“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!”