“The royal square, the square of Awkaipata,” Kuurikwiljor answered.
“I should have guessed.” If anyone wanted such lavish illumination, it would be the king and his court.
Park turned. They had ascended only the lowest of Saxawaman’s walls. Other curtains of unmortared stone, pale in the starlight, climbed the hill behind them. And beyond those walls were the greater stone ramparts of the Andes, black against the sky.
The sky — In the north and overhead lay the constellations with which Park was familiar, though here they looked upside down. But to the south the stars were new to him, and made strange patterns. And there were so many of them! In Kuuskoo’s thin, clear air, they seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch.
Kuuskoo’s air was also chilly. Park had been sweating as he went up the stone stairs, but a few minutes of quietly looking about were plenty to make him start shivering. “Now I see why you wanted to walk the walls,” he said, matching action to word. “We’d freeze if we just stood here.”
“This is a fine mild night,” Kuurikwiljor protested; but she fell in step beside him. “Are all people from Vinland so sensitive to cold?”
“It’s like I told your brother: I don’t think all people from anywhere are any one thing. In Vinland, though, most people would not think this night is mild.”
“How odd,” Kuurikwiljor said. “In what other small ways are our folk different, I wonder? Color is plain at first glance, and faith soon becomes clear, but I never would have thought we might find different kinds of weather comfortable.”
“Tawantiinsuuju has provinces that get much hotter than Vinland, and stay hot the whole year around,” Park said.
“How do people from those lands like it here?”
Kuurikwiljor laughed. “They shake all the time, and wrap themselves up in blankets even at noon. I did not think you were so delicate.”
“I’m not, but it’s-” Park paused, trying to work out how to say it’s a matter of degree, not kind in Ketjwa. He was still thinking when he heard someone kick a pebble not too far away. “What was that?” His fists bunched. Kuuskoo had to have a few footpads, and no one was close by to hear him if he needed to shout for help.
But Kuurikwiljor laughed again. “Just someone else — or rather, some two else — walking the walls of Saxawaman. Did you think we were the only ones?”
“I hadn’t thought about it at all.” Now Park did, hard. So she’d taken him to the local lovers’ lane, had she? In that case… His arm slid round her waist. She didn’t pull back. In fact, she moved closer. That was doubly nice. Not only was she a pleasant armful of girl, she was also warm.
He kissed her. She put her arms around his neck. When at last they separated, she stared up at him, eyes wide and wondering. “You really do still care for me, knowing I am a widow?”
“Yes, I care for you,” Park said. “And what does your being a widow have to do with anything? I’m very sorry you lost your husband, but-”
Kuurikwiljor’s soft, breathy laugh made him stop. She said, “Another of those small differences between your people and mine, I see. In Tawantiinsuuju, most widows stay chaste, and most men want little to do with them. Indeed, if I had children it would be against the law for me to marry again.”
“That’s a foolish law,” Park blurted. Then, lawyerlike, he hedged: “At least, it would be in Vinland. As you say, our people are not the same.”
He noted that she’d told him she wasn’t forbidden to remarry, which probably meant she wanted to. He thought marriage a fine institution — for people who liked living in institutions. That didn’t mean he had anything against some of its concomitants. He kissed Kuurikwiljor again; she responded with an ardor he found gratifying. But when he slid a hand under her tunic, she twisted away.
“It’s fine to feel cared for, wanted,” she said, “but I do not give myself to a man I’ve known only a day. If that is all you want from me, better you should find a pampairuuna, a woman of the marketplace.”
“Of course it’s not all,” Park protested, hoping he sounded indignant. “I like your company, and talking with you. But — forgive me, because I do not know how to say this in fancy talk — you are a widow, and you know what goes on between men and women.”
“Yes, I do.” Kuurikwiljor did not sound angry, but she did not sound like someone who was going to change her mind, either: “I also know that what goes on between men and women, as you say, is better when they are people to each other, not just bodies. Otherwise a pampairuuna would be honored, not scorned.”
“Hmm,” was all Park said to that. She had a point, although he was not about to admit it out loud. After a moment, he went on, “I would like to know you better. May I call on you again?”
She smiled at him. “I hope you will, for I also want to know you. Now, though, I think we should go back to my brother’s house. It has grown cooler.”
“All right.” Feeling as if he were back in high school, Park walked her home.
Just around the corner from Pauljuu’s house, where none of his people could see them, she stopped and kissed him again, as warmly as she had up on Saxawaman. Then she walked on to the door. “Do call,” she said as she clapped for a servant to open it.
“I will,” he said. “Thanks.” Just then the door opened. Kuurikwiljor went in.
Allister Park headed back toward the house where he was staying. As he walked, he wondered (purely in a hypothetical way, he told himself) how to go about finding a pampairuuna.
* * *
For the next several days, Kuuskoo stayed quiet. Park met with Tjiimpuu and Da’ud ibn Tariq, both alone and together. In diplomatic language, the joint discussions were frank and serious: which is to say, agreement was nowhere to be found. At least, however, the two men did seem willing to keep talking. To Park, whose job was heading off a war, that looked like progress.
He enjoyed his wirecaller talks with Kuurikwiljor much more. They went out to a restaurant that she praised for serving old-style Tawantiinsuujan food. Park left it convinced that the old Tawantiinsuujans had had a dull time.
“What do they call this dried meat?” he asked, gnawing on the long, tough strip.
“Ktjarkii,” she answered. Her teeth, apparently, had no trouble with it.
“Jerky!” he said. “We have the same word in English. How strange.” With a little thought, he realized it wasn’t so strange. The English he’d grown up with must have borrowed the term from his world’s Quechua. For that matter, he didn’t know whether jerky was a word in the Bretwaldate of Vinland. Have to ask Monkey-face, he thought.
The dinner also featured tjuunjuu-powdered potatoes preserved by exposure to frost and sun. It was as bland as it sounded.
Afterwards, they went walking on the walls of Saxawaman. Park, whose judgment in such matters was acute, could tell he was making progress. If he pushed matters, he thought Kuurikwiljor would probably yield. He decided not to push. Next time, he figured, she’d come around of her own accord. That would keep her happier in the long run, not leave her feeling used.
By the time he got home that night, he’d forgotten all about asking Eric Dunedin about ktjarkii. He remembered the next morning, but Dunedin was still asleep. Park never had got fully used to the idea of having a servant. He got dressed, made his own breakfast, and left for the foreign ministry with Monkey-face still snoring.
Tjiimpuu was in a towering fury when he arrived. The Tawantiinsuujan hurled two sheets of paper onto the desk in front of him, slammed his open hand down on them with a noise like a thunderclap. “Patjakamak curse the Muslims for ever and ever!” he shouted. “As you asked, we showed restraint — and here are the thanks we got for it.”
“What’s gone wrong?” Park asked with a sinking feeling.
“They like their little joke, making goodwains into bombs,” Tjiimpuu ground out. “Here is one report from Kiitoo in the north, another from Kahamarka closer to home. Deaths, injuries, destruction. Well, we will visit them al
l on the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb, I promise you that. Nor will you talk me out of war this time, either.”
Park sat down to do just that. After a couple of hours, he even began to think he was getting somewhere. Then a real thunderclap smote Kuuskoo. Tjiimpuu’s windows rattled. Faintly, far in the distance, Park heard screams begin. Tjiimpuu’s face might have been carved from stone. “You may leave now,” he said. “Your mission here is ended. When I have time, I will arrange for your transportation back to Vinland. Now, though, I must help the Son of the Sun prepare us to fight.”
Seeing he had no chance of changing the foreign minister’s mind, Park perforce went home. He was not in the best of moods as he walked along. Here he’d been called in to stop a war from breaking out, and it had blown up in his face. What with the Muslim zealots using trucks as terror devices, that was almost literally true. Even so, he’d failed his first major test. The other, more senior, judges on the International Court might well hesitate to give him another.
Dunedin gaped at him when he slammed the front door to announce his arrival. “Judge Scoglund! Why are you here so soon?” His servant’s wrinkled cheeks turned red. “And why did you not rouse me when you got up this morn? It’s my job to help you, after all.”
“Sorry,” Park said. He grinned at Monkey-face: “But you looked like such a little angel, sleeping there with your thumb in your mouth, I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”
“I do not sleep with my thumb in my mouth!” Park had never heard Eric Dunedin yell so loud.
“I know, I know, I know.” When he had Dunedin partway placated, Park went on, “If you feel you have to make like a thane, why don’t you run back into the kitchen and fetch me a jug of aka? I’m home early because it looks like Tawantiinsuuju and the Emirate are damned well going to fick a war regardless of what I think about it. Fick ’em all, I say.”
Monkey-face brought back two jugs of aka. Park gave him a quizzical look. “You’re learning, old boy, you’re learning.” Each man unstoppered a jug. Park sat down, half-emptied his with one long pull.
For the first time since he’d been named judge of the International Court, he gave some thought to visiting Joseph Noggle once he got back to Vinland. Maybe whoever was currently inhabiting his body hadn’t made too bad a botch of things while he’d been gone…
He put that aside for further consideration: nothing he could do about it now anyhow. He finished the aka, got up and walked over to the wirecaller. “Get me the house of Pauljuu, son of Ruuminjavii, please.” If Tjiimpuu was going to kick him out at any moment, he might as well have a pleasant memory to take home. A servant answered the phone. “May I please speak to the widow Kuurikwiljor? This is Judge Scoglund.”
“Tonight?” Kuurikwiljor exclaimed when Park asked her out. “This is so sudden.” She paused. Park crossed his fingers. Then she said, “But I’d be delighted. When will you come? Around sunset? Fine, I’ll see you then. Goodbye.”
Park was whistling as he hung up. Aka made the present look rosier, and Kuurikwiljor gave him something to look forward to.
He was going through his wardrobe late that afternoon, deciding what to wear, when someone clapped outside the front door. “Answer it, will you?” he called to Dunedin. Before Monkey-face got to the door, though, whoever was out there started pounding on it.
That didn’t sound good, Park thought. Maybe Pauljuu was worried about his sister’s virtue. Even as the idea crossed his mind, Dunedin stuck his head into the bedroom and said, “There’s a big Skrelling outside who wants to see you.”
“I don’t much want to see him,” Park said. He went out anyhow, looking for something that would make a good blunt instrument as he did so. But it was not Pauljuu standing there. “Ankowaljuu!”
“Whom were you outlooking?” The tukuuii riikook fixed Park with the knowing, cynical gaze he remembered from the ship.
“Never mind. Come in. I’m glad to see you.” Aware that he was babbling, Park took a deep breath and made himself slow down. He waved Ankowaljuu to a chair. “Here, sit down and tell me what I can do for you.”
“You came here to stop a war, not so?” the Skrelling demanded.
“Aye, I did, and a fat lot of good it’s done me — or anybody else,” Park said bitterly. “Tjiimpuu just gave me my walking papers.” Seeing Ankowaljuu frown, he explained: “He told me my sending here was done, and that I would have to backgo to Vinland: the Son of the Sun would order war outspoken against the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.”
“That’s sooth,” Ankowaljuu said. “He’s done it. But then, you never got a chance to set the whole dealing before Maita Kapak himself.” He made the ritual eye-shielding gesture.
“Before Maita Kapak?” Park was too upset to bother with Tawantiinsuujan niceties — if Ankowaljuu didn’t like it, too bad. “How could I go before Maita Kapak? The way the Son of the Sun is hedged round with mummery, it’s a wonder any of his wives get to see him.” He realized he might have gone too far. “Forgive me, I pray. I am not trying to wound you.”
“It’s all rick, Judge Scoglund. There are those among us who say the like — I not least. But as for getting the let to see him — remember, I am tukuuii riikook. I have the rick of a seeing at any time I think needful. I think this is such a time. A wain is waiting outside for us.”
Park hadn’t heard it come up, but that meant nothing, not with the silent steam engines this world used. He started for the door. “Let’s go!”
“Nay so quick.” Ankowaljuu sprang up, made as if to head him off. “You needs must pack first.”
“Pack?” Park gaped as if he’d never heard the word before. “What the hell for? Are you shifting me into the kingly palace? Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“The palace has naught to do with it. Maita Kapak”-again the eye-shielding, which had to be as automatic as breathing for Tawantiinsuujans-“left by airwain this morning, to lead our warriors to winning against the heathen who deny Patjakamak and slay his worshipers. I have another airwain waiting on my ordering at the airfield. I want us on it, as fast as doable.”
Park wasted a moment regretting that Kurrikwiljor’s bronze body would not be his tonight. Then he dashed for the bedroom, shouting to Monkey-face, “Come on, Eric, goddammit, give me a hand here.”
Dunedin was right behind him. They flung clothes into a trunk. “Hey, wait a minute.” Park pointed to a shirt.
“That’s yours. We won’t need it. Take it out.”
His thane shook his head. “Don’t need it indeed. What do you reckon me to wear on this trip?”
“I didn’t reckon you to wear anything — and I don’t mean I thock you’d come along naked, either. I reckoned you’d let Tjiimpuu ship you home; that’d be easiest and safest both.”
“So it would, if I meant to leave. But I don’t. My job is to caretake you, and that’s what I aim to do.” He gave Allister Park a defiant stare.
Park slapped him on the back, staggering him slightly. “You’re a good egg, Eric. All rick, you can come, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He thought of something: this world’s steam-powered planes were anything but powerful performers. “Will the airwain bear his heft, Ankowaljuu?”
“Reckon so,” the Skrelling said. “I’m more afeared for all the books you’re heaving into that case, Judge Scoglund.”
“I need these,” Park yelped, stung. “What’s a judge without his books?”
“A lickter lawyer,” Ankowaljuu retorted. “Well, as may be. I reckon we’ll fly. Be you ready?”
“I guess we are.” Park looked around the room at everything he and Dunedin were leaving behind. “What’ll happen to all this stuff, though?”
“It’ll be kept for you. We’re an orderly folk, we Tawantiinsuujans; we don’t wantonly throw things away.” Having seen how smoothly Kuuskoo ran, Park suspected Ankowaljuu was right. The Skrelling watched Monkey-face wrestle the trunk closed, then said, “Come on. Let’s be off.”
Ankowaljuu not only had a wain outs
ide, but also a driver. The fellow’s face was a perfect blank mask, part Skrelling impassivity, part the boredom of flunkies everywhere waiting for their bosses to finish business that doesn’t involve them. He stayed behind the wheel and let Park and Dunedin heave the trunk in by themselves.
“Go,” Ankowaljuu told him.
The wain sprang ahead, shoving Park back in his seat. He was no milquetoast driver himself, but Ankowaljuu’s man did not seem to care whether he lived or died. Eric Dunedin’s face was white as they shot through Kuuskoo like a dodge-’em car, evading trucks by the thickness of a coat of paint and making pedestrians scatter for their lives. Park sympathized with his thane. Though he wasn’t really Bishop Ib Scoglund, he’d never felt more like praying.
Ankowaljuu turned to grin at his passengers. “When Ljiikljiik here isn’t swinking for me, he’s a champion wain-racer.”
“I believe it,” Park said. “Who would dare stay on the same track with him?”
Ankowaljuu laughed out loud. He translated the remark into Ketjwa for Ljiikljiik’s benefit. The driver’s face twitched. Park supposed that was a smile.
Soon they were out of town. That meant less traffic, but Ljiikljiik sped up even more, rocketing south down the valley at whose northern end Kuuskoo sat.
The airfield was just that: a grassy field. Ljiikljilk drove off the road. As far as Park could tell, he didn’t slow down a bit, though everyone in the car rattled around like dried peas in a gourd. When Ljiikljiik slammed on the brakes, Park almost went over the front seat and through the windshield. The driver spoke his only words of the journey: “We’re here.”
“Praise to Hallow Ailbe for that!” Dunedin gasped. He jumped out of the wain before Ljiikljiik could even think about changing his mind. Park followed with equal alacrity. Still grinning, Ankowaljuu tipped the trunk out after them, then got out himself. Ljiikljiik sped away.
Only one airwain, presumably the one at Ankowaljuu’s beck and call, sat waiting on the field. Next to a DC-3 from Park’s world, even next to a Ford Trimotor, the machine would have been unimpressive. With its square-sectioned body hung from a flat slab of a wing, it rather reminded him of a scaled-down version of a Trimotor. It had no nose prop, though, and the steam engines on either side of the wing were far bigger and bulkier than the power plants a plane of his world would have used.
Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places) Page 25
