Bemish found Rogov in the living room. The colonel and several of his officers watched the day's broadcast closely. The colonel was interested not in the broadcast's content but rather in the layout of hangars, storages and chutes. The officers were watching the broadcast for the third time and the sound was turned off. It was difficult to guess, looking at their faces, what they thought about the broadcast after having seen it the first time.
'Colonel! How many Aloms are in the division?'
The colonel and the officers turned around like one. It looked like there were no Aloms among them except for this one, on the side… No, he was not an Alom, he was a half-breed something like a mix of a Dane and a Vietnamese…
'Nobody has counted them,' the colonel said calmly, as if he had been waiting for this question for a while, 'but I think that it's about eighty to eighty five percent.'
'Eighty?!! Why?'
The colonel grinned.
'Mr. Bemish, have you ever served in the army?'
'No.'
'Why?'
'Because…' Bemish broke off. On the second day of their acquaintance, Kissur had asked him why he had never served in the army and Bemish remembered what he had said.
The colonel smiled as if he guessed what Bemish had answered then and said.
'The majority of fully fledged Federation citizens share your attitude towards the army, director. The army receives twenty times less budget financing than medicine.
'And you enlist Aloms in the army!'
'We enlist anybody who agrees to serve in the army.'
Here Bemish turned around and noticed that two more people entered the living room attracted by the argument — the Earth envoy, Mr. Severin and the emergency committee head, Mr. Shavash.
'But three hundred credits is four times less than unemployment benefits!'
'The unemployment benefits are allotted to Federation citizens, not to Aloms. You know very well that they are doomed to much greater poverty in their mountains. For centuries they have been indoctrinated that war is the only occupation worthy of a man, that man should kill, that death is the way to glory. They are happy to join Federation forces. The ones who pass our admission committees take it as a pass to heaven. They know that they will obtain citizenship in ten years of service. By the way, having received it, they don't leave the service. They are as happy to hold weapons in their hands as others are to hold women or money… Where else will you find such warriors? If a Federation citizen is born in a middle class family, he graduates from a college and he makes money. If he is born in a garbage can, he receives unemployment benefits and gobbles up hallucinogens…'
'But three hundred credits!'
'How much can we pay them? The military budget is one half percent of the GDP!'
The envoy listened to their conversation in astonishment. Clearly, he also hadn't known who exactly guarded the borders of his great motherland. Probably, it was a delicate and not particularly popular subject. The military command was not in a hurry to announce that foreign barbarians made up eighty percent of the army, and that strong, healthy guys with excellent muscles and decent brains got paid three times less than hereditary unemployed saturated with drugs.
'So, your soldiers are happy, aren't they?' Bemish asked with certain irony.
'They are very happy, businessman! They grew up without commercials, human rights, credit cards and whores. They were taught that battle is the road to God! When their contracts run out and they become Federation citizens, they enlist again. They stay in the service!'
'Where else can they go to?' Bemish grinned, 'Into an investment company? You don't teach them anything but to how to kill. They are aliens in the world of the Federation.'
'They love the army! And they make twenty times more money here than they would make in their mountains!'
'I think that they love the army in their first year, colonel. They love the army when they come there out of a mountain hut where their fathers had two sheep and where ten people slept in one room on a mud floor. In the barracks they have their own bunk beds and they get good food and they see 3D TV first time in their lives. But half a year or a year passes and they watch TV and learn our language. They start understanding that the country that enlisted them into their army pays their soldiers four times less than it pays its unemployed. They start understanding that three hundred credits would be enough to buy a farm in the mountains but it would not be enough to afford a bottle of beer every evening in a bar half a kilometer away from the camp… And they start comparing their own bunk beds not with their clay huts but with the cottages that they pass as they ride to training. And they start thinking that it's not fair that brave and strong people sit in barracks for three hundred credits a year while drooling weaklings sit on boards of directors. Is it true?'
The colonel was silent.
'Do you know how the previous Weian dynasty fell?'
'Yes. Aloms conquered the Empire.'
'Your soldiers misinformed you, colonel. The people of the Empire were rich and lazy. They didn't like fighting and the government enlisted mostly war-loving barbarians into the army. Aloms didn't conquer the Empire. They simply served in its army and they came to own the Empire when no other troops were left.'
'How can you say so, Bemish?' the envoy was startled. 'It's absolutely impossible. We are talking about a totally different time; they are just commandos, for God's sake!'
A moan — or maybe a squeal — sounded next to Bemish.. The Earthman turned around. Shavash — the emergency committee's chairman, the official who called Federation troops in to Assalah to destroy his enemies — covered his face with his hands and was slowly sliding down the door frame to the floor. Shredding cloth crackled — Shavash's jacket caught on a brass decoration on the door frame, the jacket ripped apart and the official fainted and fell all the way to the floor.
Bemish stepped across his partner in export-import cooperative, Assako, and walked outside. Stars sparkled in the garden and the engine of an armored troop carrier still roared just as rhythmically as it had roared an hour ago — something was wrong with it. The army still bustled in the dark. It was not evident anymore, however, what side the army was on. Half of these people were White Falcons' vassals. The vassal oath was not inferior in any way to a military one! And nobody could claim that White Falcons would send them to fight for three hundred credits while they were sitting idle and getting rich. White Falcons didn't consider war to be an occupation suitable only for people who couldn't make money on the Exchange. Whatever else happened, when an Alom army entered a battle, White Falcons would ride in front.
Somebody moved behind Bemish. The latter glanced aside and saw the colonel. Simultaneously, they started slowly walking down a path.
'On what side do you think, your soldiers will fight?' Bemish asked.
'I was going to ask you the same question,' the colonel answered.
They walked silently for a while.
'I've heard a lot about Kissur,' the colonel said.
'Have you heard about him from the soldiers?'
'Yes. I mean, from their songs. They don't always go nuts about our bands. They often sing their own songs.'
'Do they sing about Kissur?'
'They sing about Kissur, about his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on — all the way to the original clan founder who, if I am not mistaken, married a forest mermaid.'
'You are mistaken. He didn't marry her, he raped her. And that caused some friction between him and a variety of forest and other outdoor fairies.'
'Oh, yes, that's right. They sang something along these lines. By the way, these are the songs by their other idol, Khanadar.'
'This villa is a gift of Kissur's,' Bemish said.
Here the garden path finished and they found themselves next to a pond. A small altar to Buzhva stood on
