"The Securities Commission cheated them out of one and a half billion," Rusby objected. "Nobody can blame me in failing to pay what I promised, in unsuccessful investments or in a pyramid scheme."
Giles went blue in the face.
"Is it true, Mr. Shavash," he said, "that the man who bankrupted two hundred thousand investors, is participating in the Assalah auction?"
"Everybody is participating in the auction," the small official said.
"Including a rogue supported by the dictator's money?"
"I am not familiar with a financial term dictatorship," Shavash replied.
Bemish looked around and noticed another witness of this ruckus — Khanadar the Dried Date looked at him out of a corner. Bemish quietly came to him and asked.
"So, how do you like the business world?"
Khanadar grinned.
"Once, twenty years ago," he said, "my comrades and I were coming back from a not-so-successful trip. We had been going to pillage a town but when we came in, the town had already been pillaged and the guys, who had pillaged it, drove us away. We were famished since we didn't eat anything for days. Even our horses croaked. Finally, we reached the coast and a town, and the food and the loot in the town. Then, we got friendlier to each other and began to hug and we had tried to keep a ten step distance, before, — to avoid being eaten."
"I see. So, the Earthmen resemble you in this trip, before you found this town."
"Eh, Terence-rey (Khanadar used a respectful Alom postfix.) We only needed three rolls for a man not to worry about being eaten, but I still haven't figured out how much an Earthman needs, not to eat another Earthman."
X X X
The officials attended to Bemish extensively and soon the whole villa was filled by their gifts — Bemish, however, had to make gifts of his own in return.
Shavash send Bemish a painting as a gift. The painting was done in the "thousand scales" style with spider web lines drawn on silk; a girl, feeding from her hand a dragon that stuck its head out of the water, was depicted. The girl with black hair and eyes, big like olives, resembled Idari and Bemish hung it right above the table in his office. At their next meeting, Shavash praised Bemish's taste and said that it was a fifth dynasty painting, most probably, an excellent copy of a Koinna's masterpiece. Bemish, somewhat galled that the gift was only a copy, inquired about the original's location and Shavash, laughing, told him that the original was stored in the palace and was fated to an eternal confinement, like the Emperor's wives.
X X X
"However," Shavash added with a grin, "they now sell the palace treasures left and right. I think that nobody reaps as much money as the custodians of paintings and bowls; at least one third of everything that has ever been painted and potted in by Eukemen is stored in the palace. Nobody except the Emperor and the custodian in charge has access to the treasures, there is absolutely no order there — steal as much as you want."
The headman heard this conversation and, arching his body in the usual way, told Bemish that a far relative of his worked in the palace and would love to meet the Earthman.
Bemish met him. The far relative appeared to be a small red nosed official from the Department of Paintings, Tripods, and Bowls. The relative showed Bemish color photographs of the astoundingly beautiful fifth dynasty vessels and several paintings done in the "morning fog" style, most popular at the Golden Sovereign times, and in the "thousand scales" style. The girl and dragon painting was not there. Or, more precisely, it was there and not one, but several of them — it was a popular sea prince tale — but none of them belonged to Koinna's hand.
The official offered Bemish to sell anything the latter would like and the price he asked for the fifth dynasty last survived silk paintings was twice less than what any modern doodle, sold in Bonn's galleries, would cost.
Bemish thanked the official and refused.
X X X
Kissur arranged for Bemish an audience in the Hundred Fields Hall. Bemish left his car next to the Sky Palace wall and he was escorted down the sanded paths and fragrant alleys.
In a light flooded hall, resembling a fragment from a fairy tale from the sky, the officials whispered, dressed in ancient court clothes. In half an hour, a silver curtain moved to the side — the Emperor Varnazd was sitting on the amethyst throne. The Emperor was dressed in white, he had a sad delicate face with strikingly made-up eyebrows, rising at the tips. It looked like a silent single actor play. Bemish thought it to be a very sad play.
The curtain soon moved back and the officials dispersed to attend their own business.
Bemish crossed the fragrant gardens and exited the palace gate. The square in front of the palace gasped with heat, two half-naked brats explored a stinking street rut with their hands.
Bemish opened his car, foraged in the glove compartment and dished several chocolate bars out to the brats. They tore the wrappers apart sinking their rotting teeth into the chocolate.
"Hey," Bemish asked in his crappy Weian, "do you know what Earth is?"
"Of course. It's a place in the sky, where we'll go after we die, if we behave ourselves and obey the Emperor."
Having turned the air conditioning on, Bemish sat in the car for a while, looking at the silver beasts on the palace wall crest, remembering the Hundred Fields Hall's immense luxury, the golden ceiling and jade columns. "A very rich government of a very poor nation," he thought.
X X X
In two weeks, Bemish was at a party that the first minister threw to celebrate his birthday. There was food and binge drinking and girls. There was swimming in a night pond. There were various contracts made and papers signed amidst the dishes with stuffed dates and the dishes with everything that was raised in the sky and raised on the ground, these very papers would normally involve huge bribes; the bribes, however, were still supposed be paid later. There were also songs and poetry. A ministry of finance official — was his name Tai? — took something resembling a lute and started playing music and singing.
Then, a girl sang a song — it was a very lyrical song. Bemish was told that an official named Andarz had written this song about twenty years ago. He was the police minister and he had suppressed the Chakhar uprising, having hung everybody who couldn't buy him off and letting off everybody who could. Coming back to the capital, he wrote the cycle of his best poetry about the four seasons. Bemish felt chills run down his spine, he leaned over to Kissur and said.
"This is a great singer."
The girl finished the song and sat, by Kissur's order, on Bemish's knees.
Afterwards, they started playing rhymes. Bemish, of course, didn't know Weian good enough to compose a verse with a given rhyme or to finish a line. But, somehow, he felt that he wouldn't do any better in English than in Weian.
A street singer was brought in.
Bemish recalled how he was driving from the spaceport and asked his interpreter — the guy had started as one of the Weians that washed dishes on the ground — to stop the car. He wanted to look at the street puppeteer with a crowd gathered around him on the curb. The interpreter answered that it was "uncultured." Bemish asked what was "cultured," and he found out that it was "cultured" for the whole neighborhood to attend trashy Hollywood and Seilass movies.
Here, among the higher officials, nobody thought that listening to a street singer was uncultured.
The street singer sang praise to the guests and they tossed money into his hat and showed him to the kitchen. The officials started singing themselves.
If only they hadn't sung! Then, everything would have been fine and it would have just been corrupted bureaucrats' drunken debauchery. But they sang so well! Bemish had a difficulty imagining state department officials coming to their boss's party and singing so well — or signing such papers at the same party.
Or was it all related? And will the poetry follow the corruption on its way to extinction? Mr. Andars departed Chakhar, burned by him, for the capital and composed his most beautiful poetry cycle abou
t summer and fall. He was probably very happy. He probably obtained a lot of booty on the Chakhar trip.
Eight years later, Kissur and Andars found themselves on the different sides of the same sword and Kissur had hung rebellious Andars and loved listening to his poetry.
The next week, Bemish arranged a return feast at his villa.
During the dinner, Shavash kept glancing at Inis, who was serving the guests. When she, having provided the guests with the sweets, walked by Shavash with an empty tray, the official pulled her to himself suddenly and seated her on his knees. Inis jumped off hurriedly, upsetting Shavash's cup with her sleeve. Fortunately, there was no wine left in the cup.
Excusing himself, Shavash left earlier than the others. Bemish walked him down.
Getting in his car, Shavash said.
"Inis is charming, Terence. They say you made her your secretary? She is as smart as she is attractive, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"I will never believe it! Would you like a bet — I will take your secretary in for two weeks, and if I am satisfied, I owe you fifty thousand."
Bemish was silent.
"Mr. Bemish!"
"I can't do you this favor, vice-minister."
"Let me have her for one night, then. She can choose afterwards."
"Look, Shavash, have you asked Kissur to let you have Idari for a night?"
"How can you compare it?" Shavash was offended. "Idari is a highborn lady and what do you have here? A small briber's daughter that you bought for thirty thousand — they cheated you by charging twice more than the regular price."
"Get out of here, vice-minister," Bemish said, "before you hurt yourself over my fist."
X X X
In the evening, after all the guests had left, Bemish walked upstairs to the bedroom. Inis lay in the bed. Bemish sat on the blanket's edge and the woman, propping herself up, started to unbutton his jacket and shirt.
"This official, Shavash, asked me to hand you over to him," Bemish said. "At first, he hoped that I would offer you myself and, then, he couldn't hold it any longer and just blurted it out. I almost trounced him."
Inis shuddered.
"Don't give me away to Shavash," she said. "He is a nasty man. He has five wives and a whip for each one. He hangs out in red light streets at night and locks himself with his secretaries during the daytime — a week ago a secretary of his hanged himself — they said he embezzled too much. And how he entertains himself in bawdy houses!"
Bemish reddened. His knowledge of Shavash's behavior in bawdy houses was based on personal observations. And he doubted his behavior was much better.
X X X
The next day, when Bemish walked upstairs, Inis's room was empty. A pale note lay lonely on the table. "I hate him. But he called me and said that he would hang my father."
Bemish was at the ministry of finance in an hour. He threw a frightened secretary away and appeared at Shavash's office door.
"You scoundrel," Bemish said. "I'll tell Kissur everything. I'll tell the sovereign…"
"And the human rights committee," the official nodded. "I don't want to place you in an uncomfortable position, director. I assure you that Inis's father deserves a rope — I have his dossier here. It's pretty horrible — all these dirty tricks that a small, stupid, and greedy briber can commit, the dirty tricks that ended with deaths and dishonor. Can you believe that — for a bribe, he switched some names on the arraignment orders after the Chakhar rebellion, he accepted as completed a water dam that burst in a month and destroyed a whole village. I assure you — if you complain to the sovereign, her father will certainly be executed."
"Give me back my wife," Bemish screamed.
The official stood up unhurriedly from his armchair, walked around the table and stopped right next to the Earthman. Bemish stared right into his attentive golden eyes and long lightly mascara coated eyelashes.
"What do you want from me?" Bemish said. "Deals? Bribes?"
Shavash smiled at the Earthman without answering. Shavash was still very beautiful, maybe slight overweight for his height, and Bemish was surprised to notice some grey strands in his hair.
Shavash raised his hand slowly and suddenly started to unbutton Terence's jacket. Bemish was confounded and he closed his eyes. The hot hands slipped under his shirt and a soft voice sounded right next to him.
"If you want to quench your thirst, don't quarrel with a spring, Earthman."
Bemish didn't feel repulsion. But he definitely felt horror. Shavash's lips appeared next to his and, at least a minute passed, till Bemish realized that they were kissing. Then, a phone rang far away.
Bemish came back to his senses.
His jacket was unbuttoned, the shirt stood out above the pants in a funny way and something jutted in the pants. The small official stood in front of him and looked at the Earthman with laughing eyes.
Bemish raised his hand lifelessly and wiped his mouth with the palm. "Beat it," Shavash said. "Take your concubine and beat it. She bores me. She mewled in bed all night."
Bemish retreated crabwise to the door, turned around and rushed out. "Button yourself, at least!" the official sarcastically shouted after him.
Having torn out the office door handle, Bemish jumped out into the foyer. Something flapped in the air and a plastic folder fell at Bemish's feet with multicolored pages standing out. It was the folder with the Inis' father dossier. Bemish snatched it and kept running.
X X X
Nobody believed that Kissur would make friends with the Earthman. Greenmailer, par venue, gobbler that has recently swallowed a small automated door company with LSV help and used it as a step to swallow something bigger; one of the youngsters, that Trevis made his money with — a nobody without Trevis. This man had the crappiest reputation on Wall Street. "The hungriest of Trevis's scoundrels," the director of the automated door company said about him after he had been fired. How could Kissur, who considered a well-behaved president of, say, Morgan James to be an usurer fit for the gallows, be friends with this financial horse thief?
The friendship between the Earthman and Kissur caused a bit of harmless gossip — everybody expected that either the Earthman calls Kissur a pedigreed bandit or Kissur reproaches Bemish with the latter's passionate avarice. However, Kissur's presenting Bemish with his manor, caused thoughts and glances in the five main precincts.
Bemish visited the capital police prefect to sign a paper with a blue line. The prefect congratulated him with the manor, sighed and said.
"You shouldn't be so close to Kissur. Do you know how he launched his career? He and his seven friends robbed a state caravan. They killed thirty six guards and Kissur put the caravan master's head on a stake, thought the man was not guilty of anything except having children and an old mother that he needed to support. Then, Kissur quarreled with the robbers because their leader didn't want to step aside for him and he baked the leader in an earth oven."
"But now," Bemish quipped, "Kissur doesn't have to rob caravans."
The prefect passed his hand over his cheek.
"There are, alas, dozens of people around Kissur. These people can handle weapons, despise bribers and traders and think robbery to be the only respectable profit source. Do you think that our country is poor due to bribers and large taxes? Alas, our businessmen don't pay money to the government, they, instead, pay money to the bandits who protect them from the other bandits."
"Nobody," Bemish said, "asked me for the protection money."
"Exactly," the police prefect said.
Bemish wanted to grab the damn official by his neck and ask him whether he was hinting that Kissur was in charge of the capital criminals. He, however, thanked him for the signature and left. Although, Kissur did take him to one of the city's most famous thief's taverns and he was welcome there — Bemish learned later that if he ambled in this tavern without a pass, he wouldn't have just been killed there — the tavern's guests would have been fed his body in a soup — that was their cute
way of getting rid of the corpses.
X X X
That day, Bemish was in the finance ministry, at Shavash's. Entering his office, he stumbled upon a pale upset man, dressed in standard clothing but having soft Weian manners.
Shavash led him into the garden, where fountains and birds chirped, and ordered a table with appetizers. Somehow the conversation unnoticeably drifted to Idari, Kissur's wife. Shavash said that if not for Idari, Kissur would have smashed his head long time ago.
"He loves her a lot," Shavash said, sighing. Three months ago, he feasted the people at her naming day, and he spent three million."
He paused and added.
"Where do you think Kissur gets so much money if he doesn't take bribes and doesn't do any business?"
"It's the tax police business and not mine, to know where he gets the money," Bemish said. "And it's the sovereign's business, since he bequests him an oil well or a manor every month."
Shavash waved his hand and started drinking tea. In five minutes, he suddenly said.
"Do you know the man who left just before you came in? He is the Damass insurance company director. It was robbed yesterday. They took twenty million dinars in cash."
Bemish was surprised — newspapers published nothing about the robbery.
"Why did they have so much money in cash?" Bemish inquired.
"That's exactly the problem," Shavash sighed. "That's the question, who is the company going to pay such a sum of money to — on a holiday evening?"
He paused.
"It will not appear in the newspapers. But the company was indeed robbed."
"Will it appear to the police?"
"Yes," Shavash said, "since our police — if asked — will not inquire why the company needed this money."
Bemish finished his coffee and asked.
"Listen, Shavash, are you trying to tell me that Kissur robs banks at nights or that you, at least, will do your best to convince the sovereign of it?"
"Come on, Mr. Bemish," the official was taken aback, "why did you…" And suddenly he tousled his hair. "He is a madman! If he is passing a house on fire, he will rush inside to get a child out and, if he is passing a house that's not burning, he will set it aflame."
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