Surprisingly, the gates were closed — the vice prefect of the capital was not feeding either officials or paupers today.
Kissur smirked.
The mansion's owner could've had numerous titles written on the plaque — the Keeper of Piety, the Brocade of Truth, the Flower Garden of the Wisdom Beyond the Sky, the Meadow of the State Virtue, etc… etc… He regularly received these titles from the Emperor and was supposed to engrave them on gate plaques. However, the owner of the mansion has often had visitors from the skies and he probably realized that the Brocade of Truth and the Flower Garden of Wisdom were not titles that would impress the foreigners.
Kissur blinked the lights; the gates suddenly moved to the sides without a call and Kissur drove in.
The yard was brightly lit. Streams of water and light erupted from the fountains and multi coloured balls bounced on the streams. Rows of columns and rose bushes led to the open front entrance. The columns tops made from carved jade and inlaid silver pointed to the moon. The host was already running down the staircase rushing to the wide path. A bowing servant opened the car door and Kissur stepped out of the car. Mr. Shavash froze as if he had ran into a wall but he recovered at once, opened his arms and embraced Kissur.
"Hello," he said.
"Well," said Kissur, "I was driving and decided to drop by. Sorry that I didn't warn you… I don't like these — beep, beep," Kissur traced a sickly body of a T-phone with his hand. "Are you busy?"
Mr. Shavash regarded the caved in car door and looked Kissur over from his head to his toes.
"Give me your driver's license," said the vice-minister of finance and the vice prefect of the capital.
Kissur bent his eyebrows, got the wallet out and handed his license over. The vice prefect waved the license, thought a bit, tore it apart and threw it in the lighted fountain.
"Whom have you run over?"
"I haven't run anybody over," answered Kissur, "I hit a pole."
This lie would have a short life span. If the Earthman is dead, Shavash will learn everything tomorrow morning. If he is alive, Shavash may learn about it tonight. Kissur, however, didn't come to Shavash to avoid a scandal. Thank God, the time hasn't come yet for a foreigner wearing a tie to turn in a complaint about a personal friend of the Emperor.
"The pole," mentioned Shavash, "had leaden fists."
"Are you waiting for somebody," asked Kissur, "did I come at a wrong time?"
Shavash became slightly embarassed.
"You are always welcome."
Shavash gave orders; Kissur followed to the guest chambers. A servant rushed along in mincing steps carrying a basket with clean sheets. Shavash said to Kissur's back,
"You will not drive again. Otherwise you will die sometime."
"It's ok," replied Kissur, "if Gods like a man, he dies young."
Twenty minutes later, bowing servants walked Kissur down the roofed path to the Pavilion of White Creeks.
There were two pavilions for receiving important guests in the Shavash's estate — the Pavilion of White Creeks and the Red Pavilion. Pavilion of White Creeks was decorated in the traditional style, the floors were covered with knee deep white rugs, flower spheres swang under the ceiling, incense flowed from golden braziers, silken scrolls rimmed with fur hang on the walls, while the corners (corners are indeed atrocious things, everything bad in a house comes from the corners) were hidden well from a random glance by long ivy plants rising all the way to the ceiling. Red Pavilion was designed by an Earthman.
Shavash usually received Weians in the Pavilion of White Creeks and Earthmen in the Red Pavilion. They claimed that these places had magical properties — when Mr. Shavash received Weians in the Pavilion of White Creeks he discoursed one way, but when he received Earthmen in the Red Pavilion his speeches were very different. For instance, when questioned about the reasons for the Empire's poverty in the Pavilion of White Creeks, he complained about the greed of people from the skies who only try to buy as much Weia as possible for a keg of marinated onions. However when asked the same question in the Red Pavilion, he complained about laziness and selfishness of Weian officials. Since these different speeches belonged to the same person, you have to agree, that the magical properties of these buildings had to be involved.
The servants brought trays of roasted goose and baskets of picked fruit and covered the table with vegetable and meat appetizers.The melon floating in a silver basin was delivered the last. Shavash seated Kissur as the guest of honor and broke off the top of clay wine jar. Kissur caught the top and glanced at the stamp.
"Good wine," Kissur, "if this stamp is not counterfeited."
"There are no fakes in my house," Shavash replied, "it was made in Inissa in the fifth year of sovereign Varnazd rein."
"It was made when the empire was still the empire. It was made when I was not a minister yet, when I was a brigand in Kharain mountains and when my wife was your fiancee.
Shavash smiled slightly and poured wine in the cups.
"I would," Kissur spoke, "drink a wine that was bottled in the times of sovereign Irshahchan. When there were no merchants and bribers and when all these barbarians from the mountains or from the sky didn't wave their swords or their science in front of our people's faces.
"I am afraid," Shavash replied, "that no wine that ancient exists. And even if it's around still, it has turned into vinegar."
The friends intertwined their hands and drank wine.
After that, Shavash started on a young bamboo shoot and a river calimari with a spicy Iniss sauce appetizers. Kissur, squinting, rolled a cup in his hands and looked at the man sitting across the table.
Even among Weian officials that nobody would suspect to be excessively uncorrupted, Shavash had made himself quite a reputation. Shavash's servants took bribes, Shavash's assistants took bribes, Shavash's wife (by the way, Kissur's wife was her sister) took bribes; they took bribes with lands and stocks, with licenses and money, with options and thoroughbreds, with the newest financial tools and ancient paintings, took bribes from provincial and center worlds, took bribes from the Federation of Nineteen and the Republic of Gera — though the dictator of Gera didn't take bribes and didn't really give much. One official asked what kind of place a supermarket was; they told him that it was a place where one could by anything. "Oh, it's Mr. Shavash's house," the astonished official exclaimed. Kissur once, after some really offensive deal, grabbed Shavash by his shirt at the Emperor's soiree and asked what the current price was for a pound of motherland. "I love motherland and I charge a lot for it," Shavash leered. Mr. Shavash liked to state that if a man says that he doesn't like money, it means that money doesn't like him.
Since the Earthmen came to the planet, seven years and four cabinets have passed. Every one of the cabinets fired all its predecessor's functionaries. Shavash was the only higher level official who worked for all the cabinets and survived. The first man he betrayed in order to survive was his teacher and lord, Nan, who had made him a big boss out of an street urchin thief. Thanks to such a long political life, Shavash was able to pull all the strings of power and influence in the country in spite of his relative youth — he was only two years older than Kissur.
Shavash could help or hinder anything. Even the biggest country bumpkin Earthmen — who came to Weia to invest in a construction of some resort in the middle of untamed nature or in the development of a uranium mine that will sooner or later finish this untamed nature off — knew that they should introduce themselves to the first vice minister of finance and they should invest in Shavash first, and in a mine next.