His hurried hand rediscovered downward that Eskimo girls wear tight caribou skin pants extending down to meet their long sealskin boots above the knee, and he smiled against her cheek. He still was clothed, breathing hard and thinking harder, while his hands helped her squirm from her pants.
In his frustrated excitement he felt like laughing or crying. As a professional population expert , he thought, should my travel pack have included an assortment of the most modern devices and morning-after pills for young ladies? Not funny, you unprepared idiot. In the Eskimo Sanctuary he hadn't intended to get involved at all, personally.
Gasping, struggling out of his clothes within their wriggling sleeping bag, he reassured himself he could exercise responsible physiological restraints more possible in intent than in practice. Smiling wryly against her ear, he had no intention of abruptly interrogating her with questions such as: Marthalik, do you have a calendar? Marthalik, are you among the 60% who are dependably regular? Marthalik, you don't know?
She wriggled smoothly against his chest and lips as his hands helped off her long soft boots. She moaned as his fingers rose, and inhaled, clamping his right hand between the inner softness of her thighs. She exhaled. In his throbbing excitement while he turned her huge-small body with her moist breath sighing faster against him, lovingly he prepared her.
Dying with his love for her, vaguely he remembered he must remember his responsibility to her. When the time came for him he must be able to interrupt himself.
With her hand clinging to his back, she moaned with pleasure about -- babies? In his mounting excitement and their rhythmic smoothness repeating faster and faster into a delicious shudder, she rippled wonderfully inward like no woman he had ever experienced or been prepared for and he exploded, everything forgotten.
Gradually his outer consciousness returned. Against his chest he felt the relaxing rhythm of her heart, and on the back of his neck the stroking of her fingers. She inhaled against him, exhaled: "Am I your wife?"
Bombed by the question, Dr. West lay, still part of her. To his own surprise he blurted: "Yes. Marthalik, you are my wife." And he felt joy, better than he'd ever felt, wonderfully free to love her now. He held her in his arms, his throat swollen with love as if he wanted to cry. And why not? he thought. And why not! "Marthalik, you are my wife."
She giggled and snuggled against him. "This person will try to have a bigger navel for you."
Her small hand guided his hand upon that part of her softness, and he smiled, remembering vaguely that Eskimo men loved opulent navels. The deeper the navel, the better-fed the wife, demonstrating the greatness of the hunter because his wife had such a wonderfully deep navel, beautifully cushioned in lush plumpness. To Eskimo men, and perhaps to Marthalik, he realized the erotic symbolism of the navel must far surpass the breasts and even the nose.
"Plump wife," he whispered, "you will always have plenty to eat with me, and a navel so wonderfully deep. Such a perfect navel is yours now because I love you."
To his surprise, her finger was making love to his navel, which was neither deep nor opulent, but startlingly stimulated by the circular sliding of her finger. Inward with delicately circling touches her finger was penetrating so deeply, his abdomen hardened with sparkling nerve signals radiating downward. What have I been missing all my life?
Arousing deliciously, he discovered the Eskimos' affection for the navel was based on more than abstract symbolism. Evidently these Eskimos through thousands of years of long winter nights had elaborated that aspect of culture known as physical love with intricate stimulants of touch and movement and communication more powerful than any hurried whiteman's.
Gliding upon him and he within her, longer and more easily they breathed and moved and flowed as one person toward unbearable excitement together as her flesh became his as he surged upon her while she cried out in joy carrying him as if they were falling through space.
In that moment, he saw a dazzling sun beneath him. Falling past asteroids dotted with white domes, he surged upon her toward a green planet as he exploded within her. Dazed, he raised his head and only the dim tent was still there. Lowering his face in exhaustion, he slept upon the smooth safety of her breasts.
Dr. West lived each day and night fully as if it were his last. With her now, he felt so free he hoped she would conceive because she kept insisting this would make her so happy. "Your sons will be strong hunters!"
A week ago during that first night with her, he'd hurriedly rationalized that the odds of safety against conception that night were a fairly safe five to one. As they lived together in happiness along her twenty-eight day cycle, the odds were narrowing. Instead of wasting his time with that confusing age-sex census which didn't make statistical sense, he learned to make love to his wife's navel with expertise beyond any Eskimo's, or so Marthalik assured him. He felt she loved him so much that anything he did pleased her.
Sometimes upon her as if entering the darkness of space, he glimpsed that strange sun again. On their gasping journeys he strained trying to see again that green planet, but standing up in the morning after his oddly recurrent amatory mirage, he laughed simply with the joy of being alive and strong and truly in love for the first time.
Nearly two weeks had passed, and the Turbo-Beaver was not going to appear, he thought. Anyway, he had no intention of returning with the pilot to the Outside. Not yet. These happy people needed him. He wanted Marthalik always to be happy, and for this reason he knew he would have to venture Outside before winter. He would have to get them food --
On unlucky nights when the only seal carcass was bare bones, he listened to these people's night myths. His arm around Marthalik, he watched Edwardluk crouching lower than the flickering lamp. He heard the hoarse grunting of Grandfather Bear emerging through Edwardluk's strange guttural voice. Magically, all these Eskimos would become excited, smiling upward and unable to explain what they felt.
Hungrily, Dr. West went seal hunting with Edwardluk on the bay ice. Impressively he shot a seal with his recoilless rile. It favorably impressed the seal because it floated long enough for Edwardluk to hurl his harpoon. Edwardluk seemed less impressed, even though he admitted old Peterluk could not shoot so far. "That old man's rifle is louder."
"Does Peterluk remember which direction you people came from?"
"Eh?" Edwardluk laughed in confusion at Dr. West's startling question. "Always we have been here. Ever since this person can remember. And before. Ever since Grandfather Bear we have been here, as this person has told you." Edwardluk squinted at the vast blue sky. "If you are to understand -- where we come from, you must wait with us for Grandfather Bear."
"No one seems to remember what happened to the old people."
"Sometimes Peterluk says one thing, sometimes another."
"You can find Peterluk?"
"This person always knows where that angakok has traveled, and hopes he will stay there."
The next morning, on the thawing gravel in front of the tent while learning to cut a seal into the proper pieces, Dr. West asked Edwardluk: "Will you take me to speak with that old man?"
Edwardluk looked north. "Peterluk is in a strong place with his rifle." His worried expression showed he didn't want to go there.
"But he fled from me." Dr. West doubted that Peterluk would shoot at him in any case. All these Eskimos seemed so nonviolent. "Already Peterluk has fled from me."
"To get more power, he has returned to the Burned Place. Above the sea on that great rock ledge, Peterluk is camped in the Navel of the World."
"But whitemen's magic," Dr. West remarked, "is stronger."
"My husband is stronger than Peterluk," Marthalik laughed, squeezing Dr. West's arm. "And wiser and braver. Even though Peterluk pretends he is not even afraid of Grandfather Bear, Peterluk always lies. He is nothing but an old man. My husband could -- "
Dr. West laughed, unable to resist showing off for his wife, and he stood up, towering above them. "Edwardluk, you are a strong man, to
o! We both are strong men! We go!"
Edwardluk smiled unhappily as he looked around, surrounded by so many curiously smiling faces. What could he do? They went, leaving Marthalik behind, which hurt her feelings. "Who will prepare the camp each night? Without a woman -- "
Like a strong husband Dr. West ordered her to stay, to give his letter to the airplane, truly to keep her from the dangerous journey.
On this rough bay ice, any pilot would be afraid to land, Dr. West thought as he helped Edwardluk heave the sled up over another pressure ridge.
Across smoother ice, the dogs raced over cracks the pressure had closed. Riding the sled, both men laughed with man's third greatest pleasure, a journey.
At first, Edwardluk had said the journey north along the coast might take two sleeps. Dr. West expected to be back with Marthalik within a week. On the bay ice, the sled short-cut from point to point, but beyond the next promontory the ice had opened with leads of shimmering water, and they had to work back toward the cliffs. Taking the longer route along the shore ice, they had to follow all the indentations of the coastline. Proud he was in such good physical condition, Dr. West trotted over the uneven ice. Hour after hour, his pride kept him moving. That night he was too tired to eat much. The next day he was stiff-muscled. The next day he was slower.
"Soon-soon," Edwardluk's voice kept soothing, and during the afternoon of the fourth day finally Edwardluk halted the dogs at the foot of a massive stone promontory. He stared up toward the gigantic ledge. Then he smiled wanly at Dr. West. "Burned Place up there."
His small hands becoming clumsy, Edwardluk finally tied the sled to a boulder at the base of the promontory. Their noses pointed toward the ledge, the dogs whined. Indecisively Edwardluk picked up his harpoon and set it down again. "Peterluk has so much power in the -- the Navel of the World."
As if he were afraid, Edwardluk made no move to start to climb.
Clutching his rifle, staring up toward the ledge, Dr. West wondered: Navel of the World? A pit or crater up there? The navel symbolizes sexual power to these people, and birth. But this is the Navel of the World. A focus of power?
The only focus around here which he could think of was of the Earth's magnetic lines of force converging at the North Magnetic Pole. Which they've never heard of.
Up in the Earth's ionosphere, the magnetically trapped radiation belts did dimple inward here, he thought, above the North Magnetic Pole. Looking up, he half-expected the squat silhouette of Peterluk to appear against the sky.
Dr. West started climbing. Back in the 1950s when he was born, early space scientists had been too concerned about the Van Allen belts, he thought. They'd suggested manned flights should be directed out through this polar hole in the radiation doughnut. A center of weakness? Dr. West grinned, hearing Edwardluk finally following him up the sloping cliff.
With his rifle slung over his back, Dr. West scrambled toward the top. Already he could smell seal oil, dog odors, typical smells of an Eskimo camp. Breathing harder than necessary, Dr. West thought he'd heard too many midnight tales of Peterluk's so-called powers.
As he raised his head, from eye level the ledge appeared to spread out as immensely as a football field. Oddly, the top of a tent seemed to be protruding from the solid rock.
When he stood up on the ledge, Dr. West was looking down into a shallow gouge or crater in the blackened rock. The tent was squatting at the bottom, surrounded by fiercely clamoring dogs.
Seeing they were tied, Dr. West walked down over the charred rocks. Under his boots crunched small shards like white china. He realized these might be fragments from the same ceramic material the Eskimos had salvaged to use as seal oil lamps. Cautiously he walked toward the dogs and the dark opening in the tent.
From behind, Edwardluk's hand restrained him.
"Our hands are empty," Edwardluk shouted at the tent.
Dr. West felt foolish, standing there clutching his rifle in plain sight.
"We love you," Edwardluk shouted past the dogs toward the triangular opening in the tent. Edwardluk repeated his love so interminably that the bored dogs lay down, whining.
Dr. West supposed this small crater was the dark spot he and the pilot had noticed from the air. By airplane flight this rugged promontory had been only fifteen minutes north of the camp. By dog sled, four days --
Cautiously, Edwardluk was edging toward the tent's entry, still murmuring about love and peace. At the last moment he stopped because a harpoon had poked out against his stomach. As he backed off, a leathery-faced Eskimo woman emerged, turning the harpoon toward Dr. West.
"Eevvaalik, do not fear this whiteman," Edwardluk's voice apologized.
"Who fears? This person knew many whitemen." In bitterly long agglutinative Eskimo word-phrases she began recalling insulting girlhood experiences with sickly stingy whitemen, while smiling innocently at Dr. West.
"He speaks our language!" Edwardluk bleated in belated warning.
"Good. We understand each other." Her insolent gaze moved downward from Dr. West's eyes to his rifle.
"Eevvaalik," Dr. West began awkwardly, "where is your -- husband?"
She laughed or coughed. "You are afraid to say his name?"
In her challenging smile, her teeth were brown stubs. Dr. West wondered how many years she had spent chewing her husband's boots to soften them. Her hair was streaked with gray. He noticed her parka was beautifully decorated with white fox tails and expertly sewn, compared with the crude parkas of the young people back at the camp. Her wrinkled face seemed sculptured by frostbite and years of freezing winds, in contrast to the unweathered complexions of the others he had met.
"Your husband is named Peterluk," Dr. West stated. "We have not come to arrest him. We are not with the Guards. We are not with the police. We are -- friends."
"You come for fox furs after all these years?" Eevvaalik suggested and smiled, baring her worn teeth. "You have -- lipstick?"
"No, but when I return I will bring many things."
"A Sony box with new Evereadys?" Eevvaalik parroted in English: "Cleaner than Clean. Don't you Know What's Happening, Mr. Jones?"
"Is your husband in the tent?"
" This is the CBC. This baby-man," she laughed contemptuously toward Edwardluk, "does not even believe voices come out of a box."
"Where is your husband?" Dr. West repeated, hoping the unseen Peterluk wasn't squinting at him now along a rifle barrel.
"All these young people are fools who will starve," she chattered. "All of this land was my husband's, and now there are so many people there are no caribou, and all will starve." Her voice drowned in a paroxysm of coughing. "My husband, sometimes -- he says -- he will kill you."
Gurgling phlegm, she spat on the dark rocks. As she raised her tortured face with red saliva hanging from her chin, Dr. West realized this was the first case of tuberculosis he'd seen in the Sanctuary. Those young Eskimos didn't even have summer colds.
"Where are the other old people?" Dr. West gently asked her.
She wiped her chin. Edwardluk elbowed Dr. West. Pointing with his stubby nose, Edwardluk was facing the big rocks silhouetted along the other rim of the crater.
"We are your friends!" Edwardluk shouted and began walking toward that hulking rim, spreading his arms like a willing target. "See, this person is Edwardluk. We love you. Even this powerful whiteman loves you."
There was no rifle shot as Edwardluk reached the huge rocks. Among them he disappeared.
Laughter came down from the rocks. Edwardluk came down with his arm upon the shoulder of a massive Eskimo. The bushy hair and lowered head made Dr. West think of a musk-ox. The big hands hung empty. Dr. West was relieved that Peterluk was not carrying his fabled rifle.
The Eskimo Invasion Page 5
