contempt of court. If you cause further
disturbance in this courtroom, I will order you held for a psychiatric
examination."

 

 

Alone in his terribly empty apartment, Dr. West smashed the mirror.
He kicked the bed until it collapsed. Sitting on the floor, he thought of
Hans Suxbey, founder and Director of the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary. During
Suxbey's last appeal before the Parliamentary Investigating Committee,
when it became evident they would recommend against any future appropriation
for the Sanctuary and that they would recommend abolishing the Eskimo
Cultural Sanctuary, Hans Suxbey had lifted a revolver from his coat
pocket. While old LaRue sat like a grinning dinosaur, unafraid, and
other Members of Parliament tipped over backward in their chairs in
their haste to leave the room, Hans Suxbey had blown out his own brains.

 

 

Dr. West went to his bureau drawer. Opening it he took out Marthalik's
note, smudged and crumpled from reading and rereading.
My husband
,
she had dictated in Steve's handwriting,
this person loves you. This
person has gone away with Steve. It is hoped the operation will help
this person have more babies.

 

 

"That's all you wanted, Marthalik, to bring more babies into the world."
Dr. West walked toward the kitchen. "More children to be penalized because
they are different from humans. More and more children. Until there are
too many Esks for us whitemen to feed, then the anger of the whitemen
will rise against the Esks."

 

 

He opened the refrigerator. "We humans are descended from savage animals.
You Esks are meek, multiplying toward misery. So who will inherit the Earth?"

 

 

Yesterday the expedition to Boothia from the State University at Palo
Alto had published their preliminary report. They had counted 4000 Esks.
Statistical analysis of the birth rate, which was in excess of 10,000
per thousand women per year, the maturation rate to breeding age, three
years; and death rate, a few statistically insignificant accidental deaths;
and present age distribution, approximately 70% of the population were
children two calendar years of age or less, had caused the eager geniuses
from Palo Alto to estimate that the Esk population was doubling every year.

 

 

"Multiplying into misery, Marthalik," Dr. West picked up a crayola left
by one of his children on the kitchen linoleum, and he savagely scrawled
on the ivory-toned wall:

 

 

1 -- this year -- 4000 Esks
2 -- next year -- 8000
3 -- 16,000
4 -- 32,000
5 -- 64,000
6 -- 128,000
7 -- 256,000
8 -- 512,000
9 -- 1,024,000
10 -- 2,048,000

 

 

"That's not many Esks ten years from now, only two million or so Esks in
a world population with nine billion humans," he laughed savagely. "But
the Canadian economy would rupture itself trying to feed that many Esks.
Canada will try to get rid of them and not by means of mass sterilization
or genocide. Canadians are too civilized. They'll try to export their
problem. The world can absorb two million Esks so easily."

 

 

Defacing the ivory-tinted wall of the kitchen he he scrawled:

 

 

11 years from now 4,096,000
12 8,192,000
13 16,384,000
14 32,768,000
15 65,536,000
16 131,072,000
17 262,144,000
18 524,288,000
19 1,048,576,000
20 2,097,152,000

 

 

"Only two billion, give or take ninety million, twenty years from now.
That's controllable, that's feedable, only two billion Esks against a human
population of twelve billion. Surely forced birth control, machine guns
and starvation can administer Esk family planning, maintaining the
Esk population at a useful two billion cheap laborers throughout the
world. But let us hope human politicians are sufficiently intelligent,
because the doubling process involves a subjective deception. As long
as the total numbers are much smaller than you are, you can laugh it
off. They seem small."

 

 

On the wall above the sink he scrawled with his black crayola:

 

 

21 years from now 4 billion
22 8 billion
23 16 billion

 

 

"My god, what happened?" he laughed to his imaginary audience. "All of
a sudden they outnumber us and there wouldn't be nearly enough food for
humans plus Esks, or even for Esks plus humans. But we will have slaughtered
the Esks by then."

 

 

He thought of Little Joe, not so little, waving goodbye as the Child Welfare
lady urged him into the electric bus, and Little Martha peering wistfully
out the bus window. Dr. West's throat hurt as if he were going to cry.

 

 

"My god, with what birth control methods will they torment all the millions
of Esks of the future? What of all the Esks who have intermarried with the
human population because Esks are lovable people. Whom do we sterilize,
whom do we push into the ovens of Auschwitz?"

 

 

"My children are mine as well as Marthalik's." He had read in that
morning's paper how the food barges were on their way north. "No one
will starve. No one will suffer -- yet."

 

 

Summer was melting the Arctic ice, and in the Canadian Parliament the
newly elected M.P., LaRue the Younger, had won his debate. Before winter,
the Canadian Government would resettle the overcrowded Esks throughout
the North. "They'll open our Frozen Frontier," LaRue had orated, "and
Canada needs more willing and cheerful laborers in the cities. Land of
the Future, Canada must grow!"

 

 

"And scatter the Esks throughout the Canadian population," Dr. West
muttered, "so that even the safest birth limitation bacteria could not
be used -- again. Marthalik? Dammit, where are you? Your children are
being doomed to misery, starvation and death!"

 

 

He kicked the refrigerator. Sweating, he opened its gleaming door.

 

 

From the refrigerator he took the polyethelene-wrapped glass tube and
stared at the gray culture medium within. With trembling hands he found
empty fruit jars in the base cabinet. In a big sauce pan he warmed gelatin
for a culture medium. His heart hammering, he opened the glass tube.

 

 

For hours he helped bacterial life awaken and multiply in spreading plaques
of life upon the gelatin within the fruit jars. "My god, look at those
little bastards multiplying whether they want to or not. Their population
must be doubling every hour."

 

 

Now he needed an ingeniously simple means of transporting and
disseminating the bacteria in the North.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. THE SPRAY CANS OF DEATH

 

 

Winging above the opened harbor ice, the immense flock of male sandpipers
crowded down on the thawing tundra. With menacing squeaks and dueling beaks,
the fragile sandpipers hopped at each other. Flurrying wings they battled
for nesting territories close to the tiny pond.

 

 

Too many sandpipers? Dr. Joe West rested beside his heavy pack and tried
to force his thoughts ahead to the Arctic bay, where the ragged tents
were crowding. A squeaking sandpiper fled past his boot. Dr. West's
imagination recoiled from the distant bay, which had become a harbor.
He stared into the tiny pond, where wriggling swarms of mosquito larva
already were pupating.

 

 

Already there was a bloody whine behind Dr. West's ear. He slapped the
back of his neck. "Dammit, I don't want to end up like a criminal --
even though I will be -- "

 

 

Through the mosquitos, he focused his binoculars against the bleak
natural harbor. "I don't want to be a martyr."

 

 

The distant growling of the tractor-truck trundling food cases out
of the beached LST was punctuated by a gunshot. Probably some bearded
amateur humanitarian shooting at a seagull! Dr. West glared through his
binoculars at the flamboyant amateur lettering across the hull of the
chartered landing ship. BOOTHIA PENINSULA OR BUST -- NEW YORK SAVE THE
ESKIMOS DAY COMMITTEE.

 

 

"No matter how many you feed there'll be more." Dr. West shook his head in
a haze of mosquitos and refocused his binoculars at the tent city rimming
the harbor like dirty snow. With its explosive rate of growth, those
canvas tents would spread all the way inland to this pond before -- !

 

 

Dr. West blinked. His nervous system tingled from surfacing childhood
guilt as he recognized through the binoculars, magnified and standing in
compressed perspective beside a distant plywood cabin, the uniformed man,
Mountie -- Police Inspector -- Canadian policeman -- cop, cop, cop!

 

 

On the surface, Dr. West knew the problem was how to distribute the
aerosol spray cans to the Esks without being traced. The depths of his
problem were more disturbing.

 

 

He had landed his float plane on newly named LaRue Lake, the long pond
located an hour's hike inland up the river through the boggy tundra.
No secrecy here. Two seaplanes and an amphibian already were tied up like
spiders, as if their pilots expected wind. For their fragile aircraft,
the lake was safer than the exposed bay. A grinning Esk had peered out of
a single tent, probably a guard for the planes. Many muddy boot prints
converged on deeper tracks, a trail left by all the airborne whitemen
who had hurried down the little river valley to the bay to inspect the
multiplying Esks.

 

 

Through his binoculars, Dr. West studied the cop -- the Mountie walking
away from the plywood cabin and its tall radio mast. Striding past
stacked supply crates, the Mountie moved down the beach toward the
bearded characters lolling in front of the LST.

 

 

Like a beached whale, the landing ship vomited the tractor-truck with
another load of food cases. Up beside the tents of the Esks, no one
seemed to be guarding the supplies. Perhaps during the past winter the
R.C.M.P. had discovered that the Esks were even more obedient, less
tempted to thievery than Eskimos. Dr. West frowned.

 

 

Hordes of Esk children were romping around the boxes. Dr. West could not
see any guards. He put away his binoculars.

 

 

Glancing at the vast Arctic sky, he hoisted his pack, heavy with the
disguised containers of aerosol spray. He plodded straight into the village.
Concealment was impossible anyway.