The Rainbow Maker's Tale (47 page)

“Yeah,” I nodded, answering the
unasked question.

“Oh.”

Cassie stepped away, leaving a
cold spot where her warm body had been. “There’s nothing for you to
do, everything is set up.” I wanted to reassure her, and clear away
the desolation that now shadowed her eyes, but I knew there was
nothing I could say that would make a difference. Cassie gave no
indication that she had heard me. “We’ve got thirty minutes now
until – well, until – it’s time.”

“Oh,” Cassie said again. She
wasn’t looking at me: she was staring at the compartment where
Joel’s covered body lay.

“We have nothing to do but
wait. Why don’t we have something to eat?”

It was a terrible suggestion
and I knew it. I was sure Cassie felt about as hungry as I did
right now, but it was the first thing that had popped into my head.
Without saying anything, she took a seat at the single small table
in the pod, which divided the
living
area from the main pod
console. I bustled about in front of the pod compartments, locating
two bowls and some dehydrated soup. Disappearing into the tiny
bathroom – where the only sink was – I added the requisite amount
of water to the package of soup, before taking it back into the
main area of the pod to put into the hot box to cook.

“Why do you think The
Collective even had a pod like this?” Cassie said abruptly. She
might have been talking to herself, but I answered anyway.

“There was something about it
in the files I found.” The hot box
pinged
and I turned away
to remove the sachet of boiling soup. Ripping the top off I poured
it haphazardly into the two bowls I’d set onto the table,
struggling with just one good hand.

Cassie pulled a bowl towards
her, but did not pick up her spoon. She was waiting for me.

“This is an old model pod – the
manual made some references to it having been used to transport
humans from elsewhere, but that the small size and lack of
restraining areas
made them impractical. Some of them – like
this – were re-fitted as waste pods for…” I drifted from
unemotional and informative, to not being able to finish my
sentence.

How could I say: “disposing of
humans” when we were waiting for Joel’s body to be released?

I swallowed the lump in my
throat, but still couldn’t get the words out. I picked up my spoon,
then put it down. Cassie placed her hand over mine and we sat in
silence, as our soup went cold and time moved on.

Cassie stood beside me in front
of the compartment. Joel’s body was visible through the small panel
in the door, although you didn’t really see much of anything as he
was covered with a white cloth. In some ways, the blank emptiness
looked almost peaceful, which he deserved. Dying was hard; but
death itself, by comparison, seemed easy.

Winding my fingers around one
of Cassie’s shaking hands, I squeezed her gently. She reached
forward and rested her palm against the clear panel of the door, as
though she were reaching out to pull Joel back inside.

“There’s nothing we could have
done for Joel.” I whispered, knowing that she was wondering if
there was some other way things might have worked out.

When she nodded at me, I knew
she was ready to say goodbye. I leaned over to the panel beside the
door and manually entered the ejection code. A moment later bright
white flames engulfed the shrouded figure inside the compartment.
It was a few short minutes before the outer door opened and the
fire and ash was pulled into space.

I turned away, expecting Cassie
to follow. She didn’t.

“It was because of me, you
know.” She said, staring into the empty waste compartment.

I didn’t know. “What was
because of you?”

“Joel – being here – it was
because of me. The system they had, The Collective needed us, but
we had to fall in love to make it work…”

What she was saying didn’t make
much sense. However, it was the first time Cassie had offered
information unprompted, so I leapt on it.

“The Collective needed us –
what for?”

“Their civilisation was
failing, some disease infecting them all, killing them.”

I shrugged. “What did that have
to do with us?”

“Nothing – at first. A group of
them left their home, searching for planets with life on them that
might hold a solution for combating the virus. They are the ones
that created the space station.”

“They were from another planet
– not Earth – and found us as they were searching for a cure?” I
remembered Joel, laid out on a table, his body being pulled apart
by those monsters.
That was some cure they found
.

Cassie turned then, searching
my face. I don’t know what she was looking for.

“They started off peaceful –
logical, really – not as bad as we found them to be. It was
desperation that drove them so far.”

Desperation?
I didn’t
care what their rationale was – they were parasites, surviving by
feeding off us. My stomach rolled as I remembered the commander –
he wasn’t just a parasite, he was evil. It took me a few seconds to
force the feeling away.

“Did you see what they looked
like, without the body-suits?” It was hard to imagine another race
of beings, and in my head I was now picturing locust-like
insects.

Cassie shook her head. “Only
through a link to The Collective – just flashes – nothing
clear.”

“What are they?”

She stared at me, a flash of
sadness creasing her features before she answered. I hoped I wasn’t
pushing her too far – I just needed to know what she did.

“
They
were like a plant,
sort of. On their own planet they lived in water – it was very
similar to Earth, which was what brought them in the first place.
You were right about the size of the space station; it was much
bigger than we were told it was. Most of it was given over to the
living space of The Collective, when they weren’t working in one of
the breeding grounds.”

Breeding grounds?
That’s
what the Family Quarter must have been. “They
bred
us?” I
guessed aloud.

Cassie nodded. “There were
several areas they maintained – our
Family Quarter
was just
one of them.”

“And our parents were part of
The Collective too?”

“The people we knew as parents
– yes. They called them
Keepers
. I don’t understand it
completely, but being apart from the rest of The Collective made
them weaker. That’s why they were so excited about the idea of us
changing
– it meant the end of their turn working in the
breeding grounds and returning to their normal environment.”

“Our human parents are dead?” I
guessed, already knowing the answer.

“They took people from Earth
originally, but they were too violent and wouldn’t accept the
control of The Collective. Your – I mean –
our
parents came
from Earth, but they were the last groups: The Collective changed
the process after that – it was too difficult to manage. Now they
use us to breed the next generation, before they – they ”

Unshed tears made Cassie’s eyes
gleam and I knew exactly what she was unable to say. I remembered
the room where I’d seen Joel die…I remembered what they had been
doing to him, and all the others that lay on tables around him.
Everything Cassie said tied into what I had seen: they used us to
propagate and re-fill their
breeding grounds
, then ripped
our bodies apart to harvest what they needed.

I had been wrong. They were all
evil.
The Collective
– one entity – no one part of that
could be absolved of responsibility. Not even the
man
that
had helped us. He still allowed all the others to die.

“Consuming us – our blood, our
organs – held back the progression of the disease. It wasn’t a
cure, but it gave them more time to keep looking.”

I frowned. “How did that even
work?”

Cassie paled. “They mixed their
cells with human DNA at the embryo stage, to make it
compatible.”

Compatible?
Palatable
more like! “They were eating us?!”

She shook her head. “I told you
they were more like a plant than an animal – it would be blended
into the water they lived in – they absorbed it.”

What. The. Hell. No wonder
she’d been so quiet – this was a lot to get your head around.

Wait a second.

“
Their
DNA is in us?
Those creatures are inside you and me?” My skin began to crawl, as
if I could feel something poisonous moving through me.

“No. It should have been. But
not you – you didn’t have it added – you were a blip in their
system. An anomaly.”

I was different?
A freak
– that’s what the commander had called me. How long had they known?
“How was that possible?”

“It was an accident. System
failure.”

I swallowed. “And you?”

Cassie looked through me. “I
was the same as everyone else: two-per cent Collective DNA.”

My legs wobbled beneath me.
This was too much. I found a chair and without looking, dropped
down. “That creature – ”

Cassie threw me a pained look –
stopping me in my tracks.

I tried again. “That man told
you all this?”

“Most of it. Some I saw when I
was connected to The Collective when I left the Family
Quarter.”

“And you
believed
him?”

“He was helping us to get out –
why would he bother lying?”

I suppose
…My mind
whirled on. “You said he helped you because of your mother – your
genetic mother – how did he know her?”

“We’re first generation Balik.
Our parents were brought from Earth – less than twenty years
ago.”

Just twenty years?
They
told us we’d been on the SS Hope for over a century – that we were
fifth generation descendents.

“Do you know what this means?
There might still be humans on Earth – we might have somewhere to
aim for!”

“Human.” Cassie echoed, her
voice flat.

The final piece dropped into
place and I realised what she’d said earlier, but I’d not picked up
on. I understood what was wrong.

“Hey,” I was on my feet,
gathering Cassie into my arms. “This doesn’t change who you are –
you’re not like them. You’re like me. Two per cent is nothing!”

Cassie’s head shook against my
chest. “You
hate
them – for what they’ve done. Part of that
is in me!”

“No,” I said firmly, pulling
her back to look at me. “They are not in you – not the bad stuff –
just a small, tiny part to make things work. It’s nothing.
You
are the reason we got out.”

The last part was a guess, but
I thought it must be close to the truth. It would certainly explain
how Cassie had heard The Collective’s silent communications.

She nodded, confirming that my
speculation was close to the truth.

“He told me they look out for
it in the Carriers – that’s what they called us. It’s rare, but it
happens now and again: we develop their traits.”

I thought of the brain scans
Cassie had triggered, and which I’d deleted from their monitoring
systems. She was right. “Did he say what would happen now, when you
left the space station?”

“Being away from the rest of
them – The Collective – the ability should fade. From what I saw,
their strength lies in being close together.”

“You’ll stop hearing people’s
thoughts?” I asked.

Knowing now what had caused
Cassie’s skill, I wanted it gone. I couldn’t stand the idea of
taking any of that with us.

Her gaze lifted to mine and
lingered, as if she was trying to look inside my head for the
answer. “Yes,” she said, finally. “It will fade. It already
is.”

* * *

The lights in the pod cabin
were dim and Cassie was dozing in the bunk. Watching her sleep
brought me a degree of peace: she looked so relaxed and normal, I
could almost forget that she was still probably catching up from
days where she’d barely rested…almost forget that her body had
needed time to recover from the exhaustion and dehydration caused
during her torturous escape from the Family Quarter…Almost forget,
but not quite…

For a long time, I had lain
beside Cassie, just watching her sleep. I could have stayed that
way forever, but I had work to do. I had made her a promise and I
intended to keep it.

So, here it was that I found
myself sitting in one of the two chairs at the console of the pod,
flicking through charts on the various screens. It was hard to
focus, being so close to the main vision panel of the pod, which
offered a perfect view of the stars and universe beyond. It was
daunting how small and insignificant we seemed, beside the
endlessness of space.

Earlier that day, we had put
together a recording about our experiences on the SS Hope. It was
Cassie’s idea and she had done most of work for it. I just helped
with the filming and saved the file into as many different versions
as I could. She was scared about what might happen to us – she
didn’t admit it, but I knew – and this was a record for if we
didn’t survive. Perhaps we could warn others and save them from the
world we had been born into.

For my part, I was oddly
confident. Possibly, it was naive, but I had an unshakeable sense
that we were going to survive...that there was somewhere for us to
go. Much of my confidence came from the facilities on the pod and
my ability to understand them, for which I had only one
person
to thank – I probably wouldn’t be admitting that out
loud any time soon though.

There was another force at work
behind my confidence, that I couldn’t deny. For a long time on the
SS Hope, I had wanted to escape from the Family Quarter; wanted to
find out why we lived the way we did…whether we were less human
than we had been on Earth. I was on the outside now and knew that
we lived the way we did because our lives were built on lies…