Insider

'Are you lovers?'

Inis was crawling next to his feet. Bemish ran his hands over the table and the woman cried out and leapt up. She looked at the intercom button with horror as if she was expecting Terence Bemish to push it and order the spaceport's security service director to find a jute sack somewhere, stick the unfaithful lover of the general director in it and sew it up.

Bemish turned and rushed out of the office.

When Bemish got to Shavash, the small official was eating a breakfast. 'You've arrested my employee!' Bemish declared at the doorstep. 'On what grounds did you do it?'

'He is a zealot and he was involved in yesterday's assassination attempt.'

'Where is the proof?'

Shavash grinned.

'The arrest comes first. He will supply us with the proof later.'

'If I were you, I wouldn't particularly trust to a testimony obtained under torture.'

'And I would never,' Shavash said, 'trust a zealot's testimony obtained without torture. Why are you looking at me as if a live carp is stuck between my teeth?'

'You are a scoundrel!' Bemish shouted.

'You have said it before, Terence.'

'And you are shaking with fright and rushed to arrest everybody left and right!'

'Terence,' Shavash said, 'we are now on one side. Look, Ashinik had run away from you and he never came back to you. Why? Because he was ordered to wring our necks.'

'If he had returned to Assalah,' Bemish noticed, 'it would have been much easier.'

'If he had returned to Assalah, Giles would take him apart in half a minute.'

'Shavash, I know Ashinik a little bit. Listen, if he had set this assassination up, you would not have survived. He would have used three times more explosives. He would not let any accidents get in his way.'

'It's possible,' Shavash said, 'but you see, if you arrest a fool that carried out the assassination, he can only tell you what a fool knows. If you arrest Ashinik who is not particularly strong in his faith, thanks to your efforts, he will tell us everything. Three days later, after Ashinik tells us everything, nothing will be left of the sect.'

'Nothing will be left except the reasons for its existence — poverty of the people, embezzling officials and rude Earthmen.'

Shavash grinned.

'You are a strange man, Terence. If I were you, I would thank a man who arrested my concubine's lover.'

Bemish paled. Even that was out. Damn it, everybody, including the zealots, knew it except for him…

'You, of course, do not love Inis. You love another woman. But still it's not a reason to appeal on Inis' beau's behalf.'

Shavash yawned and covered his mouth with his hand.

Bemish shouted in such a voice that the glass doors in a cabinet clanged.

'Either you will show me the proof that Ashinik's arrest is based on or you will go with me and free him!'

Shavash thought for a bit and then he rose, gestured at Bemish with his finger to follow him and stepped out of the office. They walked down a corridor with a beautiful hardwood floor, passed by two or three halls decorated with the utmost luxury and covered with ancient rugs. It was rumored that Shavash had ordered these rugs to be ripped off the walls of Isia-ratough temple in Chakhar (they had processed this robbery later as the sale of these rugs at some ridiculously low price). Having passed two or three more doors, they found themselves in a concrete corridor leading underground. Bemish suddenly remembered with a shudder how Shavash had boasted about his personal jail. He also recalled the words attributed to Shavash, 'You are powerful not if you can afford a personal villa; you are powerful if you can afford a personal dungeon.' So, they hadn't even taken Ashinik to a state prison…

A low desperate cry came from behind a door at the very end of the corridor. Shavash threw the door wide open.

Bemish noticed a pile of bloody rags in a corner, some pliers in a bowl and Ashinik's dead eyes. Completely naked, he was hanging head down on metal rings attached to a wall and Bemish's attention was pulled to his right hand — all the nails there had been torn out. Then Shavash stepped forward moving his friend aside and said in a tired and ironic voice, 'The first set is finished. Take the pear off the branch.'

They took half-dead Ashinik off the rings and seated him astride a chair. Shavash stood above the prisoner, pulled his head up and asked, 'Who placed the bomb?'

Ashinik was silent. His black hair stood up straight soaked with blood. Bemish rushed to the youth but the guards blocked his way at once and one of them, baring his rotten teeth, silently stuck a gun into Bemish's side.

Ashinik's eyes were as empty as RAM in a turned off computer. Then he whispered something. His lips didn't work. Bemish understood only the end of the sentence — Ashinik swore dirty.

'That's not an answer.' Shavash said.

Ashinik licked his broken lips and spit with all his strength at Shavash's face.

His saliva and blood were all over the official's lips and chin. Everybody froze. Shavash slowly turned and walked to an old sink built into the room's right corner. The splashing water and the washing official's snorts sounded very clear in the quiet room. Shavash closed the tap and approached the prisoner again.

'Do you hope that your boss will get you out of this?'

He spun to Bemish.

'Choose, Terence — this guy or the controlling stock block of BOAR.'

The single second, that passed by, seemed like eternity to Ashinik. Then the Assalah general director pushed the gun, pointed at him, away and said loudly, 'You are such a scoundrel, Shavash!'

Astonishment glanced in Ashinik's wide open eyes.

'You are free,' Shavash told Ashinik, 'And when you set up another assassination, take care that your boss is around, otherwise nobody will step in on your behalf.'

Bemish pushed the official away, looked around and, grinning viciously, started pulling the pants and shirt off one of the torturers. The torturer squeaked fearfully, pulled out of the boss' hands and ran away. He came back in a minute, carrying clean clothes.

The second guard smiled exasperatedly and unlocked the cuffs holding Ashinik's bloodied wrists together.

'Shouldn't we wash the lad?' he asked.

Bemish hissed at him like a goose and started pulling the pants on Ashinik. Then he buttoned up the jacket on the youth and dragged him away.

Bemish had dropped his car right at the main staircase of the city manor. He threw the lad into the car like a sack and he drove the car over a flower bed planted with rare orchids while making a turn.

Bemish stopped at the first private hospital; they washed Ashinik and a physician with frightened eyes bandaged him. The youth was silent and he only cried occasionally.

Bemish looked at the crying Ashinik and thought that he and the official had not even discussed whether or not the lad was guilty.

When they arrived to Assalah, the sun was setting down. The pilot and Bemish picked up Ashinik and helped him to walk to the administration building. Ashinik was slowly getting over the shock and his eyes started looking more alert.

Bemish locked the youth in his office and went to deal with the representatives of the freight company SpaceMart.

When he returned in an hour, he had a white plastic folder in his hands. Ashinik had squeezed into a corner and he sat there shaking horribly. A comfortable leather armchair was next to him but Ashinik squatted in his ancestors' way. It was strange to see a man in Earth clothing squatting.

Bemish walked to the youth.

'Did you have anything to do with this explosion?'

'No.'