, Terence Bemish declared at his first meeting with Inis some
words about the freedom of will, in reality this freedom of will extended
only as far as him making Inis his secretary - while Inis was a nice and
kind girl, blindingly bright she was not. Bemish was quite happy when she
handed him a clean shirt and socks in the morning, excellent coffee at noon
and spent nights in his bed - when, of course, the Assalah company head was
not having fun in a capital bordello or at a high rank official reception
that would usually come to an end in the same bordello.
Bemish took as good care of her as he did of expensive house furniture
but he knew that nothing better than a secretary could come out of Inis - a
nice pleasant girl with a warm heart and, let's admit it, not a very smart
head. And Terence Bemish assigned automatically any unintelligent person to
a place at the very bottom of his rating list.
X X X
The next week, Trevis visited the construction. The meeting had been
planned a while ago and had nothing to do with the zealots' affair but
Trevis probably heard something during the flight. His first question upon
arrival was,
"Terence, what's going on here? They say that you appointed some zealot
to be your deputy?"
"Let me introduce Ashinik to you," Bemish said.
Ashinik bowed. Trevis stared at the youth.
"Do you consider me a demon?" Trevis inquired.
"I am not familiar with you," Ashinik answered seriously, "But what
I've heard about you makes me think that a lot of people would call you a
demon and you wouldn't take an offence at this name anyway."
Trevis laughed out.
"Well, even if you are a zealot, at least you are not crazy," he said.
X X X
On the eighteenth, Bemish spoke to the sovereign Varnazd. It happened
the following way.
Bemish collected quite a number of papers requiring Shavash's signature
and he arrived to the capital in person bringing the papers and gifts with
him. He was told that Shavash was in the palace and he would be there till
morning. Bemish went to the palace. He entered without an issue.
Umpteen pavilions and inner yards and the gardens breathing with
freshness were so unexpectedly beautiful that Bemish, tired of the banging
concrete blocks and of all the filth of his huge construction, forgot
everything walking thoughtlessly amidst the dancing gods and pompously
cackling peacocks. Suddenly somebody called him out of a carved gazebo.
"Mr. Bemish!"
Bemish turned around and came closer trying to recall where, out of all
the endless receptions, he saw this young official with a nice and uncertain
face and eyebrows pulling upwards like a sparrow's tail.
"Don't you recognize me?" the official asked smiling.
"Oh, my sovereign," Bemish exclaimed, going down on one knee, "How can
one not recognize you?!"
The sovereign pointed Bemish to a woven chair deep in the gazebo.
Bemish sat in the chair and pushed the paper folder behind his back.
"I wanted to ask you," the sovereign continued, "What is
"unfathomable?"
"What?" Bemish was astounded. The sovereign picked a volume lying in
front of him and read, stretching the vowels slightly.
Unfathomable sea, whose waves are years,
Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe,
Are salted with the salt of human tears...
Bemish lowered his eyes looking at the front page - it was Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
"Ah," Bemish said, "Unfathomable means bottomless. It's a poetic word.
I don't think anybody would need it now."
"Yes," the sovereign nodded, "A lot of poetic words disappeared from
your language. But numerous abbreviations appeared, didn't they?
Bemish nodded.
"It's a pity," the sovereign said, "that they don't translate your old
books. They translate dictionaries and manuals but not Shelley."
"Do you like Shelley?" Bemish asked with trepidation to maintain the
conversation, even though the only Shelley he had read was a certain A.D.
Shelley, one of the co-authors of a book Assembling Radiowave Beacons on
Geostationary Orbits in Order to Correct the Spaceship's Trajectory in the
Proximity of Planets."
"Yes," the sovereign said, "Reading him I understand that we and
Earthmen are very much alike. Or we were alike. You know this representation
of time that brings downfall to the best and the proudest, goes
backwards..."
The sovereign paused.
"Were you looking for someone?" he said suddenly, nodding at the folder
a corner of which was sticking out of the armchair.
"Yes, I was looking for Shavash. I need his signature."
"Maybe I could sign something here? I am sure you don't have
anything... reprehensible."
Sovereign Varnazd smiled shyly saying these words and Bemish had an
unpleasant feeling. What does he mean, "anything reprehensible?" Does he
mean that Bemish is not a swindler? Or that all the filth doesn't touch the
papers?
"So would you like me to sign anything?"
Bemish hesitated. On one side, two papers indeed required the
sovereign's signature - he would have to wait three weeks to get it. On the
other hand, what if Shavash gets displeased? He will think that Bemish crept
into the garden, found the sovereign behind the Shavash's back, told him God
knows what, left Shavash without rightly earned gifts and, to conclude,
acted improperly.
Bemish raised his eyes. The Emperor suddenly smiled bitterly and spoke.
"I am sorry. I know that my signature doesn't mean much but I often
forget that it can also cause damage."
Oh, my God! - Bemish was astonished - he understands everything! But
why...
"I would like to do something nice for you," the sovereign said.
"You... I have seen some of your paintings. May I see others?"
The sovereign smiled.
"Let's go."
In five minutes, they passed through the sovereign's bedroom into a
light room with eight corners. The guards gaped, if any Earthmen - Van
Leyven or Nan - had found themselves in the guarded halls, at least, it had
happened a long time ago.
Bemish wasn't mistaken - the sovereign's Varnazd drawings were
wondrously good. He probably wasn't a genius painter, he likely followed one
of the old masters - every single drawing was done in a traditional manner
with light watercolors, slightly faded from the beginning, - and there was
something sad and defenseless in all of them, something that resonated
surprisingly well with the face of the sovereign of Great Light Country. "I
wouldn't hire him even as a department head," Bemish thought.
Bemish stopped for a long while in front of a certain drawing. It
depicted a view out of a window - probably a palace one, judging by a curled
frame corner - a view of a winter garden. Huge wet snow sheets pushed dry
flowers to the ground, four commoner gardeners looking like sparrows with
ruffled feathers, were starting a fire in the middle of a large black
clearing. A forlorn spear was poised behind the fire. It was clear that the
painter felt bad for these people but he thought that he couldn't change
anything. It was winter coming year after year. Unfathomable sea whose waves
are years...
"Well," the sovereign Varnazd said, "Which one do you like the most?"
Bemish pointed at the drawing with the gardeners at the fire.
"What else?"
Bemish picked another one.
"You have an excellent taste," the sovereign said. "These are the
best."
"Have you painted them a while ago?"
"Yes, it was seven years ago when I was a Khanalai's prisoner. These
are my guards. Do you see the spear?"
Bemish paled. Yes, sovereign Varnazd was a Khanalai's prisoner seven
years ago and not just a prisoner - Khanalai did everything but starved him,
wiped his fingers at Varnazd's hair during his feasts, and just waited for
the full victory to execute an unworthy emperor...
"It's possible that to draw well, you have to suffer. I had a reason
then to pity myself."
"You seem not to pity yourself," Bemish dared. "You seem to pity the
peasants that guard you."
They left the eight cornered room for a terrace. A light armchair with
a golden head and spreading wings at the sides - it seemed to be flying -
stood next to the balustrade and several foot stools stood next to it. The
sovereign sat in the armchair and showed Bemish to a stool. They sat down,
the sovereign paused and asked.
"They write in your newspapers that I should have a parliament elected
and transfer the power to the people - that is, they say, the only way to
manage corruption and power abuse. And my officials keep pointing out that
the people are poor, lost and embittered and that there are a lot of
underground sects in the country. If only rich are allowed to vote, a
rebellion will fire up and if everybody is allowed to vote, crazy zealots
will make one half of parliament and the officials bribed by the criminals -
another half. They also say that an assembly can rule only during easy
times, and one man should rule during uneasy times. It is in assemblies'
nature to think slowly and in the uneasy times one has to make fast
decisions and any slow decision in uneasy times will be a wrong one. What do
you think?"
Bemish felt uncomfortable sitting on a gilded perch - he wasn't a
parrot, was he? He stood and said.
"I think that one can always find a thousand reasons why democracy is
not good. And I think that all these reasons are untrustworthy. I don't
think that people are as stupid as unscrupulous politicians picture them and
I bring you my apologies, sovereign, but I am sure that it is more difficult
to fool a million of stupid commoners than one smart emperor."
Varnazd paused.
"When I was Khanalai's prisoner, I thought a lot about it. I thought
that my own errors caused the civil war and the worst of it was that it
wasn't really my fault. It's just that if everything depends on one person,
the officials around him want to solve all their problems by fooling this
person and they, of course, succeed. And I decided that one man shouldn't
rule the country because perfect sovereigns don't exist and only the
sovereigns who consider themselves be perfect, exist."
Bemish grinned.
"I apologize, sovereign, but it's not really evident that you have
chosen this way."
"I was talked out of it," Varnazd said, "By the Earthmen - Nan and Van
Leyven. They started arguing that an election would cause anarchy, that the
people would consider it to be a shame and a concession to the Earthmen who
forced their decisions on the freed emperor, that even Khanalai realized
that the Empire of Great Light existence was based on worshipping God-king
while an elected assembly would be despised, not respected. It may all be
correct, but the real reason was that Nan and Van Leyven knew it would be
easier for them to rule in my name than in an elected assembly's name. Yes,
they talked me out of it."
"I don't think so," Bemish said. "You let yourself be persuaded. You
had shrunk away from power when you hadn't had it, but when you got it back
you didn't really want to refuse it."
Bemish expected anger or an emotionless "no" but the sovereign lowered
his head suddenly and tears showed at his eyelashes.
"It's so strange," Varnazd said. "I told myself what you've just said
many times. And now you told me the same words and I am ready to hate you
for it."
And he flapped his sleeves.
"Where is it, my power? You are even afraid to get your papers signed,
the same ones that Shavash will bring tomorrow for my signature! You are
afraid that Shavash will suspect you conniving something and will not let
you use the papers signed by me! And you and Shavash are friends!"
"Sovereign," Bemish said, "if you understand everything, why do you act
this way? Why wouldn't you set an election day?"
"Do you know," Varnazd asked, "who will become the Empire's first
minister after the election?"
Bemish shrugged his shoulders.
"Shavash! I don't believe that my people will elect a zealot or a fool!
They will elect a smart man. Shavash will bribe everybody and everybody will
like him, he will even find a path to the zealots' hearts using his spies -
but while I am alive, Mr. Bemish, I will not allow Shavash to rule my
people. We don't have a god similar to your Satan but believe me, if we did,
Shavash would be his son."
Before leaving Bemish, the sovereign Varnazd suddenly brought his guest
to a pavilion where the paintings drawn the previous centuries hung. The
paintings covered the wall like a spotty carpet - like an iconostasis -
small marble altars, braziers and gold basins with fresh pine branches
floating in them, stood in front of the most beautiful paintings.
Bemish saw a girl and a dragon immediately - an altar stood in front of
it - and Bemish thought worriedly whether the brazier smoke harmed the
drawing or, to the contrary, protected it.
"I would like to give it to you," the emperor said. Bemish bowed.
"Your Eternity, I can't accept such a gift."
"But I would like you to!"
"A man was killed because of this painting. It will always remind me
about his death."
"Who was he?"
"It was my headman, Adini. The man, who swapped the original and the
copy, following Shavash's orders."
Bemish hesitated, considering whether he was going to say something
that would be taken as an affront, and finished.
"I would prefer the gardeners around a fire."
The sovereign didn't give Bemish the gardeners, of course. Two days
later, he however bestowed a watercolor to the Earthman that depicted
mermaids, imps and people in a dancing frenzy around a fire soaring to the
sky. The colors were painfully bright, the people's pupils narrowed from the
blinding light and the fire itself was formed by a circle of the intertwined
transparent snakelike demons. One of the guests whispered to Bemish with a
smile that somewhere around fifth century, the god of wealth secret worships
had been depicted in such a way.
Terence Bemish had an overcoat, that such gifts were supposed to be
accepted in, put on his shoulders and he kneeled and kissed the emperor's
hand and the golden brush attached to the roll's right corner.
The very fact, that the emperor bestowed one of his own paintings to a
man from the stars, brought forth many rumors - Terence Bemish was the first
man born on the sky that received such a gift. The whispers started that the
foreigner would soon be offered a Chakhar governor or a minister of finance
position but better informed people shook their heads and said that nobody
would change a bill prohibiting people from the stars from taking Empyreal
appointments - this bill had been designed specially to kick Nan out of the
country.
X X X
The day that Bemish spent talking to sovereign Varnazd, his first
deputy Ashinik spent at the new site A-33. The place was barely developed -
a tractor path wove in the middle of it but it was enough to step ten meters
away to see birds fluttering out of the grass and lizards presenting their
green back to the sun on the spotty rocks. When lunch time came, the workers
climbed in a jeep and drove to the cafeteria. Ashinik wanted to spend some
time alone. He walked up a sunlit hillock, sat on the grass and uncovered a
rug his lunch was wrapped in - two flatbread pieces with sheep cheese and
butter.
Somebody settled down on the grass next to him. Ashinik turned around.
Near him, a man sat in a rough hay overcoat and a yellow repairman belt - it
was not a repairman, however, but a man named Yadan. Yadan was the very same
zealot that had taught Ashinik and raised him to the third level. Yadan was
not the head of the zealots, there was one man above him who was not
supposed to be called by his name and whom everybody called White Elder.
White Elder was not a nickname - it was a position. If the White Elder died,
Yadan would become the White Elder. Yadan was the most uncompromising
Earthmen's opponent in the sect and he was the second in its hierarchy.
"Good day, Ashinik."
"Good day, teacher. Why didn't you say that you wanted to see me? It's
dangerous for you to come here. What if somebody identifies you?"
"Why is it dangerous? I thought that this is the safest place in the
whole Empire for me. Isn't everybody working at the construction devoted to
us?"
"What can you require from simple peasants, teacher? It's easy to tempt
a man with a high salary and a thick bun and this demon Giles stuck his
steel eyes everywhere and watches me all the time. All that he wants is to
use me to catch a big fish that will feed demons' Intelligence and that
Shavash will enjoy."
Ashinik was saying these words mechanically squeezing the unwrapped rag
with a bun and cheese in his hand. He felt fear shoving its sticky fingers
in his heart. What will Yadan ask from him? The teacher's voice didn't
promise anything pleasant. He will be punished now... Why? What rules has
Ashinik broken? He always followed all rituals and customs carefully. An
evening hasn't passed yet without Ashinik calling the workers in for a brief
prayer, a morning hasn't passed without him getting out of the bed and
splashing his left shoulder with water... And still Ashinik's heart
fluttered....
"You are afraid," Yagan said unexpectedly. "Why are you shaking,
Ashinik?"
Ashinik was silent.
"Oh, I am sorry my lad, that I am asking such a stupid question," Yadan
spoke suddenly. "It's difficult to live amidst demons and not be afraid,
isn't it?"
"Yes, of course."
They were silent for a moment. Yadan, dry and rangy, stared at the
uprooted patch and a covered with clay excavator immobilized at a huge
foundation pit.
"I am hungry," Yadan spoke suddenly.
Ashinik hurriedly broke the bun in half.
"Hola, my lad!" the zealot said quietly. "Do you eat demons' food
already?"
Ashinik looked at the bun in horror.
He picked up the snack at a road stand where a village matron was
selling cheap Weian food. The bun was frankly of the simplest kind, the same
one as women had baked here for the thousands of years and the cheese was
homemade sharp goat cheese rolled in small white balls. But red hot sauce
between cheese and onions - here Yadan was totally right - came not from the
local places but out of an imported demons' can. Ashinik went cold. Even a
month ago, he, Ashinik, would have noticed himself that it was demons' food
and here he just bought the bun and wrapped it in the rug automatically.
Gods, what's happening to him, Ashinik, that he doesn't notice so simple
things? Or, is it all that important what can this sauce comes from?
Ashinik blushed furiously and threw the bun in the pit filled with
water.
"How often do you eat their food?"
Ashinik kept guilty silence. Constantly having body cleanliness and the
teacher's admonitions in mind, he mostly tried to avoid the Earthmen's
dishes but it wasn't easy. The first time, he had to eat their food was at
that bank committee reception. Ashinik was seated with the other people at a
banquet table and, though Ashinik could handle hunger, he couldn't handle
the understanding and relaxed look that Terence Bemish glanced at Ashinik's
empty plate with.
Then - either a meeting after which Inis gets a pizza or working till
late night and a hamburger - it's difficult to live with the demons and not
eat their food. Forget about the food, it such a shame that Ashinik has a
suit hanging in his closet - made out of the same demons' cloth that he
frightened the believers with.
"Do you eat demons' food often?" Yadan repeated his question.
"I have to sometimes," Ashinik uttered.
"So, that's what is happening," Yadan grinned. "The gods addled the
demons' minds and turned them into the gods' tool - did we suppose that the
demons would handle their main construction over to us..."
And he stood suddenly.
"It's enough of demons' food for you; the time has come for you to eat
food for your soul. Come to Inissa by the sixth, you know, where you should
be."
He turned away and disappeared.
Ashinik sat unmoving for a while. He thought that everything could have
been way worse. Yadan could order him to kill Bemish or to set a bomb off
next to a passenger terminal. What would have Ashinik done then? He couldn't
refuse...
Instead of this, they just called him to Inissa for an all-round sect
meeting. What does it mean? Do they approve of his actions? Or are they
going to bring him to a trial and the sixth will become his life's last day?
Or he will be commanded to make up for his crime by killing the very same
man that tempted him away from the true road - Terence Bemish?
Ashinik stood up abruptly. He suddenly felt how his body became sticky
with sweat and he also felt horrible hunger pangs. Really, he hadn't eaten
since five am. He would have happily picked up the bun if he had thrown it
to the ground. Ashinik was a simple and resilient village lad and by the
war's end, during the famine, he had to eat not just buns covered in mud but
also live caterpillars. But he had thrown the bun away in the foundation
pit, should he swim after it?
Ashinik slowly lumbered west where the spaceport's hangars and
technical services started on the other side of the torn out fence's planks.
In five minutes, he entered the main building via an underground
tunnel. Weian and English words blinked on a board, alien words hang in the
air like flies and thousands of people scurried back and forth.
Ashinik spun his head around looking for the nearest Weian seller but,
then, he turned sharply and approached a huge gleaming fast food stand
covered with all kinds of hamburgers and bottles full of dyed water.
X X X
In half an hour, Ashinik ran right into Giles on the twelfth floor.
Ashinik didn't like Giles. He knew that the latter was Shavash's close
friend, and unlike Terence Bemish, who never grilled Ashinik about the sect
or the reasons behind his orders, Giles constantly wondered about customs
and meetings and more than once or twice he would start explaining pompously
to Ashinik why, accordingly to Earth scientific laws, nothing could get born
out of a golden egg.
"Hey, Ashinik, what do you need here?" Giles inquired.
"The report that I gave to Mr. Bemish yesterday," Ashinik answered. "I
need to fix some stuff."
"Ah, hm-hm," the security chief said mysteriously. Here, the elevator
doors opened finally, Giles jumped in and left.
Ashinik twitched his mouth and opened the door to Bemish's personal
office. He told Giles the truth and nothing but the truth - he did need his
yesterday's report. Leaving for the capital, Bemish said that he scribbled
some remarks on it and Ashinik needed to fix the report accordingly to the
remarks and hand it over to Bemish when the latter returned.
The report however was nowhere to be found. Ashinik cautiously searched
the papers strewn across Terence's table and found nothing. Ashinik
hesitated and, having approached a door at the far end of the office, he
pushed it and entered.
It was Terence Bemish's personal residence. A forty square meters
living room started right behind the office doors, its windows, made out of
soundproof glass, faced the landing pads. A personal elevator could deliver
the owner to the bedroom and the guests even higher, to the very tower top
where a rocky garden with cactuses and agaves was set out. Other plants
didn't take well to this height, either wind got in their way or it was the
nonstop roaring of the ships taking off - there was no soundproof glass
around the plants.
Going to his bedroom, Bemish generally used, instead of the elevator, a
wide and beautiful staircase that started right in the living room.
The report was not in the living room either. Ashinik thought that
Bemish had slept here yesterday and most probably he had left the report on
a table in the bedroom. Bemish had left papers there before occasionally and
he had sent Ashinik after them. Ashinik, after a brief hesitation, walked
upstairs.
Semi-darkness and cleanliness ruled the bedroom and Ashinik noticed the
blasted report at once - it lay under the bed, next to Bemish's slippers,
and one could see how mercilessly it had been scribbled over even all the
way from the door. Then, something moved to the side next to a mirror.
Ashinik turned his head and saw Inis.
"What are you doing here?" Inis said.
"I came to get the report," Ashinik answered, bending and picking up
the papers. "And you?"
"Don't you see? It's the new skirt!" Indeed, Inis stood next to the
mirror twisting around to see her own profile and, instead of a somber
business suit that she had had on in the morning, she was dressed in a
wraparound skirt.
Ashinik, still holding the report in his hands, sat on the bed edge
mechanically.
"Has Mr. Bemish bought it?"
"Silly! It's a surprise. It's a gift from Idari."
Inis picked the skirt edge with her fingertips and raised her hands and
suddenly swirled across the room. Entranced Ashinik looked at her white
legs.
He had never noticed before what Inis was dressed in. He had always
undressed her in his thoughts.
"It's beautiful. Isn't it beautiful, really?"
"It's very beautiful," Ashinik whispered.
Inis laughed and ran to the door on her toes. Her hand groped for a
switch. She turned the light off. However, it was still quite bright in the
bedroom, thanks to wide windows going across the whole wall. The windows had
no curtains - a layer of special compound inside them of them blocked
incoming light either partially or completely. Now, the windows were working
part way, softening blinding lights of the launching pads and, the lights'
positions told Ashinik that a ship in K1 pad was going to take off any
minute.
It should be howling outside by now, but the walls cut the sound off.
"Imagine, Mr. Bemish would sit like this, and I would appear here,"
Inis spoke.
She swirled around the room and suddenly froze spreading the skirt at
the lighted window background. At that moment, the yellow take off lights
fired, the nose of a large freight Atlant shuddered and moved up, fire and
smoke beams started under its exhausts, bulky like hippopotamus legs, the
room was lit in a blinding blood red color and Ashinik saw Inis's black
silhouette standing out on this blood red light background.
"Ouch," Inis cried out, stumbling for a moment.
She fell on the bed and Ashinik pressed her to himself at the same
moment.
"Exactly," Inis spoke laughing, "Here, Mr. Bemish will embrace me like
this... let me go..."
Not answering, Ashinik was kissing her.
"Let me go!"
Ashinik and Inis had kissed several times before that, but now Ashinik
wasn't really controlling himself. He was madly frightened by the
conversation with Yadan, the darkness and the faraway light bursts excited
him and he was absolutely certain that Terence Bemish was in the capital,
two hours away, and nobody would enter his bedroom.
"Inis, I am leaving soon. I can't leave without that." Ashinik
whispered.
Inis was fighting him no more. The girl, having thrown her head
backwards, let him kiss her and moaned slightly. Ashinik pulled her closer.
"Hold on," Inis suddenly said, "I will take the skirt off or you will
tear it."
Ashinik relaxed his hands and looked at Inis unbuttoning her blouse and
pulling the skirt over her head in a lithe feline movement. Then, her hands
embraced the youth and before Ashinik figured out what's happening, the girl
unbuckled his belt and her thin nimble fingers slid down to his male
nature...
"Wow, what a python I have awakened," Inis whispered.
X X X
In half an hour, they were still lying completely naked in the Assalah
company director's wide queen size bed and Inis was thoughtfully gliding her
finger over Ashinik's flat boyish stomach. Going into the sky torches were
still blazing up and fading behind the window. Ashinik extended his hand and
having found the transparency regulator, made the window slightly darker.
"Where is the master sending you to?" Inis asked suddenly.
"Eh?"
Ashinik didn't immediately figure out what she meant.
"It's not the master. It's... I just need to go back to my place."
They were silent. Ashinik felt a strange fury thinking that tomorrow
night she would be lying with Bemish the same way and everything that she
was able to do - and she was able to do a lot and she had demonstrated it to
Ashinik - all of it she learned from the man from the stars.
"In the past," Insis said thoughtfully sorting Ashinik's hair, "they
put adulterous concubines in sacks and threw them alive into a river."
"Terence Bemish will hardly through you into the river," Ashinik
objected. "He is an Earthman."
"I wonder, what he would do to us," Inis pondered.
"He won't do anything to us if we tell him nothing."
"The workday is finished. Stay here," Inis suggested. "The master is in
the capital anyway and he won't return before the morning."
"I still need to fix the report," Ashinik said.
"You can fix it in the morning."
And Ashinik stayed.
Bemish indeed returned only the next day and not even in the morning,
but in the afternoon. Ashinik had managed to fix the report but Bemish
didn't even look at it. He called a meeting and demanded that work on the
fifteenth launch pad be temporarily frozen and all freed workforce to be
used at the new storage construction. Ashinik sat at the meeting not raising
his eyes. A full bookshelf hung behind Bemish's back and Ashinik remembered
that a Lassal's demolition manual was on the shelf. Ashinik needed this book
but he was afraid to take it out that morning because it seemed to him that
the security head Giles had indeed seen old Yadan and if Ashinik started
reading demolition manuals after Yadan's visit, then Giles would place
surveillance bugs even in Ashinik's pants.
"Ashinik, do you understand what you need to do?"
Ashinik raised his head bewildered. Bemish was telling him something,
but he missed it all. Ashinik nodded and only then he noticed the company
director's swollen cheeks and dark circles under his eyes - he had probably
had a lot of fun yesterday.
Yikes, bordellos - demons' pastime where corrupted officials put Weian
girls in the demons' beds...
"Yes, I got it."
"Ashinik, what's wrong with you? Are you sick?"
"I am all right. I'll go..."
"You will go and lie still in my bedroom. Do you understand?"
Bemish embraced the lad with one hand and flung the door to the inner
living room with the other. Out of the wide open office door, Inis caught
embarrassed Ashinik's glance and smiled at him slightly.
X X X
Of course, when in two hours, Bemish walked upstairs to the bedroom, he
found Ashinik not lying in bed but, to the contrary, sitting hunched on the
floor and reading a book. Bemish approached him and looked over his
shoulder. The lad shuddered. The book was a Lassal's demolition manual.
"It's an old manual," Bemish said. "Let's go - I'll try to find a
better book."
They walked to Bemish's office and the construction director having
rummaged around in the books, dug out a fundamental and intelligible
Feinstein's textbook.
"Here it is," Bemish said.
Ashinik held the book tightly like a shepherd would hold a sick lamb,
hunched and walked to the door. Bemish watched him carefully. It seemed that
Ashinik was expecting a question - why would he need a demolition manual,
though why would a manager at the construction that uses up three kilos of
TNT equivalent a week - not read this manual."
Ashinik pushed the door open.
"Hold on," Bemish said, "I need to talk to you."
Ashinik returned and sat down obediently. "Giles spied on me and Inis,"
a thought glanced in his mind. "Or he spied on Yadan. Great gods, let this
conversation be about Yadan!"
"Is it very difficult for you?" Bemish asked.
"Why should it be difficult for me?" Ashinik responded in a dull voice.
"Because you became my deputy to establish order in the company but you
could do it only as the head of the sect that considers the construction to
be demons' business. So, you could be my deputy only being the sect's head
and you can be the sect's head only not being my deputy."'
"I will manage, Ashinik said.
He was still looking down hunching.
"You almost fainted two hours ago."
"What do you want?"
"You could leave," Bemish said. "They send many people to study
overseas. It's not right that you work fourteen hours and then sit reading
books."
"He is throwing me out!" a thought lit in Ashinik's mind. "He used me
to establish order at the construction and now he is throwing me out at
Shavash's order!"
"May I go to Inissa for a week?" Ashinik asked.
"You don't have folks in Inissa, do you? Are you going to a sect's
meeting?"
Ashinik was silent.
"Of course, you can go, Ashinik," Bemish said.
X X X
Ashinik had barely stepped out of the office, when Giles took his
place. Strangely, Bemish and spy became good friends. The reason was that
Giles demonstrated good businessman qualities - he scurried around all the
country, looked for the best agreements, contrived, plotted, gave bribes and
pushed himself to the limit for the company. He, also, appeared to be an
amiable companion. He often slept over at the villa where he, like most
Earthmen employees, had his own room; he was a charming talker and got along
well with Inis. He never talked to Bemish about the good of the Federation,
having figured out that a businessman and a spy had absolutely opposite
views to what was the good of the Federation.
"What happened," Bemish inquired.
Giles threw a picture on the table.
"Do you know this guy?"
Bemish looked at the picture for a while. The guy on the photo sat near
a fire in ragged local clothing with his feet under him cramming gruel.
"Beats me... Maybe I've seen him somewhere at the construction..."
"You haven't seen him at the construction. You have seen him at your
villa with Kissur's brother, Ashidan." Bemish shuddered. Of course!
""Damn it! Does he work at the construction?"
"He worked here till yesterday."
"And what happened yesterday?"
"Yesterday, one of my people found out that somebody was trying to
crack the security software at five in the morning and at five in the
morning this guy was cleaning his room."
"And..."
"Somebody was able to warn the guy. He took off."
"I will ask Ashinik..."
"Nobody besides Ashinik's people could've warned him. It's a funny
combination - Following the Way sect and an anarcho-syndicalist demon, isn't
it?"
"It's totally unbelievable."
"There is something even more unbelievable - the guy came here from one
of Kissur's manors. And his reference letter was signed by Kissur. You know
- that he was a diligent worker and gathered hay just great...By the way, he
is an old acquaintance of Kissur's."
Bemish paused.
"What exactly was he ferreting out?"
"Oh, his interests were all-inclusive. Mostly, however, he was
interested in certain trading operations of Weian New Age fund. For
instance, he was interested in the situation when several hours before an
announcement about transnational Metal Uranium buying a totally non-liquid
uranium mine came out, you had bought two hundred thirty million worth of
this mine's shares. And you sold them in two days at three billion. Oh,
there is another strikingly interesting accident - Shavash's friend Igon who
was in charge of the country's international loans, claimed that Weia was
considering postponing paying off the interest on the international loan
known as Iron Bonds. Since, say, some bearer's bonds had been stolen at
Lamass bank robbery and they needed to find out how the current bonds'
owners had acquired them. The securities' rating collapsed almost by a
factor of two and in a day Shavash threw Igon out with a scandal, published
a denouncement and paid the interest off right on time so that practically
in a week the rating was back to normal. Remarkably, you bought forty
million worth of these securities right after Igon's announcement and sold
them in a week at, correspondingly, eighty million. You were also reckless
enough to transfer, at the same time, quite a significant amount of money to
Shavash's and Igon's accounts."
"Has the anarchist dug it out or has it been your work?" Bemish
inquired.
"It was the anarchist. He spent a month in your computer and then he
tried hacking into our systems and he was uncovered. He was also likely to
find out a lot of interesting stuff about the spaceport."
Bemish was silent. The guy could surely learn a lot of interesting
stuff about the spaceport. Bemish clenched his teeth sometimes realizing
what was happening at the spaceport. The "fan" approach to the formation of
export-import companies that existed for two months only, till the deadline
for the first tax declaration, was the most innocent trick out of what was
happening.
But there was nothing else to do - so many gifts were required, so many
unofficial expenses were needed on the top of official ones, and Bemish
sadly realized that the larger was the embezzlement scale, the safer the
embezzlement was.
X X X
The next day, the security department crew got together in Bemish's
office again.
The size of the damage caused by the anarchist was quite large;
Bemish's calls had most probably been tapped. Certainly, the anarchist had
had access to the Assalah director's personal computer and therefore to the
files dealing with the funds' operations.
"Frankly," Giles admitted after the conversation had been finished,
"The theft itself bothers me less than the guy's contacts with Kissur. He is
such an unpredictable man! He patronizes us and at the same time he
patronizes the guy who would smear a launching chute with plastic explosives
without any guilt whatsoever!"
"Would you like, Giles, to prevent Kissur from hanging out together
with terrorists?"
"Well?"
"He applied to the military academy, didn't he? Accept him."
"It's impossible..."
"Why?"
"Firstly, this man started his acquaintance with our equipment
kidnapping a military airplane that he immediately put to its intended use.
Secondly, Kissur is a savage. He should learn algebra first."
"Come on, you are not going to make a rocket battle cruiser commander
out of him. Eight years ago this man was an excellent war leader. War and
freedom were the same for him because freedom was for him the right to kill.
And when the sovereign asked him to eradicate separatists three years ago,
he and his people appeared to manage rocket launchers pretty well."
"Are you asking this on your own volition," Giles inquired, "or has
Kissur asked you?"
"I am asking this on my own. Kissur will die first before he asks
Earthmen for anything. But I know, Giles, that he is capable of God knows
what if he is not busy with something useful. He is not going to take
bribes, he can't be a sovereign's lapdog, the only thing he can do is to
fight. Earthmen came and destroyed his old war. He applied to the academy
but they didn't let him into the new war. How can a man, who won more
battles that our generals conducted maneuvers, take it?"
"The new war is not what Kissur thinks it is."
"That's exactly why it would be useful for Kissur make a closer
acquaintance with it."
X X X
In two days, Shavash finally appeared at the spaceport. It was an
official visit - Shavash accompanied a Joined Economics Assembly committee -
and they were in public during the entire visit. At the second chute,
Shavash leaned to the company director's ear and asked quietly,
"Where is your deputy, Ashinik, by the way?"
"He took a one week vacation," Bemish said.
"Ah, he took a vacation... You know something akin to a Following the
Way meeting started in Inissa, in Gaddar. They are having a celebration of
somebody's "resurrection" and working meetings of the circles' heads.
"Well?" Bemish said.
"These people are very dangerous," Shavash shook his head. "We have to
smile and tell the world community that the people who consider Earthmen to
be demons are no more important than the people on Earth who spend their
time in mental institutions and claim themselves to be Napoleons - but I
warn you, Terence, that even you don't know how dangerous they are."
"What are you whispering about?" a committee member asked.
Bemish turned to his countryman and said that they were whispering
about local Dahan factory that supplied the construction with titanium
supports and started explaining the problems they had with supplies.
The Tenth Chapter
Where Terence Bemish becomes familiar with provincial life of the
Empire while Mr. Shavash offers an original plan for the restructuring of
the state debt.
Giles returned from Earth in three days and he brought a bulky bundle
of papers sealed with vacuum tape - for authorized personnel only. Giles
handed the bundle to Bemish and locked the door, and Bemish mounted his legs
on the table and engrossed himself in the papers.
In an hour, having looked through the documents, Bemish said,
"That's great but have you talked to your bosses about my request?"
"What request do you mean?"
"I mean Kissur and the military academy."
"Yes. They are against it."
"Why?"
Giles paused.
"Terence, tell me, have you told Kissur what we are building here?"
"How does it matter?"
"It matters because five years ago, after Kissur had escaped from
Earth, he found himself in a Gera training camp. It was there that he
learned how to handle rocket launchers and all the other modern killing
machinery that he manages now so well."
"Is that all?"
"No, it's not all. Haven't you forgotten the guy who came to the
construction with Kissur's reference letter and hacked your computer?"
"It was not Kissur's reference letter. It was a reference letter from
one of his bailiffs. These letters cost ten "pinkies" a piece on the local
black market. Would you like me to get a dozen for you by tomorrow?"
"A month ago Kissur flew to Cassandra. He met an old acquaintance of
his there - this guy."
And Giles fished a photo out of his pocket and put it down in front of
Bemish.
"This man, by the way, led at some point anarcho-terrorist group ABC.
He has on his account..."
"I am not interested in his account," Bemish cut off the spy.
"Really? Shavash was quite interested."
"I would recommend to you not to discuss these matters with Shavash -
you and Shavash have different goals."
"What do you mean?"
"You want to figure out whether or not Kissur is connected to
terrorists and Shavash wants to prove that he is connected to them. Of
course, he will prove it."
"Will his conclusion be purely arbitrary?"
"Kissur is a thousand and one adventures. If a house next to him is on
fire, he will run in and save a child. If a house is not on fire, he may
start one. Of course, a terrorist visited Kissur. Kissur is too colorful a
figure not to be visited. So what? I didn't see Shavash right when you were
asking him this question but I could swear that he was dying of laughter. If
he had answered you honestly, he would have said on the spot that a man who
dared to compare the sovereign Irshahchan with this wasted Earthman Marx -
this man was risking taking a bath in a swimming pool right there. But
Shavash didn't say that because Shavash hates Kissur. You dished an idea out
to Shavash - he will find the proofs. He will find terrorists' liaisons to
Kissur and he will train them what they should say. Kissur is an
unpredictable man but Shavash can predict even him. If a man approaches
Kissur and says, "Let's bomb this bank for a glorious future's sake," Kissur
will throw him out of a window. While a man instructed by Shavash will
approach Kissur and say,
"Why don't we bomb this bank and feed these bribers with a dish they
deserved?"
"What a wonderful idea!" Kissur will exclaim. It will enable Shavash to
annihilate Kissur even though it would be proper to jail Shavash and not
Kissur for the bank robbery."
Giles paused.
"I thought the same, Terence," he said. "I started shouting that it was
all crap... To make the long story short, they introduced me to an
investigator. Kissur traffics in drugs."
"What?!!"
"Kissur sells drugs. They grow a lot of wolf's wisk on his lands in
Upper Warnaraine. It happens with a full blessing of the landowner. I am
very sorry Terence but we can't accept to the military academy one of Weian
drug mafia bosses."
And the spy left the office, having carefully closed the door behind
him.
In about five minutes, Ashinik walked into the office with a bunch of
printouts.
"What's wrong with you, master? Are you crying?"
Bemish was not responding.
"Are you ok? Should I call a doctor?"
X X X
In three days, Kissur with Khanadar the Dried Date, Aldon the Lynx Cub
and a couple of dogs dropped by Bemish and all five of them left for a horse
ride.
The field they were riding over was already covered with concrete
blocks. Tree stumps stuck out far away on a knoll like teeth leftovers in an
old man's mouth and a cheerful red tractor was pulling them out of earth
amidst din and screech.
The new road ended unnoticed - the riders raced down an old Empire
track with yellowish stone ruts, wide palm trees and narrow pyramids of
poplars planted along the road accordingly to the ancient laws... Green
knolls and rice paddies covered with water flashed far away. Bemish spun his
head excitedly - the beauty around seemed to be like a photo.
A squirrel sat on a poplar branch and ate a nut. Amusing himself,
Khanadar the Dried Date shot at the nut and knocked it out of the squirrel's
paws; it whisked up the tree in horror.
"Hunting used to be good here," Khanadar told Bemish. "And now the only
big game here is your bulldozers."
"Hey," Kissur said, "Why don't we go to Black Nest? Hunting is great
there."
"When?"
"Why don't we go there right now?"
"Riding?"
"That's a great idea," Kissur said. "Let's ride!"
Khanadar laughed uproariously.
And they raced. Bemish felt as good as he had never felt in his life.
He wanted to cancel all the meetings in the world, he didn't give a damn
about the spaceport and the investment funds - he just wanted to ride down
this road where his car would get stuck and his bulldozer would just tear
up.
By the evening, Kissur pointed at an altar house overgrown with
burdocks and inquired,
"Will we sleep over here or in the field?"
Bemish came to his senses.
"Kissur," he said, "I have a business meeting tomorrow at eight in the
morning. Will we be able to return before sunrise?"
Khanadar almost fell off the saddle laughing.
"Terence," he said, "Black Nest is Kissur's clan castle in Mountain
Warnaraine. Old Elda lives there and Ashidan arrived there a week ago."
"Hold on," Bemish said. "It's fifteen hundred kilometers!"
"It's sixteen hundred thirty, if I haven't forgotten your damned
units," Khanadar chortled. Bemish turned his horse back.
"I am sorry gentlemen," he spoke, "but I don't have time for a ten day
ride next to good highways."
"Hey," Kissur said, "you can't go back on your word! You promised me a
hunt in Black Nest!"
"I didn't promise to ride a horse there," Bemish stormed.
"One can't," Khanadar said, "reach a real castle by a car. One has to
ride to the real castle for five days and five nights. And the Earthman's
butt is already sore."
The comment was unfair. It was especially unfair since Bemish had been
riding a horse around the construction in the morning for the last two
months, having admitted the advantage a horse had over a heavy-assed jeep
and a fleeting flyer. So, Bemish became quite a decent horse rider though he
was not in the same league with the barbarians whose fathers had put them on
horses before their mothers started teaching them to walk.
"All right," Kissur said, "You can go back but I will be waiting for
you in Black Nest on the twenty third."
"What do you mean twenty third? Are you going to ride your horse to the
castle in five days?"
"Seven years ago," Khanadar said, "I made this trip in five days and I
had two hundred shield and spear horsemen with me and we had a skirmish
every day."
"All right," Bemish said," I will take a car and drive to your Nest,
whether it's black or white, and I am sure that I will get there before
you."
X X X
The guests came in the next morning - the Federation envoy, Mr.
Liddell, Shavash and his direct boss, the finance minister Sarjik. The
finance minister was in really bad shape - his bald head shook and his
watery eyes kept running. Shavash extracted this man from somewhere in
Chakhar province where he had been sitting since sovereign Neevik's times.
Accordingly to the non-confirmed rumors, the finance minister didn't have
credit cards and, seeing other people using them, he would shake his head,
"Nothing good will come out of it I assure you! Say, Shakunik Bank had also
issued private money and then the bank was confiscated and the money was
lost! What if the Federation government runs out of money and confiscates
your bank?" The old minister firmly grasped in his youth the following rule
- the richer is an entrepreneur, the more the state covers his riches - and
he couldn't change himself.
They abandoned the minister in a room and Shavash drove examining the
construction.
"Where is Kissur," he asked. "And why are you so disheveled?"
"Kissur," Bemish said, "rode to Black Nest with his friends, on a horse
back."
Shavash grinned.
"And what's happened to you?"
"And I rode back all night. There was not a single phone in the
villages around and I was dumb enough not take a satellite phone with me."
Bemish was exhausted, since he rode slowly, afraid of tiring the horse
out, and he couldn't sleep in saddle and he wasn't going to learn this
skill.
"I see," Shavash said, "Khanadar the Dried Date is going to ride down
the glorious battles' path. These people live in the previous century."
In the end, Bemish asked, where the story of Kissur trafficking in
drugs came from, but smiling Shavash claimed his total ignorance.
X X X
Upon serious consideration, Bemish decided to drive and he was very
proud that he would see the Country of Great Light not through an airplane
window but through a windshield.
He chose an old 4WD jeep with large wheels and he put in the trunk the
second spare tire, high hunting boots, a whole battery of drinking water
bottles and several tinned food cans. He welded steel supports to the rack
and fastened a light motorcycle to them. Bemish remembered how Khanadar had
smiled saying that it was impossible to reach Black Nest by a car and one
had to ride there on a horse. Knowing Khanadar, he suspected that he had
been a butt of a dirty joke and a car road to the castle existed only on the
map.
Bemish was driving out of the Empire's center to its barbarian
outskirts and it seemed that every kilometer, put between him and the
capital, was transposing him backwards in time. Cute manors with satellite
dishes disappeared first, foreign goods on the road stands disappeared next,
factory-made shirts on people around him disappeared last. A different
landscape stretched around him - rice paddies covered with water, clay
villages where dogs barked and drums boomed in precincts and where peasants
in hemp pants sang thousand-year-old songs while collecting the harvest, and
only a perfect highway, like a bridge spanning over time for a curious
observer, connected a sprightly rolling jeep with the faraway world of glass
and steel.
In thousand kilometers the road finally ended - the jeep started
hopping down a rocky mountain path - the highest achievement of the
construction methods in sovereign Irshahchan's times. The animals became
more audacious and began crossing the road. Occasional people, however,
dashed away from a weird cart into the woods. Rice paddies disappeared; the
few villages existing in these mountains still lived by hunting and
gathering and by robbing occasional travelers.
In the second day's evening, Bemish saw five familiar horses at a
roadside tavern and stopped there.
Kissur and his companions were sitting at a plank table and gobbling up
a wild boar. Bemish joined them.
"I'll leave you behind," Bemish said.
"Hmm," Kissur said, "By the way, I could order to puncture your tires."
Bemish bantered back, "And I can sue you."
Kissur was chewing greedily on the boar.
"This is my land. I am the master of taxes and jurisdiction here. So,
if you sue me, I may as well sentence you to hanging for perjury."
"Do you judge this way often?"
"Never," Kissur said. "If you sentence a man to death, his relatives
will start hunting you in a vendetta. Who will avenge you?"
"Nobody will avenge an Earthman," Khanadar the Dried Date agreed.
"Earthmen think that their government should avenge them. Soon, their
government will sleep with their women for them."
Bemish was assigned the best den in the tavern and Kissur sent him a
girl. The girl had been washed and she was quite cute. She stood shyly
tugging at a mat with her bare toes. Bemish seated the girl on his knees and
started fingering her necklace. There were numerous coins on the necklace -
several heavy silver asymmetric coins with a hole inside and a partially
rubbed off Gold Sovereign's seal, a dozen of dimes and quarters, a Swiss
frank and even as far as Bemish could decipher German, one Cologne subway
nickel token.
Bemish pushed the girl off his knees, dug in his wallet and spilled all
the change on his hand. He found there a dime that had spent a long time in
the wallet, showed it to the girl and tapped with his finger a silver
"unicorn" the size of a chicken egg, square shaped and with a round hole in
the middle and an encryption glorifying sovereign Meenun on the girl's
necklace.
"Let's exchange," he said.
The girl's eyes blossomed with joy. She quickly started pulling the
necklace off her neck. Bemish grabbed her hand.
"Listen, stupid," he said. "If you take this dime and one more and a
hundred more and a thousand more and fill this coffer in the corner with all
these dimes, the whole coffer will be worth less than this silver coin. Got
it?"
The girl nodded.
"And now get out," Bemish said. The girl's eyes saddened.
"Won't we exchange?" she asked looking at the dime with an unconcealed
longing. Bemish gave her the dime and kicked her out.
When Bemish woke up next morning, Kissur and his retinue were no longer
there, they had ridden away at the crack of dawn.
"Will I catch up with them soon?" Bemish asked the hostess.
"No," the hostess said, "You need to take a detour via the White Pass
and they rode straight. You will reach the castle by the evening."
"And what will happen to them?"
"Hmm," the woman hesitated, "If snow melts a bit in the daytime and an
avalanche comes down, you, of course, will get their first but if no
avalanche happens they, of course, will get there before you."
"Is the straight path hard?"
"I don't know. Since old Shun broke his neck there ten years ago,
nobody has taken it."
The mountain road winded like a pumpkin vine. Heavy rain shredded with
snow started suddenly. The wipers were not able to handle it. Bemish was
horrified for Kissur - he was not old Shun, of course, but he still could
break his neck.
This mountainous area was wild to the utmost. Trade had flourished in
the coastal regions and three dozens years ago local cities such as Lamass
or Kudum could brag about their good communities and abundant traders. The
civil war in the Empire turned everything around - the castles' inhabitants
straightened up, the traders' sons left for the castles' regiments and their
daughters became concubines. The demand for warlike Alom nobility was such
that an average knight could rob more in two month in the Empire than an
average trader could make in two years. By the war's end, trading paid off
so little that Lamass traders became extinct and it was the land of bandits
and robbers that welcomed the people from the stars.
The hands of the Empire could barely reach this strange region;
formally a castle owner was responsible for upholding order in the local
lands but he usually happened to be the biggest bandit. Nobody even
considered mine development here because horsemen with rocket launchers
under their armpits invariably approached mine engineers to demand a
tribute.
No passerby was safe here. The most disgusting accident happened three
years ago when a World Bank vice president, an amateur mountaineer, and two
friends of his decided, damn it, to conquer a local mountain Aych-Akhal.
While approaching the peak, he was taken prisoner by a local pedigreed
bandit and escorted to his castle. Next day the bank received a fax with a
picture of the vice president sitting chained in a real underground pit and
a one trillion dinars ransom demand. The World Bank stock capital was five
trillion dinars.
The media howled.
The Galaxy demanded the Empire to take decisive actions. The Galaxy
demanded to locate the castle the prisoner was in. "Whatever," the Empire
envoy shrugged his shoulders, "Whoever caught him keeps him." The Galaxy
demanded the decisive actions to be taken at this region.
The castle owner announced that if anybody resorts to decisive actions,
the prisoner would have his throat cut. Kissur helped the World Bank out. He
flew to his castle immediately and called the local lords in for a feast and
counsel. They arrived. Kissur imperturbably arrested the three dozens guests
that came to visit him and announced that he would shoot all these folks if
the vice president was not released.
The landowner who took the vice president prisoner was not present
among Kissur's guests. However, his brother and his father-in-law were
there. The same night, the vice president was released without any ransom.
Afterwards, Kissur didn't even bother meeting the man he had saved.
By the evening, Bemish reached the main and the only one street in
Black Village; faraway on the mountain amidst the clouds, the castle and its
wall, jagged like an EEG, showed up for a moment.
Right at this moment, a goose appeared on the wet road.
Bemish expected the goose to move aside and let the car pass since, in
the Earthman's opinion, roads were created for cars not geese. In the
goose's opinion however, roads were created for geese and accordingly to his
views the goose stared at the car with curiosity and then turned its back to
it and lowered its head.
They explained to Bemish afterwards that he should have lowered speed
and driven over the goose and the goose would have been unharmed and the car
would have been fine. But Bemish wasn't familiar with local geese' customs.
He turned the steering wheel to the right and floored the brake. The
car spun like a feather. Bemish flew into boysenberry bushes that the locals
used for fences and he almost split his head apart over the steering wheel.
The car shuddered and froze. Bemish slammed the door and stepped out to take
a look. The front wheels sat deep in the rut and one of them fell off.
Bemish looked around. The gosling, glancing sideways, desperately ran away
from the road. "Son of a bitch!" Bemish said loudly.
It was getting dark quickly. There was no way to fix the car. A dog
behind the boysenberry fence tried to compensate for a lacking fire alarm.
More and more dogs were joining it. As for the people - the village seemed
to be dead.
"Hei," Bemish shouted, "is anybody there?"
He had to shout for a while. Finally a house door opened and somebody
asked from a doorstep,
"What's this shouting in the dark?"
Something was gleaming behind the door but Bemish was not able to see
the man.
"Do you have a phone?" Bemish asked.
"I don't have a phone. I have a fan laser," the answer was.
Bemish bared his teeth.
"I have a fan laser myself."
The guy shut the door. Bemish kicked the car thoughtfully. He threw the
fan emitter on his left shoulder, a daypack on his right shoulder and took
the small bike off the rack. "Fan laser," he thought, thinking about the
gleam in the opened door, "No way, it's a fan laser, damn it - it's at least
a plasma rocket launcher."
X X X
The guards let Bemish into the castle without any surprise; bike or no
bike - who can understand these Earthmen? "Yes," Bemish thought, "people
here are very different from the plains' dwellers, they hugged their swords
in silence for a thousand years and now they silently hug their rocket
launchers, every trial verdict starts a vendetta here..."
It was slippery and wet in the castle yard, like in a defrosted
refrigerator. Kissur hadn't arrived yet. Old Elda was napping in an armchair
in the upper hall. She looked at the nervous Earthman as she would look at a
frog and said that the Earthman's iron cart would fall apart on the
Earthmen's roads smooth like a eunuch's cheek before her son falls from a
steep slope in the local mountains.
Bemish took off together with his nerves.
The young castle owner Ashidan, a Cambridge student, was passed out in
the main hall having dropped his golden curls into a plate with leftovers. A
bull mask with torches in place of horns bared its teeth above him and
something smoldering in the fireplace under the mask produced a horrible
smell; at a closer view it, appeared to be a hand phone remnants.
"What is it?" Bemish asked the majordomo.
"Lady Elda," he answered, "said that she didn't want any witchcraft
objects in her house. She just found it in the morning having gone over the
rooms."
Bemish looked Ashidan over more carefully. He slept shuddering
nervously and he didn't appear to Bemish to be drunk.
"Aren't there any communication devices in the castle?"
"Oh," the servant said, "what communication are you talking about?!
Look - even the cloth is homespun. She would burn anything else." And he
pointed at his dress. Bemish felt his sleeve - it really was burlap. He
hadn't understood that at first and thought in surprise that the servant had
a very luxurious jacket - thick knotted cloth like this was fashionable this
year.
Bemish didn't sleep at night and tossed; old pines squeaked behind a
narrow window, designed to shoot out from not to look out of, and their
squeaking branches made sounds like a hanged man's rope. Bemish pulled an
antenna out of a small radio and started listening. Suddenly while he was
searching for a station, he heard his name and a long string of words
spitted out in Alom - Bemish didn't make them out through the noise. Bemish
turned the dial again but the conversation had ended. "Hmm," Bemish thought,
"Somebody in this castle hid a transmitter away from old Elda."
X X X
In the morning Bemish left for the village. He didn't really want to
complain to old Elda that his iron cart fell apart on the road that even a
ram would pass through in a snowstorm and he was also sure that the castle
inhabitants knew as much about cars as he knew about divination on oil.
Bemish walked down a fresh road passing boysenberry fences and curious
chicken, thinking about this strange area where a phone in a house was a
luxury and an assault rifle was a necessary tool.
He reached the car and stopped in surprise.
The car stood at the same place and the busted wheel still hunched in
the rut. The other three wheels had disappeared in an unknown direction -
the lonesome car sank on its axles. The wipers were gone off the windshield
and the windshield was also gone. Bemish's eyes traveled into the car -
radio, head supports, rugs, handles and all five windows beside the
windshield had carefully packed up and left. An untouched first aid kit sat
in the back seat.
Bemish walked around the car and opened the trunk. There was nothing
inside except for a pair of old worn out bark sandals. Bemish was surprised
at first because he didn't have a habit of wearing bark sandals but then he
realized that the thief probably put Bemish's leather boots on and left the
bark sandals there. With gloomy anticipation, Bemish raised the hood and
gazed at the engine. Bemish was quite familiar with the car's design. He
immediately realized that the night thieves were much more familiar with
this design.
Bemish looked around - geese and turkey with red snot surrounded him
and the same rocket launcher old guy was digging cabbage in his garden. He
didn't have the rocket launcher next to him, probably thanks to the
daylight.
"Hey," Bemish said.
The old guy turned around. He wore a shirt that used to be white in its
youth and the pants that nobody would be able to say anything about.
"Come here," Bemish said. The old guy approached. Further into the
garden, his son hoed the ground mechanically without looking around. Bemish
waved the bark sandals and extended them over the fence.
"Do you know," Bemish said, "Who owns these?"
The old man took the sandals and fished out a ten dinar note that
Bemish had pushed down the toe earlier. He rolled the note and stuck it
behind his ear and handed the sandals back to Bemish.
"I don't know," he said.
Bemish lost his speech.
He looked at himself suddenly with the peasant's eyes. He looked at a
well dressed alien coming out of the world that all the people, who worked
well and obeyed the authorities, would go to after death - and he looked at
this half bare destitute village where no phones existed but news about a
car that could be stripped spread quickly without the phone, where no
toilets existed but mortars were available, and everybody knew everything
but would say nothing about his neighbors - and he realized with utter
clarity that even if the night adepts had stripped the car in the view of
the whole village and it probably had happened this way, not all the police
in the world would be able to find out who had done this.
Wheels rustled on the road.
"What's the problem?"
Bemish turned around. Behind him in a sport car, turquoise and narrow
like an orchid petal, Kissur's brother, Ashidan sat. A perfect shirt, a
precise hairdo, the smell of cologne - a starting manager and a Cambridge
graduate - Bemish felt his world pleasantly coming back to him.
Terence Bemish sardonically raised the bark footwear.
"Here," he said, "somebody decided to exchange transportation means
with me."
But Ashidan had figured it out already. He got out of the car, opened
the passenger's door and bowed to Bemish inviting him into the car. Bemish
got in. The peasant watched them with frightened eyes.
"Hey," Ashidan shouted to the guy in the garden, "come here!" The
peasant approached.
"Get in the car," Ashidan told the guy.
Bemish stretched to open a door.
"Get in the trunk," Ashidan added, looking in disgust at the guy's bare
and dirty feet. "Ah, well, you may change your clothing."
The guy ran to the house. Bemish regained his speech.
"Why do you think," Bemish asked, "that he stripped the car? It could
be anybody..."
"If," Ashidan said in an even voice, "a crime is committed in a village
and the criminal is not apprehended, the lord should arrest several village
inhabitants and keep them as hostages till they die or till the others
deliver the guilty party."
Bemish stared at Ashidan with wide opened eyes. The charming boy - and
he was a very beautiful lad - looked very much like a successful manager.
"In this voice his ancestors spoke generation after generation," Bemish
thought, "It looks like progress here is characterized by the lord putting a
peasant in a car's trunk instead of tying him to a horse's tail."
"This man," Ashidan said, pointing at Bemish, "is a named brother of my
brother and a guest of my ancestors. My brother is coming today - the
servants brought news that he got stuck at the Trekking Pass and took a
detour via Lokh."
The peasant dropped to his knees.
"Master!" it was unclear whether he addressed Ashidan or the alien.
The peasant's son walked out of the house in clean white clothing with
a satchel in his hand. A ten-year-old boy accompanied him.
"Master," the oldster continued, "take the younger one, we have so much
work now!"
Ashidan thoughtfully tapped the leather steering wheel.
"Our ancestor's guest," he said, "had a bad dream that somebody robbed
his car. I had this dream, too, and I hurried here. But now it seems to me
that it was a false dream and that the car, complete and unharmed, will
return to the castle by the evening."
Having said this, Ashinik floored the accelerator and the car sprayed
the white peasant's dress with a load of mud and rushed away.
X X X
Kissur reached the castle only by noon. The rumors appeared to be
correct - an avalanche had descended off the Trekking Pass and it had
brushed by the people and the horses. Everybody was alive but Kissur's
horse, Stargazer, with a white arrow on his forehead and wide hooves, was
dragged down and only a red spot blinked in the snow for a moment. They took
the same road that Bemish had used; Kissur's eyes swelled with blood like
ripe cherries because of the horse. Kissur glanced at Bemish and snapped,
"You won the bet. We will hunt tomorrow." And he ran upstairs.
Bemish didn't pursue him. Something scary suddenly hung in the air, the
stone gods' masks grimaced with their mouths at the Earthman and clanged
their teeth. Bemish turned around - pale Ashidan stood next to him rubbing
his temples.
Kissur locked himself in a corner tower and didn't let anybody in.
Khanadar explained that he was mourning the horse following the customs.
When Bemish's car drove into the castle's yard in the evening, Bemish
was sitting on a guard tower looking at the dragon-like clouds. Bemish ran
downstairs.
A well-built flaxen guy stepped out of the car and, bowing, handed the
keys to him. Everything was fixed including the broken wheel. Bemish looked
the guy over and said,
"Thanks. How many auto repair shops are in the village?"
"One," the guy answered without blushing.
Bemish looked at the guy's feet - he stood in a pool wiggling his bare
toes. The Earthman walked around the car and unlocked the trunk - the case
bristled there self-importantly. Bemish opened the case - underwear and
clothing was there, only two shirts were wet - clearly, they had been washed
and ironed. Bemish extracted leather boots out of the case.
"Hold it," Bemish said, "That's a gift for you. The guy gasped and took
the boots. Bemish stuck his hand in his pocket, took three hundred local
"unicorns" out and handed them to the guy.
"It's for your work."
"Mister," the guy said, "we just fixed the wheel. It costs twenty
"unicorns."
"Where are you going now?" Bemish asked.
"I am going to the Blue Ravine, to the village's left end."
"Get in," Bemish said, "I'll give you a ride." The village stretched
along the road, between the mountain and the canyon. It was rarely more than
hundred meters wide and about eight kilometers long. The guy squeezed
himself in a corner almost under the seat and kept silent. One could think
that he sat in the car first time in his life. "Hmm," Bemish thought, "on
the other hand, a master and an alien is giving him a ride for the first
time... I hope I am not compromising White Falcon clan's honor."
"How long has Ashidan been living in the castle?" Bemish asked.
"It's been two months, master."
"Does he drink?"
"No, master," the guy said nervously.
Bemish dropped the guy off at a field where girls in blue and red
skirts were already starting to dance and came closer to see what it was
that they grew in this field. He was going to ask for how long the peasants
had been growing this stuff but the bailiff rushed towards him. Bemish
turned around and drove away.
It was just before the sunset - he drove down a forest till he found a
nice lawn to the road's left. He drove into the lawn, turned the ignition
off, lifted the hood and gazed at the engine.
The carburetor was assembled like a bird's nest from many different
parts and the air filter was also taken from another car. The night thieves
from the only auto repair shop in the village had installed everything else
where they had taken it from.
Bemish turned around and drove back.
Kissur had already descended to the yard and they explored the castle
together. It was huge, the walls rose one after another like cabbage leaves.
The castle sat on the very mountaintop and only one road led to it from
the west. The outer wall hovered above an abyss on all the other sides and
the abyss had been hewed off for better defense, forming a wall smooth like
glass.
Kissur showed his guest a yard where Kanut the Falcon had been killed
and a small castle garden where Kissur's great grandmother had sinned with a
winged two-headed bull under an apple tree. Bemish told Kissur that tourists
from the whole Galaxy could visit the castle.
"This castle is not fit for tourists," Kissur smirked, "It does not
have disabled access." And he squeezed himself nimbly onto a narrow and
incredibly steep staircase spiraling along one of the outside walls.
Merriness ruled the castle in the evening - the grooms braided the
horses' tails, servants dragged out of the closets huge yew old bows,
wrapped in old rotten cloth with silver inscriptions. Bemish glanced into a
semi-dark stable and froze - Kissur, smiling coldly, was hiding a stubby
black assault rifle in a saddlebag.
Bemish stepped inside. Kissur lowered the woven bag lid.
"What game," Bemish asked, "are we going to hunt tomorrow?"
"In this area," Kissur said, "people have been hunting big game -
boars, bears - since old times."
A question hung on Bemish's tongue tip, "What kind of boar would you
hunt with an assault rifle?" But Bemish licked his lips and swallowed the
question.
They rode out before the crescent left the black sky, equipped the same
way as eight or hundred years ago - Kissur wore grey suede tall boots,
decorated with lilies, with high red heels but without spurs, green pants
and a red jacket girdled with a heavy belt made out of gold plates - every
plate depicted a beast or a fish. Kissur's overcoat was also green, with two
wide lanes sewn with golden mesh. A bow hung on his shoulder and a leather
quiver hung behind his back; arrow feathers, white like plastic foam, stuck
out of the quiver. A throw-axe hung at his belt and two yew javelins and a
sword hung at the saddle. The other nobles were dressed the same way. It
would be wrong to call it carnival dress - Kissur, like the majority of
Weians, dressed archaically even in the capital and he practically always
wore a wide necklace, made out of jade plates set in woven gold and
depicting falcons. As for Bemish, he clearly understood that his hunting bib
layered with PVC would call the local gods' fury at his head and they would
withhold the game that they guarded, from him. Now he felt like an impostor
in leather pants embroidered with silver.
Before leaving, Kissur threw a piece of fresh meat on an altar next to
the gate and tapped a bare sword over a rock to attract the god's attention.
Bemish looked at the sword with interest; it was very heavy and long,
with a three edged blade and some engraving that looked like running horses
along its edge. The handle had been made in the shape of intertwined snakes.
Bemish asked why they needed a sword and Kissur replied that gods didn't
grant fortune without a sword since the road to the other world went along
its edge and they brought and took away beasts down this road.
They watched the sunrise from a mountaintop, aerial wind danced in
their horses' tails - they said that this wind used to mount fillies in
ancient times and black horses with white spots had been born of this wind -
shells scrunched occasionally under the hooves reminding that a sea had been
there millions of years ago. Then, Kissur espied a deer that also decided to
enjoy the sunrise and they released the dogs and rode following them.
There were five nobles - Kissur, Ashidan, Khanadar the Dried Date,
Aldon and Bemish, there were also eight dogs and three servants - they drove
the deer at Kissur and he, having opened his eyes wide and screamed wildly,
threw a spear handed to him by one of the servants. Painted yellow, with a
green pinecone on the end, the spear almost pierced the deer all the way
through easier than it pierced the old maple in Kissur's manor in the
capital. Suddenly the forest buzzed and leaves flew. Either it entered
Bemish's mind on its own or the gods gave him a hint, "Kissur will get in an
accident. The mountain took the horse yesterday, today..."
By noon, Bemish was drunk with blood, the servants lagged somewhere
behind, he, Kissur and Ashidan rode out to a lawn overgrown with red
flowers. Kissur, having ridden to another side of the lawn, was making out
moss on a tree, he was probably foretelling.
At this moment, a bear cub jumped out on the lawn and crazily rushed up
the tree.
"Don't do it," Kissur told his brother, "It's a bad omen."
But Ashidan had already pulled his bow and shot - the cub let the tree
go and fell. Ashidan jumped off the saddle and ran to the cub. The bushes
were pulled apart, a roar issued forth and a huge black and brown she-bear
barged in.
"Ashidan," Bemish screamed.
Ashidan turned around. The she-bear rose on her hind paws and the youth
stood in front of her, bewildered with a broken arrow pulled out of her son.
Bemish snatched at his gun. Before he raised his hand, Kissur had
rolled off his saddle with a sword in his hand and dived under the bear's
belly. Ashidan with a squeal jumped aside. Bemish fired. The bear swung its
paws heavily in the air and crashed on Kissur. She shuddered and froze like
a pile of peat dumped off a truck.
Bemish and Ashidan rushed to the bear.
"Kissur are you alive?"
No answer issued.
Bemish approached the bear and started pulling it by its ear. At this
moment the pile of seemingly dead meat moved and Kissur materialized.
"Damn," he bared his teeth, "sword..."
But the sword, after they had turned the bear over, appeared to be fine
- it had entered her belly almost all the way to the guard. They examined
her snout - the bullet hit the bear right in her eye.
Yes, the hunt was excellent, even Dried Date who was not capable of
smiling screamed and hooted. He sat at the fire next to Kissur's knees and
started singing his songs that Bemish had heard so many times from boom
boxes in the workers' barracks that he came to liking them.
They rode back in the dusk. The horses walked down the path two
abreast, black oily earth crumbled under their hooves, a forested slope rose
like a dark wall on the right, the fuzzy sun was rolling behind the faraway
mountains covered with gleaming snow like a cake glazed with white. The
birds fluttered up from under the hooves and life was wondrously good. "Oh,
my God, it's such a great place for a hotel," a thought passed Bemish's
mind. He was a practical man and he always sought for ways to adjust nature
to money.
After the bear cub accident, Ashidan saddened and it happened somehow
that Kissur and his retinue raced in front and Bemish lagged behind them and
rode next to Ashidan. The latter was pale - either due to the weed that the
peasants grew in a local field or because of Cambridge. Bemish leaned to
Ashidan and asked quietly,
"Does Kissur know that you are a drug addict?"
"I am not a drug addict, I am just curious! I can stop this any
moment."
Bemish sniggered involuntarily. The youth shuddered. Then he abruptly
turned his grey eyes to the Earthman. His pupils were unnaturally
contracted.
It's not my fault, it's yours," he said, "Seven years ago Warnaraine
was ruled from this castle, and now it's a dump because there is no eight
line highway next to it! You have chased our gods away and what have you
given us instead, a Pepsi can?"
Ashidan grabbed the Earthman by his hand.
"This weed has always grown here! They ate it to speak to the gods! You
declared even talking to the gods to be a crime!"
"Come on, Ashidan! You don't converse to a god or a demon, you just
gobble this weed up to get high and you are afraid of Kissur because he will
throw you into a hospital for drug addicts or just chain you."
"I am afraid of the sword he took," Ashidan said, "I saw this sword in
Khanalai's hand and if people are killed, their souls enter their swords."
Khanalai was the rebel that fought Kissur seven years ago.
"Khanalai?" Bemish was astonished, "Have you met Khanalai?"
"He took me prisoner," Ashidan answered.
Bemish stared at the youth - he was young, slim like a snake and
incredibly beautiful, with golden hair and grey eyes heavily mascara coated
for the hunt.
"Oh, my God! How old were you?"
"I was fifteen, almost fifteen. Kissur entrusted me with five thousand
horsemen and Dried Date and Aldon's uncle - Aldon the Striped - were with
me. We should have waited for Kissur in the Black Mountains. But we heard
that down there, in the town of Lukhun, merchants had come in for a fair and
were bunched all together there because of the war. We decided to seize this
town because we would get more loot if we didn't wait for Kissur.
So, we approached this town with a guide and when the sun came out we
realized that it was a trap - Khanalai's army encircled us. Khanalai was
going to catch Kissur."
Ashidan rocked in the saddle.
I rode forward and challenged Khanalai to a duel. My shield had an
image of the White Falcon on it; Khanalai thought that Kissur himself got in
his trap. He really didn't want to fight but he had to accept the challenge.
He was afraid that his captains would mock him.
There is not much to say about this fight - Khanalai split my shoulder
and threw me to the ground like a kitten and then he removed my helmet to
cut my head off. He was really surprised and he asked me, "Who are you,
brat, to wear a White Falcon shield?" I told him that my name was Ashidan
and that my brother Kissur would avenge me and why wouldn't he just shut his
lousy trap and cut my head off. I was a very cute boy and Khanalai suddenly
took pity on me. He raised his sword and then he thought, "I will die - and
these words contained all the horror of irreversible, you couldn't sleep at
night having heard them. So, would it be worth it to bring the sword down?"
At least, that's what he told me afterwards. So he threw me like a wench
over his horse's back and rode to his army. And my army was obliterated down
to the last man. You see, it was a war very different from a war between two
countries. When one country and another country make a war, it's fair to
spare the enemy and to make him your vassal. While when a government fights
rebels, it's fair to obliterate the rebels completely.
"What happened to Dried Date?" Bemish suddenly realized.
"Dried Date and old Aldon were taken prisoners."
"And what happened next?"
They brought me and Dried Date to Khanalai's tent where he was feasting
after the battle and Khanalai said that he would like to hear a song about
this battle from Dried Date. Dried Date answered that the battle was not
finished yet because not everybody, supposed to be executed after this
battle, was executed and when Khalai executed everybody who was supposed to
be executed, there would be nobody left to sing this song. Khanalai grinned
and gave his new lute and his sword to Dried Date, and this sword was so
valuable that it cost more that Dried Date's honor. He sat and sang a song
of praise to Khanalai and I don't think that you'll ever hear it from Dried
Date or on a tape recorder. Then, Khanalai turned to me and said that he
would like to let me go. I was insolent to him. He paused and said, "All
right, they will crucify you tomorrow, brat. At first they will crucify
Aldon and then you."
"What happened tomorrow?"
"They brought Aldon and me out and Khanalai said, `If you let me pardon
you, I will let Aldon go.' I spit in his face."
Ashidan paused. He face paled completely and Bemish suddenly imagined
how cute a boy he had been at "almost fifteen."
"Khanalai rocked on his feet for a while and then said, `You are too
beautiful a boy to die.' They crucified Aldon and quarreled for a while and
then took me away."
"And what happened to Dried Date?"
"Dried Date sang songs of praise to Khanalai till he was offended, that
he, a man from a noble family, was serving a commoner who used to tread cow
dung in his childhood. He cut one of Khanalai's aides head off, threw it in
a sack and raced to Kissur with this ransom. And he also gave Khanalai's
sword to Kissur."
Ashidan paused and said, "I also met Khanalai's son there - we were of
the same age and the lad was quite gifted. I think that Khanalai took mercy
on me because of him. He asked me once, "What if Kissur gets a hold of my
son? Do you think he will let him live like I let you?"
"Yes," Bemish thought, "Kissur, however, didn't take mercy on
Khanalai's son and he didn't take mercy on anybody else."
"Hey," Khanadar the Dried Date shouted ahead, "have you fallen asleep?
Come here quickly!"
Bemish and Ashidan hastened their horses. The road split in two in
front of them, the riders grouped at the fork.
"We should go left," Kissur said, "We should visit Aldis so that the
next hunt would be even more fruitful than the last one."
"Well," Ashidan objected, "we won't reach the castle before nightfall."
"No problem," Kissur said, "we will sleep over at the old altar house."
Ashidan's face fell.
"Look," Khanadar said, "you aren't afraid of the old altar house, are
you?"
And he continued having turned to Bemish,
"Aldis the White Falcon is buried next to the old altar and two
families were assigned to take care of the grave. But they ignored their
duty and Aldis ate them and he liked it - he started climbing out every
night, chased passersby with all his retinue and herded them into his place
for a feast. A traveler passes by and sees a manor with lights on, and only
his bones are left by the morning. People took notice - if on a new moon
night there were fire and commotion at the old altar house - then, some
family would wail somewhere soon enough. They would have pounded a stake
down his coffin long time ago if he had been a commoner but they are afraid
of doing it - you know, he is Kissur's great grandfather." Ashidan grinned.
"It's not fitting to visit ancestors' graves with an Earthman
outlander," he said, "It's enough for a stranger that we took him for a
hunt."
"I have never hunted here before," Kissur answered, "and not shared my
booty with my ancestor."
And they rode to the old altar house, having dismissed the servants and
having tied the bear cub's body to a saddle.
The old altar house sat between a forest and a horseshoe shaped
mountain on the very edge of a sheer, as if cut with a knife, gorge. Behind
a black carved fence, one could see a roof tied in a knot; yellow light
issued forth from a round window, people's voices were coming from behind
the fence. Ashidan's face acquired a pallid color of toothpowder.
"Oh-ho-ho," Kissur said, "is Aldis getting rowdy again?"
The riders quietly dismounted, Kissur petted his horse so it wouldn't
neigh and stuck covertly a stubby assault rifle under his overcoat. A pine
tree, that had fallen last year, crushed the fence and miraculously spared
the chapel - they took a look over the tree log into a wide yard. There, on
a stone site, a small space boat Orinoko-22 stood looking like a striped
squash. People in body suits were standing in a line and passing sacks from
the altar house to the boat.
"Heia," Kissur said loudly, "that's called progress! Even ghosts can no
longer fly without engines!"
He bounced over the log and stepped in the lit circle. Frankly, it was
Kissur that looked more like a ghost here - a hunter in an ancient green
caftan with a yew bow hanging over his shoulder and his face painted with
blue stripes for the hunt - amidst people in flying suits who froze for a
moment next to a cargo hatch. The people dropped plastic sacks. Three guys
jumped out of an altar house window with long barreled lasers in their
hands. A horse quietly neighed - Khanadar and Ashidan stepped out into the
light from the other side, leading their horses.
"False alarm," somebody said, "these are the landlords."
Kissur unhurriedly walked to a short round eyed character whom Bemish
recognized to be the local bailiff.
"Oh, it's you Lakhor. What are you doing here?"
"You know, my Lord," Lakhor said with a certain dignity, "We are
loading..."
Kissur placed his foot on a sack, dragged a hunting knife from his belt
and ripped the plastic cover from top to bottom.
"I swear by god's goiter," Kissur said, "Everybody around says "Lord,"
"Lord" to you, kisses your knees while you don't even know what it is that
you lord over. What are these oats you are hauling to the boat? Nothing but
oats has ever grown around here, if my memory doesn't fail me."
Kissur scooped up a bit out of the sack with his hand and sniffed it.
"No," he shook his head, "no way, oats could smell like this. Khanadar,
do you know what it is?"
Khanadar also picked a sack, tore it apart with his whip's claw, picked
some weed up and stuck it under his horse's nose. It neighed and turned its
head aside.
"No," Khanadar said, "I don't know what it is but it's not oats. Look,
Striped is putting its nose up and it doesn't want it." At this point, Aldon
the Lynx Cub joined the conversation.
"Hey, it's hemp," he said, "wolf's whisk." Weian zealots and local
serfs have used it since old times to visit the skies and now people carry
it to the Sky in plastic bags. I heard, they pay a lot of money for this
weed on the sky. Earthmen always pay a lot of money for what a horse put its
nose up away."
The only thing that Bemish couldn't understand was why they were all
still alive.
Here, Ashidan's breaking voice sounded.
"Kissur," he said, "it's my fault. I failed to ask your permission."
Kissur span around.
"Are you trying to say," he spoke with a phony astonishment, "that you
allowed my serfs to trade weed grown in my lands without asking for my
consent?"
"But I was not sure..." Ashidan started.
"Tell me," Kissur inquired, "who is the senior in our clan, you or me?"
"You are."
"And who owns the land and everything above it and below it, the senior
or the junior?"
"The senior does."
"Then, why are you breaking the law and pocketing the profit from this
business?"
"I was afraid that you won't understand..."
"Of course, I won't understand," Kissur thundered, "my serfs on my land
start a business and don't pay me two cents! Who should feed me, the
sovereign or my own holding?"
"My Lord, my Lord," round eyed Lakhor hurried, "We didn't know that
master Ashidan paid you nothing, I'll turn into a frog if we wanted to break
the law!"
At this point, a man in a flying suit ducked out of the cargo hatch.
"I bring my apologies, Mr. Kissur," he said in Interenglish, "We really
didn't know that you were not aware of our modest business."
Kissur looked him over from head to toes.
"How much do you pay my brother for a sack?"
"Ten."
"You will pay me twelve. I want money now."
"Do you think I have so much?" the pilot snapped.
"Don't cross him," Lakhor peeped in horror.
"I am waiting," Kissur said coldly, "or I will rip all the sacks
apart."
"Don't pick a fight with him," another Earthman said, "he is livid."
"You would become livid here," Khanadar the Dried Date objected, "when
your own serfs don't pay you their taxes fairly and you brother cheats you -
hasn't Ashidan promised you Kissur's protection?"
Kissur and the pilot disappeared in the hatch opening. Ashidan sat on
the log not raising his pale face. Bemish's mind was reeling. If Kissur
hadn't known whom he would meet at the old altar house, why had he brought
the assault rifle that he was now carefully hiding under his hunting coat?
And if he had known, why had he dragged Bemish with him? Did he think that
Bemish would keep silent? No, damn it, did he think that Terence Bemish
would swallow even that? Or would he suggest landing these boats in Assalah
spaceport?
Kissur and the pilot stepped out of the hatch again. The pilot was
smiling. It was clear that in his opinion he got away cheaply and found
himself such a protector that all Weian police would not be able to lay a
finger on him. Kissur stuck the money in his pants pocket and, having bent
his leg, placed it right in front of the pilot on a boarding ramp's aluminum
stair.
The latter started looking around confusedly.
"Stupid," old Lakhor hissed, "Kiss the foot, the Lord's foot."
The Earthman shrugged his shoulders and bended down to the dusty boot.
At this moment, Kissur kneed the pilot under his chin. The pilot
squealed. His body flew upwards and Kissur's joined hands crushed his neck -
his backbone crunched.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bemish barely managed to see how Aldon
plucked Ashidan and threw him into the bushes. Kissur went flat behind a
steel landing support, whipped his gun out and started firing at the
confused people, Aldon and Khanadar joined the fray.
Three Earthmen with guns went supine, the fourth one, unnoticed by
Kissur, leaped out of the altar house. Bemish jumped at him and kicked his
gun away; both of them went to the ground. The gunman seized Bemish's throat
and started choking him. Bemish rolled on his back and quite nimbly kicked
the attacker in the place where legs grow from. The latter said "ouch"
loudly and let Bemish go but he immediately recovered and butted him in the
stomach and then punched him with the right hand. Bemish intercepted this
punch, seized the gunman's sleeve with his left hand and, with fingers
spread apart, hit him in the eyes. One eye burst and oozed down his cheek.
"Aaahhh!" the gunman screamed. In a tight embrace, they rolled down to
the abyss over boulders and hummocks.
Bemish banged a rock with his back badly and he fainted for a moment.
The gunman whipped an arrow out of the quiver, hanging behind Bemish's back.
The arrow was sharp and firm, with white icy feathers. A hexagonal titanium
tip gleaned in the moonlight above Bemish. "That's it," Bemish thought.
The smuggler dropped the arrow, however, and then he sighed and fell on
Bemish's chest. Bemish shook himself up and climbed from under his enemy's
body. A long knife was stuck in the guy's back and Khanadar the Dried Date
stood over the knife.
Date extended his hand and helped Bemish get up. They climbed the loose
rocks uphill to the lighted altar house and space boat.
Everything had already been done there. Bemish counted the corpses -
sixteen people, five wore body suits or jeans and the others were locals.
The gunpowder smell of shots mixed with the smell of fresh hemp and blood.
Ashidan sat on a rock holding his head in his hands.
Following Kissur's orders they gathered the corpses and the sacks next
to the altar house walls, poured gas over them and lit them on fire.
"I feel bad about the grave," Khanadar said.
"It's desecrated now, what can we do?" Kissur responded. Still, he
untied the bear cub off the saddle and threw it in the fire.
Afterwards, Kissur tore off the emergency control seals, turned the
safety block off and started clicking the switches till the main screen
swelled red and screamed in an ugly voice.
"Mount," Kissur yelled, running out of the space boat. Khanadar had
already leaped across the broken fence and he was prancing on his horse next
to the forest.
"Should I repeat it for you?" Kissur screamed at Ashidan, "It will blow
up in a moment."
Ashidan raced following the others.
It blew up in such a way that the moon almost dropped off the sky and
fire imps leaped out of the mountains and danced over the altar house left
behind; when people in the village found the remnants, they said, with
astonishment, that old Aldis had dragged stupid travelers from the sky to
him and nothing good, of course, had come out of it.
With his head low, Ashidan rode between Aldon and Khanadar and Khanadar
held his horse's reins.
Bemish rode behind everybody. He didn't feel all that good. A dull pain
walked up and down where his spine had banged against the rock and his side
was skinned in places. Kissur suddenly slowed his horse a bit and waited for
his friend.
Kissur jabbed Bemish with his elbow and said, with a laugh,
"So, Earthman, admit that your feet got cold? Admit that you decided I
would ask you to land this boat next time in Assalah spaceport?"
"You should have called police in."
"I," Kissur said, "am the master over this land's taxes and courts.
What would have happened if I had called police? Firstly, I wouldn't have
found this boat, because our justice is worse than a whore and they would be
warned away. When the justice sells out, a man should take it in its own
hands. Or do you think that I acted wrongly?"
"Yes," Bemish answered, "I don't think that you acted right. It was not
justice you cared about but rather shame besmirching your clan's honor. If
you had executed people accordingly to their guilt, Ashidan would have been
executed first since he knows perfectly well that selling drugs is a crime,
unlike a stupid old serf who did what his master told him to and anyway he
had no clue that it's illegal to eat this weed, since all the shamans in
this village have been eating it for the last thousand years and so what?
You would have given him couple lashes and sent him away."
They rode down a broad dark path between the abyss and the cliff and
the sky on the other side of the cliff was re