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.
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 hippopotamus 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.
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.'
