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Description
The hatch clicked, airtight seal releasing with factory-precision smoothness.  I raised my head above the hull.  God - wind!  Wind, in my hair!  How long has it been?  It was easy to take fans on board a starship, and of course the life support systems depended on them for oxygen circulation.  You could get wind in your hair anytime, in space.  But not *real* wind.  Not like this.  The factory-air-conditioned air from the ship's factory-air-conditioned factory smelled as artificial as the fan noises sounded.  You don't notice it at first, but as the weeks drag by, it starts to drag on your spirit, this eternal nature-wind deprivation.  I can't imagine how the slowboat crews stayed sane for want of the breath of Old Momma Terra.

The wind is different on every world, of course, but then the wind is different from one part of the year to the next, from one day to the next.  Alien storms can only really be so alien, and even where the air smells different, the wind feels the same.  It was like that, elsewhere, a rush of homesickness swept away, with the poignant reminder that home is still very far away.  A lot of us colonists, we still feel the pull of Momma Terra.  They haven't been a major power since before the colonies were all even established, so the people who run Terra aren't all that important, except that they can dictate local law on the homeland.  They don't dare rule too callously over the tourist trade, of course - how else would their broken economy be mended by a resource-poor world?  The Trade Union of the WAF reaches every world, in some form or another, yet Terra holds some of the holiest places in history, including the very crucible of our creation.  This is a resource that can, in turn, be stripped of dignity and sold as product.  Sphinx tee shirts with real "camel hair fresh from the dusts of egypt" sewn into its fibers.  Tacky sombrero-clad book-ends with gold leaf decorations made from reforged gold from the ancient Mayan treasures - or maybe some asteroid they commandeered in-system just the other year and have been stripping down ever since.  Asteroid farms get taxed heavily, in prime Terra real estate, but the richest property is on the surface itself, and every tourist hot spot is owned and cash farmed competitively by some petty government or other.  The only thing they can all agree on is that the WAF doesn't own them, which is true de jure, but crap de facto.  Momma Terra's being used like everyone else.

And like a sucker, I'm supporting the exploitation.  I've paid my due for a round trip ticket home.

I'm on business.  Of course.  Who can afford a Terrestrial vacation, from my neck of the woods, without hitting the lottery, mortgaging the home, selling the kids, or charging it on the employer's expenses?  Me, I'd prefer the lottery thing, but the employer's tab is a fair second best.  I still have to go to work every day, but, hell, I'm *home*.  In a world I've never set foot on before.  But this is the wind I've wanted in my hair, all my life.

"Do you mind?" Javin prompted me.  "Some of us want to ogle, too."

I threw my head back and laughed.  "Javin, we're home!"  I leaped from the airlock, into the dust and sand, and laughed clear and loud in amazed incredulity.  Javin tumbled out behind me, sprawling in the sand and laughing.

"Home!  After all this time, we're finally..."

"But not to stay."

"No.  Hell no, not to stay."

"Poor old Momma Terra."

It was a few minutes before the tour guides and souvenir merchants zeroed in on our flight path and started hawking their relics at us.  A very few minutes of magic for the price all this would cost.

Maybe it wouldn't matter much if I bought just a little bit more.

I really shouldn't.  But I'm not going to want to leave this world behind.  It would be nice to take some small part of it with me.

Then it hit me.  I already have been carrying with me some small part of it.  I am of the people born of this world, and I am all the souvenir I could possibly want.  It's in my every breath and pulse.  It's in my heart, and in my lungs, and in my hair, God the wind was glorious.  "Please stop talking," I told the hawkers.  "You're drowning out the one voice I really want to hear."  They didn't listen.  Of course.

"Shut up, you ghoulish mummy merchants!" Javin snapped.  The hawkers went silent.

He turned to look at me.  "The wind?"  A lesser man would have asked, "Me, right?"

"The wind," I answered.  God, I love him.

Description
The hatch clicked, airtight seal releasing with factory-precision smoothness.  I raised my head above the hull.  God - wind!  Wind, in my hair!  How long has it been?  It was easy to take fans on board a starship, and of course the life support systems depended on them for oxygen circulation.  You could get wind in your hair anytime, in space.  But not *real* wind.  Not like this.  The factory-air-conditioned air from the ship's factory-air-conditioned factory smelled as artificial as the fan noises sounded.  You don't notice it at first, but as the weeks drag by, it starts to drag on your spirit, this eternal nature-wind deprivation.  I can't imagine how the slowboat crews stayed sane for want of the breath of Old Momma Terra.

The wind is different on every world, of course, but then the wind is different from one part of the year to the next, from one day to the next.  Alien storms can only really be so alien, and even where the air smells different, the wind feels the same.  It was like that, elsewhere, a rush of homesickness swept away, with the poignant reminder that home is still very far away.  A lot of us colonists, we still feel the pull of Momma Terra.  They haven't been a major power since before the colonies were all even established, so the people who run Terra aren't all that important, except that they can dictate local law on the homeland.  They don't dare rule too callously over the tourist trade, of course - how else would their broken economy be mended by a resource-poor world?  The Trade Union of the WAF reaches every world, in some form or another, yet Terra holds some of the holiest places in history, including the very crucible of our creation.  This is a resource that can, in turn, be stripped of dignity and sold as product.  Sphinx tee shirts with real "camel hair fresh from the dusts of egypt" sewn into its fibers.  Tacky sombrero-clad book-ends with gold leaf decorations made from reforged gold from the ancient Mayan treasures - or maybe some asteroid they commandeered in-system just the other year and have been stripping down ever since.  Asteroid farms get taxed heavily, in prime Terra real estate, but the richest property is on the surface itself, and every tourist hot spot is owned and cash farmed competitively by some petty government or other.  The only thing they can all agree on is that the WAF doesn't own them, which is true de jure, but crap de facto.  Momma Terra's being used like everyone else.

And like a sucker, I'm supporting the exploitation.  I've paid my due for a round trip ticket home.

I'm on business.  Of course.  Who can afford a Terrestrial vacation, from my neck of the woods, without hitting the lottery, mortgaging the home, selling the kids, or charging it on the employer's expenses?  Me, I'd prefer the lottery thing, but the employer's tab is a fair second best.  I still have to go to work every day, but, hell, I'm *home*.  In a world I've never set foot on before.  But this is the wind I've wanted in my hair, all my life.

"Do you mind?" Javin prompted me.  "Some of us want to ogle, too."

I threw my head back and laughed.  "Javin, we're home!"  I leaped from the airlock, into the dust and sand, and laughed clear and loud in amazed incredulity.  Javin tumbled out behind me, sprawling in the sand and laughing.

"Home!  After all this time, we're finally..."

"But not to stay."

"No.  Hell no, not to stay."

"Poor old Momma Terra."

It was a few minutes before the tour guides and souvenir merchants zeroed in on our flight path and started hawking their relics at us.  A very few minutes of magic for the price all this would cost.

Maybe it wouldn't matter much if I bought just a little bit more.

I really shouldn't.  But I'm not going to want to leave this world behind.  It would be nice to take some small part of it with me.

Then it hit me.  I already have been carrying with me some small part of it.  I am of the people born of this world, and I am all the souvenir I could possibly want.  It's in my every breath and pulse.  It's in my heart, and in my lungs, and in my hair, God the wind was glorious.  "Please stop talking," I told the hawkers.  "You're drowning out the one voice I really want to hear."  They didn't listen.  Of course.

"Shut up, you ghoulish mummy merchants!" Javin snapped.  The hawkers went silent.

He turned to look at me.  "The wind?"  A lesser man would have asked, "Me, right?"

"The wind," I answered.  God, I love him.