The Far Side of Evil

by Sylvia Engdahl

  Of the dreams I had while I was delirious, I can say little; they were incoherent, indescribable not only in Youngling terms but in my own. And they faded almost immediately when my head cleared and I became aware, for the first time, of my surroundings. My main impression was of whiteness—whiteness of the ceiling, the walls, the bed—a dearth of color exceeded only by the blankness of my own memory. Why, I thought dazedly, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am! And as I realized that, panic swept over me, and nausea, and I turned away from the light and buried my face in my arms.

  I’m not sure how long I lay that way, but eventually a voice came silently from somewhere within me—not an immediate, personal voice such as you “hear” in telepathic communication, but an echo from the past I couldn’t recall. You must learn where you are! it told me. Hiding won’t help; you must open your eyes to the world in which you find yourself. It will be strange, confusing, alien—but you mustn’t fear that. You must use the time given you.

  With great effort, feeling as if I were under at least three times the gravity I had been born to, I rolled over and forced my eyes open again. A girl stood by my bed, her white dress merging fuzzily into the glaring whiteness of the room. I blinked and focused on her face. She had dark hair, about the color of mine, but she wore it longer and it was tied tightly back with a ribbon, I could not judge her age; she seemed very young, but perhaps it was only that her manner lacked poise and assurance.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” She smiled at me, a shy but friendly smile. “How do you feel, Elana?” When I didn’t answer, she went on hesitantly, “Elana—that is your name, isn’t it? That’s what your passport says.”

  “I—I don’t know,” I answered weakly. At the moment this was true. But in the depths of my mind the voice echoed again: You are not permitted to know, for now. You must not let it frighten you; you can meet what comes simply by being who you are, without knowing. We would not have arranged anything you weren’t equal to.

  I didn’t have any idea who had said that to me, but somehow the thought was reassuring. All the same, I was frightened. Your sense of identity is just about the most vital thing you have; if it suddenly evaporates, there isn’t anything left to rely on, because your ability to cope with what’s outside depends on your certainty of what’s inside—that is, of yourself as somebody. If you don’t know anything about the person you are, you haven’t much basis for believing that you can keep yourself under control.

  “You don’t know if it’s your name?” The girl stared, puzzled. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” I admitted. “I’ve been sick, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, awfully sick,” she told me gently. “Ever since you were brought in. But I’m sure you’ll be all right now. The doctor said you probably would be if you came out of the coma—” She broke off, apparently realizing that it wasn’t her place to discuss the gravity of my condition.

  “Are you my nurse?” I asked her.

  “No, I’m only an aide. I bring the meals, tidy up the rooms, and so forth.” She added, almost apologetically, “My name is Kari.”

  I tried to sit up but was unsuccessful. It took all the energy I could muster just to form sentences in the unfamiliar language that I felt compelled to use. “Where am I, Kari?” I asked feebly.

  “In the hospital.”

  “Yes, but where?”

  “What city, you mean? Why, Cerne. Didn’t you come from here? You were found outside the blockade, of course—”

  Cerne. It meant nothing to me. “What world is this?” I whispered, and then I wished, desperately, that I had not, for I had a sudden sense of having violated some deep and sacred taboo.

  “What world?”

  “I—I’m sorry. I’ve been out of my head, I guess; I’ve had all kinds of crazy nightmares, and I haven’t gotten them sorted out yet.” I was close to tears, for I really hadn’t. “Kari, I’m not sure what’s real.”

  She bent down and, awkwardly, touched my hand. “Oh, don’t worry—please don’t! You’ll remember soon. Look, I’ve got to go now, but I’ll send in the doctor.”

  As she disappeared, fear rose in me again. I still did not know what world I was on, nor why it seemed wrong to ask; and since apparently it was wrong, I could not imagine how I was ever going to find out. Moreover, there were other things from which I was barred by the same mysterious inner prompting. I was horribly thirsty, and on the table across the room from me stood a tall, cool-looking pitcher of water; yet somehow I could not bring myself to obtain it through psychokinesis, sure though I was that the weakness that kept me flat on my back wouldn’t affect my normal mental powers.

  And the arrival of the doctor was not exactly a comfort. I did my best to answer his questions, but all the while I was eying him warily in an agony of suspicion that I could neither explain nor banish. Poor man, he was well-meaning, I’m sure, and he would have been astonished had he known what caused my terror of him. I did not know myself; I only knew, as he stood over me with hypodermic in hand, that I did not trust him and that he could not possibly tell what was wrong with me, much less how to cure it. Instinctively, I fought the approaching needle.

  “Hey now, calm down!” the doctor said. “This won’t hurt.”

  It was not a matter of its hurting. It was a matter of being absolutely helpless in the hands of undependable strangers. Glancing frantically around, I saw stark white shapes gathering near my bed: another doctor, perhaps, and two or three nurses and orderlies. Kari, who had seemed a friend, was nowhere in sight. With strength born of desperation I struggled to rise. As if from far away I heard the command, “Restrain her. I’m going to inject a sedative.” Strong arms gripped mine, and I think I screamed.

  Then as the drug took hold my panic subsided, freeing me to think. It’s all right, the inner voice told me, they can’t harm you … you must trust that this will turn out all right… My thoughts were drifting, spinning, and I could not grasp any memory firmly. But for an instant the artificial wall dissolved and I knew a flash of incredible clarity. There was a warmth, a sense of sureness, and words formed in my mind: solemn, exultant words telling of a universe of joy and beauty and design. I did not recognize them. They were, I suppose, from Service ritual; but of that I recalled nothing.

  The next morning, things were a bit brighter. When I awoke, I still couldn’t remember my past life, but my present one didn’t seem quite so dismaying. The pattern of sunlight on the wall opposite my bed seemed almost cheerful.

  Kari was busy at the table, arranging long-stemmed blooms in a pottery bowl. “I brought you some flowers,” she said, noticing that my eyes were open. “Yellow ones, because your room was so bare, and”—her voice dropped—“and besides, it’s Springtide.”

  “Thank you,” I said, overwhelmed. Frowning, I added, “Springtide?”

  Giving me a startled look, she exclaimed, “You really don’t remember! Not anything! Unless—” She faltered and shrank apprehensively from my gaze.

  “What is it?” I asked in alarm. “What’s scared you?”

  She stepped forward, her expression changing to one of relief and sympathetic concern. “Forgive me,” she begged. “It was horrible of me, but for a minute, when you frowned like that, I—I thought you might be one of them.”

  Not having the slightest idea what she was talking about, I did not attempt to answer. Kari stooped down and, in a low voice, continued, “It’s forbidden to celebrate Springtide now. It’s forbidden to speak of it, even; the first week of spring is supposed to mean a new calendar, and nothing more. But they can’t stop people from thinking about it, can they?”

  “No,” I said positively. “No, they can’t.”

  “I remember when I was a little girl,” Kari went on, “after Devotions all our relatives used to come for the family dinner, and we’d have gift baskets, and yellow flowers in every room. And Granddad would complain that times weren’t what they used to be; but Uncle Derk would laugh and s
ay that as long as we kept Springtide, the human race wasn’t in much danger.” She paused and then added matter-of-factly, “Uncle Derk’s dead now. They shot him during the Occupation.”

  “That’s awful!” I burst out.

  “Life is awful, I guess,” Kari said resignedly. “The whole world is, and it’s silly to pretend it won’t always be.” There was an awkward silence. Then, blushing, she hurried on, “How thoughtless I am, telling you my good memories when you can’t remember at all. You must hate me.”

  “Of course I don’t,” I assured her. “And I want you to tell me more.”

  “More about what?”

  “About anything—anything that might help me remember.”

  “All right,” she agreed. “Only for a few minutes, though, because I’ve got to go after the lunch trays pretty soon.”

  “Start by explaining who they are,” I suggested resolutely, although I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to know.

  She told me briefly how Cerne had been occupied by the dictator’s army and how at present, though most of the troops were gone, a Neo-Statist puppet government was keeping the city under rigid control. I had many questions, for I had no conscious knowledge, then, of anything I had learned aboard the starship, or even of the fact that there was a starship. I did not think of the people among whom I found myself as “Younglings”; I had no cause to assume any difference between their situation and my own. That situation being a frightful one, the more I heard of it the worse I felt. Kari’s own apprehension came through to me telepathically as she talked, and it told me far more than her guarded words.

  From somewhere outside came the wail of a noon whistle, low-pitched and mournful. Kari straightened my bedclothes and turned to go. “In a way I envy you,” she said slowly. “I keep thinking of what you said yesterday about having dreamed this wasn’t the only world, and—well, maybe you’re better off without sorting the dreams from the real things. Because they aren’t nice things to remember. The world is decaying, people say; but then of course the Bomb will probably wipe out civilization before very long. Sometimes I wish I could have amnesia, too.”

  “The Bomb?” I asked, horrified.

  She offered no explanation; it was to her simply a fact of life, like pain. “I shouldn’t have reminded you,” she said, sighing, and then she fled from the room. As she went, my eyes fell on the bowl of flowers she had left me—yellow flowers, for Springtide—and I noticed that the ribbon that bound back her hair, which on the previous day had been black, was now a vibrant, defiant yellow.

  Bomb? I repeated to myself. Before long? Maybe I was better off dreaming, at that.

  No, insisted that inexplicable inner voice that was always with me. You must use the time given you; you must learn all you can. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  But there is … there is, I protested. Memory or no memory, I still had common sense, and it was pretty obvious that there was nothing safe about the place I was in. Nothing safe, nothing comforting…

  The sun had gone under. I lay back against the pillows, staring out through streaked windowpanes at the still-bare branches of a tall, gaunt tree silhouetted against a white sky. Who am I? I thought despairingly. Who am I, that I should find myself in this sort of a world? Armies … bombs … what kind of a nightmare have I fallen into? And for that, there was no answer.

  *

  There is a theme that recurs in the folklore of all worlds, a myth of death and rebirth. (We studied such things at the Academy, for they are basic to the understanding of Youngling cultures.) This particular theme, which is widespread among primitive peoples, is often acted out symbolically in rites of passage like tribal initiation ceremonies. The idea is that if a person is suddenly going to become somebody different—for example, an adult tribesman instead of a child—he must forget all about what he used to be, at least temporarily. He must “die” as far as that life is concerned and be “born” into a new one. And since that can’t really happen, he can only do it by undergoing some overwhelming experience that makes him feel as if it had.

  Well, what I went through was a little like that, I think. Younglings aren’t stupid; their folklore usually has a lot of truth behind it. They interpret that truth in strange ways, maybe, but all the same it’s there. This business of “dying” to your former life is simply a quick way of accomplishing something that under less dramatic circumstances would have to happen gradually. Whether it’s mixed up with mythology or not doesn’t matter. And whether you are subjected to it by a superstitious witch doctor or by a fully trained scientist like Meleny, the result is the same: You get a whole new slant on things.

  I don’t mean that I literally thought I was dying; sick though I was for a while, my symptoms weren’t that bad. But to wake without memory is in some ways very much like being born. The thing is, you have no frame of reference. Everything is unstable and confusing because you have no positive facts to hold on to. It’s an unbearable feeling, so you throw all your energy into getting yourself oriented.

  You learn fast, of course, because your mind is better developed than a baby’s and you’ve got an unconscious backlog of knowledge to draw on. Besides, you have nothing more pressing to distract you. By the time I had gotten my physical strength back, I knew all I needed to know in order to pass as a native-born Torisian, What’s more, I knew it in a different way than I would have if I had simply superimposed that knowledge on my normal pattern of thought. My Torisian identity was—well, more basic. I was living it instead of acting; I was committed to it, for I believed I was Torisian.

  Most of my information came from Kari. I saw her only in the morning, however, for her job at the hospital was a part-time one; afternoons she had classes at the University. The nurses were rushed and uncommunicative, and I begged to be put in a ward where there would be other patients to talk to. But the doctor refused; not having been able to diagnose my illness, he was still afraid that it might prove contagious. So between Kari’s visits I had to be content with the small radio she brought me.

  On the fifth day I had visitors. Kari announced them, her eyes dark with dismay. “Elana,” she said shakily, “there are two men here to see you. I—I think”—her voice fell to a whisper—”I think they’re SSP.”

  I swallowed. The SSP, the State Security Police whom I had already learned to fear…

  “What do they want?” I quavered. “I haven’t done anything, at least I don’t think I have. But Kari, I don’t really remember.”

  She was struggling for composure. “Of course you haven’t,” she soothed. “It’s only that you didn’t have a travel permit. They’ll ask you why, I suppose. But what can they do if you don’t know?”

  “They’ll believe me, won’t they?”

  “They’ll have to. Besides, they’re talking to the doctor now; he’ll tell them, and—” She stopped short, the pallor of fright spreading across her face. “And I guess they’ll ask me.”

  Her terror at the prospect was obvious, and I was troubled at having gotten her involved. From all I had heard of the SSP, they were quite likely to suspect her simply for having shown me friendship. “I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “It’s all my fault.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You couldn’t help being sick.”

  The interview, as it turned out, was not too difficult. The men’s questions were perfunctory, for the doctor had apparently convinced them that my memory was truly gone. He had also made it clear that since I’d been at death’s door for several days, I could not possibly be faking. My passport appeared to be in order; and as I had neither money nor a travel permit, it was the consensus of opinion that both had been stolen by thieves who had left me to die beside the highway. Though a routine check had turned up no record of anyone by my name, that wasn’t surprising because the files for the recently-conquered Cerne were in turmoil. Luckily my case wasn’t considered worth a more thorough investigation.

  Kari was questioned separately. She knew nothing about my bac
kground and they had no reason to doubt her; but after they’d gone she sat down in the chair beside my bed and burst into tears. “I c-can’t help it,” she sobbed. “I know I’ve got no right to act this way, when it’s you that’s in trouble. But I can’t bear those men! Oh, Elana, they see into people’s minds; they can punish a person for even thinking things—”

  She didn’t put all her fears into words; she didn’t dare to. But she wanted desperately to tell me, so the rest came through telepathically. Kari was a Libertarian sympathizer in a country where Libertarian sympathies were deemed a criminal offense. No wonder she felt guilty in the presence of the dread secret police; she was agonizingly aware that her beliefs, should they detect them, would land her in a labor camp or worse. And what’s more, she was blaming herself for not being brave enough to act on those beliefs as her Uncle Derk had.

  Stricken, I reached for her hand and squeezed it. She had been kind to me, acting against, I now realized, her normal instinct to stay clear of involvement with anyone whose status was suspect. She had gone out of her way to talk to me, to spend every spare moment in my room, simply because she had known that I was lost and alone.

  “I just can’t live like this,” she concluded hysterically. “I hate it! Not only what’s happened here in Cerne. The whole world’s bad now; everything people used to have faith in is gone. Or maybe it never really existed.”

  Kari, don’t feel that way! I cried silently. It isn’t true! There’s plenty to have faith in; there’s a whole universe— I cut off in mid-thought, stopped by the abrupt realization that I should not be communicating in that fashion. It was another of the warnings that I had come to accept as a natural restraint on my mental processes. But this time I suddenly wondered, Why? Why shouldn’t I help Kari? What harm could it do?

  And then I thought, What was it I wanted to tell her? I was just as scared as she was. She had taught me all I knew of the world; why did her judgment of it strike me as wrong, untrue? What did I see that she didn’t?