The Rainbow Maker's Tale (28 page)

“Nothing?” I asked eventually,
although I already knew the answer.

“Nothing,” she confirmed,
sounding a little disappointed herself.

“OK.”

Cassie still had her headset
on, but I had taken mine off. We’d both been wearing them a few
minutes earlier, and I wondered if perhaps that was the connection.
I pulled the band around my head and settled it into place.

“What about now?”

Cassie re-focused on my eyes,
just as she had last time. I stared back at her and waited, willing
her to hear me.
“Come on…come on…”
I pleaded, desperate for
something to happen. Cassie gave a small nod.
“You can hear
me?”
I asked. She nodded again, giving me a small smile, as my
own face split into a wide grin.

I was about to jump up and
start bouncing around. This was huge! This was amazing – something
I’d never heard of, or read about, or even dreamed it was possible
for someone to do. Then, I checked myself, not wanting to break
Cassie’s concentration.

Maybe I should try something
more difficult than words…? We’d come this far, after all.
“I
wonder if…”

I concentrated on building a
picture in my head. I imagined one of my favourite parts in Park 42
and began filling in the details. The grasses, bushes and trees:
all different shades of browns and greens. The dappled light coming
through the overhanging branches, different to the usual flood of
brightness from the mirror-sky.

As an afterthought I added
Cassie and me to the scene. Working with things I had definitely
daydreamed about before, I let Cassie see one of my own secrets. We
were standing close together and I pictured wrapping my arm around
her waist, just as I had earlier. In my head, Cassie’s body moved
easily into mine and I used my other hand to stroke across her
cheek and turn her face to mine. I leaned in and –

“Hey!” Cassie exclaimed. “You
can’t do that!”

She sounded breathless, which
made me smile. I grinned, but thought back at her:
“I think
you’ll find I just did.”

The door to the records suite
slid open and Medic Jones entered. We both jumped at the intrusion
and turned guilty-looking faces in his direction. It wasn’t
difficult for him to guess that we had been doing very little work.
At least, not research that The Clinic would be happy about.

“I need some assistance in
Records.” Medic Jones was addressing me.

“Of course,” I replied. Pushing
back my chair I threw Cassie a look over my shoulder. “I’ll see you
later?”

Cassie agreed. “I’ll meet you
after I finish.”

“OK,” I pushed the image of the
hill path in the park we had taken yesterday out to her. I
half-wondered if she wouldn’t understand, but hoped that she would.
She nodded once without looking away from her screen, which I took
to mean that she’d got my message.

Reaching up, I pulled the
headset from around my ears and placed it carefully back into the
holder beside the screen. Pointing my finger towards the streams of
research that were still churning on the monitor, I was about to
ask Medic Jones if I should leave the system on, but before I could
speak he was already nodding at me to leave the program running.
Shaking off my irritation at the Medic’s brusque attitude, I
stepped around him and through the opening, only to find myself
stood waiting in the corridor whilst he stayed in the archive
room.

“Did you need me to come as
well Medic?” Cassie’s voice drifted from inside the room. She’d
obviously noticed him waiting around too. The only response was a
slight shake of the head and then he was beside me.

Pointing a single finger along
the corridor, he silently indicated the route we were to take,
before turning away and leading me off. Behind his back I shook my
own head.
Adults could be so odd sometimes.

When we reached the new room –
another small, research space – Medic Jones was swift to show me
what needed doing before excusing himself. It was a simple analysis
of blood types within the Family Quarter residents and current
stock levels of donor blood. That was easy enough. I programmed in
the parameters I needed to get the search report underway. Then,
finding myself alone, I decided to begin some research of my own.
There was even more reason to look at what Cassie’s records showed
now.

Using the spare terminal I
logged in to the main population data system – using Father’s
administrator passcode – and pulled up my personal file. My morning
waste sample analysis was in, showing heightened levels of
testosterone and flagging a note for further investigation. With a
couple of key strokes I returned the figures to the normal range,
repeating the action I’d been taking several times a day since I
discovered what was in my
vitamin
tablets and stopped taking
them.

Once my own data was looking
perfectly normal – I also had to reduce my heart rate anomaly which
registered on two scanners yesterday afternoon as Cassie and I had
walked back from Park 42 – I turned my attention to Cassie’s
records. At first I was intending only to check that her body scan
results had shown nothing problematic after yesterday’s accident.
But, once I was inside her profile, I couldn’t help but look
further.

The first thing I noticed was
that Cassie’s vitamin supplement had recently been adjusted. Until
the time we started the placement it had included a small amount of
lithium. The only purpose for lithium I was aware of was as a mood
suppressant, which was troubling; but then, two days after we
finished school, this element had been removed. It was replaced
with small doses of dopamine and norepinephrine, alongside a
standard vitamin complex.

Flicking further back in her
records, I noted that Cassie had a lithium component to her daily
vitamins virtually every day. The dose had been steadily reducing
over the past six months, until it was removed as we started the
placement at The Clinic.

I made a mental note to go back
and check our classmate’s records. It would be interesting to see
if the lithium was just something Cassie had been given, or whether
others were affected. It would certainly explain their lack of
interest in the problems I found with the Family Quarter.

From my previous research,
which I’d taken back several years, I did not recall lithium being
added to my supplement. The Council’s main interest in my health
profile appeared to be testosterone levels: I’d noted a fluctuating
pattern of adding the hormone, and then counteracting it with doses
of oestrogen. My chart read as if two people were fighting over my
tablets, without knowing the other was doing anything.

I was ready to look at
something else, my finger hovering over the
close
command
for that page. Then a single entry from a few weeks ago caught my
attention.

Cassie had received an
additional injected vitamin on the morning of our last school
examination, for iron deficiency. It reminded me that I’d received
exactly the same shot that day. I remembered being pulled aside,
with Cassie and two other boys from our class after initial
registration at school, before we entered the examination room.

We were told that our recent
blood tests – taken two days earlier – had shown low iron levels
and we would need a concentrated supplement now. The remainder of
our dose was to be managed through diet and had already been
scheduled into our meal program. I recalled that a mountain of
green vegetables had been added to my plate for the next five
days.

Curious, I clicked on the link
to open the chemical analysis of what Cassie had been given and a
small pop-up appeared:

Supplement Composition: 50%
liquid iron, 25% vitamin C, 10% pheromone-A, 5% pheromone-D, 5%
testosterone-F, 5% serotonin

I frowned as I read the
breakdown of the ingredients. That was not an iron injection; it
was something else entirely. And, it had been given to me, and
Cassie.

Why?

* * *

I rubbed a weary hand over my
face. It was dripping with sweat and my hand came away wet.
Normally, running through the combat and agility sequences I’d
developed would make me feel calm and order my thoughts. But that
was not happening today. I couldn’t relax. There were too many
thoughts churning away inside my head to allow me to unwind.

No one could understand this.
No one.

Least of all me!

Just when I thought I could see
a way of making things – anything – work with Cassie, something new
got thrown in the way. Now, more than ever, I was questioning
whether she was a tool in the system. If she was a tool, was I
stupid enough to fall for it? Or was Cassie simply trapped in the
same way as me…? It was possible we were both being
manipulated.

CRACK.

The loud snapping sound of the
tree branch, smashing beneath my fist, diverted my attention. I’d
only been using it as a centre target to direct my sweeps against;
I hadn’t actually meant to break it. Perhaps I was angrier than I’d
realised. I punched the tree trunk again, deliberately now,
half-relishing the blunt pain inside my knuckles.

What right did they have to try
and manipulate us?

Thump.

Surely we could have free
choice in one area of our lives?

Thump.

Why did they need us to fall in
love?

Thump.

My fists pounded into the
narrow trunk, punctuating my questions. I only stopped when the
burning in hands matched that in my head.

For a while, I simply stood, my
arms hanging limp at my sides, while doubts and questions washed
over me. Back and forth I ran everything through my mind, until
finally it began to slow down and fell into a rational order. It
started with the first day I’d spoken with Cassie.

Had I been affected by the
injection we’d been given?

No. I didn’t think so. Even
without the pheromone boost we had both been given, I’d always been
aware of Cassie. I didn’t need chemicals to know that I liked her,
although perhaps they helped me overcome my shyness that day…

What about Cassie?

I couldn’t answer for her. I
wasn’t sure how quickly chemical pheromones would work, or the
removal of the lithium mood inhibitor. However, the additional
serotonin, dopamine and other junk that had been going into
Cassie’s daily supplement in the past few weeks would surely have
some effect. Possibly even this intriguing new ability she had
acquired...

It made me furious all over
again, to even think that how I felt about Cassie might, for her,
be merely based on chemicals that had been forced into her body.
Just speculating that Cassie’s affection for me lay in lies and
deceit made a hollow, empty space open inside my chest.

I rolled my shoulders and shook
out my arms, trying to loosen the knots that had formed. I didn’t
need to be this tense – it wasn’t all bad. Even though it was
probably wrong of me, I did feel better about the adjustments I’d
made to Cassie’s supplement. A few simple updates to her natural
chemistry records had re-designated her daily tablets as a plain
multi-vitamin complex. Nothing untoward and nothing hormonal would
be going in there now: it was exactly the same as the one I was
being given because my test levels were all within the safe range.
Well, they were normal on the database, at least.

I grinned, feeling better
enough to begin my exercises again. This time, I knew I was going
to push myself properly and, in preparation, undid the front of my
day suit and rolled it down until I was able to tie the sleeves
around my waist. Satisfied with this, I ran through some light
stretches to warm up my muscles and began my routine.

A slow mantra cycled in my mind
as the precise fluid movements of the sequence drew me in. “Being
human is natural; natural
is
normal,” I whispered, running
through the movements over and over. It wasn’t something I usually
did and might have sounded like I was trying to convince myself,
but I wasn’t. This was just how I felt at that moment and was a
truth I was sure of. Today, I trusted nature, in a way that I did
not trust the world of the Space Station Hope.

A long while later, I realised
I wasn’t alone. The sensation of being watched by unseen eyes
crawled up my bare spine, making the hairs at the base of my neck
shiver. It was not an unpleasant feeling – quite the opposite, in
fact – simply because I knew it was Cassie watching me. Without
stopping, I began to search my surroundings trying to glimpse her
before I spoke. At first there was nothing but the same grey-green
blur of bushes and rock, but as I slowed my rotations I found the
only obvious place she could be.

A large outcrop of rock hid
most of Cassie’s figure from view. As I continued to move I caught
snippets of her: the right half of her face, one green eye
following my body as I shifted around. Another flash of her face,
this time I saw her lips twitching with the ghost of a smile,
before I whirled on again.

Despite my fear that Cassie
might have been influenced by the recent additions to her daily
supplements, I couldn’t help but want the way she looked at me to
be real. For me, it
was
real.

“I know you’re there.” I paused
for a fraction of a second, before finishing the sequence with a
high-spinning kick. When I landed I was in the perfect position to
see Cassie’s face as she reacted to my words. She ducked behind the
rock for a split-second, before re-emerging almost immediately,
guilty features blazing red. To avoid further embarrassment I
feigned nonchalance and continued with my routine, circling and
sweeping my arms around me in a series of gentle punches.

Pretending Cassie wasn’t there
quickly became difficult. Each time I spun my body around now, I
found my eyes being drawn back to her. Simply seeing her standing
there, watching me, filled me with a curious, nervous excitement
that was hard to ignore.