The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  Four children became the minimum family size shown in television advertisements.

  Finally awakening, the Federal Government improved Income Tax deductions to $1000 for the first child, another $1500 for the second, and $2000 for each additional child, plus the $1200 for husband and wife, so that a man with five children on an income of under $10,000 was free from income tax. New excise taxes increased the costs of birth control pills. Newspaper publicity was given to patriotically large families. The population growth rate began returning toward 3%, aided by the Federal Family Allowance Bonuses which rewarded the parents with the financial equivalent of a new car each time they produced a new baby.

  Thus, in spite of the vast array of birth control methods available in this richest country in the world, the patriotic U.S. population should double during the next twenty-five years to a happily predicted 500 million while the stock market skyrockets.

  This rate of increase was tortoise-slow compared with the Esks.

  "What got for us?" The roundly innocent face of an Esk boy peeked over the supply crates close to Dr. West, and the suddenly grinning boy opened his little hands; he was a clown.

  "Nothing. Everything." Dr. West answered.

  Laughing, all the children began jabbering at once. Their Modern Eskimo dialect sounded clumsier somehow than Dr. West remembered of children he talked with three years ago, before he carried off Marthalik.

  Now these children were the next generation. With other Esks as models for growing up, would each generation be more crudely hewn than the last?

  Dr. West asked if any of them could read. He pointed to the marks on the boxes. None of the children grasped what he meant. They didn't know about -- reading.

  Dr. West doubted they would have the opportunity to learn. They would be adults in three years. How long would they live? No one knew yet.

  Except for old Eevvaalik, these Esk children saw only inexperienced Esks as their models for growing up. "Do you hunt walrus?" Dr. West asked. "Do you play at hunting walrus? Harpoon? Seal?"

  "Wal-rus?" Already these two-year-old children, who looked like twelve-year -olds, didn't know what walrus were. Due to the outspreading population pressure around this harbor where the supplies were landed, these Esk children might not even see a seal. A little girl climbed onto Dr. West's lap. Smiling not so shyly, she reminded him of Little Martha, his first daughter. "Tell me of our Grandfather in the sky."

  "Once there was a great white bear who looked down from the stars," Dr. West began, but since he last was on the Boothia Penninsula, the myth must have been crystallized in a new order, because the children giggled and began telling him the story.

  "That star. That star." They were pointing, but in the sun-faded Arctic summer night the star was invisible to Dr. West.

  "That star flying to this place closer all the time," the boy explained patiently. "That is how we began. Grandfather Bear send part of himself ahead. He say be fruitful and multiply and prepare this place for me."

  "What does fruitful mean?" Dr. West asked. "Multiply?"

  "Don't know yet," the boy answered solemnly. "But -- when we have covered the world, Grandfather Bear will come. And once again all of us will become one. It will feel so good."

  The children giggled and laughed and clapped their hands, echoing: "Will feel so good." -- "Will feel so good."

  Like children everywhere, their attention was shifting, and they lost interest in Dr. West and ran away to play. Dr. West listened to their shrill voices in the distance while he removed the wooden box of aerosol spray cans from his pack and left it among the bigger wooden crates. He walked away, his heart beating faster instead of slower.

  What are you doing? Dr. West's young-old face twisted as if a spear was probing his heart. I'm doing what has to be done now. The thing which can't be done once the Esks have spread through the Canadian population.

  But do you know what you are doing? Dr. West blindly hurried away, thinking of Marthalik's gently smiling face across the breakfast table in California. Anxious to please him, at first she had repeated that she was glad not to be bothered with a baby: "I dream about many babies. Something, Grandfather Bear from the sky? Silly dream." Like the waxing moon her restlessness increased each month, and she cried out in her sleep, but to him she laughed with embarrassment: "Eh-eh, it feels strange not to have a baby every month. Feels strange not to accomplish anything."

  And now Marthalik was gone. Steve and Marthalik. Marthalik and Steve.

  Do you know what you will be doing to these people psychologically? Why? Dr. West punished himself as he pushed into Eevvaalik's tent and shoved his photographic equipment back into his emptied pack. Can I even predict their physical reactions to this pathogen?

  He winced at the thought of children playing with the orange cans.

  Endospores of the bacteria were "sleeping" in these aerosol cans marked MOSQUITO SPRAY.

  It was true that this was the self-attenuating strain; fading like the ripples from a stone dropped into a pond, as the bacterial infection spread outward through the population, its virulency would weaken outward to nothing. It could not infect the world. From a single source, it could not even engulf a small country.

  But Marthalik was the only Esk on whom the birth-limiting bacteria had been tested. Although he needed to act quickly because the Canadian Government was preparing to resettle the Esks throughout the North, from a scientific point of view he knew he had acted too quickly, insanely. One Esk was not a valid test sample.

  "All members of a species will not react exactly the same to a new disease." In his mind, on a graph, a bell-shaped curve confronted him. The vertical margin of the graph counted people. The horizontal margin rated virulency. Individual reactions tend to group along a bell-shaped curve. On the left-hand "lip" of the bell curve are few people with surprisingly slight reactions to a disease. The great majority of people, indicated by the hump of the curve, have the typical illness. A few down the other side of the bell curve suffer violent reactions.

  Dr. West's face tightened like a death mask. If the virulent side of the bell graph had a cutoff appearance, the researcher would be looking at an abstract line of corpses.

  "God, forgive me!" Dr. West couldn't know where Marthalik's mild reaction would fit on a bell-shaped curve of the entire infected Esk population.

  I tell you I had to act now before these people scattered. Dr. West wondered if he had spoken out loud. Eevvaalik was staring up at him wide-eyed.

  "We will go now," Dr. West said quietly, and he knelt beside Eevvaalik and began to help her up.

  "Eh-eh, this person stand by herself." Eevvaalik swayed while he supported her arm, and as she shuffled across the tent floor, she was temporarily halted by a paroxysm of coughing, and then she continued on out into the garish Arctic day-night under her own power. "Eh-eh, big sky."

  Her legs sagged, and Dr. West supported her while the mosquitos whined.

  Dr. West knew he was going to need strong helpers to carry Eevvaalik all the way across the tundra to his plane. He hoped the Mountie was asleep. Quietly, Dr. West drafted four Esks. Unquestioningly they tried to obey him. Finally, two of the Esks understood -- observed from him how to form a carrying chair of their interlocked hands for Eevvaalik. The other two Esks wandered along behind. Dr. West was beginning to think he would get away with Eevvaalik.

  The Mountie blundered toward them, his hair still rumpled with sleep, his eyes blinking in the weak midnight sunglow. Dr. West realized that an Esk must have been instructed to watch constantly, and the Esk had run to awaken the Mountie.

  "Sir, if she is so ill," the Mountie mumbled, "you'd best take her to my cabin." He added apologetically: "Our doctor isn't here. Gone to Walrus Point Encampment two sleeps ago. Put her in my cabin. I'll send a boy for the doctor's reserve kit, if you want to give her something."

  Dr. West started to speak and couldn't. It was now or never.

  The Mountie blinked at the pair of Esks. "You, you, walk sl
ow. Carry old woman to big cabin."

  "Eh? Not old," Eevvaalik protested faintly as they carried her away from Dr. West.

  "Sir, you'll want some tea." The Mountie's hand closed on Dr. West's arm and steered him toward the cabin.

  It was as if the Mountie knew how Marthalik had been removed to California and didn't intend to let Dr. West fly off with Eevvaalik as well.

  Dr. West felt suddenly old. As he walked, he resisted the urge to glance toward the stack of crates. He wondered if the Esk spy had witnessed him hiding the box of spray cans. Would the Esk tell the Mountie of the little box the whiteman had left among the crates?

  "You, you put her on the floor. Over there by stove," the Mountie was ordering the Esks as they entered his cabin. To Dr. West the Mountie smiled wanly. "I'm not afraid of a little TB."

  "Eevvaalik's was an arrested case of TB," Dr. West said. "What was the doctor -- how was the doctor treating her?"

  "Don't know, sir. I thought antibiotics cured that sort of thing nowadays, but -- are the germs, sir, getting ahead of us? I'd thought she was better."

  "Have you seen TB among the Esks ?" It was a rhetorical question. Dr. West was nerving himself to walk defiantly out of the cabin and hike to his plane, to flee.

  "None, sir. Esks all seem sound as Canadian dollars," the Mountie laughed wearily. "Healthier than the rest of us."

  "And multiplying a hell of a lot faster," Dr. West blurted, realizing he was going to stay and see it out to the end no matter what happened.

  "One chap had a crate fall on his foot today, sir. Bloody mess. He's not complaining of much pain, but Esks don't," the Mountie's sleepy voice rambled on. "Bloody mess. Sir, since the doctor may not be back for days, I was hoping you'd have a look at this injured Esk. Not now, sir. After you've slept."

  Dr. West knew the Mountie didn't intend for him to leave. He was the mouse. Was the Mountie the cat? He sat down on the corner bunk.

  Swirling with thirty-six hours of exhaustion, Dr. West slept among the whining mosquitos.

  When Dr. West awoke, there was an intermittent hissing noise within the cabin. He opened his eyes, and watched the Mountie moving around in the cabin with one arm upraised, waving a little orange can. A masking odor of artificial pine trees drifted down upon Dr. West's face. Breathing quickly, Dr. West raised himself on one elbow.

  The Mountie lowered the orange-colored aerosol spray can. "You've had a good sleep, sir. -- Canned bacon for breakfast, sir?"

  Dr. West couldn't open his mouth to answer. His contracting stomach was about to crawl out of his mouth as he watched the Mountie using the mosquito spray.

  "Any time I wake up," the Mountie's voice chatted on, "I call that meal my breakfast. I miss not having fried seal liver. This spray must be the slow-acting kind. Ah, see that mosquito! Still circling around like a skua. Skua's a fierce gull. Nearest thing we have to a vulture. Sir, do you want your eggs sunny-side up? Those bearded chaps from New York may think themselves better than uniformed men, but the girl, skinny little thing -- she's the cook in their landing ship, made me a present of this dozen eggs. A uniform always appeals to the women, sir. Never fails. Made me a present of this strawberry jam. How many pieces of bacon will you be having, sir?" He sprayed near the frying pan.

  The scent of artificial pine trees blending with the overpowering odor of frying bacon whirled and thickened. Dr. West blundered outside and threw up before an interested audience of young Esks. They were impressed by his dry heaves for a few moments. Then, giggling, a boy chased a girl through the crowd, spraying her face with another orange can. Dr. West imagined her engulfed in a fog of invisible bacterial spores.

  When Dr. West blundered back into the bacon-reeking cabin, the mosquitos were whining unabated. The spray seemed harmless to mosquitos.

  Eevvaalik was awake. Squatting in the corner, she was devouring Dr. West's unfinished breakfast.

  "Here, sir, a good cup of tea will swish out the stomach, I always say." The Mountie cheerfully waved his hand at a mosquito. "When you feel fit, I hope you'll take a look at the Esk with the crushed foot." The Mountie evidently intended to keep Dr. West as long as he could.

  Dr. West knew the Mountie had been in communication with his superiors by radio. Were they belatedly reviewing the "kidnapping" of Marthalik? That might necessitate telephone calls to authorities in California. Reputedly the R.C.M.P. were sticklers as to legal procedure, careful as to the rights of a suspect.

  This Mountie might suspect Dr. West was attempting to make off with Eevvaalik, but proving that to a judge would be difficult if Dr. West denied the intent. Dr. West stood up.

  After inspecting the crushed foot of the grinning Esk, Dr. West told the Mountie he wanted to walk to his plane to get his medical bag. Instead, the Mountie sent an Esk to get the bag.

  In that irritating moment, Dr. West hoped this damned, smug Mountie would be susceptible to the endospores from the aerosol can. In males the infection sometimes produced uncomfortable and embarrassing symptoms like prostatitus. In twenty-four hours he would know --

  In twenty-four hours the Mountie appeared crestfallen. Perhaps in his latest radio conversation, the R.C.M.P. had told him to forget his suspicions. No warrant would be issued. Dr. West felt like telling the Mountie to go to hell. He felt like walking off to his plane without looking back. He might get away with it.

  "Sir, there's a woman having a bit of trouble giving birth," the Mountie muttered, blocking his path.

  With so many Esks around all day, the Mountie produced one inescapable case after another for Dr. West, whose irritation exploded.

  "Serves her right for having one every month!"

  "I know you don't mean that, sir. She's a mother."

  "Of course she's a supermother."

  "Sir?"

  "She'll produce so many children that your children won't have room to sit down."

  "I'm a bachelor, sir."

  "You're a human being. You'll be one of an inundated species."

  "Sir, are you talking about birth control? We were warn -- Anyway it doesn't seem to do any good. The Family Planning nurses said the Esk women WANT to have more babies."

  "And just what did the nurses do to prevent it?"

  To this question the Mountie colored with embarrassment. "This and that, sir. Pills and all. When they found out what the pills were for, the Esk women threw the pills away."

  "There are other female methods than pills."

  "I'm a bachelor, sir. I -- not instructed in the R.C.M.P."

  "Like diaphragms?" Dr. West continued maliciously at this Victorian-uniformed Mountie. "Diaphragms," Dr. West repeated. "I suppose those wouldn't be practical if the women resisted. And intrauterine devices, little curly-cues of plastic or stainless steel. Even with cooperative women there is a 20% expulsion rate. Did the nurses try hormone injections on the Esk women? Technically, science is equipped to control births in any number of ways. Some hormone injections prevent ovulation for six months. Admit that they tried injections."

  "Sir, now these Esk women won't even let the doctor hypo them for blood tests, or measles preventative shots, or -- "

  "You mean some fool told them what the birth control injections were for?"

  "Sir, you can't inject people against their will." The Mountie's face was sweating. "You can't just seize people and inoculate them against having babies. Our whole Canadian democratic system -- " The Mountie sat down, red-faced.