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  "What does it mean?"

  "He can bankrupt you without breaking a sweat like a vulture fund manager and he can personally cut your head off like a true Weian official. He is the most charming man."

  "So, what has the most charming man told you about your desire to buy Assalah?"

  "That to agree to our proposal means to sell the motherhood for a sour cream jar."

  "Well, should we pack our things and leave?"

  "Not necessarily. Mr. Shavash hinted that he would be ready to sell the motherhood for a sour cream jar, if the jar was big enough."

  Welsey hummed.

  "Don't I dream sometimes," he said, "that at some point the Securities and Stocks Committee will allow us to have an entry in a balance sheet — "for bribing of the developing markets officials" — and it will be tax deductible… How much does he want?"

  "We didn't get to particular numbers."

  Bemish was silent for a moment and continued,

  "The company stocks are unbelievably under priced. I am not going to give him any money. Let him buy stock warrants, this way it would be in his interest for the company to survive and prosper."

  "What is that you don't like?"

  "Shavash is not the director of the company."

  "Excuse me," Welsey was amazed, "what do you mean, he is not a director? All the forms say — Shavash Ahdi, the director of the state-owned Assalah Company."

  "Stephen, it is a poor translation. The company is not owned by the state, it is owned by the sovereign. Do you see the difference? "State" and "sovereign" are two different conjugations of the same word in Weian — nouns have conjugations here — what a language… When the translation says, the state appoints, it really means, the sovereign appoints. The sovereign personally appoints and revokes the company president; the sovereign personally accepts financial plans. What if the sovereign does not accept the IPO plan? Bye-bye sour cream…"

  "Hmm," Welsey said, "From what I've heard, you can't really say he spends all his time studying companies' IPO plans during the de-nationalization process. They say he has seven hundred concubines…"

  "Yes, but what's the guarantee that some official that can't stand Shavash doesn't go to the sovereign and tell him about the sour cream jar."

  "Giles from IC told me that we would not even be able to get papers for the space field preliminary checkup without bribing Shavash first."

  Bemish retorted, "What is the IC? I've never heard about this company."

  Somebody knocked in the door.

  "Come in," Welsey shouted.

  A boy with a card on a silver tray materialized at the entrance. As a local custom demanded, the boy kneeled down on a scrawny knee in front of the foreigner. Bemish took the card. The boy said,

  "A gentleman would like to have a breakfast with you. The gentleman is waiting down in the foyer."

  "I am coming," Bemish said.

  The boy backed away and left. Bemish hurriedly pulled on pants and a jacket. Welsey took the card.

  "Kissur," he read, "wow, isn't he the Emperor's favorite who filched a Van Leyven's bomber plane and slaughtered the rebels next to the capital? Didn't he later get on LSD and gang up with anarchists on Earth? Where did you pick this drug addict up?"

  Bemish checked his bruise out in the mirror.

  "Drug addicts," Bemish said, "don't fight like this."

  X X X

  Terence Bemish descended.

  Slim and smiling Kissur sat on the car hood. He wore soft grey pants girdled by a wide belt embroidered with silver sharks and a grey jacket. A wide necklace made of jade plates set in gold glistened under the open jacket akin to a collar. The attire was similar enough to the contemporary fashion to look unobtrusive, except for the necklace and the finger rings. Bemish winced involuntarily and touched his cheekbone where Kissur's ring tore the skin off.

  "Hello," Kissur said, "general director! Never in my life have I met a general director who fights like this. Are you special?"

  "I am special," Terence Bemish agreed.

  Laughing, Kissur embraced him, seated him in the car and started the engine.

  "What have you seen in our capital?" Kissur asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Have you seen nothing at all?"

  "Well, I saw cards in the hotel hall," Bemish said, "and I also saw a warning there — don't eat fried river calamari on the market if the calamari are from the left river, where the leather processing plant "flows" to."

  "Got you," Kissur said, "let's go then."

  They drove over the river across a blue lacquered bridge, loaded with market stalls and people. Kissur stopped on the bridge in front of a wreath shop, bought three of them, put one on his neck, another on Bemish's and later left the third one in the temple of the Sky Swans.

  After that, Kissur drove Bemish around the city.

  The city, that Bemish hadn't seen yet, was both beautiful and ugly. Temple turrets and muraled precinct gates mixed with astonishing five storied shanty houses built from the stuff that Bemish wouldn't dare to build a cardboard box; potters on the floating market sold enticing jars painted with grasses and flowers and empty rainbow hued Coke bottles. Melon peels and colorful wraps floated down the canal — the remnants of everything that grew on Weia and came from the skies, everything that found a place in the mammoth belly of the Sky City but didn't find a place in the weak bowels of its sewage.

  They watched a puppet show at the market based on a new popular TV series demonstrating the mutual integration of the cultures; they fed holy mice and dropped by the Temple of Isia-ratouph, where stone gods dressed in long caftans and high suede boots nodded to visitors if they dropped coins (bought here) down a slot in the wall.

  Kissur showed the Earthman a wonderful town clock made in the very beginning of the sovereign Kassia's rule. There were twenty three thousand figurines next to the clock, a thousand for an every province, and they all represented officials, peasants and artisans. They spun in front of the dial displaying a blue mountain. Bemish asked why the mountain was blue and Kissur answered that was the mountain that stood above the sky and had four colors — blue, red, yellow and orange. The blue side of the mountain faces the Earth — that's why sky is blue. The orange side of the mountain faces the gods, hence the sky above the place where gods live is orange.

  This was a standard cultural program except for the fact the director of a modest company registered in the state of Delaware, USA, Federation of Nineteen was accompanied by one of the richest people in the Empire.

  Finally, Kissur stopped at a temple somewhere at the city outskirts. He, probably, stopped there because of a two thousand step long staircase leading to the temple. Kissur started running up the steps and Bemish desperately tried to keep up. He was out of breath and his heart was pounding in the chest, but the Earthman and the Weian got to the top of the colonnade side by side, looked at each other and laughed.

  "Like a pig race," Kissur said, gasping for breath, "Terence, have you seen a pig race?"

  "No."

  "We must go there. I threw away twenty thousand last week on this Red Nose bastard."

  It was dark and cool inside the temple. A bronze god in a brocade caftan and high suede boots sat amidst green and gold columns and his wife sat in the next hall. Kissur said that Weians didn't put much stock in bachelor gods. A god should be a good family man and an exemplary father, otherwise what can he expect from people?

  Bemish listened to the strange silence in the temple and perused the face of the god and the family man.

  "By the way, where did you learn to fight?"

  "My father taught me," Bemish said, "he was a well-known sportsman. I almost became one myself."

  The ex-first minister's eyebrows, furled in contempt were visible even in the temple dusk

  "Sportsman…" he drawled, "it's a shameful business to fight for plebeian delight. Why haven't you become a warrior?

  Terence Bemish was amazed. To say the truth, it has never occurred to
him to join the army, not even in his wildest dreams.

  "The army," Bemish said, "is for losers."

  The ex-premier grinned.

  "Yes," he replied, "for an Earthman, anything that can't procure wealth is for losers. The Earthmen make money out of wars no longer; they make money out of money.

  "I didn't mean that," Bemish objected, "I want to be myself and not a trigger pulling machine. The army means the loss of freedom."

  "Crap," said Kissur, "the army is the only way to freedom. There is nobody between a warrior and god."

  "Maybe," Bemish agreed, "only our army hasn't fought for the last one hundred thirteen years."

  They left the hall, walked through a rock and flower garden and found themselves in another temple wing — enticing smells wafted from there and Bemish saw cars with diplomatic plate licenses through a twined lattice. Bemish thought the temple rented this house out but Kissur told him that an eatery had always been there.

  They walked down into the yard. A fountain babbled in the yard inconsolably and people sat at the tables under the swaying yellow tents. Kissur seated Bemish at a table, grabbed a passing waiter, plucked two wine jars from his basket and ordered food.

  "So," Kissur said, pouring spicy palm wine down the clay mugs, "you have never been to a war. What do you do then?"

  "I am in finance. The company that belongs to me will possibly be interested in buying some stuff here."

  "Are you rich?"

  "You don't have to be rich in order to acquire a company. You just have to have a reputation of a man who can triple the stock price of this company in a year and a financial company who can raise money for you."

  "Aha. Do you have one?"

  "Yes. My colleague Welsey represents it. It's LSV bank."

  "Are foreign banks allowed here?"

  "LSV is not a deposit bank. They are in investment business, "Bemish said, feeling slightly offended for the fifth largest investment bank in the Galaxy.

  Here, Kissur astounded Bemish. The ex-first minister of the Empire of the Great Light looked at Bemish and asked,

  "Oh, do banks engage in anything beyond usury?"

  Bemish was silent for a moment. Then he carefully inquired,

  "Kissur, do you know what a stock is?"

  "Hmm," the ex-minister said, "it's when you get a loan?"

  Bemish almost choked.

  "Am I not right?"

  "When they loan money and issue securities it is called bonds."

  "That's what I am saying. Isn't it the same thing?"

  "No," Bemish said, "When a company issues stocks, whoever buys a stock becomes a co-owner of the company and has a right to vote at a stock holder meeting. He also gets dividends and their size depends on the company's performance. On the other hand, when a company issues bonds, it means that it borrows money and whoever buys bonds will have guaranteed payments till the loan will be paid off, if the company does not go bankrupt, of course."

  "Oh, how interesting," Kissur said; he snapped his fingers and shouted,

  "Chief! Where is the jellyfish?"

  Bemish had never eaten marinated jellyfish before and he wasn't particularly curious about it; he sincerely wished that the place ran out of them. However, the jellyfish arrived, looking like a pile of broken plexiglass smothered in with red sauce, and Kissur continued,

  "What company are you aiming at?"

  "The company that received a concession for the Assalah spaceport construction. Since the sovereign owns 65 % of the company's capital, accordingly to your laws he appointed the company director — Mr. Shavash."

  Kissur, having some vague recollection that Shavash owned twelve more companies like that including the Galaxy's second biggest (and rated one hundred eighteenth in efficiency) uranium mine, silently nodded.

  "Are you definitely buying it?"

  "It depends on a number of factors."

  "Such as?"

  "It depends on the current state of the construction, the state of the world stock market by the time of the IPO, the IPO volume and its prospects, — you see, LSV can act as an underwriter and get a profit selling securities but prices may go down after the IPO and then LSV will incur all the losses. It is also important what kind of securities it will be, stocks, bonds, or derivatives.

  "Bonds would be better," Kissur said.

  "Why?"

  "You said it yourself — if anybody buys stocks, he also buys the company. What if somebody buys the spaceport? All these… trying to worm their way in here…"

  Bemish choked a bit, but it was probably caused by the unusual taste of jellyfish.

  "Tell me more about the company," Kissur demanded.

  The Assalah Company was founded four years ago for the construction and the industrial usage of a spaceport with a twenty five square mile landing area that could potentially be increased. 15 square miles of peasant communal land was appropriated for the construction. The company issued six hundred forty million stocks with a nominal price of one hundred isheviks each. The state kept 65 % of the stocks and the management received five percent. The community peasants got about seven percent. Instead of getting cash for the appropriated lands, these people obtained a partnership in the future construction. Fifteen percent of stocks was sold via the over-the-counter market.

  The construction was going along rapidly; the stocks were pretty high up and their price reached three thousand isheviks or eighteen Galactic dinars on the stock exchange. Then the director embezzled too much and a scandal burst; it became apparent that only one third of planned construction had been accomplished, the market crashed, almost all of upper managers were arrested, the workers scurried away picking up everything that the managers hadn't stolen yet; the construction halted on its own volition and never started up again. Shavash was appointed the head of the company, though I think that he had originally been on the Board of Directors.

  "That's simple," Kissur said, "if Shavash was on the Board to begin with, it means that he quarreled with his colleagues and had them imprisoned."

  "I don't know," Bemish said, "you see, this kind of stuff would not be included in IPO prospects. Shavash tried to set up an international IPO and he got in touch with "Merrill Roberto Darnhem." He almost pulled it off but the investors refused to undersign the issue in the end."

  "Why?"

  "Because," Bemish gleefully explained, "a rebellion or something the government considered a rebellion happened in Chakhar that month, and a certain Kissur led his tanks among other things through the production facilities of a soft beverage joint corporation, squashing under his tracks a manager named Rodger Gernis. After this little trip, the securities of six Weian companies that had passed the international certification plunged down and bruised themselves and nobody wanted to talk about a new IPO. Didn't you know about it?"

  Kissur twirled his head thoughtfully.

  "I've heard something about it," he said, "but I don't see anything wrong if your sharks don't eat our carp."

  "Your carp won't get smarter if nobody swallows it."

  Kissur raised his head and looked thoughtfully at Bemish. His jaws moved powerfully, crunching the jellyfish like it was not a jellyfish but at least a lamb bone.

  "That's well said, financier, " Kissur mentioned, "it's frank, at least. Do you own a construction company?"

  "More or less."

  "What kind of construction?"

  "It makes automated doors for monorail subway cars."

  Kissur pondered. He was evidently trying to figure out the relationship between the automated doors and the Assalah spacefield and he just could not fathom it.

  "Have you inherited it from your father?" Kissur asked.

  "No, I bought it a year ago."

  "Why?"

  "To use it as a tool to acquire a bigger company."

  This statement was more frank and even scandalous compared to the previous one about the carp. It would make the Galactic Reserve bureaucrat twitch but Kissur clearly didn't care.
r />   Kissur poured Bemish palm wine and they drank a mug and then another one.

  "What's so special about you, director?" Kissur asked suddenly.

  Bemish was silent for a moment. He wouldn't mind having Kissur as an ally. He realized that Kissur detested everything to do with Earthmen and their money and he couldn't predict the Kissur's reaction to his next statement.

  "Most general directors," Bemish delivered, "slowly climb up the corporate ladder, play golf with their equals and charge their own companies for the their cats' space travels. They won't let me play golf with them. They call me and my likes corporate raiders. We don't play by the rules. We buy companies and fire ineffective management. We buy companies with other people's money and pay off loans by selling half of what we bought."

  Kissur sipped wine. He didn't care a fig that the Securities and Stocks Committee was now discussing the legal issues of corporate raiders' actions yet again, and that Terence Bemish's name was often being mentioned in not the most favorable way.

  "So," Kissur said, "the Assalah spacefield. It's in Chakhar, at the border with the capital region… They grow great grapes in Assalah… Isn't one hole in the sky enough for Chakhar?"

  "No," Bemish said, "one hole in the sky appears not to be enough. It was also supposed to be a temporary hole built in a swamp. The Chakhar capital becomes as inaccessible in the rainy season, as a marsh village during a flood. The landing blocks grow wet mildew and the spaceships hang out there in space and charge so much for the delays, that cost as much as ten spacefields or one palace. "

  "How horrible!" Kissur exclaimed.

  "Didn't you know that?"

  "I am not a shopkeeper," the ex-first minister of the Empire was offended, "everybody, interested in this, starts giving bribes or making money sooner or later."

  He was silent for a moment and then added, "so did you come to Shavash about this… hole in the sky? How much did he ask?" Bemish grinned savagely.

  "I am not in the habit of giving anything to the management of the companies acquired by me accept for a kick in the butt. Assalah will be sold on an investment auction. I will win this auction and that's it."