Harry Turtledove - Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

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.”