"You got it," Shavash said. "Bemish is going to cleanse Assalah of crooks using federal troops."
"It's not good if Long Stick sends the troops," the short man said.
"I can't do anything here," Shavash spread his hands. "It's your fault. Who robbed Giles?"
"I will find out," the man said.
"Find it out, please. It's useful to know sometimes what your people do."
Shavash paused and added.
"You, O'Hara, are like a parasite at the construction. You suck but you don't feed, you harvest and you don't plough. Why would Bemish love you? While if you helped him…"
"How can I help him? Should I not steal? How will I make my living?"
"Why should you not steal? For instance, Bemish has serious problems with zealots. If you step on the zealots' tails, you will help Bemish."
The guy looked at the vice-minister with animosity. Weian crooks didn't attack zealots as a rule. The pickings would be slim, and the zealots would go totally mad — if you touched them they wouldn't rest till they cut the whole gang down and declare it to be gods' wrath.
"I have a feeling that the zealots blighted you, not Bemish," the thief said, "and that I will do a favor to you rather than to Bemish."
Two hours later, Bemish's helicopter landed in Kissur villa's backyard. "The master is not at home," a maid reported, "the mistress will see you in a moment. Could you, please, step into Lake Hall?"
Idari met him dressed in a blue skirt with golden sable trim and a jacket embroidered with peacocks and squirrels. Her hair was pulled up in a large black bun and a silver hairpin in the shape of a Lamass rowboat pierced the bun. Bemish looked at the hairpin and it seemed to him that the hairpin was piercing his heart.
Bemish kissed the house mistress' hand and said.
"I am touched that you received me in Kissur's absence."
Idari sat on the couch and pulled a tambour with a partially knitted belt onto her knees.
The belt was embroidered with clouds and rivers. She almost always had needlework with her.
Two servants brought fruit and cookie baskets to the veranda and departed. A tame peacock dropped by the veranda, unfolded his tail, scratched the doorstep with his red foot and left for the garden.
"What are you upset about, Mr. Bemish?" Idari asked. "Do you have any problems with the fund?"
"No," Bemish said. "It's just that while I bought and sold other people's stocks, I possibly wasted my own company."
"I thought that you finished assembling the first line of landing pads a week before you planned."
"I mean the mood at the construction — zealots and crooks. I can't eradicate them. Shavash tricked me when he obtained legal immunity for the construction." Idari was silent.
"Why did he do it?" Bemish cried out. "Did he need me to hang the zealots? Does he need the Earthmen to butcher these idiots instead of the Empire, so that his hands are clean and the Earthmen's hands are smeared with shit?"
"What am I saying?" a thought passed in Bemish's mind. "I am sitting with a woman that I would give all of Assalah away for — ok, not all of Assalah but at least thirty percent of it — and I am talking to her about god knows what and she considers me to be a greedy and cowardly Earthman."
"He is not fully satisfied with you," Idari said.
"What is he not satisfied with? The only thing I don't export is drugs!"
"That's exactly right."
Bemish froze, as if he just collided with a wall.
"Are you…serious?"
"I mean that all the legal violations taking place at the spaceport deal only with taxes. You have not broken any criminal laws yet, Terence, and Shavash doesn't like that. If you break tax laws you can be prosecuted only at this planet. If you break criminal laws, you can be prosecuted across the whole Galaxy. The more crimes you commit, the more power Shavash will have over you."
"Bastard," Bemish muttered glumly. "If only I had known…"
"Shavash is better than you are," Idari objected.
"Shavash? Better?!!"
"Shavash will be forgiven many things because he wants a lot. He wants women, power, glory, while you want only money."
"I want you. I want you more than money," Bemish wanted to say.
"You are right, Idari," he said, "I like money more than anything else."
The next evening, the phone rang in Bemish's office. Ross called — an ex-colleague of Giles — now his deputy on security issues.
"We have an emergency," Ross said. "A packer boy was knifed. We got the killer."
"Did he resist?"
"No. He is quite a lout."
"Bring him to me," Bemish ordered.
Murders happened quite often at the construction. Generally, the killers could not be found. Even if a man was killed in broad daylight, somehow nobody saw anything.
Bemish was leafing through a draft of the yearly company report prepared by the PR department on Earth when two wide-angled guys from the security department brought the killer in the office — an inconspicuous sixty-year-old man in washed out jeans and a jacket with white trim showing that he worked in the fifth roadwork team. The killer's hands were twisted behind his head and locked with handcuffs.
The guys left and Bemish pointed the involuntary visitor to a chair.
"Sit down."
He sat silently. Bemish was leafing through the report's last pages.
"Why don't you let me go, boss. They say you have a right to do it."
Bemish was staggered by his gall.
"Why did you kill the lad?"