The Rainbow Maker's Tale (17 page)

“Wow.” Cassie smiled to herself
and started turning on the spot again, gazing out at the station
spreading away beneath us from every possible angle.

Watching her, an unfamiliar
sense of calm spread through me and I stood beside her feeling more
peaceful than I had in a long time. At length I sank down to the
ground, settling into an easy sitting position, to leave Cassie
undisturbed for a while longer. As I relaxed in the comfortable
silence I allowed my own thoughts to return to their earlier
preoccupation: what was Cassie to me, and what was
I
to
her?

It turned out that waiting was
only making me feel bolder and in the end – unable to hold off any
longer – I reached up for her hand, hanging loosely at her side and
gripping her fingers lightly in my own tugged her gently, insisting
that she sit beside me. Cassie moved willingly as I guided her and
once she was seated on the short, tufted grass I released her hand.
She shuffled around for a few moments, drawing her legs up to her
chest and leaning forwards to rest her chin lightly on her knees as
she relaxed.

From the corner of my eye I
watched her. The dark strands of her hair were pulled loosely away
from her face, allowing me to see her keen, green eyes as she gazed
into the distance beyond us. She seemed quite content as we sat
there. Content and beautiful I observed, sighing silently beneath
my breath. I wasn’t about to articulate
that
thought
again!

“There’s so much to see,” she
whispered softly, “it’s hard to take it all in.”

“I’ve been here lots of times
and I still find something new each time I come.”

Perhaps sharing some of my own
observations would help her put the images into context, I thought,
and so leaning forwards I began pointing out some of the main areas
she might be interested in. Three tall buildings stood out to me
straight away. “That’s the main hub at the centre of the Black,
Green and Blue residential zones,” I pointed them out.

“That’s The Clinic?”

She sounded a little more
shocked than I’d expected, but I wasn’t too sure what part
exactly
she was surprised about and so I simply nodded and
pressed on with the “tour”.

“We came around the inside edge
of the Agricultural Sector in the middle of the station…” I
gestured towards the far right side of the towers, where the large
domes of the Agricultural Sector curved like giant bubbles. “…And
skirted through the boundary of the Red Zone to get to the Park
entrance.” I traced the arc that we had walked, drawing Cassie’s
gaze past me and finishing at the park entrance, behind us to the
right.

“It’s so strange looking across
the whole of the space station from here,” she observed, as she
redirected her eyes back towards the distant Green Zone.

“You can’t see the
whole
station,” I corrected, more sharply than I intended, unable to stop
myself from bristling at her words.

Taking a breath, I reminded
myself that Cassie hadn’t spent most of her life obsessing over the
minutia details of life on the station. She might not have, but
I
had – perhaps it was time to start my little
investigation… it was the reason we were here, wasn’t it?

The thought encouraged me and I
tried again – more appropriately this time – to help Cassie
understand what we were looking at by pointing towards one of the
areas I found most troublesome about the station.

“It’s hard to see because of
the colours, but that’s the Married Quarter over to the right
beyond the edge of the food domes. On the left is the Retirement
Quarter, at the other side of the Engineering Sector.” Once more I
traced the outline of the features I was trying to show her with my
hand.

Cassie squinted in the
direction I indicated, but showed no sign of recognition.

“Can you see?” I leaned in more
closely to check whether the line I was pointing out aligned with
her perspective. “There’s a slightly darker grey wall that reaches
fully to the top of the arched ceiling...” My words trailed off as
I waited for an answer.

“Erm,” she hesitated as I
watched her eyes moving across the area I’d shown her. “No,” she
finally acknowledged, sounding frustrated.

To be fair the boundary wasn’t
that
obvious: I’d been here countless times before I even
began to understand the wider layout of the station beyond the
Family Quarter. I could make this easier for her.

“Here,” I took hold of Cassie’s
hand, pleased to have an excuse to do so even when I knew I should
be focusing on my
investigation
. She allowed me to curl her
fingers smoothly into a fist until only her index finger was
pointing out, then I drew her arm outward and leaned my head
against her shoulder to trace the correct line of sight.
Investigating is fun, I smirked, keeping hold of her hand and
guiding it along the distant boundary line.

“Just above the domes, you can
see it’s a little darker…” I spoke slowly, half through
concentration, half to conceal the thrill I felt at being close to
her.

Cassie seemed to barely breathe
as I moved her arm around and I wondered if this was because my
behaviour was making her uncomfortable. Just as this thought was
penetrating my mind she exclaimed “oh yes,” loudly in my ear and
made me jump. She’d obviously seen the Married Quarter. The thick
atmosphere that had been growing between us disappeared with her
words, and although Cassie didn’t seem uncomfortable now, I dropped
her hand and pulled my head away from her.

“It blocks the whole area,” she
noted, sounding confused. “I didn’t think it would be that
big.”

“It
is
big,” I agreed,
distracted once more by the confusing mixture of emotions and
thoughts I found myself filling up with. I was only half listening
as Cassie continued speaking, until I realised what she was
saying.

“I don’t suppose I’d really
given it that much thought… But, I suppose given the number of
people in the station in the Family Quarter and everything, there
must be – what –a few hundred couples in there at any one time? I
wonder if it’s a similar layout to this Quarter…”

My back went rigid as I
realised that, without meaning to, Cassie had stumbled onto one of
my most problematic observations about the Married Quarter. Her
words trailed to an end as I pulled away from her, staring at the
grey walls in the distance.

“What’s wrong?”

I could feel her eyes on my
face, but could not look at her. “Nothing,” I murmured. My own
thoughts and irritations blurring in my mind. Cassie’s simple – if
unrealistic – comments about the size of the Married Quarter had
made me angry. Not with her, but with the hidden system we lived
within. I hated living in a world built upon lies.

That was not Cassie’s fault
though, was it? I had brought her here to test our
friendship
hadn’t I? I wanted to see how she would react to
the
real
me. So, why wait any longer… If she had information
that would be useful to me, now was the time to find out. I took a
deep, steadying breath.

“I tried to do the
calculations, you know?” I began slowly, unsure if this was the
right way to start. “I did them to try and work out how many people
might be in the Married Quarter…”

How could I say this without
sounding like a madman?

“And…?” Cassie prompted, when
my words faltered.

“I couldn’t get the figures to
make sense.”

“What did they show?”

The answer had been trapped
inside me for so long. With no one to trust or talk to about this,
I’d held it close as one of the many lies we were being told. Now
Cassie was sat here,
asking
me to tell her. It’s what I
wanted – and it would test our friendship – so the truth began
pouring out.

“It was simple really…when I
realised it, I couldn’t work out how I hadn’t seen it before. It’s
so obvious!” I knew I sounded angry and so I sucked in a deep
breath in the hope of calming my voice. Maybe it would be better if
I got Cassie to work it out, instead of simply telling her. “You
know the population of the station remains pretty much constant
because of the one-child policy?”

Cassie nodded, yes.

“How can that possibly work?” I
watched as she considered my question.

“I don’t know what you mean,”
Cassie replied eventually, shaking her head.

“What I mean is: how can the
population levels remain static if every two people here can only
have one child?” I explained with another question, trying to make
my thought process clear. Cassie’s eyes held mind as I saw her
playing through the logic behind my statement.

“How can that be right?” Her
words were more exclamation than question and I knew she understood
what I did. She pressed on, answering her own query as she spoke.
“If for every two people who leave here for the Married Quarter,
only one replaces them when they returned to the Family Quarter,
the population would be decreasing over time, wouldn’t it?”

Her bright eyes widened with
the shock of realisation. It was basic mathematics – although no
one else ever seemed to notice the anomaly that the population
remained the same, even though there should only be half the number
of people returning as left.

“It isn’t right,” I said. “If
it
is
true that the population has to remain static due to
resource limitations
, and the one-child policy is enforced,
then the system as I understand it does not add up. It’s not
logical.”

Logic.

No matter how many times I
looked at it, I could not make sense of our unchanging system, that
had at it’s heart, the principle that two become one.
Hell, no
one even seemed to notice the eerie symmetry of our classes at
school!
Every year group was matched evenly, five boys and five
girls. Year after year – the pattern repeated across the Family
Quarter. That was no coincidence, and if it was a necessity for
survival, then why wasn’t it explained to us, as part of our future
on the space station?

I had been hiding this for so
long, even speaking about it now was difficult. Hatred seeped into
words I shared.

“There must be some
explanation…” Cassie said.

“Such as?” I spat back,
blocking Cassie’s half-formed question.

I knew I was being belligerent,
but for some reason I couldn’t stop myself. She was just trying to
rationalise what she’d learned, but I didn’t want to hear it. I had
looked at this issue from every angle possible. There was no
explanation that fitted with the world of the space station as we
were expected to believe it worked.

Maybe I was angry because
Cassie was supposed to have the answers. Wasn’t she the one that
Scarlett had been so focused on: before she
died
, and again
just as she disappeared into the Married Quarter?

Why had Scarlett been so
determined that Cassie had answers?

I shook my head, realising that
I’d changed my life over a couple of strange events. Scarlett had
put me on a path to Cassie for answers, when I hadn’t even got
questions. She had sent me searching for them, hadn’t she?

None of this was Cassie’s
responsibility, but I admired the fact that she didn’t back down,
even though I had cut her off, sounding like an arrogant fool. She
began firing her own questions and suggestions back at me,
continuing even when I tossed them aside.

“Maybe there are more a lot
more people already in the Married Quarter waiting to have children
and so it balances out?”

“If that were the case, there
would still only be a decreasing population,” I dismissed.

“Unless there were more people
in there to start with…?”

“But where would they have come
from?” I countered. We’re fifth generation descendents now – surely
any
spares
would have been worked out of the system by
now.

“Maybe it hasn’t always been a
one-child policy?”

There was possibility behind
this suggestion. “Perhaps,” I allowed, with a shrug. “If that’s the
case we must be close to hitting a point where they would allow
more than one child in order to maintain the population.”

“Perhaps,” Cassie echoed my
words now. And I caught a flash of anger in the set of her mouth as
she fired back her own question: “you don’t know that The Council
won’t do that though, do you?”

Cassie was no pushover. I
tilted my head in a small nod, admiring the speed with which she’d
taken onboard my suggestion and come back at me with answers. With
her school friends I’d only ever seen Cassie try to fit in: not
saying anything contentious. She always seemed to be trying to hide
her obvious intelligence. I didn’t know why, but I think I liked
the fact that I’d made her a little angry, made her tell
me
the truth.

I offered a final observation
in response to Cassie’s open-ended question. “They’d have to
provide some new facilities at The Clinic, as they don’t cater for
maternity care at the moment, or hadn’t you noticed?” It definitely
made her angry.

“Is that why you brought me
here?” Her green eyes focused fiercely on mine.

I looked away. No. This wasn’t
what I wanted and I knew it.

Cassie’s answers intrigued me,
definitely. The fact that some of the strangest things that had
happened to me, might be connected to her, meant that I couldn’t
stay away. But, the reason we were here – beyond all my other
interests and pretences – was because I was falling in love with
her. And now I was ruining whatever chance I had of making Cassie
like me.

“I’m sorry, you’re right. You
don’t want to hear the crazy things I think about.” My attempt at
smile disintegrated into a pained grimace and so I let it fall
away. I didn’t want to come off being angry AND creepy, although it
was probably already too late for that.