called Trevis.
'Listen,' Bemish said, 'I looked through the papers prepared by Ashinik and I found them to be pretty good. Send him to me.'
Trevis said that he would like to have the young Weian in his office due to the growing number of Weian deals.
'This guy cost me ten percent of a company with a yearly export size of forty billion dinars,' Bemish said, 'and he will work it all off for me.'
Trevis asked something else but then the receiver croaked and hissed and the connection broke off.
Ashinik returned to Weia in three weeks. He looked completely different. Instead of a skinny frightened young lad that had left the Empire eight months ago, a confident man with cold blue eyes and wide shoulders walked into Bemish's office.
'I am sorry that I pulled you out,' Bemish said, embracing the youth, 'but I need you. It concerns BOAR.'
Ashinik lowered his head. When half a year ago, half-dead from torture he heard Shavash's voice offering his master to choose between him, Ashinik, and a twenty five percent controlling BOAR stock block, the company name couldn't tell him anything. Now the word BOAR decorated the financial newspapers' front pages and Bemish's share of the company was perfectly well known to be fourteen percent. Ashinik knew for sure that neither his direct boss nor Trevis nor even Ashinik himself would have exchanged the control of the deal of the century for a man.
'I…I…,' Ashinik muttered. Bemish took the youth's hand.
'It doesn't matter. Where are you staying?'
'I am staying in a hotel,' the lad replied turning to a window. There, behind the burned caramel color glass and sharp points of the ships, a huge glass body of a luxurious hotel was melting in the sun.
'You can move to my villa,' Bemish said. 'How is Inis doing?'
'She is with me,' Ashinik replied. He paused and added, 'I don't want to leave her alone. She shouldn't wave her skirt around.
It became quiet for a moment in the office, and then Bemish said,
'I left her alone often and nothing good came out of it. In three hours, Giles will meet people from Chakhar Trade Bank in the capital. Could you go with him?'
Ashinik went to the capital. He took part in the talks and stayed at a party celebrating the third year anniversary of Sadd Company. Giles introduced him to the economics minister.
Ashinik's hands went cold when, having approached a cluster of people, he saw in its center the beautiful, slightly corpulent face of Shavash.
'How is your health,' Shavash asked abruptly, interrupting his conversation with an Earthman and nodding welcomingly to Ashinik.
'I am well, thanks,' Ashinik heard his own voice as if it was coming out of a phone receiver.
'How is your wife doing?'
Ashinik uttered something about his wife being also fine.
'I recommend you this young man,' Shavash said, 'He helped us a lot with BOAR company.'
The people who crowded around Shavash but stood to far to start a conversation with him moved slowly and started surrounding Ashinik.
In a while after Shavash had left, Ashinik realized suddenly with cold curiosity that he felt good about Shavash's nodding to him — the same Shavash that he had been trained in his previous life to exterminate like a mongoose exterminates snakes. In the hierarchy of his new life this nod immediately distinguished him out of the other young people and it was as if a small beacon lit above Ashinik's head and the guests flew towards this beacon as moths fly towards light.
The door slammed behind Ashinik and Bemish still sat the same way looking absent-mindedly at a field through the window. He picked up a lot of Empire's customs in his two years on Weia. One thing he hadn't apparently done yet — he had never killed a man because he wanted his wife.
Now, in seven months after their last meeting, Bemish didn't have any feelings towards ex-zealot Ashinik who started to resemble, frighteningly, a polished novice broker. He only felt quite annoyed thinking about the lost BOAR shares. On the other hand, the accident brought Bemish certain benefits. It had somehow leaked out — probably via Shavash who didn't find anything appalling there — and it improved Bemish's reputation tremendously. The biggest people on Weia knew that the Earthman hadn't turned his friend into for money and it was a Weian custom not to betray friends. It would be fine to send an innocent man to the gallows to help your friend or to embezzle money from the state treasury but to betray your friend was not nice.
Bemish didn't need Ashinik. But he realized with a surprise that he needed Inis. While his concubine had been next to him and he could take her any minute, could walk upstairs with her or simply lock the office door, caress her soft body and think about another woman — unavailable and forbidden — then it seemed to Bemish that talking about love would be stupid. Do you love your car? You just use it and if you crash it, you buy another one.
But buying another car proved to be difficult. Bemish tried three or four concubines during that time and threw them out, wincing. The sluts called in by Bemish didn't help either. Kissur seeing the Earthman suffering once took him to such a place that… yikes, it's better to forget all about it…
Then, there was some celebration at Shavash's palace where, besides everything else, they presented an ancient play about an Inissa prince. Watching it, Bemish suddenly realized that in this world it had always been considered normal for a man to desire two women simultaneously and that he, Terence Bemish, had turned Weian to a greater degree than he expected.
A penetrating beep of the phone interrupted Bemish's contemplation. Having answered the call, Bemish stood up abruptly. It was time to face the truth — he called Ashinik to Weia to take his wife away from him. It would possibly not work on Earth. But here, on Weia, where Bemish was no longer a man that would be called 'businessman' on Earth but rather became a man that would be called 'prince' — nobody would dare refuse him.
When Bemish with a large wrapped gift package entered a hotel room, Inis sat next to a mirror. She turned around and froze seeing the Earthman. Bemish, without taking his light overcoat off, approached her and kissed her silently. The woman didn't resist.
'It's for you,' Bemish said, gently pushing her away in several minutes.
Blushing with joy, Inis started unwrapping the package. In a moment, she cried out happily admiring a necklace of large bluish pearls.
Bemish carefully took the necklace out of her hands and put it on her neck. Inis tried to turn away.
'What's wrong?'
Bemish tenderly turned her face towards him. It was only then that he noticed an ugly round bruise on her cheekbone.
'What is it?'
'Ashinik hit me.'
'Ashinik?'
'He beats me often.'
'Why?'
'He doesn't like anything,' Inis said. 'He doesn't like my dresses, he doesn't like that I was his master's concubine, he doesn't like that people don't kowtow in front of him, and he doesn't like it when I dance with anybody else. At first he works day and night closing a deal and then he gets a bonus and says that it's a sugar lump that they gave to a trained Weian dog for jumping through a hoop.'
Bemish sat on the bed. He suddenly didn't have anything to say. Two people in the room were silent and the setting sun, melting in the sky, was rapidly floating to the west following a rising freight ship.
'You didn't buy yourself a new concubine, did you?' Inis suddenly asked.
'No,' Bemish said.
'Why?'
'I don't know. I think I didn't stop loving the previous one enough.'
