“Raimii, eh?” That was the most important religious festival in Tawantiinsuuju, the solemn feast of the sun. Curiosity got the better of Park, though he knew the original inhabitant of ex-Bishop Ib Scoglund’s body would not have been caught dead attending such a pagan rite. Too bad for old Ib, he thought. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”

The local beamed, shifted the big cud of coca leaves in his mouth. “I always thought foreigners were too ignorant and depraved to understand our religion. Perhaps I was wrong.”

Park only grunted in response to that. He walked with the crowd now, instead of trying to cut across it. The Skrellings’ low-voiced talk grew louder and more excited as they filed into a large plaza near the center of Kuuskoo. The square was as big as two football fields side by side, maybe bigger. Park tried to work out how many people it could hold. Let’s see, he thought, assuming each person needs a little more than a square foot to stand in, if thisplace is, say, 400 feet by 300-

He gave up the arithmetic as a bad job, for he suddenly saw that the walls of two sides of the square had a golden chain stretched along them, a little above man-high. Each link was thicker than his wrist. Instead of figuring out people, he started reckoning how many dollars, or even Vinland crowns, that chain would be worth. A lot of them, for sure.

The Tawantiinsuujan who had told him of the festival was still beside him. He saw Park staring at the chain. “This is as nothing, stranger. This is but the common people’s square; we call it Kuusipata. The Son of the Sun and his kin worship one square over, in the plaza called Awkaipata. There you would see gold and silver used in a truly lavish way.”

“This is lavish enough for me,” Park muttered. Just one link of that chain, he thought, and he wouldn’t have to worry about money for the rest of his life. For the first time, he understood what Francisco Pizarro must have felt when he plundered the wealth of the Incas back in Park’s original world. He’d always thought Pizarro the champion bandit of all time, but the sight of so much gold lying around loose would have made anyone start breathing hard.

Several men strode out onto a raised platform at the front of the square. Some wore gold and silver wreaths, and had plates of the precious metals adorning their tunics. Others used the hides of pumas and jaguars in place of robes, with their own faces peering out under the big cats’ heads. When one man held his arms wide, others had to step aside, for his costume included huge condor wings, feathered in black and white.

One of the priests, for such they were, raised his hands to the sky. All the people in the square somehow found room to squat. Park was a beat late, and felt rather like an impostor trying to pretend he belonged in a marching band. His knees creaked as he held the squat. He grumpily wondered why the Tawantiinsuujans couldn’t kneel when they worshiped, like everyone else. That would have been a lot more comfortable.

The locals tilted their heads back so they looked up toward the sun. They must have had a trick for not looking right at it. Park didn’t know the trick. He kept on staring blearily upwards, dazzled and blinking, his eyes full of tears.

The Tawantiinsuujans held their hands up by their faces and loudly kissed the air. Somehow, again a beat slow, Park managed to do the same without toppling over into one of the people by him.

The priests on the platform began to sing a hymn. Still squatting, the squareful of worshipers joined in. Everybody — everybody but Park — knew the words. Some voices were good, others not. Taken all together, they were impressive, almost hypnotic, the way any massed singing becomes after a while.

The hymn was long. Park’s knees hurt too much to let him be hypnotized. Back in his New York days, he’d never thought much of baseball players as athletes, but now he started feeling no small respect for what catchers went through.

At last the hymn ended. People stood up. Another hymn started. When it was done, the Tawantiinsuujans squatted again. So, stifling a groan, did Allister Park. Yet another hymn began.

By the time the service was finally done, Park felt as though he’d caught a double-header. He also desperately needed to find a public jakes.

“Is that not a magnificent festival?” asked the Skrelling who’d inveigled him into going to the square of Kuusipata.

Well, maybe it hadn’t happened exactly like that, but at the moment Park’s memory was inclined to be selective.

“Most impressive,” he said, lying through his teeth.

“Raimii will go on for nine days in all,” the local told him, “each day’s worship being different from the last. Will you come to Kuusipata tomorrow, your foreign excellency?”

“If I can,” Park said, that seeming a more politic response than not on your life. After nine days of squatting, he was convinced he would walk like an arthritic chimp forevermore. Then something he had noticed but not thought about during the service sank home. “Nine days!” he exclaimed. “I saw no books for prayer among you. Do you remember all your songs and such?”

“Of course we do,” the Skrelling said proudly. “They are graven on our hearts. Only people whose faith is cold have to remind themselves of it. Books for prayer, indeed!” The very idea offended him.

Park was thoughtful as he filed toward the edge of the square. Reading was obviously easier and more trustworthy than memorizing, and therefore, to him anyway, obviously more desirable for keeping records straight. The Tawantiinsuujans, though, as he had already discovered in other contexts, did not think the same way he did.

Maybe that was what made him notice the goodwain parked near a wall fifty yards or so beyond the edge of the square. In New York, or even in New Belfast, he would not have given it a second glance: parking spaces were where you found them. In Kuuskoo, though, it surprised him. It impeded the flow of people coming out of Kuusipata, and that was unlike the orderly folk here.

The locals must have thought the same. A man climbed up onto the running board, reached out to unlatch the driver’s-side door so he could get in and move the truck out of the way.

The door wasn’t locked. Few were, in law-abiding Thwantiinsuuju. He yanked it open. The goodwain blew up.

Park felt the blast more than he heard it. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground. The cobbles were hard and bumpy. As if from very far away, he heard people shrieking.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and scrambled to his feet. The carnage closer to the goodwain was appalling. He shivered as he saw how lucky he was. Only the bodies of the people in front of him had shielded him from the full force of the explosion.

Half a dozen men sprang up from behind the wall, which was of ancient megalithic stonework and hence undamaged by the blast. For a moment, Park thought they’d got up there to direct help to the writhing victims near them. Then he saw they all had air rifles. They raised them to their shoulders, started shooting into the crowd.

Allister Park had seen combat as a young man in his own world, and again during his brief tenure as Vinland’s assistant secretary of war. At the sound of the first sharp pop, he threw himself flat. He knocked over the person behind him. They fell together.

The men with guns shouted in unison as they fired. Park took a moment to notice, first that the shouts were not in Ketjwa, then that he understood them anyhow. “Allahu akbar!” the gunmen cried. “God is great! Allahu akbar!” Someone screamed, right in Park’s ear. Only then did he realize he was lying on a woman. Her fist pounded his shoulder. “Let me go!” she yelled. She tried to push him off her.

“No! Stay down!” By some miracle, he remembered to speak Ketjwa instead of English. As if to punctuate his words, a bullet felled a man standing not three paces away. The woman screamed again, and shuddered, but seemed to decide Park was protecting rather than attacking her. She quit struggling beneath him.