Doris Lessing - The making of representative for Planet 8

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 is the fourth in a series of novels with the overall title 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'; the first is Shikasta (1979); the second The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980); the third The Sirian Experiments (1981); and the fifth The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983).

You ask how the Canopean Agents seemed to us in the times of The Ice.

It was usually Johor who came, but whichever one of them it was, arrived without prior warning and apparently casually, stayed for a short or a long time, and during these agreeable visits - for we always looked forward to them -gave us advice, showed us how we could more effectively use the resources of our planet, suggested devices, methods, techniques. And then left without saying when we might expect to see Canopus again.

The Canopean Agents were not much unlike each other. I and the few others who had been taken to other Colonized Planets for instruction or training of various kinds knew that the officials of the Canopean Colonial Service were to be recognized by an authority they all had. But this was an expression of inner qualities, and not of a position in a hierarchy. On these other planets the Canopeans were always distinguishable from the natives, once we had learned what to look for. And this made us more aware of what it was they brought to our own Planet 8.

Everything on Planet 8 that had been planned, built, made - everything that was not natural - was according to their specifications. The presence of our kind on the planet was because of them: because of Canopus. They had brought us here, a species created by them from stock originating on several planets.

Therefore it is not accurate to talk of obedience: does one talk of obeying when it is a question of one's origin, and existence?

Or talk of rebellion...

There was once a near rebellion.

It was when Johor said we should circle our little globe with a tall thick wall, and brought instructions in how to make building substances not then known by us. We had to mix chemicals in certain proportions with our own crushed local stones. To make this wall would take all our strength, all our effort, and all our resources for a long time.

We pointed this out: as if it were likely Canopus did not already know it! This was our protest, for we called it that, among ourselves. And it was the limit of our 'rebellion'. Johor's smiling silence told us that a wall would have to be built.

What for?

We would find out, was the reply.

By the time the wall was completed, those who had been infants when it was started were old - I was one of them; and their children's children saw the ceremony when the last slab of shining black was swung into place on top of a construction fifty times as high as our tallest building, and with a breadth to match.

It was a marvel, this wall.

The black thing that circled our globe - though not at its widest part, not at its middle, a fact that made us question and doubt even more - drew us to it, attracted our minds and imaginations, absorbed us. Always were to be seen knots and groups and crowds of us, standing along its top; or on the observation platforms that had been placed all along it, for this purpose; or on high ground that overlooked it - high ground at a distance, for nothing near could give us an ample enough view. We were there in the early mornings when our sun flashed out over it, or at midday, when the glistening black flashed back light and colour to the sky, and at night, when the brilliant clustering stars of Planet 8 seemed to shine forth from within it as from dark water. Our planet did not have moons.

This wall had become our achievement, our progress, our summing up and definition: we were no longer developing in other ways, our wealth did not increase. We no longer expected, as we had in the past, always to be augmenting our resources: always to be making more subtle and fine and inventive our ways of living.

A wall. A great black shining wall. A useless wall.

Johor, the others who came, said: Wait, you will see, you will find out, you must trust us.

Their visits became more frequent, and their instructions were not always to do with the wall, and the nature and purposes of what we had to do were not easy to understand.

We knew that we had ceased to understand. We had understood - or believed we had - what Canopus wanted for us, and from us: we had been taking part, under their provision, in a long, slow progress upwards in civilization.

During this period of change, while our expectations for ourselves and our children were being tempered, our world continued mild in climate, and agreeable, and very beautiful. As always, we continued to grow more crops and beasts than we needed, and exchanged these with other near planets for their surpluses. Our population remained at the exact level required of us by Canopus. Our wealth was not increasing but we were not poor. We had never suffered harshness or threat.

We were a favoured planet, climatically, physically. Other planets suffered extremes of climate, knew heat that flayed and withered, and cold that kept great parts of them uninhabitable. Planet 8's position from its sun was such that along a narrow central zone there was heat, and sometimes discomfort. Temperate zones spread on either side. At the poles were frigid regions: but these were very small. The planet did not incline on its axis, or only so little that it made no difference. We did not have seasons as we knew other planets did.

In the regions where we all lived, there was never snow or ice.

We would tell our children: 'If you travel as far as you can that way, as far as you can that way, you will come to places that lie more distant from our sun than we do. You will find thick water, not light and quick-moving as it is with us. The water is slow with cold, and on its surface it wrinkles as it moves, or even, sometimes, makes plates or flakes that are solid. This is ice.'