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. Again they don t know that and wouldn t believe it.Junz stood up and his chair moved automatically away from the table.Handsfirmly interlocked behind his back, he strode the carpet.Up and back.Up andback.At intervals he glanced harshly at Abel.Abel turned unemotionally to a second cup of coffee.Junz said,  How do you know all this? All what? Everything.How and when the Spatio-analyst stowed away.How and in whatmanner the Townman has been eluding cap-ture.Is it your purpose to deceiveme? My dear Dr.Junz. You admitted you had your men watching for the Spatio-analyst independentlyof myself.You saw to it that I was safely out of the way last night, leavingnothing to chance. Junz re-membered, suddenly, that whiff of somnin. I spent a night, Doctor, in constant communication with cer-tain of myagents.What I did and what I learned comes under the heading of, shall wesay, classified material.You had to be out of the way, and yet safe.What Ihave told you just now I learned from my agents last night. To learn what you did you would need spies in the Sarkite government itself. Well, naturally.Junz whirled on the ambassador. Come, now. You find that surprising? To be sure, Sark is proverbial for the stability ofits government and the loyalty of its people.The reason is simple enoughsince even the poorest Sarkite is an aristocrat in comparison with Floriniansand can consider him-self, however fallaciously, to be a member of a rulingclass. Consider, though, that Sark is not the world of billionaires most of theGalaxy thinks it is.A year s residence must have well convinced you of that.Eighty per cent of its poprilation has its living standard at a par with thatof other worlds and not much higher than the standard of Florina itself.Therewill always be a certain number of Sarkites who, in their hunger, will besufficiently annoyed with the small fraction of the population ob-viouslydrenched in luxury to lend themselves to my uses. It is the great weakness of the Sarkite government that for centuries theyhave associated rebellion only withFlorina.They have forgotten to watch over themselves.Junz said,  These small Sarkites, assuming they exist, can t do you muchgood. Individually, no.Collectively, they form useful tools for our more importantmen.There are members even of the real ruling class who have taken thelessons of the last two centuries to heart.They are convinced that in the endTrantor will have es-tablished its rule over all the Galaxy, and, I believe,rightly con-vinced.They even suspect that the final dominion may takeplace within their lifetimes, and they prefer to establish them-selves, inadvance, on the winning side.Junz grimaced. You make interstellar politics soljncj a very dirty game. It is, but disapproving of dirt doesn t remove it.N~r are all its facetsunrelieved dirt.Consider the idealist.Consider the few men in Sark sgovernment who serve Trantor neither for money nor for promises of power butonly because they honestly believe that a unified Galactic government is bestPage 88ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlfor humanity nnd that only Trantor can bring such a government about.~ haveone such man, my best one, in Sark s Department of Security, and at thismoment he is bringing in the Townman.Junz said,  You said he had been captured. By Depsec, yes.But my man is Depsec and my~ar~ For a moment Abel frowned and turned pettish. His useful~iess will besharply reduced after this.Once he lets the Town-man get away, it will meandemotion at the best and imprisorlme2t at the worst.Oh well! What are you planning now? I scarcely know.First, we must have our Towi~m~n.I am sure of him only tothe point of arrival at the spaceport.What happens thereafter Abel shrugged, and his olil, yellowish skin stretchedparchmentlike over his cheekbones.Then he added,  The Squires will be waiting for th.e Town-man as well.Theyare under the impression they have fiiin, and until one or the other of us hashim in our fists, nothirig tnore can happen.But that statement was wrong.Strictly speaking, all foreign embassies throughout th~ Galaxy maintainedextraterritorial rights over the immediate areas of their location.Generallythis amounted to nothing  ~or~ than a pious wish, except where the strength ofthe home p1.anet en-forced respect.In actual practice it meant that O~lyTrantor could truly maintain the independence of its envoys.The grounds of the Trantorian Embassy covered ~ear1y a square mile and withinit armed men in TrantorianCos~JThe and insignia maintained patrol.No Sarkite might enter ~ut oninvi-tation, and no armed Sarkite on any account.To e ~ure, the1sum of Trantorian men and arms could withstand the deter-mined attack of asingle Sarkite armored regiment for not more than two or three hours, butbehind the small band was the power of reprisal from the organized might of amillion worlds.It remained inviolate.It could even maintain direct material communication with Trantor, without theneed of passing through Sarkite ports of entry or debarkation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]