'I sympathize with the people that the likes of you shit on with money.'
'Why do you sympathize with them on Weia?'
'This planet is interesting for me,' Smith said. 'People here haven't choked on their money.
'Yes,' Bemish agreed, recalling peasants, crawling in the fields, 'they haven't. But I hope to fix it.'
'Eh?'
'I will help them to choke on their money,' Bemish stated.
'It's nonsense! You don't care about anything except your profits!'
Bemish was unhurriedly eating the morning soup. Last time he heard the same thing from the former ADO general director, whom he kicked out from a comfortable for him, but burdensome for the company, armchair.
'Don't push it, Johnny,' Ashidan said sarcastically, 'or he will be calling police in a second.'
'I would certainly call police,' Bemish said, 'if I saw you making a bomb. Since you are just yakking, why the heck should I call them?'
'Will you tell my brother?'
Bemish carefully looked at Ashidan. 'What a brood,' a thought passed his mind, 'one drives tanks down the foreign companies' facilities and another reads Marx in Princeton… Why didn't Kissur give him the villa?' Bemish fished a satellite phone out of his pocket and handed it to the youth.
'Tell him yourself,' Bemish suggested.
Ashidan got up and walked to the garden to make a call. Right then, the servants rushed to the terrace to announce the district head's arrival.
The district head brought gifts with him — three dishes of grilled meat with garlic, a suckling pig, salads in flat baskets and, also, a plate of walnut shaped cookies and a round sweet quince pie decorated with the Bemish's last name misspelled on top.
Bemish walked the guest to the garden gazebo. The official bowed to him with the pie and said, 'It's a great honor for us, Mr. Bemish that you will now, in a way, live with us. I am happy to express my gratitude to you. Thanks to your help and Kissur's courage, a crime of unimaginable magnitude and horror was uncovered.
'I think you were aware of it,' Bemish said.
'Hola, how can you say so?! I was shocked, squashed like a frog under a wagon!'
Bemish shrugged his shoulders. A servant knocked and appeared in the door with a steaming teapot and sweets in woven baskets.
The guest and the host treated each other with tea and, then, the district head inquired,
'They say that you will be in the charge of our construction?'
'It's too early to say,' Bemish said.
Here it seemed to Bemish that the district head winked his eye at him in a coarse and canny way.
'Well, say,' the district head said, 'there is no reason to doubt now. Believe me, I and the others around will be utterly happy to do everything they can for Kissur's friend and their future colleague.'
'Did you whip Krasnov?' Bemish asked.
'Eh?'
'I mean the trader, who came to Assalah for the stocks. You said, that you wouldn't allow foreigners to rob the people.'
The district head nodded understandingly. His face became now important and benevolent.
'Unfortunately,' he said, 'the people are like children and officials should protect them. How can I let them sell invaluable property for two cents?'
'You can't let them sell it for two cents but you can let them sell it for free? To pay for the taxes you invented?'
'Hola!' the district head exclaimed, 'how can you say so?'
His round kind face reddened and tears appeared on the wide open eyes.
'Do you have company shares? Did you pay a cent for them?'
The district head's eyes looked at Bemis honestly and directly.
'From now on,' the district head said, 'the meaning of my life is to serve you! What would you like me to do? Tell me and I will carry it out.'
'I would like you,' Bemish said, 'to sell me the Assalah shares at the same price the peasants sold them to you — for free.'
The official choked.
'Otherwise,' Bemish continued, 'the sovereign will know how you chased foreign vultures from here with a brined whip to bleed the people on your own.'
The official was silent for a moment and then bowed and pronounced, 'It will be my honor to serve you.'
'I should get him fired,' Bemish thought, 'so that a man grateful to me for the appointment and not the man hating me because of the shares is head of the precinct.
When Bemish walked down in the garden, Ashidan was standing on the swimming pool edge and throwing thin well sharpened darts into a fat pot.
'Well, did you talk to this mongrel? Ashidan asked, 'How much money did he give you, so that you didn't prosecute him?'
'Don't be rude, Ashidan.'
'This district head is a real weirdo, 'the youth continued, 'He is the only local official who spends every day in the office. Do you know what he engages in in there?'
'Well?'
'He locks himself with his young male secretary since his wife comes from a much better family than he does, and she doesn't allow these little tricks at home.'
THE FOURTH CHAPTER
Where Kissur tells investment bankers how to train a highwayman's horse while Terence Bemish makes an acquintance with other contenders for Assalah stocks
The next day after his return to the capital, Bemish found himself at a party thrown by the district prefect to celebrate the plum blossoming or some other divine occasion.
The party was grand. All of the high society arrived.
The officials discussed the inflation and the importance of the preservation of the customs. The people from the stars discussed the inflation and the importance of the preservation of the customs.
In a corner, the foreign entrepreneurs shared more particular impressions from the local business surroundings with each other.
'So, this abbot comes to me and offers to bless the bank against a misfortune and he asks for two hundred thousand dinars for the ceremony. I refuse and the next night a fire starts in the office. The next day this vermin comes to me again, expresses its condolences, and asks for two hundred thousand again. When I complained to the police, they gave me the advice — don' buck and cough up the money — the abbot is connected to Horn's gang.'
'By the way, speaking about banks — do you know that only the companies, with accounts in Shavash controlled banks, received the budget financing this month? They say that Shavash had a ten percent kickback.
And so on. And so forth.
Bemish met the Federation of Nineteen envoy, an elderly Malaysian, and the envoy led Bemish into a corner immediately and started telling him true stories from local officials' lives.
There were about dozen envoys present. Bemish was suddenly surprised by the number. He thought that only fifteen… not even fifteen — ten years ago — the envoys' number would be way smaller. The Earth colonies were leaving the Federation of Nineteen one after another, peacefully or with swords drawn.
