The Eskimo Invasion (8 page)

 

 

When they finally reached the cover of the next promontory, Dr. West
mentally was berating himself.
That damned Eskimo almost took away my
rifle. I failed to learn anything from him except what a treacherous --
No, I learned there's plenty to tell when I make Peterluk talk.

 

 

"I'm not through with him!" Dr. West muttered in English, looking at
Edwardluk and wondering what this smiling savage would tell Marthalik.
That I ran? The hell with it! She loves me. She'll understand.

 

 

Dr. West looked back where the promontory of the Burned Place, of the Navel
of the World, already was hidden by the next projecting point.
That crazy
Peterluk, inside his greasy head is what happened in this Sanctuary.

 

 

Trying to short-cut across the bay ice while the wind was shifting,
Edwardluk finally had to admit they were cut off from shore. "Soon-soon
we see our camp."

 

 

Day after day, Edwardluk led them south, east, north, west among the open
leads, the cliffs always visible on their left hand. Far to the right
gleamed ice islands. Beyond like gray mist lay a real island. "Over there,"
Edwardluk laughed cheerfully, "Peterluk says whitemen. Guard Station."

 

 

Dr. West was too tired to answer. In this continuous ice glare, his eyes
were killing him. His dark glasses weren't enough protection from this
needle-sharp brightness as his body weakened. His sighting eye blurred
so much he missed his one shot at a seal. Each day Edwardluk failed to
harpoon a seal, Dr. West's hungry stomach tightened and his temper grew
shorter but he tried to act cheerful, at least half as cheerful as Edwardluk.

 

 

Vaguely, Dr. West thought eight or ten days had passed as they struggled
toward the cliffs, parallel to the cliffs, below the cliffs, along the
slippery ice foot with the sea gurgling below. In all that time Edwardluk
seemed as strong as ever, and as cheerful.
The man is a saint
, Dr. West
thought with exhaustion.

 

 

From the one seal Edwardluk had managed to kill somehow, Edwardluk ate
little. "You big man. You need to eat more." But Edwardluk insisted on
feeding the dogs. "So few dogs, so many of us."

 

 

One blinding day there were distant shouts. Children ran to meet them.

 

 

"Where is my wi -- Where is Marthalik?"

 

 

"She coming. We run faster," they laughed, "faster than your wife."

 

 

Dr. West's face cracked in a chapped smile as he finally recognized Marthalik
jogging toward him. Surprisingly, she ran as heavily as a little hippo,
he thought, and stumbled to meet her. With joy he squeezed her to him.
He thought they had been separated more than two weeks. Feeling her belly
pressing against him as he nuzzled her hair, he clasped her swollen waist.

 

 

My god! he thought in shock.
She's developed some sort of gigantic
fast-growing watery tumor -- in just two weeks.
She had swelled up like
a balloon. He didn't want to frighten her, but he'd have to take her
Outside. To get help, first he'd have to cross all that ice to the Guard
Station on the gray island. He'd have to get an aircraft, a gynecologist,
get her to a hospital. In the month since he first saw Marthalik kneeling
naked in the tent she'd swelled up like --

 

 

Inside the blessed dimness of the tent, Marthalik giggled proudly.
"This person is going to have a baby."

 

 

Dr. West didn't want to contradict her. There was no use frightening her yet.
He laid his hand on her belly. He couldn't feel the baby kicking. Two weeks
ago when he left her, she had been nicely plump. Before he left, he thought
perhaps she had put on some weight during those two weeks while they were
making love, but even if she'd been a few months pregnant then, such a
suddenly advanced pregnancy now was physiologically impossible.
Got to
get her to a hospital.
In exhaustion on the sleeping platform, Dr. West
lay resting his head against her while she whispered so happily to him.

 

 

He was awakened by the knocking of floor stones being moved, by the
scraping of gravel. Marthalik and her mother both were on their knees,
digging a shallow pit in the floor of the tent. As he sat up, he stared
at Marthalik lining the basin-sized hole in the gravel with a caribou
skin, her body jerking as if with surges of pain.

 

 

My god. This has gone too far. How can I explain to her about a false
pregnancy? Surely her mother knows a pregnancy takes nine long months --
Dr. West's thoughts trailed off.

 

 

Marthalik was kneeling above the hole when her mother bent behind her
with the stone knife. As Dr. West opened his mouth to cry out and lunged
forward, her mother sawed up at the seam of Martbalik's fur pants between
her legs.

 

 

"Eh!" the mother laughed, with her hands tearing the seam open, her own
young face gleaming at Dr. West. "She is your wife. -- This person believes
more sons are born if the father helps."

 

 

Like a sleepwalker, Dr. West knelt beside his wife. Gynecology was not
his specialty. The mother pushed him over behind Marthalik. "Put your
strong arms around her. Higher! On top of your son, help push him out."

 

 

He felt Marthalik's contractions.

 

 

Matching his rhythm to hers, Dr. West went through the motions of pressing
down his spread hands. He was afraid to press hard. Marthalik never moaned.
Feeling more and more tired, Dr. West felt like moaning on and on.

 

 

Exhausted, Dr. West heard a small mewing sound beneath them, and the two
women were chattering happily. Dr. West lay down. The slippery baby gave
one loud cry as Marthalik's mother bit through the umbilical cord. She
knotted it while Dr. West worriedly watched, realizing any interference
from him simply might hurt their feelings. Happily Marthalik licked her
baby clean. Proudly, Marthalik smiled down at Dr. West: "You have a hunter!"

 

 

Cradling her baby out of sight inside her parka, Marthalik crouched beside
the seal carcass. With one hand she tore loose a great chunk of fat and meat.

 

 

"You must eat," she said, seriously peering at Dr. West's face. "You are
tired. But this is best piece."

 

 

Dr. West grinned, taking the meat and putting it aside. He helped her up
onto the sleeping platform.

 

 

"This person is a little bit tired from scraping seal skins this morning,"
she murmured, snuggling beside him under the caribou skin and lovingly
stroking his neck. "This person wants to thank you -- "

 

 

While she slept beside him, Dr. West lay on his back with his son
squirming on his bare chest inside his parka. Encouraged by Dr. West's
finger, this strong little hunter even managed to raise his head.

 

 

"My name is Joe, Joseph," Dr. West whispered, grinning. "Your name should
be Speedy."

 

 

Exploring, Dr. West stroked with his finger around the rim of the baby's
ear. In the cartilage on the top he could feel the little bump, and on
the other ear the same. Proudly he fingered his own ear. "That's a West
family trait. A dominant genetic characteristic."

 

 

Without waking his wife, he fingered the rim of her ear, which was
smoothly rounded, no cartilaginous bump.
I doubt any of these Eskimos
have that characteristic so -- nine months or one month --
"You speedy
little devil, you are my son."

 

 

The terrible global significance of what he'd just experienced had not hit
him yet.

 

 

Turning his head toward the lamp, he saw Marthalik's mother was suckling
her own new baby. This baby must have been born while Edwardluk and he
were on their journey to the Burned Place. "How many days old?" he whispered.

 

 

She held up one hand, spreading her fingers and thumb. Five days. Her baby
squirmed strongly, getting a better grip.

 

 

Dr. West was no pediatric specialist, but he thought her baby appeared very
fat and sturdy for only five days of feeding. "How long does it take --
inside?"

 

 

"To make a baby?" The woman smiled at him as if he were stupid or something.
"Perhaps a woman begins when the moon is thin. After the moon is fat and
becomes thin again, a woman has a baby."

 

 

"All women?"

 

 

"Of course, all women. Are whitewomen so different?"

 

 

Dr. West closed his eyes.
Who is more right? Why should it take nine
months?
He thought of hospital premies who emerged fairly successfully
after five months. They weren't really ready. But why not a full-term
baby in five months? Or four months, three months, two months, one month?
Nine months must have been normal for hundreds of thousands of years.
Prehistorically it may have become most advantageous for survival millions
of years ago when species of manlike animals and their environments were
so different.

 

 

Why nine months? He knew that many mammals have much shorter gestation
periods. Growth from fertilized ovum to embryo to fetus to fully formed
baby could proceed more rapidly than nine months, he pondered, if the
prehistorically programmed hormone signals proceeded faster and more
efficiently.

 

 

How do I know? I've just seen it demonstrated. My son is here wiggling
strongly on my chest.

 

 

Smiling at that perfect little red face, Dr. West thought that part of a
nine-month gestation period must be a waste of time anyway, particularly
during the early embryonic stages.
How much growth-energy does a
human embryo waste while growing its tail and then absorbing it again?
"And our embryonic gills -- ridiculous. Obsolete recapitulation."

 

 

A one-month gestation period really is more logical from a uterine
standpoint, he thought. Approximately once a month an ovum descends a
Fallopian tube toward the uterus, and the walls of the uterus thicken in
preparation. If the ovum isn't fertilized, fails to attach itself, the
uterus sloughs off a bloody discharge which is a signal of failure.
The womb is unfulfilled and its menstrual flow simply reveals a wasted
month, a physiological failure, an inefficiency of the civilized female,
he thought to himself, grinning. Ovarian efficiency would mean a baby
every month.

 

 

For we Homo sapiens, a nine-month gestation period may have been one
of our prehistoric survival advantages, he thought, when we were in
competition with other manlike species. We don't know how long was the
extinct Neanderthal woman's gestation period? Or Peking woman's? Nine
months happened to be a characteristic of our winning species long ago.

 

 

But conditions on Earth now are so different in the same competition
for food and living space, he thought. Perhaps people with a one-month
gestation period will have the advantage?

 

 

Not unless they have food, he thought, worriedly looking down at his
sleeping wife. Her lips were moving, smiling in her dream.

 

 

Like the rest of us, they can't understand or admit they're breeding
toward catastrophe, he thought unhappily. To save them from starvation
this winter they'll need food and other help from outside this so-called
Sanctuary.

 

 

His snow-burned eyes blurred. What should I do first?

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. POLAR BEAR!

 

 

Snowblindness stalked him like a spectral white bear. Through his Arctic
sunglasses, Dr. Joe West's eyes winced. His forehead ached from the
penetrating white glare.

 

 

Across the dazzling ice, shadow-shapes of children and squatty men romped
on all fours. They were pretending to he bears, roaring and giggling as
the bears devoured the children. Watching from their summer parkas with
hoods turned back, the horde of swollen women exposed their squinting
babies to the Arctic sun. Dr. West's eyes pulsed uncomfortably in
the glare.

 

 

He must leave soon and travel fast before his eyes betrayed him. His eyes
seemed weaker every day. He had to leave, he thought. Escape still seemed
too strong a word.

 

 

"Today we go," Dr. West said (asked).

 

 

"Soon-soon we go," Edwardluk agreed pleasantly; his was the only dog team
in the encampment. "The wind will change. This bad ice will be better
tomorrow. We will go."

 

 

"Each day you say that." Dr. West felt trapped in a morass of happy promises
and no action.

 

 

"Eh-eh," Edwardluk laughed, politely agreeing. "The ice will be better.
Your eyes will be better if you stay inside the tent with Marthalik.
Each day we are more all-the-same with you, and you will like us more.
In the winter the ice will be safer ."

 

 

"I like you now." Dr. West tried not to raise his voice. "We must travel
now. As soon as we reach the whitemen, I'll tell them how much you helped
me. The airplanes will drop much food for this camp. We must go now, before
the ice is worse."

 

 

"Eh-eh." Edwardluk unexpectedly stood up as if he were about to do something
besides talk. "Soon as we kill seals to feed dogs, we go!"

 

 

Edwardluk trotted toward his tent, and Dr. West followed with long strides,
unable to believe this sudden activity.

 

 

"First we fill our bellies." Edwardluk flopped down on an ancient sealskin
and shouted impressively for his wife to cut meat. "Then we hunt seals
together like brothers," Edwardluk sighed happily. "Good dreams will
protect us from the bad ice out there. Good dreams will help you like
us better tomorrow." With downcast eyes, Edwardluk smiled like a shy
little boy and handed Dr. West a thawing glob of seal liver as if it
were a valentine. "Best piece for you."