The Far Side of Evil

by Sylvia Engdahl

  Without question, Randil was about to plunge Toris out of the frying pan and into the fire, a fire that would be the hottest and most uncontrollable that had ever engulfed a human race because it would result from artificial disruption of evolutionary laws. By handing that ship to the Torisians, he would be setting in motion forces that would kill them just as surely as if he had planted a time bomb in the heart of their sun.

  I could not let that happen.

  The responsibility was mine. It had been mine all along, even before I had acknowledged it by assuming the authority of Senior Agent. I had known that Randil was treading on dangerous ground, yet I had taken no action; I had been unable to face the prospect of what action would mean: for him, for Kari, and for myself. But if in sure knowledge of his present intent I let him carry it through, what happened to the people of this world would be as much my fault as his—more, even, since I knew the consequences and he did not. I was sworn. There was only one course compatible with my Oath to hold the welfare of Toris above all other considerations.

  I had given him fair warning. I had told him that I could stop him, and there was a simple means of doing so. It took all night for me to muster the courage. But in the morning, after an agonizingly cheerful conversation with Kari on our way to the hospital, I took leave of her at the kitchen entrance as usual, watched her disappear into the elevator, and turned resolutely back into the street. I walked six blocks in blind, sick misery. Then, steeling myself to the enormity of the betrayal, I strode into SSP headquarters and denounced Randil to the secret police.

  *

  The secret police give a warm reception to informers. It was not hard to concoct a story calculated to arouse suspicion against Randil. It wasn’t at all difficult to implant the suggestion that his passport should be checked, nor did it take much imagination to guess what would happen when they discovered it to be a forgery. Randil would get no opportunity to do any more meddling.

  And as for me, I would have to go home and live with Kari.

  He would not suffer if he was tortured; like me, he had been trained in psychic defense. But Kari didn’t know that. She would know, in time, of his arrest. She was aware of what arrest by the SSP usually means.

  Imprisonment would be a grueling ordeal for Randil despite his defensive powers, not only in itself but because of his sincere though erroneous belief that the intervention from which he was barred could save Toris. He would be equal to that ordeal. He would be equal to the situation Varned had faced, if it came to that; and I could not deny that it might. If it did, I would find it no more a torment to live with Kari than with myself.

  “You are a good citizen,” the officer behind the desk declared condescendingly. “Your patriotism will not go unrewarded.”

  I kept my face impassive, but inwardly I was seething. If they offered me money, I thought, I would be utterly incapable of faking the appropriate satisfaction.

  The man spoke into his telephone, then turned back to me. “There will be a few more questions,” he said. “If you will come this way, please.”

  For the first time it occurred to me that the police might recheck my own passport. The idea didn’t disturb me; I almost hoped they would.

  I was told to wait in a small, rather luxurious office. I sat stiffly in a leather-upholstered chair; there was a painting on the wall opposite, upon which I fixed my attention, but I cannot say what it looked like. The hour I spent there was one of the worst of my life, not excepting the interrogations I have since undergone.

  Another officer entered, to whom I was required to repeat my story. At the end of it he frowned. “You were right to come to us with your suspicions of this man,” he said slowly. “Your vigilance is appreciated. In this particular case, however, there are certain complications. It would be best if you did not speak of the incident.”

  “As you wish, sir,” I assented, wondering what his motive could be. Usually the dictatorship was only too happy to proclaim the apprehension of a suspected “people’s enemy.”

  “It so happens,” he went on, “that we already know about the man of whom you speak. It’s quite true that he is not what he has pretended to be.”

  I recoiled with shock. What could they know? How? They might conceivably have traced the authorship of his articles, but that seemed unlikely since his work had never been censored or disapproved.

  The officer continued smugly, “He is actually an undercover agent who has done the People’s State a great service. I’m sure you understand that I am not at liberty to give you the details; but you need have no fear of his being a traitor. Rather, through him our cause against the Libertarian imperialists has been immeasurably advanced.”

  Aghast, I realized that such a statement could mean just one thing. I was too late! The overnight delay, the hours I had spent in anguished vacillation, had been seized by Randil as his one and only chance. He had anticipated what I would do, and had already turned the ship over to the local authorities.

  Though my effort to hide my reaction wasn’t successful, it was misinterpreted. “Have no fear,” the officer repeated. “There will be no reprisals against you; had the man been what he seemed, you would have received the credit for uncovering his crimes. But take care never to speak of him to anyone.” As an afterthought he added, “You will not see him again. He has been taken into custody for his own protection, since it would be most unfortunate if he were to fall into the hands of the Libertarians.”

  My alarm grew. If they held him until they reached Juta, he would never be able to come up with a credible story; disclosure would be not only inevitable but immediate. “Why do you tell me this?” I asked boldly, knowing that I must get all the information I could. “If I were so inclined, I could let the Libertarians know whom to look for.”

  He laughed. “Do you think I’m unaware of your background? You are an amnesiac, and you’ve been under surveillance ever since you arrived in this city. You have no contacts among Libertarian sympathizers, and as you obviously did not come here to sell what you knew, it’s unlikely that you would put a price on your silence. But I’m taking no risk. The man is beyond reach, as is the secret weapon of which he has knowledge. As for the Libertarians, their days are numbered. We will obliterate them! We’ve said so before and they scoffed, but by this time next week they’ll believe us, if there are any left alive.”

  Dizziness struck me, and I was afraid I would be sick right there in front of him. Secret weapon? They had the ship, and they were keeping it secret; they would first use it not to explore space but against the Libertarians! Even I had not seen that—I, who had tried so hard to convince Randil that they were bent on conquest. I had been so intent on the long-range perils that I had overlooked the obvious short-range one.

  A Service landing craft is swift, silent, and readily maneuverable. It can cross continents in mere minutes; it can ascend and descend vertically, with incredible speed and with no visible means of propulsion. It is shielded not only against damage but against detection, and cannot be tracked by any radar network on Toris. How many cities could it wipe out on a single mission? There was no precedent, the Federation never having used one for any such purpose; but the number might well be limited only by the number of nuclear bombs the Neo-Statists could cram in.

  “You are free to go,” the officer was saying to me. “Hail the glory of the State, citizen.”

  “Hail the glory of the State,” I replied mechanically. Had the words been in my own language instead of a Youngling one, I would have choked on them. I turned and left the building with no plans, no purpose, only an aimless, wretched sense of despair. By this time next week. Would the Libertarians retaliate? Probably, yet that wouldn’t deter a dictator with a vastly superior striking force. The power to retaliate creates a balance that can stave off disaster, but our presence had upset that balance, and there was no way it could be restored. The civilization of Toris was doomed.

  For a moment I was so incensed against Randil that I very
nearly stopped hating myself for having denounced him, but my rage softened as I pictured the agony he must be experiencing. I couldn’t feel that he deserved it; Randil’s judgment was tragically poor, but he had honestly tried to bring peace to Toris. The knowledge that he had instead brought more war was a heavier punishment than should be wished on anyone.

  And then I realized that he didn’t know. They would not have told him. If they had believed his story—as they must have—that he had come in peace from the planet Juta, they would not reveal their plans in his presence. For he would have said that his purpose was to unite both worlds in pursuit of a common goal, and they would play along with that, using him to teach them about the ship while deceiving him as to their true intent. He would not guess it. His identification with the Torisians worked both ways: Not only did he feel himself one of them, but he assumed they thought as he did. Evil was an abstraction to Randil; he was blind to its power over the minds of Younglings.

  I crossed the street, so absorbed in my bitterness that a car almost grazed me, and then walked along the cement esplanade beside the river. The noonday sun shone on the water and on the boats that plied up- and downstream. On the opposite shore I could see a tree-lined park where a few children, too young for school, dabbled in the shallows under the watchful eye of an old woman. Those children would never grow up, I thought hopelessly. The fatalism of people like Kari had been only too accurate. But it might not have been, if we had never come to Toris. How could the Service dare to visit Youngling worlds if all its wisdom, all its dedication, all the safeguards of its Oath still weren’t enough to keep two well-meaning but fallible agents from loosing the nightmare of a nuclear holocaust?

  Leaning against the iron railing that bordered the river, I looked down at the brownish waves lapping against the embankment. Oh, Randil, Randil! I cried silently, throwing every bit of my energy and emotion into the most desperate telepathic appeal I had ever attempted. But it was no use. Wherever they had him, it was too far. And he did not know! He was out there somewhere, downriver, probably, showing them how to work the controls of that ship; whereas if he knew, he would surely have destroyed it.

  I drew in my breath, startled by the thought. The ship could be destroyed. It could be vaporized from the starship, by remote control, which would already have been done if the Service knew it to be in the possession of Younglings; Randil must have disabled the signaling mechanism by which its location could be pinpointed. But there was another method. A landing craft is equipped with a built-in destruct device and every agent is taught to operate it, for there are times when its use is the only possible means of preventing a disclosure. You do not need to be inside the ship to set off the explosion; it can be done psychokinetically, from a short distance away.

  My responsibility suddenly became clear. Randil did not know the situation. I could not contact him, and, because of my solo status, Varned and Meleny had kept me from knowing what other agents were on Toris. I had no alternative but to get within range of that landing craft somehow and destroy it myself. The damage caused by Randil’s misjudgment and my own weak-willed procrastination could not be undone in any other way.

  The idea sickened me; it went against my most deep-seated instincts, and I could scarcely force myself to think it through. I would not be dangerously close to the ship when it blew up, but others would. There were undoubtedly guards, technicians, scientists studying its design—perhaps even Randil himself. Destruction of the landing craft could not fail to result in the deaths of innocent people.

  To Younglings, accustomed as they are to lightly tossing away people’s lives—in worthy causes and some not so worthy—that fact might not seem so appalling. And in a sense I saw it more objectively than they. I had studied Youngling wars, both those of Toris and those of countless other worlds, and I understood that though innocent people do die, it is unavoidable and natural. I had told Kari that the people killed in the Occupation had not died in vain, and I had meant it. But those people had not died through any act of mine.

  We of the Federation do not kill. We are not casual about human life. The Service eschews violence, and agents are at all times unarmed. We gamble our own lives, yes, and sacrifice them if necessary; but we do not intentionally take those of others. I did not see how I, personally, could ever go through with such a thing.

  Yet if there should be nuclear war, those men would die anyway. For me to kill them would be wrong, but not to do so would be a greater wrong. The fate of a whole planet against the premature death of a few of its people—what other choice had I? When the question was put that way, the demands of the Oath were unquestionable. To pledge that you will value the best interests of a world above everything else means that if you must, to save that world, you will sacrifice whatever it is that one loses by committing an act as terrible as premeditated killing.

  I knew that I would lose something. I knew that I would not be quite the same person after it was over. But, staring into the murky depths of the river, I also knew that I was going to plunge into it that night and swim downstream, as Randil undoubtedly had, to find the ship.

  *

  The remaining daylight hours were interminable. I didn’t go back to the hospital, and though I knew Kari would be frantic when I didn’t show up at the apartment either, there was just nothing I could tell her that would not be worse than my failure to appear. Randil, of course, had made no more dates with her; it would be a day or two before she became aware of the fact that he was also missing. By that time either I would be back to help her face what she must, or I would have disappeared permanently—and in the latter case Kari might not have long to worry about anything.

  I was aware that my chances were slight. There was no way out of Cerne save by the river, and I did not know the river patrol system as Randil did. Meleny had doubted whether even he could manage it without breathing apparatus; although knowing that he had obviously done so when leaving the city was encouraging, it was no true assurance that I’d be equally successful. And supposing that I did get past the guards safely, what then? Would I be able to reach the ship?

  The one hope was that Randil had not gone too far from the river before summoning the landing craft. There was a fairly good possibility that he hadn’t. He had not wanted to conceal it, so he would have had no reason to go off into the hills as Varned would have. And since the military authorities who had taken charge were aiming at secrecy, they would be more likely to camouflage the ship than to attempt to move it prematurely and in broad daylight. Wherever it was, though, it was undoubtedly well guarded. My ability to approach within psychokinetic range would depend on the available cover, the presence of floodlights, and all sorts of unpredictable variables.

  And then, of course, there was the very questionable issue of whether I could ever swim upstream, back into the city. That was a minor consideration, to be sure, but for Kari’s sake I hoped it would be possible even if I failed to destroy the ship; and if I didn’t fail, it would be my job to resume my observation duties. The risks of the return would be still greater than those of the trip out, however.

  I did not allow myself to think of the truly central problem, the moment when I would actually come to the point of setting off an explosion in which unsuspecting people would die before my eyes.

  It would have been useful to take the River Street bus to the city limits, where I could have gotten a look at the guard setup at the bridge that marked the outer bounds of legal traffic; but I did not dare. I had been told that I was under surveillance, and while it probably hadn’t been close surveillance so far, I might well be followed for the next few days. My failure to go back to work after my interview with the police would be dismissed as simple laziness, but any trip to Cerne’s outskirts could arouse suspicion.

  So I did my best to act like a typical kitchen worker guiltily snatching a rare and unexpected opportunity to loaf. I crossed the river by ferry in order to reach the park, which was the only place in the downtown area
where I would have free access to the water. There I stretched out on the grass, letting the sun warm me, and forced myself to perform the mental exercises through which I had been taught to relax under stress. I would need rest, I knew, if I was to get through the coming night’s ordeal, for the previous night had been sleepless.

  I would also need food to keep my strength up, though despite having skipped both breakfast and lunch I had little appetite after my hours of self-imposed relaxation. I entered a nearly empty café across from the park and determinedly downed a nourishing but tasteless meal. For a while I was afraid that it was not going to stay down, but fortunately it did.

  There was still some time to wait before it would be dark enough to try the swim. Next door was a tawdry cinema; I went in and sat through two showings of a film that I cannot even remember the name of. It had few patrons, none of whom seemed to be watching me, but I kept track to be sure that everyone who had arrived soon after me left before I did. When I came out again, I went directly to the narrow strip of beach. It was deserted; since curfew had not yet sounded, no patrolmen were on duty. Hesitation would merely increase the risk. I took off my shoes, tying their laces around my belt so that I need not abandon them, and waded into the current.

  The water was dirty and ill-smelling, and much colder than I had expected. It felt horrible. As quickly and as quietly as possible I got out into the deep channel and plunged under. I had no idea of the distance I would have to swim, and I knew that I must find out how well I could hold my breath before approaching the patrolled area.

  Breathing exercises are a useful form of discipline, an aid in learning to bring automatic processes—both physical and mental—under voluntary control; they have sometimes been used as such even by Younglings. I had developed a fair amount of skill early in my training, but as a means to an end, not in anticipation of putting it to practical use. And part of the trick lies in slowing your bodily functions so that you won’t need so much air; you cannot do that and swim at the same time. The current, to be sure, was with me; I could never have fought it. Just the same, I found that although I could stay down far longer than any Torisian could have, it might not be long enough to get me past that guarded bridge.