The Eskimo Invasion (16 page)

 

 

"Eh?" Eevvaalik laughed. "Why do you men always want to ask my husband?
This is a woman's question, where babies come from."

 

 

"All these people were not born here?" Dr. West asked, as another
leading question.

 

 

"I am the mother!"

 

 

Dr. West stared up at her in disbelief while she tittered. "You do not
even believe this person is the grandmother," she taunted, countering
with an Eskimo legend. "There also was a girl who was carried off by a
bear to live in his igloo. She is barren now, but they began from me,
and whatever Peterluk tells is lies."

 

 

Angrily, Dr. West retorted: "You joke while he shoots at us."

 

 

"His power is weak because he is not at the Burned Place."

 

 

"So the Navel of the World," Dr. West asked, thinking of his struggle
there with Peterluk for the rifle, "is of -- importance."

 

 

"This person was not there that night."

 

 

"What night?"

 

 

"This person does not know what night," Eevvaalik replied with an
irritating smile.

 

 

"Was it the night a sub -- a whiteman's boat which swims under the ice -- ?"
Dr. West was remembering Peterluk's lies. "Whitemen came ashore?"

 

 

"This person does not know." Eevvaalik answered too quickly, Dr. West
thought.

 

 

"Then the legend of the man who fell from the sky," Dr. West challenged her
with wry humor, "whose back split open so that he bore a son, that is false?"

 

 

"Who can say what is false? Peterluk was only a young man then, and
how could he recognize his Grandfather?" The woman shook her head
with distaste. "No, it would have been better if a bear truly was his
Grandfather. His Grandfather! I was but a young girl who had borne only
one child when Peterluk stole me, and my son died. Peterluk, how angry
he was. He wanted many sons."

 

 

She coughed, gurgled, spat blood. From the icy floor Dr. West argued from
a new direction. He was trying to talk his way free from Peterluk's bullets.

 

 

"Eevvaalik, when you were a girl you remember the whitemen called
doctors
?
I am a doctor. Your coughing will become worse and you will die soon unless
you are taken to a
hospital
. You remember that is a place of beds and
white-women in white clothing. You will be given
injections
. You remember
the sharp needles which make people well? Tell your husband to stop shooting,
so we may help you."

 

 

"You are afraid of my husband," she laughed triumphantly. "He is stronger
than whitemen, with more sons than you will ever have."

 

 

"Are they really his sons?"

 

 

"Eh? Is it better to believe all these people began when Grandfather
Bear's back split open. No? Then, believe a sharp needle in a tube of
glass," she laughed contemptuously at Dr. West, "as this person lay on
the sleeping ledge waiting for her husband. Oh, so big! A whiteman's
harpoon that makes love! This person was surprised when she swelled up
and had a baby in a month!"

 

 

"What is she talking about now?" LaRue hissed.

 

 

"She has an active imagination," Dr. West replied. "She's just invented
her own artificial insemination for some reason -- "

 

 

"Disgusting. Was that fiend a scientist?" LaRue accused, having missed
the point of the conversation, and not clarifying his own antiscientific
fears rising from his subconscious memories. "I do not approve of any
tampering with the human body."

 

 

He gawked. Eevvaalik was grinning, gesturing crudely, deliberately
catching their attention.

 

 

An explosion slammed through the tunnel. The murderously low path of the
bullet had ripped between them, and the two whitemen scrambled apart,
up on the sleeping platform on either side of the low entrance to the
room. The acrid stench of gun powder and the hoarse sound of Peterluk's
breathing came from the tunnel.

 

 

"Listen my husband," Eevvaalik called cheerfully, "we have two visitors.
One is waiting on each side above the door hole."

 

 

Peterluk's voice began only a few feet away. "Tell them to come outside."

 

 

"They are afraid you will kill them," Eevvaalik answered, compulsively
trimming the lamp.

 

 

"Tell them to come out or I will break a hole in the side of the igloo
and shoot them where they are." Peterluk evidently didn't want to risk
lunging blindly through the low entry. "Come out!"

 

 

Neither whiteman spoke.

 

 

Dr. West watched as LaRue discovered that a lump under the caribou skin
was a stone axe. Vaguely, Dr. West thought this flimsy-handled slab
of stone would have made Hans Suxbey, Director of the Eskimo Cultural
Sanctuary, smile with pride, a genuine Eskimo artifact!

 

 

Finally, Eevvaalik called, "My husband, you had better do it, or go away
and not do it."

 

 

"Woman, close your mouth!"

 

 

The three people in the igloo crouched waiting. The sounds
of Peterluk's breathing softened. Silence.

 

 

"Children who grow big as a man are very good," Eevvaalik remarked like a
housewife making conversation during an embarrassing pause. "But too many.
Children have children so quick, too many. Never enough seals. When this
person was a little girl, my mother told me it was a hungry winter when
I was born and she would have left me out on the ice but changed her mind
because that day three seals were killed. With meat again she would have
milk in her breasts. Eh-eh, customs were wiser in those days. There were
not too many Eskimos because enough new babies were left on the ice.
Everyone had enough to eat. Better not too many girls to feed,
better enough hunters."

 

 

Neither whiteman commented.

 

 

"You fat policeman come out," Peterluk's voice called inaccurately and
more distantly, as if he had backed silently out of the tunnel. "Better
hurry. Many people coming and they will kill you. You better come out
and run away."

 

 

"He is not a policeman," Dr. West shouted. "He is a friend."

 

 

"Too late for that. So close." Peterluk shouted. "Come out. Run."

 

 

"Those many people from the big camps wouldn't kill anybody." Eevvaalik
snorted. "They want everyone to love them, but there are too many of them."

 

 

"Come out!" Peterluk yelled as if in desperation. "Run fast to the plane
before they catch you. They kill all whitemen."

 

 

Neither man moved or reacted to this obvious trap.

 

 

Eevvaalik snorted. "These people do not even kill enough seals. They are
afraid to kill bears. All they talk about is Grandfather Bear."
Eevvaalik's voice rose in outrage. "They are not even Christians!"

 

 

There was a muffled gun shot. No bullet passed through the igloo.
The silence became so long that Dr. West wondered if Peterluk had shot
himself.

 

 

"All they talk about," Eevvaalik's voice rambled cheerfully, "is --
soon there will be so many of them that their Grandfather will come down
from the sky. This person thinks he will merely eat them. That is what
should be expected if he is a bear. These people are not Christians."

 

 

From the distance there was a shout, followed by three shots fired at the
speed a clumsy but hurried man could operate an old bolt-action rifle,
Dr. West thought.

 

 

"He must be firing in another direction," LaRue hissed, standing up on
the sleeping platform with his head and shoulders bent to fit the curve
of the icy ceiling.

 

 

With the stone axe, LaRue began knocking a hole in the roof of the igloo,
presumably high enough, Dr. West hoped, that Peterluk would have to scramble
up on the side of the igloo if he were to shoot in at them.

 

 

Outside there were strangely cheerful-sounding shouts.

 

 

As LaRue chopped upward, light burst through the roof and snow chinks
fell inside; standing erect on the sleeping platform, LaRue thrust up
his head through the hole in the igloo.

 

 

"Mon dieu!" Like a turtle, LaRue retracted his head back into the igloo
as another shot sounded. "Dozens of Eskimos approaching! He has shot one."

 

 

Again, LaRue poked up his head through the hole. "They are coming to rescue
us I think. Ah, so many of them. They are showing no fear."

 

 

Dr. West heard their voices calling to each other.

 

 

"He is running. They have him. They have seized him. They have his rifle."
LaRue ducked his head into the igloo. "They have rescued us I hope.
There are so many of them, we might as well go outside in any case and
congratulate them."

 

 

When Dr. West scrambled out of the tunnel into the blinding snow-light,
he blinked at Peterluk standing with lowered head like a musk-ox among
the smiling Esks. None was holding Peterluk.

 

 

An Esk handed Peterluk's rusty rifle to LaRue, who glanced at it incuriously,
then squinted at the rifle's bolt action. "Mon dieu! I think this old rifle
is Russian."

 

 

Peterluk walked away through the Esks. With Dr. West stumbling after him,
Peterluk ran toward the aircraft. Dr. West heard the click-snap of the
rifle's action. Would LaRue shoot?

 

 

"Don't shoot him," Dr. West gasped unheard as he limped far behind Peterluk.

 

 

From LaRue, there was no shot.

 

 

The rifle's magazine must be empty, Dr. West thought as his repaired leg
muscle tightened. He slowed to a hobble as several Esks passed him.
Running alongside Peterluk like playful puppies, they seemed hesitant
to violently seize him. Peterluk veered away from them toward the low
hill from which his earlier shots had come.

 

 

Peterluk's sled and dogs were not visible. Dr. West knew they were concealed
behind this hill because Peterluk was circling back. Dr. West took the
shorter course up the hill.

 

 

His repaired thigh muscle jerked like a poorly constructed android's.
Polar bear, not dog bite, he thought angrily of his thigh's great white
square of plastic surgery. As he scrambled up the slope, his muscles warmed.
From the corner of his eye he saw Peterluk change course -- away.

 

 

Dr. West had won this race. The dogs growled at him. Closer than the dogs
was spread a worn caribou skin on which Peterluk had lain while shooting
down into the igloo. The ejected cartridge cases were dull and old. Tied
on the sled was a battered metal box, an old military ammunition box,
he thought. The letters stenciled were Russian. Years ago, it must have
contained hundreds of bullets, he thought. Now it was empty.

 

 

"I want you, Peterluk," Dr. West gasped to himself. "You know so much more
than I -- "

 

 

Peterluk was running far away, toward the sea, and the Esks had stopped
chasing him.

 

 

"Pacifist fools," Dr. West wheezed. "You'd be helpless in this world."
With his good leg, he kicked the frozen sled runners loose.

 

 

With the whip, as ferociously as a real Eskimo, Dr. West lashed the dogs
until they understood who was master in a hurry. He was driving the sled
under good control when he headed off Peterluk. Back down the hill toward
the Esks, Peterluk fled as if he was afraid Dr. West wanted to kill him.
Down there LaRue ran to meet him. Hurling the rifle at Peterluk and
missing, LaRue lunged at the Eskimo with open arms and bulldogged the
exhausted Eskimo to the ground.

 

 

"Voilŕ! I have captured this murderer." LaRue shouted triumphantly,
twisting Peterluk's arm behind his back so that he growled in pain.
"Ask this savage why he foolishly shoots at whitemen."

 

 

Peterluk grunted that he had killed no one.

 

 

"That Esk is lying dead from your bullet," Dr. West retorted.

 

 

"Not people. Not real Eskimos."

 

 

"He says they're not real Eskimos," Dr. West translated to LaRue.
"Not real people."

 

 

"Not real Eskimos? These Esks not real people?" LaRue shouted in
outrage at Dr. West. "Maniac. You are wrong. These are the finest
human beings in the world. They save our lives while this murderer was
shooting. Among the bullets, they seized this man. They didn't have to,
but they came to help us. Look at this poor Esk lying shot dead in the
snow. He helped save our lives. He died for us. Don't you tell me these
people are not human. They are more human than you." He was shouting at
Dr. West. "You and my uncle saying these people are not human. You are --
are bigots! There should be more of these wonderful people in this world."

 

 

"You misunderstand me -- "

 

 

"I saw your dossier. You are one of those scientific birth control fiends,"
LaRue roared on. "Who are you to decide who lives and who is not born?
Birth control is so easy for you to say if others should do it, other races
we don't want to feed, such as these people who need food. They need warm
clothes. They need protection from fiends like you, and that atheistic
Director of this concentration camp, and also from my uncle," his voice
faded. "Help me tie this murderer."

 

 

"We agree there won't be enough food for them," Dr. West said wearily.