Kissur laughed hoarsely.
"Don't be an idiot, Kissur! Shavash is just a horny goat. He almost took Inis away from me! He sleeps with the wives of all his employees!"
"Exactly. He sleeps with everything that has a hole between its legs whether this hole is in the front or in the back, he never leaves the pubs, he drags his brat even to the negotiations with Galactic Bank and he dares to ask me to give him my wife!"
X X X
The elections for the first Weian parliament took place on the fifth of Shuyun, July, 17th by the interplanetary calendar. The overwhelming majority of the electorate — 67.5 % — voted for the party of the people's freedom, the ex-sect Following the Way.
The same day, the sovereign declared the results invalid and issued arrest warrants for Yadan and Ashinik, two best known leaders of the sect.
Yadan disappeared. Ashinik escaped to Earth. His arrival caused a huge sensation in the liberal media. He was a charming twenty two year old young man with perfect English, a year's working experience as a vice president in a large trans galactic company and a one year college experience in an elite business school. He totally didn't look like somebody accused by Weian authorities of terrorism, manipulation of people's minds, mass hypnosis and the literal understanding of the electoral campaign slogan "Earthmen are demons."
Two days after his escape, Ashinik gave a long interview on the seventh intergalactic TV channel. He explained all of the rumors attacking the party of the people's freedom in a very simple way. The officials had decided to run the elections hoping to obtain more power than they had before. When the people's party won the elections, the results were declared invalid and a huge incomparable libel campaign started against the party.
They asked Ashinik if his party was going to nationalize the foreign companies' property if it came to power.
"No," Ashinik answered, "but we were going to make businessmen and financiers of the Federation of Nineteen follow the Federation's laws."
As an example, Ashinik referred to Terence Bemish. Mr. Bemish had created one of the largest industrial companies on Weia and Ashinik had worked for him for a year. Terence Bemish bought eighteen million dollars worth of Ichar non-ferrous metals facility stocks in an hour after his friend Shavash had cleared this facility's sale to MetalUranium Company and a day before the deal went public. Terence Bemish made thirty million.
Terence Bemish bought twenty million worth of gold loan bonds after Shavash's close friend Oshin had announced that the payments on this loan's interest would possibly be postponed; this announcement dropped the bonds' prices by forty percent. Oshin was fired in a week, the bonds' value grew back to the same level and Terence Bemish made sixteen millions. In a week, Bemish hired Oshin as a manager of one of his funds.
"These actions resemble insider trading too much; they would cause legal proceedings to happen anywhere else in the world," Ashinik claimed.
"Clearly, Terence Bemish has bought securities knowing that their value would increase sharply. Persecution of these criminal activities doesn't threaten the market. On the opposite, it would guarantee equal opportunity for everyone. As for Assalah Company," Ashinik explained, "it hasn't only provided ships with landing opportunities; it also has allowed the ship owners to avoid paying import tariffs. A conveyor belt of export-import companies was created at the spaceport with every company's life time being two months. Accordingly to Weian regulations, a company should issue tax reports every two months and, if it exists less than that, it just doesn't pay any taxes. Of course, the local officials knew everything about it but they were browbeaten or bought off. The companies were used for two purposes. Mostly a successor company would fulfill its predecessor's obligations in full but sometimes, if Bemish or Shavash needed to punish somebody, the successor would not pay for the goods or, inversely, wouldn't deliver prepaid merchandise. It was not difficult since most freight didn't have accompanying documentation issued. That's why Assalah imports were thirty percent cheaper than imports via any other spaceport."
"Does it mean," a journalist inquired, "that having gained power you will collect all the tariffs in full?"
"No," the clever Havishem graduate answered, "quite the opposite, we will lower tariffs. We are against protectionism and limiting foreign trade. But I would like to stress that Yanik's government charged some companies and didn't charge the others. This is not protectionism of domestic industry. They favor some importers at the price paid by the others and this is even worse than protectionism."
The journalist inquired how conscientiously Assalah paid its taxes and Ashinik said that the year before last, Bemish had paid the taxes with the bonds of bankrupted Weian National Bank. The trick was that Bemish had bought the securities on Exchange at 7 % of their face value while the state budget accepted them at 100 % of their face value.
The last year they started experimenting issuing tax promissory notes on Weia. These promissory notes were securities based a company's debts to the treasury. Everybody knew that Bemish wouldn't pay anything on these promissory notes and they cost 3–4% of their face value. Bemish bought them at this price via dummy fronts and he didn't have to pay the taxes this year anymore. Bemish also acquired a lot of promissory notes of the companies that he had some designs for and the state helped him to exchange the notes into the stocks of these companies.
The Assalah securities didn't take this interview well — their price plummeted by thirty points.
Bemish ordered his employees to compile and send to Earth a small ethnographic report about the activities of Following the Way, so that the
TV audience could clearly understand that the political goals of the sect were not limited to the removal of protectionism and insider trading in stock market.
The next day, Ashinik made an official announcement that nuclear weapons were stored in Assalah spaceport including Cassiopeia nuclear missiles equipped with S-field that had been delivered there accordingly to a secret treaty between the Empire and the Federation governments. The proliferation of these missiles had been banned accordingly to the S-armament non-proliferation treaty signed by the UN countries.
Bemish called this statement a horrible lie.
Ashinik demanded the spaceport to be inspected by the people.
Bemish announced that he would not allow a people's inspection because a Weian peasant would not see any difference between a nuclear missile and a landing stabilizer support and he, Bemish, didn't want somebody to throw an explosive device in a landing chute during such an "inspection." All this "people's inspection" was demagoguery anyway, why didn't experts just come in and inspect whatever they want to?
Ashinik claimed that Earth experts would be bought by Bemish and the Federation counter-intelligence.
Bemish announced that he didn't understand what a people's inspection was.
Ashinik promised to explain to Bemish what a people's inspection was.
X X X
Two days later, the spaceport security service informed Bemish that a crowd was moving towards the spaceport. Almost synchronously, two dozen zealots, that had infiltrated the lounge before, descended to the storage area to reclaim their luggage containing rocket launchers and other assorted killing utensils.
The luggage had been X-rayed earlier and the zealots were arrested in flagrant delicti. Bemish announced that it was an organized terrorist activity and, if the people's inspection was going to happen along the same lines, he wouldn't allow it. The zealots were taken to the capital and all the confessions were beaten out of them quite quickly.
Bemish issued to order to guard the whole spaceport's perimeter closely and to allow only ticket holders inside the port due to the emergency situation. The next day, he showed to the journalists two bombs extracted from an unknown man's luggage; the man arrived at the spaceport with a ticket to the planet of Gera and left the spaceport in an unknown direction.
Ashinik claimed that Bemish had engineered the whole thing himself just as he had with the ze
alots and rocket launchers. As for their "confession" to the Weian police, Ashinik noted that Mr. Shavash could make an elephant confess that it was a mouse in disguise. Ashinik claimed that the protests were perfectly peaceful.
A huge crowd of zealots blocked the spaceport. The journalists from all over the Galaxy flew to Assalah in search of prize news.
New people arrived at the roadblocks every day. They introduced themselves to the journalists as "simple peasants that didn't like their motherland being traded away for a jar of sour cream." Bemish, on the other hand, claimed that they were not peasants but staunch zealots.
The traffic on the highway connecting Assalah to the capital was completely paralyzed. Two monorails, Assalah — Sky City and Assalah — I–Chakhar, were used for cargo transport. The blocked-off area in the vicinity of the monorails was controlled by the satellites launched specifically for this purpose; the satellites called alarm three times a day and the trains had to be stopped; the cargo transportation schedule went to hell.
Trucks traveled in groups accompanied by sharpshooters. Bemish announced that the spaceport's administration would not take any responsibility for the people's safety if they used passenger cars to get to the capital. The car rental agencies went hysterical. The helicopter drivers lived in the state of bliss. Three hundred taxi drivers that had been temporarily hired by the spaceport security were ready to tear the zealots apart.
The media approach shocked Bemish somewhat. They would interview an ardent zealot — a professional agitator who had been bumming around fairs since the age of five and who was lost in his own lies to such an extant that he no longer knew whether or not Earthmen were demons. They would call him a "Weian peasant who came to Assalah to fight for the freedom of the elections and his country's freedom." On the other hand, a Weian taxi driver whose car had been burned out two days ago by a zealot crowd was called "a secret agent of security service bought by Bemish."
The spaceport sustained huge losses due to cargo being delayed and frightened passengers hurriedly picking other travel routes. Twenty thousand tons of gourmet Iniss peaches turned into peach chowder after spending five hours in crazy summer heat in a monorail train with a disabled cooling system. Ashinik called a bomb found on the monorail "a spaceport special services' instigation."
Continuous magnetrone inspection of cargo damaged a Crudge-14A with superconductive circuits traveling to the Iniss branch of Mountain TDL and the corporation raised a horrible fuss about it.
The security service employees had all of their vacations cancelled. They worked fourteen hours a day without holidays and slept right there, crowding in the spaceport hotel rooms. Three hundred enraged taxi drivers and long distance truck drivers joined the security service. Three hundred highly professional colleagues of Giles' arrived quietly at the spaceport and the journalists learned about their incognito arrival five minutes after the space liner had landed.
Assalah stocks dropped five points a day on the average. Assalah high-margin bonds were being sold twenty cents a dinar by the end of this week.
However, Bemish's personal finances were in much better state than that of the company. Bemish had realized that the zealots were sure to win before the election's results were declared invalid and he ordered to sell quickly practically everything that they traded with on Weian Exchange. Going short brought at least forty million dinars to Weian Special and Second Investment Fund but it was the first time in Terence Bemish's life when he was not particularly happy to short.
Bemish requested governmental assistance with the protesters. The government dallied and wavered and finally told him that while it was sympathetic towards the Assalah issues but it was not willing to utilize Weian police against Weian peasants to protect a foreign company that, additionally, employed a right of "tax and trial" inside its territory. Confidentially the government hinted that it was afraid to be kicked out of power if tried to do anything along these lines.
X X X
Ronald Trevis arrived at Assalah on the third day. Three hours after his arrival, a twenty person Ajax landed in the spaceport and suntanned Kissur climbed out of it. Kissur hurried to Bemish's office where a management meeting was taking place and he started shouting right at the doorstep.
"What's this mess? Why don't you just shoot this muck? What are all these rubber sticks doing here instead of rocket launchers?"
"If I shoot all this muck," Bemish said, "I will do what Ashinik dreams about. It will bury the relationship between Weia and the Federation. Ashinik will start screaming that foreigners at his planet shoot at absolutely peaceful protestors. He will be somewhat correct about that. The foreigners should not have a right to make such decisions."
"Why the hell did you ask for the right of "trial and taxes?"
"It was my mistake."
"I swear by the god's balls!" Kissur cursed. "Why don't you ask the police minister for assistance?"
"I've asked him already. The government doesn't want to shoot its own citizens for a foreign company's profit. If it does it, it will have to shoot its own citizens to save its own ass tomorrow. Also, everybody knows that an official, who gives such an order, will find a bomb in his first Sunday soup even though Ashinik will assure that the bomb was planted by provocateurs."
"All right," Kissur said and he slammed the door and took off.
X X X
Kissur returned in six hours, after dark. Eight skyers with large load capacity landed at the spacefield and delivered about five hundred fighters with blackened teeth wearing soft ox leather Alom boots. The fighters were armed right up to their blackened teeth.
Two beetle-shaped amphibian tanks dropped out of the skyers' bellies; the tanks were equipped with unusually short guns and they stuck upwards at the rear resembling beetle's forewings folded at its back. The tanks were covered with a non-metallic dully gleaming skin. Astonished, Giles whispered into Bemish's ear that these were the latest generation BCC-29 tanks designed to be dropped off a plane with a parachute onto any surface no less than six minutes after a thermonuclear explosion.
Presenting his blackened teeth to flashing cameras, Kissur explained that he came here to help his friend Bemish out and that his people couldn't be taken for foreigners by any stretch of imagination and that only his friend Bemish's squeals stopped him from burning this zealot muck one meter deep into the ground.
He said that Bemish was a pansy, that the government was a flock of horny dumb goats and that Ashinik was a dog that he, Kissur, would hang right at that loading crane if they found one more bomb in the spaceport.
Kissur's people took over almost all spaceport security. A half of all regular spaceport security employees went to sleep. Frankly, they were mostly peaceful people who had never seen anything more dangerous than a drug trafficker trying to hide hundred grams of barnithole or good old LSD in his stomach; their familiarity with electric shockers was only theoretical.
The passengers arriving at the spaceport glanced with frightened admiration at the huge, almost two meter tall, wild looking men who seemingly napped at the terminals having folded their hands on stubby assault rifles. The ladies felt quite a specific curiosity towards these lads, comparing them with their civilized husbands who contemplated morning meetings even in bed.
The journalists waited breathlessly. It seemed absolutely certain that any careless action of the crowd besieging the spaceport would lead to the crowd's bloody demise.
It was five pm when Kissur entered Bemish's office; Ronald Trevis, the head of LSV bank, had just arrived from Earth and he sat in the room reclining in an armchair.
"Hello," Kissur said, "What are you doing here?"
"We are discussing the spaceport's future," Trevis replied.
"Oh, yes. These…eh stocks of yours plummeted."
"The spaceport's stocks," Trevis spoke, "belong to me, Bemish and Nan. We are discussing the future of bonds."
"What's wrong with those?"
"They cost twenty cents a dinar."
> "So what?"
"It would not be a problem if they were regular bonds. They are, however, bonds with adjustable rate."
"What kind of beast is that?"
"It was my suggestion. The interest payments on the bonds are set up in such a way that a bond's value is hundred cents for a dinar," Bemish entered the conversation.
"I don't understand."
"The interest on the bonds is fourteen and a half percent," Bemish said. "It's quite a bit. I hoped that I would be able to lower it. The Assalah bonds cost hundred and three cents a dinar before the crisis. They cost twenty cents now."
"It's crazy. I never knew about these clever securities."
"Unlike you, Ashinik knew it perfectly well," Bemish said, "I walked him through our financial structure myself."
"Are you going to adjust yield?"
"No. There is not a single company that could handle it, even if it had a large cash flow. Our cash flow dropped by thirty percent this month."
"What are you going to do?"
"I offered new securities to the investors instead of this crap."
"What did they do?"
"They sent me to hell. Ronald just delivered their responses."
"I see. Is this company bankrupt?"
Bemish didn't answer.
"If we flatten all this shit into the ground, will your bonds cost more?"
"We should flatten this shit into the ground anyway," Trevis muttered, "even if it doesn't save the company."
X X X
Later, they reconstructed the events the following way. At 18:00, Kissur accompanied by Khanadar the Dried Date and by ten fighters walked into the main office where all the upper company management had already gathered; Trevis was also there with two aides. Bemish and Giles came in slightly later. They were both armed. Bemish took a note that Kissur was dressed very carefully — he wore a perfect white shirt, a proper black suit and an unassuming tie of correct width — the clothing item that Kissur loathed the most. On the other hand, a gun under Kissur's armpit was large enough that even a perfectly designed suit failed to conceal it. Giles slapped Kissur on the shoulder and said, "Damn it, Kissur! You are the man! Without you we would be in shit up to our necks!"
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