"You are right, Terence," he spoke, "You are right! I will gather your… representatives. Let them decide themselves who is gonna be the minister! And let Mr. Shavash prove them that he acted for the people's good, let's see if my people are as stupid as I am!"
The Emperor rose and rushed into the inner halls. Giles and Shavash hurried after him but the guards didn't let them through. Bemish turned around, tripped over a golden peacock and bolted downstairs. Halfway down, he almost collided with Kissur who was ascending quickly.
"Kissur," Bemish said desperately, "You know that they forced me to do it."
Kissur just waved his hand.
"How is the sovereign?" he asked.
"He fired Yanik."
"Great Wei! Who is the first minister?! Shavash?!"
"Nobody," Bemish said, "The sovereign promised to announce elections to the Parliament."
Kissur's face contorted.
"You suggested this to him, didn't you?"
"You know my views."
"I know your views. You don't give a damn about this country. You think that democracy will raise the stock quotes of your blasted companies!"
"Time spent with me was beneficial for you, Kissur. How long ago was it when your understanding of stocks equaled my understanding of horses?"
Kissur threw himself down on a stair and squashed Bemish's foot. He sat there for a while and then he stood up.
"It's not a problem. I've hanged one fully assembled parliament already and I will hang another one. Take this into account when you plan your investments."
And he ran up jumping over three stairs at a time — however, they were quite low.
Still airborne on his way to Assalah, Bemish spent an hour giving orders to buy the stocks of Weian companies, to buy as many of them as possible and to keep low profile while doing it.
In an hour, having finished all his calls, Bemish extracted a sheet of paper and started drawing a diagram illustrating his company's refinancing scheme. High yield Assalah bonds currently paid off at fourteen percent a month. Parliament elections and the subsequent rise of the country's rating would increase the bonds' value. Accordingly to Bemish's calculations, they should cost a hundred and three to a hundred and four cents for a dinar in two to three months. Even now they reached a hundred and one point one cents for a dinar — under these conditions even a bond bought at the price above its face value still brought thirteen percent. Accordingly to the IPO's conditions, rise (and fall) of the bonds' value caused the interest rates to adjust so that the bonds would cost hundred cents per dinar. New Assalah bonds, Bemish calculated, should make eleven to twelve percent.
A phone call interrupted his calculations.
"I have news about Inis," over the receiver he heard Giles' cold voice.
"Finally. Where is she?"
"You should better come to the villa."
In half an hour Bemish stood in a far corner of his luxurious garden, next to a carved gazebo entwined with ivy. He stood near an ornamental well that was a necessary feature — together with a hermit's hut and tame deer — of a country manor. Nobody used it for the original purpose since running water available was available. But tame beasts started behaving strange next to the well and three hours ago a meticulous gardener had taken a look into it in case something was wrong.
Bemish stood and watched two security service guys, clad in tight rubber and leather, pulling a white swollen body over the well's edge. Far away in the sky among the stars, danced blue and yellow lights of the rising ships and a bold nightingale in a neighboring bush was singing a song accompanied by a chorus of night cicadas.
"Do you know what Blue Sun will publish tomorrow?" Giles moved nearby. "It will write that a foreign vampire killed his lover and hid her body in an abandoned well.
Bemish turned and Giles saw with horror that the businessman's grey eyes were as empty as a safe that robbers had broken into. Then, the general director of Assalah Company swayed and, unconscious, slowly collapsed in Giles's hands.
THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
Where the nation expresses its will with unpredictable results
Two months passed by. Preparations for the elections were at their peak. Throughout the whole country, the officials had their precinct gates wide open and fed their future electorate with, square like Weia, rice pies and with, round like the sky, wheat pies. Throughout the whole country, zealots performed shows about iron people. Throughout the whole country, entrepreneurs and traders made donations to the officials' election campaigns instead of bribing them.
Bemish spent this time flying around the Galaxy. The people closest to him knew that he was horribly upset about Inis' death. The Earthman hadn't stepped out of his bedroom for the first two days and, then, he threw himself into his business like a fish dives into the ocean with an evident and almost hysterical desire to drive the recent events out of his mind.
Various suggestions were made about the murderer's identity, including the ex-first minister Yanik and the Following the Way; a number of people suspected them to be connected. Mr. Yanik, alike the zealots, didn't approve of the Empire being bought by the people from the stars. He wholeheartedly wanted his friends to buy the Empire but, unfortunately, the people from the stars had more money.
Shavash was also mentioned quite often; people said that the vengeful official had killed Ashinik in retaliation for the old assassination attempt and that he had killed the woman because once Bemish hadn't shared her with him and also to mislead the investigation. They said that the Earthman grieved so much because he knew who the man behind the murder was but he could avenge it only by destroying his business in the process. Frankly, the comments hit reasonably close to the truth.
Another rumor was also popular — the Earthman had knifed the woman to demonstrate his grief and to alleviate the suspicions about his love for another woman — they mentioned Idari quite loudly.
They searched for Ashinik very thoroughly, sometimes suspecting him of his wife's murder and sometimes thinking that he had been killed together with his wife as a traitor. But Ashinik disappeared without a trace. They, however, found the man who had handed the papers about the spaceport's military future to the zealots. It was the marxist technician who had arrived with Ashidan at Kissur's villa and spied on the spaceport later.
Bemish went to see what was what left of this man. The next day, during negotiations in Los Angeles Bemish would catch himself thinking occasionally about possible reactions of his polite colleague in tortoise glasses if this colleague knew that six hours ago the respectable director of Assalah Company had cold-bloodedly observed how an alive man had his flesh cut off him bit after bit and how this man screamed at the top of his lungs that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing about Inis.
Having traveled for a month, Bemish returned to Weia. He had practically finished the negotiations concerning BOAR. At the spaceport, he ran into a flock of journalists who arrived to monitor the fairness of the election preparations. One of the journalists asked him, "What do you estimate Yadan's chances to win the elections are?"
Three hours before Bemish's arrival, the leader of the White Sect, a mortal foe of the Earthmen and, therefore a mortal foe of all their inventions such as democracy, credit cards and pizza, had declared that he would participate in the elections.
"What are Yadan's chances?" Bemish was astonished.
"He is a madman who believes that Earthmen are demons. He looks at my spaceport and says that I built a hole to hell. He says that he climbs a ladder to the sky every morning and there are no Earthmen here. It means that all our ships and equipment are phantoms and our spaceports are holes leading underground. He also says that he was born out of a golden egg."