of our ordinariness. And we held on to that thought when we came back and became a nine days’ wonder with our amazing stories … It was then I first noticed that always when one is telling of something done or seen or experienced, it becomes a story, a tale … at any rate, our people listened as if to some tale or legend. But you have only to begin: We were taken to this or that city, and it was such a time of the day, and we were met by – and at once there is something marvellous about it, and they have to know what is going to happen next! And this is true even when you are telling of something quite ordinary, let alone of a new planet! Since then I have remained Doeg nearly all of the time, though Klin and Marl have not. Though I have been Klin and Marl and Pedug and Masson, when needed. But Doeg is my nature, I suppose.’
‘And when you were one of the five Representatives of the Representatives?’
‘Oh, that was convenience, chance – people are chosen almost at random.’
‘Any one of the Representatives can represent the others?’
‘Yes! You know that! You know everything I am telling you – yes, I understand that I have to tell myself what I know – but we sit here, we sit talking, you and I, the pair of us, and you prod and you push me to say things that I suppose are important …’
‘Unless you expect me not to take you seriously when you ask questions? Shall I ignore them, because you already know the answers? Representative Doeg, whom do you represent? And what are you?’
He leaned forward at this, looking straight into my face, but what welled up in me then put an end to a moment that could have saved me so much questioning, and pain. But we may not hasten certain processes in ourselves: they have to work their way, and often enough, without our active or conscious aid.
I was thinking of our poor peoples; the pain of their fate invaded me, the waste of it, the waste …
Johor said drily: ‘This is a lavish and generous universe.’
‘You mean, it can afford the deaths of a few million people.’
‘Is death something new to you? Is it only now that you begin to contemplate death – what it means?’
‘Are you saying to me that the deaths of old people who have had their lives and who have used them are the same as the deaths we have to confront now?’
‘Have children and young people and even infants never died with you? Have you only had to come to terms with the deaths of the aged?’
‘You cannot be saying to me that it does not matter if the populations of a whole planet have to die – a species?’
‘I have not said it did not matter. Nor that we, Canopus, do not feel pain at what is happening. Nor, Doeg, that we have not done everything to prevent this happening. Nor that we are not …’
But indignation made me cut him short. ‘But you are not able to space-lift off this planet its doomed millions? You do not have a little unwanted planet somewhere that we could be given to use and develop and make fruitful? You have no use for us?’
‘Are those really questions, Doeg? Very well, I shall treat them as such – though ask yourself, does Canopus, in your experience, deal in rhetoric? No, we are not able to take off from Planet 8 all your populations. We do not have the resources …’
But again I was so thoroughly possessed by indignation that I could not let him go on, and I exclaimed: ‘You do not have the resources! Or are you saying that some of us will be taken off, leaving the rest to their fates? If you are saying this, then I, for one, will refuse! I am not going to be saved at the expense of others! And I know that every one of the Representatives will say the same! We have not spent our lives working for our peoples, expressing our peoples, being our peoples, only to abandon them at the end …’ My mind blacked out there, and for a long time. I knew it had been a long time, when I came to myself and found I was sitting there, in the cold shed, opposite Johor, who was patiently waiting.
His eyes were keenly searching my eyes, my face.
What had gone on, inside me, during that long dark space, now made it impossible for me to challenge him as wildly and angrily as I had before. But after a time I heard myself bring out rather feebly: ‘It is strange, what you said then, that Canopus does not have resources for this or that … We have always thought of you as all-powerful, able to do what you like. We have never imagined you as limited. Limited by what, Johor?’ And I answered myself: ‘You are the creation and creatures of something, some Being, to whom you stand in the same relation as we stand to you? … Yes, that must be so. But I have not thought on those lines before … And you cannot transcend your boundaries, as we may not transcend ours …’ And here came welling up the rage again – ‘But Canopus has not suddenly found itself the subject of a cosmic accident! Your planet – or is it planets? – does your star nurture more than one dependant? Your planet has not found itself suddenly, and almost from one day to the next, blighted and cursed by some movement of stars so distant you probably have never even known they existed – have not even given names to?’
He said gently, humorously: ‘Well, not yet. But you know, it could happen to us, as it has happened to you.’
‘And to Rohanda.’
‘And to Rohanda.’ And here, at the name, he let out a sigh so deep and so painful that I had to cry out: ‘Ah, Johor, I wonder if you sigh and suffer for us, Planet 8, as I can see you do for Rohanda. Do you care for it so much? Is it so much more beautiful a place than this is – was? In talking to others, perhaps to your peers, on Canopus, do you sigh as you did then, at the word Rohanda, when someone says: Planet 8?’
He said: ‘It is true that I am at this time afflicted by Rohanda. I have just come from there. It is hard to see something as healthy and good and promising as Rohanda was lose its impetus, its direction.’
‘Worse than seeing us do the same?’
‘You forget, the future of your planet was to be the future of Rohanda! We sent to Rohanda especially skilled and admirable colonists, from Planet 10, to make a synthesis with a species we were bringing to a certain level, so that you, from this planet, might make a synthesis with them, and become something quite extraordinary – so we hoped …’
I said: ‘You were planning to take off our populations to Rohanda. You have resources and intention for that – but not to save us now.’
‘There is nowhere to take you. Our economy is a very finely tuned one. Our empire isn’t random, or made by the decisions of self-seeking rulers or by the unplanned developments of our technologies. No, we have a very long time ago grown out of that barbarism. Our growth, our existence, what we are is a unit, a unity, a whole – in a way that, as far as we know, does not exist anywhere in our galaxy.’
‘So we are victims of your perfection!’
‘Perfection is not a word we have ever used of ourselves – and not in thought either … that word belongs only – to something higher.’
‘Victims nevertheless.’
I said this briskly, coldly, and with finality. I did not feel able to continue with the colloquy. I was tired in a way which had become only too familiar – as if movement, every word, even a thought that came into my head – was too heavy and difficult. I needed to sleep.
‘You can, if you need privacy, use my ice
