The Day it Rained Forever (17 page)

‘Well,' said Captain Forester, ‘it didn't quake for us, so it must be that it doesn't approve of your philosophy.'

‘Coincidence,' Chatterton smiled. ‘Come on now on the double. I want the Drill out here in a half-hour for a few samplings.'

‘Just a moment.' Forester stopped laughing. ‘We've got to clear the area first, be certain there're no hostile people or animals. Besides, it isn't every year you hit a planet like this, very nice; can you blame us if we want to have a look at it?'

‘All right.' Chatterton joined them. ‘Let's get it over with.'

They left a guard at the ship and they walked away over fields and meadows, over small hills and into little valleys. Like a bunch of boys out hiking on the finest day of the best summer in the most beautiful year in history, walking in the croquet weather where if you listened you could hear the whisper of the wooden ball across grass, the click through the hoop, the gentle undulations of voices, a sudden high drift of women's laughter from some ivy-shaded porch, the tinkle of ice in the summer tea-pitcher.

‘Hey,' said Driscoll, one of the younger crewmen, sniffing the air. ‘I brought a baseball and bat; we'll have a game later. What a diamond!'

The men laughed quietly in the baseball season, in the good quiet wind for tennis, in the weather for bicycling and picking wild grapes.

‘How'd you like the job of mowing all this?' asked Driscoll.

The men stopped.

‘I
knew
there was something wrong!' cried Chatterton. ‘This grass; it's freshly cut!'

‘Probably a species of dichondra, always short.'

Chatterton spat on the green grass and rubbed it in with his boot. ‘I don't like it, I don't like it. If anything happened to us, no one on Earth would ever know. Silly policy: if a rocket fails to return, we never send a second rocket to check the reason why.'

‘Natural enough,' explained Forester. ‘We can't waste time on a thousand hostile worlds, fighting futile wars. Each rocket represents years, money, lives. We can't afford to waste
two
rockets if one rocket proves a planet hostile. We go on to peaceful planets. Like this one.'

‘I often wonder,' said Driscoll, ‘what happened to all those lost expeditions on worlds we'll never try again.'

Chatterton eyed the distant forest. ‘They were shot, stabbed, broiled for dinner. Even as we may be, any minute. It's time we got back to work, Captain!'

They stood at the top of a little rise.

‘Feel,' said Driscoll, his hands and arms out loosely. ‘Remember how you used to run when you were a kid, and how the wind felt? Like feathers on your arms. You ran and thought any minute you'd fly, but you never quite did.'

The men stood remembering. There was a smell of pollen and new rain drying upon a million grass blades.

Driscoll gave a little run. ‘Feel it, by God, the wind! You know, we never have
really
flown by ourselves. We have to sit inside tons of metal, away from flying, really. We've never flown like birds fly, to themselves. Wouldn't it be nice to put your arms out like this –' He extended his arms. ‘And run.' He ran ahead of them, laughing at his idiocy. ‘And fly!' he cried.

He flew.

Time passed on the silent gold wrist-watches of the men standing below. They stared up. And from the sky came a high sound of almost unbelievable laughter.

‘Tell him to come down,' whispered Chatterton. ‘He'll be killed.'

Nobody heard. Their faces were raised away from Chatterton; they were stunned and smiling.

At last Driscoll landed at their feet. ‘Did you see me? My God, I flew!'

They had seen.

‘Let me sit down, oh Lord, Lord.' Driscoll slapped his knees, chuckling. ‘I'm a sparrow, I'm a hawk, God bless me. Go on, all of you, try it!'

‘It's the wind. It picked me up and flew me!' he said, a moment later, gasping, shivering with delight.

‘Let's get out of here.' Chatterton started turning slowly in circles, watching the blue sky. ‘It's a trap, it wants us all to fly in the air. Then it'll drop us all at once and kill us. I'm going back to the ship.'

‘You'll wait for my order on that,' said Forester.

The men were frowning, standing in the warm-cool air, while the wind sighed about them. There was a kite sound in the air, a sound of eternal March.

‘I
asked
the wind to fly me,' said Driscoll. ‘And it
did
!'

Forester waved the others aside. ‘I'll chance it next. If I'm killed, back to the ship, all of you.'

‘I'm sorry, I can't allow this; you're the captain,' said Chatterton. ‘We can't risk you.' He took out his gun. ‘I should have some sort of authority or force here. This game's gone on too long; I'm ordering us back to the ship!'

‘Holster your gun,' said Forester quietly.

‘Stand still, you idiot!' Chatterton blinked now at this man, now at that. ‘Haven't you
felt
it? This world's alive, it has a look to it, it's playing with us, biding its time.'

‘I'll be the judge of that,' said Forester. ‘You're going back to the ship, in a moment, under arrest, if you don't put up that gun.'

‘If you fools won't come with me, you can die out here. I'm going back, get my samples, and get out.'

‘Chatterton!'

‘Don't try to stop me!'

Chatterton started to run. Then, suddenly, he gave a cry.

Everyone shouted and looked up.

‘There he goes,' said Driscoll.

Chatterton was up in the sky.

Night had come on like the closing of a great but gentle eye. Chatterton sat stunned on the side of the hill. The other men sat around him, exhausted and laughing. He would not look at them, he would not look at the sky, he would only feel of the earth, and his arms and his legs and his body, tightening in on himself.

‘God, wasn't it perfect!' said a man named Koestler.

They had all flown, like orioles and eagles and sparrows, and they were all happy.

‘Come out of it, Chatterton, it was fun, wasn't it?' said Koestler.

‘It's impossible.' Chatterton shut his eyes, tight, tight. ‘It can't do it. There's only one way for it to do it; it's alive. The air's alive. Like a fist, it picked me up. Any minute now, it can kill us all. It's alive!'

‘All right,' said Koestler, ‘say it's alive. And a living thing must have purposes. Suppose the purpose of this world is to make us happy.'

As if to add to this, Driscoll came flying up, canteens in each hand. ‘I found a creek, tested and pure water, wait'll you try it!'

Forester took a canteen, nudged Chatterton with it, offering a drink. Chatterton shook his head and drew hastily away. He put his hands over his face. ‘It's the blood of this planet. Living blood. Drink that, put that inside and you put this world inside you to peer out your eyes and listen through your ears. No thanks!'

Forester shrugged and drank.

‘Wine!' he said.

‘It can't be!'

‘It
is
. Smell it, taste it! A rare white wine!'

‘French domestic' Driscoll sipped his.

‘Poison,' said Chatterton.

They passed the canteens round.

They idled on through the gentle afternoon, not wanting to do anything to disturb the peace that lay all about them. They were like very young men in the presence of great beauty, of a fine and famous woman, afraid that by some word, some gesture, they might turn her face away, avert her loveliness and her kindly attentions. They had felt the earthquake that had greeted Chatterton, thought Forester, and they did not want earthquake. Let them enjoy this Day After School Lets Out, this fishing weather. Let them sit under the shade trees or walk on the tender hills, but let them drill no drillings, test no testings, contaminate no contaminations.

They found a small stream which poured into a boiling water pool. Fish, swimming in the cold creek above, fell glittering into the hot spring and floated, minutes later, cooked, to the surface.

Chatterton reluctantly joined the others, eating.

‘It'll poison us all. There's always a trick to things like this. I'm sleeping in the rocket tonight. You can sleep out if you want. To quote a map I saw in medieval history: “Here there be tygers.” Some time tonight when you're sleeping, the tigers and cannibals will show up.'

Forester shook his head. ‘I'll go along with you, this planet is alive. It's a race unto itself. But it needs us to show off to, to appreciate its beauty. What's the use of a stage full of miracles if there's no audience?'

But Chatterton was busy. He was bent over, being sick.

‘I'm poisoned! Poisoned!'

They held his shoulders until the sickness passed. They gave him water. The others were feeling fine.

‘Better eat nothing but ship's food from now on,' advised Forester. ‘It'd be safer.'

‘We're starting work right now.' Chatterton swayed, wiping his mouth. ‘We've wasted a whole day. I'll work alone if I have to. I'll show this damned thing.'

He staggered away towards the rocket.

‘He doesn't know when he's well off,' murmured Driscoll. ‘Can't we stop him, Captain?'

‘He practically owns the expedition. We don't have to help him; there's a clause in our contract that guarantees refusal to work under dangerous conditions. So … do unto this Picnic Ground as you would have it do unto you. No initial-cutting on the trees. Replace the turf on the greens. Clean up your banana-peels after you.'

Now, below, in the ship there was an immense humming. From the storage port rolled the great shining Drill. Chatterton followed it, called directions to its robot radio. ‘This way, here!'

‘The fool.'

‘Now!' cried Chatterton.

The Drill plunged its long screw-bore into the green grass.

Chatterton waved up at the other men. ‘I'll show it!'

The sky trembled.

The Drill stood in the centre of a little sea of grass. For a moment it plunged away, bringing up moist corks of sod which it spat unceremoniously into a shaking analysis bin.

Now the Drill gave a wrenched, metallic squeal like a monster interrupted at its feed. From the soil beneath it, slow, bluish liquids bubbled up.

Chatterton shouted, ‘Get back, you fool!'

The Drill lumbered in a prehistoric dance. It shrieked like a mighty train turning on a sharp curve, throwing out red sparks. It was sinking. The black slime gave under it in a dark pool.

With a coughing sigh, a series of pants and churnings, the Drill sank into a black scum like an elephant shot and dying, trumpeting, like a mammoth at the end of an Age, vanishing limb by ponderous limb into the pit.

‘My God,' said Forester under his breath, fascinated with the scene. ‘You know what that is, Driscoll? It's tar. The damn fool machine hit a tar-pit!'

‘Listen, listen!' cried Chatterton at the Drill, running about on the edge of the oily lake. ‘
This
way, over here!'

But like the old tyrants of the earth, the dinosaurs with their tubed and screaming necks, the Drill was plunging and thrashing in the one lake from where there was no returning to bask on the firm and understandable shore.

Chatterton turned to the other men far away. ‘
Do
something, someone!'

The Drill was gone.

The tar-pit bubbled and gloated, sucking the hidden monster bones. The surface of the pool was silent. A huge bubble, the last, rose, expelled a scent of ancient petroleum, and fell apart.

The men came down and stood on the edge of the little black sea.

Chatterton stopped yelling.

After a long minute of staring into the silent tar-pool, Chatterton turned and looked at the hills, blindly, at the green rolling lawns. The distant trees were growing fruit now and dropping it, softly, to the ground.

‘I'll show it,' he said quietly.

‘Take it easy, Chatterton.'

‘I'll fix it,' he said.

‘Sit down, have a drink.'

‘I'll fix it good, I'll show it it can't do this to me.'

Chatterton started off back to the ship.

‘Wait a minute, now,' said Forester.

Chatterton ran. ‘I know what to do, I know how to fix it!'

‘Stop him!' said Forester. He ran, then remembered he could fly. ‘The A-Bomb's on the ship, if he should get to that….'

The other men had thought of that and were in the air. A small grove of trees stood between the rocket and Chatterton as he ran on the ground, forgetting that he could fly, or afraid to fly, or not allowed to fly, yelling. The crew headed for the rocket to wait for him, the Captain with them. They arrived, formed a line, and shut the rocket port. The last they saw of Chatterton he was plunging through the edge of the tiny forest.

The crew stood waiting.

‘That fool, that crazy guy.'

Chatterton did not come out on the other side of the small woodland.

‘He's turned back, waiting for us to relax our guard.'

‘Go bring him in,' said Forester.

Two men flew off.

Now, softly, a great and gentle rain fell upon the green world.

‘The final touch,' said Driscoll. ‘We'd never have to build houses here. Notice it's not raining
on
us. It's raining all around, ahead, behind us. What a world!'

They stood dry in the middle of the blue, cool rain. The sun was setting. The moon, a large one the colour of ice, rose over the freshened hills.

‘There's only one more thing this world needs.'

‘Yes,' said everyone, thoughtfully, slowly.

‘We'll have to go looking,' said Driscoll. ‘It's logical. The wind flies us, the trees and streams feed us, everything is alive. Perhaps if we asked for companionship …'

‘I've thought a long time, today and other days,' said Koestler. ‘We're all bachelors, been travelling for years, and tired of it. Wouldn't it be nice to settle down somewhere. Here, maybe. On Earth you work like hell just to save enough to buy a house, pay taxes; the cities stink. Here, you won't even need a house, with this weather. If it gets monotonous you can ask for rain, clouds, snow, changes. You don't have to work here for anything.'