Norman Invasions

by John Norman

  “May I see the retained print?” I asked.

  “I would be pleased to show it to you,” he said. “In that way it would make it more difficult for them. They would have to kill both of us.”

  “Maybe you could just tell me about it,” I said.

  “You are willing to place your life in jeopardy?” he asked.

  “I am an investigative reporter,” I said. I supposed I was as willing to place my life in jeopardy as much as your average investigative reporter. But, actually, that is not really too much. When it comes right down to it we would rather, however reluctantly, if a choice must be made, place the lives of others in jeopardy, our informants, and such.

  “Look!” he cried, whipping out a glossy ten by fourteen photograph.

  He had acted too quickly. I had just been preparing, upon reflection, to tell him that though I was an investigative reporter, a certain amount of caution and common sense must temper our inquiries—when it was too late, too late!

  I stared, in horror, in disbelief, at the photograph.

  “See?” inquired my friend.

  “It cannot be what it seems to be,” I said.

  “Note,” said my friend.

  “I see, I see,” I said.

  It was an enormous close up, obviously blown up, of the rump of a large polar bear, as it slipped into the water. It had been taken with one of those cameras to which I have previously alluded, one of those whose zoom lens might have detected a dropped lens cap in a lunar crater, and had then been enlarged, apparently several times.

  “It is a zipper,” I said.

  “Obviously,” he said.

  As those with some expertise in zoology, particularly polar zoology, would instantly see, and, indeed, as those with no expertise whatsoever in zoology of any sort would instantly see, something was seriously awry.

  Polar bears may shed in their summer months, but they certainly do not put on and remove coats, at least not like people, and certainly not with zippers.

  Polar bears do not come with zippers.

  “Perhaps,” said I, “it is not a zipper, but a wrinkle in the film, the result of a fault in the emulsion, a mistake in development of some sort.”

  “It is a zipper,” he said.

  “Clearly,” I agreed.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “Stop hovering,” I said to the waiter, who seemed, inadvertently, to have drifted by. He withdrew then, but not too far.

  “Clearly there is a simple explanation for this,” I said to my friend. “In defiance of laws dedicated to preserving the purity of Arctic wastelands surely some recreant has cast an unwanted coat into the water, from which the zipper became detached, later to be snagged in the fur of that splendid animal.”

  “Perhaps,” said the photographer, “but why then would a mysterious agent, acting on behalf it seems of some powerful group or force, purchase the other prints and negative?”

  “As a novelty perhaps,” I said. “An eccentric collectible?”

  “Perhaps,” he granted me.

  “Not now,” I said to the waiter, using two more items from my Norwegian lexicon.

  Soon thereafter I settled our small bar bill, from my expense account, courtesy of a major metropolitan newspaper whose unabashed liberal views and links to vast advertising revenues are unquestioned, at least by most.. Interestingly I settled the bill with a waitress, as the waiter with whom we had earlier dealt was nowhere in evidence, his shift doubtless having been completed. I did not object to his absence, for this lacuna obviated the necessity of leaving a tip. The waitress commented in Norwegian, but her remark did not lie within the compass of my lexicon.

  My photographer friend and I parted outside the hotel, each to while away a bit of time in the rifle and parka shops lining Longyearbyen’s major thoroughfare, which is about two hundred yards long.

  The plane would be boarding in something like a hour or so.

  My friend and I went separately, as he was slowed by the necessity of dragging his trunk.

  The photograph concerning which we have spoken here had been placed, carefully folded several times, in the left, inside pocket of his coat.

  I am afraid that I did not devote the amount of attention they deserved to the parkas, rifles, bullets, compasses, boots, socks, knickknacks, and such, attractively displayed in Longyearbyen’s several well-kept emporia. I was dissatisfied with the deft convenience and too obvious plausibility of my explanation of the polar bear’s zipper. Another possibility nagged at the edge of my consciousness.

  On the way back to the hotel, to gather my luggage and board the bus for the airport, I was distracted by a commotion on the street.

  I thought there might be something to investigate here, and, as I was an investigator reporter, I investigated.

  Moving politely to the front of a horrified crowd of tourists, intermingled with which were some blasé Norwegians, who seemed to see nothing out of the ordinary in the scene, I beheld, to my consternation, my photographer friend. He was lying beside his opened trunk, which had been forced open. The bunches of currency, however, lay within it unruffled. “He has been beaten senseless,” said a fellow, who was with our group. This was not quite true, as my friend was groaning, audibly. Perhaps he had been previously beaten senseless.

  Fortunately our local guide was in the crowd.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Polar bear attack,” said the man.

  “Here?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It happens sometimes, particularly to photographers. You are not a photographer, are you?”

  “No,” I assured him.

  I bent to the body. I looked to the trunk. Not a dinar or shell was missing.

  “Nothing is missing,” said the guide.

  This is not unusual in polar bear attacks. Commonly not much is missing but half of the victim.

  I should also note that neither the tourists nor the locals had touched the exposed riches in the open trunk, no more than the polar bear. Norwegians, as is well known, are an honest folk, even alarmingly so, and unusual people who take long trips to see polar bears, rather than visit a zoo, are very similar in this respect.

  “No!” I cried. “Something is missing! A photograph! A photograph is gone!” And the reader has doubtless already surmised that the photograph in question was the very photograph which I had seen in the hotel bar earlier.

  The Norwegians in the crowd laughed uneasily. The tourists laughed with less reservation.

  “Why would a polar bear take a photograph?” asked the local guide.

  “I intend to find out!” I announced.

  The Norwegians looked at one another uneasily. The tourists exchanged glances, in a normal manner.

  “There are tracks!” I cried, pointing to where an elderly municipal employee was busily sweeping.

  I rushed about the municipal employee and hurried from the main street, which takes about four seconds, and found myself in Longyearbyen’s wilderness. In a moment or two, guided by heavy paw prints, bloody on some rocks, and by an occasional broken twig, of which there are few in the area of Longyearbyen, and several dislodged pebbles, of which there are many in the area, I followed the trail, away from the city, across the highway, past a small lake filled with very cold water, past several “watch out for polar bears” signs, most of which merely showed the picture of a polar bear and an exclamation point, but that was enough to give one the general idea. The trail led upward, toward a small, dilapidated, apparently abandoned cabin, high on the side of a mountain.

  It was to the door of this cabin that the trail led.

  The bear had apparently entered the cabin. The cabin, I trusted, was abandoned. Otherwise I would have feared for any occupants.

  In a fit of mad, blind investigative zeal, of a pitch and sort understood
only by the true investigative reporter on a hot lead, or perhaps by a Viking Berserker, or a marine predator in a blood frenzy, or, say, a chemically enhanced homicidal psychotic, I plunged through the door and found myself face to face with a gigantic, standing polar bear. Moreover, this polar bear was holding a rifle, and it was pointing at my heart!

  It was a hunter’s nightmare!

  “Where is the photograph?” I cried, my Norwegian barely sufficing to enunciate this question.

  “There,” said the bear, in Norwegian, gesturing with the muzzle of the weapon.

  My heart sank, for the muzzle of that lethal device indicated a small pile of ash. “Fiend!” I cried, in English, for I did not know the Norwegian for this word, or had not time to recollect it.

  “Do you think you will leave this cabin alive?” asked the bear.

  “Your Norwegian is not very good,” I said, suddenly. The accent was clearly Berlitz.

  “I have twenty-seven words of Norwegian,” said the bear, huffily.

  “Berlitz?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I have forty-one,” I said.

  “Berlitz?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Obviously,” said the bear, “you are more fluent than I. Would you care to speak in some other language, English, perhaps?”

  “If you wish,” I said. It made little difference to me.

  “Do you expect to leave this room alive?” asked the bear, in English.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Actually I do not remember exactly what my response was, but, as I am now writing this, I conjecture that my response must have been something along those lines.

  The muzzle of that frightful, dangerous artifact was again trained on my heart.

  “Your accent,” I said, “is of Queens, New York, perhaps Forest Hills, perhaps Rego Park.”

  He seemed suddenly shaken.

  “I do not think you are actually a polar bear,” I said.

  The muzzle wavered.

  I had him now.

  “You are not going to pull that trigger,” I said.

  At this point we have lost many an investigative reporter.

  The bullet blazed past my left ear and knocked a board loose behind me.

  “You are not going to pull the trigger again,” I informed him.

  This time the bullet ripped through the collar of my Linkblott parka, and a panel of the door behind me exploded down the hill.

  “You see,” I said, “you have missed me twice. Freud has an explanation for this. It is called motivated missing.”

  I saw that this shook the bear considerably.

  “You are not truly a bear,” I said, “but a human being disguised as a bear. I would not be surprised if you had a zipper in the back.”

  I thought I heard a gasp emerge between the fangs in that cavernous maw, and perhaps a choked sob.

  “You are living a lie,” I informed him, cruelly. Sometimes an investigative reporter must be cruel. We are not trained to pull punches, except in cases where we might thereby annoy our adversary, and risk being pummeled.

  “Yes,” he said, suddenly, and staggered back, and then sat back on a chair, wearily, behind the table in the room, the rifle lowered, placed on the table, not pointing any longer at me. He put his head in his paws.

  “Yes,” he said, agonized. “I am not truly a polar bear. I have been living a lie.”

  “You are clearly suffering from cognitive dissonance,” I said, “and are riven with self-conflict.” It helps for an investigative reporter to have some awareness of psychology.

  The massive, shaggy body shook with dry, throaty sobs. I was touched. My appeal, of course, had been a moral one. Morality is a formidable weapon when applied to the moral. With the immoral it does not work as well.

  Suddenly, with his paws, he removed the massive headpiece, which so cunningly resembled the head of one of the Arctic’s most fearsome predators.

  “You!” I cried.

  I beheld the visage of our obtrusive waiter, the large, strong, broad-shouldered youth with the mop of shaggy blond hair, he who looked as though he might easily command the floor of a Norwegian disco.

  I suspect he had been chosen in part because of his uncanny resemblance to a large, strong, broad-shouldered, shaggy-haired Norwegian youth, of the sort which might arouse not suspicion, but admiration, in a Norwegian disco. I wondered if he had won the hearts of several of the lusciously gyrating maids of the land of the Midnight Sun. He had but twenty-seven words of Norwegian, but I suspected he could have made them go a long way. Too, Norwegian maids are used to taciturn men, strong silent types who, particularly in the rural areas, are likely to limit themselves to six or seven words a day, most of which have to do with weather and the condition of the stock, but the others commonly expressive of tenderness, regard, and sensitivity.

  Norwegian marriages tend to be long-lasting and loving, perhaps in part because harsh words, rather like other words, are seldom spoken.

  “My name is Irving, Irving Himmelfarb,” he said. “As you suspected, I am from Queens, New York and, indeed, from Forest Hills. I attended Forest Hills High School there, and patronized the Bagel Nosh.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  Incidentally, I will now refer to him as Olaf, that in order to protect his true identity.

  “Being a reckless youth,” he said, “and zealous to pursue adventures, I succumbed to the lure of exotic vistas and ready cash, a good deal of it.”

  It was an old story, recklessness, a zeal for adventure, the lure of exotic vistas, and wealth.

  “And so when the offer of becoming a polar bear impostor offered itself, I leapt at it, naturally”

  “That is natural” I granted him, sympathetically.

  “Forest Hills, Queens,” he said, “incidentally, is a major recruiting center for polar bear impostors.”

  “I did not know that,” I said. I didn’t know it at the time.

  “Others,” he said, “are in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, San Diego, and Los Angeles.”

  “Certainly the craft is an odd one,” I said, hoping to draw him out.

  “It is more common than you might think,” he said, “that and certain similar or kindred occupations. You must understand, first, that rivalry amongst travel organizations is fierce. Competition for the customer’s dollars, or dinars, or shells, or zarduks, is fierce. Economic natural selection, merciless and unforgiving, flourishes. Resources are limited. Economic arms races, so to speak, are rampant. Who will survive? Suppose then, that a travel company forced into exotic niches appealing only to unusual clienteles is on the brink of extinction. What if, for example, a jungle expedition advertising aardvark sightings fails to sight aardvarks?”

  “Or a polar marine expedition polar bears,” I said, shrewdly

  “Yes,” he said, “I think you can see that that option is not economically permissible. It would be an invitation to join the economic Dodo birds, Great Auks, and such. Companies will fight to survive, tooth and nail, and they intend to get on with business, if necessary, ‘red in tooth and claw.’”

  “Naturally,” I said. I saw that Olaf was well read. At least he was familiar with Tennyson.

  “I did not think of it as wrong, or criminal,” he said. “I am not even sure, now, that it is. Is it wrong to try to do what one can to help a brave, desperate, noble, struggling company to survive? Is it wrong to give pleasure to eager polar bear enthusiasts? Do we denounce and castigate actors for donning costumes and presenting plays? For example, we do not really think that Derek Jacoby is Hamlet, at least not most of us. We do not scorn actors for trying to make their living, do we?”

  “Not lately,” I said. I knew something of the history of the theater.

  “Yet fraud,” said he, “is clearly involved.”

 
“Yes,” I said.

  I could almost hear the dark bells of cognitive dissonance clanging in Olaf’s subconscious mind.

  “The benefits are good,” said Olaf, “and one gets vacations twice a year.”

  “How many polar bear impostors are there?” I asked.

  “At any given time, counting days off, the fellows on vacation, and so on, twenty-eight.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “But there were things they didn’t tell me about,” said Olaf, “the loneliness, the ice, the temperature of the water, the lousy raw fish one has to eat, the ridicule of seals who splat their flippers in our very faces, the insolent gulls, many of whom are afflicted with intestinal incontinence, and occasionally the curiosity of real polar bears.”

  I recalled hearing that one of the earlier expeditions had sighted twenty-nine polar bears.

  “That could be dangerous,” I said.

  “They space themselves out,” said Olaf. “It’s territorial. The danger is the mating season. It’s good to have your vacation then.”

  “It sounds risky to me,” I said.

  “We have a shoulder holster inside the suit,” he said, patting a bulge near his left foreleg, “and plenty of tranquilizer darts, fifty cc’s of fluid in each.”

  “Still,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “it’s dangerous.”

  I shuddered.

  “Why don’t you quit?” I asked.

  He smiled bitterly. “These guys are tough,” he said. “Do you think this is the sort of job you can just walk out on? Do you think they let you do that? Do you think they can afford to let you do that? They have too much invested. There’s a lot at stake here.”

  “It sounds like the Mafia,” I said.

  “The Mafia won’t touch these guys,” he said. “Too dangerous, too cold, too far from Sicily. Too, the Mafia guys are at least human. They like to eat pizza and spaghetti, and they have a profound respect for family values.”

  “You can’t quit then?” I said.

  “I know too much,” he said, wearily.