We waited until Alsi opened her eyes and sat up, and Johor did the same.

I said to her, 'And how was it with you, as Doeg?' She said, smiling, 'Doeg, it seemed to me that as I spoke, everything that had happened to me, all my thoughts and my feelings, everything that I believed I had to be, was being put together in words, words, words - parcelled up, packaged up, and sent away... yes Doeg, I-Doeg - saw Alsi doing this and that, feeling thus or thinking so - and who was Alsi? I watched her, saw myself moving there among all the others... and now, I look back at myself as Doeg sitting in the shed with Johor, I see myself there, and see Johor, two people sitting together talking. And who was Doeg? Who, Doeg, is Doeg? And where now are Alsi or Doeg - for what is left of us all now? And to whom will you or I or any one of us be telling our little tales, singing our little songs?' And she looked, smiling, at me, and then at Johor who was listening as he lay propped on his elbow, and then at all the others. Slowly she looked at one after another, and we all looked back at her. When Alsi came back to us, with Johor, our small assembly of people had been made even more sharply aware of ourselves, our situation. We felt ourselves, as sharply as we saw - on a cold hillside, under a low cold hurrying sky, half a hundred individuals sitting together, fifty heaps of dirty shaggy animal skin and inside each a shivering parcel of bones and flesh, and thoughts and feelings too (but where were they, what were they?). We huddled there, listening to how the blizzards on the horizon squealed and raged and threatened this brief summer of ours which was no more than a small space or time at the very extremity of our planet, for the frosts of the approaching winter were beginning to show themselves. White on black, small white particles on black soil, crumbs and crystals of white scattered on the rocks and the grey-green grasses and on the wiry little plants - and in the air around us white flakes, only a few still, drifting, catching the weak sunlight, floating and sinking to settle with the frost on the earth. High above us, under heavy white clouds that had black crevasses, circled the great birds of the snow, white on white.

'If you are no longer Alsi,' I said to her, 'that means the snow animals are dead?'

'The pens are empty now, all of them.'

We all looked, and then understood that this was what we were doing, at her hands: those knots of thin bones that had once been so large and so capable, tending so well the small, the weak, the vulnerable.

And she was looking at Johor. And that was a look not so easily described. For one thing, there was nothing in it of suppliance. Or even of need. What was there, and most strongly, was the recognition of him, of Canopus.

'I am no longer Alsi,' she said to him. 'Not in any way, or in any capacity.' This sounded almost like a question; and in a moment she answered it. 'Somewhere else there is Alsi - another place, another time. Alsi cannot disappear since Alsi is and must be continually re-created.' Again she seemed to wait for him to speak, but he only smiled. 'Though we cannot see them, since it is day now, and the sunlight up there obscures this truth, our sky is full of stars and planets and on them there is Alsi. Alsi -there I am, since it must be so.'

'Since it must be so,' voices echoed her from our group.

'So, since this is not Alsi, who am I, Johor, and what is my name?

I said to him: 'Doeg tells tales and sings songs in all times and all places, everywhere people use sounds to communicate, so if I am no longer Doeg, then Doeg still is, and perhaps as the dark comes down...' - and it was coming down, as we talked, and small distant stars appeared - '... we are looking as we raise our eyes at worlds where Doeg is at work, for Doeg has to be. But who am I, Johor, and what is my name?'

And then Klin, the Fruit Maker, the Guardian of the Orchards: 'There is not one orchard or fruit tree or fruit anywhere in this world of ours, nothing is left of all that beauty and richness - and so Klin I am not, since Klin was what I did - Klin is at work somewhere else, there Klin grafts shoots to shoots, Klin buds and blends and makes, and causes branches to he heavy with blossom and then with fruit. But not here, not anywhere here, and so I am no longer Klin. And what is my name?'

And Bratch: 'The skill in my mind and in my hands is at work now, at work everywhere there are creatures of flesh and sinew, and blood and bone - Bratch is needed, and so Bratch must be, though it is not here, for here there is nothing left to do, since all over this world of ours our populations lie dying in their icy homes. Bratch I am not, since Bratch is what I did - and what is my name, Johor, what is my name?'

And Pedug: 'Where species reproduce themselves, where the young are born continually to replace those that have to die, there Pedug is, since Pedug has to be. Pedug is re-created always and everywhere, in every time and place, where Pedug is needed. So Pedug is not lost and gone because Pedug no longer exists on our planet. But I am not Pedug, Johor, and - what is my name?'

So it went, with every one of us, and the dark was heavy around us, and the chant, or song, or plaint, continued through the night, one after another of us, asking Johor, asking him, saying where and how and why, but answering ourselves, answering all we wanted to know ourselves, but ending always with that question we could not answer, since it was beyond us - what am I, who am I, and what is my name? Or, what was our name? - we, the Representatives, who represented now no skills, or abilities, or working functions, but who still sat there, cold and small and so very few, on that hillside, through the night, all through the night - and then the weak sun was shining dimly, a greyish gleam from greyish skies, and there was no colour left anywhere, for snow had fallen gently and silently, and the tall column Canopus had set there rose up out of fresh soft white, through which pushed the tips of low plants and the stiff dead grasses.

'There is one of us who still has a name,' said Alsi, as we became silent, since everyone had spoken.

'But Marl is not here,' one said. 'The Keepers of the Herds are not here.'

'And the herds are not here either, yet there is nowhere else for them to be.'

We sat on there, that day, as the snow fell quietly around us, for Johor said nothing, and we did not know what it was we ought to be doing.

And, as the light went, for another night, three figures came staggering towards us out of the gloom, and fell among us, breathing deep and painfully, and slept for a time, while we waited. These were Marl, and until they spoke, we could not feel that this particular stage of our being together was concluded.

It was in the night that they came up out of their exhaustion, and told us the tale of the herds - yes, it was Doeg we listened to for a while, Marl as Doeg, and this was what we were told.

That multitude of great hungry beasts found themselves crowding closer together every day, as the snows spread down and around them, making a natural corral of snowbanks, a barrier that the beasts showed no disposition to cross, since all the food that remained to them on the entire planet was in this small area around the tall black column. The hay masses from the last summer did not provision them for long, and then they browsed on the wiry plants and the bitter grasses, and then on the soil that is half vegetable. And still the snow crept in around them, and soon they stood together body to body, many thousands of them, a multitude, and there was nothing to eat. Many died, and those that were alive were spurred by their situation into an intelligence no one could have believed possible to them - they pushed the corpses out of the mass of the living with those horns of theirs that were so heavy and, we had thought when we first saw the beasts, so useless: What could they possibly be used for? Yet these horns had turned over the soil, when it became necessary to eat it, had dug roots out of the earth, had overturned boulders in the desperate search for food, had been used, finally, to push their dead out of what remained of the usable space.