The Very Best of F & SF v1 (3 page)

“Wait a minute...”

“It has all been
carefully planned. I have gambled on you, Mr. Knight. I am depending on your
good sense. Let me have the Almanac. I will disband... re-orient... and you
will never see me again. Vorloss verdash! It will be a bar adventure to narrate
for friends. Give me the Almanac!”

“Hold the phone,”
Knight said. “This is a gag. Remember? I—”

“Is it?” Boyne
interrupted. “Is it? Look at me.”

For almost a
minute the young couple stared at the bleached white face with its deadly eyes.
The half smile left Knight’s lips, and Jane shuddered involuntarily. There was
chill and dismay in the backroom.

“My God!” Knight
glanced helplessly at Jane. “This can’t be happening. He’s got me believing.
You?”

Jane nodded
jerkily.

“What should we
do? If everything he says is true we can refuse and live happily ever after.”

“No,” Jane said
in a choked voice. “There may be money and success in that book, but there’s
divorce and death too. Give him the book.”

“Take it,” Knight
said faintly.

Boyne rose
instantly. He picked up the parcel and went into the phone booth. When he came
out he had three books in one hand and a smaller parcel made up of the original
wrapping in the other. He placed the books on the table and stood for a moment,
smiling down.

“My gratitude,” he
said. “You have eased a precarious situation. It is only fair you should
receive something in return. We are forbidden to transfer anything that might
divert existing phenomena streams, but at least I can give you one token of the
future.”

He backed away,
bowed curiously, and said: “My service to you both.” Then he turned and started
out of the Tavern.

“Hey!” Knight
called. “The token?”

“Mr. Macy has it,”
Boyne answered and was gone.

The couple sat
at the table for a few blank moments like sleepers slowly awakening. Then, as
reality began to return, they stared at each other and burst into laughter.

“He really had
me scared,” Jane said.

“Talk about
Third Avenue characters. What an act. What’d he get out of it?”

“Well... he got
your Almanac.”

“But it doesn’t
make sense.” Knight began to laugh again. “All that business about paying Macy
but not giving him anything. And I’m supposed to see that he isn’t cheated. And
the mystery token of the future...”

The Tavern door
burst open and Macy shot through the saloon into the backroom. “Where is he?”
Macy shouted. “Where’s the thief? Boyne, he calls himself. More likely his name
is Dillinger.”

“Why, Mr. Macy!”
Jane exclaimed. “What’s the matter?”

“Where is he?”
Macy pounded on the door of the Men’s Room. “Come out, ye blaggard!”

“He’s gone,” Knight
said. “He left just before you got back.”

“And you, Mr.
Knight!” Macy pointed a trembling finger at the young lawyer. “You, to be party
to thievery and racketeers. Shame on you!”

“What’s wrong?”
Knight asked.

“He paid me one
hundred dollars to rent this backroom,” Macy cried in anguish. “One hundred
dollars. I took the bill over to Bernie the pawnbroker, being cautious-like,
and he found out it’s a forgery. It’s a counterfeit.”

“Oh no,” Jane
laughed. “That’s too much. Counterfeit?”

“Look at this,” Mr.
Macy shouted, slamming the bill down on the table.

Knight inspected
it closely. Suddenly he turned pale and the laughter drained out of his face.
He reached into his inside pocket, withdrew a checkbook and began to write with
trembling fingers.

“What on earth
are you doing?” Jane asked.

“Making sure
that Macy isn’t cheated,” Knight said. “You’ll get your hundred dollars, Mr.
Macy.”

“Oliver! Are you
insane? Throwing away a hundred dollars...”

“And I won’t be
losing anything either,” Knight answered. “All will be adjusted without
dislocation! They’re diabolical. Diabolical!”

“I don’t
understand.”

“Look at the
bill,” Knight said in a shaky voice. “Look closely.”

It was
beautifully engraved and genuine in appearance. Benjamin Franklin’s benign
features gazed up at them mildly and authentically; but in the lower right-hand
corner was printed: Series 1980 D. And underneath that was signed: Oliver
Wilson Knight, Secretary of the Treasury.

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Ray Bradbury has said that he’s not a
science fiction writer, he’s a fantasist, which helps explain why his lyrical,
imaginative tales have been such a good fit with
F&SF.
This particular story is a timeless fable and it’s one of the most
widely reprinted works ever to appear in our magazine (which is no small
distinction; many
F&SF
stories have been reprinted upwards
of two dozen times). We get letters all the time from readers looking to find a
story they remember from our pages; no other tale draws as many such letters as
this one.

“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 that 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 forest, 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 to 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 that 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, secondly, 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 that 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 summertime.

“Now, don’t go
too far,” called the teacher after them. “You’ve only one hour, 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 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, tumultuous, even as you watched it. It was a nest of
octopuses, clustering up great arms of flesh-like 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.

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 at 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
quickly 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.

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