The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  Neither whiteman commented.

  "You fat policeman come out," Peterluk's voice called inaccurately and more distantly, as if he had backed silently out of the tunnel. "Better hurry. Many people coming and they will kill you. You better come out and run away."

  "He is not a policeman," Dr. West shouted. "He is a friend."

  "Too late for that. So close." Peterluk shouted. "Come out. Run."

  "Those many people from the big camps wouldn't kill anybody." Eevvaalik snorted. "They want everyone to love them, but there are too many of them."

  "Come out!" Peterluk yelled as if in desperation. "Run fast to the plane before they catch you. They kill all whitemen."

  Neither man moved or reacted to this obvious trap.

  Eevvaalik snorted. "These people do not even kill enough seals. They are afraid to kill bears. All they talk about is Grandfather Bear." Eevvaalik's voice rose in outrage. "They are not even Christians!"

  There was a muffled gun shot. No bullet passed through the igloo. The silence became so long that Dr. West wondered if Peterluk had shot himself.

  "All they talk about," Eevvaalik's voice rambled cheerfully, "is -- soon there will be so many of them that their Grandfather will come down from the sky. This person thinks he will merely eat them. That is what should be expected if he is a bear. These people are not Christians."

  From the distance there was a shout, followed by three shots fired at the speed a clumsy but hurried man could operate an old bolt-action rifle, Dr. West thought.

  "He must be firing in another direction," LaRue hissed, standing up on the sleeping platform with his head and shoulders bent to fit the curve of the icy ceiling.

  With the stone axe, LaRue began knocking a hole in the roof of the igloo, presumably high enough, Dr. West hoped, that Peterluk would have to scramble up on the side of the igloo if he were to shoot in at them.

  Outside there were strangely cheerful-sounding shouts.

  As LaRue chopped upward, light burst through the roof and snow chinks fell inside; standing erect on the sleeping platform, LaRue thrust up his head through the hole in the igloo.

  "Mon dieu!" Like a turtle, LaRue retracted his head back into the igloo as another shot sounded. "Dozens of Eskimos approaching! He has shot one."

  Again, LaRue poked up his head through the hole. "They are coming to rescue us I think. Ah, so many of them. They are showing no fear."

  Dr. West heard their voices calling to each other.

  "He is running. They have him. They have seized him. They have his rifle." LaRue ducked his head into the igloo. "They have rescued us I hope. There are so many of them, we might as well go outside in any case and congratulate them."

  When Dr. West scrambled out of the tunnel into the blinding snow-light, he blinked at Peterluk standing with lowered head like a musk-ox among the smiling Esks. None was holding Peterluk.

  An Esk handed Peterluk's rusty rifle to LaRue, who glanced at it incuriously, then squinted at the rifle's bolt action. "Mon dieu! I think this old rifle is Russian."

  Peterluk walked away through the Esks. With Dr. West stumbling after him, Peterluk ran toward the aircraft. Dr. West heard the click-snap of the rifle's action. Would LaRue shoot?

  "Don't shoot him," Dr. West gasped unheard as he limped far behind Peterluk.

  From LaRue, there was no shot.

  The rifle's magazine must be empty, Dr. West thought as his repaired leg muscle tightened. He slowed to a hobble as several Esks passed him. Running alongside Peterluk like playful puppies, they seemed hesitant to violently seize him. Peterluk veered away from them toward the low hill from which his earlier shots had come.

  Peterluk's sled and dogs were not visible. Dr. West knew they were concealed behind this hill because Peterluk was circling back. Dr. West took the shorter course up the hill.

  His repaired thigh muscle jerked like a poorly constructed android's. Polar bear, not dog bite, he thought angrily of his thigh's great white square of plastic surgery. As he scrambled up the slope, his muscles warmed. From the corner of his eye he saw Peterluk change course -- away.

  Dr. West had won this race. The dogs growled at him. Closer than the dogs was spread a worn caribou skin on which Peterluk had lain while shooting down into the igloo. The ejected cartridge cases were dull and old. Tied on the sled was a battered metal box, an old military ammunition box, he thought. The letters stenciled were Russian. Years ago, it must have contained hundreds of bullets, he thought. Now it was empty.

  "I want you, Peterluk," Dr. West gasped to himself. "You know so much more than I -- "

  Peterluk was running far away, toward the sea, and the Esks had stopped chasing him.

  "Pacifist fools," Dr. West wheezed. "You'd be helpless in this world." With his good leg, he kicked the frozen sled runners loose.

  With the whip, as ferociously as a real Eskimo, Dr. West lashed the dogs until they understood who was master in a hurry. He was driving the sled under good control when he headed off Peterluk. Back down the hill toward the Esks, Peterluk fled as if he was afraid Dr. West wanted to kill him. Down there LaRue ran to meet him. Hurling the rifle at Peterluk and missing, LaRue lunged at the Eskimo with open arms and bulldogged the exhausted Eskimo to the ground.

  "Voilŕ! I have captured this murderer." LaRue shouted triumphantly, twisting Peterluk's arm behind his back so that he growled in pain. "Ask this savage why he foolishly shoots at whitemen."

  Peterluk grunted that he had killed no one.

  "That Esk is lying dead from your bullet," Dr. West retorted.

  "Not people. Not real Eskimos."

  "He says they're not real Eskimos," Dr. West translated to LaRue. "Not real people."

  "Not real Eskimos? These Esks not real people?" LaRue shouted in outrage at Dr. West. "Maniac. You are wrong. These are the finest human beings in the world. They save our lives while this murderer was shooting. Among the bullets, they seized this man. They didn't have to, but they came to help us. Look at this poor Esk lying shot dead in the snow. He helped save our lives. He died for us. Don't you tell me these people are not human. They are more human than you." He was shouting at Dr. West. "You and my uncle saying these people are not human. You are -- are bigots! There should be more of these wonderful people in this world."

  "You misunderstand me -- "

  "I saw your dossier. You are one of those scientific birth control fiends," LaRue roared on. "Who are you to decide who lives and who is not born? Birth control is so easy for you to say if others should do it, other races we don't want to feed, such as these people who need food. They need warm clothes. They need protection from fiends like you, and that atheistic Director of this concentration camp, and also from my uncle," his voice faded. "Help me tie this murderer."

  "We agree there won't be enough food for them," Dr. West said wearily.

  "You want me to agree there are too many of them," LaRue retorted. "My uncle, at least he will help me fight your birth control. My uncle he is old and crazy, but he still controls a few voters."

  LaRue's face gleamed as if he were seeing the rising summer sun. "Mon dieu! All these people will have votes."

  As if stunned, Dr. West stared at Henry LaRue's gleaming face. Dr. West stared at the blinding snow. For the Esks and for Canada if ignorant politicians began using these people, Dr. West foresaw tragedy growing. He limped away from LaRue toward the aircraft. He was afraid Henry LaRue at age forty finally had become a man. This LaRue finally was seizing a purpose for life. Henry LaRue was shouting after him: "I'll aid these people. I, too, am a leader! I'll show that old bigot. I'll show my uncle what I have become."

  My god, Dr. West thought, if he can keep it up, he might -- On the snow beneath the wing of the aircraft, Dr. West stared at the priest-pilot's body, face down on frozen blood. Peterluk's longest shot -- Dr. West supposed the priest's rifle still must be hanging on its straps inside the aircraft. This priest is ended on this Earth, Dr. West thought dully. And Henry LaRue has just begun -- to
help these Esks survive and spread from their Sanctuary. So many hungry mouths. Such gentle people. Probably better than the rest of us.

  The crying sound of a baby pierced Dr. West's conscience. More Esks were coming from the new camp over the hill. Closer, muffled in tattered parkas against the wind, they appeared indistinguishable. But Dr. West's heart leaped. Running toward him --

  "Marthalik!" He seized her, clung to her, and because he was so much taller he looked down over her shoulder into the bulging back of her parka, into the wide eyes of the baby.

  "My son is well?" Dr. West laughed, squeezing her even closer as if she could become part of him.

  Marthalik gasped, breathlessly laughing with tears shimmering down her cheeks. "He is growing strong, like you. This person will run back to the camp and bring him to his father."

  Dr. West blinked, staring at the round face of this baby in her parka, who had begun to smile at him. "Who is -- this?"

  "Your daughter," she laughed proudly, "this is your newest daughter."

  "Two children!" he laughed more with excitement than surprise.

  "My husband, this person is even stronger than that."

  "Marthalik, we must hurry. We will travel to my country. Go back. Bring my son."

  "Only your son?"

  "Hurry." Dr. West turned back to LaRue, who was scowling from the aircraft to the dead pilot and muttering.

  "For an inexperienced but courageous pilot as myself," LaRue was saying, "two motors are too many to control."

  "True." Dr. West limped back toward the igloo, seeng Eevvaalik vanish into the entry tunnel from which she must have been watching. "Wait, Eevvaalik!"

  He pursued her into the dimly arched igloo. "Eevvaalik, I am a doctor. I will take you to -- to a hospital place, you remember? You are sick from coughing. You will be made well. Please come to the airplane with Peterluk."

  "No!" She twisted free from his gentle grasp.

  "Eevvaalik, you will travel with your husband; Peterluk is going in the plane."

  "No," she hissed, avoiding his grasp. "This person wants to stay here until all the whitemen die! This person will rise to Grandfather Bear."

  "But you don't believe those young people's legends? You said they are stupid. Not Christians."

  "This person," Eevvaalik gasped, "is deciding now what to believe!" Struggling against him, she began to scream and cough, and Dr. West gave up trying to carry away Eevvaalik into civilization -- for the moment.

  He limped back down the slope to the aircraft, thinking ahead toward LaRue, who would interfere with his plans.

  "If we cannot fly this aircraft," Dr. West told LaRue, "I can operate the radio."

  "My idea exactly," LaRue laughed with relief. "We will radio the Order of Pope John to fly here an experienced pilot to res- -- to aid us."

  "Yes, that is a good idea." Dr. West instantly agreed, visualizing himself seated at the radio, at the controls of the CL-284, and rising into the air with Marthalik and his son and daughter, and with Peterluk bound and locked in the baggage compartment, and LaRue in the cockpit, but violently interfering when he discovered they were not returning to Churchill; he would have to do something about Henry LaRue now.

  " -- champion of these oppressed people." LaRue inter- rupted his thoughts, "I, too shall be nominated to stand for Parliament. My uncle finally will be shown I am a man of my own. The little people are my concern, the hungry ones. I will not be simply a politician. From the beginning I will be a statesman."

  With deaf ears and darting mind, Dr. West stared at the aircraft and beyond, visualizing Peterluk somehow flown out of Canada to Berkeley, Peterluk strapped on a leather couch, being injected with sodium pentothal. Now tell me the truth about the Burned Place. You are the one who knows how the Esks began.

  "Already today," LaRue laughed excitedly, "I have captured a murderer."

  "True. Like a hero, if you stayed here in this icy wilderness to look after these people," Dr. West suggested, "at least until tomorrow. I could return to civilization first to tell the newspapers how you stayed behind to help them. In spite of my pleas, heroically you stayed to help these oppressed people in the blizzard," Dr. West expanded. "You stayed to study the problems of these starving Eskimos so that all people throughout Canada will learn -- that you are a hero, because that is what I will tell them."

  "You mean you would try to pilot out this plane and leave me here in the cold?"

  "I would tell the news services how you seized that murderous Peterluk, bravely, you personally captured him in order to save the lives of us all. Tomorrow a whole planeload of newsmen would fly here to congratulate you on the spot. With cameras for TV they would listen while you expose this whole Sanctuary mess. On TV you would address the voters."

  At this, Henry LaRue smiled shyly. "I think you are exaggerating my contribution -- a little bit. I will alert the world to the plight of these people. I will speak on the radio now. Now they can send another aircraft with an experienced pilot -- to fly us out today."

  "True." Dr. West grunted, trying to conceal his raging frustration as he dragged the bound Peterluk to the aircraft. "Help me lift him in so I can lock him in the baggage compartment. As their future leader, give encouragement to all these Esks who are your friends. Two men have died this day -- "

  Beside Peterluk in the baggage compartment, Dr. West laid the body of the priest-pilot, and looked down at the priest's softly dead face, and then at Peterluk's wrinkled, frightened face, the narrow eyes, the mouth a chapped scar.

  "Eh! You think to frighten this person with the dead?" Peterluk's big teeth gleamed. "Stronger whitemen than you have not been able --"

  Dr. West slammed the aluminum door against Peterluk's voice because he heard Marthalik's voice calling.

  She handed up his son to him. Then she handed up the baby from her parka. He saw Marthalik's face was frightened.

  "A woman should not disobey her husband," Marthalik blurted, "but this person could not leave behind our other daughter."

  She handed up a third baby, who eyed Dr. West suspiciously. In his hands, this baby felt heavier, larger than the baby from Marthalik's parka. But it was smaller than his son and intermediate in size, Dr. West pondered, and age. Stunned, Dr. West stared down at the three babies crawling on the dented floor of the aircraft. The boy, he knew, was his -- that first night. Precociously his ten-week-old son struggled erect. Dr. West thought the second baby could have been conceived that last night before he left Marthalik. Across the ice with Edwardluk and into the hospital, he had been gone over two and a half months since the second baby was conceived. This third little baby, the smiling baby from Marthalik's parka, must have been conceived at least a month after he was gone. He thought he could not be the father of this gleefully smiling baby girl. Wearily, Dr. West helped Marthalik into the aircraft.

  "Why are you putting in all these Eskimos," LaRue shouted up from the snow. "You cannot fly."

  "To protect them from the wind, Dr. West retorted, moving to block the entry. "I'll radio ahead that you're the hero, the Savior of these Esks. Keep back! Read the newspaper account of how I told what a hero you are before you say too much. Be sure our stories agree. Look out!" He kicked at LaRue's fingers. "I'm going to fire off the jets." With all his strength, Dr. West closed the door of the aircraft against the yelling LaRue.