Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

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 a

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 gri

“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 ru

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.