The Far Side of Evil

by Sylvia Engdahl

  He was helpless, he realized—as helpless as Elana herself. He had started something that he was powerless to stop.

  At that moment the phone rang, and Randil snatched it with relief, assuming that there had been a last-minute decision to conciliate him. There hadn’t. The voice that spoke was that of Commander Feric.

  “The final interrogation of the agent will take place tonight,” he announced ominously. “If you wish to be present, I will send a car for you.”

  “No—” Randil’s protest came out as a scarcely audible gasp.

  “You’ve changed your mind? I think I can promise you better results this time. I know this agent thoroughly; she is incapable of facing what I shall confront her with. I have been lenient too long. But I must admit she’s earned my respect, in a sense, and I hoped not to have to use extreme measures.”

  Randil pulled himself together, knowing that he must do so if he was to assume any trace of his responsibility. “Send your car,” he said shortly.

  He did not believe he could endure what he would witness, yet he must try. It was all he could do for Kari. He had brought this on her not in a noble cause, as he had naïvely imagined, but through his own stubborn misjudgment; he had doomed the person he most cared for—along with her entire civilization. There was no redemption for him. There was only one thing left, his love. He could, if he had the courage, communicate that love, provided that Elana had indeed awakened Kari’s latent telepathic faculties. Through love, he could give Kari what she had always lacked: the sustaining knowledge that evil, even victorious evil, was not the most powerful force in the universe.

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  Chapter 8

  The room in which we are now waiting might be, I suppose, termed a dungeon, though it’s far from dark since its walls are whitewashed and it is illuminated by a number of those dazzling lights of which our captors seem so fond. There are no furnishings except a large, solid table and some wooden benches that we’re not allowed to sit on. We are standing at attention; this is a requirement aimed at taxing our endurance, and naturally there are several guards present to enforce it.

  I am afraid. I am more afraid than I’ve ever thought it possible to be. All the answers have evaporated; all the solutions have proved futile. Kari is in a very terrible situation, and I know I’m not going to be strong enough to see this through.

  She has been transformed, to be sure. She didn’t panic yesterday at the Commander’s threats; she walked back to our cell, in fact, with her head high and a confidence that approached elation. For the first time in her life, she had found out what it was to meet a frightening experience without being thrown by it, and her courage had burst forth like water from a once-frozen spring. The infamous pain machine had been to her the ultimate terror, and she had faced it, and she was unharmed! I had promised that she would not suffer pain under any circumstances. It hadn’t entered her head that they would kill her, much less what that process might involve. In the morning, I knew, I would have to prepare her; and I did not see how I could find the fortitude.

  But they did not wait until morning. Sometime, around midnight I think, our cell was entered by a hard-faced female guard who ordered us to strip, handing us the briefest of shapeless gray knit garments to cover our nakedness. Kari cringed, speechless, but she obeyed with more poise than I would have thought possible from her. I too recoiled in horror, not from the indignity of it—for I had undergone worse more than once during the course of my imprisonment—but from the loss of those precious bits of bread in my pocket. As I removed my prison uniform, I managed to snatch a few crumbs, rolling them into a pellet within my clenched fist; I knew that our clothes would very likely disappear with the guard, which indeed proved to be the case. “Ready yourselves,” she told us harshly. “You are being taken downstairs soon.”

  Kari, unfamiliar with the prison jargon that I had heard from the guards, didn’t catch the implication of that, and I did not enlighten her. The fact was that downstairs meant not the ground floor but the basement, and the interrogation rooms of the basement were of a notoriously different nature from Commander Feric’s well-furnished office. Few prisoners who went “downstairs” ever returned.

  Quickly I ripped the wires loose from the camera and microphone again, which presented no problem now that I had once “seen” them, though the guards would surely be mystified by such a freakish “accident” occurring twice. Then I opened my hand, holding the bread pellet out to Kari. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, with as reassuring a smile as I could force. “I was able to hide one while she wasn’t watching.”

  Kari reached for it, and then, suddenly, she drew back. “But Elana,” she protested, “where’s yours?”

  Too late, I saw my mistake. I should have claimed to have already swallowed it! My hasty attempt to cover up did no good; Kari wasn’t fooled. “You’re lying,” she asserted bluntly. “There’s only one, and you’re giving it to me.”

  “Yes, of course,” I admitted.

  “But that’s not right! You’re the one with the important secret, so you’ve got to have it. The interrogator told us he’d try whatever he’s planning on you first.”

  I had backed myself into a corner. If she were to learn that the “drug” was superfluous for me, she would lose her faith in it; it would be useless for her, too. What lay before us was undoubtedly pretty ghastly, and without the support of the placebo Kari would have no chance at all. We would be right back where we started: She would suffer horribly, and in the end I might crack up.

  Yet there was still a way out. “We’ll toss for it, if you insist,” I said confidently, knowing that through psychokinesis I could control the throw to let her win.

  “That’s too risky. I don’t know anything important, so it doesn’t matter what happens to me, but if you broke down, they’d have what they need to start the war.”

  I had no choice but to use my ultimate weapon, the half-truth that I still dared not mention aloud. You do know something important, I reminded her. You know that they can get what they want through Randil, so it would come to the same thing in the end.

  Kari paled. Oh, Elana, then there’s no hope at all. Not for any of us, not even for the world!

  I put my arm around her trembling shoulders. “Yes, there is,” I said quietly. “Kari, as I’ve said before, situations like this aren’t always as hopeless as they seem on the surface. It’s possible to face up to them, and you’ve just proved it.”

  “I’ve proved it? How?”

  “By recognizing that underneath, you’d prefer to go through something really horrible rather than take a chance on letting millions of people be harmed.”

  “Well, of course I would—”

  “But you didn’t know it till now, did you?”

  She stared at me, surprised. “I guess I didn’t.”

  “What people may have told you about torture isn’t true,” I continued levelly. “Nobody can be forced to tell anything. There’s always a choice. The choice you make depends on what sort of person you are and what’s at stake, but it’s a free choice. We’re not robots, and we can’t be controlled. The interrogator thinks we can, but then, he thinks everybody ought to be controlled, so his judgment isn’t very reliable.”

  “I—I guess I see,” she murmured thoughtfully. “If we agree that he can control us, it’s the same as agreeing to their whole system—to everything we hate about it!”

  “That’s right.” I made her face me. “Kari, have you ever experienced pain? Bad pain, I mean, worse than what you were given the first day with the machine?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Well, I have. I’m going to be honest about it: n some ways it’s more terrible than anything you imagine beforehand. But in another way it’s less so. Panic is the worst part; you can keep your head, provided you don’t panic and start worrying about what’s coming instead of what’s happening. And as long as you keep your head, you still have that free choice! So you see,
whichever of us has to face this without the drug isn’t going to give away any secrets, no matter how bad things get.”

  Kari had come a long way since her arrest. Before, I doubt if she would have dared to follow such a line of reasoning through, but she had learned to know herself better. Unfortunately, this self-knowledge had come too late to do her much good, unless Randil had managed to destroy that ship. The chances of that, I realized, were slim. Even if he had destroyed it, I might not find out in time, and Commander Feric’s conscience might not prove as strong as I had claimed; it might not count for as much as his desire to save face. I had no illusions. But at least she would not suffer.

  “Let’s toss,” I said with forced brightness.

  “All right,” Kari agreed. “What shall we use for a coin?”

  And there we were stumped. We had no coins, naturally, but neither did we have anything else, not so much as a button. The cell was bare.

  The faded, ill-fitting garments in which we were clad were old and worn; a thread was raveling from the shoulder strap of Kari’s. She broke it off, in two pieces, saying, “We’ll draw straws. The longest wins.” She clutched them in her fist, ends protruding, and held it out to me.

  I gasped. Over this I had no psychokinetic control! Clairvoyance? I wasn’t good enough; I could not do it on the spur of the moment, without mental preparation. Telepathy? All I learned that way was that she hadn’t kept track herself.

  “Hurry and draw,” Kari urged. “The guards may come for us any moment.”

  Helplessly, I drew—and I won.

  “There, it’s settled,” Kari declared, valiantly suppressing the tremor of her voice.

  “No,” I protested. “No, Kari, I can’t accept it! You’d never have been arrested if it hadn’t been for me; it’s my responsibility.”

  She turned away, her eyes brimming with tears. “I suppose you’re right,” she faltered, “in thinking you’ll do better than me, since you’ve got so much more courage than I have.” Sensing her emotions, I could feel her newfound confidence begin to melt, and with sudden insight I realized that to spare my own sensitive feelings I was destroying the only real good I had ever brought to Kari.

  For once in her life she had done a truly brave thing. For once, she had understood herself for the person she really was. It was better to let her suffer pain than to rob her of that.

  “I haven’t any more courage than you,” I asserted quickly. “I only thought that since the whole mess was my fault … but that’s past, and we’re both in it now.” I was defeated. I did the only thing I could do: I gave in gracefully and swallowed that irreplaceable bread pellet myself.

  *

  A few minutes later we were taken to this basement dungeon, and whether either of us will ever leave it is a question best left unasked. Commander Feric is not here at the moment, for he has given us two hours in which to “think things over.” We have also been given explicit and graphic instructions on what to think about. We were shown various instruments, the use of which was thoroughly described, and we were forced to examine some quite dreadful photographs. I shall not record the details; they are unspeakable.

  So far, Kari has been upheld by our ongoing telepathic contact. Back in our cell I overlooked the fact that because of my original ruse she would interpret her continuing ability to communicate with me as a sign that her first dose of the “drug” hadn’t yet fully worn off. On our way down here, though, she asked apprehensively, How much longer will we be able to “talk” this way? I realized then that unless I devised an adequate explanation, she might lose even her command of the telepathy that is usable at will between an agent and a once-initiated Youngling.

  We’ll keep right on, I told her. Your mind has learned the trick now, and mine’s so sensitive from having taken the drug repeatedly that it’ll compensate for yours not being reinforced.

  My mind has learned the trick? How could it, when it was simply being affected by the drug?

  Mind-changing drugs don’t alter your mind. They only release what’s already there. That’s the big danger of the bad ones: People have ended up in the hospital, you know, because they kept on feeling the effects long after they’d taken the stuff.

  Could it work that way with this? Not only for the telepathy, but for—for the other, too?

  I dared not give too positive an assurance, for however strong I made it there would be doubt in her, and the defense against pain is too elusive a skill to permit any doubt. I couldn’t jeopardize her trust in me if I was to sustain her during the ordeals to come. Still, there was a bare chance.

  Possibly, I hedged, if you go into this acting as if it will— not letting yourself be afraid. You’ve nothing to lose by trying.

  Since she had great faith in my judgment, she made a gallant effort to take this advice. She still had no suspicion, at that point, of what was in store for her; she was envisioning pain, perhaps severe pain, but nothing beyond. I had decided against any attempt to prepare her. It was best, I decided, to take things as they came. A person who is about to die deserves a chance to come to terms with herself; but if the Commander intended to kill Kari, she would be given more than enough opportunity. One thing I could be sure of was that whatever he was planning would not be over quickly.

  Now, of course, she is better informed; Commander Feric tried hard to crack her composure. I knew when he began how it would be: He would draw it out, concentrating his main effort on the anticipatory phase, because he is convinced that if I break at all, it’ll be while there’s a chance of saving Kari, and he doesn’t doubt that in the end she’ll plead with me to do so. We’re probably going to go through a lot of rigamarole designed to frighten us, I had warned her as we entered the room. The Commander is a real expert at it! Don’t panic, and don’t take all that’s said too seriously.

  But it was impossible not to take the things we were shown seriously. Kari is, I believe, somewhat benumbed by shock. Between the overwhelming events of the past two days and her discovery of the courage she never dreamed was in her, she has become unable to assimilate the fact that what’s threatening her is real. Her self-possession astounds her; sick as she is with dread and revulsion, her thoughts are coherent and she’s steady on her feet. I’ve cautioned her that this time she must show no fear, feigned or otherwise, because I don’t think Commander Feric will begin on her until she seems ready to beg me for mercy. He will start with me, in the hope that her newfound poise will be destroyed by what she observes.

  So here we stand, and we are indeed thinking things over, and though we’re agreed that we must not yield, I’m very much aware that when it comes right down to it, we may not have what it takes to do otherwise. And even if we do have, it will be a dark victory. I’ve turned my mind to “recording” so that I won’t dwell on that darkness, for Kari must not sense my despair. She has found something wonderful, and she must keep it to the end. There’s a way through this, I’ve assured her. Not out of it, perhaps, but through.

  Elana, she mused, do you remember the fortune-teller who told me I was destined to do something brave?

  Of course.

  Could he really have had knowledge of the future?

  Maybe not in the way you mean. But he knew a great deal more than most people in this world. I decided, suddenly, to tell her the facts, for it was a time to face the grim truth rather than to avoid it. He was involved in the same thing we are, Kari; he was my—my contact, and Randil’s, too. Randil was with him when they arrested him.

  Oh… Her feelings surged through me: surprise mingled with grief.

  They killed him, I admitted, yet he wasn’t afraid. That’s what I wanted you to know: He was wiser than any of us, and he truly wasn’t afraid.

  She didn’t respond for a long time. Then abruptly she asked me, Do—do you still believe what you once said about God?

  Yes, I declared positively.

  After your memory came back, did you know anything more about where things are leading?


  I can’t explain all I know, I told her, not saying why. And there’s a lot that nobody has ever known. A pattern exists, though. Underneath there are answers; you’ll see. But I can’t see, myself.

  My spirit has forsaken me. I’ve said the ritual phrases over and over; still, they’ve left me cold, unmoved. All the certitude, all the trust, all the lovely words about darkness being part of the fabric of the way things are, with good winning in the end no matter how much individual people have to suffer… Well, I still believe those things intellectually, but I don’t feel them. They no longer help. I’m still willing to die for them if need be, but that doesn’t prove much because I’m not at all sure that I want to be alive anyway. It’s an awful thing to say, but I really don’t care if I’m ever rescued or not. Because having once stopped feeling the good, I can’t imagine ever feeling it again.

  It’s the same universe, you see, as it has been all along. There is no more evil in it—or less good—than there was before this happened. The only change is in me; my eyes have been opened to a view I hadn’t imagined before. And it hurts, and it will always haunt me, and if I am rescued, then years from now on some other planet I’ll wake in the night and picture Kari’s face, and feel her anguish … and I don’t know if I’ll be able to do my job there, either.

  Randil has not appeared. I fear that if by some miracle he has destroyed the ship, I won’t be told until just after the decisive point—whether I confess, or whether I let Kari die—which will mean that either way the Commander’s campaign to make me hate myself will succeed. On the other hand, if the morning’s shock didn’t change Randil’s mind, the destruction of Toris itself can’t be held off much longer. In that case what we’re about to face may prove meaningless; yet we’ve still got to face it, and I only hope that for Kari’s sake Randil will be brave enough to come.