Welsey drove slowly to the nearest police precinct, pushed a frightened guard away and walked to the supervisor's office.
'My name is Stephen Welsey,' he said, 'I represent a financial company LSV and I flew in here from Sydney to consult our client taking part in an investment auction. I have just been stopped by a police car with a plate number 34-29-57. The guards confiscated my papers and escaped. This is probably a misapprehension. I hope to receive the documents back within three hours, otherwise I will act with no holds barred.
A young police official squinted frightened at the Earthman, ran in a next room and chattered away on a computer keyboard.
'Number 34-29-57,' he finally said, 'That's wrong. There is no car with this license plate number registered in the police department. In fact, there is no car registered with this license plate number at all.
Three hours later, Welsey came back to hotel feeling atrocious. If he needed a final proof that there was no law in this country, he got it. He washed the lip cut by the sharp policeman's (or fake policeman's) fist, opened the case and started to throw his belongings in randomly. He called the spaceport, found out that the next Earth flight would be in eleven hours and reserved a ticket.
The case was packed in fifteen minutes. Welsey looked at his watch — he had ten more hours before the flight's departure. The trip to the spaceport would take two hours. Welsey shrugged his shoulders, walked to the draped window, pulled the curtain away, and looked from the fifth floor down at the street. Thank God, he will leave this planet in ten more hours! The country of scoundrels! Bribers! Malingerers! Oh my God, why did he give a five thousand bribe to this bug-eyed guy from the eighth precinct? Now, if Shavash arrests Welsey, he would force the guy to claim that the bribe was hundred thousand and the official promised… Ouch!
The square in front of the hotel was brightly lit. A delicate eight-columned temple stood slightly lower and across it. The garden beds were arranged in front of the temple, and the spotlights hidden among the flowers beamed right at the temple, illuminating marble columns and turnip roof curls from below, scattering in a faraway fountain in the middle of the temple yard, challenging large ripe stars. 'Such beauty!', Welsey thought suddenly.
Right then, a car appeared at the square's far end. It drove over a flower bed edge, flattened a spotlight, swerved to the opposite lane and stopped down there at the hotel entrance. Pulling in, it crashed into a truck standing in front of it, but not too badly, no deeper than five inches. Welsey's eyes popped out.
The car door opened and Bemish landed outside. Two valets rushed to him from the glass entrance. Bemish stepped left, then right. Thence he lifted his head and, swaying, started to contemplate the lighted entrance. He sighed and sat on the curb. Even from the fifth floor, it was evident that he was boozed up to the hilt.
Welsey shrugged his shoulders and walked down.
Two valets were already deferentially half carrying half supporting Bemish towards him. Bemish resisted and assured everybody that he was totally sober. He aspired to sing and invited both valets to fish in the Blue Mountains. Valets quietly and with concentration dragged him up the staircase to the room. They possibly couldn't understand him. They were probably used to these sights.
Welsey felt himself blushing. Bemish was dragging the high status of Earthman and beacon of civilization right down in the mud. Welsey stepped towards him, grabbed Bemish by his tie and, with the valets' assistance, dragged him to the room. Bemish was rolling his eyes around and opening his mouth like a karaoke singer with the sound track turned off.
When Welsey threw Bemish on the couch, he swung his finger drunkenly and said,
'Surprise.'
And he fell asleep. A pig. A drunken pig.
Welsey tore his pants and jacket off, hung them on the chair and got out. The jacket was too heavy — the chair tipped over and the jacket crashed to the floor. Welsey returned and picked the jacket to hang it back. The jacket inside pocket was crammed with rumpled papers. Welsey pried the papers out and unrolled them. These were all the requests and power-of-attorney forms that police in yellow jackets confiscated three hours ago. Welsey leafed through them and found the right signatures on them all. More than that, the forms were stamped with personal seals and that was plain impossible.
Welsey went downstairs. He checked the Bemish's car out and found the yellow briefcase, seized by the police, in the trunk. Mysteriously, there was a grilled lamb lying next to the briefcase in the trunk. The lamb held a thick gold ring in the mouth. The lamb was lying on a silver dish.
Welsey walked upstairs and put the recovered papers in the recovered briefcase. He called the spaceport and canceled the reservation. He called a boy valet and they hauled the lamb, the ring, and the dish upstairs.
The rest of the night, Welsey spent next to the window in his room looking at the pink eight-columned temple, thoughtfully chewing on a grilled lamb leg and washing it down with disgustingly warm carbonated water.
The most bewildering part of that all, was that Bemish couldn't even recall how the signatures came to existence. He remembered perfectly well the temple, two hundred kilometers away from the capital, that he and Kissur drove to, and the manor, that belonged to a Kissur's friend, Khanadar the Dried Date, next to the temple. They had fun in the manor — at first with weapons, then at the table, and then with the chicks. Khanadar and Kissur took turns making bets and shooting at a peach on each other's head at first with a bow and then with a gun. The trick was to hit it right in a pit. Bemish refused decisively to shoot the bow and, to assert his manhood, he had a horrible fight with sinewy Khanadar, strong like a steam press.
Khanadar the Dried Date was the most extraordinary man — he was on of the bravest Kissur's commanders and one of the best Empire's poets.
He plundered huge spoils during the civil war; he squandered money as quickly as he got it and started looking for more. Piracy was the choice and Khanadar wrestled a smugglers' space boat away from them. The boat was designed with escape rather than attack in mind, but Khanadar decided that the cowardly dogs from the skies wouldn't really notice this trifle if their pockets were threatened. Unfortunately, Khanadar was not as good with a photon reactor as he was with a Kharran sword and at the end of the second trip the newly assigned pirate dinghy dug a three meter deep ditch in the ground and was no longer in any shape to fly.
It was awfully fashionable to assist Weia then and Khanadar almost received a literature Nobel Prize for his songs, full of wild beauty. So, the information agencies are making two announcements in one day — that Weian poet Khanadar is nominated for a literature Nobel Prize and that somebody named Khanadar is wanted for the transgalactic liner 'Mekong' robbery. This is how Khanadar did not receive a Nobel Prize first time.
Then, Khanadar became the Arakka governor and generously gave money to the people and tax cuts to the entrepreneurs. The money was from the state budget and it was quickly gone; and since the tax cuts were abundant, the money didn't come back. Khanadar asked a local polymetallic factory for money; an Earthman owned the factory. The Earthman gave money once, once more, and stopped; the people loved their governor and laid waste to the factory.
Meanwhile, the time for the next Nobel Prize approached. Hence, the information agencies are making two announcements in one day — that Weian poet Khanadar is nominated for a literature Nobel Prize and that governor Khanadar incited a mob and caused a three billion denars damage to MetalPMOre company. This is how Khanadar did not receive a Nobel Prize second time.
Then, the sovereign revoked Khanadar's appointment for overstepping his bounds and Khanadar peacefully resided in a manor bestowed to him, next to Shechen river in Inissa. Why did the head of the planet Gera trade mission have to buy himself a villa nearby?
So, another year passes by and the Gera chief trade deputy sues Khanadar for brawling on his land and burning his pig farm. Khanadar attends the trial and asks the judge to give him a small paper cutting knife. The judge offers him the knife and Khanadar attacks the trade deputy with the knife right in front of the jury. The trade deputy escapes from the court yard and does not return. Since it is a personal suit and the plaintiff is not present in the court, the judge cancels the trial and Khanadar saves bribe money.
Again, the Nobel Prize time approaches, and the information agencies are making two announcements — that the famous Weian poet Khanadar is nominated for a literature Nobel Prize and that Khanadar well-nigh cut down a representative of a civilized nation right in a court.
