Bemish lowered his head. He could see already the scale of the swindling operation. Oh, my God! That's why such a careful official for the first time in his life insisted so decisively on taking an unpopular action. To think that the other Weians agreed to it to compromise Shavash! Still, something smelled fishy here…
'So,' Bemish said, 'was the quarrel between you and Kissur completely faked?
'I am sorry, Terence, I am so sorry. It was a complete and utter fake.'
'But Yadan, you and Yadan, you and Ashinik — it's not possible, Shavash! The fanatics hate you.'
Kissur left the room, smiling; he was probably going to give some orders. The official silently beckoned Bemish with his finger and the latter crawled off the sofa, fighting the pain. Shavash approached a window and pulled the blinds up. Bemish stretched his head over Shavash's shoulder and looked out of the window.
Out of the director's office windows, a beautiful view opened up at the landing field strewn with the black bodies of fighter helicopters and commandos in spotty camouflage. But the construction's director attention was pulled towards something else. They had used railroad tracks to pull a huge cargo crane RV-37 into the middle of the field. The crane was generally used to correct the positioning of rockets and to load containers heavier than 700 tons. This time, the crane's load was much smaller than the maximum allowed weight. The crane's jib pointed to the sky and twelve… no, thirteen bodies were swinging under it and Bemish recognized his ex-deputy — young Ashinik — hanging to the side. Two squeaking yellow vultures were already circling the crane…
'The zealots and rebels,' Shavash said coolly, 'disturbed the Empire, babbled too much and addled people's minds. It was not possible to catch them all at once — they hid, showed up only separately and threatened to avenge the deaths of their comrades. Now we gathered all of the zealots in one place and destroyed this filth once and forever. Now, when we are not bothered by the crazy gangs, we can negotiate with the Federation as a real state. The simple people that believed zealots will believe Kissur. The officials terrified by zealots will trust me.'
Shavash turned away from the window. The setting sun was burning and melting in the small official's eyes, his half-opened lips were twisted in a smile…
'Why?' Bemish asked suddenly. 'Why do you hate us, Shavash? I don't mean myself, I mean the Federation.'
The official's face contorted.
'Why? Can't you figure it out, Terence? I hate you because you are so clean; I hate your sparkling cars, your gleaming wraps, your advertisement boards. I hate you because when you arrive at the dirtiest town, you build a hotel for yourself without dirt and poverty. A poor people hate a rich one, haven't you known that?'
'I didn't know that you were poor,' Bemish muttered. 'I thought that you stole enough from your own people.'
Shavash laughed.
'I was not always rich — have you forgotten that? Do you know how I became literate? I stood next to announcement boards and compared the herald's words with letters. My father was the poorest shaman in the village; I stole on the streets and drank out of mud pools. I was lucky — I met Nan and instead of ending up in a gang, I ended up in the White Buzhva Lycee. Not that it would make any difference to an Earthman… When I was an official seven years ago, I had been waiting for my arrest, torture and exile every day. Have you ever expected being arrested, Terence? Even if you were arrested for DWI, I don't think that you would be thrown in an earth pit.'
'I don't argue that,' Bemish agreed. 'The earth pits are a strong point of your civilization.'
'They are a strong point, indeed, Terence — life lacks spice without them. It's like meat without salt.' Shavash swung his hand sharply.
'When you convey our demands for negotiations Terence, don't forget to stress that they should take place at the highest level. The Federation president will head the Galactic delegation and I will head the Weian one.'
'You are both nuts,' Bemish muttered glumly. 'Damn the day when I thought that you, Shavash, were a normal official only because you took a lot of bribes.'
Accompanied by Kissur, Bemish walked down the main spaceport building. It was in somewhat better condition than he had expected — he saw even occasional unbroken bottles in the bars. The floor had been cleaned recently and the main hall's announcement board still carried the old slogan 'Long live the party of people's freedom.'
The building had suffered several millions worth of damage but Bemish, surprisingly, didn't really care. Really, yesterday morning he had been sure that they would fire meson artillery directly at the construction. What was a torn apart monitor next to a SpaceExtra stand after that? Ashinik, Ashinik! Did you think that after demanding Kissur's appointment to the first minister that the latter would hang you on a tower crane in twenty four hours?!
'Where are common zealots?'
Kissur ran his hand across his neck. Bemish realized why the floor had been recently washed.
'How many of them were here?'
'It was no more than a hundred,' Kissur lied coolly.
'Bullshit! There were more than two thousand of them!'
Kissur shrugged his shoulders.
'Can I see colonel Rogov?' Bemish asked.
They walked up a motionless ascender to the second floor and entered the air traffic control room.
The colonel lay on the table. Somebody had placed a white pillow under his head, crossed his hands on his chest and placed a funeral wreath made out of white flowers. It was an Alom burial custom for warriors.
'Have they killed him?'
'He was a real warrior and he didn't need another's hand to pull the trigger,' Kissur answered.
Bemish shifted the wreath up and saw a barely noticeable hole at the colonel's temple under large whitecandle petals.'
'Should I have done the same?' Bemish asked.
'You are a businessman. It's not yours.'
Bemish lowered the wreath silently and left the room.
Kissur stayed for a moment to rearrange the flowers correctly.
'I am glad that there are still warriors left on Earth,' Kissur said.
It proved impossible later to find out how many zealots had been killed that day accordingly to Shavash's and Kissur's orders. It was absolutely known that not a single zealot present in the spaceport during the night of ninth had escaped it alive.
Shavash and Kissur always claimed that it had been about one hundred to one hundred fifty corpses. They were interested in bringing the estimated number of 'lunatic maniacs' down. Accordingly to Bemish's calculations, at least three thousand zealots crowded in the spaceport when the whole thing started. They had all been let inside the buildings and on the landing field. Most of these peasants had never seen before wondrous buildings of glass and steel where staircase moved on their own and announcement ran across the ceiling, where they couldn't even squat in a corner to take a crap. Few of them walked away, returning to their homes, on the second day of their stay in the spaceport, especially since 'yellow coats' blocked the roads. It became clear why Kissur had let the passenger hostages go — he didn't want any witnesses around and he didn't want them to get in the way accidentally.
Later, Bemish dragged some details of the massacre out of his own employees. Everything happened only after the paratroopers had come in. There were two thousand of Aloms in the spaceport and there were two trained supermen per every unarmed peasant. They killed the zealots with knives and bare hands; they didn't use any firearms or lasers. They were not afraid of noise, especially since lasers didn't make any. However, they were afraid of damaging the equipment and they didn't want a laser ray, for instance, to jab into the floor and leave a trace that they would not be able to hide afterwards. They accidentally killed a dozen personnel including the head technician of the heating systems. He was the only heating systems tech left in the spaceport and they almost got themselves into a crisis. Thankfully, a commando sergeant figured the system out.
Then they performed the great cleaning of the building — they washed the floors, scrubbed guts of the
