The Far Side of Evil

by Sylvia Engdahl

  One thing more, Varned had said in parting, I get the impression that you’re identifying a little more closely with the Torisians than you need to. Their danger may not be as great as they think, you know; most worlds come safely through the Critical Stage. To feel empathy is good, but watch out that you don’t become their champion. It’s not well for a scientist to abandon impartial observation in order to champion a cause he doesn’t fully understand.

  But he did understand, Randil reflected indignantly as he looked out at the garishly lit streets of Cerne through the window of the last bus back from the fairgrounds. Hadn’t he studied everything ever written on the Critical Stage, perhaps more extensively than Varned himself? He understood very clearly that the Torisians were doomed unless they immediately turned their attention to the colonization of space, and it didn’t seem as if such a shift in their attention would be too hard to bring about.

  He thought back over the basic theory of the Critical Stage he had learned at the Academy. There comes a point for every human race when for the first—and only—time in its history it has the ability to destroy itself completely, and that point coincides with the point at which it is ready to take its first steps beyond its home world. The level of technology that creates one possibility simultaneously creates the other. If the colonization of space is undertaken, it becomes all-absorbing, full-scale war is forgotten, and the danger is averted—permanently, for never again will the species be isolated on one small and vulnerable planet. All the mature peoples of the Federation have resolved their challenge in this way; global civilizations are destined to expand or face destruction.

  Yet the Torisians showed no interest at all in space. Randil had looked up everything he could find on the subject in the university library, and it was all wild speculation, none of it endorsed by reputable scientists and none of it backed either by the application of current technological knowledge or by any foundation in philosophy. In short, the concept of space travel wasn’t taken seriously. Even the fiction about it was classed as pure fantasy.

  To be sure, enthusiasm for astronautics couldn’t have been expected to arise as early as on some worlds, for Toris lacked a natural moon. That was a handicap because it meant the first extra-orbital space voyage would have to be a relatively long one: to the nearest neighboring planet, Juta. But since plenty of Federation worlds had no moons either, the handicap was by no means insurmountable. Moreover, Juta was more suitable for colonization than the average planet; not often was a human race blessed with such a convenient outpost in its own solar system.

  Unfortunately, nobody on Toris had any idea how important colonization was. Not only the average man in the street but even the farsighted people—the ones who were bothered by the filthiness of the river and the murk of the city air and who realized that if the Bomb didn’t wipe out civilization, overpopulation and pollution would—failed to see that there was really only one long-range solution to the problem. They hadn’t even identified the problem. Those who hadn’t fallen for the Neo-Statists’ assertions about “Libertarian imperialism” thought the threat of war an indication that technology had gotten out of step with sociology.

  If only he could tell them, Randil thought. It wasn’t right for the Service not to tell them! He remembered what he had studied and wished, defiantly, that he could slip it into the paper he was writing now at the University. Human species progress only when challenged. If sociological advance were to make war impossible before a planet’s technology was sufficiently developed, the people of that planet would never achieve the means to expand to other worlds. If they waited for overpopulation to confront them, it would be too late; they would either become the victims of mass starvation and chaos, or resort to ruthless, planned killing without the “excuse” of war, followed by an irreversible decadence… But the fuse is necessarily short. The technology, once achieved, must be used for expansion; otherwise the tendency toward war outlives its purpose and results in inescapable disaster…

  He could imagine what Varned would say if he did such a thing. Agents were, after all, under strict orders to avoid exerting even the subtlest and most indirect influence on Torisian affairs. And yet … why? Randil knew the accepted explanation; he knew all the platitudes about how harmful it was to interfere with the development of Younglings. He had been told at the Academy; he had absorbed the applicable portions of Service ritual; and Varned had just gone over it again during the heated argument that had precipitated his current rancor. But was that all there was to it? Was that really sufficient grounds for withholding knowledge from a human race that was manifestly about to destroy itself?

  Perhaps the Service had other reasons, reasons concerned less with the welfare of the Torisians than with the nature of the data being sought.

  With a start, Randil realized that he had missed his bus stop. He got off at the next one and walked back, forgetting the race to beat curfew in his sudden, shocked concern about what these reasons might be. He asked himself why the Service was giving such high priority to a mission that would yield no unique results if the Critical Stage on Toris were to be resolved as it had been on most worlds. He asked why that mission had been set up as it had: why, for instance, he was kept in the dark about many phases of the plans and why he was forbidden to communicate with Elana, whom he knew to be also in Cerne but whose cover role hadn’t been disclosed to him.

  Aboard the starship, Varned and Meleny had given him an answer. Was it the only conceivable one? It was not, Randil decided; and the alternate answer that occurred to him he did not like at all.

  *

  Kari didn’t have much of a social life; her shyness prevented her from mixing easily, and though she went out occasionally, she was not dating anyone in particular. So I was a bit surprised the day she told me, abruptly during our lunch hour, that she had been asked to a party that evening and would like me to come along. There was something peculiar in her whole attitude toward the affair—not just her normal reticence, but a strange mixture of eagerness and fear. It was unlike Kari; usually she turned down invitations from people she wasn’t sure she would be comfortable with.

  “Please come with me, Elana,” she said almost desperately. “I haven’t a date, and I don’t want to go by myself.”

  “Are you sure I’m invited, too?”

  “Yes, I checked. I don’t know anyone who’ll be there very well,” she added hastily. “I can’t imagine why they asked me, unless—unless it’s because of the thing that happened last week. I—I’ve heard talk about this crowd; it’s said that their parties are more than just parties. I had to promise I wouldn’t give out the address.”

  On the point of refusal, I stopped short. Kari had told me what had happened on campus some days before: There had been a discussion in one of her classes before the professor arrived, and stimulated by the newfound frankness with which she had been expressing herself to me, she had made an unguarded remark. She had been dreadfully upset afterward. Well, it hadn’t been noticed by an informer, for if it had, she would have been reprimanded before this. But apparently, it had been noticed by someone else.

  “The girl I talked to did have some questions about you,” Kari was saying. “I told her about the amnesia—that’s all, of course. It seemed to satisfy her. If her friends were doing anything dangerous they’d be more careful, wouldn’t they? Oh, Elana, I hope it wasn’t wrong of me to mention—”

  “Certainly not,” I assured her. “I want to go; you knew I would.” I really did. I oughtn’t to; although this invitation was probably quite innocent, it could be an overture from the Resistance, and I could under no circumstances get mixed up in the Resistance. I could not take on responsibilities that my own work might prevent me from fulfilling. Yet it would be the making of Kari! The mere fact that she was willing to attend what she suspected to be an illegal gathering showed that I was at last getting somewhere in my efforts to increase her confidence.

  But nothing, I realized, would be settled at the
first party we went to. An underground group would have to be very sure of us before taking any steps toward recruiting us; we would undoubtedly be tested, and Kari would need help and encouragement. Surely, at the last minute I myself could contrive not to qualify.

  It was a hot night, and there were several hours of daylight left when we started out. The pavement burned despite the heavy soles of the Torisian shoes I still wasn’t used to. The address Kari had been given was in a run-down neighborhood on the opposite side of the campus; by the time we got there, we were weary and breathless. I wasn’t much impressed by the grimy hallway of the aged apartment building in which we found ourselves.

  Kari knocked tentatively. While we were waiting, she turned to me and said anxiously, “Elana, maybe we’re crazy! I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be. We’re not committed to anything. Let’s just see what happens.”

  The music blaring out of the apartment was scarcely an encouraging sign; though of a kind popular among Torisian youth, it was not to my taste nor, I knew, to Kari’s, and it didn’t strike me as anything that would appeal to the sort of student likely to be engaged in underground work. It could, of course, be a cover. I hoped so.

  The door opened a crack and then, almost immediately, wider, revealing a young but tired-eyed woman who did not seem particularly pleased to see us. “Oh, it’s you, Kari,” she said brusquely, her voice flat with disappointment. “Come on in.”

  Afterward, I wondered why we were accepted so easily, and then realized that those at the party knew Kari wouldn’t report them. They were witnesses to her indiscretion in class, after all; and they knew her normal caution. I believe they really wanted to help her. I believe they thought they could.

  Once inside, we proceeded down a narrow flight of basement stairs. The dingy room into which we were ushered was windowless and sweltering. It didn’t have much furniture, though cushions were strewn over the floor, and the walls were blotched with whorls of varicolored paint. There were about a dozen people present, more than half male. Their appearance was, to say the least, startling. If this was a cover, it was a strange one, for their mode of dress was in itself prohibited. All but the hostess were clothed in the style of a bygone century, with grotesquely painted faces and short, closely cropped hair that would have been considered an insult to public decency had it been revealed on the street. Such fashions had been worn openly until the Neo-Statist takeover; since then, it was rumored, they continued to thrive within a clandestine youth movement. But there were other rumors about that movement, disturbing ones that didn’t coincide with what I knew of the Resistance, or indeed of organized resistance efforts in any dictatorship. If we had stumbled into a genuine group of its followers, we might be in hot water. If only I could have done some investigating before letting Kari get involved!

  Everyone was simply standing around doing nothing. They were not even drinking anything; there were no glasses in sight, let alone food. And there was very little talking. The void was filled by the loud, raucous music, which no one was paying any attention to, but which, I guessed, would be immediately missed were it to stop. There was an air of tension about the place—not excitement, not the natural tenseness of people embarking upon a dangerous job, but simply the unbearable emptiness of—waiting. It wasn’t a happy feeling.

  Kari looked at me, puzzled, and I began to think about how we might manage a graceful exit. But at that moment we were approached by a wildly clad young man whose intelligent eyes belied the defiant garishness of his facial paint. “You must be the girl with amnesia,” he said to me.

  “Yes,” I admitted cautiously. “I don’t remember anything before ten weeks ago.”

  “I should be so lucky,” he muttered. But I could not read his emotions; they seemed well buried beneath a mask of apathy and indifference. “I don’t suppose you feel that way,” he said. “I suppose it scares you. Well, we’ll fix you up. Maybe you will remember; the stuff does funny things sometimes. In any case you’ll be better off for a while.”

  Sick dread rose in me at this confirmation of my darkest suspicions, dread not for myself but for Kari. She had been elated by these dissenters’ invitation to her, and elated too by her own daring in accepting it. It was I who had been urging her on; if she had landed in a situation she wasn’t equipped to handle, the responsibility was mine. Somehow I would have to get her away before whoever was bringing “the stuff” put in an appearance.

  But it wasn’t so simple. Kari had been taken in tow by two or three of the more animated people, and, flushed with excitement, she was following my well-meant advice. “I—I don’t believe what they tell us about the State!” she was saying as I came up to them. “I don’t believe we’re just machines to serve the State, never doing anything for ourselves or for each other. That sort of life isn’t worth living.”

  “Right you are,” said the hostess, toying nervously with a limp strand of the long hair she quite obviously wished to be rid of. “The State’s a drag.”

  “It’s not for you, Kari,” added the student I had been talking to. “We knew it wasn’t by what you said before class last week.”

  “No,” Kari agreed, spellbound. “It’s not for me.”

  “What is for you, then?” I put in quickly.

  “Freedom,” she whispered.

  “There’s only one kind of freedom,” he said intensely. “The kind inside you. The country of your mind is a fascinating realm to explore. No rules, no signposts. No stupid authorities telling you what you should do and what you shouldn’t—”

  “Yes, but can you come and go as you choose?” I asked. “Is your will in the driver’s seat? You can’t be free unless it is.”

  “You don’t need will; you don’t want it. You let your inner mind sweep you along. It’s you. And it’s the whole world. Everything’s one—you’ll see. We can’t talk about it; it’s got to be experienced, or else we’re on two sides of a wall. When you’ve crossed over, you’ll know.”

  He didn’t suspect that I was already more knowledgeable than he in such matters, and it was difficult to argue without letting on; yet I knew that to maintain the amnesia ruse, I would have to make my point while pretending to be on the same side of the wall as the average Youngling. In desperation I protested, “But outside, the world is still there. The dictator is still running things.”

  “Not for us. Let civilization go its way; it’ll fall of its own weight in time.”

  “What’ll replace it? What about human progress?”

  The young man laughed. “There’s no such thing.”

  “You mean history isn’t going anywhere even if we don’t have a nuclear war?” All Younglings were blind, I thought, and yet was this a normal attitude for the Critical Stage? Or was it peculiar to peoples who did not go anywhere? Was it a portent of disaster, tied in with the key I had come to find?

  “It’s never gone anywhere yet,” the long-haired hostess answered cynically, “except from bad to worse.”

  Though I had known that many Torisians felt this way, it was still a shock to hear it stated so flatly. The idea of civilization itself being worthless was worse than the prevalent fear of its being wiped out by the Bomb. It was horrible. It was more horrible than all the horrors of their history that these people were without hope. No wonder they wore the garb of the past, if they did not believe in the future! No wonder they sacrificed will and thought in a drug-induced plunge into the inner realms of the mind. A universe without direction does not bear thinking about.

  The door buzzer sounded again, and the hostess rushed for the stairs. A moment later she was back, transformed, and not only by relief, for her hair was as short as everyone else’s, and the long, decorous tresses—a wig—dangled from her hand. With her was a quite ordinary-looking young man who threw off his cloak to reveal clothes even more bizarre than those of the rest. He too removed a wig; his head was almost smooth-shaven.

  “It’s all right,” he told the group clustering around him. “No slip
up, and I wasn’t followed. We’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.” He and the hostess, arm in arm, retired into the kitchen.

  “Kari,” I said urgently, “let’s leave. We don’t want anything to do with this; it’s too risky.”

  “No,” she told me. “No, I want to stay.” The others were making a circle, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Someone had turned up the music; it was deafening. Gradually, people began to sway in rhythm. Whether they were deliberately copying some primitive tribal ritual or whether it was subconscious reversion, I don’t know; perhaps it was only as an anthropologist that I noticed the resemblance.

  Kari found a place in the circle. There was no room for me next to her, and I had to squeeze in elsewhere, with no chance to speak to her privately. The tension grew. Finally, the newcomer reappeared—his face, like that of the hostess, having been daubed with color—settled across from us, and raised a tall, none-too-clean goblet filled with a pale liquid. “One swallow,” he cautioned. “One swallow, and pass it on.” He drank and, giving it to the student beside him, added, “Happy landings.”

  One swallow would be enough; more than enough, or they wouldn’t dispense it so informally. Kari did not know! Their talk had been full of deceptive half-truths; they opposed the dictatorship, as she did, and the fact that they opposed too many other things was not obvious. Their sincerity, on the other hand, was unquestionable. She would not listen to my warning. She would follow their lead, when the glass came round to her, and drink.

  She was not ready to meet what she would encounter. None of them were, but Kari was less so than average. For her it would not even be a happy realm; her will was neither weak enough to give up without struggle nor strong enough to win. So it would be dark and menacing, and though I could attempt to guide her, I was by no means fully qualified.