The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  On the wall above the sink he scrawled with his black crayola:

  21 years from now 4 billion 22 8 billion 23 16 billion

  "My god, what happened?" he laughed to his imaginary audience. "All of a sudden they outnumber us and there wouldn't be nearly enough food for humans plus Esks, or even for Esks plus humans. But we will have slaughtered the Esks by then."

  He thought of Little Joe, not so little, waving goodbye as the Child Welfare lady urged him into the electric bus, and Little Martha peering wistfully out the bus window. Dr. West's throat hurt as if he were going to cry.

  "My god, with what birth control methods will they torment all the millions of Esks of the future? What of all the Esks who have intermarried with the human population because Esks are lovable people. Whom do we sterilize, whom do we push into the ovens of Auschwitz?"

  "My children are mine as well as Marthalik's." He had read in that morning's paper how the food barges were on their way north. "No one will starve. No one will suffer -- yet."

  Summer was melting the Arctic ice, and in the Canadian Parliament the newly elected M.P., LaRue the Younger, had won his debate. Before winter, the Canadian Government would resettle the overcrowded Esks throughout the North. "They'll open our Frozen Frontier," LaRue had orated, "and Canada needs more willing and cheerful laborers in the cities. Land of the Future, Canada must grow!"

  "And scatter the Esks throughout the Canadian population," Dr. West muttered, "so that even the safest birth limitation bacteria could not be used -- again. Marthalik? Dammit, where are you? Your children are being doomed to misery, starvation and death!"

  He kicked the refrigerator. Sweating, he opened its gleaming door.

  From the refrigerator he took the polyethelene-wrapped glass tube and stared at the gray culture medium within. With trembling hands he found empty fruit jars in the base cabinet. In a big sauce pan he warmed gelatin for a culture medium. His heart hammering, he opened the glass tube.

  For hours he helped bacterial life awaken and multiply in spreading plaques of life upon the gelatin within the fruit jars. "My god, look at those little bastards multiplying whether they want to or not. Their population must be doubling every hour."

  Now he needed an ingeniously simple means of transporting and disseminating the bacteria in the North.

  5. THE SPRAY CANS OF DEATH

  Winging above the opened harbor ice, the immense flock of male sandpipers crowded down on the thawing tundra. With menacing squeaks and dueling beaks, the fragile sandpipers hopped at each other. Flurrying wings they battled for nesting territories close to the tiny pond.

  Too many sandpipers? Dr. Joe West rested beside his heavy pack and tried to force his thoughts ahead to the Arctic bay, where the ragged tents were crowding. A squeaking sandpiper fled past his boot. Dr. West's imagination recoiled from the distant bay, which had become a harbor. He stared into the tiny pond, where wriggling swarms of mosquito larva already were pupating.

  Already there was a bloody whine behind Dr. West's ear. He slapped the back of his neck. "Dammit, I don't want to end up like a criminal -- even though I will be -- "

  Through the mosquitos, he focused his binoculars against the bleak natural harbor. "I don't want to be a martyr."

  The distant growling of the tractor-truck trundling food cases out of the beached LST was punctuated by a gunshot. Probably some bearded amateur humanitarian shooting at a seagull! Dr. West glared through his binoculars at the flamboyant amateur lettering across the hull of the chartered landing ship. BOOTHIA PENINSULA OR BUST -- NEW YORK SAVE THE ESKIMOS DAY COMMITTEE.

  "No matter how many you feed there'll be more." Dr. West shook his head in a haze of mosquitos and refocused his binoculars at the tent city rimming the harbor like dirty snow. With its explosive rate of growth, those canvas tents would spread all the way inland to this pond before -- !

  Dr. West blinked. His nervous system tingled from surfacing childhood guilt as he recognized through the binoculars, magnified and standing in compressed perspective beside a distant plywood cabin, the uniformed man, Mountie -- Police Inspector -- Canadian policeman -- cop, cop, cop!

  On the surface, Dr. West knew the problem was how to distribute the aerosol spray cans to the Esks without being traced. The depths of his problem were more disturbing.

  He had landed his float plane on newly named LaRue Lake, the long pond located an hour's hike inland up the river through the boggy tundra. No secrecy here. Two seaplanes and an amphibian already were tied up like spiders, as if their pilots expected wind. For their fragile aircraft, the lake was safer than the exposed bay. A grinning Esk had peered out of a single tent, probably a guard for the planes. Many muddy boot prints converged on deeper tracks, a trail left by all the airborne whitemen who had hurried down the little river valley to the bay to inspect the multiplying Esks.

  Through his binoculars, Dr. West studied the cop -- the Mountie walking away from the plywood cabin and its tall radio mast. Striding past stacked supply crates, the Mountie moved down the beach toward the bearded characters lolling in front of the LST.

  Like a beached whale, the landing ship vomited the tractor-truck with another load of food cases. Up beside the tents of the Esks, no one seemed to be guarding the supplies. Perhaps during the past winter the R.C.M.P. had discovered that the Esks were even more obedient, less tempted to thievery than Eskimos. Dr. West frowned.

  Hordes of Esk children were romping around the boxes. Dr. West could not see any guards. He put away his binoculars.

  Glancing at the vast Arctic sky, he hoisted his pack, heavy with the disguised containers of aerosol spray. He plodded straight into the village. Concealment was impossible anyway.

  While the children scampered around him, Dr. West walked stiffly to meet the Mountie, who was striding up from the beach in a swarm of mosquitos.

  "Sir -- I recognize -- you are Dr. Joseph West." The Mountie managed to seem glad to see him. "As you predicted, sir, we've a -- rapidly growing community." The Mountie had a warm handshake. "It is -- it is an honor, sir, to meet you. Sir, I've always considered you as the -- the discoverer of these -- people. A pleasure to meet you. Why don't we continue on to my cabin. Your flight, walking from the lake, you must be tired and hungry, sir." He reached to relieve Dr. West of the weight of his pack.

  "Thank you," Dr. West muttered with embarrassment, allowing the Mountie to take the surprisingly heavy pack.

  For the moment, the Mountie was too courteous to ask if he had a landing permit. No doubt the politician, LaRue, had warned the R.C.M.P. to be on the lookout for Dr. West.

  Inside the cabin, mosquitos hummed across plywood walls lined with books, stereo components and photosatellite maps of the Boothia Peninsula. Evidently the Mountie expected a permanent assignment here.

  "Here's my landing permit." Dr. West handed it over with a belligerent smile. "Surprised?"

  "No, sir. Headquarters radioed me to be expecting your aircraft." The Mountie acted like a stolid type who would not expose his surprise even if a little green man from Uranus four-lettered on his R.C.M.P. hat.

  During tea and mosquitos, Dr. West opened his heavy pack. He lifted out a tape recorder, and a strobe light with the largest size battery pack, and a bulky battery-operated 16mm movie camera. Due to efficient forethought, all this equipment used the same size cylindrical interchangeable batteries. None of the equipment would work, because each battery enclosed and concealed an aerosol spray can.

  Dr. West glanced from the tape recorder to the Mountie's mildly interested expression. "I'm looking for Eevvaalik, that old woman whose husband was jailed," Dr. West announced, and the Mountie's eyelids flickered.

  A year ago, Cultural Sanctuary Guards would have kept Dr. West out, but their replacements, the R.C.M.P., evidently approved letting him in for some reason.

  During the winter, the Canadian Parliament had listened with increasingly affirmative nods to impassioned attacks by members of LaRue's party against the whole Cultural Sanctu
ary concept. No one hesitated to speak ill of the dead Director, Hans Suxbey. As Hans Suxbey had anticipated in the Committee Room when he shot himself, Parliament overwhelmingly refused to pass their annual appropriation for the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary. "Starvation camp -- Concentration camp -- Free our starving Eskimos -- Eliminate the Sanctuary."

  When carry-over funds were exhausted, the Sanctuary Guards had been withdrawn, and replaced by Mounties and smiling politicians, Life photographers and amazed gynecologists. Disturbed Family Allowance administrators had landed on LaRue Lake and plodded across the tundra to gawk at the multiplying Esks.

  The Canadian Government's Family Planning nurses already reported that the Esks showed discouragingly negative attitudes toward customary birth control techniques.

  When the rumor reached Ottawa that Family Planning nurses were injecting Esk women with a six-months ovulation delay hormone and assuring the women it was a flu shot, there was more outraged oratory from old Etienne LaRue in Parliament. "This, it is not only murder of unborn spirits. It is government deception." The nurses were withdrawn.

  But Dr. West suspected the bureaucrats still were holding their fingers up to test the winds of change.

  In Canada, from one side blew the dinosaur's breath of old Etienne LaRue, opposing any population limitation for the Esks or anyone else. Whether the Esks might vote for his party was unimportant, he said, smiling because the birth control shots proved ineffective.

  On the other side were increasingly disquieted administrators and politicians responsible for providing the food, clothing and well-being of the rapidly increasing Esks. Unless something sensible were done, Canadian income taxes would have to increase.

  "You're quite lucky, sir," the Mountie was saying, "to locate old Eevvaalik. She was brought to this camp two weeks ago. Our doctor tells me she is quite ill, TB."

  The thought flashed through Dr. West's mind, when he fled again from the Boothia Peninsula, he should take Eevvaalik back to civilization with him. Kidnapping? Three years ago, when Dr. West had taken Marthalik and the bound and growling Peterluk, Eevvaalik had refused to go. Now would she harshly scream and fight and cough? This might be his last chance. In California, he could get professional help in interrogating her. Depth hypnosis aided by pentothal injections might expose what Eevvaalik claimed she could not bear to remember. Unreasonably, sometimes she claimed all the Esks were her children. But what had created the first Esk? Locked in her greasy head --

  "This way, sir." As the Mountie led him through the aimless crowds of smiling Esks toward old Eevvaalik's tent, Dr. West's heart leaped.

  For a moment he'd thought he glimpsed Marthalik. Then he saw this was another Esk girl who looked like his wife. He felt like crying.

  "In this tent," the Mountie was saying. "Eevvaalik?"

  The tent was Canadian Army surplus and looked it. Eevvaalik crouched in the dim corner beside her strange ceramic seal oil lamp, empty. Dr. West unslung his heavy pack.

  "Eh-eh," she laughed, immediately recognizing him. "It is The-Whiteman- Who-Was-Bitten-by-a-Dog." Coughing, she gasped: "Tell this person of her husband -- "

  "Peterluk has much to eat. He has a warm place to sleep," Dr. West answered. "The Government would not let me go in to see him in the beautiful white tower."

  "A warm place?" Eevvaalik said hopefully. "This person wishes to be there also."

  At this, the Mountie left the tent.

  Dr. West smiled at Eevvaalik as he knelt beside her and felt her pulse. In a way he was sorry that her weakness had drained away her crusty independence. Probably she was the only real Eskimo in the camp. Mosquitos whined.

  "You would like it in Ottawa," he said, meaning California, beginning to think she would go with him to the plane with no trouble at all.

  "Eh-eh," she laughed. "What is this warm place called?"

  "The New Ottawa Reformation Center. They say each person has his own igloo in the tower." Dr. West laid his hand on her brow, wishing he had brought a thermometer.

  "Peterluk needs a woman," Eevvaalik laughed. "This person will be stronger soon." She slapped her bony chest. "This person can still do it with Peterluk the way he likes." She managed a feeble leer at Dr. West. "So you take this person to her husband."

  "Soon-soon," Dr. West sighed, regretting he had not even brought a sleeping injection from his medical bag, now seeming so far away in the plane on LaRue Lake. "Sleep."

  Ignoring the mosquitos wheezing in the tent, leather-skinned old Eevvaalik slept.

  This tent seemed the only place where Dr. West could escape the thousands of eyes. Swiftly, he opened the back of the tape recorder, took out the batteries. Prying off the top of a cylindrical battery he removed a small orange aerosol can labeled MOSQUITO SPRAY.

  With his heavy-bladed hunting knife he dug hard-packed filth-clotted gravel from the floor of the tent. He refilled the battery with gravel. Jamming on the top, he fitted the battery back into the tape recorder. By the time he had operated on all the batteries in the tape recorder, in the battery pack for the strobe light, and in the battery-powered camera, he had sixteen aerosol cans labeled MOSQUITO SPRAY.

  He was sweating with haste and fright as he removed the rigidity boards from the square pack, dovetailed the boards together, and opened the little package of box nails. He hammered the box together using the butt of his hunting knife. The outside of the box was stamped: MOSQUITO SPRAY -- NEW YORK SAVE THE ESKIMOS DAY COMMITTEE -- 334, a nonexistent but likely looking invoice number.

  If he had planned all of this sooner, if he had made the terrible decision earlier, Dr. West thought, he might have planted this box in the freight car to Churchill on Hudson Bay or in the LST when it was being loaded. He might have avoided this risk. But here he was.

  Ahead of the Government's plan to resettle the Esks, he might have been able to place these terrible cans in the next food shipment, and never return here to the Boothia Peninsula. But here he was. "What makes me do these things?"

  It was as dim outside as it would ever be. The crazy orange sun was looping down to the horizon and would rise without setting.

  Dr. West withdrew his head back into the tent. With his expensively worthless photographic equipment strewn on the gravel floor, he fitted the wooden box containing the aerosol cans into his pack. Their spray would not kill mosquitos.

  As he tried to walk outside past hordes of playing children, they followed him. Like Eskimo children they didn't keep regular sleeping hours. Here it was midnight. They ran ahead of him toward a stack of unopened wooden crates stamped: DEHYDRATED FREEZE-DRIED 218.

  Children swarmed ahead of him onto the crates, giggling. Little girls hummed and flapped their skinny arms.

  My God, I can't really do it, Dr. West thought. Let the Government do it. They've got to, eventually. But most Cana- dian economists insisted their country was underpopulated. He thought of China, India still increasing. And South America!

  More disillusioning, in the U.S. during the 1970s when use of The Pill was most widespread, the birthrate had tumbled down. Belatedly the Pentagon became frantic because the future supply of scientists and soldiers was diminishing in comparison with unfriendly countries whose birthrates remained high.

  U.S. economists became disturbed because industrial production had been geared to a population growth rate of about 3% per year and this slump to a 1 % population increase per year was leading into an endless recession. Even the increased antiballistic missile spending and overseas military exercises no longer were obscuring the gap between immense production and lagging consumption. As unemployment increased, the work week was shortened. As U.S. population growth slowed, there was less active demand for cars and houses because there were fewer young consumers because of The Pill. Formerly, half the population had been under twenty-five years of age. Now the proportion of young people was declining. Future consumers were lagging, failing to emerge because of The Pill. The stock market continued to decline. Corporations geared for continuous growth w
ere frantically demanding more Government help, more pump priming. As one of the least inhibited telecommentators put it: "The opinion media must lead the massive educational program for mother priming."