The Rainbow Maker's Tale (22 page)

“I think so.” Cassie paused,
wrinkling her nose as she thought about it. “I’ll find something to
help – don’t worry about it.”

My lip curled up at her blasé
response. Cassie was dismissing her needs – again – and I just
knew
that if she could have moved her shoulder, she would
have shrugged off my question as well. As if I could forget that
she had mangled her arm and nearly died, because of me! Well, if
she wasn’t going to help herself, I would just have to make use of
my skills and get her something from The Clinic.

Speaking of
special
skills
, I realised that we hadn’t said anything more about the
weird thing that happened in the park over dinner. It was odd.
Everything about the way Cassie reacted to my suggestion made me
think that there was more to it, rather than just an odd
coincidence. Did she actually have something to hide? I stared at
her, and she watched me back, as I first tried to figure out what
might be going on, and then I tried asking her.
Can you really
hear what I’m thinking?

“What?” Cassie snapped at me,
her eyes flashing brightly.

I chuckled, taking in the
exasperated expression on her face: she obviously didn’t enjoy
being scrutinised. “I was trying to tell you something,” I said
truthfully, adding: “but it obviously didn’t work – maybe today was
a one-off after all…”

Cassie’s head shook, her eyes
rolling skyward as she allowed herself a short laugh. Just as
before, there was something
off
about her reaction. Her
laugh was a short bark, and she moved away from me, stepping back
into the shadowy apartment as if distancing herself from the
conversation.

“I’m not one of your science
experiments you know!”

I laughed at her reprimand,
although it was my turn to be false this time. In just a few short
weeks of watching Cassie, I knew that it was fear that I saw in her
eyes just then, not laughter, not anger. For now, I pretended not
to see it and teased her back. “We’ll just have to see about
that.”

This definitely isn’t
over
.

She frowned and I could see
Cassie fighting to make her anger seem real, but she didn’t manage
it and a genuine smile softened her face a moment later.

What was she so afraid
of?
I couldn’t think of anything that should make her so
nervous, and it just seemed wrong that she was pretending to laugh
it off, instead of
actually
doing that.

Some of my old fears bubbled to
the surface as I found myself questioning what Cassie might be
trying to hide. I didn’t believe she was part of the web of lies we
were trapped inside, but at the same time, it appeared that I
wasn’t the only one capable of keeping a secret. For the second
time today, I felt the stabbing pain of rejection, realising that
Cassie just did not trust me.

I stared at the floor, taking a
deep breath to steady the nerves that were suddenly twisting my
stomach into knots. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad
thing that I like you so much.” In a surprising step, I made a
completely honest admission, not really knowing why I felt the need
to do it. Then, in a typical Cassie-move, I shrugged my shoulders
dismissing my own words.

In the short silence that
followed my random, but honest confession, I felt my control
beginning to slip. I needed to get out of there before I said, or
did, something I’d regret.

“You didn’t say goodbye,”
Cassie called as I retreated down the hall.

From the sound of her voice I
guessed that she had ventured forward to watch me leave. I raised
my hand in a half wave, but didn’t turn around to check if my
assumption was correct. “Goodbye Cassie!” I shouted back, as I
dropped into the stairwell.

My feet slapped against the
hard plastic resin steps as I plunged downward. I was about to do
one of the stupidest things I’d ever attempted, which was saying
something. Maybe, after this, Cassie would know that she could
trust me.

* * *

The Family Quarter had turned
dark in the time it took me to walk from the café to Cassie’s
apartment, and then back to the central area at the edge of the
Green and Blue Residential Zones. As the mirrored ceiling had
tilted into artificial night, softer lights came to life on the
outside of the buildings and tall street lamps. We learned at
school that the normal cycle of day and night had been imitated on
the SS Hope to give inhabitants a sense of comfort and familiarity.
Normally, it seemed odd to me that we created a false darkness on
the station, only to illuminate it, but for once I actually found
something comforting in the change. Perhaps, it was because tonight
I wanted to hide in the shadows and make use of the darkness.

Across the plaza ahead of me
loomed The Clinic. In daylight it was so clean and bright you could
barely stand to look at it, but now in the dim light the
reflections disappeared and instead you could see the movements
inside the building, through the transparent façade. I watched a
few dark suited figures gliding through the rooms, watching over
the patients as they rested. It looked quiet, just as I had hoped.
All the daytime services that operated in The Clinic had finished
running at 6.00pm and so, few staff would still be here now unless
they were working on the occupied wards.

I dropped onto a bench, pulling
my day sac onto my knee so that I could activate the portable
viewing screen inside, without taking it out. As I waited for the
system to warm up, I listened to the happy splashing sound of the
water in the fountain, not two metres from where I sat.

In daylight hours I liked
watching the patterns the droplets would make as they sparkled and
tumbled over one another. I would often wait here to
accidentally
run in to Cassie at the end of a placement day;
enjoying the peace after a few hours with Olivia. There was
something
real
about the fountain. I could appreciate the
freedom water had – at the same time I resented its easy liberty!
The only force each droplet adhered to was gravity, albeit the
specially created gravitational field that operated on the space
station. The water went up and came down, but everything in between
was unknown. I wished my life had such opportunities.

Beep.

The viewing screen was ready.
As I reached my fingers towards the keypad, I suddenly realised
that I might actually get my wish. With everything I’d been doing
recently, perhaps I was creating my own opportunities. Right now, I
was going to try something I had never dreamed of previously, and I
had no idea what the consequences might be if I got caught. In the
past, had I been scared to push myself this far? I couldn’t be
sure, but I knew that today – when Cassie needed my help – I was
going to do this.

Was that what Scarlett had
wanted from Cassie? For her to push my boundaries?

My fingers moved across the
screen and within seconds I had logged into the main Family Quarter
computer system. It was easy to navigate and I had a good general
knowledge of pretty much everything that happened in the Quarter,
based on what I had learned over the last few years. With a few
swipes and taps I was able to work my way into any area I wanted –
with the exception that I couldn’t get to any systems beyond the
Family Quarter. From what I could see, there was a completely
independent setup from the systems that ran the wider space
station, even the Retirement and Married Quarter systems were not
connected to ours. The independence of our system was only a minor
irritation today, because I wasn’t looking for information on what
existed beyond the grey resin boundary walls of the Family
Quarter.

Without really focusing on what
I was doing, my fingers had automatically guided the screen to the
engineering blue prints for The Clinic. I scanned the image,
zooming in when I found a likely candidate for the medicine
storeroom, and zooming out when I realised it wasn’t.

Finally, I reached the basement
level. There were two floors that extended below the ground level
of The Clinic. According to the blueprint, the medicine storeroom
was immediately beneath the great entrance hall. And it was
huge.

Zooming into the plan again, I
was able to pull up the security settings for the area. There was a
general access keypad at the main entrance to the corridor leading
to storerooms – Level 3 clearance. That wouldn’t be a problem:
watching my Father over the years, I had memorised all of his
number-chains, which ran to Level 4 areas. However, the main
medical store itself was a different matter. This was a swipe
reader, and I knew that the only people issued with swipe cards in
The Clinic were the Medics themselves.

“Damn it!” I muttered. If I had
already qualified as a Medic, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I was
just a Medic’s son.

Just a Medic’s son…

The words repeated themselves
in my head, and sparked the beginning of a plan. Closing down the
viewing screen, having already memorised the route I needed to
take, I hopped up from the bench and slung my bag across my
body.

With one last glance at the
fountain, I realised that I
was
getting my wish to be as
free as the water that flowed there. I was here right now, but what
would happen next, was completely unknown. Trying not to grin, I
set off toward the welcoming entrance of The Clinic.

The scanner in the doorway
beeped softly as I passed. I barely noticed the familiar sound as
it registered my mark, although out of habit I looked down at the
small combination of shapes tattooed in black onto the inside of my
right wrist. It never changed no matter how much I looked at it,
but I could just never shake the feeling that it
should
.

The usual crowds were absent
this evening and the large entrance hall was quiet, except for a
few Medics passing through from one area to another. A couple of
parents – I assumed – were leaving for the night, one looking calm,
the other…scared? I turned away, uncomfortable at the unfamiliar
show of emotion in an adult.

This evening there was a lone
receptionist seated at the large reception desk off to one side of
the hall. The counter would normally be filled with five people
during the daytime and so the woman looked abnormally small as she
perched behind the long narrow desk. At the sound of the scanner
she looked up, glancing at me and then turning to the screen beside
her. I had no choice but to go over.

As I drew nearer I realised
that the receptionist was not an adult, as I’d first thought. The
biggest giveaway was the fact that she smiled at me as I
approached.

“Hi?” I said as I reached the
desk. She was looking at me expectantly – as if we knew each other
– and it made my greeting sound unsure, when I hadn’t meant it
to.

“Hello Balik,” she smiled
brightly back at me.

There was something familiar
about the girl, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t her
face; not the icy blue eyes or dark hair swept up into a high
ponytail, showing off bright indigo stripes in her fringe. The
girl’s gaze flicked over my features in return, and the curve in
her mouth widened further.

“Erm, hi?” I repeated, unable
to remove the question from my tone. When she didn’t offer anything
else, I found curiosity got the better of me. “Do we know each
other?”

“No,” she laughed, shaking her
head from side to side, making her multi-coloured ponytail flick
out. “When you scanned in, your details came up on my screen.” A
brief wave of her hand in the direction of the viewing screen
reinforced her words, although she didn’t bother looking that
way.

“Oh, right.” I bobbed my head
once in understanding.

“But, I know who you are.”

My eyebrows twitched upward in
an unspoken question. The girl giggled a little, the noise
squeaking in her throat.

“What I meant to say is that
you’re on placement with a friend of mine – Olivia – she’s been
saying you’re going to meet us nearly every day since she started,
but you’re always doing extra work or have plans…”

Her words trailed off in an odd
way: it wasn’t the end of a sentence or a direct question. When she
added nothing else, I realised that I would have to say
something.

“I – Olivia – yeah, we’re
placement partners.”

“It must be nice to have
someone to talk to while you’re on placement,” the girl pouted.
“I’ve been on the night shift for the last two weeks and there is
NO ONE to talk to.”

I struggled not to laugh out
loud. How nice would it be
not
to have Olivia chattering
away at my elbow for eight hours a day? I didn’t laugh. Instead I
said, “That doesn’t sound like fun at all.”

“So, how come you’ve never come
to meet us? Olivia’s always saying how good friends you two
are.”

I managed to control the
surprise I felt, and at the same time something deflated in me. I
may not be good with other people, but I could read them well
enough. By the sounds of it Olivia did like me. Just as Cassie had
said – just as I had suspected.

“We are, I just – it’s tough
being on the Medic rotation – that’s why I came on the extended
placement. It’s been even harder than I thought it would be, if I’m
honest.”

“I’m sure you’re doing well,”
she smiled.

“I don’t know about that – I
probably forget more than I remember!” I gave her a sheepish grin,
hoping I looked honest. “I’ve had to come back now because I’ve
forgotten something.”

“It’s pretty late,” she glanced
at the time on her viewing screen, “there’s not many Medics left
from the day rotations.”

“I know. It’s actually Mother
I’ve come to see, I’ll probably only be a few minutes.”

“Oh, OK.” She sounded a bit
disappointed, maybe hoping that I’d stay and chat longer to help
her pass some time on her shift. Definitely picked the wrong person
for that!