So what I saw in Johor’s eyes was what I saw every day; and what I knew others saw in mine. I knew already that there were no fleets of rescue ships waiting somewhere just out of my line of sight on the tundra. I knew he had come to us alone.
I asked, knowing what he would say: ‘Your Space Traveller?’
He said gently: ‘I have sent it away. I shall be with you for – quite a little time.’
I turned my face well away from him, knowing that he could not see it inside the deep fur, for I could not hide then what I felt.
We went into the shed. It was a long low place, with openings along one wall that led into the runs of the animals where food could be pushed in. Sacks of springy tough plants from the tundra were piled up and the smell from them was sharp and pleasant. I sat on one, enjoying the freshness, and Johor sat near. He brought out from his pockets some small red fruits, which I had not seen, and he held them out towards me on his palm. My hands went out to them as if I was going to grab and snatch, and, seeing my hands do this, I could not help shuddering at myself, and turning my face away. That gesture, which I could not help, said clearly enough what we all were now, what we had come to, and of course Johor had taken in its meaning.
Now he pushed back the hood from his head, and I saw him clearly. He had not changed. I enjoyed looking at the healthy gleam of the brown skin, the quick alertness of healthy eyes. I knew my eyes were feeding on the sight: I understood what those words meant, to feed on sight. And I pushed my head back and loosened my heavy coat, and his eyes took in what there was to be gathered from my face.
He nodded, and sighed.
I said: ‘If you have no fleet of Space Travellers, then there are no supplies of fresh food.’
And he slightly shook his head.
‘And yet we are not to be taken off from here at once?’
I knew I leaned forward to search his face, and he remained still, letting me look into his face and his eyes.
‘We are not to be taken off,’ I said at last, and I heard my words ring out in the cold silence, and each word seemed to sink through the air, as if the air itself rejected them: the substance of my words was being refused by the air, and what I felt was this: If my words are true, then what is rejecting them?
‘What has happened?’ I said at last, and my voice was wild and angry.
He began to speak, and failed.
I said: ‘There is a paradise somewhere, we see it when we look up out of this sordid place, we see it shining in our cold skies, or rather we see its mother, a fruitful star. Rohanda will be our home, Rohanda the generous one, Rohanda the planet where everything thrives, and where a race of people are being grown like particularly promising plants, grown by Canopus, to act one day as hosts for us, for the poor inhabitants of Planet 8, who also have been nurtured by Canopus, made and grown and fed by Canopus, so that they and we may come together in a match, and make of Rohanda a planet that Canopus itself will wonder over and admire. On that lovely planet wait for us even now warm oceans, and sunny fields and pleasant forests full of fruit and hillsides where grain is gold and white and rippling green as the soft winds move. On Rohanda there are storehouses full of the soft light clothes that will cover us and the fresh light food we will eat and everything, everything, everything we will look at will be coloured, we will live again among the colours of living things, we will see the infinite shades of green, and yellow and red – our eyes will again be fed with scarlet and gold and purple, and when we look up into the deeps of the skies our eyes will fill with blue, blue, blue, so that when we look into each other’s eyes we will no longer see a crazed glare of white where colour has been bled out by whiteness, white, white, always white or grey or brown … yes, Canopus? Is that what you have come to tell us?’
‘No,’ he said at last.
‘Well then? How is Rohanda? Have you planned that another species, another of your genetic creations is to enjoy Rohanda?’
‘Canopus keeps its word,’ he said, though his voice sounded strange enough.
‘When it can?’ I said.
‘When it can.’
‘Well then?’
‘Rohanda has … suffered the same fate as Planet 8, though not as terribly and suddenly.’
‘Rohanda is no longer lovely and fruitful?’
‘Rohanda is … Shikasta, the broken one, the afflicted.’
And now it began to come into me, what he was saying, my whole self was absorbing it, and I stilled my indignation, my wild rejection of what he was telling me. I sat there in my thick wad of hide, and I heard a keening cry come out of me – the same that had come from the populations when we stood around the lake, our sacred place, and knew we were going to destroy it.
I could not still this lament, not at once, not for wanting to, because I was thinking of the thousands of low dark dwellings everywhere on our little world where our people huddled like beasts, dreaming of sunny days and soft winds – dreaming of Rohanda and of their regeneration.
Johor did not move away, or spare me, or himself. He continued to sit there, quite close, his face open to my eyes.
And when I was at last quiet he said: ‘And Canopus does keep its word.’
‘When you can.’
‘In one way if not in another.’
I knew perfectly well that the implications of this were too difficult for me to take in then. The words had that ring to them that words do when presenting to you for the first time truths with which you are going to have to become familiar – whether you want to or not! Oh yes, I was listening, and I knew it, to some new possibilities of growth being offered to me. Which I was going to have to aspire to … to grow towards … to take in.
But sorrowful indignation was still surging and sweeping in me, and I said to him: ‘On the other side of the planet, in Mandel, the great city, which we could emerge into if we could burrow straight through from here to there, is a civil war. They are killing each other. The dead are lying in heaps and mountains all around the city, because there is no way of burying them in the frozen soil, nor do we have any means of burning them for we have no fuel. The living – if you can call it living – go about what they have to do, surrounded by piles of their dead. And these are people who until such a short time ago did not have a word for murder. Or for war.’
He sighed – and suffered. But he did not turn his face away.
‘How are we going to tell them, Johor?’
He said nothing.
‘Are you going to tell them – you, Canopus? … No, for that is not your way. You will be with us for a little, and soon we, the Representatives, will understand that everyone knows it already, but we will not know how this has happened.’
And now I was silent a long while, for my mind seemed to want to open itself to something – I felt the pressure of some truth working there in its depths.
‘Johor, what is it I have to understand?’
‘Have you ever thought what being a Representative is?’
‘Do you imagine I have not lain awake at nights over it, have not thought, and wondered! Of course I have. That is what my life has been! Am I doing as I should for the best, making the good and proper decisions, working rightly and well with the other Representatives, expressing them as they …’
And my mind faded out again, into a place where truth was waiting for me.
‘As they express me?’ I asked at last.
‘How did you become a Representative? When was it? Can you remember?’
‘Funnily