The making of representative for Planet 8

Now that the herds had all gone through the wall, we filled the gap by pushing across the gate. But Canopus said that as soon as we got back to our houses, work parties must be sent out, and this gap, and the others that had been left, must be built up as strongly and thickly as all the rest of the wall. For the openings that had been ordered to be left in the wall long before there had been cold, or even the first signs of cold, to save animals that had not even been brought to our planet, had fulfilled their purpose. We no longer needed them. The wall must be perfect and whole and without a weak place.

We walked on for some days after that before there was a blizzard of an intensity we had not even been able to imagine. We huddled on the safe side of the wall, while the winds screamed over us and sometimes came sucking and driving down where we were, and we shivered and we shrank, and knew that we had not begun to imagine what we had, all of us, to face. And when the screaming and scouring stopped and we climbed up the little projecting steps to the top, carefully because of the glaze of ice on them, we saw that on the cold side snow had fallen so heavily that all the hollows and the heights of the landscape were filled in with billowy white, and the wall was only half its previous height.

By then we were not far from our starting place, and we all longed to be back in our homes, our new thick-walled solid houses with roofs that had been pitched to throw off any snowfall - so we had thought. But now wondered. Were we going to have to live under snow as some creatures lived under water? Were we going to have to make little tu

But still, on our side of the wall, where our towns and cities and farms spread, there was some green, there was the shine of moving water. And knowing of our hunger and our desperation and our longing, Canopus did not now make us turn our faces from this livingness, but allowed us to stumble on, looking warmthwards, trying to ignore the snowy wilderness that was crowding down on us.

And it was during these days that Johor fell back with me, and talked to me, alone. I listened to him and I had my eyes on my fellows in front, the Representatives, and when I knew that what I was being told was for me, and not for them - not yet, at least, because they could not yet face it - there came into me an even deeper sense of what was in store. But what worse could there possibly be?

Ahead of us this great wall of ours stood high and black above marshes where the snows of the blizzard had partly melted, leaving streaks and blobs of thin white on dark water. We stood there, Johor and I, and watched our companions walk away, and become no more than a moving blur on the crest of the wall where it rose to cross a ridge and then disappeared from our view. It climbed again, and we saw it, still mighty and tall though so far away, showing exactly what its nature was, for on one side the snows piled, and on the other the beasts fed on wintry grass and on low grey bushes.

Johor touched my arm, and we walked forward to stand where the marshes lay on either side. On the right the dark white-streaked waters seemed cha

I was standing there with my back to the icy winds, face towards our precious lake that was out of sight beyond tall plumy reeds, and I was thinking: And ice? -we must see this new enemy of ours as something all fluidity and movement? And it was at that moment that it came into me for the first time that our ocean might freeze. Even though it was on the 'safe' side of our barrier wall. The thought came like a blast of cold. I knew it would be so, and I already felt something of what Canopus was going to tell me. I did not want to turn and face Johor - face what I had to.

I felt his touch on my elbow again and I did turn.

I saw him as he saw me, fragile and vulnerable inside thick pelts, hands hidden inside sleeves, eyes peering out from deep shaggy hoods.

It is a hard thing, to lose the sense of physical appropriateness - and again my eyes went skywards where an eagle lay poised on air just above us.

'Representative,' said Johor gently, and I made my gaze return downwards, to what I could see of his yellow face.

'Your ocean will freeze,' he said.

I could feel my bones huddle and tremble inside my thin flesh.

I tried to joke: 'Canopus can bring us new beasts with heavy bones for the cold - but what can you do for our bones? Or shall we all die out as our other animals did, to make way for new species - new races?'

'You will not die out,' he said, and his strong brown eyes - inflamed though, and strained - were forcing me to look at him.

Another new thought came into me, and I asked: 'You were not born on Canopus, so you said. What kind of planet did you come from?'

'I was given existence on a warm and easy planet.'

'As Planet 8 was, once.'

'As the planet is that you will all be going to.'

At this I was silent for a very long time. There were too many adjustments to make in my thoughts - which whirled about and did not settle into patterns that could frame useful questions.

When I was slightly recovered, I still was facing Johor, who stood with his back to a wind that came pouring down from the snow fields.

'You are always travelling,' I said. 'You are seldom on your own planet - do you miss it?'

He did not answer. He was waiting.

'If we are all to be space-lifted away from our home, then why the wall? Why were we not taken away when the snows first began to fall?'

'The hardest thing for any one of us to realize - every one of us, no matter how high in the levels of functioning - is that we are all subject to an overall plan. A general Necessity.'

'It was not convenient?' And my voice was bitter.

'When we took you for training to the other planets, did you ever hear of the planet Rohanda?'

I had, and my curiosity was already expectation - and even a warm and friendly expectation.

'Yes, it is a beautiful planet. And quite one of our most successful attempts... 'He smiled, though I could not see his smile, only the change in the shape of his eyes, for his mouth was covered: and I smiled too - ruefully, of course. For it is not easy to accept oneself as an item among many.