At the edge of the Enchanted Forest there lived a poor woodcutter who had four sons, the youngest of whom was named Georyn. They were able to earn a meager living by selling wood to the folk of the village, and although there was seldom more than dry bread or thin gruel on their table, they were not miserable.
Yet the brothers, as they grew to manhood, found little satisfaction in their lot. Often, as they toiled at the hewing of a tree on the outskirts of the wood, they stopped to watch the huntsmen of the King ride by to hunt in the Enchanted Forest, which their father had forbidden them to enter. And the eldest son would say, “Ah, if I but had the power of the King and a hundred servants to do my bidding!” And the next brother would laugh and reply, “Myself, I would settle for the King’s treasure, for gold buys all that a man could wish for.” And the next would tell them, “You are both fools, but if a man could win a fair bride such as the King’s daughter, he would be well content.”
Georyn, the youngest, would say nothing; yet in his own heart he would whisper, “Had I the wisdom of the King and his councillors, I would not be merely a woodcutter, and indeed I would not be hungry, nor would the villagers. And I would know the secret of the Enchanted Forest and be free to hunt there, and someday I might go even beyond it!”
Now to that country there came a time of great sorrow, for on the far side of the Enchanted Forest there appeared a monstrous Dragon that breathed fire, and its roaring could be heard far and wide over the land; and many folk fled in terror, fearing that their homes would be laid waste. Many of the King’s huntsmen went to fight the Dragon, yet the Dragon remained and no men returned.
At last the King sent forth a decree, and in every village it was proclaimed: whosoever should free the land of the terrible Dragon would be given whatever reward his heart should desire, even to a half of the kingdom. Yet the people were afraid. If the King’s own huntsmen had failed, how could mere villagers face the monster and kill it? And few men entertained thoughts of the King’s reward.
But the woodcutter’s sons had dreamed long of possessing such as the King could give, and they begged their father for permission to travel to the King and ask his blessing in the quest. The woodcutter himself, however, opposed them. “Even to enter the Enchanted Forest is death for such as you!” he cried. “Yet you talk of dragons! I forbid it; you shall not go.”
The three elder brothers went angrily to their beds and whispered far into the night, making plans to disobey their father and set out together at first light, for they believed their valor equal to that of nobles and huntsmen. But Georyn talked further with the woodcutter, asking, “Why should it be death to enter the Forest, when the King and his followers have hunted there since before I was born?”
“As I have often told you,” replied the woodcutter, “the Enchanted Forest is the home of evil spirits, who have laid a curse on all who go there, though they dare not touch the King’s companions. This was true even before the Dragon appeared to ravage our land.”
“Then if the King should send us, they would not touch us either.”
“Perhaps not. But how could you hope to slay the Dragon, you who have never before held a sword? It is impossible, Georyn.”
Now Georyn knew this, for though he was quite as brave as his brothers, he was not so foolish as to consider himself abler than the King’s huntsmen at killing. But these men had failed, and if they had failed then perhaps the Dragon could not be killed with a sword at all. “There may be a way to overcome the monster, Father,” he said. “But it will not be found by those who fear it! I can have no happiness until I have at least tried.”
And so at last, seeing that he could not dissuade them, the woodcutter allowed his sons to seek the aid of the King. They set forth the next morning, following the river that circled the wood. When they had gone but a short distance, they came to a fork in the path: one way kept to the course of the stream, while the other led to the King’s castle by a shorter route, through the forest.
“Let us take the quickest way,” said the eldest brother.
“That would not be wise,” protested Georyn. “That way leads directly into the Enchanted Forest.”
His brothers laughed, saying, “What, do you believe such foolishness? Do you fear that we will be bewitched?”
“Not all tales of enchantment are foolish ones,” replied Georyn. “There will be a time when we must challenge that which lies within the Forest, but to do so now, unnecessarily, would be no better than folly. We have no knowledge of what we face.”
Thereupon the brothers stopped and debated; for they remembered that they had indeed heard fearsome tales of the Enchanted Forest, and they were not anxious to test the truth of them. So at length they were persuaded to take the familiar way, and for the rest of that day they continued along the riverbank. It was a bright springtime morning; the leaves were young and green, the water sparkled in the sunlight, and as the young men walked, they whistled.
When the sun had sunk low behind the dark profiles of the fir trees, however, the Forest beyond the river loomed larger, both in the brothers’ eyes and in their thoughts. The foaming roar of the water seemed less cheering, and upon the opposite shore a faint trace of mist began to form. And then it was that the brothers came upon a small stone hut, which surprised them greatly, for it had not been there in the past when they had cut wood near that place. As they were wondering at this, a tall, dark-haired maiden stepped forth from the hut; and the woodcutter’s sons stood silent in amazement and awe, for she was unlike any mortal maiden they had ever seen, and they knew at once that she was an enchantress.
I was not supposed to be in the landing party at all—I was supposed to be studying. That was part of the bargain when Father decided we should go in the first place; I agreed to prepare for First Phase exams on shipboard, to make up for the time I would be missing at the Academy. For that matter, the Academy itself wouldn’t have granted me leave on any other basis. Father’s wish was enough to get us passage, since the starship was to make a stop at the world on which our family reunion’s to be held, but even that wouldn’t have carried much weight with the Dean.
A Service starship is a good place to study; you have lots of free time at your disposal, especially if you are neither part of a survey team nor a member of the crew. But who wants to study all the time? I had never been off my home world before; since I’m from a Service family, even entering the Academy hadn’t meant a trip for me. And I was dying to see something! I knew that I would not be permitted to accompany any regular team for a long time. So when the Andrecian situation came up and Father was appointed Senior Agent to handle it, I begged him to take me with him.
“It’s out of the question, Elana,” he said gravely. “We are not going on a sightseeing trip. You know that.”
“Evrek’s going!”
“Evrek has completed Third Phase; he has taken the Oath. He’s ready for a field assignment, and while I wouldn’t have chosen a thing like this for his first one, it’s his job.”
It was true enough that Evrek and I were not really in the same category anymore. The Oath makes a difference, personally as well as officially; since Evrek was sworn, I’d hardly known him. Practically from the moment of his investiture, which had taken place only a few days before we left home, he had seemed changed in some subtle way that I couldn’t quite define. One thing was sure: it wasn’t only the new white uniform. Agents don’t wear their uniforms anyway, except on dress occasions.
But as you know, Evrek and I are close friends—well, more than friends. Someday we will marry and will be a field team in the same sense that Father and Mother were before Mother was killed, many years ago, on that ill-fated exploratory expedition. Despite the temporary gulf between us, I was not about to stand by while Evrek went down to Andrecia without me.
“Please, Father?” I persisted. “I won’t be in the way, I promise!”
“I’m sorry. But it would be dangerous, not only for you but for the mission.”
I didn’t reply aloud; though language is a useful tool, sometimes you get further telepathically. I’m not afraid … and I’ll learn from it!
You’re too young, you’re not yet sworn!
This was about the answer I had expected. Sometimes it seemed that the closer I got to my own investiture, the harder it was to wait. You’re not invested until the end of Third Phase; I wasn’t even through First Phase yet. And I’d nearly forgotten that last year the big hurdle was simply to get admitted to the Academy.
All my life I’ve wanted a career in the Anthropological Service; I’ve lived and breathed it ever since I was old enough to know what a Youngling world is. Of course it’s natural in my case, since besides my parents being Service people my grandfather and grandmother—Mother’s parents, with whom I lived most of my childhood—are both retired field agents. But even for someone with my background, the Academy is not easy to get into. The stories you hear about the entrance tests being such an awful ordeal are true. They’re carefully designed to be, because you’re not meant to pass unless you want to pretty desperately. It’s not just a matter of being smart—though you do have to be, of course—or of having high aptitude for the control of psychic powers like psychokinesis and the Shield as well as ordinary telepathy. It’s more a question of having the right personality. The Service is not about to turn anybody loose on a Youngling world who’s not fitted for the responsibility. So there are all sorts of psychological tests … and some other things they throw in to weed out anyone who hasn’t sufficient—well, fortitude. Being an agent isn’t always fun, and you are supposed to take the first steps toward finding that out before you get in too deep.
So they do everything they can to discourage you—but it’s a very good arrangement, because the Service is not just a job. After all, once you take the Oath you are in for life; it’s irrevocable, and you renounce your allegiance to your native world. There are a number of reasons why it was set up this way, but the main one is that they just don’t want you if you don’t feel that strongly about it. The power to influence Youngling civilizations is not a thing to be taken lightly.
But if you are truly serious about it, if you are willing to make the sacrifices the Oath demands, all the worlds of the universe are open to you! If you are not in the Service you will never see anything but Federation planets, for the worlds of Younglings—peoples who are not yet mature enough to qualify for Federation membership—are strictly off limits to everyone but trained field agents. The reasons are very complex, but what it boils down to is that if Youngling peoples were to find out that they aren’t the most advanced humans in the universe, their civilizations just wouldn’t develop properly. They wouldn’t ever realize their own potential. The Federation doesn’t want to dominate other peoples, only to study them—so we don’t reveal ourselves.
Of course, the Service is more than a chance to travel to exciting places. To begin with, it’s a fellowship like none other. Service people are of all races, from all over the universe; yet we’re like one family. Once sworn, you’re Service first and differences in background don’t matter. There’s not even any rank among agents; though they’re rated by ability and experience and given responsibility accordingly, these ratings aren’t announced. Naturally, for any specific mission someone’s appointed Senior Agent and the rest are bound to obey that person; but at other times and places we’re all peers.
The really big thing about the Service, though, the thing that makes you want to give your life to it, is the opportunity to do something worthwhile … more than worthwhile, actually significant. Because, while our main objective is to study the Younglings, there are occasions on which we do take action. There are times when we may, literally, save a world—save its people, I mean, from slavery or from extinction. Not that we meddle in any planet’s internal affairs; that is absolutely forbidden, for the Federation knows that however benevolent this might seem in some cases, it would be ultimately harmful. But we do try to save Youngling peoples from each other, when we can.
For some Youngling civilizations, the most advanced ones, have starships. It takes a lot less maturity to build a starship than to understand what to do with one when you get it. With their starships, they begin to expand to planets besides their own, which is both natural and right. The trouble is, they don’t stick to uninhabited planets; occasionally they grab one that belongs to somebody else: either they invade it, or they unwittingly destroy its culture through peaceful contact. We stop that if it’s feasible, but we do it in a very quiet manner. Oh, it would be easy to use force! It would be easy to lay down ultimatums and that kind of thing, because we of the Federation have all sorts of powers that nobody else has; but we’d do more harm than good that way.
So we don’t send in a fully armed starship and an army of men. We send two or three field agents, unarmed, just as if it were an ordinary data-gathering expedition.
You may wonder why we don’t simply avoid the trouble in the first place by shielding the Youngling planets, as we shield our own, so that they can’t be found by a science less advanced than ours. Well, it’s a nice idea, but it just wouldn’t be practical. In the first place it would be awfully expensive. You can’t shield only the inhabited planets, you’ve got to shield all the planets in their solar systems, because otherwise any astronomer who took the trouble to calculate planetary orbits would realize that something peculiar was going on. It’s one thing to do this for the Federation solar systems, but something else again to do it for every Youngling system that’s been charted. And even if we could, it wouldn’t solve anything; after all, we’ve explored comparatively few of the millions of Youngling systems that exist.
More than this, though, if on Youngling planets we kept the equipment needed to shield them, there’d be a very substantial risk of disclosure to the people of those planets. And that would be a risk we couldn’t take, because the chances of their being harmed by it would be much greater than the chances of their being picked for invasion. The Service has learned when to leave well enough alone.
It’s a frustrating problem. It’s heartbreaking, even, when you really think about it. We have so much power, yet we can accomplish so little! Our primary mission is to observe and to learn. The sad fact is that Youngling peoples are often wiped out, either through colonization of their planet or through some other disaster that we haven’t any idea of how to prevent … and we may not even know about it until it’s too late. Once in a while, though, it happens that we are in the right place at the right time to come to the rescue. In the case of Andrecia—and I knew that Andrecia must be such a case, for mysterious unscheduled stops aren’t made otherwise—the rescuers were to be Father, Evrek, and a woman named Ilura whom I knew only slightly.
Father had been on leave status, of course, and he had been looking forward to the family reunion, too, not having been back to the world of his birth since before he married Mother. But he was the only unassigned agent on board qualified for such a command; that’s the way it goes in the Service. He had chosen his assistants from among the members of the survey teams aboard. Actually, he had asked for volunteers; this in itself should have told me that he meant what he said about the expected dangers. But all I could think of was finding a way to be included. It didn’t occur to me that to try to get around a Senior Agent’s decision regarding a sensitive mission was hardly the ideal way to start my career. When it’s your own father, you naturally think that he overprotects you and that it’s fair enough to outwit him.
You don’t argue with Father, however. I would have to figure out some other course of action. Meanwhile, I turned back to the text that I had been studying:
It is by now a well-known fact that the human peoples of the universe have similar histories—not that the specific details are similar, but the same patterns emerge on every home world. Each must pass through three stages: first childhood, when all is full of wonder, when the people of a world admit that much is unknown to them, calling it “supernatural,” yet believing; then adolescence, when they discard superstition and revere science, feeling that they have charted its realms and have only to conquer them—never dreaming that certain “supernatural” wonders should not be set aside, but understood. And at last maturity, when the discovery is made that what was termed “supernatural” has been perfectly natural all along, and is in reality a part of the very science that sought to reject it.…
But I don’t want to read about all that, I thought, I want to see it! What sort of people are down there on Andrecia? What sort of emergency is it that’s taken us off course and is serious enough for a team to be sent in—for them to risk contact, maybe, or even their lives?
Contact is a thing that’s seldom permitted, except under very compelling circumstances. Younglings are not allowed to know that the Federation even exists. That’s the most unbreakable rule we have, because a Youngling culture could be irreparably damaged by that awareness. You have to be willing to die rather than make an illegal disclosure; in fact one of the provisions of the Oath binds you to do just that. So contact, when it’s necessary, requires a cover of some sort. And any mission involving this can be very risky indeed.
I canceled out the text and instructed the computer to give me all the facts it had on Andrecia. It didn’t have many. There was a survey not too many years ago, but as the Andrecian culture is a very rudimentary one, there was not much technology for the team to study. The people of the area that had been most closely observed fit into a pattern that was familiar enough: medium height, predominantly light-skinned and fair-haired so far as physical characteristics went, and as for their society, I guess you would call it feudal. Not very advanced; it would be many, many years before the Andrecians, left to themselves, would have developed far enough to give the Service any worry. But they were a very vulnerable people … Andrecia was a good planet, a rich one. Too rich! It didn’t take much imagination to guess the nature of the current trouble.
I’m ashamed to say that to me the idea of our having to save this world from a takeover was a pleasantly exciting one. We’re really going to do something, I thought—not just observe, but act! I didn’t understand very much in those days. I thought of Younglings as interesting but exotic beings, not as people, people with feelings like my own. I had never known any, you see. The whole thing, even the hint of danger, seemed like a game. And I didn’t see how my presence could imperil the mission; sworn or not sworn, I knew the rules. Surely Father didn’t think that I couldn’t be trusted! No matter what we got into …
I knew, with my mind if not yet with my emotions, that the danger could be real. You might think that no Youngling could be much of a match for a Federation citizen, but any field agent knows better. The thing is, you can’t always use your advantage. It’s not only that the use of non-native physical weapons is prohibited—some of the psychic powers are too revealing, too. There’s a rather well-known case where an agent made a small slip, and then had to let herself be put to death for witchcraft rather than go on to an actual disclosure.
You know about things like that, but they don’t really scare you. They’re too far removed from your experience. Then there are other things that you don’t know about … not in First Phase, you don’t. Only of course, if you happen to have gotten so far as to be on board a Service starship, you think you know everything.
I thought so, certainly, when I joined the Andrecia party by the simple expedient of sneaking into the small landing craft that the team was to use and hiding myself in the supply compartment.
I won’t dwell on that incident; it is not an episode that I am proud of. I’ve since been told that initiative and daring are prized in an agent and that you have to be able to go out on a limb, even against policy, when circumstances justify it. They did not justify it in this case, however, and what’s more I had absolutely no conception of what was at stake.
Anyway, if some of what happened to me on Andrecia wasn’t too pleasant, I can’t say I didn’t ask for it.
The Imperial Exploration Corps had founded many colonies, but this one was better situated than most. It was in the northern hemisphere of a rich new planet, near the coast of a large and fertile continent; moreover, it lay at the western edge of an impressive stand of timber. Not that the trees were in themselves of any value, since they must eventually be cleared. But the area served as a temporary buffer between the base camp and the nearest native village. Most natives, it had been learned, were afraid of this forest. They believed it to be haunted.
On a spring afternoon when the building of the colony had barely begun, the apprentice medical officer, Jarel, stood in the clearing and watched the rockchewer charge again and again at the stubborn perimeter of the woods. It was still being used to burn off surface growth; excavation wouldn’t be started for some days yet. The racket was muffled by his pressure suit’s helmet, and the cold flames darting from the nose of the big land-clearing machine looked incongruously fierce. It wasn’t normal for anything so lethal to seem so quiet! A rockchewer was a monstrous piece of equipment shaped rather like some huge prehistoric beast, and it generated an ear-shattering noise.
So this is how it feels, Jarel thought. This is how it feels to be on a new, untouched planet, light-years from our own star; a planet that will soon be an outpost of the Empire because of our work here. All through medical school, this is what I wanted; I never even considered any other sort of internship. Well, now I’ve got it.
It was too bad that the land must be cleared. This was kind of a nice planet, green trees and grass and stuff. It was the third planet of a yellow sun, even: in that, as in other ways, it seemed just like home. But the place was crawling with alien bacteria; not only must pressure suits and helmets be worn until immunity was established, but every inch of ground must be sterilized before any construction could be started. Burn off the trees, level the ground—how else could you take over a hostile world?
There was no other safe way. The first load of colonists had already arrived: a dozen couples, plus their kids, in addition to the fifty or so members of the Corps in the original survey party. They had plenty of hard work ahead of them, and no time to waste regretting the destruction of the native vegetation. But it did seem a pity.
It was a pity about the native population, too.
The natives were pretty primitive, of course. They had no technology to speak of, sort of a feudal setup, no real government, not even any cities—and they weren’t widespread. They weren’t using a fraction of the good land. Certainly they weren’t dangerous. It was rather pathetic, the way they’d been venturing into camp two or three at a time, brandishing swords and trying to look ferocious. One of the temporary barracks had been unpressurized for use as a lockup, and any natives that showed up were being held prisoner. There were, after all, women and children among the colonists, and it was best to be on the safe side. There would be time enough when the colony was set up to see about arranging for a treaty and a reservation. Anyway, Captain Dulard seemed to think so.
You couldn’t really expect Dulard to give a second thought to a bunch of savages that did not represent a potential danger, Jarel realized. As commander, he had enough else to worry about; so long as the natives weren’t strong enough to rise against him, he was satisfied. It wasn’t as if the original inhabitants of this world had any rights under the Charter. If they were anywhere near to that level, the planet wouldn’t have been chosen, but they were not. They were merely humanoid animals. It being Empire policy to avoid wiping out native species where possible, they would be granted tracts of land. Some of them might even prove to be trainable; there was always a labor shortage in a new colony.
Well, that’s the way it goes, Jarel thought. The Empire has to expand; new worlds are needed—and the worlds are taken. He had come to learn how it was done, hadn’t he? He had wanted to take part in the shaping of humanity’s glorious future among the stars?
Only he wished, somehow, that this was an uninhabited world.
No one knew I was aboard the landing craft until we were actually down to the planet’s surface. Hidden as I was, they couldn’t detect me any more than I could see or hear them, and of course I had been very careful to keep my thoughts strictly to myself during the descent. Sometimes Evrek and I communicate too well, and the rapport between Father and myself is even better—not that they can probe my mind, since your full consent’s needed for that, but I still tend to transmit involuntarily when I’m excited. I don’t yet have full conscious control over any of my psychic powers.
A few moments after I felt the ship settle gently to a landing, I came out of hiding. The others were already outside; I had to recycle the airlock. When its outer door slid open I stood there breathing in marvelously free air and sunlight, and I called to them. What a child I was, poised on the threshold of my first new planet, with my happy-go-lucky expectations of grand and glorious adventure! Sometimes I think of it, now that I’m wiser and know that worlds are not playgrounds; I remember how carefree I felt and I’m wistful, for it will never be that way again.
The place where we had come down was an idyllic one, a pastoral spot in which the metallic sphere of our ship seemed almost incongruous. There was a meadow, starred with clumps of yellow flowers, and a fringe of dark woods. Nearby within the forest was a river; the murmur of it could be heard clearly, though the trees hid it from view. The sun, low in the sky, shimmered through a lacy veil of cloud. An alien sun—the first I’d ever seen—yet it didn’t look alien. Dimmer, perhaps, than the one of my home solar system; I could look straight at it as the clouds blew past. But it seemed natural.
On the grass near the ship stood the members of the landing party; all three of them turned and stared at me, and I stared back. Nobody said anything, though I caught Father’s swift thought: Oh no, Elana! Father and Evrek wore ordinary field outfits, clothes more or less like my own, but Ilura was dressed in a long, full skirt, a style that I could only suppose was Andrecian. (Service starships carry all sorts of odd supplies, like homespun cloth, for nobody can predict what a survey team will run into.) When I stopped to think about it, I realized that she was of a race very much like the Andrecians physically, and that she could conceivably pass for one of them—which of course the rest of us could not, our coloring and features being quite different. But it was startling to see her so disguised.
Evrek, I think, was the most upset by my appearance—Evrek, who I’d have thought would be secretly glad to see me! “Are you crazy, Elana?” he demanded as I joined them in the meadow. “Did you think we were going on a picnic or something? It’s a critical mission, and risky. You could get hurt.”
Evrek is funny sometimes. Looking back, I realize that he was truly afraid for me, and because he didn’t want to show that fear, he let it out as anger. And I didn’t help matters any. “Oh, that’s silly!” I said impatiently. “Father won’t let any of us get hurt.”
Father agreed firmly. “Not if I can prevent it, I won’t. And in your case I can. You’re going right back with the landing craft.”
“To the starship? But that would leave you stranded here!”
“We are going to be stranded anyway, until our job’s done. Did you think we’d keep a ship around for someone to find?”
I did not really know many of the details of how a field team operated, I realized. The landing craft could, of course, be returned to the starship’s orbit under automatic control and recalled later, but somehow I hadn’t expected them to do this. It seemed rather drastic, in a way.
Well, in any case, I’d had a glimpse of Andrecia; it hadn’t all been wasted effort. “This is a beautiful planet!” I burst out.
“Yes,” said Ilura. “No wonder the colonists want it.”
“Colonists?” I didn’t have any actual information about what was going on here, other than my own guesses; the official announcement aboard the starship had been very noncommittal.
“You might as well know,” Father said. “There’s another ship here, a ship from a quite powerful young Empire. They’re clearing land for a colony.”
“And we’re going to stop them?”
“We hope so. There are plenty of uninhabited worlds they can colonize. But they’re a formidable people, Elana.”
“But still Youngling,” I said. They were at a high level, I knew, if they had achieved the stardrive—not too far below us technologically. There could be no other Younglings significantly superior to them. Still …
“Yes, Youngling—of course,” Ilura told me. “They have no command of psychic powers at all; their gods are machines. All the same they’re dangerous, and there are nearly a hundred of them here, I’d say.”
“Come on, let’s get busy,” Father interrupted. “Elana, you can help us to set up camp, but when I send the ship back you’ll be in it.”
We crossed the meadow and selected a place near the river, among tall, majestic trees, for the base camp. Naturally we couldn’t put up any sort of shelter that would not seem indigenous to the surroundings. But there were plenty of fair-sized stones strewn around nearby—apparently the river was sometimes higher than at present—and from them Father and Evrek erected a small, windowless stone hut. This was done quickly and silently, and, I believe, psychokinetically, though the stones rarely left anyone’s hands and conventional plastics were used for cementing them. I know that Father has more ability along these lines than most of us; I could not, with my own mind, have moved one of those stones two feet without emotional stimulus. Perhaps, of course, the urgency was more apparent to him. The fact remains that the hut went up much more rapidly than it should have, if there had been anyone there to watch.
While the hut was taking shape, Ilura and I unloaded the supplies and carried them to the edge of the woodsy clearing. When we were almost finished Father said to me, “Go aboard now, Elana. Leave the last few things in the meadow, and we’ll pick them up. I’ve got to get that ship out of here.”
A breeze rippled the new spring leaves of the trees; I took a deep breath, and the air seemed alive with a faintly alien scent. A Youngling world: a lush, green world full of mystery and promise. What might lie hidden in this unearthly forest? I’d had a look at it, anyway—that was something, though perhaps it was only tantalizing. I started reluctantly toward the meadow and the waiting ship. And then, in one brief instant, the first real turning point of my life came; and now nothing will ever be the same as it was before.
There was no warning until, just as I was about to step out from the shelter of the trees, Father grabbed me and pulled me back. Directly across the clearing from us I saw a flash of metal. Two men were emerging from the forest, and they could not be Andrecians. They wore pressure suits and helmets; Andrecia’s atmosphere—or its bacteria—must be poisonous to them.
“The ship!” Evrek cried out.
Father must have been aware of what was happening before the rest of us were, for the ship had already begun its swift, soundless lift from the meadow. The invaders couldn’t have spotted it as they came into the clearing; a large clump of thick-foliaged trees had kept it out of their direct line of sight. They now had their backs to it, but if they turned within the next thirty seconds they could not fail to see.
“A clear disclosure!” murmured Ilura. “They’ll know what an alien ship means! It’s the worst thing that could happen, for the Imperials to—”
I understood her. A spherical, noiseless ship—a ship without visible means of propulsion—they’d know it for the earmark of a civilization more advanced than their own. So the danger wasn’t just to this world. It could change the course of their Empire’s history if those men saw and were believed.
The thing happened so fast that I could scarcely take it in. Father and Evrek could do nothing; for them to be seen, undisguised, would have been disastrous. But Ilura wore the dress of an Andrecian woman. Physically, she could pass as Andrecian. As the invaders started to turn toward the rising ship she ran forward with a terrific yell, snatched out the Andrecian-type knife she’d had concealed somewhere—and threw it.
“What’s she doing?” I exclaimed, horrified. “She wouldn’t kill them? She couldn’t, even if she wanted to, with that, not with them wearing suits.”
“No,” Evrek said softly. “It was a diversion. The ship’s gone, they didn’t see.”
The ship had indeed disappeared, silently, into a pink-tinged bank of clouds. The Imperials were facing Ilura. Though the knife had fallen harmlessly to the ground, one of them raised his weapon.
It was a laser of some kind; it made no sound, and the flash was unbearably bright. When I got my eyes open again, Ilura was gone. Just—gone!
“Her Shield!” I whispered numbly. “What happened to her Shield?”
Evrek faced me. “She didn’t use it. The Shield would have given her away; the Imperials would have known she was alien.”
I froze there, overcome by stunned disbelief. They had meant what they were saying. It was not a sightseeing trip, not a picnic, not a game. The things that happened here would be real.
The two invaders had turned back toward the forest and were disappearing in the direction from which they had come; apparently they were not in the mood to take on more hostile natives, not knowing how many of these there might be. Still Father stood motionless, his face marked by pain that was more than the shock of a mere observer. I looked at him, suddenly seeing a man who was not my father at all. You and Ilura were—communicating! I asserted mutely.
Of course.
Was it her idea … or yours?
It was hers, Elana.
But he could have stopped her, I thought. She was under his orders; whether it was her own idea or not, surely he could have found some other way …
Evrek put his arms around me, and I clung to him. Soundlessly I cried, Oh, Evrek! Why did Father let it happen?
Elana, he is sworn! They were both sworn; what choice did they have?
Around Evrek’s neck hung the Emblem, the multifaceted pendant symbolizing the Oath that every agent wears; now, with my cheek against his shoulder, I saw it as if for the first time. All my life I’d accepted this as a standard article of dress; even my mother had worn one, and no doubt it had first caught my eye during my infancy. Certainly one of my earliest memories was of sitting on her lap and turning it over and over in my hands. But I had not truly grasped its significance before.
Evrek, too, was sworn! If he had been the one disguised as a native of this world, he would now be dead. My mother herself had been killed under roughly comparable circumstances, though at the time I’d been too young to understand. The Oath was more than a colorful ritual to which, if you happened to want a Service career, you looked forward all through your schooldays; it was more than a decision that you made once, for all time, about the vocation you would follow. It was a thing you lived with continuously, during every moment you spent on an alien world.
We stayed hidden until we were sure that the Imperials would not return; then, without speaking, we picked up the supplies and carried them into the hut. It was cold there. I dropped my load in a corner and went outside again, into the fast-fading sunlight.
Father followed me and put his arm around my shoulders, but I pulled away. He came after me. “Things like this happen,” he said gently. “It’s part of the price we pay.”
“For being here?”
“For being what we are. For our knowledge.”
“I know … only it—it wasn’t real before.”
“There’s always a moment when it becomes real. I’m sorry; I’d rather you had been older.”
“I’m all right!” I knew that the situation was one to which I’d have to adjust if I really was old enough to be here. But one thing was still troubling me. “Father, would they have known for sure, from the Shield?”
“It was too great a chance to take, considering that we had only a few seconds for a decision.” He hesitated, then went on, “Elana, I’m going to be very honest with you. In this particular case, they might not have. In fact, if they had recognized it for what it is—a mental power instead of a physical one—a demonstration of the Shield might actually have been helpful to us; that makes this doubly hard to bear. But they probably wouldn’t have recognized it, for they are conditioned to see such things from a materialistic viewpoint. They would have investigated and found us. Even if they hadn’t found us, their suspicions would have been aroused, and we’d have lost our only chance to help the Andrecians.”
“Why would we?”
“For reasons too complicated to explain right now, reasons having to do with our plan of action.” Father shook his head sadly. “No agent can ever be sure. Here, we were confronted with a very real possibility not only of starting a chain of events that would have led to the failure of our mission, but of disclosure to the Empire. Two Youngling civilizations, Elana! They would both have been hurt—”
“Hurt, if she’d merely used the Shield?”
“The more power you have, the greater the consequences of the little things.”
I looked up at the tall conifers silhouetted against the soft glow of an Andrecian sunset. Behind me, the sound of the river seemed to grow louder. There’s just such a river near Grandfather’s summer place on my home world; I used to hear it from my bedroom whenever I woke at night. How many rivers, I thought, on how many planets … in the whole universe? How many of them will I see? Beside how many of them will I stand when something like this happens?
But you don’t want anyone, least of all your father, to think that you aren’t mature enough to face reality. I turned to him and said steadily, “What happens now?”
Father looked at me thoughtfully. “Elana,” he began, “you know that for you to be here, unsworn, is illegal.”
“Yes. I—I’m sorry.”
“Really?” He met my eyes, and I saw suddenly that he was not angry with me at all. There was something there that, if it had not been for Ilura, would have been a smile. “You haven’t lost your enthusiasm or your nerve, have you?” he asked quietly.
“No!” Realizing what he was leading up to, I added, “You’re not going to recall the ship, are you?”
“No, I’m not. I don’t dare to recall it right now, and even if I did—well, I’ve had an idea, Elana.” He paused and then said slowly, “You’re not really ready. You won’t understand everything that happens. But I need someone to fill Ilura’s place, and it’s too much of a risk to wait for another agent to be brought in at this point.”
“Ilura’s place? Me?” I hadn’t dared to hope he’d let me play any real part.
“Yes, if you want it.”
“Of course I do!” I said, my excitement returning. After all, I’d known all along that an agent’s job is at times perilous, and I wasn’t about to let that stop me.
Evrek had joined us just in time to hear this. Glaring at Father, he protested, “Elana can’t pose as a native, as Ilura was to have done!”
“No. None of us can, so we’ve got to revamp the plan. But I’ve something in mind for which Elana’s well suited.”
Turning to me, Evrek said quietly, “Elana, you don’t have to agree. You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
“Are you going to try to protect me, too?” I laughed.
“Of course I am! I love you! Don’t you see the responsibility you’re accepting?”
I followed his glance toward the spot where Ilura had stood just minutes before, and it did give me the shivers, I’ll admit. Not that the same circumstances would arise again, but it was true enough that an agent’s role would, in principle, entail an agent’s obligations; the fact that I was not yet sworn was only a technicality. There are some kinds of training that you don’t get until Third Phase. The Shield, for example, is a more or less automatic mental reflex to which you are conditioned from childhood. You can’t control it by an act of will unless you’ve been specifically taught to. Would I even know how not to use it?
But if I had any doubts on that score, I certainly wasn’t going to let Evrek suspect them. I told him, “I guess I accepted it when I came down here in the first place, didn’t I?”
“I guess you did,” he admitted reluctantly. Drawing me to him, he added, “But oh, Elana, if anything happened to you—”
Just then Father broke in hurriedly. “Someone’s coming. Get inside!”
We retreated into the hut and, staying clear of its uncovered opening, peered out through a chink between the rough stones. More Imperials? To my astonishment, I began to feel a sort of sick, icy fear that was not at all familiar to me.
“Andrecians,” Evrek said. “Peasants—woodsmen, maybe—on foot, and unarmed. They look harmless.”
“They’re coming over here!” I whispered. “They’ll find us!”
Father was silent for a few moments, then made a fast decision. He smiled at me and said softly, “Yes. We’re going to let them.”
“Contact? Now?” Evrek demanded, sounding somewhat horrified. “No investigation? No preparation—”
“This isn’t a textbook case! There’s no time to explain now, but I think we’ve got to take a real plunge. Maybe no one else will be by here for days, and I’d rather do it this way than seek them out.”
You don’t question your Senior Agent’s strategy. Besides, not having made a contact before, Evrek was eager. “Can I go out with you?” he asked.
“No. I’m not going out; there’s a better way.” Father met my eyes with a measuring look. “Elana, are you really serious about wanting to be in on this? Can you follow directions?”
“Yes,” I agreed, though I felt less confident all of a sudden.
“Then step outside and let those men see you.”
“Alone? And undisguised?” I protested incredulously. Evrek was aghast, as I was, but a look from Father silenced him.
“It’s all right,” Father told me. “They won’t recognize you for what you are, as Imperials would. You won’t be revealing anything you shouldn’t.”
Evrek had hold of my arm, and he didn’t release it. “You’re surely not going to let Elana make contact all by herself!”
“We’ll be communicating, and I’ll guide her. But she must be the one to talk to them.”
“Talk to them?” I wavered. “How can I? I don’t know their language!”
“Use ours. The actual words you speak won’t matter; only the thought behind them.”
“But Younglings can’t use telepathy!”
“Not between themselves. With us, most of them can.” Abruptly, he slipped to the soundless level of communication. Don’t be frightened. That’s very important, because if you are they’ll know it.
But what shall I say to them?
I’ll tell you, when the time comes.
I felt he could at least give me a little more information than that. Then I sensed an exchange between Father and Evrek and knew that they were communicating privately. At that moment, Evrek gave me an encouraging grin and dropped my arm. So that’s how it is, I thought. They’re testing me.
Well, I had gotten myself into this, I thought grimly, and I was not going to back out now. The Andrecians were within a few paces of the hut. I could see them clearly; there were four of them, all fairly young men, wearing belted smocks and hose of a coarse brown fabric. They did not look hostile. One of them, in fact, was whistling a bright, lilting tune. Mustering all my determination, I stepped into the open doorway.