The Barsoom Project

The trapdoor in the ground puffed again, and more people emerged. Some were Eskimos in traditional dress, furs and skins. Some of the frocks looked to have been made of fish skin, and others of waterproof gut. Some wore more modem cold-weather gear, perhaps even some of the plastic adverse-environment gear Bowles had mentioned.

Both men and women wore earrings hanging from pierced earlobes. As one wrinkled Mongol face passed close by, Eviane caught a closer look at his flat, rectangular earrings. Bits of ivory, glass beads, and colored rock were stuck into them.

The women were heavy but withered by time and environment. Many wore jewelry decorated with grotesque faces, grinning demon-shapes, snarling animals. Two had bone needles projecting through their septa.

Eviane counted a dozen men and women. One… two wore bloody bandages. Some were introduced by name, names that made Eviane’s head hurt to hear them: Kitngiq and Pingayunelgen and Tayarut and even less manageable mouthfuls.

All had the characteristic padding of fat, the dark skin and epicanthic folds. There was a kind of vitality to them that made the excess poundage seem appropriate in a way her own never had. They carried it as if it was insulation above hard muscle.

When the room was three-quarters full, they arranged themselves around the fire pit in a circle.

With flint and steel, Martin started the fire. Smoke clouded the air, although it was almost magically drawn up through the roof.

Pouches were opened. Dried fish and meat went around the circle. Orson Sands sneered at what he was holding. “This isn’t even diet food. There was plenty of real food back in the supply store.”

Martin shook his head sadly. “You must learn to see as the Cabal see, if you would best them at their game. We must prepare you for the traditional ways, my friend.”

“He doesn’t mean Eskimo Pies,” Max told his brother.

The pouch reached her hands. What Eviane pulled out had a texture like rough cardboard. She began to chew. It was stringy, with a smoked flavor.

“The Inua of the fish must be respected. They feed us and clothe us, quiver our arrows and seal our boats. Their eggs tan hides and the oil of their bodies lights our homes. Eat, and nourish your bodies, and give reverence to the Inua of the fish. Many of you will die before this is over, and then your spirits will mingle with those beings you have consumed. It would be best to make peace with them now.”

The girl-Snow Goose-said, “Sedna is already gravely ill. Too ill to-” Martin glared at her and she was silent.

Eviane took Martin at his word, eating slowly, chewing until each mouthful was almost a liquid. (Sedna?) The atmosphere in the lodge was close, growing warmer. Her companions were having little trouble eating the peculiar food. Most of them must have tried stranger diets than this, from the look of them. (Did she know that name?)

When she stopped eating, she wasn’t full, but the edge was off her hunger. She felt in a state of readiness, eager to hear the next of it.

Several of the older men and one of the younger went to the fire and threw on crumbled handfuls of powder. When they burned, they made a smell like tobacco and dust. The smoke grew thicker, the flame hotter.

The Eskimos were peeling off their external clothing. Soon they were all in underwear or twisted loincloths. The refugees looked at each other, in speculation or embarrassment or panic. Martin the Arctic Fox seemed half-starved, bones showing, concave belly… no navel. Qaterliaraq had no navel. Orson nudged Max, whispered.

The air grew thicker, warmer. Eviane was perspiring. No help for it. She stripped, and didn’t stop until she was down to bra and panties. She folded her clothes into a careful bundle. The Eskimos weren’t hiding themselves, and she wouldn’t either.

Bowles and Stith-Wood wore their near nudity with ease, but Orson Sands held his shirt and jacket nervously in front of himself, trying to cover as much flab as he could. Kevin spread his thin arms before the fire. His eyes were half-closed in bliss, and his ribs were prominent.

Hippogryph, sweating freely, had kept his clothes on until he couldn’t take the heat. Now he was undressing in some haste. He kept the bundled clothes in front of him, blushing furiously.

Max had stripped down to shorts without a tremor, but many of Eviane’s fleshy companions were embarrassed. They shifted their considerable weight nervously from side to side like guilty children. Charlene tried to shrink into herself, shoulders hunched, arms hugging her knees, guilty grin… but she was relaxing even as Eviane watched. She was watching Hippogryph.

Hippogryph would not meet anyone’s eyes. His ears were quite red. He was hunched as Charlene had been, yet he had little to hide. Beneath his quite Eskimo-like fat layer the muscle was solid. And what did Charlene think she was hiding? Elvish alien beauty, if she would only straighten up.

Behind her, Johnny Welsh whispered, perhaps to himself, “I wish there wasn’t so much light…”