Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Ambassador

Ten hours before Janz met with the secretary, Terrence left Croft's bakery. Terrence walked cautiously along the alleyway in the city, keeping one hand on the rough outer wall of the roadside industrial dormitory.He was in total darkness save for the intermittent pale light of the Upper City.The only light downtown was the pearly flashes of the patrolmen, who patrolled the city in teams of two or three. The lower city is like a sleeping poisonous monster, its slippery, hovering body hides under the splendid upper city.Some parts of it may still be vaguely alive, such as the wholesale distribution center for agricultural products, but it is definitely not here, not this slum.

With the sound of crisp footsteps approaching from a distance, Terrence retreated into a dusty alley. (Even Florenia's nightly showers barely penetrated the cement alloy above and into the shadowy areas below.) A few beams of light appeared a hundred yards away, moved slowly, and disappeared without a trace. Throughout the night, patrolmen kept coming and going.All they had to do was to inspire fear enough to maintain order with little need for a show of force.The danger would not have been so great without the patrolling police, though countless surreptitious ones could have taken advantage of the cover of darkness.Food stores and factories are closely guarded; the luxurious upper city is high above; and if you want to steal from each other, you will just parasitize each other's plight, and it will be futile.

The so-called evils of other worlds do not exist in the darkness of this place.The poor can be caught without a fight, but they are already impoverished, while the rich are absolutely out of reach. Terrence walked forward quietly, and every time he passed the opening of the cement alloy above, his face was pale with light, and he couldn't help but look up. out of reach! Are they really out of reach?How many times has his attitude towards the Sack tycoon changed in his life?When he was young, he was just an ordinary kid.Patrolmen are silver and black monsters, and anyone who sees them runs away, no matter what they do wrong.The tycoon is a mysterious superman, a symbol of the highest good, who lives in the paradise called Sark, and carefully and patiently contemplates the well-being of all fools and fools on Florenia.

At school, he would repeat it every day: May the Galactic Spirit watch over Tycoon, It's like they watch over us. Yes, he thought now, that's it, exactly!May the Holy Spirit treat them as they treat us.His fists clenched so hard they almost burst into flames in the shadows. At the age of ten, he had written an essay in school about how he imagined Sack's life.It was purely a creation of imagination, just to show his literary talent.He has forgotten the detailed content, but only remembers one paragraph.He then described each magnate as twenty feet high, with a majestic figure; every morning the magnates gathered in a hall as colorful as thistles, to debate the crimes of the Florentines, and to observe a mournful silence , determined to make them change for the better.

The teacher was very happy after reading it.At the end of that year, while the other children moved on to another literacy and morals class, he moved into a special class and began learning arithmetic, galactic theory, and the history of Sark.At the age of sixteen, he was sent to Sark. He still remembers that great day, but he snaps back, and it shames him to think about it. Now, Terrence is close to the outskirts of the city.Occasional breezes brought him the rich aroma of thistle flowers at night.In a few minutes he would be in a field that was quite safe.There were no regular patrols by the police, and he could see the stars again through the night sky, even Sark's sun, the solid, bright yellow star.

For half of his life he had regarded that star as his sun.When he saw it up close for the first time from the porthole of the spaceship, he wanted to kneel on the spot.It is no longer a star, but a small ball that is dazzling and unstoppable.Even the dread of my first spaceflight vanished at the thought that I was approaching heaven. He finally landed in what he thought was heaven, and was sent to the home of an elderly Florentine.The old man took care of him to bathe and change clothes, and then led him to a huge building.On the way, the old man bent down and bowed to a person passing by.

"Bow!" the old man whispered to young Terrence angrily. Terrence did so, but was at a loss: "Who is that?" "A tycoon, you ignorant farm laborer." "He! A tycoon?" He immediately froze in the road until the old man urged him to move forward.This was the first time Terrence had seen the tycoon, who was not twenty feet tall at all, and looked like an ordinary person.Other Florentine teenagers might have recovered from this shock of disillusionment, but Terrence hadn't.Something had changed inside of him, a permanent change. Later, although he received various trainings and was among the best, he never forgot that the tycoon was just an ordinary person.

He spent ten years in school.In his spare time, besides eating and sleeping, he was asked to be a useful person in many small things.He learned to run errands to deliver letters, to take out the garbage, to bend and bow when the tycoon passed by, and to turn his head respectfully to the wall when the tycoon's wife passed by. Later, he worked in the State Department for another five years.He changed positions from time to time so that his ability was best tested in a variety of circumstances. Once he was visited by an amiable fat Florentine.The man smiled, pinched his shoulder lightly, and asked him what he thought of the tycoon.

Terrence suppressed the idea of ​​turning around and running.He couldn't help but wonder if his thoughts were imprinted in some kind of code on the lines of his face.He shook his head and murmured a string of platitudes in praise of the tycoon. But the fat man grinned: "You don't mean what you said, come here tonight." He handed Terrence a small card, and a few minutes later, the card was automatically shattered and burned. Terrence went as promised. Although he was afraid, he was very curious.He met many of his friends there, and they all looked at him mysteriously; when they met him again at work later, they only gave him an indifferent glance.In that gathering, he listened to their speeches, and found that many of them seemed to agree with his deepest thoughts.He thought it was his own original idea, and no one else had thought of it.

Gradually he learned that at least some Florentians considered barons to be vile beasts who, for selfish reasons, plucked Florentine wealth while leaving the hardworking natives idle in ignorance and poverty. In the mud.He also learned that a great uprising against the Sarks was coming, and that if successful, all of Florenia's wealth would return to its true owners. How to do it?Terrence asked, over and over again.After all, both the tycoon and the policeman have weapons. So they told him of the existence of Trantor, a vast empire that had grown over the centuries and now encompassed half the inhabited worlds of the galaxy.They say that Trantor, with the help of the Florentians, will destroy Sark.

But—Terrence said to himself first, and then publicly—if Trantor was so big and Florentine was so small, wouldn't Trantor be a bigger and more tyrannical master instead of Sack? ?If that's the only way out, he'd rather choose to endure Sak's rule.A familiar juggernaut is better than an unfamiliar juggernaut. He was ridiculed and kicked out.They also threatened him with life, not allowing him to tell anyone what he had heard that day. But after some time, he noticed that those conspirators disappeared one by one, and finally only the original fat man remained. Occasionally, he would see Fatty whispering to newcomers here and there.He knew that those were facing temptations and tests, but he dared not warn them.They must find their own way out, just as Terrence did. Terrence even spent a while at the Ministry of State Security, an honor that only a few Florentines have.That period of time was short, because the security officials had so much power that anyone's time there was shorter than in other units. But in the Ministry of Security, Terrence found that there was really a conspiracy to deal with, which surprised him.It turned out that someone in Florina managed to communicate with each other and planned a mutiny.Usually these operations were secretly financed by Trantor, but some rebels really thought Florenar could do it alone. Terrence thought about it silently.He speaks very little and behaves strangely, but his thoughts are not restricted.One of the reasons he hated those tycoons was that they weren't twenty feet tall; the second was that he couldn't look at their women; A bunch of stupid guys who are no better educated than he is and usually much dumber than he is. However, what is to be done to get out of this life of slavery?There's no point in just swapping out the stupid Sack tycoons for stupid Trantors.It would again be wishful thinking to expect the Florentine peasants to do something themselves.So, it's just a no-brainer. From his student days, to a small official, to now becoming the mayor of the town, this question has lingered in his mind for many years. Suddenly, a special opportunity presented him with an undreamed-of answer.The answer was the unflattering man, the one-time space analyst who said with certainty that the lives of Florenian men and women were in danger. Terrence finally came to the field, where the night rain was about to stop, and the starlight among the clouds looked wet.He took a deep breath of the aroma of thistle, and couldn't help thinking that thistle was both Floren's treasure and the planet's curse. He was very clear.He was no longer the mayor, not even a free Florentine peasant.He's just a fugitive criminal who has to hide from now on. But there was a fire of hope burning in his heart.For the past twenty-four hours, he had wielded the most powerful weapon ever held against Sack.There is no doubt about it, he knows that Yu Ke's memory is correct - Yu Ke was a space analyst, received a mind modification, and his mind is almost blank; but what this person remembers is real, terrible, and powerful . He is sure of that. Now, Yuke is in the palm of another person.The man pretended to be a Florentine hero, but was actually a Trantor spy. Terrence felt bitter anger rushing up his throat.The baker was, of course, the Trantor spy, and he had no doubts about that from the start.Which downtown dweller has the money to build a fake radiant oven? He could not and would not let Fool fall into the hands of Trantor.The plan he was going to carry out was extremely difficult, but so what?He has already carried a death sentence on his body. A dim light appeared in the corner of the sky, and he had to wait for dawn before acting.Of course, patrol stations everywhere would receive his image, but it would take them a few minutes to recognize him as a person. And in those few minutes, he's still a mayor, and he'll have time to do one thing.But now, even now, he dared not bring himself to think about it. Ten hours after Chandz met with the secretary, he met again with Rudigan Abel. The ambassador greeted Jands with his usual enthusiasm on the surface, but with a clear and uneasy sense of guilt in his heart.When they first met (that was a long time ago, nearly a galactic standard year passed), he didn't take what the man said to him, and the only thing he thought about was: Will this matter , or could Trantor be helped? Trantor!He always thought of Trantor first.But unlike those fools, he doesn't worship a bunch of stars, or the yellow "Starship and Sun" badge that Trantor soldiers wear.In short, he was no ordinary patriot, and Trantor itself meant nothing to him. But he advocates peace, especially as he grows older, he is extremely intoxicated by the fine wine in the cup, the environment full of soft music and fragrance, and the afternoon break, and he also yearns for a peaceful and peaceful rest of his life.In his ideal, everyone should have this enjoyment; however, in reality, everyone is devastated by war.Humans freeze to death in the void of space, vaporize in atomic explosions, or starve to death on besieged and bombarded planets. How can we practice peace?Of course not by reasoning, nor by education.If a man understands the true meaning of peace and the nature of war, but cannot choose the former and reject the latter, what reason can he be persuaded?What is a stronger condemnation of war than war itself?No matter how exquisite the dialectical skill is, it is not one-tenth of the power of eleven dilapidated battleships full of bones and full of holes. Therefore, to end the abuse of force, there is only one solution left, and that is force itself. In Abel's study was a set of maps of Trantor, specially designed to show the achievements of force.It is a crystal clear oval, showing the three-dimensional structure of the Milky Way lens.Among them, the stars are white diamond dust, the nebula is a band of light or dim cloud, and near the center, there are several red spots, which are the former Republic of Trantor. Not "present," but "past." The Republic of Trantor five hundred years ago consisted of only five worlds. This is a set of historical maps, and only when time returns to zero, will the republic of five hundred years ago appear.Turning the time forward one frame, the Milky Way in the picture will advance fifty years, and there will be an extra circle of red stars on the edge of Trantor. During the ten stages, a total of 500 years passed, and the crimson color continued to expand like a pool of blood, until most of the Milky Way fell into a sea of ​​red. Red is the color of blood, which is just an image.As the Republic of Trantor became the Confederacy of Trantor, and then the Empire of Trantor, its expansion buried countless mutilated bodies, mutilated ships, and mutilated worlds.However, through these transformations, the whole of Trantor has become extremely powerful, and peace can finally be enjoyed in the red area. Now, Trantor was on the verge of another transformation: from the Trantor Empire to the Galactic Empire, and then the red would swallow up all the stars, and the galaxy would be at peace—Peace under Trantor. Abel yearns for this outcome.Five hundred years ago, four hundred years ago, even two hundred years ago, he would have opposed these menacing, aggressive people on Trantor.They are greedy, disregarding the rights of others; their own democracy is not yet sound, but they are extremely sensitive to the slight slavery of other worlds... However, those are in the past tense. He is not for Trantor, but for the unified ending that Trantor represents.So the original question "How does this contribute to galactic peace?" naturally turns into "How does this contribute to Trantor?" The problem is that for this particular event, he doesn't know what the answer is either.For Chandzi, the only solution was obvious—Trantor had to support the Analysis Bureau, and Sark had to be punished. If it really proves Sack wrong, maybe it's a good thing to do.But even if there is evidence, maybe punishing Sak is still not a good way.But without evidence at all, this approach will never work.In any case, Trantor must not act rashly.The entire galaxy can see that Trantor will soon rule the galaxy, but those planets that have not yet belonged to Trantor may still unite and resist to the end.Trantor could even win such a war, but at a price that would probably make victory an eloquent synonym for fiasco. Therefore, in this final stage of the game, Trantor must not act rashly.Based on this, Abel dealt with the matter slowly step by step.He gently cast the net to the labyrinth of the State Department and the luxurious life circle of the sack tycoon; he used his smile as a probe to inquire about information without any trace.Besides, he hadn't forgotten to have Trantor's agents keep an eye on Jandz himself, lest the angry Liberian wreak havoc that would take him a year to undo. Abel marveled at the Liberian's persistent anger.He once asked him: "Why does a little analyst make you so concerned?" What he expected to hear was to analyze the Bureau as a whole, and that everyone had a responsibility to support the Bureau, because it was not a tool of a certain world, but served all mankind.The result was beyond his expectation. Janz frowned and answered him: "Because under all these superficial problems, there is a relationship between Sac and Florenna, and I want to expose and destroy that relationship." Abel felt completely nauseated.No matter when and where, there are always people who pay too much attention to a certain world, so that everyone can't concentrate on the issue of galactic unity. This kind of thing happens again and again.Of course there is social injustice everywhere, and of course it sometimes seems unbearable.But didn't these people think that this kind of thing could only be resolved after the establishment of the empire?First of all, wars and confrontations between nations must be terminated, and only then can we try to resolve the inner idleness for which, after all, the outer conflicts are the main cause. Besides, Janz is not from Florenia, so he shouldn't have such an emotional and short-sighted style. "What does Florina mean to you?" Abel asked again. Qiangzi hesitated for a moment: "There is a sense of intimacy." "But you're a Liberian, at least in my impression." "I am, and that's where the intimacy comes from, we're all extreme races in the galaxy." "Extreme? I don't understand." Janz explained: "I mean skin color. They're too white and we're too dark, and that's something. There must have been a long history of being different, even being ostracized by the mainstream of society. We are unfortunate white and brown people, sympathetic in being different.” Abel stared at him in surprise and disbelief, and Janz couldn't continue.Since then, this topic has never arisen between them. Now, after almost a year, without warning, without warning, just when the whole misadventure seemed to be ending quietly, even the heat of Chandzi had faded, and things were suddenly out of hand. Abel now faces a different Janzi, one whose anger is directed not only at Sack, but also at Abel. "I'm so angry," said the Liberian, "not because your agents have been following me. You must be careful not to trust anything or anyone. For that matter, I can accept it. But after finding our people, why didn't you notify me immediately?" Abel caressed the warm fabric of the armrest of the seat with one hand: "The situation is very complicated, and it has always been complicated. I made arrangements at the beginning. If any unauthorized person inquires about space analysis data, in addition to notifying you, we must also Reporting to some of my intelligence agents, I even thought you might need protection. But in Florence..." Janz's tone was sour: "That's right. We're all idiots and didn't think about it. It took us almost a year to prove that he couldn't be found anywhere in Sark, he must have been in Florena all along, and It never occurred to us. Anyway, now we have found him, or rather you have. Presumably you will arrange for me to meet him?" Abel didn't answer directly: "They told you that this man named Korov is an intelligence agent of Trantor?" "Isn't it? Why are they lying? Is their intelligence wrong?" "They didn't lie, the intelligence wasn't wrong, and this man has been our intelligence agent for ten years. It worries me that they already knew. I can't help but wonder how much more they know about us, and that we How loosely organized it really is. But don't you find it strange why they are so eager to tell you that Korov is one of us?" "I think because that's the truth, and then I won't be able to embarrass them again. Otherwise, the further requests I'll make will only cause trouble between them and Trantor." "Truth is sugarcoated poison among diplomats. Let us know how well they know us, let us seize the opportunity to reclaim the broken net, mend it and reopen it, and what else can they make for themselves Big trouble?" "Please answer your own question." "I said, they told you Korov's true identity in order to put on a victory gesture. They knew that whether this matter was kept secret or revealed, it would not help or hurt them in any way, because as early as twelve hours ago Before, I learned that they knew the identity of Korov." "How did you know?" "Take the most unlikely lead. Listen! Twelve hours ago, Trantor's agent, Matt Kroff, was shot dead by a member of the Florentine patrol. He knew Two Florentines, a man and a woman, the man is most likely the fieldman you are looking for. Both are gone, vanished, and must have fallen into the hands of the barons." Qiangzi roared and almost stood up from his seat. Abel calmly raised his wine glass to his lips: "I can't take any formal action. The dead man was a Florentine, and so were the two people who disappeared—even if we can provide counter-evidence. So you see , we were not only severely thwarted, but fooled."