The First Day of Spring Part 5

"Sure. Why not? Dad's talked enough about s.p.a.ce. I might as well see what it's like for myself."

Trina shook her head. But before she could speak, someone opened the door and the cold breeze came in, hitting her in the face.

"Come on," Saari said. "It'll be warm in the car."

Somehow she was outside, following the others. The wind whipped her hair, stung her eyes, tore at her legs. The coat kept it from her body, but she couldn't protect her face, nor shut out the low moaning wail of it through the trees and the housetops.

She groped her way into the car. The door slammed shut, and the wind retreated, a little.

"Is it--is it often like that?"

Saari MacGregor looked at her. Max Cramer turned and looked at her, and so did the others in the car. For a long moment no one said anything.

And then Saari said, "Why, this is _summer_, Trina."

"Summer?" She thought of the cereal gra.s.ses, rippling in the warm day.

They'd be whipping in the wind now, of course. The wind that was so much stronger than any the world's machines ever made.

"You ought to be here in winter," Saari was saying. "It really blows then. And there are the rainstorms, and snow...."

"Snow?" Trina said blankly.

"Certainly. A couple of feet of it, usually." Saari stopped talking and looked at Trina, and surprise crept even farther into her face. "You mean you don't have snow on your world?"

"Why, yes, we have snow. We have everything Earth had." But snow two feet deep ... Trina s.h.i.+vered, thinking of winter on the world, and the soft dusting of white on winter mornings, the beautiful powdery flakes cool in the sunlight.

"They have about a sixteenth of an inch of it," Max said. "And even that's more than some of the worlds have. It hardly ever even rains in New California."

Saari turned away finally, and the others did too. The car started, the sound of its motors shutting out the wind a little, and then they were moving. Yet it was even more frightening, rus.h.i.+ng over the roads in the darkness, with the houses flas.h.i.+ng past and the trees thras.h.i.+ng in the wind and the people briefly seen and then left behind in the night.

The s.h.i.+p was ahead. The s.h.i.+p. Now even it seemed a safe, familiar place.

"This isn't like Earth after all," Trina said bitterly. "And it seemed so beautiful at first."

Then she saw that Saari MacGregor was looking at her again, but this time more in pity than in surprise.

"Not like Earth, Trina? You're wrong. We have a better climate than Earth's. We never have blizzards, nor hurricanes, and it's never too cold nor too hot, really."

"How can you say that?" Trina cried. "We've kept _our_ world like Earth.

Oh, maybe we've shortened winter a little, but still...."

Saari's voice was sad and gentle, as if she were explaining something to a bewildered child. "My mother's ancestors came here only a few years out from Earth," she said. "And do you know what they called this planet? A paradise. A garden world."

"That's why they named it Eden," Max Cramer said.

Then they were at the s.h.i.+p, out of the car, running to the airlock, with the gra.s.s las.h.i.+ng at their legs and the wind las.h.i.+ng at their faces and the cold night air aflame suddenly in their lungs. And Trina couldn't protest any longer, not with the world mad about her, not with Saari's words ringing in her ears like the wind.

She saw them carry Curt Elias in, and then Max was helping her aboard, and a moment later, finally, the airlock doors slipped shut and it was quiet.

She held out her arm for the needle.

When she awoke again it was morning. Morning on the world. They had carried her to one of the divans in the council hall, one near a window so that she could see the familiar fields of her homeland as soon as she awoke. She rubbed her eyes and straightened and looked up at the others.

At Elias, still resting on another divan. At Captain Bernard. At Saari and her father, and another man from the planet. At Max.

He looked at her, and then sighed and turned away, shaking his head.

"Are we--are we going back there?" Trina asked.

"No," Elias said. "The people are against it."

There was silence for a moment, and then Elias went on. "I'm against it.

I suppose that even if I'd been young I wouldn't have wanted to stay."

His eyes met Trina's, and there was pity in them.

"No," Max said. "You wouldn't have wanted to."

"And yet," Elias said, "I went down there. Trina went down there. Her father and I both went out into s.p.a.ce." He sighed. "The others wouldn't even do that."

"You're not quite as bad, that's all," Max said bluntly. "But I don't understand any of you. None of us ever has understood you. None of us ever will."

Trina looked across at him. Her fingers knew every line of his face, but now he was withdrawn, a stranger. "You're going back there, aren't you?"

she said. And when he nodded, she sighed. "We'll never understand you either, I guess."

She remembered Saari's question of the night before, "Is he your man?"

and she realized that her answer had not been the truth. She knew now that he had never been hers, not really, nor she his, that the woman who would be his would be like Saari, eager and unafraid and laughing in the wind, or looking out the ports at friendly stars.

Elias leaned forward on the divan and gestured toward the master weather panel for their part of the village, the indicators that told what it was like today and what it would be like tomorrow all over the world. "I think I understand," he said. "I think I know what we did to our environment, through the generations. But it doesn't do much good, just knowing something."

"You'll never change," Max said.

"No, I don't think we will."

Captain Bernard got up, and MacGregor got up too. They looked at Max.

Slowly he turned his head and smiled at Trina, and then he too stood up.

"Want to come outside and talk, Trina?"

But there was nothing to say. Nothing she could do except break down and cry in his arms and beg him not to leave her, beg him to spend the rest of his life on a world she could never leave again.

"No," she said. "I guess not." And then, the memories rushed back, and the music, and the little lane down by the stream where the magnolias spread their web of fragrance. "It's--it's almost festival time, Max.

Will you be here for it?"

"I don't know, Trina."

It meant no; she knew that.

The weeks slipped by, until it was summer on the world, until the festival music sang through the villages and the festival flowers bloomed and the festival lovers slipped off from the dances to walk among them. There was a breeze, just enough to carry the mingled fragrances and the mingled songs, just enough to touch the throat and ruffle the hair and lie lightly between the lips of lovers.