Chapter 7 Chapter VII Patrol

Yu Ke witnessed the brutal murder of the baker.He saw a soft push of a pistol, and at once the baker collapsed without a sound, his chest sunken and charred.For Yu Ke, this scene drowned almost all the memories before and after the event. He vaguely remembered how the patrolmen had appeared and then quietly and murderously drew their weapons.The baker once raised his head and was about to speak, but he didn't have time to utter the last word of his life.Then everything happened, Yu Ke could hear the buzzing of the blood vessels in his ears, and the loud screams from all directions, like a flooding river.

Yuke's sanity recovered after several hours of sleep disappeared in an instant.The patrolman was about to rush towards Yuke, he squeezed in among the shouting men and women, but the crowd seemed to stick to him like a mass of mud, making his footsteps too heavy for him to lift. Yuke and Varona spun with the crowd , was gradually taken away from the original place.They were a small vortex, and when the patrol car began to circle overhead, the frightened crowd began to commotion.Varona urged Yuke to go forward, towards the outskirts of the city.For a moment, Yu Ke became the frightened child of yesterday instead of the would-be adult of this morning.

That morning, he woke up in the gray dawn, but in that closed room, he couldn't see the dawn.He lay there for a long time, examining his mind.After this night, some old wounds healed, and some structures were reattached and became a complete part.It had all been set in motion two days earlier, the moment he had begun to "remember."This process was going on all day yesterday.The trip to Uptown and the library, the attack on the policeman and the subsequent escape, the chance meeting with the baker—these things all acted as a ferment for him.Those shriveled filaments of his mind that had been dormant for so long were now at last violently straightened, forcing them into painful activity.And now, after a good night's sleep, they began to pulsate faintly.

He thought of space and the stars, of great solitary realms and utter silence. Finally, he turned his head to one side and called out, "Lorna." She woke up immediately, propped herself up and looked towards him. "Stupid?" "I'm here, Rona." "How are you?" "Of course." He couldn't contain his excitement. "I feel good, Lorna. I remember more. I was on a spaceship, and I know for sure,…" But she wasn't listening.She pulls on quickly, with her back to him, flattening the seams, zipping up the front chest, and fumbling nervously for the belt again.

Then, she tiptoed towards him: "I didn't sleep on purpose, Yu Ke, I've tried my best to stay awake." Yu Ke was also made nervous by her: "Is there something wrong?" "Shh, keep your voice down, everything is fine." "Where's the mayor?" "He's not here, he...he has to go. Can you sleep again, Yuke?" She reached out to hug him, but he pushed her away. "I'm fine, I'm not going to sleep," he said, "I'm going to tell the mayor about the spaceship." But the mayor wasn't there, and Varona didn't want to listen.Yu Ke finally calmed down, feeling impatient with Varona for the first time.She treated him like a child, and he was beginning to feel like a grown-up.

At this time, a ray of light penetrated into the room, followed by the huge figure of the baker.Yu Ke looked at him and couldn't help blinking his eyes, trembling with fear for a while.He didn't quite resist when Varona's arm rested quietly on his shoulder. The baker's thick lips parted into a smile: "How early you get up." Neither of them answered. The baker said again: "That's fine, you are leaving here today." Varona felt parched: "You won't hand us over to the police, will you?" She remembered the way this man looked at Yuke after the mayor left.Now he is still looking at Yuke, only looking at him alone.

"Not to the Patrolman," he said. "I have notified the person who should be notified. You will be safe." After speaking, he turned around and left, but returned soon after, and brought food, clothes and two basins of water.The clothes were all new, and they looked grotesque. As he watched them eat, he said, "I'm going to give you a new name and a new identity. Now listen carefully, I don't want you to forget. You are not from Florenia, understand? You are from Ottawa. Brothers and sisters of Planet Turks, you have come to Florenna...," He went on, filling in many details, asking them back and listening to their answers.

Yu Ke is very happy to have the opportunity to show his memory and superb learning ability, but Varona's eyes are full of deep worry. Of course the baker was not blind. He said to Varona: "If you cause me a little trouble, I will send him away alone and leave you behind." Varona's strong hands clenched and relaxed nervously: "I won't cause you any trouble." Nearly halfway through the morning, the baker stood up and said, "Let's go!" Finally he stuffed black cards made of soft fake leather into their breast pockets. When he walked out of the room, Yu Ke saw his own appearance clearly, and couldn't help being shocked, he didn't know that the clothes could be so complicated.The baker helped him put it on just now, but what happens when he takes it off?Varona doesn't look like a country girl at all now, even her legs are covered with light cloth and her heels are raised, so she has to be careful to keep her balance when she walks.

Passers-by gathered around, stared at them blankly, and called more people to come.Most of these people are children, shopping women, and ragged, loafing people.The baker didn't seem to take these people seriously. He carried a thick stick. Occasionally, if someone got too close, the stick would stick out like a coincidence. Then, when they turned a corner, only a hundred yards or so from the bakery, the crowd of onlookers began to commotion, and Yu Ke immediately recognized the silver and black uniform of a patrolman. That's when it happened.The patrolman drew his weapon and bombarded the baker, and they began to flee in a frenzy.Every moment that followed, he felt that someone was chasing them behind him like a shadow.

The two came to a dirty area on the outskirts of the city. Varona was panting heavily, and her new clothes were soaked in sweat. Yu Ke panted and said, "I can't run anymore." "We can't stop." "It's not running like this, stop," he resolutely withdrew his hand that was grabbed by her, "Listen to me." Fear and panic are leaving him. "Why don't we keep doing what the bakers tell us to do?" he said, She asked back, "How do you know what he wants us to do?" She was so anxious that she just wanted to keep running.

He said, "Pretend we are from another world, and he gave us this." Yuke looked excited.He took the little card out of his pocket, studied it over and over, and tried to open it as if it were a booklet. He couldn't open it, there were no pages inside, so he began to feel around the edges.When his finger touched a certain corner, he heard, or rather felt, something concave, and then the side facing him turned into an astonishing milky white, with dense and illegible writing reflected on it, but he still carefully Identify those words. Finally he said: "This is a passport." "what?" "Something that will allow us to go elsewhere." He was sure of that, the word "passport" popped into his mind, "Can't you see? He's going to get us out of Florence on a ship The spaceship departs. We're going as planned." She said, "No, they stopped him, they killed him. Foolish, we can't do that." He said uncompromisingly, almost chattering: "But it will be the best way, they don't expect us to do that. And, let's not get on the spaceship he wants us to take, they will monitor it." One. We'll pick another, any other." A spaceship, any one, the words rang in his ears.He didn't give a damn whether it was a good idea or not; he wanted to get on a spaceship, he wanted to go to space. "Please, Lorna!" "Well, if you really want to. I know where the space station is. When I was a kid, we would sometimes go there on our off-days and watch the spaceships lift off from afar." They started on their way again.A slight unease scratched Yu Ke's entrance to consciousness, but it was in vain.It came from a not-too-distant memory, something he should remember but didn't remember, anyway, there was one thing. His uneasiness was masked by his thoughts of the spaceship waiting for them. The Florentine who guarded the population checkpoint was particularly excited today, but for reasons that had nothing to do with him personally.He had heard rumors that someone had attacked the patrolman the previous evening and then fled without a trace.By this morning those rumors had grown of their own accord, and there were even whispers that several patrolmen had been killed. He didn't dare to leave his job, so he just stretched his neck, watched the air speeder pass by, and watched the patrolmen with tense faces leave one by one.The number of patrol detachments on the space station was reduced and reduced until there was no one left. Looks like they're filling the city with cops, he thought, a surge of dread and drunken glee all at the same time.Why should the thought of the policeman being killed make him happy?They never bothered him, hardly at least.He has a good job, unlike those stupid farmers. But he is still happy. He barely had time to examine the two in front of him.They were sweating profusely and looked disgusting; their strange clothes made it easy to see that they were foreigners.At this moment, the woman was sending the passport through the window. He glanced at her, then at his passport, then at the list of reservations.Then he pressed a button, and two sheets of translucent tape jumped in front of them. "Let's go," he said impatiently, "put it on your wrist and keep going." "Which one is our spaceship?" the woman asked softly and politely. This sentence made him very happy.Foreigners don't come to Florena Space Station very often, lately.It's even getting rarer for a few years.However, these foreigners who are neither policemen nor tycoons don't seem to know that you are only a Florentine, so they speak politely to you. This made him feel five centimeters taller.He said, "Ma'am, you will see it at Port 17, and I wish you a pleasant journey to Wortex," he said in a dignified tone. Then he returned to his old work, which included surreptitiously calling friends in town for further news, and even more discreetly, trying to eavesdrop on private energy beam calls in Uptown. It wasn't until hours later that he realized he had made a terrible mistake. "Lona!" Yu Ke pulled her elbow, pointed forward quickly, and whispered: "That ship!" Varona looked suspiciously at the spaceship he was pointing at.It was much smaller than the one at Port Seventeen they were supposed to take, but it looked brighter.All four airlocks were open, and the main porthole was gaping wide, from which a ramp led down to the ground like a tongue outstretched. "They're changing the air," Yuke said. "Spaceliners usually do it before take-off to get rid of the accumulated odor from reusable tanks of oxygen." Varona stared at him: "How do you know?" Yu Ke's vanity welled up: "I just know. You see, there's no one in there right now. It's uncomfortable to be in there when the ventilation is on." He looked around uneasily: "However, I don't know why there are no people around. Didn't it look like this when you came to see the excitement?" Varona thinks it shouldn't be, but she can't remember clearly, and her childhood memories are already out of reach. The two climbed up the inclined ladder with trembling legs, and there was no patrolman around.They only saw civilian employees, all of whom were concentrating on their work. Due to the distance, each figure seemed small. The moment they entered the cabin, the flowing air rushed towards them, and Varona's suit was blown up.She had to hold it down with both hands so that the hem of the skirt would not fly up. "Will it always be like this in here?" She'd never been on a spaceship, never dreamed of it.She was so nervous that her heart was pounding. "No, only when breathing." Yu Ke said. He walked happily down the metal aisle, eagerly inspecting each empty cabin. "Here," he said—it was a kitchen cabin. "Food is not important, we can survive without food for a while, what matters is water," he quickly added. He rummaged through the neatly arranged and tightly stacked vessels until he found a large container with a lid.He looked around for the water cock again, muttering a prayer that they hadn't forgotten to fill the trough.He grinned in relief as the soft sound of drawing water came and the steady stream gushed out. "Okay, take some cans, but don't take too much, so as not to attract their attention." Yu Ke racked his brains to imagine a way not to be discovered, and explored things that he didn't remember clearly.Occasionally, he still bumped into those fault lines in his mind, and he always avoided them cowardly, refusing to acknowledge their existence. Finally he found a small cabin that contained firefighting equipment, welding equipment, and emergency medical and surgical necessities. He said in a less confident tone, "Unless there is an emergency, they won't come here. Are you afraid, Lorna?" "I'm not afraid when I'm with you, Yuke." She replied humbly.Two days ago, no, twelve hours ago, the situation was just the opposite.But after boarding the spaceship, the personalities of the two changed at the same time, she had no doubts about this.Now Yu Ke has become an adult, and she has become an ignorant child. "We can't turn on the lights, or they'll notice the power loss," he said. "We have to wait until the break to go to the bathroom, and we have to avoid the night guards when we go out." The ventilation equipment suddenly stopped working.The cold air was no longer blowing in their faces, and the soft, steady hum in the distance was gone, replaced by a great silence. Yu Ke said, "They will board the ship soon, and then we will go into space." Varona had never seen such joy on Yu Ke's face, at this moment he was like a boy in love, who was about to meet his lover. If Yuke felt like a grown-up when he woke up that morning, now he is a giant, able to embrace the entire galaxy with his arms outstretched.The stars are marbles, and the nebula is a cobweb waiting to be swept away. He's on a spaceship!Those memories rushed back in waves like a torrent, and other memories had to give way quickly.He quickly forgot the thistle fields, the processing plant, and the songs that Varona hummed to him at night.In the tapestry of memory, those are only temporary patches, and now the loose edges of the tapestry are slowly weaving together. All thanks to the spaceship! If they'd put him on a spaceship early on, his burned-out brain cells wouldn't have had to wait so long to finally heal on their own. He whispered to Varona in the dark, "Don't worry. Wait a minute and you'll feel a few vibrations and hear a noise, that's just the engine. There's still a lot of weight on you, and that's because of the acceleration. .” Florina's ordinary vocabulary could not describe the concept, he used the words that came naturally to his mind, Varona didn't understand at all. "Will it hurt?" she asked. He replied, "It will be very uncomfortable because we don't have anti-acceleration suits to absorb the pressure, but it won't last long. Just stand against this bulkhead and when you feel a force pushing you towards it, Relax your whole body. Look, it's already started." He had chosen the right bulkhead.As the noise of the superatomic propulsion engine gradually increased, it felt that gravity began to turn, and the originally vertical bulkhead seemed to become more and more inclined. Varona choked for a moment, and then her breathing became unknowingly difficult, and she couldn't make any sound anymore.Their chests were not protected by hydraulic absorbers, and their throats felt like they were being rasped as they tried to suck in a little air to relieve their suffocating lungs. Yuke managed to utter a few words, any words that would make Varona know he was there and assuage her extreme fear of the unknown - which he knew was inevitable.It was just a spaceship, just a great spaceship, but she had never been on any spaceship before. He said: "Of course, later on there's the jump, and we'll go into hyperspace and travel most of the distance between the two stars in an instant. That won't make you sad at all, and you won't even know it's happening. And Compared to it now, the jump is nothing, but you will feel a slight twitch in your body, and then it will be over." He gurgled out each word, and it took a long time to finish. The weight from their chests slowly lifted, and the invisible chains that bound them to the wall gradually loosened and finally disappeared.At this moment, they fell to the floor panting. After a long time, Varona finally said, "Are you hurt, Yuke?" "I, hurt?" He forced a smile.He hadn't gotten his breath right yet, but he still couldn't help laughing at the idea that he'd be injured on the spaceship. "I've lived in a spaceship for many years without landing on any planets for months at a time," he said. "Why?" she asked.She had crawled up to him and put a hand on his cheek to make sure he was still there. He put his arms around her shoulders, and she leaned quietly in his arms, receiving comfort like feeding back. "Why?" she asked again. Stupid can't remember why.That's what he's done, and he hates landing on any planet.For some reason, he had to stay in space, but he couldn't remember why. He avoids the fault again: "I used to have a job." "That's right," she said, "you analyze 'nothing'." "Yeah," he said happily, "that's my job. Do you know what that means?" "have no idea." He didn't expect her to understand, but he had to talk.He must wallow in the memory, indulging in the celebration of his ability to recall past memories in an instant. He said: "Did you know that all matter in the universe is composed of more than one hundred raw materials, which we call elements. For example, iron and copper are elements." "I thought they were metal." "They are metals, but they are also elements. And so are oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and palladium. The most important are hydrogen and helium, which are the simplest and most common elements." "I've never heard of that," Varona said expectantly. "Seventy-five percent of the elements in the universe are hydrogen, and most of the rest are helium, even in space." "I've been told," Varona said, "that space is a vacuum. They say that means there's nothing in it. Is that true?" "Not really, almost nothing. But you know, I'm a space analyst, which means I'm flying around in space, collecting and analyzing tiny traces of elements. That is, I'm in charge of judging the hydrogen How much, how much helium, how much other elements." "why?" "Well, it's complicated. You know, the distribution of elements in space is not the same everywhere. In some regions, the proportion of helium is higher than normal, and in other places, the proportion of sodium is higher than normal, and so on. .These regions of special composition spread in space like many dark currents, called space atomic flows. Understanding how these atomic flows are distributed is very important because it helps explain the creation and evolution of the universe." "How to explain it?" Yu Ke hesitated for a moment: "No one knows the exact answer." He stopped hastily, embarrassed.The huge treasury of knowledge that his heart finally found, but the end marked with "I don't know" appeared so easily, and the questioner was... was... He suddenly thought that anyway, Valona was just a Florentine after all. peasant girl. So he went on: "Also, we find out the density, you know, the concentration, of this space gas all over the galaxy. It's not the same everywhere, and we have to know its exact nature before the spacecraft can do it." Precise calculations of hyperspace jumps. It's like..." His voice trailed off, then died away. Startled, Varona waited anxiously for him to continue, but there was only silence. In the total darkness, her hoarse voice sounded: "Yuke? What's the matter with you, Yuke?" There was still silence.Her hands touched his shoulders, and shook him vigorously: "Foolish! Foolish!" Unexpectedly, the answering voice returned to the stupid one before—the voice was full of weakness and fear, and the joy and confidence just now disappeared. "Lorna, we did one thing wrong." "What happened? What did we do wrong?" The image of the patrolman shooting the baker came back to him with depth and clarity, as if summoned by many other distinct memories. "We shouldn't have escaped, we shouldn't have been on this spaceship," he said. His body couldn't help shaking, and he couldn't control himself.Varona tried to wipe the sweat off his forehead with her hands, but couldn't finish it. "Why?" she asked, "Why?" "We should know that the baker's willingness to take us out in broad daylight means he's sure he won't have trouble with the patrolman. Do you remember the patrolman? The patrolman who shot the baker?" "Remember." "Do you remember his face?" "I didn't dare to look." "I saw it, and there was something very strange, but I didn't think about it. I didn't think about it, Rona, that wasn't a policeman at all. It was our mayor, Rona, and that was the mayor dressed as a patrolman."