The Eskimo Invasion (9 page)

 

 

"Do you think I don't like you? Is that it? Because I am going away?
But I will return with help for all of you. And I will return for Marthalik
and my son. We are of one body. You understand I will return?"

 

 

"Eh." Edwardluk's smiling eyes narrowed as his massive jaw crunched through
the partially frozen meat. Gulping, he swallowed and crunched and gulped.
His eyes closed. His head sagged down. As easily as a tired child, he slept.

 

 

Dr. West's thin hands tightened on his recoilless rifle.
These people
are so damned lovable, it would be impossible to threaten him. My rifle
is useless against him.

 

 

Dr. West's contradictory grin, which also made him attractive to women
who were more selective than Eskimo women, his uncertain grin cracked his
chapped lips.
If I am a prisoner
, he cheerfully thought his way into
a semantic trap,
I can escape. If I am NOT a prisoner, by definition
I cannot escape.
He laughed.
Damn! That's a neurotic thought. I've got
to escape, I mean, take a leave of absence.

 

 

He stared down at the chunk of meat which was attracting flies to Edwardluk's
small hand. It was amazing how these people lacked the gargantuan appetites
of other Eskimos. And there was the little matter of babies, their one-month
gestation period; even his own son was conceived and born in a month.
Too many babies. There were too many small children, tragically more
than the environment could support this winter, he thought.
I've got
to hurry back for Marthalik and my son.

 

 

If the ice out there weren't so bad, he would take her with him. He would
take her with him, but when he surrendered at the Guard Station they would
arrest him, probably humiliate him, and he didn't want Marthalik to see that.
To her, he was a big man, a strong man, a lover.
Marthalik, Marthalik,
if I don't leave now, I may never leave.
His smile becoming unhappy, he
stared a long time at the tent where she was drowsing. Finally he looked
at the snoring Edwardluk and the sleeping dogs. Yesterday, when he tried
to order these people to help him prepare the sled, giggling, they had
diverted him from leaving. Marthalik had rubbed urgently against him,
peering up with sweet narrow eyes, urging him to come back into the tent,
ducking under his suddenly waving arms of anger. He'd never been angry
at her before, and it had shocked him, shamed him.

 

 

In her hood, the wrinkled face of the baby had flopped back and forth,
crying. His son! From Dr. West's inexplicable rage, the people had averted
their faces like hurt children. Yesterday his determination to leave had
dissolved in embarrassment, remorse, the restfully dark tent and gentle
whispering with Marthalik. Yesterday. Today.

 

 

In the white glare his eyelids itched. Dr. West knew if he was going
to travel he already should have left.
These women, these incredibly
wonderful women. I've got to escape now!
Simultaneously, he felt like
laughing and crying.
Marthalik, how I love you.
He did not look at
her tent. Perhaps lying on the caribou skins she was nursing his son.

 

 

His forehead wrinkling, Dr. West looked in the opposite direction, out
of the Sanctuary to where the Guard Station was supposed to be. Beyond
the shore ice and the dark crack gleamed the veined sea ice with distant
islands glittering. They were icebergs.
God help me! I have to cross
that!
Edwardluk had told him the Sanctuary Guard Station must be on
the gray smudge on the horizon. It was the whitemen's island. He looked
back at Edwardluk so happily sleeping. Angrily Dr. West thought:
I can
travel there alone -- if the dogs are harnessed to the sled, by you --
Flies buzzed above Edwardluk's sleeping smile, and his massive jaw
moved. He was dreaming. These people, Marthalik, all of them -- Dr. West
marveled how animated their faces were when they slept, as if their
dreams were more real than reality.
Surely I can outthink Edwardluk. I'm the one who should be pulling the
strings. I'm not his puppet. He should be mine, if I have any brains left
at all.

 

 

Quietly, Dr. West picked up his sleeping bag. He slid his arm through
the sling of his recoilless rifle. He hefted his pack. Heavy-laden, he
started walking across the ice toward the distant icebergs in the polar
strait. He hoped he was setting a trap for Edwardluk. He hoped Edwardluk
would not be angry. Perhaps Edwardluk would laugh, "Eh-eh, we go!"

 

 

With each step, the silicone rubber membranes in Dr. West's boots exhaled
fog. Yet he waded with dry feet through shimmering puddles of meltwater
across the thawing sea ice. Like a giant, he strode over eroding stream
beds on the ice. Fresh water trickled toward dark leads where the sea
surged, where seals could rise.

 

 

This summer ice was rotting, dangerous. He opened the vents in his outer
parka because to perspire also was dangerous. "Bad, bad-bad," Edwardluk
had said, "for whiteman to walk alone on sea ice."

 

 

Then you come rescue me, Dr. West thought and walked on and on.

 

 

The icebergs seemed no closer, but when Dr. West looked back he saw that
the encampment had miniaturized into a cluster of dots.

 

 

Like a midget, a midge, a dark speck, Dr. West plodded endlessly across
the flat sea ice. He hoped Edwardluk was watching, massive jaw beginning
to sag with worry. Dr. West was gambling that Edwardluk would grunt with
decision, hitch the dogs to the sled and come out after him to rescue him.

 

 

"You will, if you truly like me." Dr. West's pack-straps sawed into his
shoulders. His feet plodded on and on across the sea ice. He squinted
at the sky although he had given up all hope of being arrested, rescued
by a Cultural Sanctuary copter. The only way of carrying his warning
message to the Outside seemed to be through hopeful physical exertion,
plus guile if Edwardluk fell into his trap.

 

 

Above the peak of the iceberg, a flock of dark fulmars whirled. Around
the berg gleamed broken ice and dark water where sea birds could feed.
Dr. West was surprised that he did not sight a single seal. He circled
behind the berg, setting the psychological trap.

 

 

Now he was out of view from the camp. Dr. West hoped Edwardluk was harnessing
the dogs.
If his friendship is genuine, he'll come to rescue me. if not,
he'll come to recapture me.
But there was a third possibility. Edwardluk
simply might sleep. But Marthalik would awaken, asking: "Where is my
husband?" She would awaken Edwardluk quickly.

 

 

From his pack, Dr. West took out a pad of caribou skin and sat down on it.
Rifle propped against his thigh, he waited. The trap was set for Edwardluk.
And he waited.

 

 

Cold rose through the ancient caribou skin pad into Joe West's haunches.
Restlessly, he remembered his Alaskan Eskimos had used bear skin pads
because they were thicker. But these Boothia people owned no polar bear
skins. They said they never killed bears, and Dr. West was inclined to
believe them.

 

 

The cold enfolded him. From the corner of his eye, a small part of the
white background trotted across his field of vision. It was an Arctic fox,
plume-tailed and oblivious.

 

 

Suddenly the white fox stared at him or past him. Dr. West felt a creeping
urge to look behind his own back. He remembered that the Eskimos refer
to the white fox as the bear's dog. On the sea ice, the fox follows the
polar bear, dependent on the bear's kills. The Eskimos say: "Fox on ice,
look behind you quick, is bear."

 

 

Turning his head, Dr. West squinted at each white mound and fuzzy shadow.
At point-blank range, he knew a polar bear would appear more cream-colored
than the ice. A black spot would be the nose of the polar bear. The Eskimos
say: "Bear hold white paw over nose, bear gone, eh-eh. Bear still there."

 

 

"Ha!" Dr. West shouted, standing up. The immense white background remained
immobile. From the white mounds, a polar bear's head did not rise weasellike
on its long neck.

 

 

"Spooked myself. These people talk too much about Grandfather Bear."
Dr. West twisted his chilled face in another grin. He didn't want to
remember Edwardluk's wide-eyed face above the seal oil lamp.

 

 

Like earlier Eskimos, these people entertained themselves with night
stories. His eyes closing in ecstasy, Edwardluk had grunted like a bear.
"Grandfather of the sky ," Edwardluk's suddenly hoarse voice had croaked.
"Sharpen your hunger. We -- your children -- prepare for you.
Open your jaws!"

 

 

Dr. West blinked his eyes and shivered. If their grandfather was a
bear-spirit, that was all right with Dr. West. Who was he to deride
anyone's totems or religious beliefs? But after thirty-six days, what
grated his nerves was the continuously nonanthropomorphic teleology of
their night stories. These people had things backward, he thought.

 

 

The mythology of other Eskimos presented bear-spirits as merely helping
or hindering man. Man was the end-purpose.

 

 

But in these people's stories, the bear seemed the end-purpose. The people
helped the bear. The people prepared the seals, the rocks, the airplanes,
for the bear. This was not the bear on the ice. This was a bear in the sky.
The purpose of all life seemed to funnel into the bear.

 

 

What their bear symbolized, Dr. West had not found out. But he suspected
that a real bear, a hungry polar bear, would make little distinction between
a prone man and a seal, and he remained standing, clutching his rifle.
The nonappearance of seals in the open water around this iceberg suggested
that a real bear was near.

 

 

Dr. West's eyes watered with the strain of trying to see everything
and distinguishing less and less in the white glow of the ice. The cold
soaked up through his feet. His leg bones became conductors of the cold.
Sometimes he stood motionless, forgetting to stamp his feet. His vision
and time blurred.

 

 

The fulmars cried out in alarm and whirled dark wings upward into the
white sky, and Dr. West's eyes widened. He turned. He laughed with relief.
A line of black specks across the ice became dogs pulling a distant sled.

 

 

Dr. West sat down on his caribou skin pad, but his heart was thudding
with suppressed excitement, and he stood up. Peering, suddenly he cursed.

 

 

There was more than one man approaching. A man trotted ahead of the sled.
The dark bulge on the sled was a second man, probably Edwardluk. Far behind,
a third man plodded over the ice. Three men was more than Dr. West had
bargained for, even though he had the only gun.

 

 

By the time they were close, Dr. West still had not decided what to do.

 

 

"He was watching you!" Edwardluk shouted happily. "Up there he was
watching you."

 

 

Dr. West looked back and up at the translucent iceberg. If Edwardluk was
referring to an actual bear, it was invisible to Dr. West. He squinted
at the dogs, who calmly lay down. They had not scented a bear.

 

 

"Bear seen us coming." Edwardluk made a circling motion with his wide face
and stubby nose, and Dr. West supposed the bear had circled out of sight
behind the berg.

 

 

"We come to carry back your seals," Edwardluk suggested innocently,
smiling. "This person told Marthalik you were hunting, and you would
return soon -- perhaps with a seal."

 

 

The second man stood smiling at the sky. The third man still was approaching.
They seemed unarmed. In their fur parkas, they reminded Dr. West of three
childhood teddy bears. They had been kind and hospitable to Dr. West,
and now he couldn't quite bring himself to point the rifle. He didn't
want to threaten them with harsh words which would bring hurt expressions
to their childlike faces.

 

 

He hesitated to ask Edwardluk to go with him outright. Edwardluk would
invent so many excuses for returning to the camp, and that is what would
happen; Dr. West was afraid he would go back with them, defeated. Smiling
like a skull, he tried to conceal his growing anger.

 

 

"There is a dead seal under the edge of the ice," Dr. West blurted,
pointing with his rifle barrel and walking behind their backs to the
sled. Their three harpoons still were lashed to the sled.

 

 

"Eh, eh," Edwardluk's voice agreed politely to this lie, "there is a seal,
but my eyes don't see it yet."

 

 

Dr. West's shivering hands were tying his pack and sleeping bag on the
sled with fumbling speed.

 

 

"Ha!" Dr. West shouted at the dogs as he flopped on the sled, and to
his surprise and relief the dogs lurched forward before he could use
the whip. They dashed past the startled face of the third man. Back to
camp was where the dogs were hurrying. Slashing the whip with all his
strength, Dr. West managed to turn the leader toward the ice horizon.

 

 

The sled passed in an arc through the shouting range of the running men,
but Dr. West managed to whip the dogs away, the sled weaving a snakelike
course beyond the iceberg, with Edwardluk running far behind.

 

 

I have escaped, Dr. West thought inaccurately. The terrible global
significance of what he had observed about these people, he had not
fully analyzed. Mainly he was fleeing from his contradictory desire to
go back to them.
Marthalik, Marthalik.