Shikasta by Doris Lessing

collected vegetables and fruit and seeds, working frantically, for as long as it was possible before the pains became unbearable. A few of the really hardy returned to the city itself, where, screaming and vomiting, they reeled in and out of the houses, dragging out warmth and shelter – bedding, clothes, utensils of all kinds. In this way enough was brought to feed them, keep them warm. But these excursions back into the city had their black side, too, as will be seen: even then it was noticeable that some of those who had subjected themselvesto the Stones’ emanations seemed to want to feel them again.
    Shelters were being made in the forest from boughs, sheaves of grass, even packed earth. Fire had been carried from the city in an earthenware pot, and was guarded day and night in the form of a great fire which was the focal point of this settlement of – savages. Ground had been marked out and was being dug for new gardens. Attempts were being made to duplicate the workshops and factories of the cities, but they could no longer remember their crafts, which in any case depended on the powers and technology of the Giants.
    The animals had begun to move away. The first hunters were killing them by walking up to one and plunging in a knife: they had never learned fear, these mild intelligent creatures of the Time of the Giants – for this was the name of the time just passed, how everyone referred to what had been lost. But the animals, learning fear, were moving away, at first reluctantly, with the same wondering disbelieving look as the Natives had when they first felt the new pains. And then, being stalked and chased, troops and bands and herds of the beautiful beasts, infinitely more varied and adapted than Shikasta ever knew afterwards, began a rapid movement out and away. There would be the sounds of thundering herds, and we knew another part of the animal population had fled.
    Meanwhile, I had to try to visit all the cities, where I hoped that instinct had taken the inhabitants out and to safety. Perhaps there was enough of the communal mind left to have allowed the other cities to sense what was happening at the Round City? I and David and some others went first of all to the Crescent City, where we found bands of people wandering about outside in the fertile fields of the great river delta. They told us that their city was ‘full of demons’ but that many of the population had not left, for ‘there had been no one to tell them to go, they were waiting for the Giants to come.’ Those who had escaped were making reed huts, and the ground had been cleared for spring planting. The animals had left. We had passed through flocks of every kind moving away from the deadly environs of the Crescent City, and from the creatures moving on two legs who had become their enemies.
    To shorten this part of my account: We went from city to city, splitting ourselves into several bands; from the Square City to the City of the Triangle, from the Diamond City to the Octagon, from the City of the Oval to the Rectangular City – and on, and on. It took a full term of the Shikastan journey around its sun. The bands that set forth did not remain as they had been, for some decided to stay with settlements that attracted them, some sickened and died, some, finding a particularly beautiful forest or river, could not leave there: but about a hundred or so, with those who joined, wishing to be of use, or impelled by the new restlessness which was such a feature of this Shikasta, journeyed incessantly for a year, and found that everywhere was the same. The cities were all empty. Not one was anything but a death-trap or a madhouse. Where people had stayed, they had killed themselves or were idiots.
    Around each were the new settlements of Natives living in every kind of roughly contrived hut, eating meat they had hunted, wearing skins, tending gardens and fields of grain. If there were any clothes left from their