Down in The Bottomlands

by Harry Turtledove

  Tjiimpuu frowned. "The Emir Hussein has never been known for his compassion."

  "That is not so," Da'ud said at once. "His Highness feels more compassion for pagans than for Muslims, in fact, as he knows that when pagans die they have only the pangs of hell to anticipate."

  "Then let him say so," Park urged.

  "Such a statement, were it to come; would surely be looked on with pleasure by the Son of the Sun," Tjiimpuu agreed. "If you think it might arrive, Da'ud ibn Tariq, I will urge Maita Kapak—" he shaded his eyes for a moment "—to delay the declaration."

  "I do not know whether the Emir would make such a statement," Da'ud said. "In any case, I do not intend to seek it of him."

  "What? Why the hell not?" Park exclaimed, startled out of both his diplomatic manners and his Ketjwa; he got no satisfaction from cursing in a tongue he had just learned.

  "Because of this." Da'ud drew a rolled sheet of paper from inside his robe, handed it with a sober flourish to Tjiimpuu. When the Tawantiinsuujan undid the ribbon that held it closed, Park saw the sinuous characters of Arabic. He was learning to speak that tongue, but could read it only very slowly.

  Tjiimpuu, plainly, had no problem with it. He looked up in sharp surprise at Da'ud. "This is not a forgery you made up this past evening after you knew I had summoned you?"

  "By Allah I swear it is not." Da'ud turned to Allister Park, explaining, "Last night I received a courier dispatch from Ramiah. Not far outside the city, a mosque was put to the torch at the hour of evening prayer some days ago. Many are dead, how many no one knows. On a wall nearby was scrawled the name `Patjakamak.' "

  "Jesus," Park said. He supposed both Tjiimpuu and Da'ud thought he was swearing by his own god. He was swearing, all right, but not in that sense of the word.

  "I will take this to the Son of the Sun," Tjiirnpuu said slowly.

  "Do so," Da'ud agreed. "We have as much cause for war as you. More, since you claim lands rightfully ours."

  "They are ours," Tjiimpuu said.

  "Wait!" Park said again. "This whole business of the lands has been stewing for a generation. A few days more won't matter, one way or another. What we need to do right now is to get each of you to stop trying to harm the other over what you find holy. Maybe knowing how much even a few zealots can hurt you will make both sides think twice."

  "I will take your words to the Son of the Sun," Tjiimpuu said. It was as big a concession as Park had seen him make. From the way Da'ud ibn Tariq bowed, it might have been as big a concession as he'd seen, too.

  He and Park left the foreign minister's office together. Tjiimpuu's secretary smiled nastily. "Is it to be war?" he asked, as if he already knew the answer.

  "No," Park told him, and watched his face fall.

  The judge and ambassador walked out toward the doorway. Park tried his halting Arabic: "A lesson here."

  "Ah? And would you deign to enlighten this ignorant one, O sage of wisdom?" Flowery in any language, Da'ud grew downright grandiloquent when using his own.

  As usual, Park spoke plainly: "Keep your holy warriors in line, and maybe the other fellow will too." Not quite the Golden Rule the real Ib Scoglund would have preached, he thought, but a step in that direction, anyhow.

  "Wisdom indeed, and fit for the Emir's ear," Da'ud said, "save only this: what if those who delight in fighting the jihad refuse to be held in check so?"

  "Who is stronger then?" Park asked in turn. "The Emir, or them?" Da'ud gave his beard a thoughtful tug and did not answer.

  Under the hostile glare of the soldiers outside the foreign ministry, the two men went their separate ways. Park hurried home to take care of Eric Dunedin, who, as he'd thought, still had a case of the galloping jimjams.

  "You ockn't to be tending me," Monkey-face protested feebly. "I'm your thane, not the other way round."

  "Oh, keep quiet," Park said. "Here, drink some more of this."

  Coca-leaf tea, soup, and, finally, a small shot of Tawantiinsuujan moonshine in tomato juice restored Dunedin to a mournful semblance of life. Park had a makeshift Bloody Mary himself; he figured he'd earned it. Thus fortified, he picked up the telephone receiver. "Whom are you wirecalling?" Dunedin asked.

  "Keep quiet," Park said again. He shifted to Ketjwa as the operator came on the line: "Could you please connect me to the house of Pauljuu, son of Ruuminjavii, in the district of Puumatjupan?"

  * * *

  When he showed up at Pauljuu's house that evening, Park was carrying a large bouquet of pink kantuuts. He didn't know if flowers were customary here, but didn't think they'd hurt. From the way the maid who opened the door exclaimed over them, he'd guessed right.

  Kuurikwiljor exclaimed over them too, and had a servant fill a bowl with water so they could float in it. "Very lovely," she said. "Such an unusual gift." So they weren't customary, he thought. They were a hit anyhow. In a way, that was even better. It got him points for originality.

  A moment later, he had to risk them: "Where shall we go?" he asked. "What shall we do? This is your city, not mine." This world had never invented movies, eliminating one obvious way for couples to spend decorous time together.

  "We could walk the walls of Saxawaman," Kuurikwiljor suggested.

  "The old fortress?" Park said, surprised. She nodded. He shrugged. It wasn't what he'd had in mind, but— "Why not?"

  Before they could walk Saxawaman's walls, they had to walk to Saxawaman, which lay on a hill north and west of the built-up area of Kuuskoo. Park let Kuurikwiljor take the lead; to him, one poorly lit street seemed much like another.

  "You don't have many robbers here, do you?" he asked, impressed by the way she confidently strode ahead. In his New York or Vinland's New Belfast, he would have been nervous about strolling around like this after dark.

  But Kuurikwiljor only answered, "No, not many," as if the idea that things could be otherwise had never entered her mind. Park suspected it hadn't. She was lucky, he thought.

  A path zigzagged up the hillside to the fortress. Park puffed along after Kuurikwiljor. He'd long since put Ib Scoglund's body on a calisthenics program, but no lowland man could match someone equally fit and native to this altitude. When he finally struggled up a stone stairway to the top of a wall, he panted, "Could we—rest—on the walls of Saxawaman?"

  "Of course," Kuurikwiljor said. To his relief, his admission of weakness did not make her scornful. She went on, "The view is magnificent, is it not?"

  "Hmm? Why, so it is." Kuuskoo lay spread out before them. Flickering torches and the occasional brighter, steadier glow of electric light defined its irregular grid of streets. One square in the northern part of the city was especially well-lit. Park pointed to it. "What's that?"

  "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 all 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!"