I did not have time to worry, for all too soon it was upon me. It was a drawbridge and from some distance away, the last time I had dared surface, I had seen that it stood open. I dove deeper and kept going until I was scarcely conscious, ignoring the ache of my lungs. But it was no use. I could not go without breathing any longer, not while expending the energy to swim. Yet the water above me was illumined by floodlights; if I came up for air, I would surely be seen, and escapees were invariably shot without ceremony.
Then, with sudden elation, I realized how stupid I’d been. It would not matter! Of course the guards would see me, and of course they would shoot; but against those shots it would be permissible to use the Shield. They would never know that their bullets hadn’t injured me: on the contrary, when I went down again, they would assume that I was dead. Randil, perhaps, had resorted to just such a ploy, though he couldn’t have done so while entering the city for fear they would make the connection when he was caught getting out of the water.
Use of the Shield requires no effort; the thing that demands self-control is not using it. I simply relaxed, let myself feel the natural fear of being shot at that would activate my psychic protection, and rose to the surface. Drawing deep, steady breaths, I waited. It didn’t take long. The beam of a powerful spotlight fell across my body, supplementing the floods, and shots were fired from both banks. One was a direct—although harmless—hit. I dove, my lungs well filled, and all was quiet.
After that it was easy. I swam a long way past the floodlit sector of the river before needing to breathe again, and from there on I stayed above water. Over my shoulder I could see the glow of Cerne brightening the sky. Ahead was blackness; but far to the right, on the north bank, sparkled a brilliant cluster of lights.
When I was opposite it, I clambered ashore, untied my shoes from my belt, and slipped into them. Being waterlogged, they were heavier than ever and squished uncomfortably as I walked. As I approached the lights, I could see that they were focused on a tall sheet-metal fence, obviously hastily constructed, beyond which I could not hope to penetrate. But rising above the barricade was a huge, shapeless mass covered with a tent-like canopy. It was about the right size for one of the spherical landing craft I was familiar with; there could be little doubt that I had found what I was looking for.
At the sight of it, I knew that relieved though I was, there was a part of me that was inwardly sorry.
The countryside surrounding Cerne is largely bare of trees, but scattered thickets bordered the river; I was able to get close enough to the fence to do what must be done without exposing myself. Guards patrolled its circumference, and there were a good many of them at the gate. As I watched, a car pulled up to join those already parked nearby. Five or six men got out; they were not all in uniform, and some, I guessed, might be distinguished scientists eager to grasp the unbelievable opportunity they had been offered to examine the product of a technology surpassing their own. And they would die! I thought in anguish. Why couldn’t they have come ten minutes later?
Some Torisian scientists, even the tools of the dictatorship, had a deep and sincere interest in the universe beyond their planet. Through such people alone could the vital space program be initiated. Was the damage irreversible? In warding off an immediate nuclear attack, might I not be killing one of the men destined to play a key role in bringing Toris’s Critical Stage to a close?
I couldn’t know. The Service would never know. From this point on, if a nuclear war did occur, we could never be sure that our actions hadn’t caused it.
I sank to my knees, exhausted and shivering, my soggy clothes clinging to my skin. The bushes that concealed me offered no protection from the raw wind. Randil? I called silently. It was quite possible that Randil was inside the enclosure, and if he was, I must warn him. He might be able to send the ship back into orbit. If not, perhaps on some pretext he could get everyone out, or at least save himself; but failing that, he must be given the chance to take the initiative. The sacrifice of an agent’s life is always fully voluntary, except in the rare case where only an imposed decision can prevent serious harm to a Youngling world.
Randil? I repeated. Randil, are you there? I got no answer; still I knew he might “hear” and yet withhold response. So I went on to summarize the situation, not omitting a frank statement of how I had come by my knowledge. Randil, I concluded resolutely, if you can’t get that landing craft away from here, we’ve got to vaporize it. You see, don’t you? Will you do it, or shall I?
He was not in there. I couldn’t believe that he would choose to evade such a choice, for whatever his failings, Randil was no coward. Probably, they had given him comfortable accommodations elsewhere; believing him an envoy from another planet, they would treat him with respect, though they wouldn’t let him out of their sight.
I couldn’t delay any longer. My nerve wasn’t increasing, and besides, still another car might arrive soon. Shutting out all distractions, I closed my eyes and visualized the ship, attempting to initiate a process for which I had been specifically trained. But my mind was not ready; I got nowhere.
Psychokinesis, like all psychic powers, is enhanced by emotion; to accomplish it over this distance a very strong emotional impetus would be required. I felt plenty of emotion, all right. The trouble was that my feelings were conflicting ones. Psychic control depends upon absolute sureness. It’s impossible to use your powers in a way that you believe wrong unless you happen to be a psychopath with no conscience at all.
Realizing that, I felt a flash of comfort. To throw all the force of my mind to destruction would be painful, but I need not fear it, for I could not carry the thing through unless I honestly thought it to be the lesser evil confronting me. The really unethical course would be to hide from the issue, refuse to face it squarely; if I did that, I would be abdicating my responsibility not only as an agent but as a human being.
I faced it. I imagined that ship rising from the riverbank, speeding out over oceans and landmasses, descending noiselessly upon city after city of the nations that had rejected the dictator’s rule. I imagined the fiery cloud pillars; the irreclaimable land; the millions who would die in the blasts and the rest who would die slowly, in pain, and without hope of any future for humanity … and the emotion was magnified in me, and the sureness came.
The psychokinetic force to be exerted was slight: simply a matter of throwing one small switch hidden beneath a protective panel on the landing craft’s control board. The complications arose not only from the distance involved but from the fact that I couldn’t see what I was doing. My talent for clairvoyance is small, and I knew I could not expect it to be of much use at this range. I had been taught the position of the switch, however. I could picture it clearly. I had, in practice sessions, handled a dummy switch successfully under comparable conditions.
So when after repeated tries the ship did not vaporize, I knew there was something wrong.
Was I too far away? No, I had been still farther during some of the training sessions, and my emotions were much stronger than they had been then. I had to destroy that ship—I had to! If I didn’t, it would destroy Toris: if not immediately, then surely through prolongation of the Critical Stage, as I had known before even hearing of its imminent use for delivering nuclear bombs. There was no doubt left in me at all. Nor was there any debilitating doubt of my own mental power; I had received too rigorous a course of psychic conditioning for that.
The switch itself was not operative. There could be no other explanation for my failure.
None of the men guarding the ship could have tampered with that switch; it was well hidden, and they would not have known what it was for. Despairingly, I realized that Randil had again anticipated me. He had guessed that I or some other agent would eventually do just what I had done; without knowing the urgency, he had taken no chances on someone’s considering the potential for disclosure too great. He had disconnected the destruct switch at the same time as he had disabled the device that would
have allowed the landing craft to be located by the starship. Perhaps he would have done so anyway, simply as a precaution in case the Torisians ever found it and decided to experiment.
I was defeated; I could not repair the circuits without getting inside the ship, and that I could never manage. There were just too many guards.
As for my next move, I had learned that to swim upstream would be impossible, considering the strength of the current, even if I were not so tired. Moreover, I could not use the trick of surfacing again. The guards would be suspicious, having failed to recover my body, and if I were seen a second time they would use boats. Even if I evaded them, they would watching the riverbanks within the city; people entering illegally were assumed to be spies and were therefore investigated more thoroughly than mere escapees. It didn’t much matter whether I went back, I supposed, the outlook for the future being what it was. Still, I would have liked to comfort Kari…
I sprawled on the ground there in the dark thicket, heedless of the cold and of the muddiness of my wet clothing, and I sobbed. I really don’t know how long I sobbed. To have nerved myself to the thing and then to fail with such flat finality—it was a crushing letdown. And what would become of me? I could not go on with my original job. I could hide in the hills, probably, and survive; I might get far enough from Cerne to survive a retaliatory nuclear attack. If the fallout level didn’t get too high, I might live for a long time. It was conceivable that I would be rescued, since other agents would eventually try to find me. In the event that Cerne itself escaped attack, they might help me reenter—for they had undoubtedly learned to forge travel permits by now—so that I could observe the last throes of a planet’s dying civilization.
That too, I thought bitterly, was an opportunity the Service had not previously been given.
*
The night passed. Finally, when stars began to fade in the east, I became aware that I must go somewhere. The undergrowth was too sparse to hide me in daylight; otherwise I would have had hopes of waiting around for Randil’s return. If I could ever make contact with him, convince him of the peril, then certainly he would find a way to reconnect the destruct device; but it was unrealistic to think that I could wait without being seized.
Was there any hope at all, I wondered, of Randil’s catching on? Would the men in authority give themselves away? The possibility was slim, yet in theory it existed. The possibility that the starship would locate its missing landing craft existed, too. Given time … if only there were more time! If only there were some way to stall off the attack!
Then suddenly it occurred to me that there might be.
The idea hit me abruptly, breathtakingly, and I began trembling less with cold than with excitement and also, I must admit, with fright. In that moment I knew what I had to do. It was the only feasible stalling action; still, it was a wild, fantastic gamble, and what was more, the better it worked the worse off I would be. I’d need all my resources of wit and self-discipline, not to mention fortitude. But with the stakes so high, wouldn’t the tiniest chance of success be worth trying for?
Leaving the cover of the thicket, I started toward the fenced enclosure. The dim light of predawn was sufficient for me to be seen, though colors weren’t yet discernible, and I could only hope that the sentries hadn’t been ordered to shoot without warning. It would mean sure disclosure to use the Shield at close range; resolutely, I made the mental adjustment to drop it and walked forward unprotected. The men grouped at the gate trained their guns on me but did not fire. I went right up to them, and, calmly, I asked for Randil by name.
Sheer audacity can work wonders, sometimes. They were so stunned that for a minute I thought they might actually let me in, eliminating the necessity for my elaborate alternate scheme. But they recovered before I had managed even a glimpse inside the gate, so I resigned myself to the still bolder tactics that I had planned. I had no illusions about what I was getting into. Yet the hoax had its comic aspects; had my opponents been less formidable, I would have been amused by the thought that I could deceive them best by telling them the literal truth.
“If Randil isn’t here,” I told the officer of the guard, “I’ll wait for him in the ship. He’s expecting me.”
They all stared, appalled, because naturally no one without top-secret clearance was supposed to know that there was any ship. Within seconds they had converged on me. The secret police are not noted for chivalry. I must have been a sorry sight in my soaked and mud-splattered kitchen aide’s uniform, but I was a worse one after I had been subjected to the thoroughgoing search that is their standard procedure. When it was over, one of the younger and less hardened men tossed me a drab raincoat, which was at least voluminous and dry.
Meanwhile, since regular telephones hadn’t been installed yet, the officer had been busy on his car phone; nobody in the SSP ever makes a decision without orders from above. He approached me, scowling. “I know who you are,” he declared. “You visited headquarters yesterday; you put on a good show of denouncing a man whose true identity you must already have known. Why?”
“You tell me,” I suggested insolently.
“All right. You came after information. You were somehow able to interpret statements that you could not have interpreted if you were what we originally thought. You’re no amnesiac; you are an enemy of the People’s State! And you are undoubtedly in league with others.”
“I needed no information about this ship,” I announced in as scornful a tone as I could affect. “Right now I know more about it than you will ever learn. I’m aware, for instance, that there is an explosive device in it, a bomb that can be set off soon or that will, in any case, prevent it from ever reaching its first target—”
He gripped my arm with brutal force. “You are lying! There could have been no sabotage.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, inwardly satisfied. My assertion being true, I had backed it telepathically, and I knew he was hooked. “In any case, you are not likely to find the device. If you were, I wouldn’t have told you; but as the matter stands, it seemed only fair to warn you, considering that as chief of security here you’ll bear the blame.”
That struck home; from his emotions I sensed that his laugh was merely an attempt to save face in the presence of his subordinates. “If it exists, we’ll find it,” he assured me, “because you will show us where it is. You are stupid, like all Libertarian conspirators; by your arrogance you’ve condemned yourself.”
“Nothing I’ve said can prevent the bomb from exploding,” I maintained, “and as for myself, I was already condemned. I’m obviously not going to succeed in eliminating the Jutan and your top scientists along with the ship, and since I’ve blown my cover by trying, there’d be little point in playing innocent.”
“You’re a cool one,” he admitted. “But you’ll lose your coolness. You will tell us everything within your first day of interrogation.”
“Don’t think you can scare me with threats,” I retorted, hoping that in my effort to sound fearless I wasn’t overdoing the melodrama. “After all, if I’d accomplished what I came here to do, I’d have been dead half an hour ago.”
“I am not threatening you with death,” he said ominously.
I was well aware of what he was threatening, and I can’t deny that I felt a surge of terror, wondering if I had overestimated my own stamina. My mouth went dry, for even a trace of self-doubt could be disastrous. There is no guarantee attached to psychic defenses, no matter how thorough your training; if you panic, you lose them.
They handcuffed me and shoved me into a car. As we drove back along the dirt road that paralleled the river, I watched the sun rise, spreading streamers of reddish gold over the multitoothed skyline of Cerne. The guards pressed close on either side of me in forbidding silence. At the checkpoint we paused only briefly, and long before reaching the city’s central district we turned off onto a street that plunged underground for several blocks. Beneath the raincoat my skin turned to gooseflesh. I had passed thro
ugh what was popularly spoken of as the Tunnel of No Return, for on emerging we halted, as I had known we would, before the grim brick facade of the SSP’s newest and most dreaded prison.
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Chapter 6
Well, there it is. That’s how I got here; I tried to crash the gate, they believe, and they arrested me. I knew they would; I knew there wasn’t one chance in ten thousand of my getting inside—but they don’t know that I knew it.
And that’s my scheme, my frantic, last-ditch maneuver to forestall them. I came right out and admitted that I had been attempting to destroy the ship; I even boasted about it. I implied that the plot was a lot more complicated than it was, that it involved other people, their own people, and that it had at least partially succeeded. And they fell for my claims.
So now, since they won’t find anyone else involved, they won’t dare use that ship until they break me.
It’s not that they wouldn’t risk their own men on a mission that might be booby-trapped, but simply that the ship is so important to them that they can’t take any chances with it at all. In their view it’s their one-and-only providential opportunity to conquer the world in one decisive blow, and they’re willing to wait a little while to make absolutely sure that they aren’t jeopardizing that opportunity. They do not expect to wait long. Everybody breaks if enough pressure is applied; that is a basic tenet of their faith.
The Far Side of Evil Page 17
