Down in The Bottomlands

by Harry Turtledove

  "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 outside, 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.

  The pilot opened a cockpit window, stuck out his head, and spat a wad of coca leaves onto the grass. That did nothing to increase Park's confidence in him, but Ankowaljuu seemed unperturbed. "Hail, Waipaljkoon," he called to the man. "Can we still fly with another man"—he pointed at Dunedin—"and this big cursed box?"

  Waipaljkoon paused to stick another wad in his cheek. "Is the box much heavier than a man?" he asked when he was done.

  "Not much, no," Ankowaljuu said with a sidelong look at Park, who resolutely ignored him.

  "We'll manage, then," Waipaljkoon said. "One of my boilers has been giving me a little trouble, but we'll manage."

  Hearing that, Park thought hard about mutiny, but found himself helping his thane manhandle the trunk into the airwain. Monkey-face was chattering excitedly; Park decided he hadn't picked up enough Ketjwa to understand what the pilot had said. He did not enlighten him.

  Takeoff procedures were of the simplest sort. The airfield did not boast a control tower. When everyone was aboard and seated, Waipaljkoon started building steam pressure in his engines. The props began to spin, faster and faster. After a while, Waipaljkoon released the brake. The airwain bumped over the itjuu-grass. Just when Park wondered if it really could get off the ground, it gave an ungainly leap and lumbered into the air.

  Used to the roar of his world's planes, Park found the quiet inside the cramped cabin eerie, almost as if he weren't flying at all. That was Kuuskoo flowing by beneath him, though. He wished he had a camera.

  "Best you and your thane don your sourstuff masks now, Judge Scoglund," Ankowaljuu said, returning to English so Park and Dunedin could not misunderstand him. "You're lowlanders, and
the air will only get thinner as we climb over the Antiis." He showed the two men from Vinland how to fit the rubber masks over their noses. "Bethink you to outbreathe through your mouths, and you'll be fine."

  The enriched air felt almost thick in Park's lungs, which had grown used to a rarer mix. Before long, at Waipaljkoon's signal, the Tawantiinsuujans also started using the masks. Not even their barrel chests could draw enough oxygen from the air as the 'wain climbed higher and higher.

  Tiny as toys, llamas wandered the high plateaus over which the airwain flew. Its almost silent passage overhead did nothing to disturb them. Then the altitude grew too great for even llamas to endure. The backbone of the continent was tumbled rock and ice and snow, dead-seeming as the mountains of the moon.

  The cabin was not heated. Waipaljkoon pointed to a cabinet. Eric Dunedin, who sat closest to it, reached in and pulled out thick blankets of llama wool. Even under three of them, Park felt his teeth chatter like castanets.

  He wanted to cheer when greenery appeared on the mountainsides below. The airwain descended as the land grew lower. The Tawantiinsuujans took off their oxygen masks. A couple of minutes later, Waipaljkoon said, "We're down to the height of Kuuskoo. Even you lowland folk ought to be all right now."

  Park shed his mask, and immediately began feeling short of air. The pilot chuckled at his distress. "How well do you do in hot, sticky weather down by the sea, smart boy?" Park growled.

  "That smelly soup? I hate it," Waipaljkoon said. Park laughed in turn. The pilot glared, then said grudgingly, "All right, you made your point."

  They landed at a town called Viiljkabamba for the night. Park tried to phone Kuurikwiljor to tell her where he was. After assorted clicks and pops, the call went through. When someone answered it, though, the connection was so faint that he could not make himself understood at all. Finally, swearing, he hung up.

  They flew on the next morning. Below them, foliage grew ever more exuberant; jungle stretched ahead as far as the eye could see. To Allister Park, viewing it from above, it might have been a great green ocean. Only an occasional cleared patch or the glint of sunlight off a pond or river spoiled the illusion.

  "How do you find your way when everything looks alike?" Park asked Waipaljkoon. For all he could tell, they might have been flying in circles.

  "By the blessed sun, of course, and the lodestone." The pilot tapped a compass on the instrument panel. In the profusion of other dials, Park had not noticed it. He felt foolish until Waipaljkoon went on, "And by keeping track of my air speed and guessing whether the wind is with or against me, and by a good deal of luck."

  "He hasn't crashed yet," Ankowaljuu said jovially, slapping the pilot on the back.

  Eric Dunedin intoned, "Patjam kuutiin—the world changes," in a voice so sepulchral that everyone stared at him, the two Tawantiinsuujans in surprise, Park in admiration. Monkey-face grinned. He sometimes showed unsuspected depths, Park thought.

  He'd drunk aka with breakfast at Viiljkabamba. Now it began to have its revenge. He fidgeted in his chair. Soon fidgeting did not help. "How do I make water here?" he asked.

  Waipaljkoon handed him a stoppered jug. "Make sure you put the plug back in tightly," the pilot warned, "in case we hit choppy air." Though relieved when he gave back the jug, Park reflected that Tawantiinsuuju still had a lot to learn about proper airline service.

  The aka also left Park sleepy. He was wondering if he could doze in his uncomfortable seat when the airwain lurched in the air. "What the—" he began, while Ankowaljuu and Dunedin made similar dismayed noises.

  Waipaljkoon, red-brown face grim, pointed wordlessly to the starboard engine. The steam plants' exhaust usually scrawled a big vapor trail across the sky. Now, though, vapor was spurting from several places in the engine housing where it did not belong. Park watched the spin of the three-bladed wooden propellor slow, stop.

  "Boiler tubes must have failed," the pilot said.

  The jungle, all of a sudden, seemed terribly far below and much too close, both at the same time. No, it was closer—the airwain was losing altitude. Park was glad he'd used the jug not long before. "Are we going to hit the ground hard?" he asked, not knowing how to say "crash" in Ketjwa.

  Waipaljkoon understood him. "Unless we find a town or a clearing soon," he said. "We can't fly long with just one motor, that's certain."

  The next few minutes were among the worst of Allister Park's life. The slow descent of the airwain only gave him more time to think about what would happen at its end. The lower they got, the hotter it grew. Park would have been sweating just as hard, though, had the engine quit during their frigid passage over the Antiis.

  Just as he was wondering when some high treetop would snag their landing gear and flip them into the forest, Eric Dunedin pointed off to the left. "Isn't that a break in the trees?"

  It was. Waipaljkoon fiddled with the controls. To Park's amazement, the airwain climbed a little. "Now that I have somewhere definite to go, I can give my one engine full power," the pilot explained. "Before, I had to save some to make sure it didn't fail too, before we had a place to land."

  All four men cheered when the clearing proved to hold not only cultivated fields but also, snug against the riverbank, a small town. Farmers in the fields gaped up at the airwain. Park wondered if they'd ever seen one up close before.

  "I'm going to set it down," Waipaljkoon said. "Hang on tight, and pray Patjakamak is watching us."

  Cornstalks swished and rattled against the wings as the airwain bumped to a stop. Park's teeth clicked together several times, but he'd been braced for worse. "Thank you, Waipaljkoon," Dunedin said. That, Park thought, about summed it up.

  People came rushing toward the airwain from the fields and from the town. "Probably the most exciting thing that's happened in years," Ankowaljuu said drily. "I wonder how many people here speak Ketjwa."

  The locals were Skrellings, of course, but with rounder faces and flatter features than the men from the mountains. Men and women alike wore only loincloths. In the moist heat of the jungle, Park could hardly blame them. "Rude to stare, Eric," he murmured, "though I own she's worth staring at." He wondered if Kuurikwiljor would forgive him for not showing up.

  Ankowaljuu was sitting closest to the door. He opened it, climbed out onto the wing. "What's the name of this town?" he called.

  Someone understood him, for an answer came back: "Iipiisjuuna."

  "Well, good people of Iipiisjuuna, I am tukuuii riikook to Maita Kapak" (they all shaded their eyes; back of beyond or no, this was still Tawantiinsuuju) "the Son of the Sun. I need your help in furthering the travels of this man here, Judge Ib Scoglund of the International Court." He beckoned to Park.

  From the way the locals gabbled when he came out, Park was sure sandy-haired white men did not come to Iipiisjuuna every day. "Hello," he said in Ketjwa, and waved, as if he were making a speech on a stump.

  A fat man with a large scar on his belly and streaks of gray in his hair (which looked, Park thought irreverently, as if it had been cut under a bowl and then soaked in Vaseline) pushed through to the front of the crowd. "What sort of help do you need?" he demanded in a deep, important-sounding voice. "Tukuuii riikook or no, sir, I, Mankoo, am chief at Iipiisjuuna."

  "Of course," Ankowaljuu agreed—wisely, Park thought, for Mankoo reminded him of a red-skinned, half-naked version of Ivor MacSvensson. The way people moved aside for the chief, the way they watched him when he spoke, said that Iipiisjuuna was as much his town as New Belfast had been MacSvensson's. And here Park had no leverage to break his hold on it.

  Ankowaljuu went on: "If you have a mechanic who can fix our airwain engine, we will be on our way very quickly."

  "We have no steam engines here, save on a couple of riverboats," Mankoo said. Park's heart sank. Of all the places he did not care to be stranded, Iipiisjuuna ranked high on the list. Mankoo was saying, "—roads hereabouts aren't good enough for them. But I will have our blacksmith look at it, if you like."


  "You are very kind," Ankowaljuu said, wincing almost imperceptibly. "If, Patjakamak prevent it, your smith is unable to make the repairs, how would you suggest that we go on our way northwards? We must, to stop the war that has broken out between the Son of the Sun and the Sun-deniers of the Dar al-Harb."

  The crowd muttered to itself. Suddenly suspicious no longer, Mankoo said, "Word of this war has not reached us. The wirecaller lines are down again, somewhere in the jungle."

  Hell, Park thought. There went another chance for calling Kuurikwiljor—and it was getting late for excuses. After this, it would be awfully late.

  Mankoo went on, "I fought the Sun-deniers a generation ago. I know what war is like. Anything to stop it is worth doing." He rubbed his scar, then turned and shouted at the fellow next to him in the local tongue. The man dashed away. Mankoo returned to Ketjwa: "He will fetch the smith."

  "What if he can't fix it?" Park spoke up. "You didn't answer that."

  Mankoo's massive head swung his way. He boldly looked back: let the chief get the idea that he was somebody in his own right, not just tagging along with the bigshot tukuuii riikook. After a moment, Mankoo nodded. "If that happens, I will give you a boat and supplies. Our river, the Muura, flows into the Huurwa, and the Huurwa into the Great River. On the towns of the Great River, you may be able to command another airwain. Is it well?" Now he looked a challenge at Park.

  The thought of sailing down the Amazon did not fill Park with delight. The thought of all the time he would lose left him even less happy. Unfortunately, though, he recognized that Mankoo really was doing his best to help. "It is well," he said, answering before Ankowaljuu could.

  It was afternoon by the time the smith got there. He and Waipaljkoon wrestled off the engine housing. When the smith looked inside, he whistled. "That engine dead," he said in halting Ketjwa. "Melted—twisted . . . Maybe Patjakamak bring back to life, but not me." The glum look on Waipaljkoon's face said he agreed with the verdict.