The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Engdahl

Author:Sylvia Engdahl [Engdahl, Sylvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: scifi, space, space travel, telepathy, interstellar, dictatorship
Publisher: Ad Stellae Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*

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.

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