Lorraine Schein
Three Rains
It's raining here on New Earthport. I watch it fall past the circular windows that look onto the rocket bases; it looks just like the rain on Old Earth, even if it is artificially-made. In my travels between the galaxies, I have seen rain on many different planets.On Amphora 2, the capital city, Llelalia, is built of rain. It falls like liquid stalactites from the red-streaked sky, a clear tiara of sound, planned to the last droplet by the famous rain architects to form the shimmering tetrahelixial water pavilions. I remember hovering above those tall streaming domes in my ship, seeing the spaceflowers emerge. They unfolded like enormous intricate paper blossoms, only to immerse themselves slowly back into the flow of hyperspace.
The city smelled of the wild scent of the rain.
On the last planet in the Rigel system, the hypercharged ions of rain ease telepathic transmission, so that language is not needed for communication when it rains. Its color mirrors the mood of whoever it falls upon. When I was there on leave, feeling happy and relaxed, I ambled down the streets of its major city, glad to have a few days off and looking forward to seeing my family. I heard thunder; it started to shower, and I found myself awash in translucent skeins of green.
But suddenly someone bumped into me, and as he apologized his hands brushed my hip. I walked on, then decided to stop for lunch at a small cafe ahead, and checked my hippac to see if I had enough credits. It was gone! I searched everywhere, then realized I had been robbed.
The green-lit rain surrounding me changed into an opaque black shower that blocked the daylight, and I stumbled on for hours till I found my way home.
And there was my co-pilot, a woman who turned informer and was caught, turned into rain at the Penal Experimental Colony on the Venusian satellites. Her whole body was softened into a gel, then evanesced into water, until she could not move but only flow in one direction, wherever they chose to put her -- to nourish whatever Earth-like planet's soil they decided to place her on.
And she cannot see or hear or smell, but only experience herself as torrents of surging water falling from an alien sky to serve the soil of some far-off world. She forgot her crimes, but forgot her delight in them also, to become a new memory in the mind of its people, the startlingly cool memory known as rain.
Background by Dreamcatcher Graphics