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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 wi
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 gri
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 thi
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.”