Down in The Bottomlands (28 page)

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, a
puu 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.