The Eskimo Invasion

by Hayden Howard

  The Esk's eyes widened in ecstasy, his mouth opening. "Grandfather Bear, Grandfather Be -- Grandfather Dragon-Tiger!"

  Dragon-tiger? Dr. West thought with disgusted surprise, and glanced at Mao III.

  Dragons, tigers, Chinese symbols of spiritual power have overlaid the fading Bear symbol. Mao III's smugness en- closed Dr. West. My tapeworm, your Polar Bear symbol is nothing more than an animistic relic of prehistoric Eskimo beliefs polluted by capitalist biblical underexposure. Nothing more. Did you think --

  "Grandfather Bear is coming down from the sky. Prepare this world," Dr. West's voice-thoughts surged from Mao III into the microphone, and the Esk lolled his head from side to side, and Dr. West paused, trying to remember how it was out under the Arctic stars --

  No matter how deep you interrogate this lump of flesh, no matter how ridiculously you try to trigger his racial memory , Mao III's thoughts taunted, he can tell you nothing new. How can he tell you secrets of a World Beyond when the only imprint within him is from this humble world?

  One of the white-capped technicians glanced up at the ceiling camera, and gradually the electrosensitization of the Esk's cerebrum was being increased while Dr. West's thoughts spoke through Mao III. Dr. West was reproducing the religious excitement of Edwardluk twenty-two years ago, when Edwardluk had clutched his arm.

  "Grandfather Bear approaching, closer and closer as we increase. He is coming! Our bodies are preparing the world for him. His great hunger is for us. Our bodies will reward him for our birth!"

  As if in answer, the Esk's voice squealed with -- joy? Abruptly, the Esk's pulse rate jumped to 150 per minute as his smile opened in a shout. "Grandfather, I -- we altogether in you." His face strained with joy and tears. It almost seemed as if his hair was standing on end in a static-electric effect as he relived the myth his father must have told him. "Grandfather, come down! We prepare world for you! For you we are ripening -- "

  The white gowns flurried about the Esk. On the table they were giving him oxygen resuscitation. Now external heart massage --

  A lot of them die like that, Mao III thought. Wasted, I suppose due to an electrosensitization overload.

  A white-robed technician glanced up at the camera, as if in frightened apology.

  Dr. West sat there sweating. He stared at Mao III. "After I rest, we will question another Esk." Dr. West's voice rose with excitement. "I don't believe this Esk died from incompetent electrosensitization. If Esks could be made to die -- triggered by mental suggestion of something coming down from the sky? I -- he died -- so happily as if -- "

  "He was electrocuted," Mao III taunted, and released a hail of words upon Dr. West's weariness. "Tapeworm, Pavlovian cues such as the wave of a flag can cause a soldier to leap up into machine-gun bullets. Other triggers such as the news of the death of a loved one can cause a man already subject to arteriosclerosis to fall down with a heart attack, and so a sudden gust of wind plucks an overripe fruit."

  Mao III's voice rose. "Even if you triggered that Esk to die, this does not prove that your words or his belief had Marxist Materialist reality, or even that other Esks can be psychophysically conditioned to ripeness for such nonsense. All Maoist Esks know there is nothing physical Out There In The Sky which desires to eat them. Marxist-Maoists stand on scientific dialectical logic. In any case, that childishly suggestible Esk will be proved to have died of too much electricity, which is a physical force ," Mao III stammered, as Dr. West was able to shut off his physical voice.

  But Mao III's thoughts swept on like an erosive river. Tapeworm, we both should admit that Esks simply are mutated Eskimos, human beings like ourselves, merely more fecund and more obedient. Listen to me, my tapeworm, subconsciously you have been searching for excuses to murder Esks. You want proof they are not human, so it will salve your conscience for the mass murder of the Eskimos you consummated more than seventeen years ago. With imperialist-cultured bacteria, you almost succeeded in Eskimo genocide. Was it twenty-two Eskimos died? Before the eyes of the world you were convicted of mass murder. Even in the most reactionary capitalist news media you are, shall we say, enshrined as a homicidal genocidal maniac!

  "No! You have twisted it!" Dr. West shouted. "My intent -- " His voice trailed off, and he felt Mao III's stream of destructive thoughts backing him into a corner so that Mao III could escape.

  Tapeworm, your insane attempt to seize my power is paranoid. Admit you are God who will cure the chaos of the world. You are trembling. Little man, you can't even remember what you were instructed to do. The little imperialist schemers of the CIA were able to conceal what has happened during the last sixteen years from you. You! Why else would they select you, who have been inert in a Cold Room for sixteen years, for this mission? Because you don't know what's been happening in this world.

  Tapeworm, you are their last weapon for mass murder and not only of Esks! Mao III closed his eyes. You have forgotten your orders because they are so horrible you cannot allow yourself to think. Once you were a good man. There still is humanity in us both. At least, we are both of the human race. Yes, we are on the same side with all of enlightened humanity. We are both human. You can rise and walk from this vault into freedom. No one will harm you. You are freed of all murder. In China there is no murder and I declare you free of all guilt. You are cleansed of the bloodstains of CIA control. Good-bye, my friend, you are free to walk to the elevator and rise into the sunshine.

  "You sly bastard!" Dr. West rose, his muscles tightening.

  His head aching with concentration, he caused Mao III to slump to the floor, where he lay jerking with spastic agony.

  "Don't try to attack me again." Dr. West swayed in the echoes of Mao III's smothering agony as he writhed on the floor.

  "When I am ready," Dr. West gasped, "you -- I will examine other Esks until we --"

  Murderer! Even from the floor Mao III thrust up his javelin thoughts. You hope you find evidence of nonhuman origin and that it will excuse your crimes. Maniac! You think you warn the world, and now people listen? Seventeen years ago your lies that Esks are not human were disproved. Mutants ARE human! You biased expert, the joke is on you. I know more of the origin of the Esks than you.

  In his memory, Dr. West saw the bare rock ledge where the Boothia Peninsula thrust against the frozen sea. Climbing onto the huge ledge, he'd looked down into the crater of the Burned Place, what Edwardluk had called the Navel of the World. No airplane crash had made that scar. There was no metal wreckage. The only odd fragments, some white, some charred, were small shards of what might have been ceramic pottery.

  Erected on the bottom of the shallow Burned Place stood old Peterluk's tent. Only his wife emerged. Peterluk had fled again, as if he feared the whiteman, as if he had a bad conscience, Dr. West thought. And Peterluk had returned after concealing his rifle, avidly eyeing Dr. West's rifle. Dr. West had asked him where all these young -- Eskimos had come from. Peterluk had hunted on the Boothia Peninsula before the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary was established. But Peterluk was evasive, angrily attacking the beliefs of the new people.

  "There is no Grandfather Bear coming down from the sky. You and me don't believe ignorant things like that!"

  But Peterluk accidentally admitted a "star" had fallen; denied it.

  In inexplicable anger, Peterluk lied that the crater was made by whitemen with sticks of dynamite. "You think this person lies? Then you don't believe the Egg of God fell here. You don't believe a whitemen's ship poke up its eye on a stick. Like a whale with many whitemen but this person was stronger than -- you!"

  Peterluk had tried to wrest away Dr. West's rifle. Dr. West had been too young and strong in those days. The injured Peterluk had fled toward his hidden rifle, but he had not used the illegal rifle that summer to kill a whiteman.

  He shot the priest-pilot when winter and Dr. West returned. So Peterluk murdered a whiteman with his rust-stained Russian military rifle, and was confined to the New Ottawa Reformation Center, never properly interrogated conc
erning the origin of the Esks.

  And Dr. West had begun to understand that Peterluk and his old wife had been the only two Eskimos among --

  Yes, Esks, you had to count ihe days of your wife's pregnancy before you even realized how diflerent they were , Mao's thoughts taunted. Whiteman, you arrived years too late to see what the Russians saw in the Burned Place. "Your Navel of the World," Mao III laughed from the floor where he lay like a sack. "It is amusing that even now, after another twenty-two years, you still don't understand what you saw. It is not that Maoism has so many more well-trained believers throughout the world than the CIA. It is simply that Chinese travelers collect even the most useless data, rumors, photographs. Everything is noted, filed and cross-filed. And we have more highly placed spies in Russia collecting observations. From infinite unrelated data, the computer arranges valid and reliable patterns."

  Dr. West permitted -- mentally helped Mao III to rise to his chair in front of the console. Mao III was leading him on for some reason.

  "It is odd," Mao III laughed, "that I am the only head of state who has taken the trouble to learn how to question an Information Retrieval Computer directly. Surely direct access to infinite global data multireferenced and computer-rated for reliability should be more useful to a head of state than the filtered information which is sprinkled on the head of your President by his cabinet officers, by his Presidential staff, by his CIA advisors, by his Joint Chiefs of Staff, none of whom agree."

  Mao III's fingers riffled over the index buttons. A still photograph of a rock ledge appeared on the telescreen. Separately projected across the top of the photograph was a date; and some symbols separately projected beside it appeared as a row of index numbers, presumably guides to related data. "Do you recognize this photograph?"

  "I assume it is the Burned Place but ," Dr. West stared uncertainly. "There is rarely that much snow. The high Arctic is dry. The wind sweeps off -- "

  "It is not the Burned Place. It simply happens to be the nearest photograph to what was the location of the North Magnetic Pole, thirty-eight years ago. See the date in the corner: 1971. The other numbers are keys." Mao III's fingers signaled these index numbers into the console. "The skill is in selecting the most pertinent general key number -- subjects. Eskimos. Scientific searches. Perhaps meteorites. Aircraft crashes. Satellites which have fallen. I repeat the location designation: North Magnetic Pole, Boothia Peninsula, not too specific. In the computer, an immense pattern of related information has materialized. A leader's whole life would be wasted reading it. To place an electronic pinpoint in this vast matrix, I introduce the phonetic number-name Peterluk."

  Mao III's fingers moved, and the photograph of a cautiously smiling young Eskimo holding out a white fox fur appeared, new index numbers materializing above his head.

  Dr. West blinked. "That doesn't look like -- It must have been taken when he was a young man. What's that behind him?"

  Mao III depressed one finger, and a photograph of what evidently was an official report appeared -- printed in Russian characters.

  "For translations from the language of imbeciles," Mao III said, "the sound vocoder is slowest but will allow us to simultaneously study the photographs. The inefficient vocoder should stammer a synopsis of those items which are pertinent to Peterluk -- and to my question pattern, which still is too diffuse."

  His finger moved, and the mechanical voice of the vocoder howled: "CANADIAN ESKIMO SELF-DESIGNATED PETERLUK. CANADA. NORTHWEST TERRITORIES. BOOTHIA PENINSULA. ESKIMO CULTURAL SANCTUARY EXTENDING NORTH FROM -- "

  Mao III's finger pressed. "Spare us these bureaucratic details." A blur of documents and index numbers swept across the screen. "Unfortunately, this computer is not capable of a direct answer to your amorphous question as to what caused the Esks. This Information Retrieval System simply flickers through molecular patterns of data, abstracting. My prod here and poke there narrows its tentative synopsis until the edge of a pattern small enough for a human mind to grasp is offered to me to guide -- "

  A still photograph of an old-model nuclear submarine appeared on the screen. The vocoder howled: "POLAR RESEARCH SUBMARINE KOLOGRIVOV. REVISED MISSION. UNDETECTED INVESTIGATION OF TERMINUS METEORIC OR MANMADE ATMOSPHERIC STREAK."

  Mao III pressed the button corresponding to the first index number, and a jerky movie film appeared on the screen. Bundled men were clambering from the deck of the submarine into a rubber boat. Another Russian-made film clip, evidently photographed from the conning tower by the same hand-held camera, showed the rubber boat bunting among the ice cakes. The distant men scrambled onto the rocks and upward.

  Dr. West finally recognized the promontory. "The Burned Place."

  "U.S. HAD NOT SENT AIRCRAFT TO INVESTIGATE PSEUDOMETEORIC-TYPE FLASH. THEREFORE RUSSIANS IN STATE OF READINESS FOR U.S. MILITARY TRAP ON CANADIAN SOIL," the vocoder howled, and Mao III nodded. "This is as closely as the computer approaches reasoning as it abstracts the pertinent essentials from a hundred documents and offers us its synopsis with the best internal reliability."

  Film from a hand-held camera was showing bundled Russians walking gingerly among large broken objects and nervously glancing at the sky, as if expecting the contrails of USAF jets.

  Rising from his chair, Dr. West shouted: "Close-up! Is there film showing a close-up of what in hell those things are."

  As if anticipating Mao III's finger, the computer projected a close-up of a Russian hammering with his rifle butt at a huge dark curve. It looked like ceramic clay. The rifle butt failed to chip it. The camera shifted to another broken curve. The two might fit together, Dr. West thought. The outside of each curve was roughened, darkened as if charred. The insides of the curves gleamed white. A broken edge was thicker than the Russian's hand-width. Like a gigantic mollusk's shell, Dr. West thought as a Russian walked upright under the jagged upper end of the curve and turned and grinned bashfully at the cameraman.

  "RUSSIANS UNABLE TO IDENTIFY BROKEN OBJECTS," the vocoder howled. "PLANNED TO REMOVE FOR FURTHER STUDY.

  "Good," said Mao III's voice, "the computer has narrowed the available data and is attempting chronological order."

  The Russian film-maker must have whirled with his camera. On the screen there was a glimpse of Russians scattering, a rifle was raised, and then the camera steadied at a stocky figure clambering down over the ledges.

  A closer view showed the young Eskimo holding out a white fox fur and grinning expectantly, as if he imagined all whitemen who illegally entered the Eskimo Cultural Sanctuary came to trade. Dr. West blinked. "I'll be damned. It is Peterluk as a young man. Look at him grinning at that Russian's rifle. He wants it so bad he can taste it!"

  "ESKIMO ADMITTED OBSERVATION OF METEOR FLASH," the vocoder howled. "UNABLE TO ESTIMATE DATE. CLAIMED TOOK NOTHING FROM BURNED SITE. AFTER REPEATED QUESTIONING ADMITTED HE HAD BROKEN A SMALLER SHELL."

  The film showed a Russian lifting a white curve, perhaps only an inch thick and large enough to shade the Russian's head and shoulders like a huge eggshell.

  "FROM ITS POSITION IN WRECKAGE, RUSSIANS CONCLUDED REMNANT OF SMALLER SHELL WAS INNER SHELL. QUESTIONED ESKIMO AS TO SHELL'S CONTENTS. ESKIMO DENIED HAD BROKEN INNER SHELL."

  The film showed a Russian carrying a curve of the inner shell toward the water.

  A long shot showed four Russians dragging a fragment of the larger outer shell into the rubber boat. "ELEVEN TRIPS TO FERRY ALL SHELL TO SUBMARINE. WHILE QUESTIONED, ESKIMO DENIED PREVIOUS OBSERVATION OF METEOR FLASH. ON FURTHER QUESTIONING, ESKIMO ESTIMATED DATE OF METEOR FLASH AS ONE MOON BEFORE BIRTH. ON FURTHER QUESTIONING, DENIED ANY OTHER ESKIMOS ON BOOTHIA PENINSULA. WHEN QUESTIONED IF HAD OBSERVED U.S. AIRCRAFT, ESKIMO STATED HAD NEVER SEEN AN AIRCRAFT. WHEN FORCE APPLIED TO ESKIMO, ADMITTED FLOCKS OF AIRCRAFT DARKENED SKY EACH DAY. CAPTAIN CONCLUDED SAFER TO CONTINUE QUESTIONING ON SUBMARINE THAN TO DISPOSE OF UNRELIABLE ESKIMO WHILE ON CANADIAN TERRITORY."

  The film showed two towering Russians smiling, their friendly arms draped over Peterluk'
s shoulders. Between them, the Eskimo stood like a worried dwarf, his white fox fur hanging limply from one hand.