The Far Side of Evil

by Sylvia Engdahl

  *

  Randil, in the luxurious but well-guarded suite provided for him at the residence of Cerne’s military governor, was deeply despondent after his telepathic exchange with Elana. His disillusionment with the Service was complete, his hope of saving Toris shaken, and on top of all that, he was sickened by the to-be-expected but still abhorrent cruelty of the Younglings for whom he had sacrificed so much.

  He looked out on the city, its lights dimming in the grayness of dawn, and thought bitterly that he had indeed been naïve, although not in the sense Elana had meant when she had accused him of it. He didn’t believe for a moment that there were any plans afoot to send his ship on a bombing mission. But to picture her at the mercy of the SSP…

  He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself, not after what they had done to Varned. Yet underneath he was. Varned, at least, had not been tortured; and while Randil had known all along that torture was standard practice among the Torisians, as among most other Younglings, it was less of an abstraction when it happened to someone he knew.

  Elana, to be sure, could cope. She had had the appropriate training, and she had chosen imprisonment voluntarily, with her eyes wide open. Chagrined, he realized that he’d misjudged her just as he had misjudged Varned. Both of them had in their own way lived up to the Oath with absolute seriousness. How tragic, he thought, that they had both been misled by a policy that was so ruthless beneath its apparent idealism!

  For he now saw with horror that it was even more ruthless than he had supposed. He had known when he dismantled the ship’s automatic signaling mechanism and destruct device that the Service would take a dim view of a Federation landing craft being in the possession of Younglings, but, not realizing how closely that craft would be guarded, he had assumed it would simply be called back to orbit or perhaps destroyed while empty. That someone might vaporize it even at the cost of Youngling life had not occurred to him before. The new awareness hurt; Randil did not see how any Federation citizen, let alone a sworn agent, could consider the taking of life to be the lesser of two evils. In his heart, though, he had to admit that Service policy would demand just such an interpretation. That the Oath itself might demand it was something he could not bring himself to accept. And that Elana—Elana, of all people—should be willing to go that far, well, that was the worst shock of all.

  He could forgive her for denouncing him to the police; he knew she had honestly believed that his action would be ultimately harmful to the Torisians. But he found her determination to destroy the ship more difficult to condone. He could not understand her conviction that she would be capable of destroying it, much less her belief that he himself could do so.

  At any rate, Randil thought, he had learned why no attempt had yet been made to embark for Juta. That had puzzled him, since the authorities had obtained all the information they needed, and inexplicably, they seemed less and less eager for his advice. Lately they had almost seemed to be concealing something from him. No wonder; they surely wouldn’t want a Jutan to suspect that his gift to them had been sabotaged!

  Elana’s explanations from the sensory deprivation tank had been scarcely coherent, and for that he couldn’t blame her. Sensory deprivation, he knew, did strange things to people’s minds. Undoubtedly it had given her a distorted concept of her captors’ plans. She had taken a fearful risk in letting herself slip so close to the brink of insanity—and how unnecessary! Her whole gambit was unnecessary and pointless, for she was certainly wrong in her contention that the Neo-Statists would cold-bloodedly bomb other nations. No one could be so depraved as to start a nuclear war on purpose, without any provocation at all.

  The men with whom he had been working did not seem depraved. They had been very friendly. To be sure, they had made him a virtual prisoner, which had been a surprise. They had explained, however, that it was a necessary precaution for his own safety, and in this he thought them sincere. Naturally, they couldn’t risk letting anything happen to a man whom they believed to be the envoy of the planet Juta.

  A still bigger surprise had been the authorities’ insistence on keeping the ship secret, yet the explanation offered for that had also seemed reasonable. The people might panic, he had been told, if they learned that Juta was inhabited. They’d fear an invasion. Randil had been astonished, never having looked at his story that way, but on reflection he had conceded that it could happen. The Torisians, after all, believed themselves the only intelligent race in the universe, and to find out otherwise would be upsetting when they had no way of knowing that not even an aggressive young interstellar empire would invade a planet with a civilization as highly developed as theirs. Perhaps it was just as well that he hadn’t brought the ship into the city after getting aboard , as he had originally planned.

  He had been unable to do so because it had been observed during its unpiloted descent to the riverbank; he’d had barely time to disable the signaling and destruct devices before troops had reached it. He had welcomed their arrival, for he had made no attempt at concealment and hadn’t anticipated that they themselves would do so. There had been no trouble in convincing them that he had come from outer space. In the first place, the ship itself constituted proof: Its alien origin was indisputable, and he had taken several officers on a trial run into orbit, safe from detection by the starship because of the landing craft’s shields, which gave off too much radiation for use near the ground but which effectively guarded against discovery outside the atmosphere. He had gone far enough out for Toris to be seen as a globe, and his passengers had been, to say the least, impressed.

  Later, when they had checked his background, they had recognized his published articles—which he had proved that he had submitted under a pen name—as further corroboration of his claim to be the emissary of another world, for the unique quality of those articles was by no means lost on the scientists of Cerne. To the government, he had told the truth, although not the whole truth. He had confessed his illegal entry to the city via the river, explaining that he had wished to observe the Cernese people before handing the ship over to them, and he had been believed. No one had any cause not to believe him; besides, he had offered conclusive evidence of his alien birth by submitting to X-rays that revealed subtle differences between his anatomy and that of a Torisian. Few agents could, like Elana, pass medical scrutiny without being classed as freaks.

  Randil’s discussion with his “hosts” had required wit and patience. He had been questioned for hours by men who hadn’t the faintest notion of the structure of the universe, one of whom had actually asked him to clarify the distinction between a planet and a star! They had demanded detailed information about the ship, seeming quite astonished that he could explain no more than the instructions for piloting it, which struck them as fantastically simple in comparison to the process of controlling the primitive aircraft with which they were familiar. In vain he had pointed out that he was not an engineer, and that they would hardly expect one of their own young pilots to create a complete set of blueprints for a jet plane. Eventually, however, he had gotten a chance to talk to some scientists—intelligent, perceptive people whose curiosity about the universe was genuine—and they, at least, were able to understand why he could tell them little concerning the ship’s design, which was more than could be said of the military men.

  Naturally, everyone had been most eager to hear about the civilization of Juta, but on that subject Randil had been steadfastly silent. He had simply stated that the Jutans offered friendship, but that as a condition of any exchange of knowledge, a delegation from Toris must make the trip to Juta alone, without any aid beyond the gift of the spacecraft. He himself, he had added, would stay behind on Toris to demonstrate Juta’s good faith. That had been the most plausible story he could think of, and to his amazement it was accepted readily. The only hitch was that he had been placed under guard, when he had expected to drop out of sight once he had taught the Torisians to manage the ship themselves. He had expected to return to the starship, in
fact, and had hidden Varned’s ring in a rock cache by the riverbank—it being of traditional and elaborate Torisian design and therefore a suspiciously inappropriate possession for either a Jutan or an impoverished Cernese university student—so that when the time came he would be able to summon another landing craft. It would be better to go back voluntarily than to wait for the Service to track him down, for to remain where Torisians might find him would be to run an unwarranted risk of disclosure.

  Randil agreed with Elana that an actual disclosure would be damaging; indeed, when he considered the situation with painful honesty, he couldn’t deny that she might also be justified in seeing a potential danger in his having enabled the people of Toris to conquer space too easily. He thought it a lesser danger than the current international situation, however. Yet in maintaining that his action must be nullified, she had implied that the ship shouldn’t be allowed to remain in Torisian hands even for such use as he had intended! That was an appalling implication; how could any agent kill innocent people to forestall such a remote and nebulous peril? Interplanetary war, decades or even centuries in the future? They had no real knowledge that it would occur. It never had before. It was true that no Younglings had ever entered space with the Federation’s assistance before; still the reasoning Elana had presented while explaining why she had denounced him was all very theoretical. Would she have tried to destroy the ship on those grounds alone?

  There was no telling; under normal circumstances she would have left the decision to the starship commander, since, with the risk of prolonging the Critical Stage a long-range one, there would have been no need for her to assume sole responsibility. That need had arisen from her conviction that the ship would be used to deliver nuclear bombs, which if based on fact would be a terrifying and all-too-potent argument. It was a mistaken conviction, he was sure. Yet on that basis, she was delaying the ship’s use. Her ploy was not only pointless but dangerous, Randil believed, for every day of postponement increased the chances that the starship would somehow locate the missing landing craft and take drastic action. He must therefore see to it that the ship got into space, where its shields would protect it, as soon as possible.

  Moreover, he felt a responsibility to Elana, who with the best of intentions was undergoing a very difficult ordeal. With sudden sympathy he realized that she had indeed suffered from her decision as well as from the treatment she was receiving; she was too sensitive not to have. What would he have done in her place, he wondered, if it were truly a choice between an act of murder and imminent war?

  Randil turned from the window and reached for the telephone. Captive though he was, his position did carry some weight. The one constructive step he could take, he decided, was to contact the SSP under the pretense of having heard rumors of a plot against the ship, and to convince them that Elana was entirely innocent of any sabotage.

  *

  The situation has changed. I am in trouble now; deeper trouble than ever before. I’m not sure that I can bear the thing I must bear. I should try to get some sleep, I suppose, but if I discipline myself to put what has happened into words first, it may help me to find an answer.

  Yesterday afternoon I was interrogated again, and at the beginning Commander Feric seemed in a surprisingly affable mood. “So,” he said, “even to sensory deprivation, you’re immune. You’re an amazing young woman, Elana.” He smiled, not at all unpleasantly. “Dr. Sturn thinks you are insane, literally insane,” he informed me. “Only a psychotic would fail to show a reaction to any of the things done to her.”

  I started guiltily, realizing with chagrin that I had slipped out of my role by overcontrolling myself. After all, Younglings have no conscious control over physiological reactions like pulse rate; even I hadn’t, before I was taught. Yet at this very moment my heartbeat and so forth were being monitored by the chair into which I was strapped, and I was valiantly suppressing all evidence of emotion.

  “Dr. Sturn is a fool!” my interrogator burst out. “He looks at test results, tapes, graphs—did you know we have complete records of every moment you have spent in this room?—but he does not often converse with you. He monitors your cell, watching you sit for hours, motionless, staring at nothing, and he calls it catatonic withdrawal. I know better. I’ve listened to the things you say, and I know that something significant is going on in that mind of yours. It’s too good a mind to waste! I want to help you, Elana, I really do, but Dr. Sturn has a lot of influence with the commandant.”

  It was standard interrogation procedure: the unexpected display of sympathy, the seeming desire to side with the victim against a less understanding colleague. I was not taken in. But in this case I thought that the facts had been honestly stated; Dr. Sturn could hardly have known how else to interpret my rigidly controlled responses, much less my frequent private “recording” sessions.

  “In any case,” Commander Feric went on, “I have some good news for you. It’s been decided that you aren’t to be killed.”

  “That’s not news,” I said with a dry laugh.

  “Oh, I don’t mean it the way you think,” he added hastily. “Naturally, we can’t kill you before you’ve confessed, and I’ve known all along that you were intelligent enough to realize that. I’m also aware that you’re not holding out merely for that reason; that’s why I haven’t insulted you with offers of leniency in exchange for your cooperation.”

  Either his memory was short, or he thought mine was; he had made precisely such an offer on the first day. But the point was scarcely worth arguing.

  “What I’m saying,” he continued, “is that you will not be executed for your crimes. There will be a trial for the sake of public appearance, and you will, of course, be found guilty. But I can promise you that you won’t be sentenced to death. You see, I rather admire you, Elana, and because of this admiration, I have convinced the commandant that such a punishment, however greatly deserved, is uncalled for.”

  He paused to let that sink in. I was not fooled; it is a very old trick: the sudden, unanticipated reprieve, the relief that lowers the victim’s defenses—and then the punch line.

  “For once, Dr. Sturn was on my side,” Commander Feric remarked casually. “If you are insane, you obviously need treatment, not punishment. But if you are not, think what it will mean to the advancement of psychiatry! Here is a person who is apparently immune to the fear of death, to pain, to isolation; who displays no shock at forced confrontation with the taboos of the society in which she was raised; who does not even react normally to drugs or to sensory deprivation. Since such immunity would violate every principle known to the science of human behavior, the only explanation is that the limits of endurance are greater than we had supposed. Dr. Sturn and his associates would, I think, be happy to devote years to the exploration of those limits.”

  My heart jumped, and, remembering my previous error, I let it show. Seeing the Commander’s smile as he watched the monitor scope, I made it show even more than my true feelings warranted. The prospect just presented to me, while chilling, was not really dangerous. Weeks or years, it would still be a matter of fortitude; techniques that could penetrate my defenses far enough to deprive me of conscious choice won’t be known to Torisian science for at least another couple of centuries.

  “You don’t have years,” I pointed out. “So whatever Dr. Sturn’s latest theory may be, it doesn’t solve your problem.”

  “Certainly not,” he agreed. “We’re not discussing my problem. We are discussing what is going to happen to you after you confess.”

  “Then it’s a pretty pointless discussion, unless you’re trying to strike a bargain after all.”

  The interrogator’s voice hardened. “There can be no bargains! We both know that I will never get a voluntary confession from you and that I have no more time to waste trying. Your future has been settled, and I am merely giving you the facts: I shall obtain the information I need by force, within the next three days, and after I am through with you, I shall give D
r. Sturn a free hand.”

  “Force? When you’ve just admitted that for all practical purposes I’m immune to force?”

  Commander Feric stood up and as he approached me, looked straight into my eyes. “You’re a realist,” he said. “You’re also both imaginative and remarkably well informed. Surely you know that I haven’t yet exhausted all the possibilities.”

  So at last we were coming to it, as I had feared we would sooner or later. My immunity to physical force extended much further than he knew; he could not injure me unless I allowed it, for I had my psychic Shield. But I could not use the Shield. If I did, I would no longer be able to conceal my alien origin.

  “Shall I describe those possibilities?” he asked. “Or would a demonstration be better, perhaps? In this prison we have many spies who are less important than you, and who have therefore been handled less gingerly. Some of them could be sent for…”

  He glanced back at the scope on which my heartbeat was displayed, and I sensed the triumph in him—triumph which, surprisingly, showed no signs of fading, though I succeeded in calming myself as he talked on. “But I doubt that it will be necessary to bother with that,” he said decisively. “I simply ask you to bear in mind what I’ve just explained: You are not going to die when this is over, and if anything is done to you of a permanent nature, you will live with its effects for a very long time.”