In a few days the waters were solid ice, and we cut out great chunks, and piled these on to sledges, or tied ropes around them, and everywhere could be seen long lines of us bent over the toil and labour of transporting the ice blocks – white against white, for everywhere it was white again, snow covering all the earth, snow-heavy clouds above us, the snowy mountain peaks ahead. And the wind spun the snow off the drifts to meet the white eddies from the skies.
Heading in every direction went the plodding lines of white figures, and our team climbed straight up through the frozen passes and into the middle areas of our planet where, far ahead, we could see rearing up into a grey sky the white mass of our wall which, as we neared it, seemed like a vast water wave that had frozen in the moment before it fell. The jagged fanged crest stretched from horizon to horizon, overtopping a wall which was white now, all iced over, and with snow packed to half its height.
When we approached our own town, with our sledges piled with the ice we had brought with us, people went ahead to rouse up the sleepers. But again, only a few came staggering out, groaning and complaining, hardly able to see because of the glare after their long sojourn in half-dark. We pressed them: Try this ice we have brought – suck it, take it inside and melt it down, drink the water, see if you, too, will become invigorated and refreshed. And some did, and were enlivened, and did not return to their terrible death-in-sleep. For many were dying as they slept, and could not be revived, not with all the skills of Bratch.
About a quarter of the population of our town stood in the deep snow of the central square, and Klin and Marl and Alsi and Masson and Pedug and Bratch were there, and I, and Johor. And again there was the long silence, which went on for as long as it was necessary for – what? But it was not broken at all, but seemed to confirm and to feed us all. And, when this process had gone on, and on, something happened that was different from the other silence down on the slopes on the polar land. Johor stepped out a little way from the crowd, and stood there, quite still, looking at us all. It was as if he were giving us an opportunity for something … for what? His eyes went from face to face, and we could see how wan and worn he was, as unhealthy as the rest of us, in spite of our little excursion into summer.
Oh, it was so dark there, so dark, with the storms driving all around us, the thick low clouds above, the sombre ice wall rearing up behind us, and the darkness was an expression of what I was feeling then, for on Johor’s face, which was humble in his patience in enduring, there was a look that said he had hoped for something from us all that was not yet there … he could see in the faces now turned towards him what he had stepped out by himself to evoke, but had hoped not to evoke. They were crowding around him, and saying: ‘Johor, are the space-fleets coming? When? How long must we wait?’ – Yet these things were being said in voices quite at odds with the questions: as if a part of the questioners was asking, a part that even the questioners themselves were half-aware of or not aware of at all – suddenly everyone seemed to me to be asleep or even drugged or hypnotized, for these muttering questions were like those coming out of sleep. Yes, it seemed to me as I stood there, slightly to one side, as Johor was, looking at the faces, that I was among sleepwalkers who did not know what they were saying, and would not remember when they woke. And I was wondering if these queries had always sounded so to Johor: ‘Where are your space-fleets, Canopus, when will you save us?’ And I wondered more than that, in the sharp moment of clarity, when everyone around me seemed to be an automaton, was it possible that this was how we all usually looked and sounded to Canopus: automata, bringing out these words or those, making these actions or those, prompted by shallow and surface parts of ourselves – for it was clear to me, as I stood there, that these demands and pleas were quite automatic, made by sleepwalkers. Even Alsi, who had had moments with me and with Johor of showing she knew quite well no such thing was going to happen, was leaning forward, asking with the others: ‘When, Johor? When?’
Johor said nothing, but gazed steadily back at them, and smiled a little.
And soon, in the same automatic, even indifferent way, they turned away from him, and began walking about the cleared space between the piles of dingy snow, and saying to each other: ‘Let us clear the snow away. How can the space-fleets land? There is nowhere for them to set themselves down.’ And they all began a hurrying scurrying activity, Alsi too, pushing the snow back off this space between the houses, piling it up, clearing paths – yet there was not room here for even Johor’s Space Traveller to land comfortably, and certainly not one of the great interconstellation ships that would be needed to transfer large numbers. And yet there they all were, rushing about, working furiously, frowning, concentrated … and still I was seeing them as Johor must be – as if they had been set into action by some quite superficial and unimportant stimulus. I was watching Alsi most particularly, with sorrowful disbelief, but with a patient expectation that soon she would come to herself – and it struck me that this was the look I saw often on Johor’s face as he watched me.
I said to him: ‘Very well, I understand, it is not yet time – though I don’t know for what it isn’t yet time.’
We two were still standing quietly to one side, watching. We were not far from the shed behind the runs of the snow animals. We went there over the rutted and stained snow, past piles of the ice blocks that had the flowers and leaves of the summer plants, green and blue, frozen into them. The interior of the shed was crammed. Alsi had heaped it with sacks of the dried plant.
The floor of the shed was now iced over, and it was ice and not frost that gleamed from the low dried-plant ceiling. We sank into the sweet-smelling sacks, and pulled our coats close. A small white animal came running out from behind sack piles: Alsi had freed her pets into the shed, and they were living there, happily, and had bred, for some fluffy little beasts came out, looked at us, and chose the sacks we sat on as a playground. They had such confidence and such pleasure in everything, such charm – and what came welling up out of me was the cry: ‘And they will soon all be gone, all gone, and yet another species will have vanished from life and the living …’ And I began on another cycle of pleas and of plaints, of grief – of sorrowing rebellion. ‘And what your answer will be I know, for there is no other; you will say, Johor, that this charm, this delightfulness, will vanish here and reappear elsewhere – on some place or planet that we have never heard of and that perhaps you have not heard of either! Charm is not lost, you say, the delicious friendliness that is the ground of these little animals’ nature cannot be lost, for these are qualities that life must re-create – the vehicles that contain them, here, now, for us – yes, they will be gone soon, the little creatures will be dead, all of them, all – but we are not to mourn them, no, for their qualities will be reborn – somewhere. It does not matter that they are going, the individual does not matter, the species does not matter – Alsi does not matter, and nor does Doeg, nor Klin and Masson, nor Marl and Pedug and the rest, for when we are extinguished, then …’ And as I reached this place in my chant, or dirge, I hesitated and my tongue stopped, hearing what I had said. I understood, yet did not, could not, yet.
I said, in the same thick, mechanical, even dead voice that I had heard used by the others outside, as they questioned Johor: ‘Yet we, the Representatives, we will be saved, so you say, I have been hearing you say – is that not what you said … yes, what else have you been saying … no, no, you have not said it, but then I haven’t said anything like that either … yet if that is not what you have been meaning, intending me to hear …’ I stopped my thick stupid mumbling and sat very quiet for a long time, a long long time. The little creatures tired of their tumbling play and lay close by me and Johor on the sacks, snuggling into the thick pelts. The two parents and four little ones, all licking our hands, sending out trills and murmurs of greeting, as to friends – their human friends. Soft blue eyes blinked at us, blinked more slowly, shut, opened showing the blue, then went out, as they slumbered there, curled into small white mounds.
I came out of the time of deep inward pondering which I was not able to monitor or direct, for it had its own laws and necessities, and I said: ‘I remember how the thought came into me that I, Doeg, was in the shape I am, with the features I have, because