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'A personal jail? Is that a joke?'

Shavash smiled.

'Would you like to see it? I can organize a trip.'

'One way?'

'Never joke about jail, Mr. Bemish,' calmly and coldly the Empire official said. They were silent for a moment and, then, Bemish said,

'How much is IC going to pay for the stocks? I can pay more?'

'It doesn't matter, Terence, whether you pay more or less for the stocks,' Shavash grinned. 'Imagine, that you pay for the stocks more but your application is not set up correctly.'

'How much does a correct application cost?'

In the uneven light by the lamps outside the window, the small official's raised eyebrows were easy to see.

'Come on,' Shavash smiled.

'Listen,' Bemish said quietly and clearly, 'a fantastic sum given to you by IC was mentioned to me. I don't know whether or not it's true. I am not going to offer you this kind of money. If, however, I buy the company and you buy the stock options, in three years, your shares will be worth eighteen times more than any of IC's pitches.'

Shavash only smiled.

'You know perfectly well what IC is, Shavash. And you know that it will bankrupt Assalah, and you know why it will do it.'

Shavash had a perfect composure but Bemish noticed surprise or, even, horror passing in his eyes.

Here, the Gera envoy with another man entered the hall and Bemish bowed and walked away to the balcony.

Giles sat at a corner table on the balcony. A glass of palm vodka, mixed with mango juice, stood next to him and an open magazine, that Giles was probably reading, was under the glass.

'Good day, Mr. Bemish! They say that you already own half the Assalah with a cute villa on top?'

Giles was drunk. He lamented probably that half the Assalah didn't belong to him.

'I haven't asked for this gift,' Bemish said, 'and, anyway, I found myself in an idiotic position.'

'Especially, since you are not going to buy the company anyway, are you?'

Bemish was tempted to empty the glass of vodka in the Giles face.

'Let me introduce you to our executive director,' Giles said lazily, 'James McFergson.'

Bemish turned around — behind him, a stout short man with unusually lively eyes and a mole on a pug nose was smiling and extending amicably his hand.

'Overjoyed to meet you,' MacFergson declared, shaking Bemish's hand. It really looked, as if he was overjoyed to meet Bemish, and, as if no Bemish existed in this world, he would fall dead with sorrow.

Here, the stage in the garden under the balcony was lightened, the harmonious sounds of flutes and lute- shells poured forth and a performance started below — in not too prudish dresses, four beauties were dancing a complex dance with swords. Quite a crowd surrounded the stage quickly and, when the performance finished, a guest — likely drunk- climbed the boards to kiss the dancing girls.

'Who is this bloke?' Bemish enquired.

'The Adana envoy, ' McFergson answered. 'The envoy fits the country.'

'An Earthman?' Bemish said with surprise.

'They are no longer Earthmen,' McFergson smirked, 'the planet Adana, for your information, was settled by SD Warheim. So, Warheim brought there several dozen thousand unemployed people — subsidizing their one-way tickets. In just a short while, the unemployed realized that there were a lot of jobs on Adana and no unemployment benefits. So, they all screamed that it was slavery in disguise and demanded that the company transport them back to Earth. When the company offered the opportunity to earn money for the transportation fees on their own, they called it Earth imperialism and declared independence. However, I heard that their current President makes them work way harder than the company did and in concentration camps rather than free.'

'Mr. Bemish knows that,' Giles interrupted his colleague. 'Just when the trouble started, he bought United Ferrous shares and sold them later at triple fold price when the new Adana government transferred all of Warheim's concessions to United.'

Several people from the group of Weian officials noiselessly approached the conversing Earthmen. Among them, Bemish noticed Jonathan Rusby with the smiling Gera envoy.

'Mr. Bemish has also provided a great assistance to Andjey Gerst. In my opinion, your decision to create a Gera-oriented portfolio investment fund made many financiers pay attention to Gera economics.'

'What's so bad about it?' Bemish enquired irritably.

'Gerst is a dictator.'

'And how exactly does it show?'

'So far, it shows, ' Giles said, 'in him attracting high level scientists and advancing huge loans to local companies for the newest technologies development — our government is forced to spend this money on social expenses. And Gera banks are reputed to be the most reliable in the Galaxy, though not due to the government protection but rather due to the very strict laws specifying the total personal responsibility of the management.'

'Whose nails do they pull out?'

'Nobody's.'

'And where is the dictatorship?

'Eh,' Giles said, 'in your opinion, a dictatorship is when they pull the people's nails out and talk stupidly… Only a weak dictatorship pulls the people's nails out, it's not a dangerous dictatorship, it will expire of its own accord, it's doomed because when they pull the people's nails out, the people don't work as much and the less they work, the more nails they have to pull out.'

'Do I understand you correctly,' Bemish inquired, 'that any state, where they don't pull your nails out, is a strong dictatorship? I think you just envy that Gera is better off than your own eh…?'

'Australia,' Giles said, 'I am an Australian. I understand you, though. You have better opinion of Gera than of your own country because Gera's Dow index grows faster.'

He stood up.

'It's a stupid argument,' he said, 'I've been to Gera and I could give you hundred proofs that its Leader is thousand times more dangerous than all the psychopaths… Why don't you think about this — the Gera army's total military capabilities are approaching those of Earth and all the other Federation of Nineteen members' armies combined, and every time, when somebody in the Federation Assembly proposes to boost the defense spending, the owners of the accounts in the stable Gera banks start screaming that we should not spend money on war, we should spend the money on social assistance.'

Kissur came in after midnight — by his looks, he spent the evening in a more interesting way — in a pub. He ran into Bemish on a garden path, next to a grotto that, due to an evident reason, Bemish needed to visit in private.

Kissur slapped Bemish on the shoulder and noted.

'I haven't expected to meet you at this zoo! So, trader, haven't you yet changed your mind about buying Assalah?'

'I will buy Assalah,' Bemish said, 'no matter what. At least, so that Giles wouldn't get it.'

'What's the difference between Giles or you buying it?' Bemish was silent for a moment. Kissur was clearly drunk and Bemish wasn't a picture of sobriety either.

'The difference? I guess, I will explain to you, Kissur, what Giles is doing. Giles represents a company that nobody knows anything about. He says that a private financier stays hidden behind the IC initials and he is ready to invest ten billion in this business. That's bullshit. There are no such investors.'

'Why is he doing that?'

This is chicanery. Whoever is behind Giles gets Assalah and issues the new shares. Your planet desperately lacks the space infrastructure, it's generally a state property, and private spaceport investments should be fantastically profitable. The stocks prices rise through the ceiling, IC makes billions on the price differential and gets out. Shavash gets millions, IC gets billions and the Federation investors with the Empire nationals get a fly