Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

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 di

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 a

“Sorry,” Park said. He gri

“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.”