The Very Best of F & SF v1 Read Online Free

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.