The First Day of Spring

by Mari Wolf

the noise and the crowdand the nervousness brought on by the rising wind.

  It would be better, of course, when they had their place in the country.There it would be warm and homelike and quiet, with the farm animalsnear by, and the weather shut out, boarded out and forgotten, the way itwas in winter on the world.

  "You're coming with us?" Captain Bernard was saying.

  "Yes, we're coming." Half a dozen of the men stood up and began pullingon their long, awkward coats.

  "It'll be good to get back in space again," MacGregor said. "For awhile." He smiled. "But I'm too old for a spaceman's life now."

  "And I'm too old even for this," Elias said apologetically. "If we'dfound this planet the other time...." He sighed and shook his head andlooked out the window at the shadows that were people, bent forward,walking into the wind. He sighed again. "I don't know. I just don'tknow."

  Saari got up and pulled on her wrap too. Then she walked over to one ofthe other women, spoke to her a minute, and came back carrying aquilted, rough fabricked coat. "Here, Trina, you'd better put this on.It'll be cold out."

  "Are you going with us?"

  "Sure. Why not? Dad's talked enough about space. I might as well seewhat it's like for myself."

  Trina shook her head. But before she could speak, someone opened thedoor 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 herhair, 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 ofit through the trees and the housetops.

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

  "Is it--is it often like that?"

  Saari MacGregor looked at her. Max Cramer turned and looked at her, andso 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 grasses, rippling in the warm day.They'd be whipping in the wind now, of course. The wind that was so muchstronger than any the world's machines ever made.

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

  "Snow?" Trina said blankly.

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

  "Why, yes, we have snow. We have everything Earth had." But snow twofeet deep ... Trina shivered, thinking of winter on the world, and thesoft dusting of white on winter mornings, the beautiful powdery flakescool in the sunlight.

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

  Saari turned away finally, and the others did too. The car started, thesound of its motors shutting out the wind a little, and then they weremoving. Yet it was even more frightening, rushing over the roads in thedarkness, with the houses flashing past and the trees thrashing in thewind and the people briefly seen and then left behind in the night.

  The ship was ahead. The ship. Now even it seemed a safe, familiar place.

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

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

  "Not like Earth, Trina? You're wrong. We have a better climate thanEarth's. We never have blizzards, nor hurricanes, and it's never toocold 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 toa bewildered child. "My mother's ancestors came here only a few yearsout from Earth," she said. "And do you know what they called thisplanet? A paradise. A garden world."

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

  Then they were at the ship, out of the car, running to the airlock, withthe grass lashing at their legs and the wind lashing at their faces andthe cold night air aflame suddenly in their lungs. And Trina couldn'tprotest any longer, not with the world mad about her, not with Saari'swords 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 wasquiet.

  She held out her arm for the needle.

  * * * * *

  When she awoke again it was morning. Morning on the world. They hadcarried her to one of the divans in the council hall, one near a windowso that she could see the familiar fields of her homeland as soon as sheawoke. She rubbed her eyes and straightened and looked up at the others.At Elias, still resting on another divan. At Captain Bernard. At Saariand 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. Herfather and I both went out into space." He sighed. "The others wouldn'teven do that."

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

  Trina looked across at him. Her fingers knew every line of his face, butnow 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 youeither, 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 nowthat he had never been hers, not really, nor she his, that the woman whowould be his would be like Saari, eager and unafraid and laughing in thewind, or looking out the ports at friendly stars.

  Elias leaned forward on the divan and gestured toward the master weatherpanel for their part of the village, the indicators that told what itwas like today and what it would be like tomorrow all over the world. "Ithink I understand," he said. "I think I know what we did to ourenvironment, through the generations. But it doesn't do much good, justknowing 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 andcry in his arms and beg him not to leave her, beg him to spend the restof his life on a world she could never leave again.

  "No," she said. "I guess not." And then, the memories rushed back, andthe music, and the little lane down by the stream where the magnoliasspread 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 thefestival music sang through the villages and the festival flowersbloomed and the festival lovers slipped off from the dances to walkamong them. There was a breeze, just enough to carry the mingledfragrances and the mingled songs, just enough to touch the throat andruffle the hair and lie lightly between the lips of lovers.

  Trina danced with Aaron Gomez, and remembered. And the wind seemed toosoft somehow, almost lifeless, with the air too sweet and cloying.

  She wondered
what a festival on the planet would be like.

  Max, with Saari MacGregor, perhaps, laughing in the wind, running in thechill of evening along some riverbank.

  I could have gone with him, she thought. I could have gone....

  But then the music swirled faster about them, the pulse of it poundingin her ears, and Aaron swept her closer as they danced, spinning amongthe people and the laughter, out toward the terrace, toward the treeswith leaves unstirring in the evening air. All was color and