The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. Doris Lessing

comprehend, am running forward into – nothing, for if I saw this summer land as Johor does, with his Canopus eyes, I would see a universe of space in which faint shapes drift and form and dissolve – I, nothing, run forward towards nothing, weeping as I run – and where live the emotions that make these tears, Johor? Where in the great spaces in the faint mist that I am, where in the fluid flowing structure of the dance of atoms, where … and how … and what, Johor?

      When we reached the hillsides where green showed under the bushes laden with blue flowers, we flung ourselves down and rolled and, seated above the summer with the snow peaks and half-frozen lands at our backs, looking into a sunlight where drifted cloud shadows and sudden chills and reminders of the winter that would soon come down again over this scented miracle, we talked about what we must do, what we had to do.

      We talked. Johor did not, though he sat among us as if he was one of the conferring group.

      Our problem was practical: when we had decided who was to benefit from this food, how was it to be conveyed? Movement between villages and towns had ceased, except for teams who dragged in the supplies of dried meat. How were we to carry loads of this light but bulky stuff up into the snow and the ice, and, when it was distributed, were they to cook and eat it, or eat it as it was – for all of us were eating the flowers straight off the bushes without ill-effects, apart from the mild stomach disorders which we had to put up with as an aspect of what we had to expect now. At last Bratch suggested that we should pile the dried plant into the ponds and the water holes, hoping that the enlivening principle in it would be transferred to the water. Some of the water could be carried in containers up into the snow-covered lands, but soon the bogs and marshes would freeze again as the cold came back and we could send down teams with sledges to transport this ice, or even to drag up chunks of it across the snow. And, meanwhile, send messengers everywhere to say that this shallow summer was here, providing vegetable matter for those who could or would make the effort to come and enjoy it.

      Some of those who were making the living fence to keep the herds off the part of the harvest we had allocated for the use of our peoples went off to make sure the news reached all the populated centres. As for us, we stayed where we were, using every hour of daylight to pile the hay into the bogs and fens. The weather was not hot enough to make fermentation an immediate problem. The earth-smelling waters of these moorlands soon were emitting the fragrance of the plant, and our nights were spent lying out among the living plants, mostly awake, for we knew that this time of reprieve would soon end. The stars shone down, but not with the hard cold brilliance in blackness of the nights of the expedition up to the other pole: this was a distant mild shining, and they were continually going out as mists and veils blew across our skies.

      By the time the messengers had come back, the plants had ceased to spring up again as they were cut; shadow lay more often on the hills and valleys than sun did; and the winds were not balmy, but made us shelter inside our deep coats. And the herds were no longer rearing and charging about, or bellowing, but were silent again. We all of us went to a place where we could look down on a valley crammed with these beasts, who stood with lowered heads above earth where there was no longer any green, or blue, or the soft blowing movement of growing things. We looked at a bull standing close to us, with the group of females that he served, and the calves of that season – there had been very few calves born for many seasons. We saw in the disconsolate, discouraged set of his shoulders that he felt himself a failure – lacking – hurt; for once again he would be commanding a group perpetually hungry, not able to breed, since nature was saying no, there is no future; once again they would have to lower their soft muzzles to the dense earth that is half-vegetable, forcing the unliked stuff into their stomachs that only partially digested it. And the females were anxious to keep their calves near them, and their eyes were red and wild, and they licked and maintained these small replicas of themselves with a desperation that said everything of the emotions that filled them. From horizon to horizon, the herds stood there – waiting. And we, too, now would have to return to our waiting.

      There were about forty of us Representatives on that slope above the herds, and a hundred or so of those who had taken the messages to the people. Some people were coming in, in small groups, to take their share of the harvest, which was so sparse now, and they too rolled around in the green and ate the flowers. But only a few had been able to rouse themselves from their torpor and make the journey. We stood, a small multitude, in a hollow between low hills.

      Long before those times of The Ice, I had learned to watch the disposition of people, events, what is said and what is not said – so as to understand what was likely to happen – what was already happening, but not yet fully disclosed. Those crowds standing about there, again huddling into the thick skins, watching the skies, where the first snow clouds were massing, were not differentiated in any way, and Johor stood among them, almost unnoticed, though everyone knew that Canopus was among us. Soon we Representatives moved out of the mass of people and up on to a slope. It was because this was expected of us; we could see, feel, sense, that we should do this. But Johor stayed where he was.

      And when we stood there, the forty of us, looking at the mass of people, and they stood looking at us, there was a long silence. What was happening? – we all wondered that, for usually the verbal exchanges between the two, represented and Representatives, were brisk enough: practical. Usually it was evident what had to be done by everyone. We had never had to make speeches, or exhort, or persuade, or demand – as I have seen done on other planets, and read about. No, there had always been a consensus, an understanding among us all, and this had meant that it had been a question of: so-and-so will see to this, and such and such will be done – by someone. And it was at these times that a Representative who felt a change was needed would step back into the mass, or someone who felt entitled and equipped would step up into the Representative group. But long silences had not been our style at all. We were looking closely at each other, examining each other: we them, and they, closely and carefully, us. We stood there a very long time. On one side the herds stretched away to the horizon, where the storms were raging black on white. On the other, trampled and fading meadows sent up the faintest reminiscent breath of the now past summer. Over us the skies were grey and low, and a few snow-flakes spun down, and melted at once on faces, on our still exposed hands. And we searched each other’s faces, as if examining our own: What was happening? Well, I know now, but then I did not. I did feel as if I were being elected, but in a capacity previously not experienced. I felt tested, probed, almost handled by those eyes that were so thoughtfully focused on me and the rest of us Representatives. And, looking at them, it was as if I had not seen them before, not properly, not as I was seeing them now. So close we all were to each other, in this desperate and terrible enterprise that would involve us all, and in ways we could only partly know.

      And while this long exchange went on, this silence that needed no words at all, Canopus stood there, part of the mass, quite passive and quiet. Yet nearly everyone in that throng, except for Alsi and – I think – Klin, still talked as if they believed Canopus would take us all off and away. That was still what we officially expected; and how – sometimes, but increasingly less frequently – we spoke. But not one of those people that day said to Johor: Canopus, where are your fleets that will take us all away from here, when will you keep your promise to us?

      No, and it was not that there was reproach in the air, or anger, or accusation or even grief. That was the remarkable thing: the sober, quiet, responsible feeling among us, that did not admit grief, or mourning, or despair. Far away, deep in the snow-filled lands, where our friends lay in dark holes piled with hides, was the lethargy of grief, of despair. But here, among these few who had made the effort to travel to where the summer was, there was a different feeling altogether. And, after a long time, while we all stood there, looking at each other, it came to an end: we seemed to decide all at once, by some inner process, that it was enough. And everyone went off to the bogs and ponds, to see if they were frozen yet. No, but there was a thickening of the water’s surfaces, and a breeze rippling them made wrinklings, then flakes and then cakes of the thinnest ice; and when we all roused ourselves next morning, where we lay together on the slopes above the water, we saw that the water had frozen over, was white, though with the blackness of bog water under it, and in the water the green and blue plant masses. We had to send out a party to drive off some young beasts from the herds, and kill them, and