Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

The Pugnacious Peacemaker
Harry Turtledove

“Aka,” the wire recorder said. “Aka, aka, aka.”

“Aka,” Eric Dunedin repeated. “Aka, aka, aka.”

Dunedin’s boss, Judge Ib Scoglund, burst out laughing. The thane’s pinched, rather simian face twisted into a reproachful frown. Scoglund could guess what he was thinking: you didn’t act like this back in the days when you were a bishop.

The judge knew Dunedin was right. He hadn’t acted this way when he was a bishop, not up until the very end. Of course, the mind of an up-and-coming New York assistant DA named Allister Park hadn’t come to inhabit this body till then, either.

“I beg forgiveness, Eric,” he said, more or less sincerely. “But you have to say forth that twoth wordpart down in the back of the throat, like this: aka. Do you hear the otherness?”

“Nay, Hallow, er, Judge,” Dunedin said.

Allister Park breathed through Ib Scoglund’s nose in exasperation. “Well, you’re going to have to learn to hear it if you ever aim at speak Ketjwa. The way you spoke it, the way the letters look on paper to someone who’s used to English, aka doesn’t mean ‘corn beer.’ It means”-at the last moment, he decided to have mercy on his servant’s sensibilities-“ ‘dung.’ ”

Dunedin looked ready to burst into tears. “I never wanted to learn to speak Ketjwa, or aught save English. All these Skrelling tongues tie my wits up in knots.”

Privately, Scoglund, or rather Park, agreed with him. But he said, “I’m learning it, so that shows you can. And you’ll have to, for no one in Kuuskoo but a few men of letters and spokesfolk to the Bretwaldate knows even one word of our speech. How will you keep us in meat and potatoes — to say naught of aka — if you can’t talk with the folk who sell them?”

“I’ll — try, Judge,” Dunedin said. “Aka.” He pronounced it wrong again.

Park sighed. Nobody could make his thane a linguist, not in the couple of days before their steamship docked at Uuraba on the northern coast of the landstrait of Panama, not in the new sea journey down from the land-strait’s southern coast to Ookonja, the port nearest Kuuskoo — and not with twenty years to work, either. A talent for languages simply wasn’t in Monkey-face. The most to hope for was that he would learn more with Park bullying him than without.

“I’m going up on deck for some fresh air,” Park announced. “You stay here till you’ve played that record two more times.” Dunedin gave him a martyred look, which he ignored. The cabin was hot and stuffy; no one in this world had thought of air conditioning.

Park grabbed a hat and a couple of books and climbed the narrow iron staircase to the deck. The air there was no less humid than it had been inside, and hardly cooler: summer on the Westmiddle Sea (Park still thought of it as the Caribbean, no matter what the map said) was bound to be tropical. But here, at least, the air was moving.

The deck chairs were deck chairs, right down to their gaudy canvas webbing. Park threw himself into one. It complained about his weight. He sighed again. All the alter egos on his wheel of if seemed to run to portliness. They were all losing their hair, too; he put on the hat in a hurry, before the sun seared his scalp.

Soon he forgot sun, humidity, everything: when he studied, he studied hard. And he had a lot of studying to do. He felt like a student dropped into a class the week before exams. Ever since his — actually, Ib Scoglund’s — appointment to the International Court for the continent of Skrelleland the year before, he’d done little but study this world’s languages, history, and legal systems. They were still strange to him, but as soon as he got to Kuuskoo he would have to start using them.

He wished he’d been assigned a case involving the Bretwaldate of Vinland. Its customs were recognizably similar to the ones he’d grown up with. But assigning legal actions to disinterested outsiders made a certain amount of sense. Disinterested, Allister Park certainly was. Nothing like either country involved in this dispute existed in the world he knew.

Tawantiinsuuju was, he gathered from the text in his lap, what the Inca Empire might have become had Spaniards not strangled it in infancy. In this world, though, Arabs and Berbers still ruled Spain. Among other places, Park thought. That was part of the problem he’d have to deal with…

A shadow fell on the book. After a moment, Park looked up. A man was standing by his chair. “You are Judge Scoglund?” he asked in Ketjwa.

“Yes, I am,” Park answered slowly, using the same language. He was just glad he was talking with a man. Men and women used different words for kin and for other things in Ketjwa, and he wasn’t any too familiar with the distaff side of the vocabulary. “Who are you, sir?”

“I am called Ankowaljuu,” the fellow answered. He was in his late thirties, close to Park’s own age, with red-brown skin, straight black hair cut a little below his ears, and a high-cheekboned face dominated by a nose of nearly Roman impressiveness. He wore sandals, a wool tunic, and a black derby hat. “I am tukuuii riikook to the Son of the Sun, Maita Kapak.” At the mention of his ruler’s name, he shaded his eyes with one hand for a moment, as if to shield them from the monarch’s glory.

“Tukuuii riikook, eh?” Park looked at him with more interest than he’d felt before: Ankowaljuu was no ordinary passenger.

“You understand what it means, then?”

“Aye,” Park said. A tukuuii riikook was an imperial inspector, of the secret sort outside the usual chain of command. Most empires had them under one name or another, so the rulers could make sure their regular functionaries were performing as they should. Frowning, the judge went on, “I do not understand why you tell me, though.”

Ankowaljuu smiled, displaying large white teeth. “Shall I speak English, to make sure I am clear?”

“Please do,” Park said with relief. “I am working to learn your tongue, but I am not yet flowing in it.”

“You have the back-of-the-throat sounds, which are most often hardest for Vinlanders to gain,” Ankowaljuu said.

“But to go on: I tell you because I want you to know you may count on me — I speak for myself now, mind you, not for the Son of the Sun — for as long as you have a hand in judging this dealing between my folk and the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.”

“Oh? Why is that?” Park hoped his voice did not show his sudden hard suspicion. His years in the DA’s office told him no one ever offered anything for nothing. “You must understand I cannot talk with you about this dealing — all the more so because you are a tukuuii riikook, a thane of your emperor.”

“Yes, of course I understand, That you naysay shows your honesty. I must tell you, the Son of the Sun was sorry he gave our quarrel with the Emir to the International Court when he learned the judge would be from Vinland.”

“Why is that?” Park asked again, this time out of genuine curiosity. “My country has little to do with either yours or the Emirate.”

“Because so many Vinlanders are forejudged against Skrellings,” Ankowaljuu said grimly. “But when I came up to New Belfast to find out what sort of man you are, I found his mistrusts were misplaced. No one who has swinked so hard for the ricks of the Skrellings in Vinland could be anything but fair in his judgments.”

“Well, thank you very much,” Park murmured, a little embarrassed at taking credit for work that had actually been Ib Scoglund’s. “I won’t needfully choose for you, either, just because you’re Skrellings, you know.”

Ankowaljuu made a shoving motion, as if to push that idea aside. “I would not reckon anything of the sort. But it is good to know you will not turn against us just because the folk of the Dar al-Harb are incomers to Skrelleland like you Vinlanders.”

“I never thock of that.” Park clapped a hand to his forehead. “This bounds strife is quite embrangled enough without worries of that sort.”

“So it is.” Ankowaljuu chuckled, a bit unpleasantly. “At least I need not trouble myself about any faithly forejudgment on your part. As a one-time Christian bishop, no doubt you will have glick scorn for the Emir and his Allah on the one hand and our hallowing of the sun and Patjakamak who put it in the sky on the other.”

“I think all faiths can be good,” Park said.

Ankowaljuu’s eloquent grunt showed just how much he believed that. The funny thing was, Park really meant it. Anyone who wanted to play politics in New York had to feel, or at least act, that way. And nothing in Park’s experience with criminals had shown him that people who followed any one religion behaved conspicuously better than those who believed in another.

Trouble was, both the Tawantiinsuujans and the Emir’s subjects took their religions so damned seriously. “Dar al-Harb” itself meant “Land of War”-war against the pagans the Moors of Cordova had found when they crossed to what Park still sometimes thought of as Brazil. Since all the Skrellings in the southern half of Skrelleland were pagan, the past few hundred years had seen a lot of war.

“Well, maybe this is one war we’ll stop,” he muttered.

He didn’t know he had spoken aloud until Ankowaljuu said, “I hope we do.” The tukuuii riikook raised a hand to the brim of his derby and walked off.

Park opened his book to the place his thumb had been keeping. Religion, politics, greed… embrangled wasn’t nearly a strong enough word for this case. A word that was came to mind, but not one suited for polite company. He said it anyhow, softly, and plunged back in.

Reed flutes whistled mournfully. Allister Park didn’t think it was fit music for a fanfare, but nobody’d asked him.

“Judge Ib Scoglund of the International Court of Skrelleland!” a flunky bawled in Ketjwa. Park bowed at the doorway to the big reception hall, slowly walked in.

Slowly was the operative word, he thought. Kuuskoo was more than two miles above sea level; the air was chilly and, above all, thin. He’d come by train from the broiling tropical port of Ookonja in less than a day. Any sudden motion made his heart pound wildly. He looked around for a chair.

He spotted one, but before he could sit down, a big, red-faced man came over to pump his hand. “Haw, good to meet you, Hallow, er, Thane, er, Judge Scoglund,” he boomed. “I’m Osfric Lundqvist, the Bretwaldate’s spokesman to the Son of the Sun.”

“Thank you, Thane Lundqvist,” Park said.

“My joyment.” Lundqvist did not let go of Park’s hand.

“Thank you,” Park repeated, trying to find some polite way to disengage himself from the ambassador. Lundqvist was, he knew, an amiable nonentity who drank too much. Because several nations lay between Vinland and Tawantiinsuuju, this was a safe enough post for a rich squire with more influence than ability. No matter how badly he blundered, he could not start a war by himself.

As if by magic, Eric Dunedin appeared at Park’s elbow. “Judge, the Son of the Sun’s warden for outlandish dealings wants to meet you.”

“Outlandish dealings?” Then Park made the mental leap between the English he was used to and the Bretwaldate’s dialect: the foreign affairs minister, Monkey-face meant. “Oh. Of course. Thanks, Eric.”

“Here, let me inlead you to him,” Lundqvist said eagerly.

“That’s all rick, your bestness, but I ock to go alone. I’m here as judge for the International Court, after all, not as a burgman of Vinland.” And, Park thought, I’ll get you out of my hair. Lundqvist looked disappointed but managed a nod.

The warden for outlandish dealings was a middle-aged Skrelling with iron-gray hair cut in a pageboy bob like Ankowaljuu’s. Unlike Ankowaljuu, though, he wore in each ear a silver plug big enough to stopper a bathtub. Only the high nobility of Tawantiinsuuju still clung to that style.

Park bowed to him, spoke in Ketjwa: “I am glad to meet you, Minister Tjiimpuu.”

Tjiimpuu bowed in return, not as deeply, and set his right hand on Park’s left shoulder. “And I you, Judge Scoglund. How fare you, in our mountain city? The climate is not much like that to which you had grown accustomed traveling here, is it?”

“No indeed.” Park tried a Ketjwa proverb: “Patjam kuutin — the world changes.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he had them back; the saying’s implication was, for the worse.

But Tjiimpuu laughed. “Lowlanders always have trouble catching their breath here. Sit down, if you need to.” Park gratefully sank into a chair.

Tjiimpuu gestured to a servant, spoke rapidly. The man nodded and hurried away. He returned a moment later with a painted earthenware cup full of some gently steaming liquid. Tjiimpuu took it from him, handed it to Park.

“Here. Drink this. Many lowlanders find it helps give them strength.”

“Thank you, sir.” Park sniffed the contents of the cup. The liquid was aromatic but unfamiliar. He tasted it. It was more bitter than he’d expected, but no worse than strong tea drunk without sugar. And by the time he’d finished the cup, he did indeed feel stronger; for the first time since he’d reached Kuuskoo, his lungs seemed to be getting enough air. “That’s marvelous stuff,” he exclaimed. “What is it?”

“Coca-leaf tea,” Tjiimpuu said.

Park stared at him. Back in New York, he’d spent part of his time throwing cocaine peddlers and cocaine users in jail. He wondered if the foreign minister was trying to trap him in an indiscretion. Then he noticed Tjiimpuu had a cup of the stuff too. “Oh,” he said weakly. “Most, uh, invigorating.”

“I thought it would do you good,” Tjlimpuu said. “I still should warn you not to exert yourself too strenuously for the next moon or two, or you may fall seriously ill.”

“I will remember,” Park said. After a moment, he added, “Could you please send some over to my servant?” Of the two of them, Dunedin would likely be doing more physical work.

A waiter soon gave Monkey-face a cup. Park caught Dunedin’s eye, nodded. His man had been looking doubtfully at the stuff. Now he drank, though he made a face at the taste. Park nodded again, sternly this time, and watched him finish the tea. When Dunedin felt what it did for his insides, he grinned at his boss, which only made him look more like a monkey than ever.

“Now to business,” Tjiimpuu said in a tone of voice different from the one he’d used before. “I must tell you that the Son of the Sun will not permit the boundary between ourselves and the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb to be moved from where his father, the great Waskar, fixed it twenty-eight years ago.” Under Waskar, Tawantiinsuuju had won the most recent clash with its eastern neighbor.

“Setting conditions at the start of talks is no way to have them succeed,” Park said.

“For the Son of the Sun to abandon land his father won would disgrace him before Patjakamak, the creator of the world, and before the holy Sun that looks down on all he does,” Tjiimpuu said icily. “It cannot be, Judge Scoglund.” That was the wrong tack to take with Allister Park. “Do not tell me what can and cannot be,” he said. “When Tawantiinsuuju agreed to let the International Court decide your latest quarrel, you put that power into its hands — and, through it, into mine.”

“I could order you out of my land this very instant,” Tjiimpuu growled. “Perhaps I should, for your insolence.”

“Go ahead,” Park said cheerfully. “I’m sure you will make the Son of the Sun happy by disgracing Tawantiinsuuju before all Skrelleland, and for showing it thinks itself above the International Court. You and the Emir had me brought down here to do a job, and by God-Patjakamak, Allah, or plain old Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — I’m going to do it.”

Someone behind Park spoke up: “Well said.”

He turned. The newcomer was a tall, smiling man, dark but not Skrelling-colored and wearing a neat black beard no Skrelling could have raised. He had on flowing cotton robes and a satin headscarf held in place by an emerald-green cord. He was, in short, a Moor.

Bowing to Park, the fellow said, “Allow me to introduce myself, sir, I pray: I am Da’ud ibn Tariq, ambassador from the Dar al-Harb to the pagans of Tawantiinsuuju. I greet you in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. He is himself perfect justice, and so loves those who end disputes among mankind.” His Ketjwa was elegant and eloquent.

Park got to his feet. Even with the coca tea, it took a distinct physical effort. Also in Ketjwa, he replied, “I am honored to meet you, Your Excellency.”

Tjiimpuu had risen too, his face like thunder. Da’ud smiled, a smile, Park guessed, intended to get further under the skin of his rival. The ambassador suddenly shifted to English: “He’s a rick ugly misbegot, isn’t he?”

Park glanced at Tjiimpuu. He hadn’t understood, but he didn’t look happy about Da’ud’s using a language he didn’t know. Park decided he couldn’t blame him.

He stayed in Ketjwa as he bowed to Da’ud: “If you admire justice so much, Excellency, you will see it is only just to keep to a language all of us know.”

“As you say, of course,” Da’ud agreed at once. “I hope, though, that you have also applied yourself to learning the tongue of the Dar al-Harb, for where is justice if the judge knows one speech and not the other?”

He was smooth where Tjiimpuu was blunt, Park thought, but he looked to be equally stubborn. Park kept a poker face as he sprang his surprise: “I am working on it, yes,” he said in the Berber-flavored Arabic of the Emirate.

“Inshallah, I shall succeed.”

Tjiimpuu burst out laughing. “He has you there,” he told Da’ud, also in Arabic. Park had figured he would know that language.

“So he does.” Da’ud plucked at his whiskers for a moment as he studied Park. “Tell me, Judge Scoglund, did you know either of these tongues before you were assigned our dispute?”

Park shook his head. This world had no international diplomatic language. The dominance of English and French in his own world sprang from the long-lasting might and prestige of those who spoke them. Power here was more fragmented.

“How does it feel, studying two new languages at the same time?” Tjiimpuu asked.

Park thumped his temple with the heel of his hand, as if trying to knock words straight into his head. The minister and ambassador both laughed. Park was pleased with himself for defusing their hostility. Maybe that would prove a good omen.

It didn’t. Tjiimpuu’s frown returned as he rounded on Da’ud. “I got a report on the wirecaller this afternoon that raiders from the Emirate attacked a town called Kiiniigwa in Tawantiinsuujan territory. They burned the sun-temple, kidnapped several women from the sacred virgins there, and fled back toward the border. How say you?”

Taller than Tjiimpuu, Da’ud looked down his long nose at him. “I could answer in several ways. First, my ruler, the mighty Emir Hussein, does not recognize your seizure of Kiiniigwa. Second, surely you do not claim this was carried out by the army of the Dar al-Harb?”

“If I claimed that,” the Tawantiinsuujan foreign minister growled, “my country and yours would be at war now, International Court or no International Court, and you, sir, would be on the next train out of Kuuskoo.”

“Well, then, you see how it is.” Da’ud spread his hands. “Even assuming the report is true, what do you expect my government to do?”

“Tracking down the raiders and striking off their heads would be a good first step,” Tjiimpuu said. “Sending those heads to the Son of the Sun with a note of apology would be a good second one.”

“But why, when they’ve broken no law?” Again Da’ud smiled that silky, irritating smile.

“Wait a bit,” Allister Park broke in sharply. “Since when aren’t arson and kidnapping — and probably rape and murder too — against the law?”

“Since they are worked against pagans by Muslims seeking to extend the sway of Islam,” answered Da’ud ibn Tariq. “In that context, under the shari’a, under Islamic law, nothing is forbidden the ghazi, the warrior of the jihad.” He meant it, Park realized. He’d read about the holy war Islam espoused against what it called paganism, but what he’d read hadn’t seemed quite real to him. Jihad smacked too much of the Crusades (which hadn’t happened in this world) and of medieval times in general for him to believe the concept could be alive and well in the twentieth century. But Da’ud, a clever, intelligent man, took it seriously, and so, by his expression, did Tjiimpuu.

“Ghazi.” The Tawantiinsuujan made it into a swear word. “The Emirate uses this as an excuse to send its criminals and wild men to the frontier to work their crimes on us instead of on its own good people — if such there be — and to lure more criminals and wild men to its shore from the Emirate of Cordova, from North Africa, even from Asia, so they too can kill and steal in our land to their hearts’ content.”

“The answer is simple,” Da’ud said. Tjiimpuu looked at him in surprise. So did Allister Park. If the answer were simple, he wouldn’t have been here, halfway up the Andes (Antiis, they spelled it here). Then the ambassador went on, “If your people acknowledge the truth of Islam, the frontier will no longer be held against pagans, and strife will cease of its own accord.”

“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 thisplace 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.

Park cautiously got to his feet. After a few seconds, he was convinced no more gun-toting fanatics were going to spring from nowhere. He stooped to help up the woman he had flattened when the shooting started.

“Thank you,” she said with some dignity, accepting his hand. “I am sorry I screamed at you. You saw the danger from those — madmen” — she shivered — “before almost anyone else.”

“I am glad you are not hurt,” Park said. For the first time, he had the leisure to take a look at her. She was, he guessed, only a few years younger than he; one or two white threads ran through the midnight mane that hung almost to her waist. She was attractive, in the long-faced, high-cheekboned local fashion. Her mantle and brightly striped skirt were of soft, fine wools.

The derby she’d been wearing was crushed beyond repair. She picked it up, made a wry face, threw it down again. Then she studied Allister Park with as much interest, or perhaps curiosity, as he showed her. “You are not one of us,” she said. “Why were you at the festival of Raimii?”

“To see what it was like,” he answered honestly. “I probably will never be in Kuuskoo again; while I am here, I want to learn and see as much as I can.”

She considered that, nodded. “Did the beauty of the service incline you toward the worship of the sun and Patjakamak?”

Despite wearing an ex-bishop’s body, Park wished people would stop asking him loaded religious questions. He temporized: “The services were very beautiful, ah-”

“My name is Kuurikwiljor,” she said.

Park gave his own or, rather, Ib Scoglund’s name, then said, “Kuurikwiljor-‘golden star.’ That’s very pretty. So, by the way, are you.” He played that game almost as automatically as he breathed; his attitude toward women was decidedly pragmatic. But just as genuine a sense of duty made him look around to make sure he was not needed here before he asked, “Where are you going now? May I walk there with you, so you will feel safe?”

Kuurikwiljor, he saw with approval, looked toward the wounded herself before she answered. With the usual Tawantiinsuujan efficiency, teams of uniformed medics were already on the scene. They slapped on bandages, set broken bones, and loaded the worst hurt onto stretchers for more extensive treatment elsewhere. They did not seem to need any unskilled help.

Park also saw Kuurikwiljor eye him appraisingly. He did not mind that; he was sensible enough to think well of good sense in others. Whatever Kuurikwiljor saw must have satisfied her, for she said, “Thank you. I am staying at my brother’s house, in the district of Puumatjupan.”

That district, Park knew, was in the southern part of the city. With Kuurikwiljor following, he started in that direction. “On to the house of your brother,” he declared. He thought he sounded rather grand, but Kuurikwiljor giggled.

He mentally reviewed what he’d just said. “Oh, hell,” he muttered in English. Then he switched back to Ketjwa, more careful Ketjwa this time: “I mean the house of your waukej, not your toora.” He’d tripped himself up by echoing Kuurikwiljor; waukej was the word men used for brother, while toora was reserved for women.

“That’s better,” Kuurikwiljor said. “You don’t speak badly. From what I’ve heard, most foreigners would never have noticed their mistake, Ib Scogljund.”

In his turn, he tried to get her to say the “l” in his name without pronouncing it as if it were “ly.” He had no luck; the simple “l” sound did not exist in Ketjwa. After teasing her a little, he gave up. “Never mind. It sounds charming as you say it.”

“But I should be right,” Kuurikwiljor said seriously. “Ib Scog-Scog-Scogljund. Oh, a pestilence!” They both laughed.

The fumbling with languages and names helped break the ice between them. They talked all the way down to Kuurikwiljor’s brother’s house. Park learned she was a childless widow. That sort of thing was only too common in this world, which knew less of medicine — and a lot less about immunization — than his own. Kuurikwiljor sounded suitably impressed about Park’s reasons for coming to Tawantiinsuuju.

“We need to find some way to live at peace with the Emir,” she said. “Either that, or wipe his country from the face of the earth. Sometimes I think Muslims are viler than the dog-eating Wankas. The way those terrible men took advantage of the accident to work even more harm on us-” She shook her head. “My mantle is all splashed with blood.”

Truly, Park thought, this world was more naпve than the one from which he’d come. As gently as he could, he said, “Kuurikwiljor, I don’t think that was an accident. I think they made that truck blow up. I think they were waiting for it to blow up, so they would have a confused and frightened crowd to shoot at.”

She stared at him. “What a dreadful thing to say!” But after walking a few steps in silence, she went on, “That does make sense, doesn’t it? They would hardly be waiting with guns just in case there was an explosion.”

“Hardly,” Park agreed. He let it go at that; telling her the Tawantiinsuujans were little kinder to Muslims would have accomplished nothing.

Her brother’s house was a large, impressive stone building next to one of the streams that defined the boundaries of Puumatjupan. Servants came rushing out when they saw Kuurikwiljor. They exclaimed over her bedraggled state and, once they found Park had helped her come home safe, praised him to the skies and pressed llama meat, cornmeal mush, and aka on him.

Before long, he found himself meeting Kuurikwiljor’s brother, a stocky, solemn man of about his own age named Pauljuu. “Most kind of you, foreign sir, and most generous,” Pauljuu said. “I know you sought none, but let me reward you for the service you have done my family.” He drew a heavy gold signet ring from his right thumb, tried to hand it to Park.

“Thank you, but I must say no,” Park told him. As Pauljuu’s face clouded over, Park went on quickly: “I am a judge. How will people say I judge fairly if I take presents from one side?”

“Ah.” Pauljuu nodded. “I have heard it said that all foreigners will do anything for gold. I am glad to see it is not so.”

“Any saying that claims all of some group will do a particular thing is not to be trusted,” Park observed.

“Spoken like a judge. If not gold, then, how may I express my thanks?” Pauljuu asked. “You should know my father Ruuminjavii is kuuraka — governor — of the province of Sausa, to the north. I need not stint.”

Park bowed. “As I say, I am a judge. I will not, I must not, take your gifts.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Still, if you would not mind me coming to see your sister-” he carefully used the right word, not wanting to embarrass himself “-again, that would be very kind.”

Pauljuu glanced toward Kuurikwiljor, who had been sitting quietly while the two men talked. (In some ways, Park thought, Tawantiinsuuju was positively Victorian. Too bad no one here had any idea what Victorian meant.) Kuurikwiljor nodded. “As it pleases her and pleases you, I have no objection,” Pauljuu said.

Park bowed again to him, then to Kuurikwiljor. “Thank you both,” he said. “Have you a wirecaller here?” In this world, the telephone had been invented in Northumbria; its Ketjwa name was a literal translation of what English speakers called it here.

“Of course. Ask for the house of Ruuminjavii’s son. The man who connects calls will make sure it goes through,” Pauljuu said.

“Good. I will call soon. May I also use the wirecaller now, to let my own people know I am all right? They will be wondering after me.”

“Of course,” Pauljuu said again. “Come this way.”

He stood up to take Park to wherever he kept the phone. Park rose too. As he followed Pauljuu out, Kuurikwiljor called after him, “Thank you for looking after me so.” Fortunately, Pauljuu’s house had high doors and tall ceilings. Otherwise, Park thought, he was so swelled up with pride that he might have bumped his head on them.

He let Pauljuu place the call for him. Before long, he heard Eric Dunedin’s reedy voice on the other end of the line. “Hallow-uh, Judge Scoglund!” Monkey-face exclaimed. “Are you hale? Where have you been? With the burg all bestirred by the goodwain blast, I was afeared after you!”

“I’m fine, Eric, and among friends.” Park repeated himself in Ketjwa for Pauljuu’s benefit, then returned to English: “I’ll be home soon. See you then. Take care of yourself. ’Bye.” He put the mouthpiece back into the big square box on the wall, said his goodbyes to Pauljuu, and started back to the small house he and Dunedin were sharing.

He whistled as he walked north through the streets of Kuuskoo. He hadn’t met a woman like Kuurikwiljor since — since he came to this world, he thought, and that was a goodly while now. She was pretty, had some brains, and seemed to think well of him. He liked the combination, liked it a lot.

Of course, he reminded himself as he walked a little farther, one reason she interested him so much was that he hadn’t had much to do with women since he’d come here. Celtic Christian bishops were depressingly celibate, and he’d stayed discreet even after he left the church. Judges didn’t have to avoid women, but they did need to keep away from scandal.

Yes, Park thought, if Kuurikwiljor were just one of the girls I was seeing, I might think she was pretty ordinary. But at the moment, she was the only girl he was seeing. That automatically made her special. Park grinned a wolfly grin. He’d enjoy whatever happened, and keep his wits about him while he did so.

Keeping his wits about him meant taking a wide detour around the plaza of Kuusipata. He hadn’t had a good look at the gunmen there. For all he knew, they could have been converted Skrellings. Even so, the locals, especially those near the square, were liable to be jumpy about anyone who looked foreign. Better safe, he thought.

He never found out whether his precautions were needed. He did get home safe and sound, which was the idea. Tawantijnsuujan doors had neither knockers nor bells. A polite person here clapped his hands outside a house and waited to be admitted. At the moment, Park didn’t care whether he was polite by local standards. He pounded on the door.

From the speed with which Dunedin opened it, he must have been waiting just inside. His welcoming smile turned into a grimace of dismay when he saw his master. “Hallow Patrick’s shinbone!” he gasped. “What befell you?”

“What are you talking about?” Park said irritably. “I’m downrightly fine — nothing wrong with me at all. I mistrust I need a bath, but that’s no big dealing. Why are you looking at me as if I just grew a twoth head?” Dunedin’s smile returned, hesitantly. “You do, ah, sound like your ain self, Judge Scoglund. Maybe you ock to peer into the spickle-glass, though-”

Park let his servant lead him to the mirror. His jaw dropped as he stood in front of it. He looked as though he’d been through a war-on the losing side. He was dirty, his cloak was ripped, and there was blood both on it and on the side of his face.

He’d seen how bedraggled Kuurikwiljor was after the truck blew up, yet never thought to wonder whether he was the same. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t the same. He was worse. “It’s not my blood,” he said, feeling like a fool.

“Praise God and the hallows for that,” Dunedin said. “Now shall I get the bath you spoke of ready?”

“Aye, put the kettle on,” Park said. Kuuskoo had cold running water, but not hot, and cold water here was cold water. The judge looked at himself again. He was filthy. “I’m near lured into not waiting for it.”

“When you were bishop, you’d have been well bethock for mortifying your flesh so,” Dunedin said. “Shall I draw you a cold bath, then?”

“Hell, no! I’m not bishop any more, thank God, and my flesh came too damn close to being mortified for good this afternoon, thank you very much.”

Dunedin’s eyes got big. Hearing such language from his boss could still shock him, though he knew someone new was living in that formerly saintly brain. “I’ll get the kettle filled,” he said.

Park felt a prick of guilt. Turning Monkey-face’s wrinkled cheeks red was a cheap thrill. “Thanks, Eric,” he said.

“While you’re back there, why don’t you see if our hosts have given us anything stronger than aka? If they have, find a couple of glasses and join me.”

Tawantiinsuujan whiskey tasted like raw corn liquor. Park had never gotten drunk in a bathtub before. It was fun. After a couple of protests for effect, Dunedin got drunk too. Park taught him “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” He liked it. They got louder with every bottle that fell.

After some considerable while, Monkey-face asked: “Ish — is that forty-two bottles left, or forty-one?”

“I-hic! — can’t bethink.” Park tried to find an appropriately judicial solution. “We’ll jusht have to start over.”

But Dunedin was sprawled against the side of the tub, snoring softly. He was almost as wet as his master; a good deal of splashing had accompanied the singing. The water, Park noticed, was cold. He wondered how long it had been that way. He started to sing solo, discovered his teeth were chattering. It had been cold for a while, then.

He pulled the pottery stopper from the drain, climbed out of the tub. “Eric?” he said. Dunedin kept on snoring. Park dragged him to his bed. Then he staggered into his own bedroom and collapsed.

The next morning, altitude turned what would have been a bad hangover into a killer. Coca tea helped a little, but not enough. Park wished for aspirins and black coffee. Wishing failed to produce them.

Eric Dunedin was still out like a light. Envying him, Park got dressed and braved the vicious sunlight outside as he walked over to the foreign ministry.

The handful of guards outside the building had been replaced by a platoon of troopers. A good many of them were standing in a tight circle around someone. They waved their arms and shouted at whoever it was.

At the moment, Park disliked shouting on general principles. “What’s going on here?” he said. Then he saw for himself. The man in the midst of the angry Tawantiinsuujan soldiers was Da’ud ibn Tariq.

Heads turned his way. “Another foreigner,” one of the troopers growled. He lifted his air rifle, not quite pointing it at Park.

His headache made Park even more irascible than usual. “Go ahead,” he said scornfully. “Shoot me and the emirate’s ambassador both, why don’t you? See if Tawantiinsuuju has a friend left in the world the moment after you do.”

The officer who had noted — and knotted — Park’s previous arrival on the kiipuu recognized him now. “It is the judge of the International Court,” he said. “Stand aside. Let him by.”

“Let Da’ud ibn Tariq come too,” Park said. “I think the minister Tjiimpuu will be interested in seeing him.”

“Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell them,” Da’ud said. “I was summoned here by the minister himself.”

“Maybe we don’t care about that, murderer,” a soldier said. “Maybe we’d sooner cut out your guts with a tuumii-knife.” The Tawantiinsuujans’ ceremonial knife had a half-moon blade on a long handle. They did not practice human sacrifice any more (even Aztecia had given it up), not officially, anyhow. But they remembered.

“Stop that!” Park yelled, and flinched at the sound of his own voice. “You are not at war with the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb. Even if you were, your own embassy in Ramiah may answer for how you treat Da’ud. So let him come with me, and stop acting like dog-eating Wanka fools.”

Park’s gibe struck home. All the other tribes in the Tawantiinsuujan empire mocked the Wankas for their addiction to cynophagy. The officer said grudgingly, “The judge may be right. Our overlords will treat the wretch as he deserves. Let him through.”

Sullenly, the soldiers obeyed. One of them slammed the big trapezoidal double doors behind the two foreigners, so hard that Park thought the top of his head would come off. He rather hoped it would.

“I am in your debt, Judge Scoglund,” Da’ud said in English, bowing deeply.

“It’s nothing. I was just trying to get them to shut up.”

The Moor glanced at him. One elegant eyebrow rose. “Perhaps I should backpay the debt by talking you into ontaking Islam. That I would seek to do anyhow, for the good of your ghost. Now, though, it strikes me your body would also be the better for having wine-bibbing forbidden it.”

“It wasn’t wine, and it’s not your dealing,” Park snapped.

“Seeking to win a good man to Islam is the dealing of any Muslim,” Da’ud said. Park was about to snarl at him when he went on smoothly, “But here we are at Tjiimpuu’s door, so let us backturn to Ketjwa and perhaps speak of this another time.”

“You were not bidden to come here, Judge Scoglund,” the foreign minister’s secretary said when he saw Park.

“Yes, I know, but here I am, and what are you going to do about it?” Park followed Da’ud ibn Tariq into Tjiimpuu’s private office. Having failed once already, the secretary didn’t do anything about it.

To Park’s surprise, Tjiimpuu didn’t fuss about his walking in. In fact, a grim smile briefly lit the foreign minister’s face. “Well met, Judge Scoglund,” he said. “Now the world will have an impartial account of the latest outrage the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb has visited upon us.”

“The Emirate has done nothing against Tawantiinsuuju,” Da’ud said. “I presume you are referring to yesterday’s explosion here.”

“And the gunmen who set it off and took advantage of the terror it caused to kill even more,” Tjiimpuu said.

“Ninety-one people are dead at last count, more than three hundred wounded. Two of the murderers survived being captured. Both are Muslims; both say they and the rest wanted to strike a blow against the true holy worship of Patjakamak and the sun.”

“Heaven will receive our dead, as it receives all who fall in the jihad,” Da’ud replied, “but they did not act by the will of the Emir, Allah’s peace be upon him. The Emirate is blameless.”

“I do not believe you,” Tjiimpuu ground out. “Nor does the Son of the Sun. This looks to be — this is — all of a piece with the murder and banditry your people engage in throughout the border provinces. We can tolerate it no more.” The foreign minister breathed heavily. “I am sorry, Judge Scoglund, but your presence in Kuuskoo is no longer required. It will be war.”

“Wait!” Allister Park said immediately, then realized he had no idea what to tell Tjiimpuu to wait for. He thought frantically. “If, ah, if the Emir — without admitting guilt — expresses his sorrow for those killed at the Raimii festival, will that not show enough, ah, good feeling from him for talks to go on?”

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!”

“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.

“A boat, then.” Ankowaljuu sighed. He turned to Allister Park. “I am sorry, Judge Scoglund — this did not turn out as I planned.”

Park shrugged. “I’m just glad to be in one piece.”

“And well you might be,” Mankoo said. “I saw airwains fall from the sky when I fought in the war — no, it is the last war now, you tell me. Seldom did I see any flying man walk away from them afterwards. Were I you, I would offer prayers of thanks to Patjakamak for your survival.”

“Tomorrow at sunrise we will be in the temple here, doing just that,” Ankowaljuu said. Then he caught himself:

“Or Waipaljkoon and I will, at any rate. Judge Scoglund here is a Christian. I do not know if he will join us.”

All eyes turned to Park. He’d hoped to sleep late, but that didn’t look politic. “I’ll come,” he said, and everyone beamed. He didn’t much mind praying to Patjakamak; as far as he was concerned, God was God, no matter what people went around calling Him. The real Ib Scoglund wouldn’t have approved, but the real Ib Scoglund wasn’t around to argue, either.

“Perhaps we will win you to the truth,” Mankoo said. Park shrugged his politest shrug. The chief smiled, recognizing it for what it was. He said, “And now a feast, to make you glad you came to Iipiisjuuna, even if unexpectedly.”

“Nothing could make me glad I came to Iipiisjuuna,” Park said, but in English. Eric Dunedin and Ankowaljuu, the only two people who understood him, both nodded.

The food these jungle Skrellings ate was different from what Park had grown used to in Kuuskoo. He hadn’t tasted tomato sauce in this world till now. The sauce in question was heated with chilies; it smothered several roundish lumps nearly the size of Park’s fist.

“What are these?” he asked, poking one with his knife. “Stuffed peppers?”

“Stewed monkey heads,” Mankoo told him. “The brains are a rare delicacy.”

“Oh.” Park wished the rare delicacy were extinct. But with the chief expectantly watching him, he had to eat. The monkey tasted like flesh; the clinging spicy sauce kept him from knowing much more than that. Just as well, he thought.

He spent the night in a hammock. The Iipiisjuunans seemed ignorant of any other way to sleep. From the size of the cockroaches he’d seen before he blew out his lamp, he suspected he knew why. He wouldn’t have wanted anything that big crawling into bed with him without an invitation.

Reliable as an alarm clock, Dunedin woke him while it was still dark. “If you’re bound for this heathen church, you’d best be on time,” he said primly.

“Mrff.” Park, always grumpy in the morning, wondered how Monkey-face would look slathered in tomato sauce.

The service to Patjakamak and the sun went on and on and on. As at the festival of Raimii, everyone but Park (and now Dunedin) had all the prayers and responses memorized. After things finally ended — it was nearly noon — Park asked Ankowaljuu, “How do you folk heartlearn all those words, all those songs?”

The tukuuii riikook also used English: “By beginning with them as soon as we begin to speak, of course. How else would one do such a thing? We have a saying: ‘Everyone is a faithly kiipuukamajoo’ — a knowledge — keeper, you might say.”

“I’ve seen that you speak sooth,” Park agreed, admiring such diligence without sharing it. He continued, “Now we have one mair thing to do.” His stomach rumbled, interrupting him. “No, two mair-first lunch, then on to the steamboat.”

“You’d never make a worshiper of Patjakamak,” Ankowaljuu chuckled, glancing at Ib Scoglund’s incipient bay window (all along the wheel of if, Park’s analogs ran to plumpness). “For some of our festivals, we fast three days straickt.”

That idea did not appeal to Park at all. Eric Dunedin came to his defense: “Aye, Judge Scoglund’s not thin-”

(“Thank you too much, Eric,” Park said, but Monkey-face was going on) “-but he’s wild for bodily fitness: he drills himself most mornings, with sitting-ups and I don’t ken what all else.”

“Is that so?” Ankowaljuu stood face-to-face with Park, set his right foot next to the judge’s, and seized his right hand. “Let’s see what his swink has got him, then.” He locked eyes with Park. “First man to pull the other off kilter wins.”

“All rick, by God!” Park said, going into a half-crouch. “Eric, count three, to give us a mark to begin at.”

He almost lost the match in the first instant, when the absurdity of Indian-wrestling a veritable Indian hit him. But the painful jerk Ankowaljuu gave his arm made him stop laughing in a hurry; He and the tukuuii riikook swayed back and forth, tugging, yanking, grunting. Finally Park, with a mighty heave, forced Ankowaljuu to take a couple of staggering steps to keep from falling. “Ha!”

Ankowaljuu opened and closed his hand several times to work out the numbness. “You cauckt me by surprise there, Judge Scoglund,” he said reproachfully.

“I didn’t know that wasn’t in the rules.” Park grinned.

Ankowaijuu raised an eyebrow. “You should be a tukuuii riikook yourself. You look to getting around rules that make trouble, not just blindly carrying them out.”

“Not so much to getting around them. That would be bad in a judge. But in reckoning the rick onputting of them-”

“Aye, there’s the rub,” Ankowaljuu said. Park blinked; Ankowaljuu, most certainly, had never heard of Shakespeare. The Skrelling went on, “I will own, this not being any hick holy day, my belly could do with filling too. Shall we see what good food Mankoo has in store?”

“Not mair monkey heads, I hope,” Park and Dunedin said in the same breath. Ankowaljuu laughed. “Sooth to tell, so do I.”

Had anyone told rising young prosecutor Allister Park that within three years he would be sailing down tributaries of the Amazon, he would have called the teller crazy. Had the fellow gone on to say he would be bored doing it, he would have laughed in his face.

But bored he was, in short order. Neither the Muura nor the Huurwa was a big enough river to be impressive in its own right, and one stretch of jungle looked much like another. Of the riverboat’s crew of three, only Iispaka the pilot spoke Ketjwa, and he was so taciturn he might as well have known no language at all.

Thrown back thus on his own resources, Park plunged into his books. By both inclination and training he was a creature of the printed page; he was convinced the answer to the endless strife between Tawantiinsuuju and the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb was set forth there, could he but find it.

Monkey-face had learned to leave him severely alone when such fits came upon him. In them, he often bit his thane’s head off. Other times, as when he was learning Ketjwa, he insisted that Dunedin share his zeal. To his servant, that was worse.

Even the air of good cheer Ankowaljuu cultivated wore thin as Park kept his nose in his books and spoke almost as little as Iispaka. Only the swarms of mosquitoes that buzzed endlessly round the steamboat made him sit up and take notice — their bites roused him to brief spasms of insecticidal frenzy.

Then one day, about a week after they had left Iipiisjuuna, Park slammed shut the volume in which he’d been lost.

“Tell me,” he asked Ankowaljuu, his voice suddenly so mild that the tukuuii riikook gave him a suspicious glance, “does your faith out-and-out forbid you from writing down what you believe in?”

“No one ever does,” Ankowaljuu said after a moment of frowning thought. “As you’ve seen, we of Tawantiinsuuju pride ourselves in heartlearning everything we need to know.”

“Aye, aye,” Park said impatiently, “but that’s not what I asked. I want to know if you may, not if you do.”

“But why would we want to?” Ankowaljuu persisted.

Park rubbed his chin. “Hmm. Reckon you had an upgrown man like, like me, say, who wanted to become a changer to the faith of Patjakamak. Upgrowns aren’t as good at heartlearning as children. Would you be allowed to put things in writing to help him grasp your faith?”

“Like you?” Ankowaljuu said. “Is that why you’ve been toiling so hard: because you’re thinking on joining the brotherhood of the sun and the All-Maker?” His English failed him; with shining eyes, he switched to Ketjwa: “We would welcome you, my friend.”

“I thank you.” Park felt like a heel — he had no intention of converting — but plunged ahead: “Could you make such a writing for me?”

“Aye, and I will,” Ankowaljuu promised. After that first moment of emotion, he had his English back. “You are rick: the writing in itself is naught shameful nor sinful, and so you will have it as quick as is doable.”

That did not prove so quick as either Ankowaljuu or Park, for rather different reasons, hoped. A search of the ship revealed only three or four sheets of paper. “Why more?” Iispaka demanded when the two eager men upbraided him for the lack. “I don’t write.”

“Where’s the nearest storehouse?” Ankowaljuu asked. Public storehouses in the towns and along the highways of Tawantiinsuuju kept vast quantities of all sorts of supplies against time of need.

“Next town is Tejfej,” Iispaka said. “Maybe two days away.”

Ankowaljuu fumed at the delay. He spent as much of the intervening time as he could preaching at Park, perhaps expecting oral argument to work as well as written. To the tukuuii riikook’s disappointment, Park responded by diving back into his books. While he was studying, he could ignore distractions.

He could not so escape Eric Dunedin. When they were bedding down on deck under mosquito netting, his servant whispered, “Do you really have truck with that heathen foolishness? I ken you’re truly no hallow, and even if you were, you left the church to take up your judgeship. But I thock you still a Christian wick.”

“I am,” Park said after some moments’ thought. “All the same, though, I need to learn as much as I can about faithly dealings here, for the strife between Tawantiinsuuju and the Emirate is ungetawayably tied up in ’em.” He paused again. “D’you believe me?”

The answer mattered to him. Dunedin was friend as well as thane. Relief flowed through him as the small, wrinkled man said, “Reckon I do. If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust anyone.”

“Thanks, Eric,” Park said softly. He got no reply and repeated himself, a little louder. Still no answer, only soft, regular breathing. Monkey-face was asleep. Park let out a snort of laughter and joined him.

That night, they passed from the Huurwa to what Park persisted in thinking of as the Amazon. It was as if a giant hand had pushed the jungle back from either side of the steamboat: the Great River was a couple of miles wide. Its own mighty current added to the speed the steamboat’s engine could produce.

As Iispaka had predicted, they reached Tejfej toward evening of the second day after Ankowaljuu had asked for paper. The little town lay on the south bank of the Amazon, just past a tributary smaller than the Huurwa. A few Kuuskoo-style public buildings of massive stonework contrasted oddly with the huts of leaves and branches all around them.

One of the massive buildings was the storehouse. Using his authority as tukuuii riikook, Ankowaljuu requisitioned a ream of paper. He would sooner have commandeered an airwain, but Tejfej had none.

“Maybe this is for the better,” Ankowaljuu said as they steamed away the next morning. “Now I will in sooth have the time to write out what you need to know.”

And write he did, with a furious intensity that reminded Park of his own obsessive leaps into projects. Each evening he delivered to Park the pile of papers he had filled that day. Then Park had to wrestle with written Ketjwa, for Ankowaljuu expected him to read every word and absorb it with proper convert’s zeal.

“How can you keep track of so much?” Eric Dunedin asked one night, seeing his boss studying by lamplight and occasionally batting away the big bugs the lamp attracted.

Park looked up, grinned wryly. “It is rather like baptism by thorough indunking, isn’t it?” He wondered for a moment what the real Bishop Ib Scoglund would have thought of that comparison, then went back to his labors.

Even in the first couple of days, he saw how much constant exposure to Tawantiinsuuju’s written language improved his command of it. He also learned enough about the local religion to develop a considerable respect for it.

Patjakamak, Ankowaljuu wrote, was the creator and sustainer of the earth and heavens. He had placed the sun above all the stars and made them the sun’s handmaidens. The moon was the sun’s sister and wife, a pattern echoing that of the ruling house of Tawantiinsuuju, which sprang from the sun.

The sun’s warmth and light was the medium Patjakamak used to shape the world and everything in it. The sun deserved worship for its light, heat, and beauty, and also for its legendary descent to earth to give rise to the empire’s royal family.

Patjakamak, by contrast, did not allow himself to be seen. Nevertheless, he was the supreme god and lord, worshiped inwardly by every Tawantiinsuujan. That appealed to Park: the sun’s cult had more show, but the invisible god behind it was the more powerful.

Patjakamak judged the souls of the dead. Those of the good went up to a heaven — literally, an anan patja, an upper house — of rest and pleasure, while those of the bad went to hell-uuka patja, the lower house — where they had toil and pain and sickness forevermore.

It was, in short, a faith about as sophisticated as Christianity or Islam, though growing from different roots. It had its own pride; Ankowaljuu wrote tartly, “Christians say God’s Son died; we know Patjakamak’s Sun lives.” A man who followed its tenets would live a good life by any reasonable standard.

None of that was enough to convince Allister Park that he needed to switch religions, but he didn’t see that the Tawantiinsuujans needed to have their beliefs changed, either. He carefully stowed away every sheet that Ankowaljuu gave him.

A little more than a week after they left Tejfej, they came to Manaus, at the junction of the Great River and the almost equally impressive Black River. Iispaka moored the steamboat at one of the floating docks that let the town cope with the river’s ever-shifting level. “You find airwain here,” he said.

Park felt sure he was right. Manaus was a real city, nearly as big as Kuuskoo. Bigger ships lay to either side of Iispaka’s vessel; though Manaus was a thousand miles from the Atlantic, ocean-going craft could sail up the Amazon to it.

None would, though, not any time soon, not if the war went on: the mouth of the Great River lay inside the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.

As soon as Ankowaljuu was off the docks and on ground that stayed at the same level, he stepped in front of a wain. The driver slammed on the brakes, though the tukuuii riikook was not that close. He stuck his head out the window and loudly wished Ankowaljuu down to uuka patja; the orderly Tawantiinsuujans did not take kindly to having order flouted.

Then Ankowaljuu announced his rank and demanded to be driven to the residence of the local kuuraka. The Skrelling in the wain sang a different tune. He jumped out, helped Park and Dunedin load their trunk inside, and whizzed off to the governor’s palace.

Impressed at such complete and instant obedience, Park asked, “How often does someone get into hot water for feigning that he’s a tukuuii riikook? He could have a rare old time till he was cauckt.”

“Only seldom,” Ankowaijuu said. “Most folk here would never think of it.”

“It’s not like that in New Belfast,” Park said.

“So I ken, but our way suits us.”

The kuuraka of Manaus was a thin, aging man named Anta-Aklja. He hustled the tukuuii riikook and his companions out to the airfield with breathtaking celerity. Park again spoke in English to Ankowaljuu: “Is he falling all over himself to be helpful, or does he have something going on here that he doesn’t want a tukuuii riikook to see?”

“You have a mistrustful turn of thock, Judge Scoglund,” Ankowaljuu said in the same language. “Were my sending with you less weighty, I might want to infollow that more closely. As is-” one eyelid fell, rose “-well, I am not the only tukuuii riikook in Tawantiinsuuju.”

The airwain to which Anta-Aklja’s minions hurried the newcomers was of the same model as the plane that had crash-landed at Iipiisjuuna. Eric Dunedin crinkled up his face at it. “I’d not like to have this twoth one fail,” he said, also in English.

“What’s that?” Waipaljkoon asked in Ketjwa. Monkey-face made the mistake of translating. The pilot burst out; “You keep quiet! It was just after you came out with your cursed patjam kuutiin that the other airwain had trouble. Are you some jatiirii, some coca-leaf reader, trying to illwish everything we do?”

He took several minutes to calm down. So, Park thought: under the fine cult of Patjakamak and the sun, superstition lives. He was unsurprised, as anyone who has ever decorated a Christmas tree would be.

Manaus’ airfield was smoother than Kuuskoo’s. Park’s teeth rattled only a couple of times before the airwain climbed off the ground. Below, he could see the Black River’s clear dark water flowing side by side with the red-brown stream of the Great River; only after some miles would they fully mix together.

“Where now?” Waipaljkoon asked as he swung the airwain northward.

“The Son of the Sun flew to Mavaka, near the head-waters of the Ooriinookoo,” Ankowaljuu said. To Park, that meant they were heading for southern Venezuela. Here, though, it was a town in the province Tawantiinsuuju had wrested from the Emirate after their last clash.

Waipaljkoon gradually shifted course to the northwest. “This would be a faster, easier flight if we hadn’t had to sail halfway down the Great River to find another airwain,” he grumbled.

“When next you tell Patjakamak how to order the universe, I suggest you take that up with him,” Ankowaljuu said. Waipaljkoon grunted and shut up.

The flight was as boring as the earlier one had been — until that plane’s engine went out, Park reminded himself. He too hoped this leg of the trip would not be so strenuously interrupted. He sat back and watched jungle go by below, now dark green, now yellow-green. Again it reminded him of the sea with its unending not-quite-sameness.

Then, suddenly, not long before Waipaljkoon expected them to reach Mavaka, they saw a great cloud of smoke rising high into the air from below. The pilot scowled, pursed his lips. “I’ve seen big fires before, aye, but seldom one that size,” he said.

“That’s no fire!” Ankowaljuu said as they got closer. “That’s a cursed battle, is what that is!” He got the words out only an instant before they burst from Allister Park. He too had seen the flashes from exploding shells down there. Men were too small to spot from several thousand feet, but goodwains and machine-gun-carrying warwains were visible in clearings carved from the jungle.

Waipaljkoon needed no urging to steer wide of the battlefield. As the airwain was approaching from the southeast, he chose to fly more nearly due north, saying, “We’ll cross the line in a quieter place, then swing west to Mavaka.” That sounded good to Park, who had no desire to catch antiaircraft fire from either side in a war not his own.

Unfortunately, though, airwains rushing up to the front to add their pinpricks to the fighting spotted the intruder. Two peeled off to give the strange aircraft a once-over. In a quavering voice, Eric Dunedin said, “They have the star and sickle moon on their tails.”

Waipaljkoon turned west with everything his airwain had. That was not nearly enough. The Emirate’s fighters would have been sitting ducks for a Messerschmitt or Spitfire, but they were like sharks against a fat ocean sunfish compared to the slow, lumbering transport the Tawantiinsuujan was flying.

One zipped past the airwain, so close that Park could see the pilot’s grinning, bearded face in the cockpit. The other came alongside, fired a burst from its air-powered machine gun. That fighter’s pilot made a come-with-me gesture, then fired his gun again. What he meant was depressingly obvious.

“Slavery,” Waipaljkoon groaned as he followed the fighter eastward. The other one stayed on his tail, to make sure he didn’t try anything tricky. “They’ll sell us into slavery if they don’t kill us on the spot for following Patjakamak. That’s all we are to the stinking Muslims, fair game.”

“They won’t kill us, and they won’t sell us either,” Park said confidently. “Remember, you’re with Judge Ib Scoglund of the International Court of the Continent of Skrelleland. If they harm me, they have an international incident on their hands.”

“Let’s hope they bother to find that out,” Ankowaljuu said. “Or that they care.”

“They’ll find out,” Park promised. He left the other half of Ankowaljuu’s worry alone; he didn’t much want to think about that himself.

The fighter in front of them landed on a strip hacked out of the jungle. Waipaljkoon followed it down. Moors who had been standing around or working on other airwains came trotting over at the sight of the unfamiliar craft bouncing to a stop.

“Some of them have pipes, Judge Scoglund,” Dunedin said. He didn’t mean the kind from which tobacco was smoked.

“Of course they have pipes, Eric. They’re warriors, for God’s sake.” Hoping he sounded braver than he felt, Park unbuckled his safety harness. “I have to get out first,” he said. Shrugging, Waipaljkoon opened the door. Park ducked through it and scrambled onto the wing.

The bearded fighter pilot was already out of his airwain and running toward the craft he had forced down. “These are my captives!” he yelled, brandishing a large knife. “They’re mine to keep and sell as the pagan dogs they are!”

Park did not follow all of that, but he caught enough. He hoped the Moors would be able to understand his self-taught Arabic — Ketjwa, at least, he’d been able to practice over the past weeks. “Not captives!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Not pagans either!”

The pilot understood, all right. “What do you mean, you’re not a captive? You’re here, lying fool, at our base, the Emirate’s base, at Siimaranja. And that’s a Tawantiinsuujan airwain, so you’re a filthy Patjakamak-worshiping pagan!”

“I’m no Tawantiinsuujan,” Park said. His fair skin, sandy hair, and light eyes told the truth of that better than any words.

“Well, who in Shaitan’s name are you, then?” someone called from the ground.

Park sternly suppressed a sigh of relief. If nobody asked that question, he would have had to plunge in cold. As it was, he had the perfect chance to give them his name and impressive title. Then, into abrupt silence, he went on, “I am a citizen of the Bretwaldate of Vinland, and a Christian by religion. You will treat me as Muslim law requires you to treat a Person of the Book.”

The Moors started arguing among themselves. That was as much as Park had expected. The pilot’s voice rose above the babble, loud with outrage: “Well, what if he does belong to the Ahl al-Kitab, the People of the Book? Those other three I see in there don’t. They’re pagan Skrellings, and they’re mine!” When no one argued with him, he started toward the downed airwain again, still clutching that knife.

“One is my servant from Vinland, and a Christian like me,” Park said. The pilot shook a fist at him. He continued, “The other two men are of Tawantiinsuuju, yes. But they fly me — I ask them to fly me — to help make peace between the Son of the Sun and your Emir. You should let us go on our way, free from harm.”

He didn’t expect that to happen. He figured, though, that if he only asked for what he wanted, he’d end up with less. One thing he’d never been short on was gall. He stood on the wing, trying to look as impressive as possible, while the Moors kept on arguing. Finally, when they seemed about to come to blows, one of them said, “Let’s take it to the qadi.”

“Yes,” Park said at once. “Take us to the qadi. He will judge the truth.”

“They’re mine, curse it!” the frustrated fighter pilot said again, but most of the Moors on the airstrip shouted him down.

“Come down,” one of them said to Park. “By Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, you will all stay free and unhurt till the qadi lays down his judgment.”

“Agreed.” Park stuck his head back into the airwain. “Come on out. One of their judges is going to figure out what to do with us.”

Despite the Moor’s promise, men crowded close to Park and his companions to make sure they did not break and run. He wondered where they could run to, but on second thought was just as glad to have a lot of bodies around — the pilot never had put away that knife.

The qadi’s tent was at the edge of the jungle, close by several dozen man-sized rugs spread on the ground: the airfield crew’s worship area, Park realized. “Excellency!” a Moor said.

Everyone bowed when the qadi came out. Park was slower than the Muslims, but quicker than Dunedin, Ankowaljuu, or Waipaljkoon. When he straightened, he got his first good look at the Muslim judge; all he’d noticed before was the Arab-style robes the man wore.

The qadi was no Arab, though. With his round, copper-skinned face, he was plainly of jungle Skrelling stock. Park knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Just as Vinland’s Skrellings were Christian, so naturally those of the Emirate would follow Islam. He needed a moment to adjust all the same.

The qadi said, “Who are these strangers? Why do you bring them before me?”

Park spoke up before anyone else had a chance: “Excellency, I am qadi myself — a judge of the International Court of the Continent of Skrelleland. Your pilot made my airwain land by mistake.”

“They are my prisoners, my battlefield booty!” the fighter pilot cried. “Even this Christian who calls himself a qadi admits that these”-he pointed at the two Tawantlinsuujans-“are but pagans, deserving only death or slavery.”

The qadi frowned. “This is too complicated to decide at once. Come into my tent, Muawiyah” (that was evidently the pilot) “and you foreign folk as well. And, to keep anyone from getting ideas perhaps he should not have, you come too, Harun, and you, Walid, with your weapons.”

The tent was crowded with so many people inside, but it held them. The Muslims with pipes sat behind Park and his companions. The qadi also found a place on the rug. He picked up a book — a Qu’ran, Park guessed.

“Now we may begin,” he said, then added, “I suppose I should tell you and yours, O qadi of the Christians, that I am called Muhammad ibn Nizam. Do you all speak Arabic?”

“I do, qadi Muhammad,” Ankowaljuu said at once. Waipaljkoon and Dunedin did not understand the question, which was answer in itself.

“Translate as you need,” Muhammad ibn Nizam told Park and the tukuuii riikook. “We shall allow the time.

‘Allah’s judgment surely will come to pass: do not try to hurry it along,’ as Allah says in the chapter called The Bee. Now, unfold me your tale.”

Park again spoke first, describing how he had been chosen to arbitrate the dispute between Tawantiinsuuju and the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb, and how, in spite of his efforts, war had broken out between them. He told how Ankowaljuu still had hopes for peace, and had arranged to have him fly to meet the Son of the Sun — and all the trouble he’d had since. “I also hope for peace now,” he finished, “but not for the same reasons.”

“I had heard of your mission,” Muhammad said. “Beyond your Frankish look, can you prove who and what you are?”

“Yes, Excellency. My papers are in the trunk inside our airwain. Other important papers, too.”

Muhammad nodded to the Moors behind Park. “Have this trunk fetched here.” One of the men hurried away. The qadi went on, “While we wait, I will hear what Muawiyah has to say.”

Park half-listened as the pilot told how he had intercepted the Tawantiinsuujan airwain and forced it to land. “The pagans, at least, are mine,” he insisted, “and their airwain, as booty won in our righteous jihad.”

Just then, two men lugged the trunk into the tent. Park opened it and extracted his credentials. He had three sets: English, Ketjwa, and Arabic, all gaudily scaled and beribboned. Muhammad ibn Nizam carefully read the Arabic version. He kept his face still until he was through. Then he nodded.

“It is as the Christian qadi says,” he declared. “Both the Emir, Allah grant him long years and prosperity, and the pagan king have agreed to harken to his judgment. May it be wise.” He bowed to Park.

“Then we are free?” Park asked, bowing back in delight. That was better than he’d dared imagine.

“You and your servant, yes. Not only are you an honored judge, but, as you said, a Person of the Book, even if your Christian Gospel has only in corrupted form the truth of the glorious Qu’ran. Still, by Allah’s holy law, you may not be wantonly enslaved. That is not the case, however, for the Tawantiinsuujans with you.”

“What? Why not?” Park said. “They are with me, they fly me to try to make peace-”

“There can be no peace between Islam and paganism,” the qadi said. “In the words of the Qu’ran, ‘Kill those who give God partners wherever you find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them.’ ” He turned to Ankowaljuu. “You, pagan who knows the Arab speech, will you and your comrade yield yourselves to the truth of Islam?”

The tukuuii riikook spoke briefly with Waipaljkoon, then shook his head. “No, qadi, we will not. We have our faith, just as you have yours.”

“Then you know what must become of you. You are the pilot Muawiyah’s to slay or to sell into slavery, as he alone shall decide. You men”-he nodded to the armed Moors in back of Park and his party-“help the good pilot take them away.”

“No! Wait!” Park said.

Muhammad ibn Nizam shook his head. “I understand your concern, qadi of the Christians. I even have some sympathy for it. But under the shari’a, the law of Islam, this thing must be. I am sorry.”

“Wait,” Park said again. He was not about to let his friends go to a fate he thought worse than death, certainly not over a dispute where, as far as he was concerned, no sure right answer existed. And so he trotted out for a qadi of no particular importance the argument he’d intended to use on the Emir or his envoy to Tawantiinsuuju: “These men are not pagans. They too are People of the Book, for they have the truths of their religion set down in writing.”

“Do you see what a liar this Christian is, qadi?” Muawiyah the pilot said. “We have been fighting these pagans since our ancestors crossed the sea to bring Islam to this newer land, and never yet have we seen one sign of a scripture among them. Now he invents it out of his own head. Let him show it to us, if it is there.”

“With pleasure.” Park dug into the trunk. He pulled out the sheets Ankowaljuu had written as they’d traveled down the Amazon, presented them with a flourish to Muhammad ibn Nizam. “I’ll read this if you like, and translate into Arabic.”

“No,” Muawiyah burst out. “I’ve already said the man is a liar, ready for anything. Who knows what these papers say, and whether he translates them truly?”

“Yes, that is so,” the qadi said thoughtfully, “the more so as lying would be to his advantage. Have we any other man here who knows the pagans’ tongue as well as our own?”

One of the armed guards, a thin, grizzled man somewhere in his fifties, spoke up: “I do, excellent qadi. I was raised not too far from here, before Tawantiinsuuju stole this province from us, and learned to read and write the language so I could better deal with the folk who knew it but no Arabic.”

“Good,” Muhammad said. “Read, then, Walid, and translate for us. By Allah, I charge you to translate the words here as they are written.”

“By Allah, I will, Excellency.” Walid took the papers from the qadi, studied them. “They do speak of Patjakamak, the Tawantiinsuujans’ false god,” he said grudgingly. “I begin: ‘How Patjakamak made the sun and the world and the stars…’ ”

“Enough,” Muhammad said, some time later.

“More than enough,” Muawiyah said loudly. “I will take these two now, as the excellent qadi has justly agreed is my right. They are not Muslims; what we just heard proves that. Therefore their religion must be false.”

“In essence, the pilot is right,” Muhammad said. “The Qu’ran recognizes but three faiths as failing under the status of Peoples of the Book: those of the Christians, Jews, and Sabians. All others are pagans. Truly, I admit there is more that approaches truth in the religion of Tawantiinsuuju than I had thought, but under the shari’a that has no bearing.”

“What of those who follow Zoroaster?” Park said. Not for nothing had he spent his time on the steamboat immersed in books. On this point of Islamic law, if on no other, he was ready to do battle with the subtlest of sages.

The qadi frowned. “They are not specifically mentioned in the Qu’ran either. What of them indeed?”

“No, not in the Qu’ran,” Park agreed. “But when Arabs conquer Persia, Zoroastrians write down their holy book, their Avesta. Till then it had only been recited”-he used the word on purpose, for the literal Arabic meaning of Qu’ran was recitation-“just like faith of Patjakamak now. And Arabs recognize Zoroastrians as People of the Book. Do you see, excellent qadi? Precedent for what I say.” Precedent was one Arabic legal term he’d made sure he knew.

Of course, all his research would go down the drain if Muhammad ibn Nizam was the kind of judge who used the law only to justify what he had already decided. Park had known enough judges like that, in New York and New Belfast both. Not all of them were, though. He waited for the qadi to reply.

What the Muslim judge said was: “Are you sure you are a Christian? You should be made to convert to Islam, for you argue like one of us.”

“La ikraha fi’l-din,” Park answered: “ ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’ ”

“You even quote the holy Qu’ran at me.” Muhammad shook his head. “I find that your precedent has some validity.” Muawiyah let out a howl of outrage; Ankowaljuu, and a moment later Waipaljkoon, cheered. “Be still, all of you,” the qadi said sternly. “More learned men than I must make the final decision in this case. Until they do, I — declare these two Tawantiinsuujans People of the Book, under the protection of the Christian qadi here. If I am overruled, however, they shall become the property of the airwain pilot Muawiyah. I have spoken.”

“Now what?” Park asked him.

“Now I send you on to my more learned colleagues, which means, in the end, on toward the court of the Emir, Allah’s blessings upon him.” The qadi’s eyes were shrewd. “Which, no doubt, is what you had in mind.”

“Who, me?” Park grinned at Muhammad ibn Nizam. It was always easier to do business with someone who understood him.

“You did that aforethockly,” Ankowaljuu said the next day as they jounced along in one of the Emirate’s military goodwains toward its ruler’s headquarters.

“Did what aforethockly?” Park asked. They used English for privacy’s sake; had Park been in Muhammad ibn Nizam’s shoes, he knew he would have salted away a Ketjwa-speaker or two among the guards who made sure nobody tried diving out over the rear gate. Park had no intention of escaping but, since he’d fallen into the Emirate’s hands in the company of two enemy citizens, was certain the Moors would not believe that.

“Had me make that faithly writing,” Ankowaljuu said. “You never planned to change to Patjakamak — you wanted the writing to show the Muslims we Tawantiinsuujans are People of the Book.”

“Who, me?” Park said, just as he had to the qadi.

“Aye, you, and don’t naysay it, either. You made me so hopeful of the ghostly good coming to you that I forgot to think straight through, as a tukuuii riikook ock. But tell me this, Thane Ready-for-Aught: how were you thinking of getting the writing to the Muslims had we gone on to the Son of the Sun as we reckoned we would?”

“I’d have had you take me over the lines,” Park answered calmly.

“I’d nay do that!”

“Oh yes, you would, if you’re as hot for peace as you say you are. The best chance to get it is to show the Muslims you’re no heathen country, but earnful of being treated like other folk with a godshown faith. I’d have talked you into getting me over there, all right, never fear.”

“You just might have,” Ankowaljuu said after a pause in which he seemed to be examining his own feelings. “I thock I was good at fingertwisting men into doing what I want, Judge Scoglund, but I own I’ve met my thane in you.”

“That’s sooth,” Eric Dunedin put in. “He even got me to learn Ketjwa. He’s the slyest man I ken for-”

Park never did find out why Monkey-face thought he was so sly. Just then, a beetle almost the size of a kitten flew into the goodwain’s passenger compartment. Christians, Patjakamak-worshipers, and Muslims spent a couple of frantic minutes knocking it down and squashing it. By the time the remains were finally scraped off the floor and tossed out, the conversational thread was broken.

When they arrived at the base from which the Emir was directing his war, Park did not find the Arabian Nights-style encampment he had half expected. Instead, the neat rows of mass-produced shelter tents reminded him only of the Vinlandish camps he’d seen the year before. The Industrial Revolution, even this world’s less complete one, inevitably brought industrialized warfare with it.

He had hoped he and his companions would be whisked straight to the Emir, but that did not happen. Muhammad ibn Nizam led them to a qadi he knew, one of hardly higher reputation than himself. That judge listened with the same skepticism Muhammad had shown, and only slowly came round to reluctant acceptance of the possibility that the Tawantiinsuujans might have had some long-ago share of divine revelation, however much their current doctrine distorted it. Ankowaljuu bristled at that; Park could not even kick him under the table, as they were sitting on rugs again instead.

The qadi said, “How ancient are these beliefs of yours?”

Park knew the cult of Patjakamak had sprung up in the fourteenth century. Before he could answer, though, Ankowaljuu said proudly, “They date from the time of the creation of the world, thousands upon thousands of years ago.”

“Hmp.” The qadi gave an audible sniff. “There were many prophets before Muhammad. Maybe one did indeed visit your folk, unlikely as I would have thought it. Had you told me your religion grew up after the Prophet’s time, I would know it for a sure falsehood, as he was the seal of prophecy… You said something, Judge Scoglund?”

“Nothing, Excellency.” Park swallowed a gulp. He had forgotten about that detail. A good thing Ankowaljuu had been irritated enough to interrupt with that bragging, he thought, or all his plans would have gone down the drain.

“Please let us deliberate by ourselves for a time now, Judge Scoglund,” Muhammad ibn Nizam said.

“Why? I am judge, too.” Park was anything but happy at having the two qadis decide things without his being there to see to it they decided his way.

But the other religious judge said pointedly, “You may be a qadi of qadis among Christians, Judge Scoglund, but you are not a Muslim.” Park knew a warning to back off when he heard one. He got out, taking Ankowaljuu with him.

“Even if they do ontake us as Folk of the Book, they’ll still be as faithproud as ever,” the tukuuii riikook said while they waited and worried. “You are a Wick of the Book, and look how the qadi brushed you aside. We and they will still find grounds for ficking each other.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Park said.

“What then?”

“If you’re Folk of the Book, that makes you a civilized country-”

“What kind of country?” Ankowaljuu asked. “I don’t know that word.”

“Huh? Civi — Oh.” It was a wonder, Park thought, that he didn’t absent-mindedly use his native brand of English by mistake more often. “A burgish country, I mean, in Muslim eyes, not a bunch of savages to be fickt whenever the mood takes the Emir, and surely not a fit dumping ground for ghazis who’d likely be in jail if they weren’t out hunting heathens.”

“I hope you’re rick,” Ankowaljuu sald, “because if you’re not-”

Muhammad and the other qadi came out of the tent. The more senior judge looked as sour as if he’d been sucking on a lemon, but he said, “Come with us. We’ll lay your case before the Emir’s qadi, to let him make the final decision.”

Getting in to see the Emir’s qadi took most of the afternoon, though he did not seem that busy. He was one of those important people who show how important they are by making everyone else wait. His name, Muhammad ibn Nizam told Park, was Uthman ibn Umar.

Park’s heart sank when he was finally led into Uthman’s presence. The chief qadi was an ancient man whose hair and beard were white but whose bushy eyebrows somehow remained defiantly dark. The deep-set eyes that glittered beneath those brows were also dark, and as unyielding as any Park had ever seen. Convincing him of anything new was not going to be easy.

“Well, what is it?” Uthman asked peevishly.

By way of answer, Muhammad ibn Nizam handed him the sheets Ankowaljuu had composed. He put on spectacles and began to read. “You know Ketjwa?” Park said in surprise.

Those eyes, like an old hawk’s, lifted from the paper. “Why should I not?” Uthman said. “Even pagans may produce worthy thoughts. Surely the Greeks did. For all their wisdom, though, they burn in hell.” He read on, dismissing Park from consideration. Park glared at his turban, but did not interrupt again.

Finally Uthman set down the sheets. “So,” he said, “you claim the Tawantiinsuujans are People of the Book and not pagans?”

“Yes, excellent qadi,” everyone said together.

“From this, I might even believe it, but for one thing,” Uthman said.

“What?” Park asked, wondering how he would have to finagle with the shari’a next.

“This book is no Book.” Uthman tapped the pages with a skinny finger. “It is but one man’s belief written out, not a true holy text like the Torah or the Gospels or the perfect book, the Qu’ran. Let the Tawantilnsuujan priests accept it and I could do the same.” His laugh told how likely he thought that was.

Park winced. The qadi had a point, one that could be stressed if the Emirate wanted to go on reckoning the Tawantiinsuujans pagans, wanted an excuse to fight their neighbors whenever they got the whim. “How fares the war, excellent qadi?” he asked tensely. If the Muslims were winning-

But Uthman did not start to gloat. “Many souls have mounted to paradise, martyrs in the jihad,” he said. “On this earthly plane-” which he obviously thought of smaller importance “-gains are small on either side.”

“Then urge the Emir to call a truce,” Ankowaljuu said. “He loses little, and may gain much. Consider — perhaps we will be less harsh to the Muslims in our land if you stop tormenting those who follow Patjakamak in yours.

“If they are People of the Book, you may honorably stop tormenting them,” Park added.

Uthman ibn Umar plucked at his beard. “Let it be so,” he said at last. “I think you will fail in your effort, thus showing that Tawantiinsuuju’s faith truly is pagan. But if I am in error, if revelation did reach you in the ancient days, I would be sinning if I denied you the chance to prove it. Wait here. I shall speak to the Emir.” He rose, tottered out of the tent.

A squad of soldiers soon appeared to take charge of Park and his companions. They led them to a bigger, fancier tent. One of the soldiers frisked them, quickly and efficiently, before they were allowed inside. A servant shouted, “Bend yourselves before the mighty Emir Hussein, beloved of Allah!”

Ankowaljuu and Waipaljkoon prostrated themselves as they might have before the Son of the Sun. Park and, following his lead, Eric Dunedin bowed from the waist. “Rise,” Hussein said. “Uthman tells me you have a curious tale for me. I would hear it.”

Hussein was not what Park had imagined an emir would be. He was short and thin and wore glasses. In the dark green uniform of the Dar al-Harb, he looked more like a corporal from the typing pool than a ruler.

He thought like a ruler, though. He proved that at once, asking, “Judge Scoglund, if I agree to seek a truce so you can try to show that the Tawantiinsuujans are in fact People of the Book, what is the advantage for me?”

Park carefully did not smile, but he felt like it. He approved of people who got down to brass tacks. He said, “If the followers of Patjakamak are People of the Book, you do not need to persecute the ones in your land any more. Make them pay jizya instead.”

“The tax for the privilege of keeping their religion in peace, eh?” Behind the lenses of his spectacles, Hussein’s eyes grew calculating. He was figuring out how much the tax would bring, Park thought — probably down to the last copper. He must have liked the sum, for he said, “Aye, that is interesting. What else?”

“If you stop persecuting those who worship Patjakamak, the Tawantiinsuujans likely will go easy on their Muslims. That gives you both one less thing to fight about.”

“This could be so.” Hussein was a cool one, all right. He steepled his fingers — a hell of a thing, Park thought, for a Muslim to do. “What else?”

“Damn,” Park muttered. If all that wasn’t good enough — He racked his brains. At last, carefully, he said, “Lord Emir, how do you feel about your ghazi raiders?”

“Why?” Hussein was cautious too, revealing nothing.

“If you want to be without them, hope the Tawantiinsuujans do show they are People of the Book. Then ghazis will have less excuse to come to your country from overseas, and you will not need to worry so much about what so many ruffians running around loose in your land may do.”

He wondered if he’d gone too far. But hell, if he were running a country, the last thing he’d want in it was a bunch of gangsters and terrorists, no matter how holy their motives were. He just hoped Hussein thought the same way.

The Emir said, “They are men given over to Allah,” and Park was sure he’d stuck his foot in it. Then Hussein went on, “But it is true, they are sometimes difficult to control.” Park breathed again. Hussein finished, “I will try to arrange a truce, then, of ten days’ time. If you fail, we fight again.”

“What if I don’t?” Park said. “What if I do what I say?” Hussein stared at him. “Do you challenge me?”

“Only this far — if I succeed, do as you agreed to do before this stupid war started: accept my settlement of your dispute with Tawantiinsuuju. Do it on the spot, right here, right now — or then, I mean.”

“You do not lack courage,” the Emir said slowly.

“Or gall,” Uthman added.

Park only waited. Now he grinned. Finally Hussein said, “We have a bargain.” After that, Park did prostrate himself. Hussein, he figured, had earned it.

Neither the Moorish officers who escorted Park and his companions across the line of battle nor the Tawantiinsuujans who received them seemed to have much faith in the green-and-white-striped flags of truce both sides bore. The two parties hastily separated from each other; members of both kept looking back over their shoulders to make sure no foe was going for a weapon.

“Is the truce holding?” Park asked the Skrelling soldier next to him.

“So far,” the Tawantiinsuujan replied. “Who knows how far we can trust the cursed Sun-deniers, though?” Park knew the men of the Dar al-Harb were saying the same thing about Tawantiinsuuju. He also knew that telling the soldier so would do no good.

A very young Tawantiinsuujan officer tried to take charge of the newcomers as soon as they were out of air-rifle range of the front line. “Come with me,” he said. “I want to get a complete written record of everything you saw and did while under the control of the forces of the Emirate.”

“No,” Ankowaljuu said.

“Hell, no,” Park agreed.

“But you must,” the lieutenant said. “Proper procedure requires-”

Ankowaljuu said, “Aka to your proper procedure, boy. I am tukuuii riikook to the Son of the Sun. Proper procedure is what I say it is.” He produced the documents that proved he was what he claimed. The young officer’s eyes got big as he read them. He put a hand over his eyes, as if Ankowaljuu were the Son of the Sun himself. “Better,” the tukuuii riikook nodded. “Now get us moving toward Maita Kapak, so I can carry out my duties.”

Within ten minutes, Park found himself bucking along in a goodwain different from one of the Emirate’s only in the color of its canvas top and that of the accompanying soldiers’ uniforms. “I admire the efficiency,” he said to Ankowaljuu, “but I wish the ride were smoother.”

“You mean you want peace and kidneys both?” Ankowaljuu exclaimed, as if he was asking much too much.

Maita Kapak’s encampment proved far more imposing than Hussein’s. The Emir was not even caliph, commander of the faithful, merely a secular prince. The Son of the Sun, though, claimed divine descent, and lived in pomp that did its best to make the claim seem real.

Prominent as his office made him, Park might have waited weeks before gaining an audience with the ruler of Tawantiinsuuju. The words tukuuii riikook, however, melted obstacles as if by magic. The sun was not yet down when Ankowaljuu and Park were ushered into a tent just outside the Son of the Sun’s pavilion.

“His Radiance will see you shortly,” a majordomo said. “Just don one of these packs-” He handed out a pair of what looked like hikers’ backpacks. Ankowaljuu, who knew the routine, strapped on his without comment.

Park balked. “Why do I have to wear this silly thing?”

The majordomo sucked in a shocked breath. “It is a symbol that you would bear any burden for the Son of the Sun.”

“In the old days, Judge Scoglund,” Ankowaljuu said, grinning slyly, “it would have been no symbol, but a fully laden pack. Be thankful you get off so easy.” Park sighed and put on the pack. If the locals didn’t think it looked stupid, he supposed he could stand it.

A servant stuck his head in and said, “The Son of the Sun will see his tukuuii riikook.”

Maita Kapak had been conferring with his aides. As Park came in with Ankowaljuu, he nodded to Tjiimpuu and Kwiismankuu, the only two he knew. Kwiismankuu nodded back; Tjiimpuu kept his face still. Park had no chance to speak to either of them. The servant was taking him straight to the Son of the Sun.

He followed Ankowaljuu to his knees and then to his belly as they offered the Son of the Sun their symbolic burdens. “Rise,” Maita Kapak said.

As Park gained his feet, he got his first good look at Tawantiinsuuju’s master. Maita Kapak was older than he, younger than Tjiimpuu. He bore something of a family resemblance to Tjiimpuu, in fact; considering the inbreeding of Tawantiinsuuju’s royal family and high nobility, that was not surprising. Like the foreign minister, he wore plugs in his ears. His were of gold, and almost the size of saucers. The vestigial muscles in Park’s own ears quivered at the thought of supporting so much weight.

The Son of the Sun said, “So, Ankowaljuu, why have you chosen to exercise the tukuuii riikook’s privilege?” As he spoke, he tossed his head. Park was sure the gesture was unconscious: instead of a crown, Maita Kapak wore a tassel of scarlet wool that descended from a cord round his head to cover most of his forehead. With that fly whisk so close to his face, Park would have done some head-tossing, too.

“Radiance, I present to you Judge Ib Scoglund of the International Court of Skrelleland,” Ankowaljuu said. “He has, I believe, a plan to bring us peace now, and perhaps even an enduring peace, with the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.”

Before Park could speak, Tjiimpuu said, “Such a plan would have been easier to bring off before the fighting started. Now passions are aroused on both sides.”

“Nobody listened to me before the fighting started,” Park said. “You people and the Emir got me down here and then ignored me. I think the whole appeal to the International Court was just so you could feel righteous about the war you felt like fighting anyway. But this one’s not as much fun as Waskar’s, is it, now that you’re in? No big breakthroughs here, just a bloody fight no one is winning.”

“We may yet force the Muslims back,” Tjiimpuu said.

“Or we may not,” Kwilsmankuu said. Ignoring Tjiimpuu’s glare, the marshal went on, “If you have peace terms you think fair, Judge Scoglund, I will listen to them.”

“And I,” Maita Kapak said. “The prospect of enduring peace especially intrigues me. The only reason we and the Emirate did not go to war years ago was that we thought ourselves too evenly matched. So it has proved on the field. I will listen.”

“You may not like what you hear,” Park warned him.

“If not, I will send you back to the Emir and go on fighting,” the Son of the Sun said. He sounded perfectly calm and self-assured. All the Tawantiinsuujans in earshot nodded, even Ankowaljuu. If Maita Kapak said it, they would do it. So, Park thought, this is what being an absolute monarch is all about.

He began, “First, Radiance, you will have to write down and publish the tenets of the faith of Patjakamak.”

“Never! ‘Everyone is a religious kiipuukamajoo’!” Tjiimpuu and Kwiismankuu said together. They stared at each other, as if unused to agreeing.

“Your faith does not forbid it.” Park looked first to Maita Kapak, then to Ankowaljuu. “So I have been told.” Reluctantly — in this company he was of lowest rank — Ankowaijuu nodded.

“It may not forbid, but it certainly does not ordain,” Maita Kapak said. He asked the same question Hussein had:

“What is the advantage of breaking a centuries-long tradition?”

“If you put your beliefs down in writing, the Muslims will recognize you as People of the Book,” Park said. “That means those who worship Patjakamak in the Emirate will be able to keep their religion if they pay a yearly tax, and it means you won’t be pagans to the Muslims any more. It will gain you status. Not only that, but you could put a similar tax on the Muslims of Tawantiinsuuju. It would” — he glanced at Kwiismankuu — “be only fair.”

“Let me think,” Maita Kapak said. He did not ask for advice, and no one presumed to offer it. One of the few advantages of absolutist states, Park thought, was that decisions got made quickly. The Son of the Sun did not have to convince or browbeat stubborn, recalcitrant thingmen into going along with him. All he had to do was speak.

He spoke: “It shall be done.” Park expected some kind of protest, but none came. Having heard their ruler state his will, Tjiimpuu and Kwiismankuu would carry it out. That was a big disadvantage of absolutist states: if Maita Kapak made a mistake, nobody warned him about it. This time, Park didn’t think he was making a mistake.

“Thank you, Radiance,” he said, bowing. “I might add that the Emir Hussein did not think you would do this. In fact, we had a sort of — ” he had to ask Ankowaljuu how to say “wager” in Ketjwa “ — on it.”

“Trust a Muslim to guess wrong about what we will do.” Tjiimpuu’s chuckle had a bitter edge. “They’ve been doing it since their state first touched ours, almost three hundred years ago.”

Maita Kapak picked up something that went by his foreign minister. That made sense, Park thought: since no one spoke straight out to the Son of the Sun, for his own sake he’d better be alert to tone. Now he asked: “Why do you mention this wager, Judge Scoglund? What were its terms?”

“To let me settle the dispute between the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb and Tawantiinsuuju, and to accept the settlement I set down. Will you also agree to that, Radiance, or will this useless war go on?”

“Anyone would know you are not one of my subjects, Judge Scoglund,” Maita Kapak said. Fortunately, he sounded more amused than angry. Park wondered just how close he’d come to lиse majestй-pretty close, by the expressions on the Tawantiinsuujans’ faces. The Son of the Sun said, “Let me think”; then, after a pause, “First tell me the terms you propose.”

“No,” Park said. Boldness had got him this far, and suited him in any case. He went on, “You and Hussein agreed to put yourselves under the authority of the International Court when you summoned me. If you didn’t mean it, keep fighting and send me home.”

“I tried that,” Tjiimpuu said. “It didn’t seem to work.”

Park grinned at him. “No, it didn’t, did it?” He worried a little when he saw the look the foreign minister was giving Ankowaljuu. If Maita Kapak went along, though, the tukuuii riikook couldn’t be in too much hot water. If…

The Son of the Sun had screened out the byplay. He was like Allister Park in that: when he was thinking, he let nothing interfere. Finally he said, “Very well, Judge Scoglund. If the Emir thinks you have terms that will satisfy both him and me, I too will put myself in your hands. How shall we become friends?”

“I doubt you will,” Park said. “Being able to live next to each other is something else again. Your becoming People of the Book will go a long way toward solving that, as the Muslims will lose their ritual need to persecute you out of existence.”

“What about our need to show them the truth of our religion?” Kwiismankuu said.

Park scowled; he’d forgotten that Patjakamak had his holy terrorists too. After some thought, he said, “I do not know, sir, if you have heard that, before I became a judge, I was a Christian bishop, a senior priest. I am not trying to change your religion — you and the Muslims have both had enough of that, I think. But I will tell you one of the things we Christians try to live by. We call it the Rule of Gold: do to others what you want them to do to you.” For once, he thought, the real Ib Scoglund would have been proud of him.

“There are worse ways to live than that, perhaps,” Maita Kapak said. “So. Have we heard all your terms of peace? If we have, I tell you I am well pleased.”

“Not quite all,” Park said. “I was summoned to give my judgment on where the border should lie between Tawantiinsuuju and the Dar al-Harb, especially in this disputed sector. My judgment is that the best line between you is the Ooriinookoo River.” He walked over to a map, ran his finger along the river, and waited for hell to break loose.

The Tawantiinsuujans did not keep him waiting long. “You thief!” Tjiimpuu cried. “Did you bother to notice that we are east of the Ooriinookoo now, and in territory that has been ours for a generation?”

“Yes, I noticed that,” Park said. “I-”

“It cannot be, Judge Scoglund,” Maita Kapak interrupted. “Were this land I myself had won in war, I might think of yielding it. But I would be forfeiting my inheritance from my father Waskar if I gave it up. That Patjakamak would never suffer me to do.”

When the Son of the Sun said it cannot be, his subjects heard and obeyed. He turned back in astonishment when Allister Park kept arguing: “Radiance, I have good reasons for proposing the Ooriinookoo as a border.”

“What possible reasons can there be for giving up a third of what Waskar won?” Maita Kapak said in a voice like ice.

“I’m glad you asked,” Park said, pretending not to notice the Son of the Sun’s tone. “For one thing, the Ooriinookoo is a wide, powerful river. That makes it a good border between countries that do not get along well — it keeps them apart. I think Kwiismankuu would agree.”

The Tawantiinsuujan marshal jerked as if poked by a pin, then nodded as both Park and Maita Kapak looked his way.

“Not only that,” Park went on, “but having such a border would make it harder for Muslim zealots to get into Tawantiinsuuju to work harm on your people.”

Kwiismanknu nodded again, this time without prompting. Tjiimpuu, however, said, “I thought you told us we would be free of Muslim zealots if we became a People of the Book.”

Damn the man for listening, Park thought. Aloud, he said, “Your problem with them will certainly be smaller. No one can promise to make all fanatics happy, though: if they could be made happy, they wouldn’t be fanatics. Having the Ooriinookoo as a border will help keep them out of Tawantiinsuuju, though, because they won’t be able to sneak into your land so easily as they can now.”

Maita Kapak started to say something, stopped, looked annoyed at himself. Park doubted the Son of the Sun often found himself of two minds. When he did speak, it was to ask his aides, “What do you think of acting as the judge suggests?”

“Militarily, it makes good sense, Radiance,” Kwiismankuu said.

“Even from the religious point of view, it could be worse; so many of the people on this side of the Ooriinookoo are still Muslims, despite our best efforts to bring them to truth.” Tjiimpuu did not sound happy about what he was saying, but said it anyway. Park admired him for that. The foreign minister went on: “If Your Radiance is able to reconcile a withdrawal with your principles-”

“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!”