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, apuu 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.
Sighing, Park said, “I had hoped to sound you out before we began face-to-face talks with Da’ud ibn Tariq. Maybe this will work out better, though. If he is as stubborn as you, the whole world will see neither side is serious about ending your life of war after war.”
Tjiimpuu’s face turned a darker shade of bronze. “I will speak with you again when these talks begin. Till then, I want nothing to do with you. You are dismissed.”