Ray Bradbury
1954
Imagine living on a planet where rain falls
continuously, except for two hours every seven years, when the sun comes out.
Such is life on the planet Venus as science fiction writer Ray Bradbury
imagines it. Although life on Venus is much different from that on Earth, the
people he describes are the same as any of us.
"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 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.
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 their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.
"Oh, it's better than the sunlamps,
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
flesh-like weed, wavering, flowering 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
the 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.
