Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (49 page)

 
          
 
"Now, Will," she called. "Don't
overdo. Don't make too much distance the first hour! You get tired, sit down!
You get hungry, eat! And . . ."

 
          
 
But here she had to stop and turn away and get
out her handkerchief.

 
          
 
A moment later she looked up the path and it
looked as though nobody had passed there in the last ten thousand years. It was
so empty she had to go in and shut the door.

 
          
 
Nighttime, nine o'clock, nine-fifteen, stars
out, moon round, house lights strawberry-colored through the curtains, the
chimney blowing long comet tails of fireworks, sighing warm. Down the chimney,
sounds of pots and pans and cutlery, fire on the hearth, Hke a great orange
cat. In the kitchen, the big iron cook-stove full of jumping flames, pans
boiling, bubbling, frying, vapors and steams in the air. From time to time the
old woman turned and her eyes listened and her mouth listened, wide, to the
world outside this house, this fire, and this food.

 
          
 
Nine-thirty and, from a great distance away
from the house, a solid whacking, chunking sound.

 
          
 
The old woman straightened up and laid down a
spoon.

 
          
 
Outside, the dull solid blows came again and
again in the moonlight. The sound went on for three or four minutes, during
which she hardly moved except to tighten her mouth or her fists with each solid
chunking blow. When the sounds stopped, she threw herself at the stove, the
table, stirring, pouring, lifting, carrying, setting down.

 
          
 
She finished just as new sounds came from the
dark land outside the windows. Footsteps came slowly up the path, heavy shoes
weighed the front porch.

 
          
 
She went to the door and waited for a knock.

 
          
 
None came.

 
          
 
She waited a full minute.

 
          
 
Outside on the porch a great bulk stirred and
shifted from side to side uneasily.

 
          
 
Finally she sighed and called sharply at the
door. "Will, is that you breathing out there?"

 
          
 
No answer. Only a kind of sheepish silence
behind the door.

 
          
 
She snatched the door wide.

 
          
 
The old man stood there, an incredible stack
of cordwood in his arm. His voice came from behind the stack.

 
          
 
"Saw smoke in the chimney; figured you
might need wood," he said.

 
          
 
She stood aside. He came in and placed the
wood carefully by the hearth, not looking at her.

 
          
 
She looked out on the porch and picked up the
suitcase and brought it in and shut the door.

 
          
 
She saw him sitting at the dinner table.

 
          
 
She stirred the soup on the stove to a great
boiling whirl.

 
          
 
"Roast beef in the oven?" he asked
quietly.

 
          
 
She opened the oven door. The steam breathed
across the room to wrap him up. He closed his eyes, seated there, bathed.

 
          
 
"What's that other smell, the
burning?" he asked a moment later.

 
          
 
She waited, back turned, and finally said,
"National Geographies."

 
          
 
He nodded slowly, saying nothing.

 
          
 
Then the food was on the table, warm and
tremulous, and there was a moment of silence after she sat down and looked at
him. She shook her head. She looked at him. Then she shook her head again
silently.

 
          
 
"Do you want to ask the blessing?"
she said.

 
          
 
“You" he said.

 
          
 
They sat there in the warm room by the bright
fire and bowed their heads and closed their eyes. She smiled and began.

 
          
 
"Thank you, Lord , . ."

 
          
 
"Ready?"

 
          
 
"Ready."

 
          
 
"Now?"

 
          
 
"Soon."

 
          
 
"Do the scientists really know? Will it
happen today, will it?"

 
          
 
"Look, look; see for yourself!"

 
          
 
The children pressed to each other like so
many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden
sun.

 
          
 
It rained.

 
          
 
It had been raining for seven years; thousands
upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with
rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers
and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the
islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a
thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on
the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men
and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out
their lives.

           
 
"It's Stopping, it's stopping!"

 
          
 
"Yes, yes!"

 
          
 
Margot stood apart from them, from these
children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and
rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years
ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned
world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in
remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow
crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they
remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms
and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum,
the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the
gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

 
          
 
All day yesterday they had read in class about
the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small
stories or essays or poems about it:

 
          
 
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for
just one hour.

 
          
 
That was Margot's poem, read in a quiet voice
in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.

 
          
 
"Aw, you didn't write that!"
protested one of the boys.

 
          
 
"I did," said Margot. "I
did."

 
          
 
"William!" said the teacher.

 
          
 
But that was yesterday. Now the rain was
slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.

 
          
 
"Where's teacher?"

 
          
 
"She'll be back."

 
          
 
"She'd better hurry, we'll miss it!"

 
          
 
They turned on themselves, like a feverish
wheel, all tumbling spokes.

 
          
 
Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl
who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had
washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow
from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away,
and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate,
staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. "What're
you looking at?" said William.

 
          
 
Margot said nothing.

 
          
 
"Speak when you're spoken to." He
gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by
him and nothing else.

 
          
 
They edged away from her, they would not look
at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games
with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her
and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang
songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they
sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched
windows.

 
          
 
And then, of course, the biggest crime of all
was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered
the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And
they, they had been on Venus all then* lives, and they had been only two years
old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat
of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered.

 
          
 
"It's like a penny," she said once,
eyes closed.

 
          
 
"No it's not!" the children cried.

 
          
 
"It's like a fire," she said,
"in the stove."

 
          
 
"You're lying, you don't remember!"
cried the children.

 
          
 
But she remembered and stood quietly apart
from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she
had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her
ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head. So after
that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her
difference and kept away.

 
          
 
There was talk that her father and mother were
taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so,
though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so,
the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence.
They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her
possible future.

 
          
 
"Get away!" The boy gave her another
push. "What're you waiting for?"

 
          
 
Then, for the first time, she turned and
looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.

 
          
 
"Well, don't wait around here!"
cried the boy savagely. "You won't see nothing!"

 
          
 
Her lips moved.

 
          
 
**Nothing!" he cried. "It was all a
joke, wasn't it?" He turned to the other children. "Nothing's
happening today. Is it?"

 
          
 
They all blinked at him and then,
understanding, laughed and shook their heads. "Nothing, nothing!"

 
          
 
"Oh, but," Margot whispered, her
eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say,
they know, the sun . . ."

 
          
 
"All a joke!" said the boy, and
seized her roughly. "Hey, everyone, let's put her in a closet before
teacher comes!"

 
          
 
"No," said Margot, falling back.

 
          
 
They surged about her, caught her up and bore
her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a
room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at
the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it.
They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back
down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

 
          
 
"Ready, children?" She glanced at
her watch.

 
          
 
"Yes!" said everyone.

 
          
 
"Are we all here?"

 
          
 
"Yes!"

 
          
 
The rain slackened still more.

 
          
 
They crowded to the huge door.

 
          
 
The rain stopped.

 
          
 
It was as if, in the midst of a film
concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something
had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally
cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and
then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a
peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a
standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears
had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put
then* hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell
of the silent, waiting world came in to them.

 
          
 
The sun came out.

 
          
 
It was the color of flaming bronze and it was
very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle
burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out,
yelling, into the springtime.

 
          
 
"Now, don't go too far," called the teacher
after them. "You've only two hours, you know. You wouldn't want to get
caught out!"

 
          
 
But they were running and turning their faces
up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were
taking off then* jackets and letting the sun bum their arms.

 
          
 
"Oh, it's better than the sun lamps,
isn't it?"

 
          
 
"Much, much better!"

 
          
 
They stopped running and stood in the great
jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously,
even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of
fleshlike weed, wavering, flowering in this brief spring. It was the color of
rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color
of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.

 
          
 
The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle
mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and alive. They
ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played
hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until tears ran
down their faces, they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing
blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to
the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion.
They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals
escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an
hour and did not stop running.

 
          
 
And then—

 
          
 
In the midst of their running one of the girls
wailed.

 
          
 
Everyone stopped.

 
          
 
The girl, standing in the open, held out her
hand.

 
          
 
"Oh, look, look," she said,
trembling.

 
          
 
They came slowly to look at her opened palm.

 
          
 
In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a
single raindrop.

 
          
 
She began to cry, looking at it.

 
          
 
They glanced quietly at the sky.

 
          
 
"Oh. Oh."

 
          
 
A few cold drops fell on their noses and their
cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cool
around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house,
their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.

 
          
 
A boom of thunder startled them and like
leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightning
struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened
into
midnight
in a flash.

 
          
 
They stood in the doorway of the underground
for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the
gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and
forever.

 
          
 
"Will it be seven more years?"

 
          
 
"Yes. Seven."

 
          
 
Then one of them gave a little cry.

 
          
 
"Margot!"

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"She's still in the closet where we
locked her."

 
          
 
"Margot."

 
          
 
They stood as if someone had driven them, like
so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away.
They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining
steadily. They could not meet each other's glances. Their faces were solemn and
pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.

 
          
 
"Margot."

 
          
 
One of the girls said, "Well . . .
?"

 
          
 
No one moved.

 
          
 
"Go on," whispered the girl.

 
          
 
They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of
cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the
storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked
over to the closet door slowly and stood by it.

 
          
 
Behind the closet door was only silence.

 
          
 
They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and
let Margot out.