'Go on from there, Alsi. Remember what happened when you did get home, and when you had told your tale and the people who had listened had turned their attention to something else? Can you remember how...'
But I did not hear any more of Alsi's efforts with memory, for the door opened in a screech of wind and a messenger came in, from Bratch for me: my aid was needed. I was to become Bratch for a time, as Alsi had become Doeg, and I went out into the wind that was coming straight down from the lands above our wall in a continuous driving squall.
I stumbled through the loose drifts, holding on to the young woman who had come to fetch me, as she clung to me, and in this way we forced our way out beyond the edges of our town and into the empty tundra where nothing could be seen but the driving snow, and so, slowly and painfully, towards the next town.
By the time we reached there, the blizzard had ceased. This town when we came on it was near obliterated, the snows had been so heavy. We pushed our way through the thick loose choking snow, well above the level of the first layer of windows where, in some places, we could see movements and pushings as if creatures were everywhere struggling out of eggs. We came to a building where the snow was smooth and thick to the height of the first ceiling, but there was a tunnel excavated down to the door, and we went down that, into a room used for meetings and discussions, and now filled with people who were sitting - not lying in that half-death of lethargic sleep - and waiting for me and for others from near towns. For there was a new danger, which soon I saw for myself, for the whole company of us went out into a morning where a cold and pale sun shone distantly in a pale hazy sky. But our eyes were not directed upwards to this rare enough sight - sun, in an unclouded sky - but on the wall that ran just beyond the edge of this town. Above it reared the familiar savage crests and shelves of ice; but the wall itself was cracked from top to bottom, black on white, for the inside of the wall had not yet frosted and dimmed. That sharp bright black astonished our eyes, and we stood staring, and as we did the crack widened, in a groan, and chips of ice flew everywhere, even threatening our poor exposed faces, and clouds of snow fell from the top of the wall. And suddenly the wall itself bulged, and then the upper part of it was crushed under the awful weight of the ice above, and fell almost to where we stood, and the ice sheets protruded forward and ground down the wall still further - and then we were standing in the little central square of the town, with the glacier coming right into it. The wall at that place did not exist - had gone.
We all knew what would happen, and what the danger to our people was: for before they had sent for me and for the others who would become Bratch for a time, they had already been into all the dwellings of the town, urging the inhabitants to come out, and to make new plans for themselves, to move away from this now dangerous wall. But they would not move, could not be made to rouse themselves. The stores of stimulant frozen water, with the flowers and leaves shining in it, were neglected, and in any case only the few already active ones had made use of them.
We had to make them all wake up and come out of the dark caves their dwellings now were, and to think how to make new shelters, and quickly, for we could hear the groaning and screaming of the ice as it pushed and slid above us towards the weak place in our wall, which was collapsing fast and faster on either side of the gap that was now filled completely with ice.
Our problem, worse than how to get new shelters built, was the fear in our minds. For something new, and impossible and deadly had happened - Canopus had been wrong, had said something which had then been cancelled, negated. The wall, our wall, which had absorbed so much of our strength and our substance, which was there because of Canopus - and which was built exactly according to the minutest prescriptions of Canopus - was breached, was down, and if in this place, then it was almost certainly down in other places, which we had not yet heard about - and probably would not, since travel now was so difficult and slow. The wall had been there to save us from the ice, and this was because Canopus would come and take us all away to the lovely Rohanda, our paradise, whose mother star we had often sought out in the sky, and then admired with our eyes and with our minds. But the wall was not going to save us... and Canopus, in the shape of Johor, a half-starved, half-frozen creature like ourselves, sat in a heap of dirty heavy hides in a shed, talking to poor Alsi, who was being Doeg - but why, what for, why, why, why - why was he troubling at all? - that was what had to be in our minds, then, as we stood looking up at where the ice had pushed our invulnerable, unconquerable wall over and down. If the wall had gone down under the onslaughts of the ice, then Canopus had made a mistake, and that meant... and those among us, Representatives and the represented, who had been talking - though less and less - about paradises and rescue and the fleets of spaceships which would soon, very soon, arrive and whisk us all away, fell silent, no longer spoke of rescue... yet, in spite of the despondency and despair which every one of us now felt, and knew we all felt, it was necessary to confer, to measure our situation, and to rouse those slumbrous dazed ones who could not or would not rouse themselves. But what for? In our hearts now we all knew, every one, that they would be roused and stimulated - if we could achieve this - to no end, for the space-fleets would not be coming. Yet Canopus wanted this. Johor said this most clearly and definitely. As long as it was possible, he wanted every individual up and alert, instead of drowsy and unconscious. And while we could see no sense in it, even a sort of cruelty, since the sleep and the lethargy were for protection, and because the people did not want to face what was happening - we had to do what he wanted. What Canopus wanted...
We, the alert among us, left the central place in the town which was being so horribly threatened by the glacier, and went back into the space under the snows, and we sat there, eating our little ration of dried meat, and we thought of how to get everyone awake and working. We had no resources but the small stores of ice that had the principle of the summer plant in it, and since that was all we could think of, knowing that exhortations on the lines of 'Canopus says...' were now useless, we set ourselves to chipping the blocks of ice into smaller and smaller pieces. These we piled on to trays, and a piled tray was carried by a team into every one of the dark odorous caves under the snows. I, carrying this desperate medicine - I, as Bratch - went into a room with others, who were Bratch, and we aroused the sleepers, and, as each one groaned awake, an arm across eyes unaccustomed now even to the little glimmer of light we brought in with us from the pallid outdoors, we held them up, and pushed the ice chips into their mouths and made sure the water was swallowed. And as animation came into their faces, and their struggles against us became stronger, we hauled them up, and pushed them up steps, and then up through the snow masses that covered the dwellings, into the central place of the town where the ice-tongue was protruding. Crowds of these poor wretches stood blinking there, up at the collapsed wall - which could not collapse, since Canopus had ordered it, but had collapsed - and then at how the glacier inched forward. They stared, and turned their heads listlessly about - for the animation the water had fed into them was not much - and most showed signs of wanting to stumble back under the snow into their sleep again. How strong is that deep, dark drive towards sleep, towards death, towards annihilation; how terribly, fearfully strong it is, and in every one of us - for I have felt it, as they did. I have lain drugged by my own indifference under the piled hides, and was saved only because others shook me awake and fought with me and made me struggle up into the cold light. To get them to move then, and to stand long enough for the active principle of the liquid to sting all their tissues awake - this was what we had to do, and we did, though we were using all our strength, physical and moral, to keep them from going back and down into the dark. We fought with them, and soon teams of them were at work dragging, on sledges and on anything that would slide over the snow, shovels and spades and the dried meats and the hides, out of that town, well clear of it, where we could build some shelters with the snow itself, for there was nothing else. The listlessness of them! - the dulled confusion! - their indifference! We had to fight, and exhort, and support. Long lines of its inhabitants stumbled away from their town, kept up this heavy staggering movement until night came and with it another blizzard. But we made them move on, and in the morning it was a clear day, not snowing, though the clouds were low and fast and thick over us, and again we walked through the day, and that night we were aided by a sky where we saw, very faint and distant and often obscured by cloud, some stars. And these encouraged us, and kept us moving. Next day, being at what we judged a safe distance, we made little houses of piled snow and blocks of ice, each one approached by a long tunnel through which one had to crawl. And in each were piles of hides, and small glimmering lights made of tallow from the herds, and stores of dried meats. And into each went four or five or more people, collapsing back at once into their lethargy, for the effect of the stimulant was wearing off. They were alive: were safe - for a time. For as long as was necessary... necessary for what? And the teams of us, of Bratch, made sure that in each shelter was one more energetic and lively than the others, though that was not saying much; and laid upon each the responsibility of seeing that the inhabitants of the snowhouses must be awake part of the time, must not be allowed to slide into the last sleep of all. Must not, must not - and when their eyes searched ours, with Why, what is the use? we put into our own eyes assurance and confidence we did not feel - for we did not feel ourselves able to say: Because Canopus says so.