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 hippopo
tamus 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."
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