Rain

It rained. It had been raining for seven tears; thousands upon thousands of days  compounded and filled from one end to the other withp9 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!" Y

"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 kshe 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  stoodalone. 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 their 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 their 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.