Entwined in the morning, they both sniffled with what he said were lovers' colds. Marthalik's temperature was only 99 degrees. His was 101. Dulled by a headache, he worried in how many ways Marthalik might differ in her physiological reactions from the women used in the testing of this bacteria. Those female prisoners reportedly had temperatures of 100 to 101.
The next day she said she felt fine. Her temperature was 98.2, normal for her. She bustled around the cottage. He lay in bed with 101.6, feeling burning pains like acute prostatitus. Finally he slept, burning and revolving until he dreamed he was her, part of her, within her. In her swollen shut Fallopian tube, he was trapped like an ovum. Like a tiny embryo growing bigger and bigger, he couldn't get out. He woke up sodden with sweat. If the blocking of her Fallopian tubes resulted in such an ectopic pregnancy she would have to undergo a major operation to save her life, he thought, a more dangerous operation than any uterine abortion.
"My husband, you must eat something." Cheerfully, she fed him canned peaches for breakfast.
As his temperature descended, he began to suspect the bacteria had left no effect on her. For controlling the spread of Esks, this mild bacteria might be useless. Perhaps the Esks could be affected only by a bacteria so virulent it would sterilize all humans, he thought. Esks seemed so much more durable than humans. He squeezed her strong little hand, thinking, My love, what are you?
The next day he felt so much better he knew she was as human as he was. "This game is called checkers," he explained, and she learned amazingly quickly, but he managed to beat her every time, while she nodded: "It is proper that the husband is wiser in the fighting of these little men."
Five days later she was surprised and alarmed to discover a menstrual flow. "This person has not bled since she was a girl, since she met you."
"That is because each month until now you had a baby." Dr. West smiled because the family limitation bacterial infection was a success.
"Is this person -- sick?"
"Your body has been given a chance to rest."
By the end of the two weeks their last groceries were eaten. He felt confident they no longer were active carriers of the bacteria. The women in the prison had not been carriers after one week. None of the men had contracted the infection when they were admitted to the cells two weeks later.
"My husband, my body is so empty. Where is my baby?"
"It's time to go home," he said, and packed their clothes in their suitcases, which he left in the cottage.
Going outside onto the wooden porch, he stared at the red drowning sun. For a moment his confidence drained. How ironic if he caused the spread of the bacteria and it mutated, becoming more virulent. Ninety years after the last human birth, he thought, a world crowded with Esks shoulder to shoulder. "The meek shall inherit the Earth."
"Eh?"
"Your people are meek, Marthalik. That means they don't fight each other. They don't get angry. Always smiling, they are better than the rest of us -- but I don't think they will inherit the Earth."
To Marthalik's openmouthed surprise, he told her to take off her clothes.
"My husband, in this country, it is not done out-of-doors."
"Marthalik, we're merely going to swim in the ocean. It's dark. Take off your clothes. Don't be a prude." He threw all their clothing on the wooden porch, and led her by the hand into a grippingly cold ocean.
While he shivered, she giggled trustfully, plumper, female, more resistant to cold water. Hardening his muscles, he ducked completely under and rose. Seizing her shoulders, he ducked her. Bubbling, she did not resist. Gasping, she clung to him as they waded out.
"My husband, it is not a woman's place to ask questions but -- "
"No, don't go back on the porch." He led her to the car, took his extra key-card from his illegally installed spare key-holder under the fender, and inserted the magnetically coded card into the trunk lock. "Here -- a towel, and some of your clothes I brought from home for you."
He said: "Put them on!" Naked he ran back to the house, and when he returned she had laid out his extra clothes for him.
"My husband, you have forgotten our suitcases."
"No, we will leave them. It is a new American custom," he said, unlocking the driveway chain.
As they drove away, bumping across the railroad tracks, curving toward the coast highway, her voice rose. "My husband, look back! A brightness like a campfire on the roof. Look back, is our cottage burning?"
"I can't look back when I'm driving," he blurted, driving out of sight. "You saw the red light from a fishing boat." He doubted if the cottage was insured. He would have to pay for it. But he had taken every precaution to minimize the unlikely risk that anyone else would be infected. As he drove, he worried.
When Marthalik did not produce a baby the following month, emotionally he began to pay for what he had done to her.
"What is wrong with me?" she complained, compulsively rubbing her small stomach as if this would help make a baby grow there. "Where is my baby?"
"You already have six children to take care of, and me."
"This person feels so -- Not accomplishing anything. So lonely with herself." For the first time Marthalik was speaking negatively like a whitewoman. "This person feels as if her life lacks -- " She stared helplessly at the ceiling as if unable to express her inner feelings.
In the night she groaned and thrashed in a nightmare, and he held her in his arms. "My love, what is it?"
"Eh? Dreaming. All right now. Hold me."
In the morning with coy smiles she tried to be attractive to her husband. Now when she needed him most, he felt separated from her.
"When will this person have a baby?" her voice persisted, while his sexual desire waned, and he paced the streets, anxious for his teaching adventure at Free U. to begin.
The finance company had been willing to loan him only $500 on his future prospects when they learned he would be teaching at Free U. Nervously he organized and reorganized his lecture notes. To get out of the apartment, he took Little Joe for long walks.
Not yet a year old, Little Joe ran across the lawns and shouted and laughed with the round-eyed children. Already Little Joe appeared as large as a four- or five-year-old, but his coordination seemed similar to a three-year-old's. When children pushed him, Little Joe smiled instead of crying or pushing back. Smiling at his smile, strange children strangely didn't push him again. They romped around Little Joe as if enjoying the radiance of his magic smile. "Daddy, they love me. Everybody loves me!"
That sleepless night, only two days before he would have to face Free U., Dr. West lay on his elbow listening to Marthalik's groaning. Beside him, asleep, her face twisted in pain while she mumbled: "For you -- we will fill -- for you -- this person is trying -- "
Awake, she tried to maintain her smiling face. Accidentally upsetting an empty glass, which didn't even break, she broke into tears. Steve Jervasoni stared at Dr. West. With increasing frequency, Steve had appeared at the apartment to play with the kids or to chat with Marthalik if Dr. West was out taking the children for a walk.
"She doesn't understand," Steve blurted at Dr. West as the two men stood outside by the curb. "A terrible thing has been done to her without her permission. Have you told her why?"
"You know I haven't told her. Goddammit, what could I tell her? I sterilized her -- perhaps forever."
"She has this terrible need."
"Tell me something I don't know!"
"I feel so guilty," Steve's voice persisted, "for bringing you the bacteria. Because you asked me to -- "
"That wasn't how -- "
"She was the happiest person I ever knew," Steve's voice rushed. "I -- we felt so wonderful just sitting in her presence, enjoying her smile. Have you considered an operation to reopen her -- "
"She's my wife, not yours!" Dr. West went in the house.
He had to sleep. Tomorrow was his first lecture at Free U. Half-remembered stories of the laughter and booing, of the humiliation
hurled at inadequate lecturers, left him sleepless beside his restlessly sleeping wife. He tried to reassure himself that he'd be lecturing at Free U. for only one semester. But the Journal of American Population Scientists had rejected his paper, asking for more substantiation that his wife was not merely a "gynecological phenomenon." The rejecting editor added: "Your age-sex census of the Boothia Peninsula Eskimos is not of a professional level. If any Eskimos, other than your wife, do tend to have shortened gestation periods, we can assume a reputable expedition soon will confirm it." But Dr. West lacked the money to return to the Boothia Peninsula, even if the Canadian Government permitted him to enter.
Free U. was scattered all over Berkeley. With a hollow feeling in his stomach, he walked stiffly toward the former furniture warehouse. Past an ancient signpost in the alley, proclaiming this as Reagan Boulevard, he entered the enormous room. Clomping on the wooden plank platform, he wrote across the blackboard what he considered most important, while the coughing and chattering of entering students grew. To his dismay, he saw they were ambling past the padlocked entry boxes without putting dollar bills in the slots. There must be an explanation --
With surprise and excitement overlaying his discomfort, he saw that he was packing the hall. All the chairs and benches filled with gum-chewing faces. A stocky youth in conservative knickers scrambled onto the platform, his bow tie askew. "Employee Relations," he introduced himself, shaking the hand of the employee, Dr. West. This student executive extracted his watch from his wescot, then glanced at the chattering audience. "Lecture Course in Population Problems," the youth shouted into the noise. "J. West, Probationary Lecturer."
Chattering continued among the low-waisted, short-skirted co-eds until resoundingly the youth fired at the high wooden ceiling. A splinter fell to the platform. Nodding encouragingly at Dr. West, the student leader blew across the twin barrels of his derringer.
Dr. West's mouth opened but no sound emerged.
He had been advised by Dr. Darwin to open his first lecture with a fresh but safely pretested joke, or if he didn't want to gamble on a joke, to hurl a shocking introductory statement at the co-eds in the front row to make them pull their knees together and sit up straight. A dramatic opening to hook the audience at once was necessary if he were to compete against the nationally syndicated TV professors. But Dr. West's throat was so dry he pointed at the blackboard, voiceless. He hoped to hook them with this visual teaser:
Estimated Population of World Date Human Progress in Millions ----- -------------- -----------------------------
25,000 B.C. Hunting and seed gathering 5 8000 B.C. Deliberate farming, villages 7 1 A.D. Roman and many Asian cities 250 1650 Scientific start 500 1960 Birth control pills tested 3000 (3 billion) 1980 World census 5000 (5 billion) 1990 This year 7000 (7 billion)
*** Actual: 1990 = 5.5, 2011 = 6.9
"Back in the 1960s," Dr. West's voice creaked, "population experts predicted a world population of about seven billion by the year 2000. They assumed correctly that there would be increasingly widespread use of The Pill. They predicted three-month antiovulation injections such as medroxy progesterone. But they underestimated nationalistic pressures to maintain high birthrates. Right now in 1990 we've had to update our prediction for the year 2000 to nine billion." He took a breath. "There'll still be room for the tourists who reserve earliest for Yosemite and Yellowstone."
Hastily he chalked on the other blackboard: WHAT IS THE MAXIMUM POPULATION THE EARTH CAN SUPPORT?
"This is an unfair question," Dr. West said, "because I didn't ask WHEN, what year. Given about sixty peaceful years of cooperation, it is estimated that mankind could organize this planet to support a maximum population of twenty billion by the year 2050. This future twenty billion would have about as much food available per person as with our seven billion today."
Dr. West inadvertently let his gaze fall to a co-ed's knees, and he stared at his notes. "In only ten years, that is, by the year 2000, there will be nine billion of us. Medical progress reducing infant mortality in Asia, Africa and South America has continued to outrace birth control programs. Population contests between military-industrial nations are escalating. World population has continued doubling every twenty-five years. But assuming nine billion in the year 2000, we may not have eighteen billion in 2025, and we won't reach thirty-six billion in 2050 if there's only food for twenty billion then. It appears that famine, disease and war may control more population than The Pill."
"The maximum population the world can support at any given time is balanced on a precarious pile of interlocking -- factors." He was afraid he was getting too abstract and losing his audience.
"Think of a three-legged race. I mean, at a picnic where you and your boyfriend's legs are tied together and you try to run. Your name is Potential Breeding Power, and you are a fast runner. His name is Food Production. He's a plodder, but you're tied together. If Breeding Power runs too fast, Food Production can't keep up, and both of you begin to stagger."
A girl giggled, and Dr. West's voice improvised: "Suppose there were a sudden increase in population ." He didn't know where his sentence was going and realized subconsciously he'd been thinking of the Esks. "Such an increase that our food distribution system begins to -- to stagger -- with lowering standards of living even in America and Europe, causing political unrest, decreasing production, revolution, chaos, a breakdown of our delicately balanced technology?" He let the question hang, and started telling what was happening in South America.
When he noticed the stocky student standing, swinging his watch back and forth by its wescot chain, he realized his hour was over. "Next meeting, old Thomas Malthus, his Theory still haunts us."
Students stood up, but Dr. West compulsively raised his voice, talking faster. "I hope you'll all be here next meeting. Young Thomas Malthus from his eighteenth-century essay became the most influential population -- uh, philosopher. The power of population , Tom Malthus said, is greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Do you believe that -- ?"
But the students were hurrying out; not one left a dollar.
Dr. West stood openmouthed.
"Good beginning," the stocky student said. "Bet you win at least half of them. Bet you draw at least a hundred dollars into the boxes next meeting when formal enrollment begins."
"Oh!" Dr. West laughed. He was in a cold sweat.
"We grade you at the end of each month," the student leader said. "You'd better improve your enunciation by then. And I think you'd be rated D or F in Looks at His Audience. Maybe a C in Organizes His Material in a Comprehensible Manner. But you certainly rated at least a B today in Sincerity, and that's most important with some of us."
Dripping wet, Dr. West still had two more lectures to deliver that day.
When he trudged home, he grinned weakly at Marthalik, and maneuvered among his clinging children and collapsed on the couch. This went on for several weeks, while Marthalik's loud dreams kept him awake at night. In the daytime, she had become strangely withdrawn, not even cheering up when Steve Jervasoni visited.
"I hear you're drawing bigger audiences than Dr. Darwin," Steve said, and lowered his voice when Marthalik went into the kitchen. "Seriously, why don't you let me take Marthalik to a doctor with a psychiatry background -- since you just keep putting off -- "
"You'd put her under sedation?" Dr. West whispered from his blurry weariness, for he had been trying to rewrite his article for the New Saturday Evening Post at night after grading papers while trying to make sense from Marthalik's nonverbal nightmares. "And interrogate her -- the origin of the Esks, is that the real reason you -- "
"No, you're overtired. I just want to help Marthalik," Steve protested, his face pained.
The Eskimo Invasion Page 18
