Victor took a particular liking to Sergei Zubov. As Junko explained, many Inuit were rabid fans of professional wrestling — as were a surprising number of native peoples around the world. Victor thought the big Ukrainian bore a striking resemblance to Angelo Mosca, the legendary Canadian wrestler and football player of the 1970s. Now that satellite dishes and VCRS had invaded the Arctic settlements, the popular icons of other cultures were woven into the native cloth.
“Big man! Good man!” Victor said, breaking his imperious facade and patting Zubov on the arm, visibly impressed. “I want my son to grow up big and strong like you.”
Zubov flushed, uncertain how to respond.
“I hope he does, Victor. But tell him that the NFL and the WWF pay a lot more per pound than NOAA ever will.”
For her part, Janey was immediately at home on the ship. Unlike her owner, the sled dog was beyond nobility and incapable of pretension; any opportunity to be unsaddled from her pack was a welcome reprieve.
She willingly accepted the petting and good-natured roughing-up offered her, then nuzzled the crew for handouts. She began wolfing down the gourmet table scraps provided by the galley before the dish was even set on the deck.
Junko took the opportunity to pass a dosimeter over the dog. Despite the thickness of the husky’s hair, it showed remarkably little sign of contamination.
“She seems clean, but I don’t want her inside the airlocks until we can examine her more thoroughly,” Junko said, then regarded Victor.
“You, on the other hand, are coming with us.” She urged the Inuk out of his outerwear and into a change of clothes for use inside the ship.
He obliged her, for Anika’s sake if nothing else, but refused a shower the loss of his accumulated sweat and skin oils would significantly lessen his insulation to the cold. Instead, Junko found him a plastic cap to keep his unkempt hair from carrying radioactive particles farther inside the ship.
After lunch, Junko brought Victor down to the ship’s infirmary, which under the doctor’s direction had been expanded to encompass three adjoining cabins. Garner took a seat and watched the examination without saying a word.
Junko accurately anticipated Victor’s reluctance to be examined by a stranger.
It was a response common among the Inuit and nearly every native group she had ever seen. Humor was a good enticement. So was candy, though tobacco or alcohol would have been more effective. Like many Inuit, Victor did not seem to place an intrinsic value on material goods an item was as valuable as the degree to which it was needed; a qablunaq was as trustworthy as her closest association to the Inuit. So she told him she had examined many, many Inuit in Greenland, including the elders and legislators of their largest towns. This experience combined, as Junko also knew, with her appearance (after all, the Asian and the Inuit people were separated only by a land bridge and about seventeen thousand years) finally persuaded Victor to strip to the waist and climb onto the examination table.
“You’re not feeling very well, are you?” Junko said quietly as she began her cursory inspection. It was more of a statement than a question. Even to a casual observer, Victor’s face showed more than fatigue and windburn. His complexion was mottled beyond the effects of regular harsh freezes or the constant glare of the ice pack for half the year.
“Tired?”
Victor shrugged.
“Inuk’s always tired.”
“Headaches?”
Another shrug.
“Inuk’s always aching.”
“Coughing up blood?” Victor looked at her blankly. What was a cough without a little bloodied phlegm?
Next Junko noted the staples of Victor’s diet in a new file.
“Do you eat muktuky she asked.
“Oh yes!” Victor said enthusiastically. “Muktuk is the best, when you can get it.”
Made from the blubber of beluga whales, Junko also knew muktuk, via bio accumulation was increasingly found to contain alarming levels of PCBS and lead.
The doctor tilted Victor’s head back slightly and shined a penlight over his inflamed gums. “I see you’ve lost some teeth recently.” Over lunch, it was impossible for her not to notice Victor’s missing teeth and the obviously sensitive stragglers. Inuit used their teeth like an extra appendage, so it wasn’t uncommon for them to be cracked or missing; in Victor’s case it was something else. The teeth looked healthy enough, but they had started falling out. Healthy teeth, particularly those that were continually stressed, did not fall out; they grew stronger chipped perhaps, and worn blunt, but strong as any bone. In addition, the gums had recessed and many of Victor’s remaining teeth were exposed to the root.
“You look like a hockey player I once knew.” She gave him a wink. “How big was the other guy? Or was it a polar bear?”
The humor seemed to disarm Victor and he smiled his broken smile.
“Nah, I wasn’t fightin’. And the bear was already dead when I found ‘im.”
In the brief time Victor had been sitting there, several strands of his coarse black hair had slipped down to the table from under his plastic cap. On closer examination, Junko noted the irregular bald spots that had begun to open up on his scalp. More evidence of exposure to radiation, slight but indisputable.
At least Victor’s eyesight was razor sharp and his balance was good. A nasal smear for inhaled radionuclides was high but not alarmingly so.
Junko moved her stethoscope over Victor’s chest and back and listened to his respiration. In years past, Inuit could develop respiratory problems as severe as those of coal miners. The condition was typically more pronounced in women, who spent more time indoors around the smoky seal-oil lamps that centered the snow houses and created their hospitable charm. Hardly any Inuit lived in such a manner any more; phlegmatic, raspy breathing these days was more often the result of cigarettes. Victor’s breathing sounded surprisingly clear, but his skin was sallow, blotchy, and pallid wherever it had not been exposed to the sun. His torso looked almost bruised, and his hands, thick with calluses and not-quite-healed frostbite, retained many nicks and scratches that seemed reluctant to mend. Decorative tattoos depicting the hunt or Inuit spirits covered much of his upper body, carefully applied by himself or others in his clan.
Junko paused to scribble in her notebook.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen a doctor?”
“Not since Anika started living with that lewkeemeeah,” Victor said.
It took a moment for the comment to register, then Junko realized what her patient had said in his blunt accent.
“Your wife has leukemia?” she asked. “She was diagnosed with it?”
“Oh sure,” Victor said. It was as if she had asked him about hunting seals; the words came easily and matter-of-factly. Yes, he knew about leukemia. He didn’t like it, but in his village he heard it mentioned nearly every day. In terms of conceptualizing it, however, understanding it in a manner beyond the taste of the air or the texture of the snow, leukemia, to Victor, remained an intangible in his life a bad spirit.
Junko gently plied Victor for more information about what the doctors had said about Anika. Shrugs this time. He was not inclined to follow Anika to the doctor’s even if they came by while he was at home between hunts and was less inclined to listen to their talk of disease. He let Junko draw some blood from his arm; she said they didn’t have the proper equipment on board to do a detailed series of tests, but they could get started.