taxi drivers that had been temporarily hired by the spaceport security were ready to tear the zealots apart.
The media approach shocked Bemish somewhat. They would interview an ardent zealot — a professional agitator who had been bumming around fairs since the age of five and who was lost in his own lies to such an extant that he no longer knew whether or not Earthmen were demons. They would call him a 'Weian peasant who came to Assalah to fight for the freedom of the elections and his country's freedom.' On the other hand, a Weian taxi driver whose car had been burned out two days ago by a zealot crowd was called 'a secret agent of security service bought by Bemish.'
The spaceport sustained huge losses due to cargo being delayed and frightened passengers hurriedly picking other travel routes. Twenty thousand tons of gourmet Iniss peaches turned into peach chowder after spending five hours in crazy summer heat in a monorail train with a disabled cooling system. Ashinik called a bomb found on the monorail 'a spaceport special services' instigation.'
Continuous magnetrone inspection of cargo damaged a Crudge-14A with superconductive circuits traveling to the Iniss branch of Mountain TDL and the corporation raised a horrible fuss about it.
The security service employees had all of their vacations cancelled. They worked fourteen hours a day without holidays and slept right there, crowding in the spaceport hotel rooms. Three hundred enraged taxi drivers and long distance truck drivers joined the security service. Three hundred highly professional colleagues of Giles' arrived quietly at the spaceport and the journalists learned about their incognito arrival five minutes after the space liner had landed.
Assalah stocks dropped five points a day on the average. Assalah high-margin bonds were being sold twenty cents a dinar by the end of this week.
However, Bemish's personal finances were in much better state than that of the company. Bemish had realized that the zealots were sure to win before the election's results were declared invalid and he ordered to sell quickly practically everything that they traded with on Weian Exchange. Going short brought at least forty million dinars to Weian Special and Second Investment Fund but it was the first time in Terence Bemish's life when he was not particularly happy to short.
Bemish requested governmental assistance with the protesters. The government dallied and wavered and finally told him that while it was sympathetic towards the Assalah issues but it was not willing to utilize Weian police against Weian peasants to protect a foreign company that, additionally, employed a right of 'tax and trial' inside its territory. Confidentially the government hinted that it was afraid to be kicked out of power if tried to do anything along these lines.
Ronald Trevis arrived at Assalah on the third day. Three hours after his arrival, a twenty person Ajax landed in the spaceport and suntanned Kissur climbed out of it. Kissur hurried to Bemish's office where a management meeting was taking place and he started shouting right at the doorstep.
'What's this mess? Why don't you just shoot this muck? What are all these rubber sticks doing here instead of rocket launchers?'
'If I shoot all this muck,' Bemish said, 'I will do what Ashinik dreams about. It will bury the relationship between Weia and the Federation. Ashinik will start screaming that foreigners at his planet shoot at absolutely peaceful protestors. He will be somewhat correct about that. The foreigners should not have a right to make such decisions.'
'Why the hell did you ask for the right of 'trial and taxes?'
'It was my mistake.'
'I swear by the god's balls!' Kissur cursed. 'Why don't you ask the police minister for assistance?'
'I've asked him already. The government doesn't want to shoot its own citizens for a foreign company's profit. If it does it, it will have to shoot its own citizens to save its own ass tomorrow. Also, everybody knows that an official, who gives such an order, will find a bomb in his first Sunday soup even though Ashinik will assure that the bomb was planted by provocateurs.'
'All right,' Kissur said and he slammed the door and took off.
Kissur returned in six hours, after dark. Eight skyers with large load capacity landed at the spacefield and delivered about five hundred fighters with blackened teeth wearing soft ox leather Alom boots. The fighters were armed right up to their blackened teeth.
Two beetle-shaped amphibian tanks dropped out of the skyers' bellies; the tanks were equipped with unusually short guns and they stuck upwards at the rear resembling beetle's forewings folded at its back. The tanks were covered with a non-metallic dully gleaming skin. Astonished, Giles whispered into Bemish's ear that these were the latest generation BCC-29 tanks designed to be dropped off a plane with a parachute onto any surface no less than six minutes after a thermonuclear explosion.
Presenting his blackened teeth to flashing cameras, Kissur explained that he came here to help his friend Bemish out and that his people couldn't be taken for foreigners by any stretch of imagination and that only his friend Bemish's squeals stopped him from burning this zealot muck one meter deep into the ground.
He said that Bemish was a pansy, that the government was a flock of horny dumb goats and that Ashinik was a dog that he, Kissur, would hang right at that loading crane if they found one more bomb in the spaceport.
Kissur's people took over almost all spaceport security. A half of all regular spaceport security employees went to sleep. Frankly, they were mostly peaceful people who had never seen anything more dangerous than a drug trafficker trying to hide hundred grams of barnithole or good old LSD in his stomach; their familiarity with electric shockers was only theoretical.
The passengers arriving at the spaceport glanced with frightened admiration at the huge, almost two meter tall, wild looking men who seemingly napped at the terminals having folded their hands on stubby assault rifles. The ladies felt quite a specific curiosity towards these lads, comparing them with their civilized husbands who contemplated morning meetings even in bed.
The journalists waited breathlessly. It seemed absolutely certain that any careless action of the crowd besieging the spaceport would lead to the crowd's bloody demise.
It was five pm when Kissur entered Bemish's office; Ronald Trevis, the head of LSV bank, had just arrived from Earth and he sat in the room reclining in an armchair.
'Hello,' Kissur said, 'What are you doing here?'
'We are discussing the spaceport's future,' Trevis replied.
'Oh, yes. These…eh stocks of yours plummeted.'
'The spaceport's stocks,' Trevis spoke, 'belong to me, Bemish and Nan. We are discussing the future of bonds.'
'What's wrong with those?'
'They cost twenty cents a dinar.'
'So what?'
'It would not be a problem if they were regular bonds. They are, however, bonds with adjustable rate.'
'What kind of beast is that?'
'It was my suggestion. The interest payments on the bonds are set up in such a way that a bond's value is hundred cents for a dinar,' Bemish entered the conversation.
'I don't understand.'
'The interest on the bonds is fourteen and a half percent,' Bemish said. 'It's quite a bit. I hoped that I would be able to lower it. The Assalah bonds cost hundred and three cents a dinar before the crisis. They cost twenty cents now.'
'It's crazy. I never knew about these clever securities.'
'Unlike you, Ashinik knew it perfectly well,' Bemish said, 'I walked him through our financial structure myself.'
'Are you going to adjust yield?'
'No. There is not a single company that could handle it, even if it had a large cash flow. Our cash flow dropped by thirty percent this month.'
'What are you going to do?'
