Insider ви-6

by Julia Latynina

  "You understand nothing here, Terence. I don't need money. I need to turn this country in something decent. It is possible only if I become the richest official in this country. For that — I need money. I need huge money, money that this country doesn't have. But, the Galaxy has this money and you, Terence, will deliver this money from the Galaxy to here."

  X X X

  To conclude, the reception worked out great if not for an accident at its very end. It was already midnight, the time when men liked to have fun was getting closer and the wives of several higher Weian officials hurried to take leave and disappear and women's laughter started to come out of the temple gazebos. Bemish and Trevis walked down a garden path under falling cherry petals by the gods cramped in the darkness. They had discussed everything already and they simply enjoyed in silence the dark and tart night, dusted by the fragrance of night flowers and the faraway singing of expensive whores.

  The road led them to a small pond, where a marble god in a brocade caftan stood on the bank.

  "Here is Shavash," Trevis said, "but it looks like the timing is wrong."

  Shavash half sat under the god's statue and fondled a midnight cowgirl. Something made Bemish hearken and he stopped.

  "Let's get out of here," Trevis restrained him.

  Suddenly something gleaned in the woman's hand.

  "Terence!"

  Bemish didn't remember how he dashed across the lawn. He remembered only Idari's voice and the dagger in her hands. The next second, Bemish pulled the official to the side. A fish scale flash of the dagger tore air right where Shavash had just sat. Idari leaped to her feet, lithe and agile like a sand lizard.

  Shavash stank with cognac and palm tree wine — a killer combination. He was boozed up to the hilt — much more than he had been an hour ago in the tower.

  "What are you doing?" the official rasped.

  Bemish silently pulled a short jab at Shavash's jaw. The official closed his eyes and went down to the ground. Trevis rushed to Bemish, pale as death.

  "Bye-bye your fund," Trevis muttered.

  "He will remember nothing," Bemish objected.

  "I hope that you will also remember nothing," Idari said.

  Bemish's heart was hopping like a mouse in a jar.

  "Should I walk you?" he asked Idari.

  But the woman only shook her head slightly and, in a moment, she disappeared in the bushes. The dagger had vanished even earlier in her blowsy sleeve folds. Shavash mumbled something, turned over on his back and started snoring.

  "Why did you have to beat him?" Trevis got angry. "Is she your lover or what?"

  Furious Bemish turned around. Trevis pulled back.

  "Just forget it," Bemish muttered finally, "otherwise we will all get a lot of problems."

  They were almost at the house, when Bemish, having kept glum silence all the way, suddenly said, "If a civil war starts in this Empire, it will start on this woman's account."

  X X X

  The morning after the reception, some guests signed a treaty of intent — about creating together with Shavash and Bemish several joint companies specializing mostly in export-import operations. Weian tariffs were quite high, but Shavash hinted to the people present that they probably wouldn't have to pay them.

  The official was pale after the yesterday's binge and a huge bruise blossomed under his cheekbone, artistically masked by various powders. Bemish didn't have to torture himself long about whether or not the official remembered who socked him. Having returned to his room, Bemish discovered there a gift basket full of soft turquoise figs and Shavash's note. "As you see, I can be grateful," Shavash wrote in calligraphy. "You had given me one fig and I gave you hundred." A bruise was called a fig in Weian.

  X X X

  The next day after the investors had left Bemish returned to the villa and was stopped by a small peasant crowd.

  "What's the problem?" Bemish asked.

  A tall barefoot old man stepped out of the crowd.

  "They told us," He said, "that the great Lord from the stars will build a magic city in this place."

  "More or less," Bemish agreed.

  "They told us that this city will be built on our lands. What will happen to us?"

  "You will have the lands across the river," Bemish answered.

  "We are happy that the Lord from the skies gives out part of our land to us. But our old land was taken away from us without any payments."

  "You were paid by company shares," Bemish said. "You squandered these shares and you don't retain any rights to them."

  "Does it mean that the Lord from the stars has money to treat officials, but he doesn't have money to pay us for our land?"

  "I will not pay you a cent," Bemish cut them off.

  Having learned about this accident with the peasants, Kissur said.

  "You acted like a man, Terence. Why do Earthmen act like men only when it comes to money?"

  The new headman approved of his boss altogether.

  "These people are such," he said, "that if you show them a finger, they will devour the whole hand. They are but spongers!"

  "Don't you come from the same people?" Bemish cut him off and the new headman shut up, offended.

  X X X

  Bemish had to see Idari quite often. A great number of the company's contracts — lumber, concrete, tungsten glass — in a nutshell, everything that was cheaper and more profitable to buy in the Empire, passed through Kissur's estate and his wife was in charge of it.

  Only gradually Bemish realized how important a part this graceful fragile woman plays not only in the economics of Kissur's estate but in the economics of the Empire. Thanks to her and only to her, not a single oil well that the sovereign had bestowed on Kissur passed away or was sold to cover debts — to the opposite, every gift was preserved, multiplied and grew and this fragile woman controlled with an iron fist at least three banks and the second biggest Weian aluminum plant. They said that the applicants for the bank positions had interviews in front of a curtain — Idari didn't consider it possible to talk in private with a male stranger and Bemish had never seen her in anything other than Weian dress.

  Idari had only one son and Bemish saw that it deeply hurt her, because in her view, a good wife should bring a litter every year. To conceive more children, she had even submitted to an Earthman physician but the physician had only raised his hands and said that nothing could be done. Three boys that Kissur fathered whoring around and a total orphan that Kissur extracted from under his own tank tracks were being brought up in the house.

  A lot of maligners told Kissur that the Earthman visited Idari somewhat more often that the business contacts required but, since the people who said that wanted very much to obtain everything Bemish had from the Empire, Kissur ignored these words.

  THE EIGHT CHAPTER

  Where Terence Bemish pays taxes with fallen leaves while the rock with an ancient foretelling is dug out at the construction

  Ashinik was born into a peasant family that was ruined during the civil war. His father was recruited into the local prince's army and killed there and his mother died just quietly. In the last year, Ashinik was also recruited, but by this time the prince's army had dwindled down to five hundred people and the prince was called a prince no longer but he was rather called a bandit. When the prince heard that nothing was left of Khanalai's army, conducting a siege on the capital, but two barns of ashes and that the new masters — the people from the skies — were giving orders in the capital, he was scared and rushed in to beg for peace. The sovereign forgave him and the people from the stars gave everybody a fancy can with a picture of meat in sauce drawn on it. Ashinik hid the can under his head and went to sleep and when he pulled the can out in the morning, he found out that it didn't have the bottom and was empty. Ashinik rushed to his friends that had just finished the breakfast and they burst in laughter and they said that it had been this way from the beginning.

  Ashinik dragged himself from the city back to the
village, to the land, but there was no land. A fence of brushwood and concrete was where the land had been and the Earthman was behind the fence. It came out that Ashinik's father bequeathed the land to the prince and the prince sold this land in the capital to a trust that dug a hole in the ground. Having heard Ashinik out, the Earthman went crazy and threw him out.

  What happened was that the Earthman had long ago realized the prince cheated him and he hadn't held the title for all of the land. He gave money to the first petitioners and, having heard about it, all the locals rushed picking up their relatives and friends and testifying that they had held such and such piece of land. With their peasants' minds they instinctively sized Earthmen up as a power-to-be and held it for a virtue to cheat the trust that was so stupid that it was ready to pay for the land which had already been sold to it, even if the people that sold the land didn't own it. The Earthman had seen that he was being hoodwinked and now he kicked out everybody who came with a complaint about the land as cheaters.

  "I didn't get much from the Earthmen for my field — an empty can and a kick in the butt," Ashinik thought. Ashinik left for his relatives in the neighboring province, but he got sick on the way. An old couple picked him up and ministered to him. Having learned that the total strangers washed him and spoon fed him, the youth burst into tears — it was the fourth year he lived as a snail without a shell, only a lazy man wouldn't step on him.

  The people, who nursed Ashinik back to health, were tanners. Ashinik started helping them with their work and with the house. At first, Ashinik didn't notice anything except that they didn't eat meat in the house but then, listening to the masters' conversations, he started to realize that his hosts were some sect's members. This sect had existed for a long time and it was based on a prophecy about iron people who would appear from underground to destroy the Empire. On numerous occasions, they had taken barbarians and rebels for iron men but then a rebel would become an Emperor and it would become clear that the prophecy was not about him. The masters hinted to Ashinik a number of times that Earthmen were these iron demons, and that they wanted to destroy the Empire and that the mine, he was invited to work on, was nothing else but a hole to hell — the demons would drag him down there and eat him.

  At first, Ashinik didn't really believe it. He had also heard some really dirty gossip about zealots — they were rumored to entice people with their lies, nurse the infirm, pick up orphans, and then preach stupid stuff and engage them in orgies and even worse on their meetings. But he felt uncomfortable arguing with the elders who had saved his life and he also had nowhere else to go.

  Soon, they took him to a meeting where they directly said that Earthmen were demons and all the things they owned were either phantoms or had been stolen from the gods. Then a teacher, clothed in white, in front of their eyes grew a golden staircase out of a seed, climbed up it to the skies and came back with a fancy pot that the gods gave him.

  Ashinik started taking part in the weekly meetings but doubts assailed him. "Of course, all I got from the Earthmen for my field was an empty can and a kick in the butt," Ashinik thought. "But if I consider everybody I got a kick in the butt from to be demons, there would be more demons than people." Finally, these thoughts hurt him so unbearably that once in the repair shop Ashinik fainted and crashed to the ground. When he came back to his senses, people were crowded around him — it appeared that a great spirit had seized him and he had been preaching.

  Ashinik was taken to the teachers, they housed him with them. Since Ashinik's words were always taken with great attention, the fits started to happen more and more often but Ashinik never remembered what he was saying. Thanks to his prophecy gift and natural cleverness, Ashinik suddenly started to climb quickly up the hierarchical ladder. Ashinik was especially shocked by the following. The zealots he found himself with at first believed that Earthmen were really demons. On the second level, they told him that words iron devil and demon with respect to Earthmen should be treated metaphorically and Earthmen live on the sky rather than underground. He was told that the stupider were the rumors about Earthmen, the easier the dumb people would believe them. But on the third level, he was told that Earthmen were demons! And they explained to him that the more metaphorical the prophecies' interpretations were, the easier would silly officials believe them since they wouldn't see the gut sense behind the false reasoning. And on the fourth level, he was told again that the prophecy should be treated metaphorically!

  When he achieved the seventh level — there were ten of them all in all — Ashinik couldn't distinguish anymore where a metaphor was, where the reality was and where the deep meaning of both of them was. Talking to a commoner, he spoke as if he was on the first level. Talking to an educated man, he spoke as if he was on the second level. He believed what his audience could believe. Thanks to that, his sermons gathered huge crowds. He was also taught to prophecy right at the meetings and he usually remembered what he had said.

  Four years passed this way — Ashinik was now twenty. Once the White Elder called and commanded him to leave for Assalah village on Chakhar border. He said,

  "The demons build their holes there. They call this hole a spaceport and they say that they fly to the sky out of these holes, but, in reality, these holes go underground all the way to hell. The Assalah demons wronged our peasants mightily and we have a strong society there. But yesterday the society head died. Go to Assalah and take his place."

  X X X

  This time the trip to the capital took eight hours instead of two months — the next day's morning a yellow bus left Ashinik at the road fork going to spaceport.

  Ashinik threw his sack over his shoulder and started walking. The trucks, looking like huge silk worms, flew past him to the construction, a cloud of dust and bad smells hung over the road and in the fields, recoiling from the curb, ripening rice ears were covered with a thick layer of cement dust. It was a long walk and Ashinik tried waving a twig several times to hitch a ride but nobody stopped. Even during the worst war years Ashinik remembered always being able to get a ride from a passerby in a cart. They could kill you once they had picked you up, but at least they would always pick you up.

  Suddenly a car slowed down. Ashinik nervously saw that it was not a truck but rather a passenger car shaped like a tiny bug. The driver threw open a door — after a brief hesitation Ashinik climbed inside. They drove in silence for a while.

  "Are you going to the construction site?" the driver asked. He spoke in demon's brogue.

  "No," Ashinik replied, "I am going to the village."

  "Who are you going to?"

  "My uncle called me in. His son died — maybe he will adopt me."

  "There are a lot of zealots," the driver said, "in this village. Following the Way. Are you one of them?"

  "Yes."

  "What level are you?"

  "What do you know about levels?"

  The driver looked the lad over — he had a round good-natured face, wide lips and adjoining thick eyebrows over his beautiful brown eyes.

  "A week ago," the driver said, "the local Following the Way man died. You are coming to replace him, aren't you?"

  "What do you do?"

  "My name is Terence Bemish, I am the Assalah company director."

  Ashinik swallowed.

  "Do you pick all passersby up or did you know that I was coming?"

  "I pick all the bums up," Bemish said. "The drivers at the construction rarely give a ride to anybody and if you are a bum, they might even kill you. They have already killed two people this way."

  "Your workers aren't any good."

  "It's difficult to get any worse. They drink, steal, and make the newcomers do the same. There are gangs among them. Two of them were caught yesterday — they sold an anti-corrosion paint box. How much do you think they sold it for? They sold it for a rice vodka crock! Yesterday, one guard shot at another guard — he was boozed up. They arrested him, started an investigation and discovered that he was wanted in the c
apital for robbery and murder. Everybody who wants to escape the capital after screwing something up there, go here."

  "Yes," Ashinik said, "it's not easy. I have never had to own people that drink, steal and eat meat. A master is like a seed and his subordinate is like grass that grows out of the seed. Grass follows seeds. It's not surprising that the demons' servants steal anti-corrosion paint from them."

  Bemish was so upset by this comment that he lost his self control. His true nature emerged and Ashinik noticed at once that Bemish's head was really just a meat egg. Ashinik felt himself very uncomfortable. "What if he asks now — do you really think I am a demon?"

  But Bemish didn't ask anything like this, he shook his meat egg and said.

  "The village is just beyond this hill. Would you be uncomfortable entering the village in my car? Would you like to get out at the turn?"

  "Not a problem at all," Ashinik said.

  In the evening, the whole village listened to their new prophet's stories about riding in the chief demon's car and seeing a meat egg on the demon's shoulders.

  X X X

  Bemish was not exaggerating the problems in his conversation with the future zealots' guru. The construction situation worsened every day. The worsening, however, was reflected neither in the balance books nor in the profits and expenses reports and the most meticulous auditor would not be able to enter the locals' feelings into the company's debits column.

  It was also partly Bemish's fault. As an ardent player who felt better next to a computer screen rather on the construction site, Bemish visited the latter only occasionally, being engrossed completely in the capital business maelstrom.

  He started up a hedge fund acquiring Weian stocks — it was quoted in the intergalactic system. Trevis raised money for him, a sum unheard-off for a developing market — five hundred million dinars. He acquired the broker house DJ securities and used it to conduct the hedge fund operations; he also acquired 12 % shares of the bank that Assalah Company had an account in.