Park sat down to do just that. After a couple of hours, he even began to think he was getting somewhere. Then a real thunderclap smote Kuuskoo. Tjiimpuu’s windows rattled. Faintly, far in the distance, Park heard screams begin. Tjiimpuu’s face might have been carved from stone. “You may leave now,” he said. “Your mission here is ended. When I have time, I will arrange for your transportation back to Vinland. Now, though, I must help the Son of the Sun prepare us to fight.”
Seeing he had no chance of changing the foreign minister’s mind, Park perforce went home. He was not in the best of moods as he walked along. Here he’d been called in to stop a war from breaking out, and it had blown up in his face. What with the Muslim zealots using trucks as terror devices, that was almost literally true. Even so, he’d failed his first major test. The other, more senior, judges on the International Court might well hesitate to give him another.
Dunedin gaped at him when he slammed the front door to announce his arrival. “Judge Scoglund! Why are you here so soon?” His servant’s wrinkled cheeks turned red. “And why did you not rouse me when you got up this morn? It’s my job to help you, after all.”
“Sorry,” Park said. He grinned at Monkey-face: “But you looked like such a little angel, sleeping there with your thumb in your mouth, I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”
“I do not sleep with my thumb in my mouth!” Park had never heard Eric Dunedin yell so loud.
“I know, I know, I know.” When he had Dunedin partway placated, Park went on, “If you feel you have to make like a thane, why don’t you run back into the kitchen and fetch me a jug of aka? I’m home early because it looks like Tawantiinsuuju and the Emirate are damned well going to fick a war regardless of what I think about it. Fick ’em all, I say.”
Monkey-face brought back two jugs of aka. Park gave him a quizzical look. “You’re learning, old boy, you’re learning.” Each man unstoppered a jug. Park sat down, half-emptied his with one long pull.
For the first time since he’d been named judge of the International Court, he gave some thought to visiting Joseph Noggle once he got back to Vinland. Maybe whoever was currently inhabiting his body hadn’t made too bad a botch of things while he’d been gone…
He put that aside for further consideration: nothing he could do about it now anyhow. He finished the aka, got up and walked over to the wirecaller. “Get me the house of Pauljuu, son of Ruuminjavii, please.” If Tjiimpuu was going to kick him out at any moment, he might as well have a pleasant memory to take home. A servant answered the phone. “May I please speak to the widow Kuurikwiljor? This is Judge Scoglund.”
“Tonight?” Kuurikwiljor exclaimed when Park asked her out. “This is so sudden.” She paused. Park crossed his fingers. Then she said, “But I’d be delighted. When will you come? Around sunset? Fine, I’ll see you then. Goodbye.”
Park was whistling as he hung up. Aka made the present look rosier, and Kuurikwiljor gave him something to look forward to.
He was going through his wardrobe late that afternoon, deciding what to wear, when someone clapped outside the front door. “Answer it, will you?” he called to Dunedin. Before Monkey-face got to the door, though, whoever was out there started pounding on it.
That didn’t sound good, Park thought. Maybe Pauljuu was worried about his sister’s virtue. Even as the idea crossed his mind, Dunedin stuck his head into the bedroom and said, “There’s a big Skrelling outside who wants to see you.”
“I don’t much want to see him,” Park said. He went out anyhow, looking for something that would make a good blunt instrument as he did so. But it was not Pauljuu standing there. “Ankowaljuu!”
“Whom were you outlooking?” The tukuuii riikook fixed Park with the knowing, cynical gaze he remembered from the ship.
“Never mind. Come in. I’m glad to see you.” Aware that he was babbling, Park took a deep breath and made himself slow down. He waved Ankowaljuu to a chair. “Here, sit down and tell me what I can do for you.”
“You came here to stop a war, not so?” the Skrelling demanded.
“Aye, I did, and a fat lot of good it’s done me — or anybody else,” Park said bitterly. “Tjiimpuu just gave me my walking papers.” Seeing Ankowaljuu frown, he explained: “He told me my sending here was done, and that I would have to backgo to Vinland: the Son of the Sun would order war outspoken against the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.”
“That’s sooth,” Ankowaljuu said. “He’s done it. But then, you never got a chance to set the whole dealing before Maita Kapak himself.” He made the ritual eye-shielding gesture.
“Before Maita Kapak?” Park was too upset to bother with Tawantiinsuujan niceties — if Ankowaljuu didn’t like it, too bad. “How could I go before Maita Kapak? The way the Son of the Sun is hedged round with mummery, it’s a wonder any of his wives get to see him.” He realized he might have gone too far. “Forgive me, I pray. I am not trying to wound you.”
“It’s all rick, Judge Scoglund. There are those among us who say the like — I not least. But as for getting the let to see him — remember, I am tukuuii riikook. I have the rick of a seeing at any time I think needful. I think this is such a time. A wain is waiting outside for us.”
Park hadn’t heard it come up, but that meant nothing, not with the silent steam engines this world used. He started for the door. “Let’s go!”
“Nay so quick.” Ankowaljuu sprang up, made as if to head him off. “You needs must pack first.”
“Pack?” Park gaped as if he’d never heard the word before. “What the hell for? Are you shifting me into the kingly palace? Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“The palace has naught to do with it. Maita Kapak”-again the eye-shielding, which had to be as automatic as breathing for Tawantiinsuujans-“left by airwain this morning, to lead our warriors to winning against the heathen who deny Patjakamak and slay his worshipers. I have another airwain waiting on my ordering at the airfield. I want us on it, as fast as doable.”
Park wasted a moment regretting that Kurrikwiljor’s bronze body would not be his tonight. Then he dashed for the bedroom, shouting to Monkey-face, “Come on, Eric, goddammit, give me a hand here.”
Dunedin was right behind him. They flung clothes into a trunk. “Hey, wait a minute.” Park pointed to a shirt.
“That’s yours. We won’t need it. Take it out.”
His thane shook his head. “Don’t need it indeed. What do you reckon me to wear on this trip?”
“I didn’t reckon you to wear anything — and I don’t mean I thock you’d come along naked, either. I reckoned you’d let Tjiimpuu ship you home; that’d be easiest and safest both.”
“So it would, if I meant to leave. But I don’t. My job is to caretake you, and that’s what I aim to do.” He gave Allister Park a defiant stare.
Park slapped him on the back, staggering him slightly. “You’re a good egg, Eric. All rick, you can come, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He thought of something: this world’s steam-powered planes were anything but powerful performers. “Will the airwain bear his heft, Ankowaljuu?”
“Reckon so,” the Skrelling said. “I’m more afeared for all the books you’re heaving into that case, Judge Scoglund.”
“I need these,” Park yelped, stung. “What’s a judge without his books?”
“A lickter lawyer,” Ankowaljuu retorted. “Well, as may be. I reckon we’ll fly. Be you ready?”
“I guess we are.” Park looked around the room at everything he and Dunedin were leaving behind. “What’ll happen to all this stuff, though?”
“It’ll be kept for you. We’re an orderly folk, we Tawantiinsuujans; we don’t wantonly throw things away.” Having seen how smoothly Kuuskoo ran, Park suspected Ankowaljuu was right. The Skrelling watched Monkey-face wrestle the trunk closed, then said, “Come on. Let’s be off.”