difficult than to change a shirt.
'Well, gentlemen,' Shavash said, still undecided about the hall, 'the night is divine, why should we sit inside eight walls, let's go into the garden.'
'I apologize,' Kissur bowed, ' but I need to go.'
'What…' Shavash started.
'Gentlemen,' Kissur said, 'I'll only get in your way. Two respectable people are going to discuss an important business. It's not a place for a vagrant like me. You are not going to waste your time on small things like a garbage plant, are you?'
THE SECOND CHAPTER
Where the sad history of the Assalah spacefield is told while the ex-first minister of Empire finds himself a new friend
Next morning Terence Bemish sat in his room on the seventh floor of the local Hilton hotel nudging the back of his head and feeling annoyed. His head hurt as hell. A large peony-shaped bruise swelled on his cheekbone.
Somebody knocked in the door — Stephen C. Welsey, an employee of one of the largest investment banks in the Galaxy and Terence's colleague on this stupid trip, walked in.
'Wow,' Welsey said, looking curiously at the peony bruise, 'is it a local mafia?'
'Ah, a guy shattered my car's headlamps.'
'And then?' Welsey asked with an undisguised curiosity knowing that a while ago the sixteen year old future corporate raider Terence Bemish got to the semi-finals of a youth kickboxing Galaxy championship.
'To be honest,' Bemish said, 'I was a complete pig. These jerks charged me three times more for the rent than this tin can really costs. I grabbed the guy by his shirt and called him a Weian monkey or something like that. He punched me in the face.'
'Thank God, you were smart enough to hold back.'
'To the contrary,' Bemish said bitterly, 'I punched him back.'
Welsey's raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
'To summarize,' Bemish explained, 'he drove away and left me sitting with my butt inside the crashed windshield.'
'What about Shavash?'
'I changed my clothing and went to Shavash.'
'Well?'
'Shavash is a very intelligent person,' Bemish said, 'and his education is impeccable. He knows everything about IPO, underwriters, cumulative privileged stocks, etc… You have to admit that in a country where most people are sure that when an Earth starship reaches the sky, the Earthmen knock in the sky and God opens them a brass door, that's pretty impressive. He is a very intelligent man who encompassed the best in the both cultures — Weian and Galactic ones.'
'What does it mean?'
'He can bankrupt you without breaking a sweat like a vulture fund manager and he can personally cut your head off like a true Weian official. He is the most charming man.'
'So, what has the most charming man told you about your desire to buy Assalah?'
'That to agree to our proposal means to sell the motherhood for a sour cream jar.'
'Well, should we pack our things and leave?'
'Not necessarily. Mr. Shavash hinted that he would be ready to sell the motherhood for a sour cream jar, if the jar was big enough.'
Welsey hummed.
'Don't I dream sometimes,' he said, 'that at some point the Securities and Stocks Committee will allow us to have an entry in a balance sheet — 'for bribing of the developing markets officials' — and it will be tax deductible… How much does he want?'
'We didn't get to particular numbers.'
Bemish was silent for a moment and continued,
'The company stocks are unbelievably under priced. I am not going to give him any money. Let him buy stock warrants, this way it would be in his interest for the company to survive and prosper.'
'What is that you don't like?'
'Shavash is not the director of the company.'
'Excuse me,' Welsey was amazed, 'what do you mean, he is not a director? All the forms say — Shavash Ahdi, the director of the state-owned Assalah Company.'
'Stephen, it is a poor translation. The company is not owned by the state, it is owned by the sovereign. Do you see the difference? 'State' and 'sovereign' are two different conjugations of the same word in Weian — nouns have conjugations here — what a language… When the translation says, the state appoints, it really means, the sovereign appoints. The sovereign personally appoints and revokes the company president; the sovereign personally accepts financial plans. What if the sovereign does not accept the IPO plan? Bye-bye sour cream…'
'Hmm,' Welsey said, 'From what I've heard, you can't really say he spends all his time studying companies' IPO plans during the de-nationalization process. They say he has seven hundred concubines…'
'Yes, but what's the guarantee that some official that can't stand Shavash doesn't go to the sovereign and tell him about the sour cream jar.'
'Giles from IC told me that we would not even be able to get papers for the space field preliminary checkup without bribing Shavash first.'
Bemish retorted, 'What is the IC? I've never heard about this company.'
Somebody knocked in the door.
'Come in,' Welsey shouted.
A boy with a card on a silver tray materialized at the entrance. As a local custom demanded, the boy kneeled down on a scrawny knee in front of the foreigner. Bemish took the card. The boy said,
'A gentleman would like to have a breakfast with you. The gentleman is waiting down in the foyer.'
'I am coming,' Bemish said.
The boy backed away and left. Bemish hurriedly pulled on pants and a jacket. Welsey took the card.
'Kissur,' he read, 'wow, isn't he the Emperor's favorite who filched a Van Leyven's bomber plane and slaughtered the rebels next to the capital? Didn't he later get on LSD and gang up with anarchists on Earth? Where did you pick this drug addict up?'
Bemish checked his bruise out in the mirror.
'Drug addicts,' Bemish said, 'don't fight like this.'
Terence Bemish descended.
Slim and smiling Kissur sat on the car hood. He wore soft grey pants girdled by a wide belt embroidered with silver sharks and a grey jacket. A wide necklace made of jade plates set in gold glistened under the open jacket akin to a collar. The attire was similar enough to the contemporary fashion to look unobtrusive, except for the necklace and the finger rings. Bemish winced involuntarily and touched his cheekbone where Kissur's ring tore the skin off.
'Hello,' Kissur said, 'general director! Never in my life have I met a general director who fights like this. Are you special?'
'I am special,' Terence Bemish agreed.
Laughing, Kissur embraced him, seated him in the car and started the engine.
'What have you seen in our capital?' Kissur asked.
'Nothing.'
'Have you seen nothing at all?'
'Well, I saw cards in the hotel hall,' Bemish said, 'and I also saw a warning there — don't eat fried river
