Down in The Bottomlands (33 page)

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?"