The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  Little Joe wandered sleepily out of a bedroom and tried to climb Dr. West's leg. "Wha-wha? Daddy."

  Dr. West picked him up and walked toward the crib in the dining room in which Little Martha already was standing up, holding on with only one hand and grinning two teeth with accomplishment.

  Steve Jervasoni was knocking bashfully on the half-open apartment door as if he didn't know whether he should bring in Marthalik's forgotten corduroy coat or not. "Sir -- Joe, you want me to drive to a supermarket and buy you folks some groceries?"

  "Come inside and entertain my daughter," Dr. West commanded, paying off the slack-jawed co-ed, who fled. "Just pick her up," he challenged Steve. "Already she weighs nineteen pounds."

  Steve squinted down cautiously at Little Martha's diapered toplessness. "I guess she's more accustomed to being carried in her mother's parka?"

  "She won't wet you. Pick her up. These last two weeks I've discovered what fatherhood is," Dr. West laughed faintly, worrying whether the University would renew his contract, worrying how he was going to support a wife and children and baby-sitters and a tutor for his wife.

  "Soon-soon! I'll boil your tea," Marthalik called happily from the kitchen. "Hello Steve."

  "Maybe I should get married," Steve laughed. "Marthalik have a sister? You know, seriously, just being around her makes me feel good. Maybe Eskimos are better than other people. When she smiles, I almost feel an aura, a radiation, almost like love -- for all humanity."

  At that moment Steve looked more like nineteen than twenty-nine. After junior college, he'd served his four years in Army Biological Warfare, followed by two years at State College, and now was in his third year of graduate work at the University of California.

  Like the perfect housewife, Marthalik bustled from the kitchen carrying a tray with the steaming teapot and four paper cups. Dr. West noticed a slight wiggle or waddle to her walk which had increased since yesterday. Soon her next pregnancy would be noticeable. Sooner, her hot tea would melt the waxed seams of those paper cups if she poured --

  "It is the custom in this big village," Dr. West said quickly in Modern Eskimo, anxious not to embarrass her in front of Steve, "we drink hot tea only from heavy cups, the big cups with flowers, the cups on the ledge above where the stream flows out. These thin cups of paper are for cold water. The heavy cups are for hot tea."

  "Eh-eh," Cheerfully she picked up the tray again. "A woman does as her husband wishes."

  As she hurried back to the kitchen, Steve looked at Dr. West. "Translated?"

  "Learn Eskimo yourself," Dr. West laughed, for it was a difficult agglutinative language, as complex but more consistent than English. "Learn Eskimo. Then go up to Boothia and steal your own bride."

  "The Canadian Government might not approve," Steve laughed, "nor might the Eskimos."

  "Marthalik isn't an Eskimo." Dr. West watched Steve blink.

  "Quit your kidding, sir," Steve grinned with embarrassment and looked down at his shoes, expensive appearing cordovans for a nonscholarship grad student. "Sir, when you get a new research grant, I hope you'll acquire my contract from Dr. Gatson. We don't seem to be attempting really basic research since you were -- since you resigned."

  The next morning Dr. West entered the office of the Dean of the Demography Department at the University. He had two purposes in mind.

  First he picked up his next to last sabbatical paycheck and turned in a required synopsis of his proposed sabbatical research report. It would analyze any population growth trends he observed within the Boothia Peninsula Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary. Deceptively, his synopsis indicated his report merely would be another age-sex census. From the synopsis, the report promised to be of only academic significance, merely confirming he'd been earning his sabbatical paychecks through required self-development in his approved field of study. He smiled. When he'd collected enough evidence from Marthalik, the real report would startle the Dean of the Demography Department into orbit! Dr. West would become a boy wonder again in a candy store of rich research grants, he hoped.

  Second, Dr. West was anxious to see if the University's offer of contract renewal was in his professorial mailbox. He knew this time the University would offer him less than his bonanza negotiated three years ago. Then he'd just won that huge grant from the Defense Department for his proposed Oriental Population Problems Research program. He had been a hero. Consequently, with the University he had negotiated what was termed a Koufax contract, his paychecks reflecting in a small way the 1.8 million dollars he had attracted from the Pentagon to the Berkeley Campus.

  Now he was out as Director. He had offended the Defense Department's cornucopia. His three-year University contract had expired. His bargaining power was gone. If he failed to turn in a sensational sabbatical report, he thought his last year's high pay probably would suffer the maximum cut, 25%. Even so, he still would be one of the most highly paid members of the faculty, so highly paid it was possible the University would try to trade him off to another university which had a lot of money but a weak Demography Department.

  The annual ninety-day negotiating period had begun in the U.S. If he refused to report to another university campus, he thought his university might stall along in negotiations with him until the ninety-day negotiating period was almost over. Then it would be too late for him to start applying for positions elsewhere. He would have to take the 25% cut anyway. So he decided to sign his contract at once. But his mailbox was empty. No contract yet.

  He was sure they would offer him one. In fairness to him, after all that Defense Department money he had brought in, the University would offer him some sort of contract renewal, he thought. They wouldn't declare him a free agent. At worst, they would try to trade him.

  The University might try to trade him to another university for a lower-salaried man but they wouldn't simply drop him during the ninety-day negotiating period, he thought. This once-a-year negotiating period applied to all universities and to all professors who wanted to continue doing business with the Defense Department. Three years was the unbreakable length of such contracts. A former Secretary of Defense had devised these regulations for academic salary negotiations, trading and recruiting, after remarking that some research professors most vital to the national interest were job jumping or being recruited to rival universities so frequently their productivity was impaired. "They spend more time traveling from coast to coast, pursued by moving vans, than in trying to straighten out their disorganized commitments to the Defense Department."

  Dr. West stared into his empty mailbox and hoped the University would not cut him. As a free agent now, with less than ninety days for him to locate a comparable position elsewhere, he might have to accept a minor position.

  "You ever teach?" The scratchy voice startled him because it belonged to Dr. Darwin; that academic outlaw was standing behind him here in the Dean's outer office with a recruiter's smile.

  "What are you doing on campus?" Dr. West laughed; at one time Dr. Darwin had been his buddy here in the Demography Department.

  Although highly regarded by his graduate students, and after working hard through three three-year contracts as an Assistant Professor, Dr. Darwin had failed to be promoted to Associate Professor, and struck out. Too few of Dr. Darwin's population research papers had been accepted for publication by the professional demographic journals, and he was out. Released as a free agent, no graduate university had offered him a contract. He was an outlaw from organized academics, and was teaching lecture classes in Berkeley at Free U., where there were young and unruly students known as undergraduates.

  "I'm recruiting you, that's what I'm doing," Dr. Darwin said.

  Dr. West laughed again, not meaning to sound contemptuous. "I'm surprised our Kampus Kops even permit a talented talent raider like you to enter our Demography Building," he kidded, "or even drive through Savio Gate."

  "Oh. the University police never bother me," Dr. Darwin laughed, "unless I park my car in an administrator's space. No
w if you were at Free U., we've no monthly parking fee."

  "I'd have to look for a space along the streets and in distant alleys?"

  "No, the kids set out sawhorses to guard a teacher's parking space. We need another teacher of General Population Problems who can also teach Physiological Aspects of Reproduction -- doctor."

  "If you mean me lecture to a big class," Dr. West laughed, for he had been more the research-executive type, working with small groups of respectful grad students while he was Director of Oriental Population Problems Research, "I've had no experience as a dramatic performer."

  "If I can, you can. On my recommendation, I think the Student Hiring Committee would agree to give you a one-semester tryout," Dr. Darwin persisted. "If you draw big crowds, there's big money. If you're good, every day those kids will be dropping their dollar bills in the entry boxes, and you'll know you're being appreciated."

  "You're still lecturing in that former furniture warehouse?" Dr. West smiled, inwardly wincing at the thought of being graded by his students every day; he wanted nothing to do with Free U.

  Free U. was making another comeback. When Dr. West was in the last class of undergrads on the Berkeley Campus, Free U. already had been growing. The year after he departed east for Harvard's Graduate School of Medicine, undergrad education at Cal. had been discontinued for financial and other reasons. As a consequence, Free U. had blossomed until it encompassed 10,000 students during the 1980s, spreading to old rented buildings all over Berkeley. So many idealistic professors were attracted and such ambitious young student administrators were elected each year that the undergraduate curriculum became more substantial than at the state colleges.

  The examination schedule was solidified, eliminating the relaxed amateur students. National-standard courses were instituted and eventually required, driving away any eclectic searchers after Truth and other eccentrics. Free U. achieved B.A. degree granting stature. It became an accredited springboard to all the important graduate schools except the University of California, where there was professional jealousy because --

  The Health, Education, and Welfare Department had granted Free U. a fifty million dollar credit for acquisition of land for a permanent campus. The student body voted to accept the slum clearance land on both sides of Telegraph Avenue, which the Housing and Redevelopment Authority offered to them at a bargain price of fifty million dollars. The student body president signed over the credit and accepted the deed. The student body had voted to use this potentially valuable commercially zoned land as security so that a major insurance company loan could finance construction of the permanent campus buildings. But a developer of regional shopping centers offered Free U. 100 million dollars for the cleared land. The student body sensibly voted to accept. A hundred million dollars divided equally among 10,000 students is $10,000 for each student. Some got married, combining their capital for a sound financial start in life. Irritated by outcries from Washington, more idealistic students flew away to the international Human Be-In in Paris. "The sensible time to enjoy money is when you're young enough to enjoy it."

  Gutted of its wealthy students, retaining few of its disillusioned faculty, overwhelmed by the annual influx of new students from high schools into the same old overcrowded Free U. rented buildings throughout Berkeley, Free U. was making another comeback.

  "Sure, I'm still lecturing in a warehouse," Dr. Darwin retorted to Dr. West. "Who needs a billion dollar concrete edifice? A college is for the students and teachers. At least we don't have professionally entrenched administrators. If your contract isn't renewed, visit the former beer parlor that's our administrative headquarters. Visit our classes. These are real live kids again. They want to interact with a real live teacher instead of a ghost on TV."

  But Dr. West was edging out the door, worrying why Dr. Darwin seemed so sure his university contract might not be renewed. "Your lecture classes are so big," Dr. West murmured, "even bigger than the 1970s."

  "They wouldn't be so big if we had more teachers," Dr. Darwin pursued him.

  "Ha!" Dr. West struck back. "If there were more teachers, there'd be less student dollars per teacher. The kids won't go above a dollar per lecture."

  "They might, they might. We plan to negotiate with the kids. But what the hell! Regardless of the $1.00 or any future $1.25 per lecture, the real satisfaction in life is having an audience if you're a real teacher."

  "I'm not a performer." Dr. West hurried along the hall because he had to go home and pick up Marthalik and take her to that innocently unsuspecting obstetrician within a half hour.

  "Could you perform for $1000 a week?" Dr. Darwin pursued him. "Two lectures a day, ten lectures a week, plus individual student conferences the rest of your time. Two lectures a day, a hundred students in each, that's $200 a day. In a five-day week, that's $1000."

  "But if they skip a class, they save a dollar," Dr. West retorted, hurrying down the stairs, not asking whether even half a class showed up for any lectures, because this would only encourage Dr. Darwin to keep talking.

  "In order to take the final exam for credit," Dr. Darwin panted after him across the ground floor lobby, "kids have to produce receipts from at least half the lecture hours. I can't attract the co-eds like you could, but I'm grossing $850 per week. My only expenses are my pro rata share of the warehouse rent, heating, lights and student janitor service. I'm netting more than an Associate Professor at the University of California."

  "Good." Dr. West dodged between silent electric autos, wondering if the innocent obstetrician he had selected for Marthalik would end up as famous as Dr. DaFoe, a semimythical Canadian who delivered the unremarkable Dionne quints.

  "And I have no research deadlines to meet," Dr. Darwin's voice trailed after him toward his car. "Without research and publications scalps to collect, I have so much time to meet with my students individually. I'm working a solid ten-hour day with kids, a lot more than I'm required to, but these are real live kids. Believe me, real teaching is wonderful."

  "What do you think my graduate students were -- dead people?" Dr. West retorted, cornered against his car. "I was teaching them -- "

  "Then there's our merit bonus," Dr. Darwin shrugged. "At the end of the Semester, when the students vote for the outstanding instructors, what a pleasure to receive a merit bonus from the kids!"

  "I hear that some teachers have received more eccentric treatment."

  "Young people are lively, but each semester my own bonuses have grown bigger. I'm learning -- "

  "Thanks for asking me," Dr. West blurted, scrambling inside his Olds Electro-Drive and simultaneously worrying about his university contract and about Marthalik's surprising attitude toward her approaching visit to the obstetrician. She had acted insulted at her husband's apparent lack of confidence in her ability as wife.

  "It is so easy to have babies by oneself," she whispered finally in the obstetrician's waiting room. "This person never has needed help. I simply kneel over a hole dug in the earth of the tent. The hole should be lined with a caribou skin."

  Dr. West sat beside her, staring at a dog-eared medical journal in the waiting room and saying nothing.

  "This is so stupid," she persisted in Modern Eskimo. "My belly has only begun to grow big. I won't have my baby for at least a week."

  "You speak truly. But it is a whiteman's custom for a medical angakok to look at the mother first. This brings good luck for the baby." Dr. West accompanied her into the examining room. He had decided not to confide in the obstetrician about the one-month gestation period because the obstetrician wouldn't believe him, and would think he was a nut.

  The obstetrician moved with practiced sureness and a curious smile, which faded as Marthalik resisted.

  In outrage, Marthalik finally submitted to the examination. In answer to the question as to the date of conception, Dr. West told the obstetrician that he could not even guess the approximate date. At the end of the examination, the OB innocently predicted Marthalik could expect normal la
bor pains in about three months. Dr. West asked for another appointment this Friday. The obstetrician blinked, evidently realizing the husband was even more difficult than the wife.