The Assalah securities didn't take this interview well — their price plummeted by thirty points.
Bemish ordered his employees to compile and send to Earth a small ethnographic report about the activities of Following the Way, so that the
TV audience could clearly understand that the political goals of the sect were not limited to the removal of protectionism and insider trading in stock market.
The next day, Ashinik made an official announcement that nuclear weapons were stored in Assalah spaceport including Cassiopeia nuclear missiles equipped with S-field that had been delivered there accordingly to a secret treaty between the Empire and the Federation governments. The proliferation of these missiles had been banned accordingly to the S-armament non-proliferation treaty signed by the UN countries.
Bemish called this statement a horrible lie.
Ashinik demanded the spaceport to be inspected by the people.
Bemish announced that he would not allow a people's inspection because a Weian peasant would not see any difference between a nuclear missile and a landing stabilizer support and he, Bemish, didn't want somebody to throw an explosive device in a landing chute during such an "inspection." All this "people's inspection" was demagoguery anyway, why didn't experts just come in and inspect whatever they want to?
Ashinik claimed that Earth experts would be bought by Bemish and the Federation counter-intelligence.
Bemish announced that he didn't understand what a people's inspection was.
Ashinik promised to explain to Bemish what a people's inspection was.
Two days later, the spaceport security service informed Bemish that a crowd was moving towards the spaceport. Almost synchronously, two dozen zealots, that had infiltrated the lounge before, descended to the storage area to reclaim their luggage containing rocket launchers and other assorted killing utensils.
The luggage had been X-rayed earlier and the zealots were arrested in flagrant delicti. Bemish announced that it was an organized terrorist activity and, if the people's inspection was going to happen along the same lines, he wouldn't allow it. The zealots were taken to the capital and all the confessions were beaten out of them quite quickly.
Bemish issued to order to guard the whole spaceport's perimeter closely and to allow only ticket holders inside the port due to the emergency situation. The next day, he showed to the journalists two bombs extracted from an unknown man's luggage; the man arrived at the spaceport with a ticket to the planet of Gera and left the spaceport in an unknown direction.
Ashinik claimed that Bemish had engineered the whole thing himself just as he had with the zealots and rocket launchers. As for their "confession" to the Weian police, Ashinik noted that Mr. Shavash could make an elephant confess that it was a mouse in disguise. Ashinik claimed that the protests were perfectly peaceful.
A huge crowd of zealots blocked the spaceport. The journalists from all over the Galaxy flew to Assalah in search of prize news.
New people arrived at the roadblocks every day. They introduced themselves to the journalists as "simple peasants that didn't like their motherland being traded away for a jar of sour cream." Bemish, on the other hand, claimed that they were not peasants but staunch zealots.
The traffic on the highway connecting Assalah to the capital was completely paralyzed. Two monorails, Assalah — Sky City and Assalah — I–Chakhar, were used for cargo transport. The blocked-off area in the vicinity of the monorails was controlled by the satellites launched specifically for this purpose; the satellites called alarm three times a day and the trains had to be stopped; the cargo transportation schedule went to hell.
Trucks traveled in groups accompanied by sharpshooters. Bemish announced that the spaceport's administration would not take any responsibility for the people's safety if they used passenger cars to get to the capital. The car rental agencies went hysterical. The helicopter drivers lived in the state of bliss. Three hundred taxi drivers that had been temporarily hired by the spaceport security were ready to tear the zealots apart.
The media approach shocked Bemish somewhat. They would interview an ardent zealot — a professional agitator who had been bumming around fairs since the age of five and who was lost in his own lies to such an extant that he no longer knew whether or not Earthmen were demons. They would call him a "Weian peasant who came to Assalah to fight for the freedom of the elections and his country's freedom." On the other hand, a Weian taxi driver whose car had been burned out two days ago by a zealot crowd was called "a secret agent of security service bought by Bemish."
The spaceport sustained huge losses due to cargo being delayed and frightened passengers hurriedly picking other travel routes. Twenty thousand tons of gourmet Iniss peaches turned into peach chowder after spending five hours in crazy summer heat in a monorail train with a disabled cooling system. Ashinik called a bomb found on the monorail "a spaceport special services' instigation."
Continuous magnetrone inspection of cargo damaged a Crudge-14A with superconductive circuits traveling to the Iniss branch of Mountain TDL and the corporation raised a horrible fuss about it.
The security service employees had all of their vacations cancelled. They worked fourteen hours a day without holidays and slept right there, crowding in the spaceport hotel rooms. Three hundred enraged taxi drivers and long distance truck drivers joined the security service. Three hundred highly professional colleagues of Giles' arrived quietly at the spaceport and the journalists learned about their incognito arrival five minutes after the space liner had landed.
Assalah stocks dropped five points a day on the average. Assalah high-margin bonds were being sold twenty cents a dinar by the end of this week.
However, Bemish's personal finances were in much better state than that of the company. Bemish had realized that the zealots were sure to win before the election's results were declared invalid and he ordered to sell quickly practically everything that they traded with on Weian Exchange. Going short brought at least forty million dinars to Weian Special and Second Investment Fund but it was the first time in Terence Bemish's life when he was not particularly happy to short.
Bemish requested governmental assistance with the protesters. The government dallied and wavered and finally told him that while it was sympathetic towards the Assalah issues but it was not willing to utilize Weian police against Weian peasants to protect a foreign company that, additionally, employed a right of "tax and trial" inside its territory. Confidentially the government hinted that it was afraid to be kicked out of power if tried to do anything along these lines.
Ronald Trevis arrived at Assalah on the third day. Three hours after his arrival, a twenty person Ajax landed in the spaceport and suntanned Kissur climbed out of it. Kissur hurried to Bemish's office where a management meeting was taking place and he started shouting right at the doorstep.
"What's this mess? Why don't you just shoot this muck? What are all these rubber sticks doing here instead of rocket launchers?"
"If I shoot all this muck," Bemish said, "I will do what Ashinik dreams about. It will bury the relationship between Weia and the Federation. Ashinik will start screaming that foreigners at his planet shoot at absolutely peaceful protestors. He will be somewhat correct about that. The foreigners should not have a right to make such decisions."