Bemish paused and asked.
"So, Kissur what should I do with the bandits? Should I make peace or war?"
"How are you to make war with the bandits?" Kissur got angry. "I am telling you — if you want to kill the zealots off, take a gun and shoot at a zealot — he will approach you himself! You don't want to shoot at a zealot that will stick his belly at you. Do you think that a bandit will stick his belly at you?"
"What would be your advice then?"
"You are a chicken, Terence. You turned the construction in a shithouse. Just recently Shavash was amazed how you accounted for some equipment in such a way that you managed to shave the tax by half a million and he was so amazed by this — even he didn't know this trick. And while you were accounting your contraptions and books…" and Kissur grinned. "Well, if gods didn't give you the ability to shoot, you will have to make peace."
"What if I asked you to kill the bandits off?"
"I won't do it."
"Why? Do you have a lot of good friends among them?"
Kissur paused. At this moment, the office door flung open and angry Giles flew in.
"Why don't you answer the phone, Terence," he shouted, "what is this habit of hanging the receiver!"
"Do you have something urgent?"
"Urgent? Do you know what's happening at the Adera Temple? This preacher, Ashinik, brought a crowd in, they broke the fence, forced their way into the temple and they are having a worship service."
Bemish turned and picked up a close-knit hemp overcoat that he often wore at the construction to be less conspicuous.
"What are you going to do?"
"I am going to attend the worship."
"You're going nuts," Giles said. "Call Shavash. Call the troops in. They have finally broken the laws!"
"Call the troops in and what? Should I jail the whole village?"
"You should jail the rabble-rousers."
"And I should turn the others from ill-wishers into terrorists, shouldn't I?"
"Bemish was tying the overcoat's laces decisively."
"I know what Terence wants," Kissur said, "I will go with him."
"Where are you going? Just the two of you? Oh, my God!" the spy roared and seeing Kissur and Bemish rushing out of the office, followed them.
Adera's temple floated in the night lit with torches from below. The crowd was huge — people in woolen jackets and grass overcoats girdled with red belts crowded in the broken hall where the sky instead of a roof covered a hurriedly built stage. Kissur and two Earthmen, dressed in rural hemp overcoats, were ignored. Only when Bemish, while elbowing energetically to the stage, pushed somebody in the back a guy jammed him in return and said rudely, "Don't push like a demon!"
On the left and on the right of the stage, huge copper lanterns burned and a round basin with fragrant water steamed on the altar. At the very edge of the stage, Ashinik stood — the young preacher of Following the Way. His face, thin as an onion peel, reddened, his eyes glistened in the torchlight and the crowd responded with an ardent bellow to his every word. Ashinik was dressed in a red hooded overcoat embroidered with red winged bulls reaching all the way to the ground. His belt was made out of polished copper plates.
Black suede high boots looked out from under the overcoat. A bound white goose lay at Ashinik's feet.
Ashinik preached about Earthmen. More precisely, he preached that the clothing sewn by demons should not be worn.
"Two hundred years ago, in the last years of Emperor Sashar's rule," the man in the red overcoat gleaning in the torchlight was saying, "a fashion spread among the people from the country of Great Light — a fashion to wear the clothing made out of wool brought in by barbarians. It was a clear omen that the barbarians would conquer the country. And now people wear the clothing sewn by demons — a clear omen that the demons will conquer the country. So, everyone wearing their foul jeans or jackets is, basically, walking naked. You should know that everything that demons make is just phantom and deceit. And they can't make anything but phantoms. Although they are very powerful sorcerers, we are even more powerful than they are."
"Bullshit," Kissur said.
Everybody present turned facing him.
"Who are you?" Ashinik cried.
"My name is Kissur the White Falcon and this is Terence Bemish, the construction boss, my best friend and we came today to see how you go nuts."
"It doesn't befit you, Kissur, to hobnob with demons," Ashinik spoke harshly, "Since many people call you Irshahchan reborn but, truly, even a white cloud dirties itself over an unclean mole."
Kissur unhurriedly ascended the stage and poked the youth in the chest. Ashinik's bodyguards stirred agitatedly — didn't Ashinik see Kissur in his last sovereign prophecy?
"You are a dog and you are a dog's bone," Kissur shouted with the same voice he used to command an army of many thousand troops and the voice carried above the quelled crowd without any speakers — you addle people's minds and prattle a lot of nonsense and you say that white is black and mix up hell and Big Galaxy and nothing but harm to the state comes from zealots. And if you think that everything Earthmen make is phantoms — do you see what this is?"
"It's a weapon of theirs," Ashinik said.
"Laser gun Star-M," Kissur thundered, "fan effect with improved specifications. And you will stand at this gross shithouse that you call an altar and I will shoot at you with this gun. And if Earthmen's weapons are phantoms and you are a sorcerer, you will stay alive, and if the Earthmen's weapons are weapons and you are a liar and a cheat, you will keel over and go to hell that you say so much crap about."
Ashinik paled. He had never stood in front of a laser barrel. He heard many times that the demons shot at the pious and it all came out to be a phantom. But…
"Are you afraid?!" Kissur shouted. And he turned to the peasants. "Yes, he is afraid; he knows that he is lying to you!"
"Shoot," Ashinik cried.
"Go to the altar!" Kissur shouted. "And all of you move aside and watch with two eyes and don't tell people afterwards what didn't happen."
The crowd quieted and only breathed intensely. Ashinik snarled at his bodyguards and they crawled aside hurriedly. Ashinik came to the altar, raised his hands and faced Kissur.
"It's all stupidity and phantom," Ashinik said and you, Kissur, fell prey to it. But when you shoot and I come back alive, your delusion will disperse and you will not shame your name any more and will stand with us against demons.
Kissur silently picked a fresh "doughnut" out of his pocket, recharged the gun and turned off the safety switch with a clip. The eye on the "doughnut's" top swelled with green light. Ashinik closed his eyes and extended his hands forward. Bemish could clearly see the zealots' leader young face covered with sweat and his chicken neck in the torchlight. "Good lad," Giles whispered nearby. Kissur raised the laser.
"Don't you dare shoot, Kissur," Bemish said.
"What are you doing?" Giles hissed from the side.
Bemish pushed him away and leaped on the stage.
"Don't shoot!"
"Idiot," Kissur smirked.
"I can't allow you to kill a man right at my eyes, whatever this man believes in!"