Semi-darkness and cleanliness ruled the bedroom and Ashinik noticed the blasted report at once — it lay under the bed, next to Bemish's slippers, and one could see how mercilessly it had been scribbled over even all the way from the door. Then, something moved to the side next to a mirror. Ashinik turned his head and saw Inis.
"What are you doing here?" Inis said.
"I came to get the report," Ashinik answered, bending and picking up the papers. "And you?"
"Don't you see? It's the new skirt!" Indeed, Inis stood next to the mirror twisting around to see her own profile and, instead of a somber business suit that she had had on in the morning, she was dressed in a wraparound skirt.
Ashinik, still holding the report in his hands, sat on the bed edge mechanically.
"Has Mr. Bemish bought it?"
"Silly! It's a surprise. It's a gift from Idari."
Inis picked the skirt edge with her fingertips and raised her hands and suddenly swirled across the room. Entranced Ashinik looked at her white legs.
He had never noticed before what Inis was dressed in. He had always undressed her in his thoughts.
"It's beautiful. Isn't it beautiful, really?"
"It's very beautiful," Ashinik whispered.
Inis laughed and ran to the door on her toes. Her hand groped for a switch. She turned the light off. However, it was still quite bright in the bedroom, thanks to wide windows going across the whole wall. The windows had no curtains — a layer of special compound inside them of them blocked incoming light either partially or completely. Now, the windows were working part way, softening blinding lights of the launching pads and, the lights' positions told Ashinik that a ship in K1 pad was going to take off any minute.
It should be howling outside by now, but the walls cut the sound off. "Imagine, Mr. Bemish would sit like this, and I would appear here,"
Inis spoke.
She swirled around the room and suddenly froze spreading the skirt at the lighted window background. At that moment, the yellow take off lights fired, the nose of a large freight Atlant shuddered and moved up, fire and smoke beams started under its exhausts, bulky like hippopotamus legs, the room was lit in a blinding blood red color and Ashinik saw Inis's black silhouette standing out on this blood red light background.
"Ouch," Inis cried out, stumbling for a moment.
She fell on the bed and Ashinik pressed her to himself at the same moment.
"Exactly," Inis spoke laughing, "Here, Mr. Bemish will embrace me like this… let me go…"
Not answering, Ashinik was kissing her.
"Let me go!"
Ashinik and Inis had kissed several times before that, but now Ashinik wasn't really controlling himself. He was madly frightened by the conversation with Yadan, the darkness and the faraway light bursts excited him and he was absolutely certain that Terence Bemish was in the capital, two hours away, and nobody would enter his bedroom.
"Inis, I am leaving soon. I can't leave without that." Ashinik whispered.
Inis was fighting him no more. The girl, having thrown her head backwards, let him kiss her and moaned slightly. Ashinik pulled her closer.
"Hold on," Inis suddenly said, "I will take the skirt off or you will tear it."
Ashinik relaxed his hands and looked at Inis unbuttoning her blouse and pulling the skirt over her head in a lithe feline movement. Then, her hands embraced the youth and before Ashinik figured out what's happening, the girl unbuckled his belt and her thin nimble fingers slid down to his male nature…
"Wow, what a python I have awakened," Inis whispered.
In half an hour, they were still lying completely naked in the Assalah company director's wide queen size bed and Inis was thoughtfully gliding her finger over Ashinik's flat boyish stomach. Going into the sky torches were still blazing up and fading behind the window. Ashinik extended his hand and having found the transparency regulator, made the window slightly darker.
"Where is the master sending you to?" Inis asked suddenly.
"Eh?"
Ashinik didn't immediately figure out what she meant.
"It's not the master. It's… I just need to go back to my place."
They were silent. Ashinik felt a strange fury thinking that tomorrow night she would be lying with Bemish the same way and everything that she was able to do — and she was able to do a lot and she had demonstrated it to Ashinik — all of it she learned from the man from the stars.
"In the past," Insis said thoughtfully sorting Ashinik's hair, "they put adulterous concubines in sacks and threw them alive into a river."
"Terence Bemish will hardly through you into the river," Ashinik objected. "He is an Earthman."
"I wonder, what he would do to us," Inis pondered.
"He won't do anything to us if we tell him nothing."
"The workday is finished. Stay here," Inis suggested. "The master is in the capital anyway and he won't return before the morning."
"I still need to fix the report," Ashinik said.
"You can fix it in the morning."
And Ashinik stayed.
Bemish indeed returned only the next day and not even in the morning, but in the afternoon. Ashinik had managed to fix the report but Bemish didn't even look at it. He called a meeting and demanded that work on the fifteenth launch pad be temporarily frozen and all freed workforce to be used at the new storage construction. Ashinik sat at the meeting not raising his eyes. A full bookshelf hung behind Bemish's back and Ashinik remembered that a Lassal's demolition manual was on the shelf. Ashinik needed this book but he was afraid to take it out that morning because it seemed to him that the security head Giles had indeed seen old Yadan and if Ashinik started reading demolition manuals after Yadan's visit, then Giles would place surveillance bugs even in Ashinik's pants.
"Ashinik, do you understand what you need to do?"
Ashinik raised his head bewildered. Bemish was telling him something, but he missed it all. Ashinik nodded and only then he noticed the company director's swollen cheeks and dark circles under his eyes — he had probably had a lot of fun yesterday.
Yikes, bordellos — demons' pastime where corrupted officials put Weian girls in the demons' beds…
"Yes, I got it."
"Ashinik, what's wrong with you? Are you sick?"
"I am all right. I'll go…"
"You will go and lie still in my bedroom. Do you understand?"
Bemish embraced the lad with one hand and flung the door to the inner living room with the other. Out of the wide open office door, Inis caught embarrassed Ashinik's glance and smiled at him slightly.