The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  "You murdered harmless Eskimos. Look at these little children. We just sprayed 'em," the Major bleated, as if it had been a death spray.

  The children scrambled about unconcernedly. A little girl clung to Dr. West's leg.

  "Don't tell me that little girl isn't human," the Major said. "She is human. Look at her little hands, her ears, her eyes, you murderer."

  "You were happier when you thought we were spraying Chinese children -- " Dr. West retorted.

  The Major made an abrupt move with his .45, and let his arm drop down hopelessly. "You're insane, criminally insane, you were convicted of genocide and sent to a prison for the criminally insane. The Eskimos are the world's happiest, most cooperative people."

  "And you believe that murderers should be executed," Dr. West challenged, hoping the Major would fire the gun, kill him, foul up all the intricate, unknown plans of the CIA.

  "These are people," the Major pressed. "Call them Esks or Eskimos, they're just as human as we are. Right home at Edwards Air Force Base, whole crews of happy Eskimos are working at the base, more of them all the time. Wonderful obedient happy people, and you tell me they're not human."

  "You sound like a bleeding heart or a Maoist," Dr. West retorted. "A rehash of the half-truths when I was crucif -- excoriated before the United Nations General Assembly. You're remembering the Chinese Communist Party line."

  "You're the traitor. Genocidal maniac is the truth," the Major added, more calmly. "That whole U.S. Administration was voted out of office at the next election."

  "The U.S. Government was innocent," Dr. West replied, "but a lot of voters believed the Communist Party line. It's funny now. My guilt rubbed off all over, even though only I made the decision to use the bacterial spray cans. If you believe the Chinese fulminations of seventeen years ago when I was convicted, I made old Adolph Eichmann look like an innocent saint. I was the threat to all the yellow skins and brown and black. I was the racial butcher."

  " -- because the Eskimos weren't bothering anybody." The Major couldn't keep his voice steady. "It wasn't their fault that radioactive cesium is concentrated by the lichen-caribou food chain. The Eskimos always had eaten caribou. None of you wise-guy know-it-all doctors told them not to -- "

  "The extreme mutational theory has no basis in fact. When will you stop confusing Eskimos with Esks?"

  "They're the same. It's a word trap, a phony word trap to justify your plan for world genocide of the Eskimos. The Eskimos can't help it if they've started multiplying fast."

  "Major, you don't know anything, except what you've recalled in bits and pieces from old TV newscasts of seventeen years ago when you were about twenty-three and so busy with girls and booze you weren't paying any attention to the rest of the world. How old do you think I was then? How old do I look now?"

  Dr. West thought his own face looked about forty, which was his theoretical physiological age. His calendar age since birth was fifty-six. He felt his damaged heart laboring as if he were seventy-six.

  The Major blinked. "You're damn well preserved. In prison you weren't in the sun. Or were you in the freezer? In prison is where you'll go again if we ever get out of here. Right now I need you. You talk Chink to these people. Tell them to hide us. Tell them we will free them from the Chinese. We'll give them self-determination, food, real clothing, medical supplies, if they'll hide us from the Chinese."

  "Oh, brother!" Dr. West laughed savagely. "You are terrified! Why not promise them guns and ammunition -- "

  "Sure, we'll drop guns. Some of their people must be the guerrillas."

  "Don't you wish it were so!" Dr. West taunted. "These people aren't Eskimos. These people aren't human. These are Esks. Throw away your expectations of human behavior. Esks don't behave that way. Do you see any Chinese guards? Humans this miserable would need guards. Esks aren't human. They don't revolt. They feel no need to be guerrillas. Or to vote. They don't need to. They're getting their way. They're getting what they want -- or what something out there wants for them. They're filling our world!"

  "Tell them to hide us. That's an order."

  "Very rapidly they're filling our world."

  "Tell them to hide us, damn you!" The Major's .45 was raised again.

  "Where can they hide us? Under their bodies?"

  "They must have houses someplace." The Major peered about.

  Shrugging, gesticulating, Dr. West tried to communicate with some of the women. He asked if they felt well. They said they did. "They say to climb over that ridge, over the hill to the next valley," he lied. "They say hide on the hill."

  He regretted his lie as they struggled up the terraces. His mouth had lied before he had a chance to think. It was as if the Harvard Circle of the CIA had drummed into his skull that he must go to a hilltop. The signal sender would have more range from a high place. Was that it?

  His heavy legs ached and dragged. His heart thudded. He was exhausted. He couldn't make it all the way to the top of the mountain. It was a mountain of endless terraces, giant steps too big for any man. The world whirled dazzling bright as Dr. West fell in the mud.

  "You got to get up." The Major was pulling at him. "Saw a copter out there. A little speck, zigging around like it's looking for something. You don't think the Chicoms are tuned in on our guerrilla wavelength?"

  Dr. West stared up at the muddy little signal sender in the Major's huge hand. "Possible." That was the truth. In fact it was the understatement of the year. The CIA radio was tuned to the Maoist frequency.

  "How do I turn this thing off without busting it?"

  "Don't turn it off. Probably the helicopter is simply supervising the Esks," Dr. West's mouth lied. "To turn it off, you would have to break it. Then the signal sender would be done for, and so will -- "

  "All right, let's go, we can still reach the top." The Major tried boosting him up the slippery wall of a terrace. "Got to reach the top. Irrigation pumps up there, I think. Can hide underneath. Won't be seen from air." The Major wheezed and gasped for breath, plainly feeling his forty plus years and a candidate for a coronary.

  Dr. West fell again. "Leave me." He had difficulty enunciating the words. "I don't want you to die for me."

  "No, got to help you. In spite of everything we're on the same side, Doc." With strength and tenderness, the Major helped Dr. West climb. "Some time -- when you got time -- you got to prove to me -- those Esks down there -- are different from Eskimos. I don't believe it. I'll never believe it."

  When the two men finally wormed under the throbbing irrigation pump on the crest of the mountain, Dr. West regained his breath and spoke intently through the roar of the pump. "If you could compare their chromosomes you would see that their genetic coding, the DNA recipe which guides the growth of an Esk, is too neat, too perfect, too repetitive among different individuals to be -- human."

  Deaf to a maniac's ravings, the Major peered out, clutching his .45 as savagely as if it were an antiaircraft weapon. "The copter's moving to a new position -- like they're sure as hell -- looking for -- something."

  "The simplest misexplanation is yours, that the Esks are mutated Eskimos." Dr. West continued talking at cross-purposes to the Major. "Ockham's Razor, an old scientific rule of thumb, suggests if there are several possible explanations for a mystery, pick the simplest. Mutated Eskimos is the simplest explanation. It is the most conservative explanation. It is the explanation picked by so-called reputable physiologists. It is the explanation people want to continue to believe."

  "The copter's moving out over the valley where we were -- " The Major stopped.

  The Doctor's hand closed around the dagger within his layers of clothing and he kept talking as though each sentence might be his last. "Mutations usually involve a single trait or related set of traits. But any honest study of the Esks shows they differ from human beings in hundreds of ways, physiologically and psychologically."

  "The copter is moving from position to position like they're trying to get a radio-location fix on us. D
o you think this signal sender -- ?"

  "And the Esk child acts happier and more cooperative than a human child, and efficiently grows into an adult in three years. Eating only 600 calories of food a day, an adult Esk outworks a Chinaman. And breed, breed like lemmings! For what purpose are the Esks overrunning the Earth? Why are the Chinese, we, everyone letting the Esks multiply?"

  "The copter's heading in our direction."

  "The simplest misexplanation is that the Chinese are using the Esks for politico-economic purposes. The Esks ease the Chinese agricultural problem. The Esks produce farm surpluses. The Esks produce favorable balance of trade. The Esk manpower frees Chinese manpower to police India. But all this is the superficial explanation. It does not reveal the underlying -- "

  "Copter straight for us!" The Major began smashing the signal sender with the butt of his .45.

  Dr. West could not stop talking. He expected to be stilled forever. "Even our President seems to believe the simple-headed explanation, that the Chinese are using, breeding the Esks as part of the Endless War, simple power politics. -- But I believe the Esks are using the Chinese!"

  The clattering wail of the jet copter chewed through the roar of the pump.

  Under the iron pump, as if cued by the sounds of the helicopter, Dr. West's hand pulled down the zipper, opening his flight suit, and freeing the quilted Chinese blue cotton within.

  The copter squatted down. It was small, with a plastic bubble cockpit. The Major stared at the indistinct faces inside -- and then down to his .45, and then to Dr. West.

  As the copter engine squealed to a stop, the Major stared unbelieving at Dr. West. "You've got on a coolie costume. All planned! Nothing for me. Good God, what was intended for me?"

  Dr. West tried to release his own fingers from the dagger inside the padded Chinese coat. "I don't know. I swear to you, I don't know."

  The black boots of a Maoist policeman sprang from the copter to the Chinese mountain top and ran toward the pump. The Major rolled, firing his booming, deafening .45 automatic three times. The Major's wide-eyed face twisted back toward Dr. West, and the round eye of the .45 followed too slowly.

  With surgical precision, Dr. West's hand thrust the dagger into the auricle of the Major's heart.

  Dr. West, the man, sobbed.

  In helpless anguish he lay within the body he had not been able to control. A Chinese hand disengaged his fingers from the dagger.

  "Liu," exclaimed the excited young Cantonese voice above Dr. West's body, "where could he have gotten such a dagger? It is a Mark III dagger."

  "My eyes can see it is a Mark III dagger," the copter pilot retorted. "He killed the other Big-Nose with it -- which is strange."

  "Liu, with care we should tread. Perhaps the Mark III dagger was issued to him." The young Cantonese voice quickened. "Great care. He is wearing commune clothing, but he has the white corpse-face of a typical Big-Nose, and yet there is the radio signal to explain. See, here is the little transmitter, which told us to come rescue him. The other Big-Nose must have smashed it. I think this man who is alive may be an important personage. Peking should be notified. Extensive photographs should be taken for the record or our buttocks may be burnt." The black boots ran back to the copter.

  "You, yes, you -- yes, you !" the copter pilot nudged Dr. West with his boot toe. "Did you understand our words?"

  Dr. West feigned unconsciousness.

  "He does. He understands us," the copter pilot shouted.

  The returning young policeman with the camera backed off, and the copter pilot followed. Like doctors in consultation, in sinister whispers they argued. Then the young Maoist policeman advanced warily toward the patient. "It is with great regret that official regulations require us to bind your wrists to your ankles," he blurted. "I, for one, would never do such a thing." With professional expertise, he knotted the ropes.

  The ropes were not tight The young Maoist policeman had been careful not to interfere with Dr. West's circulation. Having already tied him so he could not walk, the two men had to hoist Dr. West and carry him to the helicopter.

  "For a thin man -- very heavy!" the young one gasped.

  "Big bones. Primitive skeleton. Typical Big-Nose," the pilot retorted.

  "Did you notice the wrists of the dead one are hairy as an ape's!" The young voice echoed the racial disgust. "Weak blue eyes. Shot at me twice."

  "Three times. So close to your belly even a drunken sot imperialist should not miss. Either you are dead or there was something wrong with his bullets."

  As the helicopter scuttled upward, it sideslipped violently. Its door flew open. The sack in which the Maoist policeman had collected the battered signal sender, the dagger, the .45, and Dr. West's CIA "escape kit" slid across the dented aluminum floor toward the open door. The young policeman fell to his knees, snatching at these sliding objects. Dr. West considered lunging from the copter -- to fall forever.

  Contorted forward on the seat because his wrists were tied to his ankles, Dr. West leaned toward the open door.

  8. OUR MAN IN PEKING

  The copter lurched upward, slamming its door shut, and the Major's hard head flopped against Dr. West's bound feet and wrists. The Major's blue eyes were white-rimmed in the futile stare of death.

  Dr. West closed his own eyes. Whiplashes of self-flagellation slashed through the numbness inside his skull.

  I can't rationalize that those bastards in Harvard Circle killed him. When he turned the muzzle of the .45 at me, all my vainglorious hopes that he would kill me turned into lies. Instinctively I dodged from the nothingness of death. My mind and body joined in thrusting the dagger with all my strength, as if he were an enemy. God help my friends! My hand would have killed him even if I had been free from narcohypnosis, and I may have been free. Now I may be free --

  The copter tilted. Dr. West stared down at the truncated mountain peaks. Those sons of bitches in the Harvard Circle should be happy now. The Chinese have me.

  Tiny reservoirs, thin pipelines, in every direction the Chinese world was terraced and glittering with microscopic rice paddies. Ten years ago these had been barren mountains, but now the myriad multiplying hands of the Esks were changing the world.

  Seventeen years ago in the Arctic, I thought I was free to act like God. I thought I realized the implications of the group of Eskimos on the Boothia Peninsula who suddenly and mysteriously were multiplying.

  By the next summer the damned fools in Ottawa and Washington were sending in icebreakers followed by whole barge-loads of food. "Human life is sacred," they said. "No one must starve."

  In those days, the Canadians cheerfully planned to resettle any "surplus" Eskimos throughout the Northwest Territories. Canadian Government officials admitted that the birthrate of the Booth Eskimos was "Startling" but "We can hardly drown the little beggars just because their mothers refuse to swallow the birth control pills."

  With a bush planeload of luggage, I flew back to the Boothia Peninsula. Having made my decision, I felt tremendous freedom to act. Gambling with people's lives was my everyday work when I was a young doctor in hospital residency. At that time, seventeen years ago when I landed my float plane on LaRue Lake, the staphylococcus strain which specifically infected the Fallopian tubes and spermatic ducts had not been fully tested on a broad sample of human races, but I acted.

  The Esks turned out to be immune to ordinary human infections.

  But camped near the refuse heap of the former Cultural Sanctuary Guard Station, twenty-two old men and women, real Eskimos, died. They should not have died, but they died from this minor staphylococcus infection.

  The tragedy became much greater than my life or death, or the death of the twenty-two Eskimos. It was my trial for attempted genocide that focused the attention of the world upon the hunger of the rapidly increasing Esks. The Swedes and Russians sent food.