upstairs.
In a secluded office, a fully dressed short fifty-year-old Weian was
cooling his heels off.
"You got it," Shavash said. "Bemish is going to cleanse Assalah of
crooks using federal troops."
"It's not good if Long Stick sends the troops," the short man said.
"I can't do anything here," Shavash spread his hands. "It's your fault.
Who robbed Giles?"
"I will find out," the man said.
"Find it out, please. It's useful to know sometimes what your people
do."
Shavash paused and added.
"You, O'Hara, are like a parasite at the construction. You suck but you
don't feed, you harvest and you don't plough. Why would Bemish love you?
While if you helped him..."
"How can I help him? Should I not steal? How will I make my living?"
"Why should you not steal? For instance, Bemish has serious problems
with zealots. If you step on the zealots' tails, you will help Bemish."
The guy looked at the vice-minister with animosity. Weian crooks didn't
attack zealots as a rule. The pickings would be slim, and the zealots would
go totally mad - if you touched them they wouldn't rest till they cut the
whole gang down and declare it to be gods' wrath.
"I have a feeling that the zealots blighted you, not Bemish," the thief
said, "and that I will do a favor to you rather than to Bemish."
Two hours later, Bemish's helicopter landed in Kissur villa's backyard.
"The master is not at home," a maid reported, "the mistress will see
you in a moment. Could you, please, step into Lake Hall?"
Idari met him dressed in a blue skirt with golden sable trim and a
jacket embroidered with peacocks and squirrels. Her hair was pulled up in a
large black bun and a silver hairpin in the shape of a Lamass rowboat
pierced the bun. Bemish looked at the hairpin and it seemed to him that the
hairpin was piercing his heart.
Bemish kissed the house mistress' hand and said.
"I am touched that you received me in Kissur's absence."
Idari sat on the couch and pulled a tambour with a partially knitted
belt onto her knees.
The belt was embroidered with clouds and rivers. She almost always had
needlework with her.
Two servants brought fruit and cookie baskets to the veranda and
departed. A tame peacock dropped by the veranda, unfolded his tail,
scratched the doorstep with his red foot and left for the garden.
"What are you upset about, Mr. Bemish?" Idari asked. "Do you have any
problems with the fund?"
"No," Bemish said. "It's just that while I bought and sold other
people's stocks, I possibly wasted my own company."
"I thought that you finished assembling the first line of landing pads
a week before you planned."
"I mean the mood at the construction - zealots and crooks. I can't
eradicate them. Shavash tricked me when he obtained legal immunity for the
construction." Idari was silent.
"Why did he do it?" Bemish cried out. "Did he need me to hang the
zealots? Does he need the Earthmen to butcher these idiots instead of the
Empire, so that his hands are clean and the Earthmen's hands are smeared
with shit?"
"What am I saying?" a thought passed in Bemish's mind. "I am sitting
with a woman that I would give all of Assalah away for - ok, not all of
Assalah but at least thirty percent of it - and I am talking to her about
god knows what and she considers me to be a greedy and cowardly Earthman."
"He is not fully satisfied with you," Idari said.
"What is he not satisfied with? The only thing I don't export is
drugs!"
"That's exactly right."
Bemish froze, as if he just collided with a wall.
"Are you...serious?"
"I mean that all the legal violations taking place at the spaceport
deal only with taxes. You have not broken any criminal laws yet, Terence,
and Shavash doesn't like that. If you break tax laws you can be prosecuted
only at this planet. If you break criminal laws, you can be prosecuted
across the whole Galaxy. The more crimes you commit, the more power Shavash
will have over you."
"Bastard," Bemish muttered glumly. "If only I had known..."
"Shavash is better than you are," Idari objected.
"Shavash? Better?!!"
"Shavash will be forgiven many things because he wants a lot. He wants
women, power, glory, while you want only money."
"I want you. I want you more than money," Bemish wanted to say.
"You are right, Idari," he said, "I like money more than anything
else."
The next evening, the phone rang in Bemish's office. Ross called - an
ex-colleague of Giles - now his deputy on security issues.
"We have an emergency," Ross said. "A packer boy was knifed. We got the
killer."
"Did he resist?"
"No. He is quite a lout."
"Bring him to me," Bemish ordered.
Murders happened quite often at the construction. Generally, the
killers could not be found. Even if a man was killed in broad daylight,
somehow nobody saw anything.
Bemish was leafing through a draft of the yearly company report
prepared by the PR department on Earth when two wide-angled guys from the
security department brought the killer in the office - an inconspicuous
sixty-year-old man in washed out jeans and a jacket with white trim showing
that he worked in the fifth roadwork team. The killer's hands were twisted
behind his head and locked with handcuffs.
The guys left and Bemish pointed the involuntary visitor to a chair.
"Sit down."
He sat silently. Bemish was leafing through the report's last pages.
"Why don't you let me go, boss. They say you have a right to do it."
Bemish was staggered by his gall.
"Why did you kill the lad?"
"I wanted to talk to you, boss," the visitor said. "See, it ain't easy
to speak to you. I made an appointment with you, see, three times and you
were just cooling it off. I make another appointment today, come in and they
tell me, "the boss ain't here for you, Weian peasant mug, the boss is
driving a big dog around the construction, it's not your lawn anymore, move
it - go back to your barrack. So, I went back and it put me out. Why won't I
do something that the boss notice me?"
Bemish didn't interrupt the man yet. He had realized a while ago that
sooner or later the bandits would visit him but he hadn't suspected that
they would choose such an original way. And this knave is also reminding in
a subtle way - I have no problem knifing a boy down or you, boss...
"That was not a good idea," Bemish grinned, "because they will cut your
head off now."
"Our authorities?" the bandit laughed out, "Boss, it's not my first
murder, and my head is still with me. Do you think you will find witnesses
against me?"
That was true. The witnesses were available when the bandit had to meet
Bemish. Concerning his head though...
"What did you want to offer me in person?"
"Let's get things in order."
"What order?"
"What's all this mess around? They pick up stuff, swear - you know
what's going on - steal materials, drink people away. Say, yesterday, a gang
came in and started to play, six people sold themselves into slavery. So
they are slaves and what happens next? They work and their owner rubs his
belly and gets paid. We, on the other hand, would tidy things up."
"And what do you want in return?"
"Appoint me the landing field security manager."
"Do you want to traffic drugs?"
"Why should I traffic drugs, people make fortunes just on cigarettes.
Say, you boss, made a company with Shavash and everybody says that the
company hauls everything it wants and doesn't pay any tariffs."
"Is that it?"
"Pay us ten million dinars."
"Why should I pay you exactly ten million dinars?"
"You carried away two hundred million worth of Adera treasure and this
treasure belongs to the people. The brothers think that if you return people
one twentieth part it would be fair.
Bemish froze.
"The Adera treasure," Bemish said, "doesn't exist. There is neither
gold nor silver in Chakhar, where could the treasure come from two thousand
years ago?"
"Don't bullshit me, boss," the bandit said, "and don't act like a
little white lamb. You hang around with Shavash, he stole half the country
and we only pick up the crumbs..."
"I won't collaborate with you."
"Aha, you can do it with Shavash but you can't do it with us."
"There is a certain intelligence gap," Bemish said, "that makes our
collaboration impossible. Shavash can pocket several million after a
financial trick but he will not believe that a well with emerald walls
exists in a God-forsaken hole."
And he barked into the intercom.
"Escort the prisoner!"
In a moment, the security department guys were dragging the thief out
of the chair.
"Remember," he turned around at the door, "you stole more than your
underling, boss, but it would be just as easy to knife you."
"Move it," a beefy guy, barbarian Alom, said and jabbed the thief in
his ribs.
Bemish turned the air conditioner on and opened the window wide to
clear the office of the thief's smell.
The night air was stuffy and soaked by the dust raised by the dozens of
excavators and the hundreds of trucks. Far away a compressor station rumbled
and the stars, large and jagged like the shards from a bottle that the gods
smashed at the stone firmament, were cooling off above him.
Bemish was dismayed. Life was a disgusting and useless thing. He was
building a military spaceport on a crazy planet with corrupted officials and
an illiterate population and, as if it was not enough already, mafia coming
to him and offering to transfer cars and cigarettes via the functioning
spaceport's sectors. At the same time, it was totally clear to Bemish that
the thief acted on Shavash's hints and all his castigations against the
vice-minister were probably staged by this same small official. Idari is
right this man will not stop pestering him till he starts exporting drugs
via the spaceport...
The door squeaked.
Bemish span around and darted to the table where a gun was stored in a
drawer. Needless to say, the thief's warning made a strong impression on
him.
The gun, however, would not be needed. On the doorstep, Kissur stood in
fancy velvet pants and a multihued shirt embroidered with kissing ducks.
"Oh, my God! What brought you here?"
"Ah," Kissur said, "I spent too much time at home. I thought, "I
haven't inhaled that gasoline smell at Bemish's for a while." But I should
get used to it. Soon, my whole country will stink like your spaceport."
Bemish was silent.
"Why are you so sad?"
"A thief today told me straight that if I didn't collaborate with
mafia, I would regret it. Do you know what he asked as a proof of our
friendship? He asked me for the Adera treasure."
"Hm," Kissur said, "Maybe you should give this treasure away to the
bandit? I've heard it brings misfortune to its owner, anyway."
Terence stared at Kissur with astonishment. The latter suddenly broke
into laughter and slapped the Earthman on his shoulder.
"I gotcha!" Kissur cried out, "I gotcha again! Don't you get jokes?"
A phone squealed. Bemish picked up the receiver and slammed it back
down.
"It's not that I just stopped getting jokes," Bemish screamed. "I will
start believing in this treasure myself tomorrow! I will believe in a field
witch that is born of a rotten pole, in a tin can witch that is born of an
old tin can and in a carburetor witch coming from a carburetor dumped in a
swamp. I will believe that I am building a hole to hell, put a white robe on
and go preaching to the Following the Way that Earthmen are demons and
everything made by them is a phantom because I am not able to prove it's not
true."
"Actually, it's very easy," Kissur said.
"What?"
"It's easy to prove that Earthmen don't send phantoms."
"Be so kind, tell me."
"It's a very old trick," Kissur said, "I used it myself eight years ago
when I ran across a gang of crazies in some province. Their chief assured
that he was invulnerable to arrows and I told him that if it was the case
why wouldn't he stand next to a wall and I would shoot at him with my bow.
And he believed what he was saying and he stood next to a wall. I struck him
so that my arrow entered his chest and stuck out of his spine for a full
elbow and he pulled his legs from under himself and hung from this arrow and
his followers ran away, disappointed. It would be enough for you to take an
assault rifle and suggest to their preacher to place his belly in the way of
a rifle burst. If you, say, stay alive than all our hardware is a phantom
and I promise you to leave, and if you die than you lied. Don't you like
it?"
"No."
"Why? Are you afraid the rifle will misfire?"
Bemish paused and asked.
"So, Kissur what should I do with the bandits? Should I make peace or
war?"
"How are you to make war with the bandits?" Kissur got angry. "I am
telling you - if you want to kill the zealots off, take a gun and shoot at a
zealot - he will approach you himself! You don't want to shoot at a zealot
that will stick his belly at you. Do you think that a bandit will stick his
belly at you?"
"What would be your advice then?"
"You are a chicken, Terence. You turned the construction in a
shithouse. Just recently Shavash was amazed how you accounted for some
equipment in such a way that you managed to shave the tax by half a million
and he was so amazed by this - even he didn't know this trick. And while you
were accounting your contraptions and books..." and Kissur grinned. "Well,
if gods didn't give you the ability to shoot, you will have to make peace."
"What if I asked you to kill the bandits off?"
"I won't do it."
"Why? Do you have a lot of good friends among them?"
Kissur paused. At this moment, the office door flung open and angry
Giles flew in.
"Why don't you answer the phone, Terence," he shouted, "what is this
habit of hanging the receiver!"
"Do you have something urgent?"
"Urgent? Do you know what's happening at the Adera Temple? This
preacher, Ashinik, brought a crowd in, they broke the fence, forced their
way into the temple and they are having a worship service."
Bemish turned and picked up a close-knit hemp overcoat that he often
wore at the construction to be less conspicuous.
"What are you going to do?"
"I am going to attend the worship."
"You're going nuts," Giles said. "Call Shavash. Call the troops in.
They have finally broken the laws!"
"Call the troops in and what? Should I jail the whole village?"
"You should jail the rabble-rousers."
"And I should turn the others from ill-wishers into terrorists,
shouldn't I?"
"Bemish was tying the overcoat's laces decisively."
"I know what Terence wants," Kissur said, "I will go with him."
"Where are you going? Just the two of you? Oh, my God!" the spy roared
and seeing Kissur and Bemish rushing out of the office, followed them.
The Ninth Chapter
Where the demons' boss makes a pact with the pious people.
Adera's temple floated in the night lit with torches from below. The
crowd was huge - people in woolen jackets and grass overcoats girdled with
red belts crowded in the broken hall where the sky instead of a roof covered
a hurriedly built stage. Kissur and two Earthmen, dressed in rural hemp
overcoats, were ignored. Only when Bemish, while elbowing energetically to
the stage, pushed somebody in the back a guy jammed him in return and said
rudely, "Don't push like a demon!"
On the left and on the right of the stage, huge copper lanterns burned
and a round basin with fragrant water steamed on the altar. At the very edge
of the stage, Ashinik stood - the young preacher of Following the Way. His
face, thin as an onion peel, reddened, his eyes glistened in the torchlight
and the crowd responded with an ardent bellow to his every word. Ashinik was
dressed in a red hooded overcoat embroidered with red winged bulls reaching
all the way to the ground. His belt was made out of polished copper plates.
Black suede high boots looked out from under the overcoat. A bound white
goose lay at Ashinik's feet.
Ashinik preached about Earthmen. More precisely, he preached that the
clothing sewn by demons should not be worn.
"Two hundred years ago, in the last years of Emperor Sashar's rule,"
the man in the red overcoat gleaning in the torchlight was saying, "a
fashion spread among the people from the country of Great Light - a fashion
to wear the clothing made out of wool brought in by barbarians. It was a
clear omen that the barbarians would conquer the country. And now people
wear the clothing sewn by demons - a clear omen that the demons will conquer
the country. So, everyone wearing their foul jeans or jackets is, basically,
walking naked. You should know that everything that demons make is just
phantom and deceit. And they can't make anything but phantoms. Although they
are very powerful sorcerers, we are even more powerful than they are."
"Bullshit," Kissur said.
Everybody present turned facing him.
"Who are you?" Ashinik cried.
"My name is Kissur the White Falcon and this is Terence Bemish, the
construction boss, my best friend and we came today to see how you go nuts."
"It doesn't befit you, Kissur, to hobnob with demons," Ashinik spoke
harshly, "Since many people call you Irshahchan reborn but, truly, even a
white cloud dirties itself over an unclean mole."
Kissur unhurriedly ascended the stage and poked the youth in the chest.
Ashinik's bodyguards stirred agitatedly - didn't Ashinik see Kissur in his
last sovereign prophecy?
"You are a dog and you are a dog's bone," Kissur shouted with the same
voice he used to command an army of many thousand troops and the voice
carried above the quelled crowd without any speakers - you addle people's
minds and prattle a lot of nonsense and you say that white is black and mix
up hell and Big Galaxy and nothing but harm to the state comes from zealots.
And if you think that everything Earthmen make is phantoms - do you see what
this is?"
"It's a weapon of theirs," Ashinik said.
"Laser gun Star-M," Kissur thundered, "fan effect with improved
specifications. And you will stand at this gross shithouse that you call an
altar and I will shoot at you with this gun. And if Earthmen's weapons are
phantoms and you are a sorcerer, you will stay alive, and if the Earthmen's
weapons are weapons and you are a liar and a cheat, you will keel over and
go to hell that you say so much crap about."
Ashinik paled. He had never stood in front of a laser barrel. He heard
many times that the demons shot at the pious and it all came out to be a
phantom. But...
"Are you afraid?!" Kissur shouted. And he turned to the peasants. "Yes,
he is afraid; he knows that he is lying to you!"
"Shoot," Ashinik cried.
"Go to the altar!" Kissur shouted. "And all of you move aside and watch
with two eyes and don't tell people afterwards what didn't happen."
The crowd quieted and only breathed intensely. Ashinik snarled at his
bodyguards and they crawled aside hurriedly. Ashinik came to the altar,
raised his hands and faced Kissur.
"It's all stupidity and phantom," Ashinik said and you, Kissur, fell
prey to it. But when you shoot and I come back alive, your delusion will
disperse and you will not shame your name any more and will stand with us
against demons.
Kissur silently picked a fresh "doughnut" out of his pocket, recharged
the gun and turned off the safety switch with a clip. The eye on the
"doughnut's" top swelled with green light. Ashinik closed his eyes and
extended his hands forward. Bemish could clearly see the zealots' leader
young face covered with sweat and his chicken neck in the torchlight. "Good
lad," Giles whispered nearby. Kissur raised the laser.
"Don't you dare shoot, Kissur," Bemish said.
"What are you doing?" Giles hissed from the side.
Bemish pushed him away and leaped on the stage.
"Don't shoot!"
"Idiot," Kissur smirked.
"I can't allow you to kill a man right at my eyes, whatever this man
believes in!"
"You are demon!" Ashinik shrieked, "Look, people, he knows that he
can't kill me!"
The crowd clamored threateningly and rocked to the stage.
"Son of a bitch," Giles screeched, yanking a Kalet laser from under his
armpit.
"Kill them," Ashinik screamed. "They can't harm you!"
People were pushing at the stage.
"One more step and we will shoot," Giles shouted.
"Stop!" Bemish cried out.
Strangely, the crowd stopped for a moment.
Bemish turned to the crowd spreading his palms - a local greeting
gesture.
"What are you blaming me for?" he asked. "Not all the Earthmen, just
me, you know, I can't be responsible for every conman born on the other side
of the sky. What do you blame me personally for, Terence Bemish, the Assalah
construction director?"
Jumbled shouts came out of the crowd.
"They beat the villagers... Walk around drunk... Took the land away...
Make a lot of money..."
"Ah, make a lot of money!" Bemish shouted. "Why don't you make a lot of
money? Have I offered you a job? I have! I have hundreds of jobs for you!
Whose fault is it that you make less? Is it mine? Or is it those who don't
allow you to work at the construction?"
The crowd was getting restless. It was evident that the idea about the
sect being guilty of current problems had indeed popped in various minds,
especially the young ones but nobody had said it aloud and it's as if an
unsaid idea doesn't really exist.
"There is no order at the construction," a cry came out of the crowd.
Bemish raised his hand.
"You are right. I was not able to establish order at the construction."
And he turned to Ashinik.
"Will you be able to establish it?"
"The god is capable of everything and I am his servant here, in the
village," Ashinik said.
"Excellent," Bemish said, "Your adherents are right. I can't maintain
order at the construction. The sovereign, after all, can't maintain order in
this whole country, who am I to maintain order in the spaceport? Scoundrels
and cads trickled in to the construction and I can't figure out who the
culprits are. So, I am asking you, Ashinik, to become my vice-president,
fire everybody you would like to and hire everybody you would like to."
The zealot looked somewhat shocked.
"I can't serve demons," Ashinik said.
"In this case," Bemish said, "You will be responsible for the every
binge, fight and depravity happening at the spaceport. Since, if you worked
at the construction, you would be able to prevent this depravity. Why do you
refuse to do good for the people? Can't you do this? Why then do you muddle
people's minds calling yourself a man of power? Don't you want to do this?
Why do you call yourself a pious man then?"
The grey crowd looking like a huge centipede with burning eyes made of
the torches turned and moved and voices reached Bemish, standing on the
stage.
"If Ashinik became a boss, everything would be really different."
Ashinik was silent. Bemish waited - what kind of man is he and what's
stronger in him - the desire to hurt the people from the stars or the desire
to help the peasants.
"You know my beliefs, Mr. Bemish," Ashinik uttered. "Do you think I
will exchange them for your window they disburse money from?"
"I," Bemish said, "Believe in the freedom of conscience. The freedom of
conscience is not, when you let your employees believe in what you like,
it's when you let your employees believe what they want to. If you want to
consider me a demon - go ahead. If you are afraid that a close encounter
with me will weaken your beliefs, then they aren't worth much."
"All right," Ashinik said, "I accept your offer."
"You are nuts, Bemish," Giles said dismally.
Annoyed Kissur weighed the gun in his hand and threw it down the black
Adera well.
"You are a fool, Terence," he said, "and all of you, Earthmen, are
fools. It looks like your chicanery is of more use than your weapons."
The next day, the old bandit was taken to the capital in a truck. On
its way, a crowd of peasant zealots stopped the truck, pulled the bandit out
and dragged him to the village, somehow the bandit happened to be torn apart
on the way.
Not informing local police, Bemish called special troops in masks but
with an evident barbarian accent from the capital - mostly they were
Kissur's ex-warriors - and they scoured the hired workers' barracks
mercilessly fishing everybody suspicious out. They found about fifty such
people, beat them senseless, deposited them in a net and attached the net to
a freight helicopter. The helicopter made three triumphal circles above the
spaceport and flew to the capital.
Afterwards Bemish let Ashinik and his zealots into the barracks. He
gave full power to Ashinik and he proved to be right. The young fanatic was
a great manager and his intelligence service seemed to know the background
of each worker. They knew who in the barracks was a perspective zealot cowed
by the bandits and the thieves, who was an honest worker away from all these
catfights, who had robbed an Iniss bank last year and who had begged in
Upper Kharaine. Ashinik just brought Bemish the lists of workers to be fired
and Bemish initialed them without asking for any explanations that he
wouldn't get anyway.
The same day, Shavash called Bemish and insistently demanded the arrest
of all of the zealots. Bemish refused saying that they was necessary to
exterminate the bandits. Shavash said that he would give Bemish two weeks to
finish the bandits off and then Bemish should consecutively arrest all the
zealots for abusing their authority, lynching and sadistic treatment of
their subordinates. Actually, Shavash didn't suggest this plan out loud but
rather pretended that it had been Bemish's plan from the very beginning. To
destroy one infection using another one and then to write off all the
depravities that had happened during the extermination of the former to the
latter.
During that week, order and cleanliness came to rule the construction.
Bemish didn't entertain any illusions about the methods the zealots used to
attain this cleanliness - he saw how two janitors were whipping their
colleague for a rug that he hadn't washed at his shift's end - they whipped
him bloody with cries and brined whips.
For two weeks, Bemish wordlessly signed Ashinik's requests including a
request for buying, at the company's expense, three hundred meters of white
silk and three white geese even though Bemish was totally aware that white
silk would be used for belts the zealots covered with spells and wore on
their bodies and the three geese would be used for the divination about the
demons' fate.
In the beginning of the third week, Bemish found his new human
resources manager sitting and reading an acetylene welder construction and
repair manual that a zealot, considering acetylene welding to be a phantom
and illusion, was not supposed to do.
The next day, a highly placed committee from a Federation financial
advisory body arrived. The committee was supposed to study Weian economics
and collect data on the Galactic Bank target loan provided by the
Federation. From Bemish's point of view, this endeavor was pointless since
he hadn't seen a single target loan yet that was used for purposes other
than the construction of suburban villas for the officials in charge of the
credit distribution. The loans were humongous and the villas came out
luxurious. And since the loans were guaranteed by the state, the Federation
officials didn't give a damn what they were used for.
The committee landed in Assalah spaceport and expressed a desire to
examine the finished buildings and also the construction's next stage,
separated from the spaceport's operating part by steel mesh.
The committee was absolutely impressed with the order at the
construction site. Parting with Bemish, the committee head, the Galactic
Bank of Development Assistance vice-chairman, told him that he had a
brilliant trade union leader.
"It's incredible! Terence, where have you found this treasure? Have you
seen how the workers listen to him? They listen to him holding their breath
as if he was a prophet, and he is not even twenty yet!"
The vice-president said that this guy should immediately get a
scholarship and go to Havishem or Harvard and promised to write him a
reference letter.
Upon the committee's departure, Ashinik asked Bemish why Shavash hadn't
arrived with the Earthmen, since he had mostly been responsible for the
distribution of the above mentioned loans. Bemish answered that Shavash had
been busy. In fact, Shavash had called an hour before the flight and said
that he would come on one condition only - if he could take back with him
Ashinik's head in a sack. Shavash expressed himself exactly this way -
"head."
"Do you know," Shavash asked, "That these Following the Way guys
organized the last attempt at my assassination?"
"How would I know," Bemish snapped back, "If you hanged completely
different people for it?"
The next day, Bemish saw the Okuri company stock price skyrocketing and
it happened since Okuri perchance had secured from the sovereign the rights
to develop copper deposits recently found in the Chakhar mountains. Bemish
called Shavash to find out if Okuri had really gobbled this chunk or if
somebody was spreading the rumors to pick some dough and to find out if
there really was any copper ore in the Chakhar Mountains to begin with.
"I will exchange information about Okuri on Ashinik's balls," Shavash
said.
"No," Bemish said.
"What's happened to you, Terence, have you fallen in love with him? I
haven't noticed you leaning this way before."
Bemish choked.
"I am kidding. Since you love a different - woman," Shavash said
heavily and with a hidden meaning. And he dropped the receiver.
This evening, when Ashinik was having a dinner in the common cafeteria,
Bemish sat next to him. After tea, Bemish asked.
"Why does your sect dislike Shavash so much?"
Ashinik paused.
"Shavash is a briber and a scoundrel."
"Ashinik, sonny, all Weian officials are bribers and scoundrels. You,
however, dislike Shavash much more than, say, Khanida or Akhaggar - while
they cause just as much harm."
"Khanida hasn't tried to destroy us."
"That's why. And has Shavash tried?"
"Yes. He filled our circle with spies and dissidents. He bribed those
who were not firm in their convictions and they started preaching a lot of
nonsense and many people let themselves be lured."
"What kind of nonsense did they preach?"
"He bribed Dakhak and Dakhak started saying that it's wrong to deny
salvation to demons and that they would not be damned forever. And he bribed
Amarn and Amarn started teaching..." Ashinik suddenly stopped. "Our
teachings are none of your business," he finished.
Bemish couldn't conceal his smile.
"Are you sure that every zealot that doesn't believe the same things
you do, is necessarily bribed or seduced?"
"These people were bribed by Shavash," Ashinik cut him off.
Bemish paused. Really, Ashinik's words could be true. Shavash himself
told the Earthman that nothing was more efficient at killing the zealots
than discords among the sects. And the whole thing just looked like
Shavash's doing. Yes, this official stole, embezzled and it was not an
accident that a joke about him traveled around - out of all gods Shavash
envied ten handed Khagge the most - imagine how much you can steal with ten
hands? At the same time, only Shavash among all the bribers surrounding him
could be seriously concerned with the future danger of Following the Way.
Yes. It makes sense that Shavash tried to take care of the sect in a
way that wouldn't cause an international scandal. It would be one thing to
hang the zealots publicly pissing off all the human rights committees and
another thing to make them throttle each other.
At the end of the third week, Bemish found Ashinik on the border of an
unfinished sector. The lad was holding Bemish's gun that he had probably
picked up in a drawer in the office and, having extracted the battery, was
contemplating the "doughnut" thoughtfully. Ten meters away from Ashinik, a
huge basalt rock arose; it had been left on the field since it was too heavy
to transport. Now, a regular Atari could drag the rock away in two trips -
it was cut in half and black basalt foam bubbled at the jagged wound's
edges.
The light on the "doughnut" top blinked red - the battery was dead.
When Bemish approached, the zealot threw the gun on the grass and asked.
"Why didn't Kissur shoot me?" Bemish rolled on his feet.
"I've already told you. I can't let a deliberate murder happen right in
front of me even if the victim doesn't mind."
"I thought that this thing couldn't shoot me. At that moment, I thought
that you didn't allow Kissur to show that I was right."
Bemish silently looked at the youth. It would be interesting to know
how much time it took him to quarter the rock. Star's "doughnut" is
specified for forty eight minutes of uninterrupted shooting.
"It's very difficult," Ashinik said, "when you had seen that something
was black and then it appeared to be white."
"Have you really had visions, Ashinik?"
"I still have them."
"What are they about? Are they about Earthmen being demons?"
"Yes," Ashinik remarked, "Tell me, could a man be born out of a golden
egg?"
"Read a biology textbook," Bemish dryly suggested.
The next day, Ashinik was managing the forest clearing in a new area
and he fainted in the workers' view. He regained his senses in ten minutes
and continued working even though Bemish told him on the radio to go and
rest.
Ashinik felt fine for two days and he fainted again on the third one.
Then, he told the workers that he would turn them into cockroaches if they
told Bemish about the fits and Bemish didn't know anything till, in two
weeks, Ashinik fainted at a morning business meeting.
He recovered quickly but Bemish, not letting him open his mouth,
dragged him to the health services - to Isaak Malinovskii who was in charge
of influenza, accidents and malaria at the construction and who also kept
terrorizing Bemish with the possibility of a cholera epidemic.
Malinovskii took the youth's blood pressure, put him on the couch,
wrapped him with wires and ran a tomography on him. Ashinik didn't resist.
He didn't seem to care.
"What problems do you have?" Malinovskii finally asked, having covered
the youth with a blanket and sitting next to him.
"Am I fine?"
"You have a bad case of nervous exhaustion. What happens to you before
you faint?"
"I see different pictures. I was sitting, for example, at the today's
meeting and then everybody around started growing horns and snouts and a
wall tied around me and began choking me."
Ashinik paused.
"Tell me, doctor, am I crazy?"
"Why are you asking this question?"
"I have visions. I read this thick book - a psychiatry textbook. It
said that if a man saw what others didn't, it meant that something was wrong
with his brains."
"If an Earthman came to me and told me what you had just described, I
would definitely recommend him a psychiatrist. But the specific subculture
you belong to is very different. For Following the Way a trance is normal
and the ability to fall in a trance is one of the ways to prove your
leadership skills. You are a very nervous and excitable man, Ashinik, but
you are mentally normal. And I think that your visions will disappear soon
because here, working for the company, you've found another way to be a
leader.
Malinovskii attached a plastic drug vial to a syringe and said, "And
now you need to sleep long and well."
When Ashinik woke up, it was already day time. The fiery snouts that
had buzzed in his mind yesterday disappeared. He lay in a wide bed in a room
with carved pink wood walls and a wide open window. A cardinal sat on the
windowsill and studied him with eyes that looked like mercury droplets and
far away, behind the bird's red feathers and bush greenery two hundred
meters of Assalah spaceport control tower soared in the sky.
Ashinik realized that he had probably been moved to Terence Bemish's
villa. He hadn't been to the villa yet because there was a lot of work at
the spaceport and because Bemish either slept at the spaceport or flew to
the capital on business.
Ashinik turned his head and saw a girl sitting next to him. The girl
was dressed in a velvet jacket and a long bell shaped skirt sewn with
flowers and grasses. A hazy silk belt tied with a five-petal knot fluttered
behind her back like butterfly wings.
The girl smiled at Ashinik shyly and Ashinik suddenly smiled back.
Something scurried between them - Ashinik imagined for a moment a furry
little animal jumping out one smile into another.
"Mr. Bemish said that you should stay in bed and should not get up."
"Are you Bemish's concubine?" Ashinik asked. His voice suddenly
acquired the cold confidence that he preached to hundreds of people with.
"Yes."
"I heard about you. You are Inis. How much did he pay for you?"
Inis shuddered.
"He paid for me as much as they asked."
"Does he love you?"
"Mr. Bemish likes me quite a bit." Inis said.
"Why haven't I seen you at the construction?"
Inis smiled guiltily.
"Mr. Bemish really wanted me to be at the construction," Inis said.
"He taught me himself how to work with accounting software and make
accounting reports. He made me his secretary. And then this crap happened...
I was once sitting in the office in the evening when three workers came in.
They were going to file a complaint about their manager but when they saw me
sitting there alone, they assaulted me and... I was just able to call for
help. After that, I asked Mr. Bemish to let me stay in the villa and he
agreed."
Inis straightened up and added proudly.
"But I do a lot of stuff here. I check all the bills and last month I
saved Mr. Bemish two hundred thousand when I noticed one local official
running fake accounts through the company."
She sighed and added.
"We still had to give this official a fifty thousand bribe."
"What software do you use," Ashinik asked.
He had practically no experience with computers and, frankly, he was
afraid of these scary answerers that Earthmen always carried with them like
handkerchiefs and at every third word took them out of their pockets and
spread open. Seeing them always reminded him one of the most popular sect
myths - that demons took their souls out and put them in these organic
silicon handkerchiefs or iron boxes and the demons' souls felt lonely and
blinked on the monitors with multicolored lights.
Inis started saying something but Ashinik had drifted off. "The demon
is not very jealous if he leaves his concubine alone with a young man," he
thought.
Ashinik returned to the construction in three days and Bemish was very
happy since it was quite difficult to manage things without him. Bemish
happened to send Ashinik to villa several times for important papers or with
some orders and Ashinik always drove there with a visible delight.
Soon Inis appeared in Bemish's office again as a secretary and
Ashinik's frequent trips to the villa came to an end. Ashinik and Inis were
quite a bit younger than Terence Bemish - she was seventeen, he was twenty -
but Bemish just didn't notice how Inis' blushed when his young deputy
entered the company director's office and how often Ashinik and Inis ate
together in the company cafeteria or in one of the port's restaurants that
had grown around like mushrooms.
Although, Terence Bemish declared at his first meeting with Inis some
words about the freedom of will, in reality this freedom of will extended
only as far as him making Inis his secretary - while Inis was a nice and
kind girl, blindingly bright she was not. Bemish was quite happy when she
handed him a clean shirt and socks in the morning, excellent coffee at noon
and spent nights in his bed - when, of course, the Assalah company head was
not having fun in a capital bordello or at a high rank official reception
that would usually come to an end in the same bordello.
Bemish took as good care of her as he did of expensive house furniture
but he knew that nothing better than a secretary could come out of Inis - a
nice pleasant girl with a warm heart and, let's admit it, not a very smart
head. And Terence Bemish assigned automatically any unintelligent person to
a place at the very bottom of his rating list.
The next week, Trevis visited the construction. The meeting had been
planned a while ago and had nothing to do with the zealots' affair but
Trevis probably heard something during the flight. His first question upon
arrival was,
"Terence, what's going on here? They say that you appointed some zealot
to be your deputy?"
"Let me introduce Ashinik to you," Bemish said.
Ashinik bowed. Trevis stared at the youth.
"Do you consider me a demon?" Trevis inquired.
"I am not familiar with you," Ashinik answered seriously, "But what
I've heard about you makes me think that a lot of people would call you a
demon and you wouldn't take an offence at this name anyway."
Trevis laughed out.
"Well, even if you are a zealot, at least you are not crazy," he said.
On the eighteenth, Bemish spoke to the sovereign Varnazd. It happened
the following way.
Bemish collected quite a number of papers requiring Shavash's signature
and he arrived to the capital in person bringing the papers and gifts with
him. He was told that Shavash was in the palace and he would be there till
morning. Bemish went to the palace. He entered without an issue.
Umpteen pavilions and inner yards and the gardens breathing with
freshness were so unexpectedly beautiful that Bemish, tired of the banging
concrete blocks and of all the filth of his huge construction, forgot
everything walking thoughtlessly amidst the dancing gods and pompously
cackling peacocks. Suddenly somebody called him out of a carved gazebo.
"Mr. Bemish!"
Bemish turned around and came closer trying to recall where, out of all
the endless receptions, he saw this young official with a nice and uncertain
face and eyebrows pulling upwards like a sparrow's tail.
"Don't you recognize me?" the official asked smiling.
"Oh, my sovereign," Bemish exclaimed, going down on one knee, "How can
one not recognize you?!"
The sovereign pointed Bemish to a woven chair deep in the gazebo.
Bemish sat in the chair and pushed the paper folder behind his back.
"I wanted to ask you," the sovereign continued, "What is
"unfathomable?"
"What?" Bemish was astounded. The sovereign picked a volume lying in
front of him and read, stretching the vowels slightly.
Unfathomable sea, whose waves are years,
Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe,
Are salted with the salt of human tears...
Bemish lowered his eyes looking at the front page - it was Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
"Ah," Bemish said, "Unfathomable means bottomless. It's a poetic word.
I don't think anybody would need it now."
"Yes," the sovereign nodded, "A lot of poetic words disappeared from
your language. But numerous abbreviations appeared, didn't they?
Bemish nodded.
"It's a pity," the sovereign said, "that they don't translate your old
books. They translate dictionaries and manuals but not Shelley."
"Do you like Shelley?" Bemish asked with trepidation to maintain the
conversation, even though the only Shelley he had read was a certain A.D.
Shelley, one of the co-authors of a book Assembling Radiowave Beacons on
Geostationary Orbits in Order to Correct the Spaceship's Trajectory in the
Proximity of Planets."
In a secluded office, a fully dressed short fifty-year-old Weian was
cooling his heels off.
"You got it," Shavash said. "Bemish is going to cleanse Assalah of
crooks using federal troops."
"It's not good if Long Stick sends the troops," the short man said.
"I can't do anything here," Shavash spread his hands. "It's your fault.
Who robbed Giles?"
"I will find out," the man said.
"Find it out, please. It's useful to know sometimes what your people
do."
Shavash paused and added.
"You, O'Hara, are like a parasite at the construction. You suck but you
don't feed, you harvest and you don't plough. Why would Bemish love you?
While if you helped him..."
"How can I help him? Should I not steal? How will I make my living?"
"Why should you not steal? For instance, Bemish has serious problems
with zealots. If you step on the zealots' tails, you will help Bemish."
The guy looked at the vice-minister with animosity. Weian crooks didn't
attack zealots as a rule. The pickings would be slim, and the zealots would
go totally mad - if you touched them they wouldn't rest till they cut the
whole gang down and declare it to be gods' wrath.
"I have a feeling that the zealots blighted you, not Bemish," the thief
said, "and that I will do a favor to you rather than to Bemish."
Two hours later, Bemish's helicopter landed in Kissur villa's backyard.
"The master is not at home," a maid reported, "the mistress will see
you in a moment. Could you, please, step into Lake Hall?"
Idari met him dressed in a blue skirt with golden sable trim and a
jacket embroidered with peacocks and squirrels. Her hair was pulled up in a
large black bun and a silver hairpin in the shape of a Lamass rowboat
pierced the bun. Bemish looked at the hairpin and it seemed to him that the
hairpin was piercing his heart.
Bemish kissed the house mistress' hand and said.
"I am touched that you received me in Kissur's absence."
Idari sat on the couch and pulled a tambour with a partially knitted
belt onto her knees.
The belt was embroidered with clouds and rivers. She almost always had
needlework with her.
Two servants brought fruit and cookie baskets to the veranda and
departed. A tame peacock dropped by the veranda, unfolded his tail,
scratched the doorstep with his red foot and left for the garden.
"What are you upset about, Mr. Bemish?" Idari asked. "Do you have any
problems with the fund?"
"No," Bemish said. "It's just that while I bought and sold other
people's stocks, I possibly wasted my own company."
"I thought that you finished assembling the first line of landing pads
a week before you planned."
"I mean the mood at the construction - zealots and crooks. I can't
eradicate them. Shavash tricked me when he obtained legal immunity for the
construction." Idari was silent.
"Why did he do it?" Bemish cried out. "Did he need me to hang the
zealots? Does he need the Earthmen to butcher these idiots instead of the
Empire, so that his hands are clean and the Earthmen's hands are smeared
with shit?"
"What am I saying?" a thought passed in Bemish's mind. "I am sitting
with a woman that I would give all of Assalah away for - ok, not all of
Assalah but at least thirty percent of it - and I am talking to her about
god knows what and she considers me to be a greedy and cowardly Earthman."
"He is not fully satisfied with you," Idari said.
"What is he not satisfied with? The only thing I don't export is
drugs!"
"That's exactly right."
Bemish froze, as if he just collided with a wall.
"Are you...serious?"
"I mean that all the legal violations taking place at the spaceport
deal only with taxes. You have not broken any criminal laws yet, Terence,
and Shavash doesn't like that. If you break tax laws you can be prosecuted
only at this planet. If you break criminal laws, you can be prosecuted
across the whole Galaxy. The more crimes you commit, the more power Shavash
will have over you."
"Bastard," Bemish muttered glumly. "If only I had known..."
"Shavash is better than you are," Idari objected.
"Shavash? Better?!!"
"Shavash will be forgiven many things because he wants a lot. He wants
women, power, glory, while you want only money."
"I want you. I want you more than money," Bemish wanted to say.
"You are right, Idari," he said, "I like money more than anything
else."
The next evening, the phone rang in Bemish's office. Ross called - an
ex-colleague of Giles - now his deputy on security issues.
"We have an emergency," Ross said. "A packer boy was knifed. We got the
killer."
"Did he resist?"
"No. He is quite a lout."
"Bring him to me," Bemish ordered.
Murders happened quite often at the construction. Generally, the
killers could not be found. Even if a man was killed in broad daylight,
somehow nobody saw anything.
Bemish was leafing through a draft of the yearly company report
prepared by the PR department on Earth when two wide-angled guys from the
security department brought the killer in the office - an inconspicuous
sixty-year-old man in washed out jeans and a jacket with white trim showing
that he worked in the fifth roadwork team. The killer's hands were twisted
behind his head and locked with handcuffs.
The guys left and Bemish pointed the involuntary visitor to a chair.
"Sit down."
He sat silently. Bemish was leafing through the report's last pages.
"Why don't you let me go, boss. They say you have a right to do it."
Bemish was staggered by his gall.
"Why did you kill the lad?"
"I wanted to talk to you, boss," the visitor said. "See, it ain't easy
to speak to you. I made an appointment with you, see, three times and you
were just cooling it off. I make another appointment today, come in and they
tell me, "the boss ain't here for you, Weian peasant mug, the boss is
driving a big dog around the construction, it's not your lawn anymore, move
it - go back to your barrack. So, I went back and it put me out. Why won't I
do something that the boss notice me?"
Bemish didn't interrupt the man yet. He had realized a while ago that
sooner or later the bandits would visit him but he hadn't suspected that
they would choose such an original way. And this knave is also reminding in
a subtle way - I have no problem knifing a boy down or you, boss...
"That was not a good idea," Bemish grinned, "because they will cut your
head off now."
"Our authorities?" the bandit laughed out, "Boss, it's not my first
murder, and my head is still with me. Do you think you will find witnesses
against me?"
That was true. The witnesses were available when the bandit had to meet
Bemish. Concerning his head though...
"What did you want to offer me in person?"
"Let's get things in order."
"What order?"
"What's all this mess around? They pick up stuff, swear - you know
what's going on - steal materials, drink people away. Say, yesterday, a gang
came in and started to play, six people sold themselves into slavery. So
they are slaves and what happens next? They work and their owner rubs his
belly and gets paid. We, on the other hand, would tidy things up."
"And what do you want in return?"
"Appoint me the landing field security manager."
"Do you want to traffic drugs?"
"Why should I traffic drugs, people make fortunes just on cigarettes.
Say, you boss, made a company with Shavash and everybody says that the
company hauls everything it wants and doesn't pay any tariffs."
"Is that it?"
"Pay us ten million dinars."
"Why should I pay you exactly ten million dinars?"
"You carried away two hundred million worth of Adera treasure and this
treasure belongs to the people. The brothers think that if you return people
one twentieth part it would be fair.
Bemish froze.
"The Adera treasure," Bemish said, "doesn't exist. There is neither
gold nor silver in Chakhar, where could the treasure come from two thousand
years ago?"
"Don't bullshit me, boss," the bandit said, "and don't act like a
little white lamb. You hang around with Shavash, he stole half the country
and we only pick up the crumbs..."
"I won't collaborate with you."
"Aha, you can do it with Shavash but you can't do it with us."
"There is a certain intelligence gap," Bemish said, "that makes our
collaboration impossible. Shavash can pocket several million after a
financial trick but he will not believe that a well with emerald walls
exists in a God-forsaken hole."
And he barked into the intercom.
"Escort the prisoner!"
In a moment, the security department guys were dragging the thief out
of the chair.
"Remember," he turned around at the door, "you stole more than your
underling, boss, but it would be just as easy to knife you."
"Move it," a beefy guy, barbarian Alom, said and jabbed the thief in
his ribs.
Bemish turned the air conditioner on and opened the window wide to
clear the office of the thief's smell.
The night air was stuffy and soaked by the dust raised by the dozens of
excavators and the hundreds of trucks. Far away a compressor station rumbled
and the stars, large and jagged like the shards from a bottle that the gods
smashed at the stone firmament, were cooling off above him.
Bemish was dismayed. Life was a disgusting and useless thing. He was
building a military spaceport on a crazy planet with corrupted officials and
an illiterate population and, as if it was not enough already, mafia coming
to him and offering to transfer cars and cigarettes via the functioning
spaceport's sectors. At the same time, it was totally clear to Bemish that
the thief acted on Shavash's hints and all his castigations against the
vice-minister were probably staged by this same small official. Idari is
right this man will not stop pestering him till he starts exporting drugs
via the spaceport...
The door squeaked.
Bemish span around and darted to the table where a gun was stored in a
drawer. Needless to say, the thief's warning made a strong impression on
him.
The gun, however, would not be needed. On the doorstep, Kissur stood in
fancy velvet pants and a multihued shirt embroidered with kissing ducks.
"Oh, my God! What brought you here?"
"Ah," Kissur said, "I spent too much time at home. I thought, "I
haven't inhaled that gasoline smell at Bemish's for a while." But I should
get used to it. Soon, my whole country will stink like your spaceport."
Bemish was silent.
"Why are you so sad?"
"A thief today told me straight that if I didn't collaborate with
mafia, I would regret it. Do you know what he asked as a proof of our
friendship? He asked me for the Adera treasure."
"Hm," Kissur said, "Maybe you should give this treasure away to the
bandit? I've heard it brings misfortune to its owner, anyway."
Terence stared at Kissur with astonishment. The latter suddenly broke
into laughter and slapped the Earthman on his shoulder.
"I gotcha!" Kissur cried out, "I gotcha again! Don't you get jokes?"
A phone squealed. Bemish picked up the receiver and slammed it back
down.
"It's not that I just stopped getting jokes," Bemish screamed. "I will
start believing in this treasure myself tomorrow! I will believe in a field
witch that is born of a rotten pole, in a tin can witch that is born of an
old tin can and in a carburetor witch coming from a carburetor dumped in a
swamp. I will believe that I am building a hole to hell, put a white robe on
and go preaching to the Following the Way that Earthmen are demons and
everything made by them is a phantom because I am not able to prove it's not
true."
"Actually, it's very easy," Kissur said.
"What?"
"It's easy to prove that Earthmen don't send phantoms."
"Be so kind, tell me."
"It's a very old trick," Kissur said, "I used it myself eight years ago
when I ran across a gang of crazies in some province. Their chief assured
that he was invulnerable to arrows and I told him that if it was the case
why wouldn't he stand next to a wall and I would shoot at him with my bow.
And he believed what he was saying and he stood next to a wall. I struck him
so that my arrow entered his chest and stuck out of his spine for a full
elbow and he pulled his legs from under himself and hung from this arrow and
his followers ran away, disappointed. It would be enough for you to take an
assault rifle and suggest to their preacher to place his belly in the way of
a rifle burst. If you, say, stay alive than all our hardware is a phantom
and I promise you to leave, and if you die than you lied. Don't you like
it?"
"No."
"Why? Are you afraid the rifle will misfire?"
Bemish paused and asked.
"So, Kissur what should I do with the bandits? Should I make peace or
war?"
"How are you to make war with the bandits?" Kissur got angry. "I am
telling you - if you want to kill the zealots off, take a gun and shoot at a
zealot - he will approach you himself! You don't want to shoot at a zealot
that will stick his belly at you. Do you think that a bandit will stick his
belly at you?"
"What would be your advice then?"
"You are a chicken, Terence. You turned the construction in a
shithouse. Just recently Shavash was amazed how you accounted for some
equipment in such a way that you managed to shave the tax by half a million
and he was so amazed by this - even he didn't know this trick. And while you
were accounting your contraptions and books..." and Kissur grinned. "Well,
if gods didn't give you the ability to shoot, you will have to make peace."
"What if I asked you to kill the bandits off?"
"I won't do it."
"Why? Do you have a lot of good friends among them?"
Kissur paused. At this moment, the office door flung open and angry
Giles flew in.
"Why don't you answer the phone, Terence," he shouted, "what is this
habit of hanging the receiver!"
"Do you have something urgent?"
"Urgent? Do you know what's happening at the Adera Temple? This
preacher, Ashinik, brought a crowd in, they broke the fence, forced their
way into the temple and they are having a worship service."
Bemish turned and picked up a close-knit hemp overcoat that he often
wore at the construction to be less conspicuous.
"What are you going to do?"
"I am going to attend the worship."
"You're going nuts," Giles said. "Call Shavash. Call the troops in.
They have finally broken the laws!"
"Call the troops in and what? Should I jail the whole village?"
"You should jail the rabble-rousers."
"And I should turn the others from ill-wishers into terrorists,
shouldn't I?"
"Bemish was tying the overcoat's laces decisively."
"I know what Terence wants," Kissur said, "I will go with him."
"Where are you going? Just the two of you? Oh, my God!" the spy roared
and seeing Kissur and Bemish rushing out of the office, followed them.
The Ninth Chapter
Where the demons' boss makes a pact with the pious people.
Adera's temple floated in the night lit with torches from below. The
crowd was huge - people in woolen jackets and grass overcoats girdled with
red belts crowded in the broken hall where the sky instead of a roof covered
a hurriedly built stage. Kissur and two Earthmen, dressed in rural hemp
overcoats, were ignored. Only when Bemish, while elbowing energetically to
the stage, pushed somebody in the back a guy jammed him in return and said
rudely, "Don't push like a demon!"
On the left and on the right of the stage, huge copper lanterns burned
and a round basin with fragrant water steamed on the altar. At the very edge
of the stage, Ashinik stood - the young preacher of Following the Way. His
face, thin as an onion peel, reddened, his eyes glistened in the torchlight
and the crowd responded with an ardent bellow to his every word. Ashinik was
dressed in a red hooded overcoat embroidered with red winged bulls reaching
all the way to the ground. His belt was made out of polished copper plates.
Black suede high boots looked out from under the overcoat. A bound white
goose lay at Ashinik's feet.
Ashinik preached about Earthmen. More precisely, he preached that the
clothing sewn by demons should not be worn.
"Two hundred years ago, in the last years of Emperor Sashar's rule,"
the man in the red overcoat gleaning in the torchlight was saying, "a
fashion spread among the people from the country of Great Light - a fashion
to wear the clothing made out of wool brought in by barbarians. It was a
clear omen that the barbarians would conquer the country. And now people
wear the clothing sewn by demons - a clear omen that the demons will conquer
the country. So, everyone wearing their foul jeans or jackets is, basically,
walking naked. You should know that everything that demons make is just
phantom and deceit. And they can't make anything but phantoms. Although they
are very powerful sorcerers, we are even more powerful than they are."
"Bullshit," Kissur said.
Everybody present turned facing him.
"Who are you?" Ashinik cried.
"My name is Kissur the White Falcon and this is Terence Bemish, the
construction boss, my best friend and we came today to see how you go nuts."
"It doesn't befit you, Kissur, to hobnob with demons," Ashinik spoke
harshly, "Since many people call you Irshahchan reborn but, truly, even a
white cloud dirties itself over an unclean mole."
Kissur unhurriedly ascended the stage and poked the youth in the chest.
Ashinik's bodyguards stirred agitatedly - didn't Ashinik see Kissur in his
last sovereign prophecy?
"You are a dog and you are a dog's bone," Kissur shouted with the same
voice he used to command an army of many thousand troops and the voice
carried above the quelled crowd without any speakers - you addle people's
minds and prattle a lot of nonsense and you say that white is black and mix
up hell and Big Galaxy and nothing but harm to the state comes from zealots.
And if you think that everything Earthmen make is phantoms - do you see what
this is?"
"It's a weapon of theirs," Ashinik said.
"Laser gun Star-M," Kissur thundered, "fan effect with improved
specifications. And you will stand at this gross shithouse that you call an
altar and I will shoot at you with this gun. And if Earthmen's weapons are
phantoms and you are a sorcerer, you will stay alive, and if the Earthmen's
weapons are weapons and you are a liar and a cheat, you will keel over and
go to hell that you say so much crap about."
Ashinik paled. He had never stood in front of a laser barrel. He heard
many times that the demons shot at the pious and it all came out to be a
phantom. But...
"Are you afraid?!" Kissur shouted. And he turned to the peasants. "Yes,
he is afraid; he knows that he is lying to you!"
"Shoot," Ashinik cried.
"Go to the altar!" Kissur shouted. "And all of you move aside and watch
with two eyes and don't tell people afterwards what didn't happen."
The crowd quieted and only breathed intensely. Ashinik snarled at his
bodyguards and they crawled aside hurriedly. Ashinik came to the altar,
raised his hands and faced Kissur.
"It's all stupidity and phantom," Ashinik said and you, Kissur, fell
prey to it. But when you shoot and I come back alive, your delusion will
disperse and you will not shame your name any more and will stand with us
against demons.
Kissur silently picked a fresh "doughnut" out of his pocket, recharged
the gun and turned off the safety switch with a clip. The eye on the
"doughnut's" top swelled with green light. Ashinik closed his eyes and
extended his hands forward. Bemish could clearly see the zealots' leader
young face covered with sweat and his chicken neck in the torchlight. "Good
lad," Giles whispered nearby. Kissur raised the laser.
"Don't you dare shoot, Kissur," Bemish said.
"What are you doing?" Giles hissed from the side.
Bemish pushed him away and leaped on the stage.
"Don't shoot!"
"Idiot," Kissur smirked.
"I can't allow you to kill a man right at my eyes, whatever this man
believes in!"
"You are demon!" Ashinik shrieked, "Look, people, he knows that he
can't kill me!"
The crowd clamored threateningly and rocked to the stage.
"Son of a bitch," Giles screeched, yanking a Kalet laser from under his
armpit.
"Kill them," Ashinik screamed. "They can't harm you!"
People were pushing at the stage.
"One more step and we will shoot," Giles shouted.
"Stop!" Bemish cried out.
Strangely, the crowd stopped for a moment.
Bemish turned to the crowd spreading his palms - a local greeting
gesture.
"What are you blaming me for?" he asked. "Not all the Earthmen, just
me, you know, I can't be responsible for every conman born on the other side
of the sky. What do you blame me personally for, Terence Bemish, the Assalah
construction director?"
Jumbled shouts came out of the crowd.
"They beat the villagers... Walk around drunk... Took the land away...
Make a lot of money..."
"Ah, make a lot of money!" Bemish shouted. "Why don't you make a lot of
money? Have I offered you a job? I have! I have hundreds of jobs for you!
Whose fault is it that you make less? Is it mine? Or is it those who don't
allow you to work at the construction?"
The crowd was getting restless. It was evident that the idea about the
sect being guilty of current problems had indeed popped in various minds,
especially the young ones but nobody had said it aloud and it's as if an
unsaid idea doesn't really exist.
"There is no order at the construction," a cry came out of the crowd.
Bemish raised his hand.
"You are right. I was not able to establish order at the construction."
And he turned to Ashinik.
"Will you be able to establish it?"
"The god is capable of everything and I am his servant here, in the
village," Ashinik said.
"Excellent," Bemish said, "Your adherents are right. I can't maintain
order at the construction. The sovereign, after all, can't maintain order in
this whole country, who am I to maintain order in the spaceport? Scoundrels
and cads trickled in to the construction and I can't figure out who the
culprits are. So, I am asking you, Ashinik, to become my vice-president,
fire everybody you would like to and hire everybody you would like to."
The zealot looked somewhat shocked.
"I can't serve demons," Ashinik said.
"In this case," Bemish said, "You will be responsible for the every
binge, fight and depravity happening at the spaceport. Since, if you worked
at the construction, you would be able to prevent this depravity. Why do you
refuse to do good for the people? Can't you do this? Why then do you muddle
people's minds calling yourself a man of power? Don't you want to do this?
Why do you call yourself a pious man then?"
The grey crowd looking like a huge centipede with burning eyes made of
the torches turned and moved and voices reached Bemish, standing on the
stage.
"If Ashinik became a boss, everything would be really different."
Ashinik was silent. Bemish waited - what kind of man is he and what's
stronger in him - the desire to hurt the people from the stars or the desire
to help the peasants.
"You know my beliefs, Mr. Bemish," Ashinik uttered. "Do you think I
will exchange them for your window they disburse money from?"
"I," Bemish said, "Believe in the freedom of conscience. The freedom of
conscience is not, when you let your employees believe in what you like,
it's when you let your employees believe what they want to. If you want to
consider me a demon - go ahead. If you are afraid that a close encounter
with me will weaken your beliefs, then they aren't worth much."
"All right," Ashinik said, "I accept your offer."
"You are nuts, Bemish," Giles said dismally.
Annoyed Kissur weighed the gun in his hand and threw it down the black
Adera well.
"You are a fool, Terence," he said, "and all of you, Earthmen, are
fools. It looks like your chicanery is of more use than your weapons."
The next day, the old bandit was taken to the capital in a truck. On
its way, a crowd of peasant zealots stopped the truck, pulled the bandit out
and dragged him to the village, somehow the bandit happened to be torn apart
on the way.
Not informing local police, Bemish called special troops in masks but
with an evident barbarian accent from the capital - mostly they were
Kissur's ex-warriors - and they scoured the hired workers' barracks
mercilessly fishing everybody suspicious out. They found about fifty such
people, beat them senseless, deposited them in a net and attached the net to
a freight helicopter. The helicopter made three triumphal circles above the
spaceport and flew to the capital.
Afterwards Bemish let Ashinik and his zealots into the barracks. He
gave full power to Ashinik and he proved to be right. The young fanatic was
a great manager and his intelligence service seemed to know the background
of each worker. They knew who in the barracks was a perspective zealot cowed
by the bandits and the thieves, who was an honest worker away from all these
catfights, who had robbed an Iniss bank last year and who had begged in
Upper Kharaine. Ashinik just brought Bemish the lists of workers to be fired
and Bemish initialed them without asking for any explanations that he
wouldn't get anyway.
The same day, Shavash called Bemish and insistently demanded the arrest
of all of the zealots. Bemish refused saying that they was necessary to
exterminate the bandits. Shavash said that he would give Bemish two weeks to
finish the bandits off and then Bemish should consecutively arrest all the
zealots for abusing their authority, lynching and sadistic treatment of
their subordinates. Actually, Shavash didn't suggest this plan out loud but
rather pretended that it had been Bemish's plan from the very beginning. To
destroy one infection using another one and then to write off all the
depravities that had happened during the extermination of the former to the
latter.
During that week, order and cleanliness came to rule the construction.
Bemish didn't entertain any illusions about the methods the zealots used to
attain this cleanliness - he saw how two janitors were whipping their
colleague for a rug that he hadn't washed at his shift's end - they whipped
him bloody with cries and brined whips.
For two weeks, Bemish wordlessly signed Ashinik's requests including a
request for buying, at the company's expense, three hundred meters of white
silk and three white geese even though Bemish was totally aware that white
silk would be used for belts the zealots covered with spells and wore on
their bodies and the three geese would be used for the divination about the
demons' fate.
In the beginning of the third week, Bemish found his new human
resources manager sitting and reading an acetylene welder construction and
repair manual that a zealot, considering acetylene welding to be a phantom
and illusion, was not supposed to do.
The next day, a highly placed committee from a Federation financial
advisory body arrived. The committee was supposed to study Weian economics
and collect data on the Galactic Bank target loan provided by the
Federation. From Bemish's point of view, this endeavor was pointless since
he hadn't seen a single target loan yet that was used for purposes other
than the construction of suburban villas for the officials in charge of the
credit distribution. The loans were humongous and the villas came out
luxurious. And since the loans were guaranteed by the state, the Federation
officials didn't give a damn what they were used for.
The committee landed in Assalah spaceport and expressed a desire to
examine the finished buildings and also the construction's next stage,
separated from the spaceport's operating part by steel mesh.
The committee was absolutely impressed with the order at the
construction site. Parting with Bemish, the committee head, the Galactic
Bank of Development Assistance vice-chairman, told him that he had a
brilliant trade union leader.
"It's incredible! Terence, where have you found this treasure? Have you
seen how the workers listen to him? They listen to him holding their breath
as if he was a prophet, and he is not even twenty yet!"
The vice-president said that this guy should immediately get a
scholarship and go to Havishem or Harvard and promised to write him a
reference letter.
Upon the committee's departure, Ashinik asked Bemish why Shavash hadn't
arrived with the Earthmen, since he had mostly been responsible for the
distribution of the above mentioned loans. Bemish answered that Shavash had
been busy. In fact, Shavash had called an hour before the flight and said
that he would come on one condition only - if he could take back with him
Ashinik's head in a sack. Shavash expressed himself exactly this way -
"head."
"Do you know," Shavash asked, "That these Following the Way guys
organized the last attempt at my assassination?"
"How would I know," Bemish snapped back, "If you hanged completely
different people for it?"
The next day, Bemish saw the Okuri company stock price skyrocketing and
it happened since Okuri perchance had secured from the sovereign the rights
to develop copper deposits recently found in the Chakhar mountains. Bemish
called Shavash to find out if Okuri had really gobbled this chunk or if
somebody was spreading the rumors to pick some dough and to find out if
there really was any copper ore in the Chakhar Mountains to begin with.
"I will exchange information about Okuri on Ashinik's balls," Shavash
said.
"No," Bemish said.
"What's happened to you, Terence, have you fallen in love with him? I
haven't noticed you leaning this way before."
Bemish choked.
"I am kidding. Since you love a different - woman," Shavash said
heavily and with a hidden meaning. And he dropped the receiver.
This evening, when Ashinik was having a dinner in the common cafeteria,
Bemish sat next to him. After tea, Bemish asked.
"Why does your sect dislike Shavash so much?"
Ashinik paused.
"Shavash is a briber and a scoundrel."
"Ashinik, sonny, all Weian officials are bribers and scoundrels. You,
however, dislike Shavash much more than, say, Khanida or Akhaggar - while
they cause just as much harm."
"Khanida hasn't tried to destroy us."
"That's why. And has Shavash tried?"
"Yes. He filled our circle with spies and dissidents. He bribed those
who were not firm in their convictions and they started preaching a lot of
nonsense and many people let themselves be lured."
"What kind of nonsense did they preach?"
"He bribed Dakhak and Dakhak started saying that it's wrong to deny
salvation to demons and that they would not be damned forever. And he bribed
Amarn and Amarn started teaching..." Ashinik suddenly stopped. "Our
teachings are none of your business," he finished.
Bemish couldn't conceal his smile.
"Are you sure that every zealot that doesn't believe the same things
you do, is necessarily bribed or seduced?"
"These people were bribed by Shavash," Ashinik cut him off.
Bemish paused. Really, Ashinik's words could be true. Shavash himself
told the Earthman that nothing was more efficient at killing the zealots
than discords among the sects. And the whole thing just looked like
Shavash's doing. Yes, this official stole, embezzled and it was not an
accident that a joke about him traveled around - out of all gods Shavash
envied ten handed Khagge the most - imagine how much you can steal with ten
hands? At the same time, only Shavash among all the bribers surrounding him
could be seriously concerned with the future danger of Following the Way.
Yes. It makes sense that Shavash tried to take care of the sect in a
way that wouldn't cause an international scandal. It would be one thing to
hang the zealots publicly pissing off all the human rights committees and
another thing to make them throttle each other.
At the end of the third week, Bemish found Ashinik on the border of an
unfinished sector. The lad was holding Bemish's gun that he had probably
picked up in a drawer in the office and, having extracted the battery, was
contemplating the "doughnut" thoughtfully. Ten meters away from Ashinik, a
huge basalt rock arose; it had been left on the field since it was too heavy
to transport. Now, a regular Atari could drag the rock away in two trips -
it was cut in half and black basalt foam bubbled at the jagged wound's
edges.
The light on the "doughnut" top blinked red - the battery was dead.
When Bemish approached, the zealot threw the gun on the grass and asked.
"Why didn't Kissur shoot me?" Bemish rolled on his feet.
"I've already told you. I can't let a deliberate murder happen right in
front of me even if the victim doesn't mind."
"I thought that this thing couldn't shoot me. At that moment, I thought
that you didn't allow Kissur to show that I was right."
Bemish silently looked at the youth. It would be interesting to know
how much time it took him to quarter the rock. Star's "doughnut" is
specified for forty eight minutes of uninterrupted shooting.
"It's very difficult," Ashinik said, "when you had seen that something
was black and then it appeared to be white."
"Have you really had visions, Ashinik?"
"I still have them."
"What are they about? Are they about Earthmen being demons?"
"Yes," Ashinik remarked, "Tell me, could a man be born out of a golden
egg?"
"Read a biology textbook," Bemish dryly suggested.
The next day, Ashinik was managing the forest clearing in a new area
and he fainted in the workers' view. He regained his senses in ten minutes
and continued working even though Bemish told him on the radio to go and
rest.
Ashinik felt fine for two days and he fainted again on the third one.
Then, he told the workers that he would turn them into cockroaches if they
told Bemish about the fits and Bemish didn't know anything till, in two
weeks, Ashinik fainted at a morning business meeting.
He recovered quickly but Bemish, not letting him open his mouth,
dragged him to the health services - to Isaak Malinovskii who was in charge
of influenza, accidents and malaria at the construction and who also kept
terrorizing Bemish with the possibility of a cholera epidemic.
Malinovskii took the youth's blood pressure, put him on the couch,
wrapped him with wires and ran a tomography on him. Ashinik didn't resist.
He didn't seem to care.
"What problems do you have?" Malinovskii finally asked, having covered
the youth with a blanket and sitting next to him.
"Am I fine?"
"You have a bad case of nervous exhaustion. What happens to you before
you faint?"
"I see different pictures. I was sitting, for example, at the today's
meeting and then everybody around started growing horns and snouts and a
wall tied around me and began choking me."
Ashinik paused.
"Tell me, doctor, am I crazy?"
"Why are you asking this question?"
"I have visions. I read this thick book - a psychiatry textbook. It
said that if a man saw what others didn't, it meant that something was wrong
with his brains."
"If an Earthman came to me and told me what you had just described, I
would definitely recommend him a psychiatrist. But the specific subculture
you belong to is very different. For Following the Way a trance is normal
and the ability to fall in a trance is one of the ways to prove your
leadership skills. You are a very nervous and excitable man, Ashinik, but
you are mentally normal. And I think that your visions will disappear soon
because here, working for the company, you've found another way to be a
leader.
Malinovskii attached a plastic drug vial to a syringe and said, "And
now you need to sleep long and well."
When Ashinik woke up, it was already day time. The fiery snouts that
had buzzed in his mind yesterday disappeared. He lay in a wide bed in a room
with carved pink wood walls and a wide open window. A cardinal sat on the
windowsill and studied him with eyes that looked like mercury droplets and
far away, behind the bird's red feathers and bush greenery two hundred
meters of Assalah spaceport control tower soared in the sky.
Ashinik realized that he had probably been moved to Terence Bemish's
villa. He hadn't been to the villa yet because there was a lot of work at
the spaceport and because Bemish either slept at the spaceport or flew to
the capital on business.
Ashinik turned his head and saw a girl sitting next to him. The girl
was dressed in a velvet jacket and a long bell shaped skirt sewn with
flowers and grasses. A hazy silk belt tied with a five-petal knot fluttered
behind her back like butterfly wings.
The girl smiled at Ashinik shyly and Ashinik suddenly smiled back.
Something scurried between them - Ashinik imagined for a moment a furry
little animal jumping out one smile into another.
"Mr. Bemish said that you should stay in bed and should not get up."
"Are you Bemish's concubine?" Ashinik asked. His voice suddenly
acquired the cold confidence that he preached to hundreds of people with.
"Yes."
"I heard about you. You are Inis. How much did he pay for you?"
Inis shuddered.
"He paid for me as much as they asked."
"Does he love you?"
"Mr. Bemish likes me quite a bit." Inis said.
"Why haven't I seen you at the construction?"
Inis smiled guiltily.
"Mr. Bemish really wanted me to be at the construction," Inis said.
"He taught me himself how to work with accounting software and make
accounting reports. He made me his secretary. And then this crap happened...
I was once sitting in the office in the evening when three workers came in.
They were going to file a complaint about their manager but when they saw me
sitting there alone, they assaulted me and... I was just able to call for
help. After that, I asked Mr. Bemish to let me stay in the villa and he
agreed."
Inis straightened up and added proudly.
"But I do a lot of stuff here. I check all the bills and last month I
saved Mr. Bemish two hundred thousand when I noticed one local official
running fake accounts through the company."
She sighed and added.
"We still had to give this official a fifty thousand bribe."
"What software do you use," Ashinik asked.
He had practically no experience with computers and, frankly, he was
afraid of these scary answerers that Earthmen always carried with them like
handkerchiefs and at every third word took them out of their pockets and
spread open. Seeing them always reminded him one of the most popular sect
myths - that demons took their souls out and put them in these organic
silicon handkerchiefs or iron boxes and the demons' souls felt lonely and
blinked on the monitors with multicolored lights.
Inis started saying something but Ashinik had drifted off. "The demon
is not very jealous if he leaves his concubine alone with a young man," he
thought.
Ashinik returned to the construction in three days and Bemish was very
happy since it was quite difficult to manage things without him. Bemish
happened to send Ashinik to villa several times for important papers or with
some orders and Ashinik always drove there with a visible delight.
Soon Inis appeared in Bemish's office again as a secretary and
Ashinik's frequent trips to the villa came to an end. Ashinik and Inis were
quite a bit younger than Terence Bemish - she was seventeen, he was twenty -
but Bemish just didn't notice how Inis' blushed when his young deputy
entered the company director's office and how often Ashinik and Inis ate
together in the company cafeteria or in one of the port's restaurants that
had grown around like mushrooms.
Although, Terence Bemish declared at his first meeting with Inis some
words about the freedom of will, in reality this freedom of will extended
only as far as him making Inis his secretary - while Inis was a nice and
kind girl, blindingly bright she was not. Bemish was quite happy when she
handed him a clean shirt and socks in the morning, excellent coffee at noon
and spent nights in his bed - when, of course, the Assalah company head was
not having fun in a capital bordello or at a high rank official reception
that would usually come to an end in the same bordello.
Bemish took as good care of her as he did of expensive house furniture
but he knew that nothing better than a secretary could come out of Inis - a
nice pleasant girl with a warm heart and, let's admit it, not a very smart
head. And Terence Bemish assigned automatically any unintelligent person to
a place at the very bottom of his rating list.
The next week, Trevis visited the construction. The meeting had been
planned a while ago and had nothing to do with the zealots' affair but
Trevis probably heard something during the flight. His first question upon
arrival was,
"Terence, what's going on here? They say that you appointed some zealot
to be your deputy?"
"Let me introduce Ashinik to you," Bemish said.
Ashinik bowed. Trevis stared at the youth.
"Do you consider me a demon?" Trevis inquired.
"I am not familiar with you," Ashinik answered seriously, "But what
I've heard about you makes me think that a lot of people would call you a
demon and you wouldn't take an offence at this name anyway."
Trevis laughed out.
"Well, even if you are a zealot, at least you are not crazy," he said.
On the eighteenth, Bemish spoke to the sovereign Varnazd. It happened
the following way.
Bemish collected quite a number of papers requiring Shavash's signature
and he arrived to the capital in person bringing the papers and gifts with
him. He was told that Shavash was in the palace and he would be there till
morning. Bemish went to the palace. He entered without an issue.
Umpteen pavilions and inner yards and the gardens breathing with
freshness were so unexpectedly beautiful that Bemish, tired of the banging
concrete blocks and of all the filth of his huge construction, forgot
everything walking thoughtlessly amidst the dancing gods and pompously
cackling peacocks. Suddenly somebody called him out of a carved gazebo.
"Mr. Bemish!"
Bemish turned around and came closer trying to recall where, out of all
the endless receptions, he saw this young official with a nice and uncertain
face and eyebrows pulling upwards like a sparrow's tail.
"Don't you recognize me?" the official asked smiling.
"Oh, my sovereign," Bemish exclaimed, going down on one knee, "How can
one not recognize you?!"
The sovereign pointed Bemish to a woven chair deep in the gazebo.
Bemish sat in the chair and pushed the paper folder behind his back.
"I wanted to ask you," the sovereign continued, "What is
"unfathomable?"
"What?" Bemish was astounded. The sovereign picked a volume lying in
front of him and read, stretching the vowels slightly.
Unfathomable sea, whose waves are years,
Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe,
Are salted with the salt of human tears...
Bemish lowered his eyes looking at the front page - it was Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
"Ah," Bemish said, "Unfathomable means bottomless. It's a poetic word.
I don't think anybody would need it now."
"Yes," the sovereign nodded, "A lot of poetic words disappeared from
your language. But numerous abbreviations appeared, didn't they?
Bemish nodded.
"It's a pity," the sovereign said, "that they don't translate your old
books. They translate dictionaries and manuals but not Shelley."
"Do you like Shelley?" Bemish asked with trepidation to maintain the
conversation, even though the only Shelley he had read was a certain A.D.
Shelley, one of the co-authors of a book Assembling Radiowave Beacons on
Geostationary Orbits in Order to Correct the Spaceship's Trajectory in the
Proximity of Planets."