Inis carefully sat down next to Bemish's feet. Her eyes, large and green, were almost like Idari's eyes and they looked at Bemish with admiration and hope.
When Ashinik returned to the hotel room in the evening, the bedroom door was slightly open and an immobile silhouette sat on the bed.
'Inis!' Ashinik called opening the door and stopped short.
It was not Inis sitting on the bed, it was Yadan.
It was difficult to recognize the zealots' leader — he wore a well-tailored suit with a fashionable standing collar and a wide tie.
'Are you back?' Yadan asked.
Ashinik felt cold fury rising inside him.
'What do you want from me?'
'I saved you ten years ago, my boy. I gave you a gift of your life after my predecessor's death. It's time to pay back.'
'I paid you back. It's a miracle that I survived.'
'You didn't pay back well and a lot of people could not understand why your bomb was not as good as the demons promised.'
'I don't owe you anything, Yadan. I owe Terence Bemish who made a man out of me.'
'They bought you, my boy.'
'No.'
'Yes. The demons buy some people for a gold piece, others for a thousand gold pieces, others for a million. They say, you were bought for a billion, for a piece of the demon's company that you called BOAR and for an opportunity to live like demons. You even got a concubine that her owner was bored with…'
Yadan paused and then cried out,
'You, a man who could become the White Elder and rule the millions of hearts, were bought for an opportunity to have a house in Los Angeles suburbs and to work eight hours a day!'
'Get out!' Ashinik squealed.
'Have you forgotten how you talked to the gods, Ashinik? Have you forgotten how they took you alive to the sky, how thousands of ears listened to you in the way that nobody listens to anybody in this whole stupid Galaxy?'
'And what have the gods spilled out to me? That you were born out of a golden egg? That one could stop a laser ray with a spell? That Earthmen were demons? Great things your gods have told me!'
'You are a fool, Ashinik,' Yadan grinned, 'and Earthmen are demons. Do you know that they built this spaceport for a war between Gera and Earth and that when this war commences, it will start raining bombs on our planet. They made our world a lawn where elephants will tread and nobody will get two cents for it except Shavash who collected six million out of it! Wouldn't you call it demons' work?'
'Bullshit,' Ashinik replied, 'there is as much bullshit here as there is in the fable about you hatching out of a gold egg.'
'Do you know that Giles works for Federal Intelligence?'
'I built this spaceport and I know that it's a civil port!'
'And do you know how much they steal there? Do you know how much of our Motherhood they rob via this spaceport?
Right then, light steps sounded in the corridor and Inis flitted into the room.
'Get out of here,' Ashinik told Yadan quietly but furiously, 'I am not afraid of all of you anymore.'
'You don't talk to the gods anymore, do you?' Yadan grinned.
Having risen quietly, he slid by Inis to the door. Ashinik didn't notice how Yadan covertly threw a grain of yellow substance into a barely smoking brazier while leaving.
He sat on the bed with his hands wrapped about his head. Yadan's last words stung him sharply. He really didn't speak to the gods anymore. And though today's Ashinik new very well that only mad people talked to the gods, he remembered these conversations deep in his mind and he remembered that it had been a proof of him being chosen.
Inis approached him and stroked him on his head and Ashinik was surprised to see an antique necklace of bluish Assaisse pearls.
'Where have you been?' irritated Ashinik asked her.
'Well, I walked around the town.'
'Where did you get this necklace?'
'It's a gift from Idari,' the woman replied quickly. 'I received it today in a basket.'
Such a quick answer put Ashinik on his guard.
'Is it a gift from Bemish?' he bared his teeth.
Inis put her hands on her hips.
'And so what?!' she cried out, 'If you don't give me beautiful things you shouldn't at least forbid other people do it!'
'You still love him, don't you?' Ashinik screamed.
'Shame on you!'
'You love him! You were just jealous of this bitch Idari! Everybody knows that she had slept with Shavash before Kissur! And then she and Bemish hit it off together! You whored with me to punish your Terence!'
Ashinik could no longer hear what he was screaming; his eyes darted wildly as if they were trying to follow something invisible filling the room. His vision became obscured by a red wavering veil that seemed to separate this place from the otherworld and it could fall apart any moment. Noises and voices were buzzing in his ears as if a TV set had fifty channels on simultaneously… Ashinik was quite familiar with this state — it used to precede an event that his brothers in sect called an 'appearance of gods' and Earthmen called a fit.
'Give it to me!' Ashinik screamed grabbing the woman and falling onto the bed with her and he started tearing the necklace off. But the necklace was strong and small and it wasn't easy to either tear the thread or take it off Inis.
'You slept with him, didn't you,' Ashinik shouted, 'in exchange for this thing?'
'So what,' Inis grinned suddenly. 'Or are you going to buy a necklace for me with your stipend? What would you have become without Terence, Ashinik? Would you be entertaining a crowd at a fair with your talks about demons?'
Something exploded in Ashinik's mind and white light blazed across it and he heard a familiar voice telling him,
'Kill the demoness! Kill the demon's lover or she will get knocked up and a demon will be born that will destroy the whole world!'
Instead of tearing the necklace, his hands tightened it around Inis' neck. The woman screamed and thrashed. 'Pull it! Pull it!' the voice screamed in Ashinik's mind. 'Pull it, my son!'
Ashinik regained his senses only in the morning. He lay supine on the red carpet and the morning sun seeped through the blinds. He didn't remember anything except the very beginning of the quarrel.
'Inis,' Ashinik called.
There was no response. 'She left,' a thought passed through Ashinik's mind, 'she left for the Earthman!'
Somebody knocked into the door.
'Who is there?' Ashinik asked hoarsely.
'Breakfast,' the answer came.
Ashinik walked unsteadily to the living room and opened the door.
A cute maid looked at him with certain sympathy — the young financier's suit was wrinkled and bedraggled and the suit's owner stood there swaying with disheveled hair and black circles under his eyes.
'When did my wife leave?' Ashinik asked hoarsely.
'I don't know,' the maid answered and winked slightly at the man, 'but if you need a woman…'
'Go away.'
