The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  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."

  "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.

  He clung to the sled undulating over the ice. The wonder of Marthalik! The dogs were running uncontrollably. The sled bucked over a pressure ridge. Marthalik, in her arms he had been so much more than he had ever been before. If he let go he would fall off the sled and go back. He laughed with bewilderment. It was these women who would be too much for the world.

  Up a steep pressure ridge he clung to the sled, and down. The sled runner jammed in the ice. It almost capsized as it abruptly stopped. His sunglasses slid down his nose.

  Blinking, Dr. West slid off the sled, hoisted the runner free and shouted at the dogs, who surged forward. Dr. West found himself loping behind the sled, trying to overtake it, running. He tripped, dislodging his glasses as he lunged through the blinding white glare.

  Squinting without his sunglasses, almost catching the sled as it skidded across a puddle of meltwater, he fell. Springing up, running harder and shouting angrily at the dogs, he had thought they would stop, but they were veering off to the left, and their loose gait accelerated to an excited rush as if they had scented a seal.

  His commanding shouts grew shrill. Desperately he ran a shorter course to head them off, but they were bounding t
oo fast, the lightened sled skipping behind them. Without the sled he was helpless, hopeless. His eyesight whirled with blinding lights as he fell.