Insider ви-6

by Julia Latynina

  Bemish had just finished the appetizers, when a guy took a sit next to him. Bemish raised his eyes — it was a middling tall man with stern eyes, transparent like gasoline, and with a body that local peasants described as "a really inept god hewed him out." However, upon more careful inspection, the guy's face didn't go together with the overall crude image — it was hard, as if made from the twisted together wires.

  "Good day, Mr. Bemish," the man said, "My name is Robert Giles. I represent IC company — you know, we are participating in the Assalah spaceport investment auction.

  "What a coincidence," Bemish said, "I am participating also in it."

  "But you are not in good standing with Mr. Shavash."

  "It's not a reason for disappointment."

  "I recommend you, Mr. Bemish, to leave this planet before they kick you out of here."

  "And I recommend you to get out of this table before I bathe you in my soup."

  "Believe me, Mr. Bemish. A company's hostile takeover is intended for a civilized country. While, if you try to buy a local company, when its director doesn't want it… do you know that this director has his own jail?"

  "I know," Bemish said, "that this director can be dismissed by the sovereign if somebody close to the sovereign proves that this director doesn't act in the company's best interest. Have you heard what happened to Joseph Kaminsky thanks to Kissur? Have I made myself clear?"

  "Quite. So, Kissur stands behind you and Shavash stands behind me. Who will flatten whom into the ground?"

  Here, the waiter brought Bemish the dessert and, elongating his neck, inquired Giles if he liked to order anything.

  "No," Giles said, "I am leaving. And if you, Mr. Bemish, knew the local cuisine well, you wouldn't have ordered a guinea pig burger."

  X X X

  Kissur spent the rest of the day with Khanadar, the Dried Date, and a couple of close friends in the pubs. Kissur lost twenty thousand in dice and he didn't really drink much, though he did thwack somebody's mug. In the evening, Kissur got in his car and drove to Shavash.

  Shavash was in the Cloud Gazebo and he had an Earthman as a visitor. The Earthman had to be a close enough associate because, firstly,

  Shavash received him in the gazebo for the Weian guests and, secondly, two beautiful girls were also there. They were more undressed than dressed; one girl sat on the Earthman's knees and another one, breathing zestfully, licked that particular object sticking its bloated head out of Shavash's unzipped pants. Shavash reclined, leaning backward, on the carpet and his jacket and shirt sprawled nearby. The table was filled with appetizers and fruits — the friends had finished the business part were starting to relax.

  The Earthman shook the wench off and got up.

  "Robert Giles," Shavash said, "the IC representative."

  Kissur silently took the Earthman's chair and sat astride it.

  "I guess, I should go," the Earthman said, glancing at the girl regretfully."

  "Go," Kissur said, "these girls cost five isheviks per pair next to Trans-Gal, don't be greedy."

  The Earthman left. Shavash pulled the girl on himself, half closing his eyes, and the girl mounted him. Shavash breathed heavily and greedily.

  "Lie on your back," he told the girl. She followed the command obediently.

  Kissur waited till Shavash came.

  "Why don't you go, bring a jar of Inissa wine," Kissur told the girls. "Both of you."

  The girls left the gazebo. Shavash lay on the carpet groping for the shirt with his hand.

  "Everybody, like, is running around with this spaceport," Kissur said, "and they all run to you."

  "I am the company director."

  "Who was the director before you?"

  "A man named Rashar."

  "Hey, wasn't he your secretary? So, at first you sent him to the director's chair, and then to jail."

  "You shouldn't steal," Shavash replied, "in busloads."

  "Come on. He would give you away half a busload and you wanted three quarters. You will waste the country, scoundrels."

  Shavash finally buttoned up the shirt and pants, propped himself up and poured a cup of wine.

  "Kissur, one little tank trip of yours over the Coke plant cost more to the country than everything I have ever stolen and I will ever steal."

  "Why do you all fret so much about this stupid factory?" Kissur exclaimed. "And Terence was just yakking about the same thing." Shavash silently sucked on a straw.

  "Whatever. Bemish will buy your company and make you all sweat."

  "He will hardly buy the company," Shavash said. "Mr. Bemish often acquires companies but I haven't heard him actually buying a single one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Mr. Bemish is quite a good financier but he made his money the following way. He would buy a company stocks threatening it by a takeover, and then sell the shares back to the company at higher than market price. It's called greenmail. He worked with very small companies in the beginning, then, he switched to the larger ones but, then, they asked him to get out of the civilized countries. He hasn't really broken any laws but they made it clear for him and his boss that they should go out and have fun someplace else."

  "His boss?"

  "His LSV boss. Ronald Trevis. Where do you think he got the greenmail money? Trevis raised money for him and Bemish was just a cudgel. Did you see a gentleman named Welsey, next to Bemish? This is Trevis — a morsel of Trevis."

  "I see," Kissur said.

  "LSV is a cool company," Shavash continued, "They find people, ready to get out of their own skins and skin the others to scrape together a dinar, a crown and a dollar, and they set them at large companies. They are not financiers — they are gangsters. They would be shot dead on our planet. They were reproached elsewhere and they decided to move to the places with no strict financial laws and a lot of under priced property."

  Shavash was silent and, then, added,

  "This rascal bought 7 % of the Assalah shares through the dummy agents and he has been buying them in small blocks for many months to not disturb the market."

  The girls came back with wine and one of them sat on Kissur's knees and other one crawled to Shavash and started to touch him with her hands under the shirt and Shavash laughed and put the wine glass on the table and reclined on his back again.

  X X X

  The next day, the first vice-minister of finance Shavash stood in front of the head of the government, old Mr. Yanik.

  Mr. Yanik became first minister a year and a half ago after the death of his predecessor's, a certain Mr. Arfarra. Everybody unanimously considered Yanik to be a nonentity and a temporary replacement. Who cares how to plug a hole as long as it doesn't leak? However, the nonentity clung to his position way longer than many people who thought him to be a temporary incident.

  Yanik and Shavash belonged to different generations, and more importantly, to different parties. Shavash occasionally expressed quite loudly his opinion about Yanik while the latter occasionally and quite loudly used the former, as an example to express his regret about the old times when the overly rapacious officials would find themselves hanging on all four palace gates — a quarter per gate.

  "Make yourself familiar," Yanik said, handing Shavash a white plastic folder.

  Shavash opened the folder and concentrated on reading.

  It was a construction project of a humongous aluminum complex in the east of the Empire, in Tar'Salim, rich in alumina but poor in energy resources. The construction consisted of the aluminum extraction and processing facilities, two power plants — fission and magneto-hydrodynamic ones, and a small plant making composite alloys for gravitonic engines.

  The total construction estimated expenditure was two hundred million galactic dinars. The company was naturally state-owned.

  Shavash turned the last page and found what he was looking for — the person nominated for the company general director position was Chanakka — the first minister's twice removed grandson, an empty-headed and
debased man who had already failed at at least three projects. Cosmopolitan Shavash, with his impeccable knowledge of the major Galactic languages and stylish suits, especially loathed Chanakka's fanatical nationalism.

  "This," the first minister said, "is an unquestionably important project. No longer will we drag behind the Civilized Worlds. No other planet has such a facility!"

  Shavash thought that both Tranar and Dakia had the same facilities. They, however, were not state-owned.

  "In two year," the first minister said, "we will control the space engines market! Your department has a week to budget seventy million dinars for the primary equipment."

  "We can't do that," Shavash said coolly.

  "Why?"

  "We don't have money. The officials in Chakhar haven't been paid since last year."

  Yanik looked at the finance vice-minister disapprovingly. Shavash was too young. Yanik still remembered times when the words "We don't have money" just didn't carry any meaning in Weian Empire. If money ran out, more of it could always be printed. None of it influenced the prices, since the merchandise prices were determined not by the amount of money in circulation but by the Bill of Prices for goods and services.

  "Mr. Shavash," Yanik asked, "what is your monthly salary?"

  "It is three hundred isheviks," Your Eminence.

  Is it true that your last toy, a private space yacht of the Emerald class cost four hundred fifty thousand isheviks?"

  "It was a friends' gift," the official smiled.

  "Mr. Shavash," Yanik said, "Tas'Salim is the our country's most important construction. We must find money for it. Otherwise, we will take care of your yacht. Do you understand me?"

  "Quite."

  X X X

  Shavash returned to his luxurious office sincerely upset. He snapped at the secretary, flung a fashionable jacket on the chair's back, threw himself in the armchair, and sat immobile for a while. Those, who knew Shavash superficially, would be certain that he was upset by the first minister's open threat — the beautiful yacht clearly aggravated some people. However strange it may sound, Shavash was upset due to totally different reasons. In any case, in the absolute quietude of his office equipped with a dozen counter-tapping devices, he allowed himself to wrap his hands around his head and quietly utter,

  "What are they doing? Do these fuckers understand what they are doing?"

  He turned the office speaker on and ordered. "Daren! Could you find Stephen Sigel for me, quickly?"

  Stephen Sigel was a representative of Naren and Lissa Joint Bank, the twelfth largest bank in this Galaxy sector; he had showed up on Weia a week ago hoping to start joint projects.

  Stephen Sigel appeared in the first finance vice-minister's office in two hours.

  "Mr. Sigel," Shavash rushed head-on, "the Weian government would like to obtain a seventy million galactic dinar loan immediately from the Naren and Lissa Joint Bank for six months at a nineteen percent interest. Could we do it?"

  Stephen Sigel swallowed. 19 % interest was a very sweat deal. The Federation bonds had 7 % interest rate, the Earth Bonds — 7.5 %. Though, the Weian Empire finances were, no doubt, in a way worse state than the Earth's finances, the bank would've considered 16 % to be quite a decent number.

  "Yes," Stephen Sigel said.

  "Great," the official replied, "the credit agreement will be signed one hour after one half of a percent from the loan appears on my table, in an envelope."

  Next morning, one hour before the government meeting, the first vice-minister of finance Shavash put on the first minister Yanik's table the credit agreement with the Naren and Lissa Joint Bank.

  "Here is your seventy million," he said, "I assume there is no point including it in the budget revenue. The money is allocated as an out-of-budget industry support fund.

  He turned away and left the office.

  "He is such an incredibly deft man," the touched first minister thought, "How has he managed to procure money so quickly?"

  Of course, the first minister understood vaguely that there was some connection between Shavash's ability to obtain galactic credits quickly and his buying trinkets like a private space yacht. On the other hand, the first minister enjoyed the thought that the money Shavash grabbed on this deal, paled next to the rake-off his twice removed grandson would make buying the galactic equipment for his company from the front intermediaries at doubled prices.

  X X X

  The same day, when the budget problems for the Galaxy's fourth largest aluminum facility were happily solved, McCormick, Welsey, and Bemish drove to another construction — also state-owned and also humongous.

  Halfway to their destination, they almost drowned in a huge pothole — the road started again in seven meters after the rut. An oldster, living nearby, gathered the people and they dragged the jeep across the pothole on a sledge. They charged so little that Bemish even relinquished his suspicions about the old guy digging the hole himself to make money on it. Later Bemish learned that two districts joined at that point and their heads could not agree on who would fix the pothole.

  At the ruins, Bemish felt such sadness as he had never felt in his life before — from the inconceivable waste of nature and construction equipment. The black gate on the landing field lonely stuck out on the blue sky background like a victory arch, it was decorated by various appeals to gods and demons. Ponds, yellow and round like owl eyes, bloomed in the landing chutes. The giant overpass had fallen apart, grass and flowers grew on the poles and the blocks, ants dashed back and forth on the road designed for multi-ton trucks.

  An even and incredibly thorny hedge with little blue flowers and half inch barbs covered exactly half the space field making it look like a forest surrounding the Sleeping Beauty's castle. Alas, the thorns didn't disappear with Bemish's arrival.

  The spaceport administration wing was cleaved at the first floor level and an elevator chute pointed right in the sky. There was no way, somebody could work here but Bemish remembered clearly an office expenditures entree in a company report and it was about this building. There was something horrifying in this place that ceased to be a part of nature but didn't become a part of the industrial world.

  "However, the construction' expenses will be twice lower here," Bemish noted.

  The sun was hurrying up to noon, when Bemish and McCormick left the building for a small bamboo grove rattling in the background of the bright stainless steel hangar. Bemish saw that they were not the only ones here — a helicopter stood on the fanned out paws behind the bamboo grove and the wind, raised by its wings, entangled gentle green grass stuck to the landing field. Bemish walked down to the helicopter. Under its belly, a man, in washed out jeans, laid out a napkin and was eating a ham sandwich. Having recognized Giles from IC, Bemish smirked. Another man stood nearby, petting on the back a red horse with white stockings — Kissur.

  "Good day," Bemish said, approaching. "Did you fly in together?"

  "No," Kissur said, "I am riding."

  And he pointed to the side, where two more riders were circling — Khanadar the Dried Date and a servant.

  "Did you ride here from the capital?" Welsey was shocked.

  "I have friends nearby, and they have a private airport," Kissur explained.

  "Yeah, they know how to build here," Welsey said, "they juiced five billions in and nobody even mows the hay down. Why don't they, do you have any idea?"

  "They are afraid of ghosts," Bemish supposed.

  "Exactly right," Kissur said, "Do you know how a witch gets born?"

  None of the Earthmen was a witch genesis specialist and Kissur explained.

  Sometimes, a temple or even a simple house is built at a road intersection and then the world changes its masters, the temple gets forgotten or a house owner moves away, God knows where to. The house cries, grows older, grass grows on the roof and a hat of moss covers the gate poles. Water starts to cut doodles and lines on the pole and a crow builds a nest there. In the evening, the locals get frightened pa
ssing by the pole — they think, somebody is standing guard in the dark. The fear grows into the pole, covers its features and seeps in its soul. The pole's soul gets born of fear and wind, it starts to watch the moon and walk in the rain and slush — that's how a pole witch appears.

  Kissur pointed at the wide open gate on the summer field and added. "Who knows, maybe these poles also stroll around at night?"

  Giles chortled. Kissur turned to Bemish and asked.

  "So, does it cost a lot?"

  "You should ask McCormick," Bemish replied. "I am not a specialist here. My field is finance."

  "They abandoned the construction to sell it cheaper afterwards," McCormick said. "They built it for a while and abandoned in three years."

  "Why was it exactly three years?" Kissur wondered.

  "Because, accordingly to your laws, a start-up company is salary tax-exempt and can import equipment with half the custom tariffs for three years," Bemish replied.

  "Ahh," ex-minister drawled, "and whom are they going to sell it to?"

  "Not to me," Bemish noted.

  Kissur turned around and stared at Giles. The IC representative feigned a yawn.

  "It's time to go," Giles claimed. "I can give a ride to the capital to anybody except the jeep."

  "Terence will stay here," Kissur said. "We will ride horses together."

  Kissur nodded to one of his companions and he jumped of the horse. They walked the horse closer to Bemish and he stared in a large brown eye. The horse chewed on its mouthpiece and her sides rose and lowered. The horse watched Bemish and Bemish watched the horse.

  "This is the tail," Kissur said, "this is the head and the driver's seat is in the middle. What are you waiting for? Get in."

  "I don't like," Bemish replied, "that it moves before I turn the ignition on."

  Kissur and his servants laughed agreeably.

  Bemish, however, had to climb on the horse and trek through a crazy forest where the power line poles entwined by lianas grew instead of the trees. Bemish tired out, battered his butt and finally almost drowned in a lawn which in reality proved to be a swamp inside a landing chute.