Insider ви-6

by Julia Latynina

  "Either you will show me the proof that Ashinik's arrest is based on or you will go with me and free him!"

  Shavash thought for a bit and then he rose, gestured at Bemish with his finger to follow him and stepped out of the office. They walked down a corridor with a beautiful hardwood floor, passed by two or three halls decorated with the utmost luxury and covered with ancient rugs. It was rumored that Shavash had ordered these rugs to be ripped off the walls of Isia-ratough temple in Chakhar (they had processed this robbery later as the sale of these rugs at some ridiculously low price). Having passed two or three more doors, they found themselves in a concrete corridor leading underground. Bemish suddenly remembered with a shudder how Shavash had boasted about his personal jail. He also recalled the words attributed to Shavash, "You are powerful not if you can afford a personal villa; you are powerful if you can afford a personal dungeon." So, they hadn't even taken Ashinik to a state prison…

  A low desperate cry came from behind a door at the very end of the corridor. Shavash threw the door wide open.

  Bemish noticed a pile of bloody rags in a corner, some pliers in a bowl and Ashinik's dead eyes. Completely naked, he was hanging head down on metal rings attached to a wall and Bemish's attention was pulled to his right hand — all the nails there had been torn out. Then Shavash stepped forward moving his friend aside and said in a tired and ironic voice, "The first set is finished. Take the pear off the branch."

  They took half-dead Ashinik off the rings and seated him astride a chair. Shavash stood above the prisoner, pulled his head up and asked, "Who placed the bomb?"

  Ashinik was silent. His black hair stood up straight soaked with blood. Bemish rushed to the youth but the guards blocked his way at once and one of them, baring his rotten teeth, silently stuck a gun into Bemish's side.

  Ashinik's eyes were as empty as RAM in a turned off computer. Then he whispered something. His lips didn't work. Bemish understood only the end of the sentence — Ashinik swore dirty.

  "That's not an answer." Shavash said.

  Ashinik licked his broken lips and spit with all his strength at Shavash's face.

  His saliva and blood were all over the official's lips and chin. Everybody froze. Shavash slowly turned and walked to an old sink built into the room's right corner. The splashing water and the washing official's snorts sounded very clear in the quiet room. Shavash closed the tap and approached the prisoner again.

  "Do you hope that your boss will get you out of this?"

  He spun to Bemish.

  "Choose, Terence — this guy or the controlling stock block of BOAR."

  The single second, that passed by, seemed like eternity to Ashinik. Then the Assalah general director pushed the gun, pointed at him, away and said loudly, "You are such a scoundrel, Shavash!"

  Astonishment glanced in Ashinik's wide open eyes.

  "You are free," Shavash told Ashinik, "And when you set up another assassination, take care that your boss is around, otherwise nobody will step in on your behalf."

  Bemish pushed the official away, looked around and, grinning viciously, started pulling the pants and shirt off one of the torturers. The torturer squeaked fearfully, pulled out of the boss' hands and ran away. He came back in a minute, carrying clean clothes.

  The second guard smiled exasperatedly and unlocked the cuffs holding Ashinik's bloodied wrists together.

  "Shouldn't we wash the lad?" he asked.

  Bemish hissed at him like a goose and started pulling the pants on Ashinik. Then he buttoned up the jacket on the youth and dragged him away.

  Bemish had dropped his car right at the main staircase of the city manor. He threw the lad into the car like a sack and he drove the car over a flower bed planted with rare orchids while making a turn.

  Bemish stopped at the first private hospital; they washed Ashinik and a physician with frightened eyes bandaged him. The youth was silent and he only cried occasionally.

  Bemish looked at the crying Ashinik and thought that he and the official had not even discussed whether or not the lad was guilty.

  When they arrived to Assalah, the sun was setting down. The pilot and Bemish picked up Ashinik and helped him to walk to the administration building. Ashinik was slowly getting over the shock and his eyes started looking more alert.

  Bemish locked the youth in his office and went to deal with the representatives of the freight company SpaceMart.

  When he returned in an hour, he had a white plastic folder in his hands. Ashinik had squeezed into a corner and he sat there shaking horribly. A comfortable leather armchair was next to him but Ashinik squatted in his ancestors' way. It was strange to see a man in Earth clothing squatting.

  Bemish walked to the youth.

  "Did you have anything to do with this explosion?"

  "No."

  "Will you lie to me, like you just lied to Shavash? Do I look like his executioners?"

  The Assalah company vice president squeezed himself further into the wall.

  "Ashinik, I know that there are people you must obey unquestionably. They could have given you orders. If this is the case, I wouldn't tell Shavash anything. I will help you to go to Earth, to any place where nobody can give you orders. Did you have anything to do with this explosion?"

  "They told me that you had sold me to Shavash. That you exchanged me for a controlling stock block of the aluminum plant!"

  "Oh-ho," Bemish muttered, "and you tried to kill Shavash. Did you try to kill me, too?"

  Ashinik hid his face in his knees and burst in tears.

  "Master! Why are you torturing me? It was Shavash first, now it's you! Not again!"

  Bemish was silent. In six months he grew attached to this twenty-year-old youth as if the latter were his son. The lad was almost the right age. Bemish had gotten used to feeling like Ashinik's patron. He picked up a dirty guy with lice in his hair and crazy visions and he transformed him into a manager with a tie around his neck and a cell phone in his pocket. And now this manager seduced his concubine. He also tried to send to the other world a man who in a strange way had become one of Terence Bemish's closest friends. And, possibly…

  Bemish paused.

  "Our score is even, Ashinik," the Earthman said. "You saved my company. I saved your life. It's one to one. I don't owe you anything."

  Bemish threw the white plastic folder at his deputy.

  "You will find here your last check from Assalah Company, two tickets to Earth, and an application form to Havishem; it's one of the best business schools. I talked to Trevis — they will accept you to Havishem. Trevis will pay your tuition fees."

  Ashinik pulled the papers out of the folder. His bandaged right hand shook slightly.

  "There are two tickets," Ashinik said suddenly.

  "Don't worry," Bemish snickered, "I'll buy myself a new concubine."

  X X X

  While all these unpleasant adventures related to the White Elder's assassination were taking place on the planet of Weia, Kissur napped in a wide first class seat of a passenger spaceship flying to the planet of Lakhan.

  The flight took almost eighteen hours.

  Kissur left the spaceport for a cheap hotel, took a shower, changed into old grey pants and a worn out shirt with a popular band's logo pictured on it, made a couple of phone calls and took off. He went to the western part of the city, to Danachin University; the famous Lakhan student uprising had taken place there ten years ago.

  Kissur took the main street across the block, turned left and left again and, bending slightly, dived into the roar and light of a bar's entrance. He chose a table next a window, leaned to a wall and started waiting.

  In half an hour, Kissur finally saw a tall and skinny guy with olive skin and a ponytail who was finding his way to the bar's stand.

  "Hey, Lore," Kissur said.

  Lore turned around and shuddered but he recovered and, having picked up a beer can, he joined Kissur.

  "How is it going, dude?" Lore asked. "You haven't gone
back to your Weia, have you?"

  Kissur just waived his hand.

  "I have a question to you," he said, "You've told me once that you knew a man who was ready to trade a tiny gadget."

  "What gadget?"

  Kissur picked up a napkin and drew something on it.

  Lore's eyes widened a bit.

  "There is such a man," he said, "but capitalist rot has eaten all the way through him. He will not do anything for his brothers, he only works for money."

  "Tell him that there is a man who will pay money for his goods."

  "How many pieces do you want to buy?"

  "I want everything."

  Lore's eyes grew suspicious.

  "Kissur, where have you gotten the dough?"

  Kissur silently presented a three-day-old newspaper to him. It was a Weian paper published in Interenglish and an article about a daring robbery of Weian Industrial Bank, the second largest bank in the Empire, covered its front page.

  "We will teach these capitalists a good lesson," Kissur spoke, "we will show them that we can fight for peace not only with our mouths."

  X X X

  Denny Hill worked on a stationary base Nordwest located on a tiny natural moon of Danae planet. Nordwest was the only base constructed on a planet that didn't have either atmosphere or population. It was only fitting that it had assumed an unpleasant role of a nuclear waste garbage pit for all the outdated and not particularly outdated armament of the whole Galaxy. Nordwest storage areas bored through the planet like huge honeycombs. Weaponry was sent there if it became obsolete or banned due to political reasons or due to the activities of peace mongers.

  The rumors traveled around the base that the oldest units in storage were shells from the First Moon War. What Denny Hill, a technician at Nordwest, knew for sure however, was that retired Cassiopeia missiles were stored at Nordwest.

  These missiles had caused a major military scandal at some point. The missiles were equipped with S-field generators capable of twisting space around them. It meant that, once launched, they could not be intercepted. Any wall, defense screen or field can, in principle, be destroyed. To destroy something, however, you have to interact with it. Interaction means passing through space but it's impossible to pass through twisted space.

  Ten years ago, Gera had raised a great hassle demanding the ban of all types of offensive armament equipped with S-field. It had been calculated that the construction of one S-field missile cost as much as the construction of twenty five subsidized houses for the underprivileged.

  The world shed tears. Instead of building missiles and employing the same underprivileged as a workforce — that would enable them to buy their houses with their earned income — the Federation signed a treaty offered by Gera and started constructing houses for the poor.

  Now Gera now didn't have to build expensive missiles and it put everything into an effort to develop alternative types of S-field that would not be covered by the treaty and would be cheaper.

  Some missiles had been destroyed outright and some had been partially disassembled and brought to a "relatively disabled" stage. The missiles from three bases — Arcon, Mino and Delos — had been transported to Nordwest.

  The accompanying documentation pointed out that there were one hundred forty six "relatively disabled" missiles. The whole Galaxy thought that there were one hundred forty six of them. Only Denny Hill, a civilian technician at the base, was energetic enough to take a count of the newest (though disassembled) missiles and he found out that there were one hundred fifty eight of them. The missiles were stored in a huge depositary area where the alarm system had been disabled by a local anaerobic life form and Denny Hill was supposed to take a census of the storage once a month. Formally speaking, it should have been a committee made out of three local employees and federal inspectors but the army didn't have any money for all these stupid committees and the base didn't have enough employees. That was why Denny Hill conducted the census on his own.

  X X X

  In two weeks on a planet with the beautiful name of Grace, two people approached Denny Hill who was spending his vacation there. Denny would have ever taken them for students — both guys were well-built and lean like pedigreed greyhounds and the senior guy had an old horrible scar above his neckline. They were Kissur and Khanadar.

  "Lore sends you his greetings," Kissur said.

  "Hello," Denny Hill said guardedly. "Why are there two of you?"

  "You are seeing only one person here. Consider the other one to be his shadow."

  Denny Hill was not completely satisfied with this explanation and he continued sipping on his soup silently- the meeting was taking place at a restaurant table.

  Kissur sat still. He wanted Hill to start talking first.

  "Is it true that you would like to buy goods?"

  "Yes."

  "How much?"

  "Twelve."

  "Three million a piece."

  "One million nine hundred."

  "Two seventy five."

  "One million eight hundred."

  "Two fifty. It's manufacturing cost."

  "Nobody sells stolen goods at their manufacturing cost."

  "When these birdies fly to their destination, the counter-intelligence will be ready to cough up ten million for information about their original residency."

  "They won't fly anywhere," Kissur said.

  "Lore told me something else."

  "Who cares what Lore said? I am an Emperor's servant. Do you think that a sovereign of the Amaride Dynasty and a man of the White Falcon clan will buy your toys to bust a supermarket? Don't you know that we are a Federation ally? The Federation won't go nuts if it learns that its ally obtained these trifles."

  "Well, that's different," Denny agreed. "I want two million a piece and a new passport because I won't like to be here when they start figuring out who should get a medal for providing a Federation ally with military support."

  X X X

  In a month, the next scheduled ship arrived at Nordwest bringing food rations in bright boxes. The ship was going to take retired scanning equipment away. Loading was completely automatic and the only person at the dock was Denny Hill. Theoretically, the regulations required the presence of two people, a civilian and a military operator that would track each other's actions. But only a quarter of the positions was currently filled at the base and the only thing that the regulations were good for was taking memory in the computer.

  Denny Hill counterfeited a backup copy of the loading papers and locked it in a safe. He was not able to fake the files in the computer itself — the computer was protected too well.

  Three days later Denny shoved Jack the Ripper virus into the computer, the virus overwrote all of the files' headers and Denny's boss told him to clean the computer up and to recover all the documentation from the backup copies.

  Denny pulled the fake backup copy out of the safe and wrote it to the hard drive removing the last traces of his real activities.

  It took three hours for the cargo ship Antei, license number 284-AP-354 registered at the planet of Agassa, to reach Lakhan spaceport. Lore Sigel was in charge of freight shipping at the spaceport. A while ago, Lore had been a very promising young man but his social-anarchy tendencies interfered with his career. He spent three days in jail for offending the public — he attempted to register a pig bought at a pig farm as a candidate on the presidential elections in Austria. He was a witness at a number of notorious terrorist trials and he had a habit of constantly moving from one place to another. All this finally brought Lore to this small provincial planet where he worked as a cargo department manager.

  Lore employed as longshoremen five or six friends that nobody else would hire since the central department of security wouldn't recommend it.

  Not surprisingly, the unloading of the ship with license number 284-AP-354 started very late, after the ship's yawning crew walked away to sleep in a hotel next to the port.

  Lore and his friends unloaded t
he boxes with the retired radio scanning equipment. There were twelve more boxes in the ship than had been registered. The identification numbers on the extra boxes were removed and the boxes were packed in the new containers and sealed. The new containers were loaded on the ship Astra flying to the planet Issan. Accordingly to the documentation, the new containers housed geo-physical equipment for the company Ambeko.

  The containers, however, never reached the planet Issan. Three hours after the ship's departure, the captain extracted a box out of his pocket. Out of the box, he extracted a paralyzed lightning beetle, a dweller of Lakhan deserts known for its ability to generate 370V electric sparks. The beetle was placed under the front panel cover of the control room. Having regained its senses the beetle discharged, causing minor damages to the main flight control system. The ship had to exit hyperspace and the crew began repairs. While the technicians were digging out the beetle and fixing the problems, twelve containers were dumped off the ship.

  The ship soon continued its way. The reason for its deviation off route in deep space was documented and presented to the authorities in a bottle with formaldehyde. The authorities reprimanded the crew for its lack of attention that had let the malevolent representative of the local fauna infiltrate the ship and the captain didn't receive a bonus.

  X X X

  Meanwhile, a small ship picked up the containers; since the ship was on a charter flight, it didn't really require all the justifying paperwork. The ship's name was Laissa. The documentation accompanying the twelve containers was changed again and the containers were now marked as medical equipment. The ship was flying to the planet of Weia, to the Assalah spaceport.

  X X X

  On the seventeenth of the month of rains, Terence Bemish got a phone call in the evening. Shavash was on the line. They discussed a Chakhar nickel facility construction project for a while and then Shavash advised his friend to sell Inissa Logging Corporation stocks in case Terence had them.

  "Oh, by the way, Shavash recalled, "a charter ship Laissa will arrive at your spaceport tomorrow. Could you make sure that customs don't bother them too much and check that their freight could be stored in some nice storage facility."