The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  His pounding heart, his surging adrenalin, had given him back his warmth, his liveness. He laughed with surprise that he was not afraid. He felt beyond fear. Much closer than before, the bear growled.

  The dogs yelped, violently thrashing the anchored sled, concealing any moving sounds of the bear.

  In this uncertain moment as Dr. West continued to awaken, he reevaluated. These dogs are straining to escape. Escape is so simple! With this intelligent realization, his atavistic flow of courage froze. With the frightened gasps of a civilized man, Dr. West dropped the harpoon and unsheathed his short-bladed skinning knife.

  Of course the dogs will run, he thought. They'll drag the sled away, carrying me.

  The bear growled.

  Tight-muscled with fright, Dr. West lurched along the straining sled, fumbled back along the rail until his hand found the taut anchor strap. His knife slashed.

  The strap broke, the lunging dogs yanking the sled from under him. He fell on his elbow on the ice, momentarily stunned by his stupidity, as the clamor of the fleeing dog team faded into the distance.

  So he couldn't escape, he thought, almost laughing with shock. Was he predestined never to escape from the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary?

  "Edwardluk!" Dr. West started to rise and was warned by a cavernous growl.

  He remained in a crouching posture, turning his head in the direction from which the sound had emerged. He was facing upwind, and an odor like rotten meat became noticeable, but now he couldn't hear the bear. The bear must be motionless, staring at him.

  Gradually, Dr. West sank down on the ice, his knife hand under his shoulder as he flattened out on the ice, his vulnerable stomach pressed against the ice, his legs pressed together, his shoulders hunched protectively about his neck. His chest pressed against the ice, his heart thudding against the ice. He could hear the hiss-hiss of its breathing, the bear's shuffling advance.

  Dr. West made no new attempts to open his eyes. He tried to see backward into the fortress of his bachelor apartment in Berkeley. In stunned amusement he thought: I can't die here with six months rent pre paid there. To the right of its fieldstone fireplace, behind the multi-colored medical books on the top shelf, he could almost see his .44 caliber magnum Ruger Blackhawk revolver, a heavy hog leg single-action revolver with gleaming thick cylinder stuffed with six bullets looking fat as thumbs. Almost as if it were reality, his hand closed around -- emptiness.

  The bear snorted. Motionless on the ice, Dr. West suppressed his breathing. He remembered Alaskan Eskimo hunters laughing how they had behaved in such situations. Prostrate before their bears, they had lived to joke. "Don't breathe," those wizened Alaskan Eskimos advised; "bear never kills dead man."

  This polar bear's stench engulfed him. Above him poised the hiss-hiss of its breathing. There was a gurgling sound, the ravenous contractions of its digestive system.

  As forcibly as the blunt end of a baseball bat, the polar bear nosed his thigh, trying to turn him over.

  Desperately, he wanted to lunge away, but he sagged limply because the bear's quick paw would smash him like a seal if he moved.

  He wanted to leap away with a nightmare shriek as the bear's nose clubbed his thigh, his hip, shoving to turn him over, to expose his vital belly. Stiffening, resisting, Dr. West tried to hold his belly pressed against the ice.

  With an eager grunt and a series of hisses, the bear's nose burrowed under him, pushing up his hip. He twisted and was clamped --

  A shriek with an agonizing muscular spasm ballooned through his consciousness. His thigh, the bear's crushing jaws. With the squawling vitality of any animal being devoured alive, the former Dr. West writhed, striking the knife blade across the hard muzzle of the polar bear.

  With a startled woof, the bear's jaws opened. Dr. West's body rolled away slashing the air and screaming defiance like a cornered animal. Backing away, gasping, he hacked the air with the knife while the shuffling sounds of the bear softened.

  He became aware of the throbbing of his thigh. Gummed eyelids torn open, he faced blindly into the whiteness and listened through his own harsh breathing for the silent bear, and remembered who he was.

  Dr. West's fingers explored the slippery twitching remnants of his thigh muscle. Hard-jawed, he tourniqueted his belt around his thigh against the groin, and gasped.

  "Edwardluk," he gurgled. "Edwardluk, Edwardluk!" he yelled.

  There was no Edwardluk. "Edwardluk! Edwardluk!"

  His voice thickened. His head seemed to sail away, and he muttered and twisted, resisting. If he fell into shock, he thought, in this cold he would be dead.

  Dead, dead, irretrievably dead. All gone. Finished. Nothing.

  From hissing wind emerged a scraping sound approaching, as if something were dragging the sled back to him.

  "Dogs turn away," Edwardluk's voice wheezed, "from water too late. Sled float. Curlytail drown. Loafer drown." All Edwardluk could talk about was the dogs. "Hump drown." Edwardluk's strong hands were turning him over on his back on the sled. "Wind Runner drown."

  Darkness and warmth slid down over Dr. West's head and shoulders, and he realized Edwardluk was giving him his outer parka.

  "White Eye drown." Edwardluk was prodding his coldly numbing leg, wrapping his leg in something jellylike within wet fur. "Fished out drowned dogs. Cut up. Eh-eh," Edwardluk laughed feebly, "much good dog meat for everyone. This person cut open Wild Runner for the bear."

  With crunching sounds, Edwardluk began breaking apart the sled. Edwardluk murmured he was rebuilding it into a man-sled. Gently, Edwardluk's hands tied Dr. West on a sled so small his heels dragged.

  Blind, Dr. West knew they were microscopic specks moving across the enormity of sea ice, icebergs, shore ice and distant ice-scraped islands.

  "Ha!" As if encouraging the drowned dogs to pull, shouting Edwardluk strained at the harness, and the jolting hours moved Dr. West through chills and sleep and fever, becoming days of blind agony without end.

  Edwardluk's soft voice tried to soothe. "Eat-eat." He was pressing chewed dog meat into Dr. West's mouth.

  Edwardluk would shout: "Ha! Forward, dogs!" and Edwardluk's stubby legs would tramp forward, endlessly dragging the man-sled with its raving burden, Dr. West.

  "The bear," Dr. West would gasp. "Got to warn them." The Canadian Parliament became twelve pairs of eyes surrealistically floating in a jury box. "Please believe me." All our growing population pressure is forcing nation against nation in amoebalike growing struggles of the population masses of the world , his thought writhed. Believe me, these Eskimos are multiplying so much faster. Like a Bomb! -- "These people cannot be Eskimos! What are they?"

  In his delirium, Marthalik's face rose smiling. He clung to her body. The droning of the airplane transformed snowflakes into parachutes drifting down with swaying food packages. As absurdly as Pop Art, these were decorated in red calligraphy: FAMILY ALLOWANCES, and swaying back and forth, massive jaws crunching.

  "Too many Eskimos." For these happy people what does the bear symbolize? "Don't feed the bear!" he shrieked.

  The giggling Eskimo women slyly were stuffing the birth control pills into their ears. Their bellies inflated. Scurrying children massed. The Earth tipped. From the darkness of space opened the jaws. "The bear!" he shrieked.

  In more lucid moments, Dr. West clutched his swollen thigh and thought what a good man Edwardluk was. Laughing, straining, uncomplaining, that was the Eskimo image. Eskimos were cheerful people who fought no wars. It was true. So true. Men of goodwill all over the world would not let the Eskimos starve no matter how many Eskimos --

  The headwind carried the smell of coal smoke, the barking of dogs.

  Loud voices were threatening. The sled had stopped. A harsh voice wheezed: "This bastard has a beard! He's a whiteman."

  "At his eyes, look," the younger voice murmured on with an accent as if he might have been one of the political refugees from West Germany who'd flocked to Canada since 1984. "Such sore eyes -- "

/>   "Lift the dirty smuggler." They were carrying him into darkness and dumped him. "Don't let the Eskimo get away," the harsh voice wheezed. "Kerosene eyedrops for snowblin -- "

  "No, wait!" Dr. West gasped. "Leave my eyes alone. I'm a doctor. I must be flown to a hospital with -- with Edwardluk."

  "If you're a doctor, where's your kit?" the Guard's harsh voice challenged. "You smuggling bastards won't even leave the world's best people alone. Twenty years I've been waiting to catch you." His voice subsided in a succession of wheezes as if he had chronic emphysema.

  "In his pack are no trade items," the younger voice soothed, and Dr. West felt the caribou skin being pulled off the lower part of his body. "His leg -- " the young voice thickened in a retching sound, and Dr. West became aware of the stench.

  "Gangrene," the old Guard wheezed. "Hope the bastard dies."

  Edwardluk, Edwardluk, Dr. West thought desperately. "Help -- " From his swollen throat his voice squeezed out so distantly it must be nearly inaudible.

  "This good man. You will like us," Edwardluk's Eskimo voice was murmuring hopefully. "West says much food here. Dog bite him. Mad dog bite his leg. This person drag him on little sled that many sleeps." Edwardluk must be holding up stubby fingers, still trying to communicate. "Dogs drown. This person drag him all the way across."

  "Sea ice over there?" The halting voice of the old Guard was attempting to reply in Eskimo as if he'd spent twenty years cooped in the Station listening to language records, never allowed to speak to an Eskimo. "Big travel. Bad ice." There was respect in the Guard's voice. "You long-traveling hunter!"

  Perhaps they were shaking hands.

  Edwardluk giggled with embarrassment. "Pulled whiteman long way. Children hungry. He say much food here."

  There was an awkward silence. Already the Guard grievously had sinned by allowing the Eskimo inside the Station. Now he was being asked to further violate the purpose of the Sanctuary by giving the Eskimos food.

  In the silence, Edwardluk laughed in confusion. "Will you help us? Many-many people hungry!" Edwardluk must be spreading his short arms. "Many people. Here his marker-book."

  Muttering, the Guard must be turning the pages. "I'll be damned!"

  "He count people. Say not enough seals," Edwardluk expounded. "He count babies. He say more hungry quick."

  "The Director should make his own survey," the Guard's voice blurted in English. "This smuggler must be crazy. He's counted too many children. Can't be this many until the end of the second Twenty-Year Plan."

  "From now is twenty years," the accented younger voice remarked almost maliciously. "But we are not permitted close enough to count. These Eskimos we know are too many already or they would not be starving."

  "He say all whitemen love us. We help him," Edwardluk's voice swept on hopefully. "All this way pulling sled like dog."

  "What does he say?"

  "He says," the Guard's tired old voice muttered in English, "we'll have to crank up the copter more often this winter to chase them back."

  "Of their starvation I worry," the young voice blurted. "Of other guards who obeyed orders I think. My grossvater -- "

  "You can think," the old Guard's voice interrupted, "because you're as good as out. Your contract won't be renewed anyway, so you don't have to hang on for your pension."

  "But if the Director finds out of the whale last winter which you -- we drove ashore," the young voice thrust slyly as if he were leading toward something, "he will cut from his budget you and your pension, kaput! -- Already didn't Suxbey say the budget is too small to give you medical leave this year?"

  "You talk about the whale, and you'll have an accident!"

  "No, no, me you misunderstand. No one would know about us except the producer. Think of this Eskimo smiling on the CBC all over Canada, tears in his eyes, children starving."

  "And wreck the Sanctuary before I get my pension?"

  "The producer said I -- we would receive a percentage -- "

  "To help sink Mr. Suxbey after twenty years?"

  "But this trespasser, lying here, if he talks to the press, which he will, perhaps for his own percentage, he or the next man will finish the wreck of the Sanctuary. -- Your pension, kaput! My producer is a generous man. But you are in command here. You must decide -- "

  "Simple. I'm radioing the Director for instructions," the old Guard wheezed.

  "Then hurry," the young voice retorted, "if out of life that is all you want. This trespasser anyway is dying."

  In terror, Dr. West tried to sit up. In his delirium he tried to speak, as Edwardluk's face appeared pleading as if from the TV screens. "Our babies starving." As if in a dream, Dr. West saw food packages pouring from shimmering aircraft and there were always more Eskimos and not enough packages. Dark faces were springing up in the UN General Assembly of his delirium, accusing. Canada's attempted birth limitation of the Eskimos was pushing the angry darker peoples of the world up in the UN shouting: "Racial sterilization! Capitalist genocide!"

  The angry roaring was huge aircraft attacking from all over the world with more food, more tents. Like a distant dream, the Eskimos were spreading over his delirium.

  "Eh-eh, we fill world," Edwardluk had explained a week ago with lovable simplicity, "until bear comes."

  Death gnawed Dr. West's leg, and he tried to sit up while Edwardluk's gentle hands held him down.

  "Must speak," Dr. West gasped, thinking: I must live. I want so much to live. "I must speak."

  "You sleep now," Edwardluk was whispering, holding him down. "He come -- "

  3. WHO IS MORE HUMAN?

  The moaning sound of the airplane enclosing him bumped down. He was carried out feet first.

  Under a modern surgical-green ceiling he lay in delirium as a blinding light moved above him and a phantom bear's teeth gnawed his leg. "Scalpel. Suture," a disembodied voice snapped, and years later another voice remarked: "They say a sled dog did this to his leg?"

  Writhing feverishly, Dr. West heard the savage howl of a diesel train. With a revolving clarity he decided he must be a thousand miles south of Boothia in the city of Churchill on Hudson Bay at the northern end of the railroad. He opened his eyes.

  Now he seemed to be lying in an Intensive Care room. There was an oddly familiar wheezing sound.

  "Welcome to Ottawa, sir." On the other bed lounged the blue-and-white uniform of a Cultural Sanctuary Guard.

  "Ottawa?" Dr. West blurted in surprise. "Ottawa?"

  "Ottawa?" the leathery face of the Cultural Sanctuary Guard mimicked. "Because you're from the States, sir, you've not bothered to learn we Canadians have a capital too?" The Guard's sarcastic smile widened in triumph. "Welcome to the New Ottawa Reformation Center."

  "My trial! When was my trial?"

  "I expect you're looking forward to the Pasteur injections for rabies, sir? They stick the needle in your stomach and -- "

  "I'm in prison without a trial!"

  "No, sir. This is the finest hospital in Canada. For serious illness, sir, the Cultural Sanctuary always uses this hospital. The prison is outside. Around us."

  Dr. West tried to sit up, entangled in drainage tubes, and in wires presumably transmitting his heartbeat and blood pressure to the monitor beside his bed.

  The nurse materialized through the revolving one-way glass wall. "You're disturbing the patient."

  "Never did a thing," the Cultural Sanctuary Guard retorted weakly, his leathery old face seeming out of place in this hospital room 2000 miles south of the Boothia Peninsula, and he slumped back on his own bed, wheezing.

  "You've been smoking again," she sniffed. "I can smell it. The doctor should take away your uniform. In a hospital gown, you should be guarding this gentleman. From your bed, you should be -- "