The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (12 page)

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 prepare food, since the harvest was over and no hay remained, nor fresh plants. The smell of blood came on the cold wind to us, and we heard the beasts nearest to us bellow and moan, as they, too, smelled the blood. And we wearily began again on this diet of ours, of meat, and meat, and meat, from which we had enjoyed so brief a respite.

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 of a choice among multitudes. I set in front of myself a mirror, and I looked at my features – nose from my mother, eyes from my father, shape of head from one, set of body from the other, with memories of grandparents and great-grandparents. I looked, saying: her hands came down to him, and then to her and so to me, and his hair shows on that head and grew again on my grandmother, and so me – and I thought how that couple, my parents, could have given birth to – how many? – children, thousands, perhaps millions, every one slightly different – it was the slight difference that intrigued me in this private game of mine, and I imagined as I stood there looking at my face, my body, how stretching behind me, to each side of me, in every direction away from me, stood slight modifications of me, some very similar indeed, some hardly at all. I filled a town with these variations of myself, then a city, then, in my mind, whole landscapes. Doeg, Doeg, Doeg again, and mentally I greeted these nonexistent never-to-exist people, people who had not come into life because I had come in this precise shape of body and face, with this particular set of mannerisms – I said to these people, all of whom resembled me more or less, closely or only slightly, being the same height, or a little taller or a little shorter, with variations of the same hair, eyes in an allotment of possibilities – I said to them: Look, here you are, in me … for the feeling of me, of I, that feeling
I am here, Doeg
, would have been your feeling had the chances of the genes fallen differently, and if you, your particular shape and mould, had been born instead of me. What was born, then, to those repositories of a million years of the dicing of the genes, was a
feeling
, a consciousness, was the self-awareness:
here I am.
And this awareness was later given the name Doeg – though I have used many names in my life. That particular
feeling
was born into this shape and style and set of inherited attributes, and could have been born into any one of that multitude of others, the possibilities who, in my mind's eye, stand, and stood, like ghosts, smiling perhaps a little wryly, watching me who
chanced
to succeed. But they are me and I am them, for it was the feeling of me that was born …' And I lapsed out, went away then, for a time, and came back with: ‘… And yet you say, Johor, and of course as soon as you say it, it is true, it must be true, that this precious thing, what I hold on to when I say:
I am here, Doeg
, this is the feeling I am, and have, and what I recognize in sleep, and will recognize as myself when I die, leaving all this behind, this precious little thing, so little, for awaking in a thick dark night out of a sleep so deep it takes a long time to know where and who you are, all there is of you, of your memories, of your life, of your loves, of your family and children and your friends – all that there is this little feeling,
here I am
, the feeling of
me
– and yet it is not mine at all, but is shared, it must be, for how can it be possible that there are as many shades and degrees of me-ness as there are individuals on this planet of ours? No, it must be that though I do not know it, this consciousness,
here I am, this is I, this is me
, this sensation that I cannot communicate to anyone, just as none of us may communicate to anyone else at all the atmosphere of a dream, no matter how familiar the dream, and how close it is to you, or how often it comes during a long life – this sensation, or taste, or touch, or recognition, or memory – this me-ness – is nevertheless known very well to others. But they may not know who else shares this particular taste or feel – this class or grade or kind of quality of consciousness. Meeting me, they do not know that I share what they are, their feeling of themselves; and I, meeting them, being with them, cannot know that we are the same. Nor can we know how many we are, or how few – nor how many grades or types or kinds of these states of consciousness there are. This planet of ours: are there a million different
me'
s here? Half a million? Ten? Five? Or do we all share the same quality of self-consciousness? No, that is hard to believe – yet why not? – since we know so little of what we are, what, invisibly, we really are. It is as possible that there are a million different qualities of the consciousness that is all we are when we wake into a dark out of a deep sleep, and are unable to move for a while, let alone know where and why we are – as there are ten or five. But perhaps, Johor, when you look at this planet with your Canopus eyes, you do not see us as individuals at all, but as composites of individuals who share a quality that makes them, makes us, really, one. You look at us all and see not the swarming myriads, but sets of wholes, as we, looking into the waters of our lake, or up into the skies, saw there groups and swarms and shoals and flocks, each consisting of a multitude of individuals thinking themselves unique, but each making, as we could see with our superior supervising eyes, a whole, an entity, moving as one, living as one, behaving as one – thinking as one. Perhaps what you see of us is just that, a conglomerate of groups, or collectives, but these collectives need not be – it seems to me as I sit here thinking these thoughts, Johor, with you saying not a word – yet I would not be able to have these thoughts or anything like them were you
not
here – it seems to me that the wholes or groups or collectives need not be geographically close or contiguous, but that perhaps an individual who has precisely the same feeling of herself or himself as I do when waking in the dark out of a deep dream, knowing nothing of his or her past, or history, all memories gone too, for just that brief space – this individual might be one I never meet, might be living in a city on the other side of the planet where I have not been nor ever will go now. Might be someone, even, that I dislike, or have a repulsion for, just as easily as someone I feel drawn towards – for this business of antipathy and likeness is a chancy thing, and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between attraction and repulsion, liking and disliking. But what a dimension that adds to the business of living, Johor, this idea of mine –
this idea of yours?
– that as I go about my work and my business, looking after this or that, doing what has to be done, meeting a hundred people in a day, then of these people it is possible I am meeting, not strangers, not the unknown, but
myself.
Myself, all I know truly of myself, which is the feeling
here I am, I am here
, – all that is left of you when you wake in a thick dark with your limbs too weighty with sleep to move, and unable to remember what you are and what you are doing here or in what room you are waking. You said to me, Johor, that the terrible feeling of isolation and loneliness that comes over me when I understand that never, no matter how I tried, could I convey to any other being the atmosphere, the
reality
, the
real
nature of a dream landscape, those landscapes where we wander in our sleep and which are more real than our waking – this isolation must be softened, must be banished, by knowing that others too,
must
use these landscapes in their sleep, and meet me there, as I meet them, though we will never, perhaps – or seldom – know it when we meet in the day, and so, too, my loneliness is softened when I reflect that in saying
I, here I am, here is what I am
, this feeling or sensation or taste of me – I speak for … but I do not know how many. For others, that is certain. In that feeling of me-ness, is, must be, a sharing, must be a companionship. I shall not ever again wake from the deep sleep, like black water, in which I have been so terribly and marvellously trustingly submerged – as trustingly as these small animals snuggle up to us, giving their helplessness and littleness to us, who are so enormous and unknown to them – without thinking, as I feel again,
Here I am, here is the consciousness of me
, of those others, who are I, are myself, though I do not know who they are, nor they me … it is a strange thing, Johor, to feel oneself part of a whole much larger than oneself, to feel oneself vanishing as one thinks, or talks, dissolving into some core, or essence – and that inner central place dissolving too, going away, changing as one talks, or thinks, or contemplates, into something else … what then am I, Johor, sitting here on this heap of half-frozen sacks that smell so deliciously of that lost summer of ours, my body so briefly at rest inside this great hide coat, my mind full of thoughts that come from somewhere, float around there, as if I am a sort of sieve or catchment for thoughts that are part of me for a time and then drift past? I look at you and know that in seeing an uncomfortable, rather unhealthy, and pallid personage, not very unlike myself, I see nothing at all of you, know nothing: know, only, because my mind tells me so, that this is Canopus – and that is so far beyond my conception that I have simply to let it go at that. I sense myself, think of myself; and as I do this I dissolve, go away, am left with nothing, nothing, nothing – unless I am the wind that blows through the immense spaces that lie between electron and electron, proton and its attendants, spaces that cannot be filled with
nothing,
since nothing is
nothing
…' And down I sank again into sleep, where a dark restfulness and reassurance always waited for me, and from which I drifted up again, back to the cold shed, with Johor there. He was watching the little animals, all awake again. They were pulling open a sack with their sharp white teeth to get at the contents, and scattering the dried sprays and pieces of green and faded blue about on the ice, and scampering about among them, and playing and rolling. He watched, and he smiled, and he smiled at me as I came up from the dark saying to myself,
Here am I, Doeg
, and then:
Here is the feeling of me that I share with my unknown friends, my other selves.