Bemish and Giles turned around almost simultaneously.
"It's not for you to talk about reputation," Giles cried out.
"Who, exactly, is financing your offer?" Bemish was surprised.
Standing next to Rusby, the Gera envoy inclined his head slightly and said.
"Several Gera banks support Mr. Rusby."
"Be careful," Giles grinned, "this man cheated the Galaxy investors out of one and a half billion."
"The Securities Commission cheated them out of one and a half billion," Rusby objected. "Nobody can blame me in failing to pay what I promised, in unsuccessful investments or in a pyramid scheme."
Giles went blue in the face.
"Is it true, Mr. Shavash," he said, "that the man who bankrupted two hundred thousand investors, is participating in the Assalah auction?"
"Everybody is participating in the auction," the small official said.
"Including a rogue supported by the dictator's money?"
"I am not familiar with a financial term dictatorship," Shavash replied.
Bemish looked around and noticed another witness of this ruckus — Khanadar the Dried Date looked at him out of a corner. Bemish quietly came to him and asked.
"So, how do you like the business world?"
Khanadar grinned.
"Once, twenty years ago," he said, "my comrades and I were coming back from a not-so-successful trip. We had been going to pillage a town but when we came in, the town had already been pillaged and the guys, who had pillaged it, drove us away. We were famished since we didn't eat anything for days. Even our horses croaked. Finally, we reached the coast and a town, and the food and the loot in the town. Then, we got friendlier to each other and began to hug and we had tried to keep a ten step distance, before, — to avoid being eaten."
"I see. So, the Earthmen resemble you in this trip, before you found this town."
"Eh, Terence-rey (Khanadar used a respectful Alom postfix.) We only needed three rolls for a man not to worry about being eaten, but I still haven't figured out how much an Earthman needs, not to eat another Earthman."
The officials attended to Bemish extensively and soon the whole villa was filled by their gifts — Bemish, however, had to make gifts of his own in return.
Shavash send Bemish a painting as a gift. The painting was done in the "thousand scales" style with spider web lines drawn on silk; a girl, feeding from her hand a dragon that stuck its head out of the water, was depicted. The girl with black hair and eyes, big like olives, resembled Idari and Bemish hung it right above the table in his office. At their next meeting, Shavash praised Bemish's taste and said that it was a fifth dynasty painting, most probably, an excellent copy of a Koinna's masterpiece. Bemish, somewhat galled that the gift was only a copy, inquired about the original's location and Shavash, laughing, told him that the original was stored in the palace and was fated to an eternal confinement, like the Emperor's wives.
"However," Shavash added with a grin, "they now sell the palace treasures left and right. I think that nobody reaps as much money as the custodians of paintings and bowls; at least one third of everything that has ever been painted and potted in by Eukemen is stored in the palace. Nobody except the Emperor and the custodian in charge has access to the treasures, there is absolutely no order there — steal as much as you want."
The headman heard this conversation and, arching his body in the usual way, told Bemish that a far relative of his worked in the palace and would love to meet the Earthman.
Bemish met him. The far relative appeared to be a small red nosed official from the Department of Paintings, Tripods, and Bowls. The relative showed Bemish color photographs of the astoundingly beautiful fifth dynasty vessels and several paintings done in the "morning fog" style, most popular at the Golden Sovereign times, and in the "thousand scales" style. The girl and dragon painting was not there. Or, more precisely, it was there and not one, but several of them — it was a popular sea prince tale — but none of them belonged to Koinna's hand.
The official offered Bemish to sell anything the latter would like and the price he asked for the fifth dynasty last survived silk paintings was twice less than what any modern doodle, sold in Bonn's galleries, would cost.
Bemish thanked the official and refused.
Kissur arranged for Bemish an audience in the Hundred Fields Hall. Bemish left his car next to the Sky Palace wall and he was escorted down the sanded paths and fragrant alleys.
In a light flooded hall, resembling a fragment from a fairy tale from the sky, the officials whispered, dressed in ancient court clothes. In half an hour, a silver curtain moved to the side — the Emperor Varnazd was sitting on the amethyst throne. The Emperor was dressed in white, he had a sad delicate face with strikingly made-up eyebrows, rising at the tips. It looked like a silent single actor play. Bemish thought it to be a very sad play.
The curtain soon moved back and the officials dispersed to attend their own business.
Bemish crossed the fragrant gardens and exited the palace gate. The square in front of the palace gasped with heat, two half-naked brats explored a stinking street rut with their hands.
Bemish opened his car, foraged in the glove compartment and dished several chocolate bars out to the brats. They tore the wrappers apart sinking their rotting teeth into the chocolate.
"Hey," Bemish asked in his crappy Weian, "do you know what Earth is?"
"Of course. It's a place in the sky, where we'll go after we die, if we behave ourselves and obey the Emperor."
Having turned the air conditioning on, Bemish sat in the car for a while, looking at the silver beasts on the palace wall crest, remembering the Hundred Fields Hall's immense luxury, the golden ceiling and jade columns. "A very rich government of a very poor nation," he thought.
In two weeks, Bemish was at a party that the first minister threw to celebrate his birthday. There was food and binge drinking and girls. There was swimming in a night pond. There were various contracts made and papers signed amidst the dishes with stuffed dates and the dishes with everything that was raised in the sky and raised on the ground, these very papers would normally involve huge bribes; the bribes, however, were still supposed be paid later. There were also songs and poetry. A ministry of finance official — was his name Tai? — took something resembling a lute and started playing music and singing.
Then, a girl sang a song — it was a very lyrical song. Bemish was told that an official named Andarz had written this song about twenty years ago. He was the police minister and he had suppressed the Chakhar uprising, having hung everybody who couldn't buy him off and letting off everybody who could. Coming back to the capital, he wrote the cycle of his best poetry about the four seasons. Bemish felt chills run down his spine, he leaned over to Kissur and said.
"This is a great singer."
The girl finished the song and sat, by Kissur's order, on Bemish's knees.
Afterwards, they started playing rhymes. Bemish, of course, didn't know Weian good enough to compose a verse with a given rhyme or to finish a line. But, somehow, he felt that he wouldn't do any better in English than in Weian.
A street singer was brought in.
Bemish recalled how he was driving from the spaceport and asked his interpreter — the guy had started as one of the Weians that washed dishes on the ground — to stop the car. He wanted to look at the street puppeteer with a crowd gathered around him on the curb. The interpreter answered that it was "uncultured." Bemish asked what was "cultured," and he found out that it was "cultured" for the whole neighborhood to attend trashy Hollywood and Seilass movies.