The Eskimo Invasion (26 page)

 

 

While the children scampered around him, Dr. West walked stiffly to meet
the Mountie, who was striding up from the beach in a swarm of mosquitos.

 

 

"Sir -- I recognize -- you are Dr. Joseph West." The Mountie managed to
seem glad to see him. "As you predicted, sir, we've a -- rapidly growing
community." The Mountie had a warm handshake. "It is -- it is an honor,
sir, to meet you. Sir, I've always considered you as the -- the discoverer
of these -- people. A pleasure to meet you. Why don't we continue on
to my cabin. Your flight, walking from the lake, you must be tired and
hungry, sir." He reached to relieve Dr. West of the weight of his pack.

 

 

"Thank you," Dr. West muttered with embarrassment, allowing the Mountie
to take the surprisingly heavy pack.

 

 

For the moment, the Mountie was too courteous to ask if he had a landing
permit. No doubt the politician, LaRue, had warned the R.C.M.P. to be
on the lookout for Dr. West.

 

 

Inside the cabin, mosquitos hummed across plywood walls lined with books,
stereo components and photosatellite maps of the Boothia Peninsula.
Evidently the Mountie expected a permanent assignment here.

 

 

"Here's my landing permit." Dr. West handed it over with a belligerent
smile. "Surprised?"

 

 

"No, sir. Headquarters radioed me to be expecting your aircraft."
The Mountie acted like a stolid type who would not expose his surprise
even if a little green man from Uranus four-lettered on his R.C.M.P. hat.

 

 

During tea and mosquitos, Dr. West opened his heavy pack. He lifted out a
tape recorder, and a strobe light with the largest size battery pack, and
a bulky battery-operated 16mm movie camera. Due to efficient forethought,
all this equipment used the same size cylindrical interchangeable batteries.
None of the equipment would work, because each battery enclosed and concealed
an aerosol spray can.

 

 

Dr. West glanced from the tape recorder to the Mountie's mildly interested
expression. "I'm looking for Eevvaalik, that old woman whose husband
was jailed," Dr. West announced, and the Mountie's eyelids flickered.

 

 

A year ago, Cultural Sanctuary Guards would have kept Dr. West out,
but their replacements, the R.C.M.P., evidently approved letting him in
for some reason.

 

 

During the winter, the Canadian Parliament had listened with increasingly
affirmative nods to impassioned attacks by members of LaRue's party
against the whole Cultural Sanctuary concept. No one hesitated to speak
ill of the dead Director, Hans Suxbey. As Hans Suxbey had anticipated
in the Committee Room when he shot himself, Parliament overwhelmingly
refused to pass their annual appropriation for the Eskimo Cultural
Sanctuary. "Starvation camp -- Concentration camp -- Free our starving
Eskimos -- Eliminate the Sanctuary."

 

 

When carry-over funds were exhausted, the Sanctuary Guards had been
withdrawn, and replaced by Mounties and smiling politicians,
Life
photographers and amazed gynecologists. Disturbed Family Allowance
administrators had landed on LaRue Lake and plodded across the tundra
to gawk at the multiplying Esks.

 

 

The Canadian Government's Family Planning nurses already reported that
the Esks showed discouragingly negative attitudes toward customary birth
control techniques.

 

 

When the rumor reached Ottawa that Family Planning nurses were injecting
Esk women with a six-months ovulation delay hormone and assuring the women
it was a flu shot, there was more outraged oratory from old Etienne LaRue
in Parliament. "This, it is not only murder of unborn spirits. It is
government deception." The nurses were withdrawn.

 

 

But Dr. West suspected the bureaucrats still were holding their fingers
up to test the winds of change.

 

 

In Canada, from one side blew the dinosaur's breath of old Etienne LaRue,
opposing any population limitation for the Esks or anyone else. Whether
the Esks might vote for his party was unimportant, he said, smiling
because the birth control shots proved ineffective.

 

 

On the other side were increasingly disquieted administrators and
politicians responsible for providing the food, clothing and well-being
of the rapidly increasing Esks. Unless something sensible were done,
Canadian income taxes would have to increase.

 

 

"You're quite lucky, sir," the Mountie was saying, "to locate old Eevvaalik.
She was brought to this camp two weeks ago. Our doctor tells me she is
quite ill, TB."

 

 

The thought flashed through Dr. West's mind, when he fled again from the
Boothia Peninsula, he should take Eevvaalik back to civilization with
him. Kidnapping? Three years ago, when Dr. West had taken Marthalik and
the bound and growling Peterluk, Eevvaalik had refused to go. Now would
she harshly scream and fight and cough? This might be his last chance.
In California, he could get professional help in interrogating her. Depth
hypnosis aided by pentothal injections might expose what Eevvaalik claimed
she could not bear to remember. Unreasonably, sometimes she claimed all
the Esks were her children. But what had created the first Esk? Locked
in her greasy head --

 

 

"This way, sir." As the Mountie led him through the aimless crowds of
smiling Esks toward old Eevvaalik's tent, Dr. West's heart leaped.

 

 

For a moment he'd thought he glimpsed Marthalik. Then he saw this was
another Esk girl who looked like his wife. He felt like crying.

 

 

"In this tent," the Mountie was saying. "Eevvaalik?"

 

 

The tent was Canadian Army surplus and looked it. Eevvaalik crouched in
the dim corner beside her strange ceramic seal oil lamp, empty. Dr. West
unslung his heavy pack.

 

 

"Eh-eh," she laughed, immediately recognizing him. "It is The-Whiteman-
Who-Was-Bitten-by-a-Dog." Coughing, she gasped: "Tell this person of
her husband -- "

 

 

"Peterluk has much to eat. He has a warm place to sleep," Dr. West answered.
"The Government would not let me go in to see him in the beautiful
white tower."

 

 

"A warm place?" Eevvaalik said hopefully. "This person wishes to be
there also."

 

 

At this, the Mountie left the tent.

 

 

Dr. West smiled at Eevvaalik as he knelt beside her and felt her pulse.
In a way he was sorry that her weakness had drained away her crusty
independence. Probably she was the only real Eskimo in the camp.
Mosquitos whined.

 

 

"You would like it in Ottawa," he said, meaning California, beginning
to think she would go with him to the plane with no trouble at all.

 

 

"Eh-eh," she laughed. "What is this warm place called?"

 

 

"The New Ottawa Reformation Center. They say each person has his own igloo
in the tower." Dr. West laid his hand on her brow, wishing he had brought
a thermometer.

 

 

"Peterluk needs a woman," Eevvaalik laughed. "This person will be stronger
soon." She slapped her bony chest. "This person can still do it with Peterluk
the way he likes." She managed a feeble leer at Dr. West. "So you take this
person to her husband."

 

 

"Soon-soon," Dr. West sighed, regretting he had not even brought a sleeping
injection from his medical bag, now seeming so far away in the plane on
LaRue Lake. "Sleep."

 

 

Ignoring the mosquitos wheezing in the tent, leather-skinned old
Eevvaalik slept.

 

 

This tent seemed the only place where Dr. West could escape the thousands
of eyes. Swiftly, he opened the back of the tape recorder, took out the
batteries. Prying off the top of a cylindrical battery he removed a small
orange aerosol can labeled MOSQUITO SPRAY.

 

 

With his heavy-bladed hunting knife he dug hard-packed filth-clotted
gravel from the floor of the tent. He refilled the battery with gravel.
Jamming on the top, he fitted the battery back into the tape recorder.
By the time he had operated on all the batteries in the tape recorder,
in the battery pack for the strobe light, and in the battery-powered
camera, he had sixteen aerosol cans labeled MOSQUITO SPRAY.

 

 

He was sweating with haste and fright as he removed the rigidity boards
from the square pack, dovetailed the boards together, and opened the
little package of box nails. He hammered the box together using the
butt of his hunting knife. The outside of the box was stamped: MOSQUITO
SPRAY -- NEW YORK SAVE THE ESKIMOS DAY COMMITTEE -- 334, a nonexistent
but likely looking invoice number.

 

 

If he had planned all of this sooner, if he had made the terrible decision
earlier, Dr. West thought, he might have planted this box in the freight
car to Churchill on Hudson Bay or in the LST when it was being loaded.
He might have avoided this risk. But here he was.

 

 

Ahead of the Government's plan to resettle the Esks, he might have been
able to place these terrible cans in the next food shipment, and never
return here to the Boothia Peninsula. But here he was. "What makes me
do these things?"

 

 

It was as dim outside as it would ever be. The crazy orange sun was
looping down to the horizon and would rise without setting.

 

 

Dr. West withdrew his head back into the tent. With his expensively
worthless photographic equipment strewn on the gravel floor, he fitted
the wooden box containing the aerosol cans into his pack. Their spray
would not kill mosquitos.

 

 

As he tried to walk outside past hordes of playing children, they followed
him. Like Eskimo children they didn't keep regular sleeping hours. Here
it was midnight. They ran ahead of him toward a stack of unopened wooden
crates stamped: DEHYDRATED FREEZE-DRIED 218.

 

 

Children swarmed ahead of him onto the crates, giggling. Little girls
hummed and flapped their skinny arms.

 

 

My God, I can't really do it, Dr. West thought.
Let the Government
do it. They've got to, eventually.
But most Cana- dian economists
insisted their country was underpopulated. He thought of China, India
still increasing. And South America!

 

 

More disillusioning, in the U.S. during the 1970s when use of The Pill was
most widespread, the birthrate had tumbled down. Belatedly the Pentagon
became frantic because the future supply of scientists and soldiers was
diminishing in comparison with unfriendly countries whose birthrates
remained high.

 

 

U.S. economists became disturbed because industrial production had
been geared to a population growth rate of about 3% per year and
this slump to a 1 % population increase per year was leading into an
endless recession. Even the increased antiballistic missile spending
and overseas military exercises no longer were obscuring the gap between
immense production and lagging consumption. As unemployment increased,
the work week was shortened. As U.S. population growth slowed, there was
less active demand for cars and houses because there were fewer young
consumers because of The Pill. Formerly, half the population had been
under twenty-five years of age. Now the proportion of young people was
declining. Future consumers were lagging, failing to emerge because of
The Pill. The stock market continued to decline. Corporations geared
for continuous growth were frantically demanding more Government help,
more pump priming. As one of the least inhibited telecommentators put it:
"The opinion media must lead the massive educational program for mother
priming."

 

 

Four children became the minimum family size shown in television
advertisements.

 

 

Finally awakening, the Federal Government improved Income Tax deductions
to $1000 for the first child, another $1500 for the second, and $2000
for each additional child, plus the $1200 for husband and wife, so that
a man with five children on an income of under $10,000 was free from
income tax. New excise taxes increased the costs of birth control pills.
Newspaper publicity was given to patriotically large families.
The population growth rate began returning toward 3%, aided by the
Federal Family Allowance Bonuses which rewarded the parents with the
financial equivalent of a new car each time they produced a new baby.

 

 

Thus, in spite of the vast array of birth control methods available in
this richest country in the world, the patriotic U.S. population should
double during the next twenty-five years to a happily predicted 500 million
while the stock market skyrockets.

 

 

This rate of increase was tortoise-slow compared with the Esks.

 

 

"What got for us?" The roundly innocent face of an Esk boy peeked over
the supply crates close to Dr. West, and the suddenly grinning boy opened
his little hands; he was a clown.

 

 

"Nothing. Everything." Dr. West answered.

 

 

Laughing, all the children began jabbering at once. Their Modern Eskimo
dialect sounded clumsier somehow than Dr. West remembered of children
he talked with three years ago, before he carried off Marthalik.

 

 

Now these children were the next generation. With other Esks as models
for growing up, would each generation be more crudely hewn than the last?

 

 

Dr. West asked if any of them could read. He pointed to the marks on the
boxes. None of the children grasped what he meant. They didn't know about
-- reading.

 

 

Dr. West doubted they would have the opportunity to learn. They would
be adults in three years. How long would they live? No one knew yet.