"I find my faith as true as you find yours or the one-time Bishop Scoglund here finds his," Tjiimpuu said. Park had the feeling this was an old argument, and sensibly kept his mouth shut about his own occasional doubts.
"But it is false, a trick of Shaitan to drag you and all your stubborn pagan people down to hell," Da'ud said.
"Aka." Tjiimpuu pronounced the word as Eric Dunedin had, but he did so deliberately. "Patjakamak is the one real god. He set the sun aflame in the sky as a token of his might, and sent the Sons of the Sun down to earth to light our way. One day the whole world will see the truth of this."
The ache that started pounding inside Park's head had nothing to do with the altitude.
"Gentlemen, please!" he said. "I've come here to try to keep the peace, not to see you fight in the hall."
"Can there be true peace with pagans?" Da'ud demanded. "They are far worse than Christians."
"Thank you so much," Park snapped. The Moor, he thought angrily, was too fanatical even to notice when he was insulting someone.
Tjiimpuu, though, was every bit as unyielding. "One day we will rid Skrelleland of you hairy, sun-denying bandits. Would that we were strong enough to do it now, instead of having to chaffer with you like potato merchants."
"Potatoes, is it? One fine day we will roast potatoes in the embers of Kuuskoo." Da'ud ibn Tariq whirled around and stormed off. His exit would have been more impressive had he not bumped into the envoy from Araukanja, the Skrelling land south of Tawantiinsuuju, and knocked a mug of corn beer (aka in the other sense of the word) out of said envoy's hand. Dripping and furious, Da'ud stomped out into the chilly night.
* * *
Even in summer, even within thirteen degrees of the equator, early morning in Tawantiinsuuju was cold. Allister Park pulled his llama-wool cloak tighter as he walked through the town's quiet streets.
The exercise made his heart race. He knew a cup of coca-leaf tea would be waiting for him at the foreign ministry. He looked forward to it. Here it was not only legal but, he was finding, necessary.
A goodwain chuffed by, its steam engine all but silent. Its staked bed, much like those of the pickup trucks he had known back in New York, was piled high with ears of corn. Probably taken from a tamboo—a storehouse—to feed some hungry village, Park supposed. A third of everything the locals produced went into tamboos; Tawantiinsuuju was more socialistic than the Soviet Union ever dreamed of being.
The goodwain disappeared around a corner. The few men and women on the streets went about their business without looking at Allister Park. In New York—in New Belfast in this world—such an obvious stranger would have attracted staring crowds. Not here.
The town was as alien as the people. It had its own traditions, and cared nothing for the ones Park was used to. Many buildings looked as old as time: huge, square, made from irregular blocks of stone, some of them taller than he was. Only the fresh thatch of their roofs said they had not stood unchanged forever.
Even the newer structures, those with more than one story and tile roofs, were from a similar mold, and one that owed nothing to any architecture sprung from Europe. Vinland's close neighbors among the Skrelling nations, Dakotia especially, had borrowed heavily from the technically more sophisticated newcomers. But Tawantiinsuuju had a thriving civilization of its own by the time European ideas trickled so far south. It took what it found useful—wheels, the alphabet, iron-smelting (it had already known bronze), the horse, and later steam power—and incorporated that into its own way of life, as Japan had in Park's home world.
The foreign ministry was in the district called Kantuutpata, east of Park's lodgings. A kantuut, he knew, was a kind of pink flower, and, sure enough, many such grew there in gardens and window boxes. The Tawantiinsuujans were often very literal-minded.
The ministry building was of the newer sort, though its concrete walls were deeply scored to make it look as if it were built of cyclopean masonry. The guards outside, however, looked thoroughly modern: they were dressed in drab fatigues very much like the ones their Vinlandish counterparts wore, and carried pipes—compressed-air guns—at the ready. Their commander studied Park's credentials with scrupulous attention before nodding and waving him into the building.
"Thank you, sir," the judge said politely. The officer nodded again and tied a knot in the kiipuu whose threads helped him keep track of incoming visitors.
Inside the ministry building, Park felt on more familiar ground. Bureaucrats behaved similarly the worlds around, be they clerks in a DA's office, clerics, or Tawantiinsuujan diplomatic officials. The measured pace of their steps; their expressions, either self-centered or worried; the sheaves of paper in their hands—all were things Park knew well.
He also knew all about cooling his heels in an outer office. When some flunky of Tjiimpuu's tried to make him do it, he stepped past the fellow. "Sir, the excellent Tjiimpuu will see you when it is convenient for him," the Skrelling protested.
"He'll see me when it's convenient for me."
Tjiimpuu looked up in surprise and annoyance as the door to his sanctum came open. So did the man with him: a solidly built Skrelling of middle years, dressed in a richer version of the gray-brown uniform the ministry guards wore. The two men stood over a map table; the maps, Park saw, were of the area in dispute with the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.
"Judge Scoglund, you have no business intruding uninvited," Tjiimpuu said coldly.
"No? By your companion, I'd say I have every business. If you are talking with a soldier at the same time you talk with me, that tells me something of how serious you are about my mission." Unlike Da'ud's, Park's nose was not really long enough to stare down, but he did his best.
The soldier said, "I will handle this." Then he surprised Park by shifting to English: " `Let him who wants peace foreready himself for war.' Some old Roman wrote that, Judge Scoglund, in a warly book. It was a rick thock then, and rick it stays in our ain time. Vinland regretted forgetting it last year, nay?"
"You have a point," Park admitted; with any sort of decent army to overawe potential rebels, the Bretwaldate would not have gone through a spasm of civil war. "But still, ah—"
"I am Kwiismankuu, apuu maita—marshal, you would say in your tongue—of Tawantiinsuuju." Kwiismankuu returned to Ketjwa: "Now I will leave this matter in the hands of you two gentlemen, so learned in the arts of peace. If you fail, I will be ready to make good your mistakes." Bowing to both Tjiimpuu and Park, he tramped out of the foreign minister's office.
Park walked over to the table and examined the map Tjiimpuu and Kwiismankuu had been using. Little kiipuu figures, with knots drawn in different ways, were scribbled by towns. Park suspected they stood for the sizes of local garrisons, but could not be sure. To the uninitiated, kiipuus were worse than Roman numerals.
He noticed how far east the Tawantiinsuujan map put the border: well into what he thought of as Venezuela. Clicking tongue against teeth, he said, "Not even Tjeroogia or Northumbria recognizes your claim to so much territory, and they're the best friends Tawantiinsuuju has."
"We won the land; we will keep it," Tjiimpuu declared, as he had at the reception a few days before. If this was what he thought negotiating was all about, Park thought gloomily, the upcoming sessions would be long, boring, and fruitless.
He tried another tack. "How many folk in the land you conquered in your last war with the Emirate are still Muslims?" he asked.
"A fair number," Tjiimpuu said, adding, "though day by day we work to convert them to the true faith of Patjakamak and the sun."
Thereby endearing yourselves both to the locals and to the Emirate, Park thought. He didn't know whether the Tawantiinsuujans had borrowed the idea of one exclusive religion from Christianity and Islam or thought of it for themselves. Either way, they had their own full measure of missionary zeal.
"Dakotia is neutral in this dispute," Park said, "not least because it borders no state that has a boundary with yours. Dakotian maps"—he drew one out
of his leather briefcase to show to Tjiimpuu—"show your border with the Emirate running so. This might be a line from which you and Da'ud could at least begin talks."
"And abandon everyone east of it to the Muslims' savagery and false faith?" The foreign minister sounded appalled.
"They feel the same way about your worship of Patjakamak," Park pointed out.
"But they are ignorant and misguided, while we possess the truth."
Park resisted a strong temptation to bend over and pound his forehead against the top of the table. That Tjiimpuu was sincere made matters no better. If anything, it made them worse. A scoundrel was much more amenable to persuasion than someone honestly convinced of the righteousness of his cause.
Sighing, Park said, "I had hoped to sound you out before we began face-to-face talks with Da'ud ibn Tariq. Maybe this will work out better, though. If he is as stubborn as you, the whole world will see neither side is serious about ending your life of war after war."
Tjiimpuu's face turned a darker shade of bronze. "I will speak with you again when these talks begin. Till then, I want nothing to do with you. You are dismissed."
Let the Moors try to claim I'm biased toward Skrellings now, Park thought as he walked out to the street. On the whole, he was more pleased than not over his confrontation with Tjiimpuu. He would have been happier yet, however, had the Tawantiinsuujan foreign minister shown even the slightest sign of compromise.
Kuuskoo's streets, nearly deserted an hour before, now swarmed with life. The locals, quiet and orderly as usual, all seemed to be going in the same direction. "What are you doing?" Park asked a man walking by.
The man turned, stared in surprise. For all Park knew, he had never seen a pink-cheeked, sandy-haired person before; neither travel nor communication between distant lands was as easy here as in the judge's native world. Still, the Kuuskan's answer was polite enough: "We go to the festival of Raimii, of course."
"Raimii, eh?" That was the most important religious festival in Tawantiinsuuju, the solemn feast of the sun. Curiosity got the better of Park, though he knew the original inhabitant of ex-Bishop Ib Scoglund's body would not have been caught dead attending such a pagan rite. Too bad for old Ib, he thought. "Maybe I'll come with you."
The local beamed, shifted the big cud of coca leaves in his mouth. "I always thought foreigners were too ignorant and depraved to understand our religion. Perhaps I was wrong."
Park only grunted in response to that. He walked with the crowd now, instead of trying to cut across it. The Skrellings' low-voiced talk grew louder and more excited as they filed into a large plaza near the center of Kuuskoo.
The square was as big as two football fields side by side, maybe bigger. Park tried to work out how many people it could hold. Let's see, he thought, assuming each person needs a little more than a square foot to stand in, if this place is, say, 400 feet by 300—
He gave up the arithmetic as a bad job, for he suddenly saw that the walls of two sides of the square had a golden chain stretched along them, a little above man-high. Each link was thicker than his wrist. Instead of figuring out people, he started reckoning how many dollars, or even Vinland crowns, that chain would be worth. A lot of them, for sure.
The Tawantiinsuujan who had told him of the festival was still beside him. He saw Park staring at the chain. "This is as nothing, stranger. This is but the common people's square; we call it Kuusipata. The Son of the Sun and his kin worship one square over, in the plaza called Awkaipata. There you would see gold and silver used in a truly lavish way."
"This is lavish enough for me," Park muttered. Just one link of that chain, he thought, and he wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of his life. For the first time, he understood what Francisco Pizarro must have felt when he plundered the wealth of the Incas back in Park's original world. He'd always thought Pizarro the champion bandit of all time, but the sight of so much gold lying around loose would have made anyone start breathing hard.
Several men strode out onto a raised platform at the front of the square. Some wore gold and silver wreaths, and had plates of the precious metals adorning their tunics. Others used the hides of pumas and jaguars in place of robes, with their own faces peering out under the big cats' heads. When one man held his arms wide, others had to step aside, for his costume included huge condor wings, feathered in black and white.
One of the priests, for such they were, raised his hands to the sky. All the people in the square somehow found room to squat. Park was a beat late, and felt rather like an impostor trying to pretend he belonged in a marching band. His knees creaked as he held the squat. He grumpily wondered why the Tawantiinsuujans couldn't kneel when they worshiped, like everyone else. That would have been a lot more comfortable.
The locals tilted their heads back so they looked up toward the sun. They must have had a trick for not looking right at it. Park didn't know the trick. He kept on staring blearily upwards, dazzled and blinking, his eyes full of tears.
The Tawantiinsuujans held their hands up by their faces and loudly kissed the air. Somehow, again a beat slow, Park managed to do the same without toppling over into one of the people by him.
The priests on the platform began to sing a hymn. Still squatting, the squareful of worshipers joined in. Everybody—everybody but Park—knew the words. Some voices were good, others not. Taken all together, they were impressive, almost hypnotic, the way any massed singing becomes after a while.
The hymn was long. Park's knees hurt too much to let him be hypnotized. Back in his New York days, he'd never thought much of baseball players as athletes, but now he started feeling no small respect for what catchers went through.
At last the hymn ended. People stood up. Another hymn started. When it was done, the Tawantiinsuujans squatted again. So, stifling a groan, did Allister Park. Yet another hymn began.
By the time the service was finally done, Park felt as though he'd caught a double-header. He also desperately needed to find a public jakes.
"Is that not a magnificent festival?" asked the Skrelling who'd inveigled him into going to the square of Kuusipata.
Well, maybe it hadn't happened exactly like that, but at the moment Park's memory was inclined to be selective. "Most impressive," he said, lying through his teeth.
"Raimii will go on for nine days in all," the local told him, "each day's worship being different from the last. Will you come to Kuusipata tomorrow, your foreign excellency?"
"If I can," Park said, that seeming a more politic response than not on your life. After nine days of squatting, he was convinced he would walk like an arthritic chimp forevermore. Then something he had noticed but not thought about during the service sank home. "Nine days!" he exclaimed. "I saw no books for prayer among you. Do you remember all your songs and such?"
"Of course we do," the Skrelling said proudly. "They are graven on our hearts. Only people whose faith is cold have to remind themselves of it. Books for prayer, indeed!" The very idea offended him.
Park was thoughtful as he filed toward the edge of the square. Reading was obviously easier and more trustworthy than memorizing, and therefore, to him anyway, obviously more desirable for keeping records straight. The Tawantiinsuujans, though, as he had already discovered in other contexts, did not think the same way he did.
Maybe that was what made him notice the goodwain parked near a wall fifty yards or so beyond the edge of the square. In New York, or even in New Belfast, he would not have given it a second glance: parking spaces were where you found them. In Kuuskoo, though, it surprised him. It impeded the flow of people coming out of Kuusipata, and that was unlike the orderly folk here.
The locals must have thought the same. A man climbed up onto the running board, reached out to unlatch the driver's-side door so he could get in and move the truck out of the way.
The door wasn't locked. Few were, in law-abiding Thwantiinsuuju. He yanked it open.
The goodwain blew up.
Park felt the blast more
than he heard it. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground. The cobbles were hard and bumpy. As if from very far away, he heard people shrieking.
He shook his head, trying to clear it, and scrambled to his feet. The carnage closer to the goodwain was appalling. He shivered as he saw how lucky he was. Only the bodies of the people in front of him had shielded him from the full force of the explosion.
Half a dozen men sprang up from behind the wall, which was of ancient megalithic stonework and hence undamaged by the blast. For a moment, Park thought they'd got up there to direct help to the writhing victims near them. Then he saw they all had air rifles. They raised them to their shoulders, started shooting into the crowd.
Allister Park had seen combat as a young man in his own world, and again during his brief tenure as Vinland's assistant secretary of war. At the sound of the first sharp pop, he threw himself flat. He knocked over the person behind him. They fell together.
The men with guns shouted in unison as they fired. Park took a moment to notice, first that the shouts were not in Ketjwa, then that he understood them anyhow. "Allahu akbar!" the gunmen cried. "God is great! Allahu akbar!"
Someone screamed, right in Park's ear. Only then did he realize he was lying on a woman. Her fist pounded his shoulder. "Let me go!" she yelled. She tried to push him off her.
"No! Stay down!" By some miracle, he remembered to speak Ketjwa instead of English. As if to punctuate his words, a bullet felled a man standing not three paces away. The woman screamed again, and shuddered, but seemed to decide Park was protecting rather than attacking her. She quit struggling beneath him.
Around them, the noise of the crowd changed from horror to animal fury. People surged toward the men on the wall. Had the gunmen been carrying the automatic weapons Park's world knew, they would have massacred their assailants. With air rifles that had to be pumped up after every shot, they slowed but could not stop the outraged mob.
"Allahu akbar!" Park lifted his head just in time to see the last gunman raise a defiant fist and jump down in back of the wall. The locals scrambled over it to give chase. One was shot, but more kept on. Others, men and women both, began to tend the scores of injured people near the twisted wreckage of the goodwain.
Down in The Bottomlands Page 22
