Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

by Harry Turtledove

  “No!” said a man who had been quiet till then. His tunic bore a large sun image, picked out in gold thread. From the size of that sun, and from the way he had dared interrupt Tjiimpuu, Park figured him for a high-ranking priest.

  “Tell me why you say no when these others agree, Viiljak Uumuu,” Maita Kapak said.

  “Because, Radiance, you were right when you first rejected this mad scheme,” Viiljak Uumuu said. “Patjakamak would turn away from you, reject you, cast you from his grace, should you decrease his realm by so much as a clod of river mud.” The priest burned with outrage at the idea.

  Well, there goes the ball game, Park thought. Religious fanaticism had started this idiot war, and religious fanaticism would keep it going. Just when he was beginning to think he’d talked Maita Kapak around, too. But fire and brimstone — or whatever their Tawantiinsuujan equivalents were — could drive out logic every time.

  Then Maita Kapak said, “Viiljak Uumuu, do you presume to expound the will of Patjakamak to me?” If his voice had been icy to Park, now it was somewhere around the temperature of liquid air.

  The priest turned as pale as a Skrelling could. “N-no, Radiance, of course not. I–I only thought to remind, uh, to remind you of what you yourself always, uh, sometimes said.”

  “Enough,” Maita Kapak said. “I am the Son of the Sun, and I am the instrument through which Patjakamak expresses his will. Do you doubt it?”

  Viiljak Uumuu went down on his belly. “No, Radiance, never!” He sounded horrified. Arguing with the Son of the Sun wasn’t merely lиse majestй, Allister Park saw — it was a lot more like blasphemy.

  “What is your will, Radiance?” Park asked into the ringing silence that followed Maita Kapak’s outburst.

  “Let me think,” the Son of the Sun said, and silence stretched again. At last the Tawantiinsuujan ruler gave his decision: “The benefits that will come to us as a result of improving our standing with the Muslims outweigh, I think, the loss we suffer from restoring to the Emirate this land east of the Ooriinookoo. Therefore Patjakamak must be seeking our acceptance of the terms Judge Scoglund has presented. Should the Emir keep the promise he made the judge to honor those terms, Tawantiinsuuju will also cleave to them. Let there be peace.”

  “Let there be peace,” his aides echoed, Viiljak Uumuu loudest among them. Park wanted to go over and shake the big-mouthed priest’s hand. If he hadn’t got Maita Kapak angry, the Son of the Sun might have come down the other way. On some different turn of the wheel of if Park thought, blinking, maybe he did. He deliberately turned his back on that thought. He liked the way things had turned out here just fine.

  “No one will be waiting for us, Judge Scoglund,” Eric Dunedin said, a little wistfully, as the train pulled into Kuuskoo.

  Park shrugged. “I didn’t want a brass band.” He wouldn’t have got a brass band anyhow; the Tawantiinsuujans greeted their returning heroes with reed pipes, flutes, and drums made from gourds. It wasn’t what Park liked in the way of music, but then it wasn’t for him, either.

  “Well, you ock to have a brass band,” Dunedin said. “If not for you, all these warriors would still be out in the jungle, ficking and dying.”

  “The International Court will know that,” Park said, “which is what counts to me. To these folk, I’m just some funny-looking outlander. That’s all rick. I did what I did, whether they care or not.”

  Someone here would care, though, Park thought as the train, brakes chuffing, glided to a halt. He looked forward to explaining to Kuurikwiljor just exactly how exciting his adventures had been, and how important his role in making the peace. He wouldn’t really have to exaggerate, he told himself, only emphasize what needed emphasizing. Of course she would be fascinated.

  And then, Park thought, and then… He’d been imagining “and then” in odd moments ever since Ankowaljuu started banging on his door. Soon, with a little luck — and he’d only need a little — he wouldn’t have to imagine any more.

  The train stopped. Park leaped to his feet. “Come on, Eric,” he said when his thane was slower to rise. “Let’s head for our house. I want to use the wirecaller.”

  “What of seeing to our trunk?” Dunedin said.

  “Hell with it. The Tawantiinsuujans will make sure it catches up with us sooner or later. They’re good at that sort of thing: hardly a thiefly wick among ’em. We didn’t pack everything, you know — there’s still enough stuff to wear back at the place.”

  Monkey-face looked dubious, but followed Park to the front of the car. As they went down the steps, the thane’s wrinkled face split in a big, delighted smile. He pointed. “Look, Judge Scoglund! Someone came to meet us after all. There’s the Vinlandish spokesman to Tawantiinsuuju.”

  Osfric Lundqvist spotted Park and Dunedin at about the same time Dunedin saw him. He waved and used his beefy frame to push his way through the crowd toward his two countrymen.

  “Haw, Judge Scoglund!” The ambassador pumped Park’s hand as if he were jacking up a wain. “Well done! I say again, well done! Without your tireless swinking on behalf of peace, the Son of the Sun and the Emir would still be bemixed in uproarious war.”

  “The very thing I told him,” Eric Dunedin chirped. “The very thing.”

  “You’re most kind, bestness,” Park murmured. He sent Monkey-face a glance that meant shut up. He had no interest whatever in standing in the railway station chattering with this political hack. What he wanted was to get to a wirecaller.

  Dunedin, unfortunately, didn’t catch the glance. He said, “Singlehanded, the judge talked Maita Kapak and Hussein into ontaking peace.”

  “Wonderful!” Lundqvist boomed. “Though as you said, Judge Scoglund, you came here as a forstander of the International Court and not of Vinland, still what you did here brings pride to all Vinlandish hearts.”

  “It wasn’t as big a dealing as all that,” Park said. Where he’d intended to magnify his accomplishments for Kuurikwiljor, now he downplayed them in an effort to make Lundqvist give up and go away.

  That, however, the ambassador refused to do. Park had picked off Amazon leeches with less cling than he displayed. Finally he said, “Isn’t that Tjiimpuu waving for you, Thane Lundqvist?”

  Lundqvist looked around. “Where?”

  “He’s behind those two tall wicks now.”

  “Reckon I ock to learn what he wants of me. I’ll see you later, Judge Scoglund; I have much mair to talk about with you.” Lundqvist plunged back into the crowd, moving quickly in the direction Park had given him.

  “I didn’t see the warden for outlandish dealings back there,” Eric Dunedin said.

  “Neither did I,” Park told him. “Let’s get out of here before Lundqvist finds out and comes back.”

  He and his thane hurried off, going the opposite way from Lundqvist. Soon they were standing outside the station. Park had hoped to flag a cab, but saw none. For one thing, they weren’t as common here as in Vinland. For another, as he realized after a moment, cabbies didn’t come swarming to meet a troop train, not in Tawantiinsuuju, where anything pertaining to military transportation was a state monopoly. As he watched, soldiers started filing onto government folkwains — by now, Park seldom thought of them as buses.

  The station was a couple of miles from the house he’d been assigned. He was about to give up and start walking-though his lungs, newly returned to two miles above sea level, dreaded the prospect — when a familiar — looking wain pulled up nearby. Ankowaljuu stuck his head out. “Need a ride, Judge Scoglund?”

  “Yes, and thank you very much.” Park and Dunedin climbed into the wain. Park shifted to Ketjwa. “Hello, Ljiikljiik,” he told the tukuuii riikook’s driver.

  Ljiikljilk nodded, then set off at the same breakneck pace he’d used before. Ankowaljuu said, “You have a fine recall, to bethink yourself of the name of a man you met just for a brief while.”

  “Thanks.” Park didn’t point out that any aspiring politician learned to remember people’s names.
He also didn’t say that he wouldn’t forget Ljiikljiik’s driving if he lived to be ninety.

  It had its uses, though. Faster than Park would have thought possible, the wain pulled up in front of his house. “I hope everything is still in there,” he said.

  “It will be,” Ankowaljuu said confidently. “In the olden days, a Tawantiinsuujan who was going out put a stick across his door to show he was not home, and no one ever bothered his goods. We’re not so lawful now, worse luck, but I was sad when I got to New Belfast and saw lodging-room doors with three locks.”

  “You’d have been sadder yet if you hadn’t used them,” Park said. Still, despite the years he’d spent in the DA’s office battling crime, he found slightly inhuman the idea of letting the world know a house was standing empty. If anywhere, though, it might have worked in Tawantiinsuuju.

  As Ankowaljuu had predicted, the inside of the house was untouched. The tukuuii riikook clasped his hand. “I wish I could stay, Judge Scoglund, but I have dealings elsewhere that will not wait.”

  “It’s all rick,” Park said. “But I thank you again — for everything. Without you, no one would have had the chance to listen to me up there in the jungle.”

  “You were the needful one. No one would have listened to me.” The tukuuii riikook nodded one last time, hurried out the door and back into his wain. Ljiikljiik zoomed off.

  “At last!” Park said. He fairly ran to the telephone. “Get me the house of Pauljuu, Ruuminjavii’s son, in the district of Puumatjupan.”

  The phone rang and rang. Just as Park began to lose patience, a servant answered: “Yes? Who is it?”

  “This is Judge Ib Scoglund,” Park said grandly. “I’d like to speak to Kuurikwiljor, please.”

  “Oh! Judge Scoglund!” the woman exclaimed. “Just one moment, please.” She set down the receiver. Faintly, Park heard her calling someone. He preened while he waited; just hearing his name, he thought, had been enough to impress the servant.

  A voice he knew came on the line: “Judge Scoglund! How are you today, excellency?”

  “Fine, thanks, Pauljuu,” Park answered, frowning a little. “But I asked to speak with your sister, not with you.

  “Kuurikwiljor — is not here.”

  “When should I call back, then?”

  “Judge Scoglund-” Pauljuu hesitated, as if unsure how to go on. “Judge Scoglund, the last time you called here, some weeks ago, you made arrangements to see my sister that evening — and then never came.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Park said. “I was called away — I was almost dragged away — on the mission to make peace with the Dar al-Harb. The mission that succeeded, I might add.”

  “I know that now. So does Kuurikwiljor, and we honor you for it. But we only learned the truth in the past few days. At the time — at the time, Judge Scoglund, all we knew was that you had not come. My sister was not pleased.”

  “I see. I was afraid of that. I’m sorry. I did try to get in touch after I left, but I had no luck. But if she isn’t angry any more, Pauljuu, perhaps-”

  “I am sorry too, Judge Scoglund, but I fear you do not see yet. A few days after you — well, after you disappeared, as we thought then — a noble named Kajoo Toopa made an offer of marriage for Kuurikwiljor. The rank of our family, which is higher than his own, made him willing to overlook her being a widow. After some thought, she accepted. The ceremony was performed eight days ago. Patjam kuutiin, Judge Scoglund.”

  “ ‘The world changes,’ ” Park echoed dully. “Uh-huh.” After a moment, he remembered enough manners to add, “I hope they will be happy together. Thank you for letting me know, Pauljuu.” He hung up. Dunedin came in, saw his face. “Bad news, Judge Scoglund? The lady is ill?”

  “Worse than that, Eric. The lady is wed.” He had the somber satisfaction of watching Monkey-face’s jaw drop.

  “What now?” his thane said.

  “That’s a good asking.” Park slowly walked into the kitchen, Dunedin tagging along behind. When he opened the pantry, his eye lit on a jug whose shape he knew. He undid the stopper, sniffed, nodded. This was the stuff, all right — one whiff was enough to make his eyes cross. “Here’s what now, by God.”

  Thane’s thane that he was, Monkey-face had already found two mugs. Park poured. Both men drank. Both men coughed. After the coughing was done, though, the pleasant glow remained in Park’s middle and rose rapidly to his head. He poured again.

  After three or four shots, Dunedin said, “Judge Scoglund, do I rickly recall you teaching me some song-?”

  “Hmm?” Then Park remembered too. “So you do, old boy, so you do.” He took a deep breath, turned his baritone loose: “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer! If one of those bottles should happen to fall-”

  Monkey-face chimed right in: “Ninety-eight bottles of beer!”

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