The Far Side of Evil

by Sylvia Engdahl

  If you did, you wouldn’t be worth much as an agent.

  I turned away from him, fixing my gaze on the bright arch of windows and, beyond, the towers of the city, seen through the sun-filter as shadowy, abstract shapes. Why, I thought privately, do we get ourselves into these things? When we could live here, here where everything is clean and comfortable and safe, and “nuclear war” is a reality known only to the ancients?

  “There will be no conflict with policy,” the Director assured me. “In order to figure out any sort of action, we’d have to know the key—the factor that keeps some worlds from diverting their energies into the normal channel instead of into destructive ones—and if we knew that, we’d also know whether intervention was justified. But we don’t have that key. We don’t understand the dynamics of the Critical Stage; that’s precisely what we hope to learn from the mission.”

  “Critical Stage?” I said slowly. It was the first time the term had come up in our discussion, so I had to think back over several years of study to place it. “Isn’t that the period just before a people begins to colonize space? When they’ve reached the point where they can move beyond their home planet, only they haven’t quite taken the plunge?”

  The Director nodded. “Do you remember what’s ‘critical’ about it?”

  “Well, if they’re at the point where they have the technology to attempt space travel, they also have the technology to destroy their world, either by depletion of its resources or through a war of annihilation—and every case that has ever been recorded shows that a people will do one or the other, but not both.”

  “That’s right. They’ve got to develop that technology, and the preparation for war helps do it. Which is all right, as long as it doesn’t go beyond preparation. The natural outlet of the effort is the colonization of space, which all peoples must achieve in order to become mature.”

  “And establishing off-world colonies prevents all-out war itself from occurring?”

  “Yes, if there’s an ongoing commitment to the effort. That’s the turning point. Once they’re putting all their energy into it, they’re out of danger.” He sighed and added grimly, “The people of the world to which you’re going haven’t so much as orbited a satellite.”

  “I didn’t know that there were any Younglings in Critical Stage—now, I mean. The cases I studied were all past history.”

  “The planet Toris,” he explained, “was discovered only a short while ago. If we had found it sooner, we would have seen the crisis approaching; we would have had teams in there for years. As it is, we’ve got to work fast. We don’t know how much time we have left.”

  I shivered. Implicit in that last remark was a warning that we would use all the time there was. If it ran out unexpectedly, there might be no rescue for the observers.

  Wanting to change the subject to something more encouraging, I asked, “Who’s to be Senior Agent?”

  “There won’t be one,” he told me.

  I stared at him. “But I thought that always, even for a two-person team—”

  “Elana,” the Director said, “there’s one more thing you’ve got to know before you make a final decision. We’re not setting this up in the usual way; it won’t be a team. The agents involved will work independently.” He hesitated before adding abruptly, “It will count as your solo.”

  “Solo?” That was a real shock. You don’t do your solo till you’ve been on some team jobs, ordinarily. It’s a scary business; you are left alone somewhere on the Youngling planet, no communication with your ship or with other agents permitted. “Am I ready?” I asked, a bit shakily.

  “No,” he admitted. “Not by the normal standards. But since the job is going to require you to work under solo conditions, it would be unfair not to give you credit for it.”

  “Will we all be separated, then? Without contact?”

  “Yes, and your position won’t be very secure,” he warned. “You know the rules for solo. We don’t help you. We keep the advance information we give you to a bare minimum; you’re simply thrust into an unpredictable situation and forced to adapt to it. Well, in this case that’s just what will be done, not as a test exercise but because we don’t have any advance information. We’ve as yet received no reports from anyone who’s been down to the surface of the planet! All we know so far has been learned from radio and telecasts picked up from orbit. Frankly, Elana, we’ve done too little groundwork to set up any cover reliable enough to be used by more than one agent; we can’t afford to have everyone make the same mistakes.”

  I was horrified, and I suppose it showed. Willing though I was to accept danger, it was unlike the Service to start off with a callous assumption that agents were expendable.

  The Director understood my concern. “That’s the least of our reasons for isolating the observers, however,” he continued, his smile warm and reassuring. “We have others, all part of a somewhat desperate scheme whereby we hope to make our handicaps work for us instead of against us. Don’t worry, you’ll have support.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. It was all rather overwhelming.

  You can still back out if you want to, he told me silently.

  No, I responded, although inside I felt far from comfortable. Aloud, I added, “It’s a chance to—to find the key, isn’t it? I mean, if someday we do understand the dynamics, the thing that makes some Critical Stage worlds fail—”

  “We could save other Younglings. But Elana, that may be an impossible dream. The key won’t be anything simple. It will be buried in a mass of data that may take many years to collect and analyze. There’s no guarantee that these people will embark on space colonization even if they come through the current crisis—and observation of one world won’t be enough; we’ll need cross-checks, comparisons.”

  “All the same, I guess it’s worth a try.” I stood up and, with as bright a smile as I could manage, asked, “How soon do I leave?”

  “The day after tomorrow. You’ll be briefed enroute.” He too rose and took my hand. “Good luck, Elana. You know, don’t you, that we wouldn’t send you if we hadn’t plenty of confidence in you, if we weren’t sure that you could handle whatever comes up?”

  He meant it, and it was a comforting idea. But I am sure that the Director, in his wildest thoughts about what might come up, never imagined anything like the fiasco I am trying to handle.

  *

  That night I stood waiting outside the Academy’s Great Hall, where the rite of investiture was to be held, feeling quite magnificent in my proud new uniform of silver-trimmed white. (We don’t wear our uniforms except on very special occasions; I hadn’t had one before despite the fact that, being sworn, I had been theoretically entitled to it.) I was happy yet also a bit wistful, a bit lonely. My classmates were walking on air, for the taking of the Oath is one of the most thrilling acts of an agent’s life, a real high point. And though as a participant in the ceremony I was to renew my commitment with all the colorful pageantry I had previously missed out on, I couldn’t share the same excitement.

  My own big moment stood clear in my memory; it always will. The shadowy, mysterious Andrecian forest; the firelight; the solemn beauty of the ritual and, during the secret parts, the unaccustomed intensity of telepathic contact; the feel of the Emblem’s chain being dropped over my head—and of course, the inexpressible elation. That can only happen to you once. For me it was long past, in space and in time, and I wasn’t the same person anymore.

  I wish Evrek were here, I was thinking. Would the next time we entered this Hall together be at our wedding? Would we ever be together at all? What if that expedition he was on ran into trouble? Or what if Toris…

  Randil, a classmate whom I didn’t know well, came up to me and said with enthusiasm, “I hear we’re going to the same place.”

  “Toris?” I asked, incredulous. The Director had implied that he was not sending inexperienced new graduates to Toris, and I had certainly never heard of anybody going solo on his first mi
ssion. What’s more, Randil had not even been trained for fieldwork; he was aiming for a scholarly career and had specialized in data analysis techniques. Was the Service that hard up for agents who could pass, physically, as Torisian?

  “They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, I guess,” he admitted, sensing my reservations. “But I did my Third Phase thesis on Critical Stage cultures, and when I heard that one had been discovered I wanted to see it firsthand. I suppose they agreed to send me because they think the research I’ve done will give me an edge in adapting to the society.”

  Sometime I would like to read Randil’s thesis. I don’t doubt that he did a fine job on it; Randil is brilliant. He is also very much in sympathy with the Torisians. But there’s a danger in concentrating too hard on abstract theory, especially if you aren’t taking the practical training to balance it. Most of us had been thoroughly educated in Youngling ways and Youngling attitudes, not just the attitudes of whole cultures but those of the sorts of individuals we would be likely to have to deal with. Although Randil, during his graduate work, would have visited Youngling worlds as a member of a large and well-organized team, his course of study had not been designed to prepare him for exploratory missions requiring actual contact with those worlds’ natives.

  We went on into the dimly lighted foyer of the Great Hall, and Randil hurried ahead to his place in the procession. I forgot all about him because in spite of myself the thrill was taking hold of me: the music, the ceremonial torches—those things do something to you whether you’ve been sworn for five minutes or fifty years. It wasn’t a night to waste worrying about whether the Director knew his job.

  Yet I did worry. Not about Randil, particularly; more, I suppose, about myself. A solo mission … was I crazy? To accept a solo mission so soon, a volunteer mission that was admittedly hazardous and perhaps hopeless? Whatever made me think that I could be resourceful enough to get by alone on a planet that hadn’t even been surveyed? A planet torn by war, suspicion—what if I couldn’t manage to stay alive long enough to learn anything of value?

  And then, as the processional gave way to the opening strains of the Anthem, all those futile doubts suddenly melted. The ritual’s power gripped me, and there was no room in me for anything but joy. From my place in the inner ring I could not see those who like myself were already sworn, yet in the telepathic litany our minds touched, and I sensed that we were all part of something sure and strong and splendid. I stared down at the Emblem I wore, watching the flicker of torchlight reflected in its myriad facets of gleaming metal, and the sparkles blurred as if seen through tears. How could I have forgotten? The rite is more than a beautiful ceremony, more even than an expression of your consecration to the Service cause. It is a bulwark that stays with you and safeguards you for as long as you live! Much is demanded of you, but much is given, too. For once accepted into its fellowship, you know that you have what it takes to meet whatever you’re confronted with; and you also know that there are others who trust you and who will back you all the way. You are not alone on any planet with that behind you.

  Those who created the Service’s traditions were wise; they knew that anybody whose job it was to explore unknown regions would have need of something besides training. Your training is designed to prepare you to go anywhere in the universe and cope with whatever strange and terrifying experiences you may be thrown into. But preparation isn’t enough. On top of it you need something solid to cling to, an emotional anchor: something symbolic. I don’t mean just a concrete thing, like the Emblem. The Emblem symbolizes the Oath, but our rituals concern deeper matters of which the Oath itself is only a symbol.

  People outside the Service sometimes misunderstand the Oath. On the surface it looks as though having once sworn to hold our responsibility to Younglings above all other considerations, we’re forced to act against our will or even against conscience. But it’s not like that at all. The Oath doesn’t bind us to anything we wouldn’t otherwise do, only to what we would do if we had time to think through all the ramifications every time we were hit with a crisis. When we’re stranded on some alien planet, we’ve got more than enough decisions to make without having to keep worrying about relative values! So it’s a real help to have our main decision out of the way.

  Of course, there’s more to Service ritual than that. It’s an expression of—well, an attitude, I guess; an attitude not only toward our responsibilities but toward the universe as a whole. If you’re going to be an explorer, you have to trust the universe. You have to believe that the natural order of things has some sort of sense to it, some real if incomprehensible logic, and that what’s true isn’t to be feared. Otherwise you would just come apart if you met something really weird in a far-off corner of the galaxy. For that matter, you would be unable to bear what faced you on the average Youngling world. Some of the things an agent sees…

  Such things have got to be considered as part of a pattern, and although we of the Service don’t understand the whole pattern, we’ve learned enough from having observed worlds in various stages of development to trust that it is there. The most moving parts of our rites are those that affirm that trust, and even here—here in this dreary Torisian prison—I can repeat them to myself, and they do sustain me. I shut my eyes, and the walls recede, and for a while I don’t feel the cold anymore. And beneath my eyelids blazes the clean flame of a torch; and the glory of the Anthem rings in my mind as I relive the evening when I last heard it.

  That’s what I think of when I picture that night, rather than any forebodings about Randil. Yet looking back, I do recall one small incident that may have some significance. There’s a point in the ritual at which the candidate’s mind is probed by the Dean in a way different from an ordinary telepathic exchange, a deeper, wordless way. We use such a level of communication for various purposes, when circumstances are compelling; but within the rite it’s employed as a form of testing. Well, when that point was reached with Randil, there was a strange sort of pause: The Dean’s hands were motionless a shade too long, and I saw the Emblem that he held ready tremble and catch the light as it swung on its chain.

  It’s hindsight that makes me mention this, of course, for I scarcely noticed it at the time. Neither Randil’s sincerity nor his courage could have been questioned; the doubt, if there was one, must have concerned something quite different. The moment passed; he rose and stood within the circle of torches for the Presentation. But I wonder if the Dean will remember when what’s happened on Toris becomes known.

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  Chapter 2

  A little while ago I awoke in cold panic, thinking that I could not endure this prison one more hour. It was not the intermittent blasts on the corridor siren that woke me; I have long since schooled my mind to ignore that, for if I hadn’t I would never have gotten any sleep at all. It was the isolation, I guess, the loneliness. I am cut off not only from my own people, but from the Younglings, too. I just don’t know if I can bear that forever.

  I can, of course. Only I must not expect it to be easy. I’ve known from the start that my job on Toris would not be easy; it requires a certain amount of fortitude, after all, just to live with the knowledge that a nuclear bomb may drop on you at any moment. Yet you get used to it. Even Younglings get used to it. In a way, though, it is easier for them because they haven’t come from a world where such a threat would be unthinkable.

  The situation here on Toris has grown steadily worse since we arrived. It could hardly have been expected to do otherwise, since this world’s nations are divided into two blocs, armed to the teeth against each other. I am in the hands of the Neo-Statists, who believe that I am an agent of the Libertarians. It is quite true that my sympathies are with the Libertarians, whose political system is much more to my liking; but I am not spying for them.

  I regret to say that there is nothing extraordinary about the Neo-Statists. All dictatorships are basically alike. The theories by which they justify themselves may sound diffe
rent, but really, if you have studied one, you can understand them all. All Youngling worlds have them; it is, unhappily, a fact of nature. A few of them have even established interplanetary empires, for some Younglings have starships; there are peoples that have colonized many solar systems yet are still a long way from maturity.

  The Neo-Statists are typical, almost a textbook case. The only thing at all unique about them is that they acknowledge their likeness to the original Statists who were defeated in a major, though non-nuclear, war about fifty Torisian years ago; usually these groups go to great lengths making themselves out to be the opposite of anything that has once failed. This one is so strong that it no longer bothers about such details. The dictator has a very forceful personality. He also has a very forceful secret police organization. Everybody is terrified of it, and with reason—as I am now in a position to know!

  But the most dangerous thing about the Neo-Statists isn’t their secret police, nor even their military prowess. It is their false view of human beings. They believe that people, individual people, are less important than the State. I know it wouldn’t be practical for Younglings to have the sort of government we have in the Federation, where everyone is free—really free—to make personal decisions, because to many Younglings freedom means freedom to hurt somebody else. There have to be laws to protect the innocent people from the troublemakers. The kinds of laws the Neo-Statists have do just the opposite, though. They give the troublemakers all the power.

  My interrogator is a good example. He has rather a high rank in the secret police, I believe; at any rate his own men are scared to death of him. I should be flattered, I suppose, that I rate his personal attention. This afternoon he gave me a long lecture on politics. I am sure that he was pleased by my avid interest, for he undoubtedly thought that he was making progress toward reforming me. Actually, of course, I was filing it all away in my memory among typical Youngling misconceptions, and if I ever get a chance to report again, it may add a bit to the data we’ve been collecting on what makes the Critical Stage critical.