The Rainbow Maker's Tale (27 page)

At first, I welcomed the
silence following Olivia’s brief appearance. Then I realised that
with only Cassie, Joel and myself stood there, the silence was
stretching from awkward to excrutiating at a rapid pace. For once I
felt concerned about falling into an uncomfortable silence. Perhaps
I didn’t want Cassie to think I was rude…? Whatever the reason, in
a move completely out of character, I started a conversation with
Joel.

“So, you were out running this
morning – anywhere nice?”

This single question was enough
to start things going. After initially looking surprised by my
interest, Joel fell into a comfortable recollection of where he’d
been running and which parks he preferred for different reasons. I
offered a few observations of my own and, before I knew it,
everyone was back in the room.

Medic Karlina stepped forwards
– making sure she had everyone’s attention – and with a glance at
her viewing screen started our daily briefing. “You’ve now
completed six weeks of the placement with us here at The Clinic,
and feedback on all of you has been generally positive so far.”

Cassie sighed at my shoulder. I
caught her gaze and flicked my eyes at her shoulder, asking
silently if she was in pain. A slight shake of the head told me she
wasn’t, and we both turned our attention back to the Medic.

“To help you get a wider range
of experience here we’re going to reorganise you into new pairs for
the next few days and see how well you can share the knowledge
you’ve already picked up.”

New pairs?

I snuck a hopeful peek at
Cassie and found she was already looking at me. I stretched out my
arm, showing off the long-sleeved suit that only Cassie and I were
wearing. Surely, that meant we would be partnered together.

Reading from the viewing
screen, Medic Karlina announced the new pairings. “Balik and Cassie
will be working in research and records for the next few days.”

She looked up at the group, not
focusing on us directly, which made me think she didn’t actually
know who Cassie and I were. That was probably an even worse
compliment than the
generally positive feedback
. It had been
nearly two months and she spoke to us five days a week. How
difficult was it to memorise a few names and faces?

Medic Karlina read out the next
pairings swiftly, not that I was interested.

“Does anyone have any
questions?” she asked.

Silence.

“Excellent, let’s get going
then.”

She turned away from us and
began tapping on her viewing screen again. It was obviously our cue
to leave. Cassie and I nudged towards each other – sharing a brief
grin – and waited for one of the Medics to identify themselves as
our mentor for the new placement. We got Medic Jones, who I’d met a
couple of times already. Without preamble he escorted us out of the
reception.

I looked down at Cassie as we
passed through the orientation reception doors and smiled to
myself. Today was already turning out to be even better than I’d
hoped.

I guessed that Cassie wasn’t
overly impressed with our new placement task. Just a hunch from the
frequent sighs emanating from her side of the small room. It didn’t
bother me particularly. I had access to a viewing screen, and was
running several basic research paths – as requested by our Medic –
in the background. This morning I had much more important research
of my own to do, and it wasn’t something I would find reviewing
health statistics of the inhabitants of the station. There was only
one person’s data I needed.

Everything was running
perfectly on my two main screens, and I was just about to open up a
new one for my own
research
, when Cassie interrupted me. I
was surprised. With her continual tapping on the keyboard, and lack
of conversation, I had assumed she was in a studious mood.

“Balik – can you show me what
you’re doing?”

She sounded reluctant and
irritated, an odd combination. I turned in my chair to face her and
was about to ask
why
, when she answered my unuttered
thought.

“My searches keep coming back
with nothing.”

Nodding my head, I spun back
around and wheeled along to make some space at the desk beside me.
Cassie stepped closer, but hesitated, seeming nervous all of a
sudden. There was no way she would be able to see from where she
was, and so I tugged her closer.

I hadn’t meant to pull too
hard, but Cassie stumbled and half-fell into my lap before I could
catch her. When she tried to get up, I put my hand on her waist to
help, but then thought better of it and nudged her closer to me
instead.

Swallowing the rocks that had
suddenly appeared in my throat, I was about to ask her
is this
OK
, but I didn’t want to sound nervous. Instead, I let bravado
get the better of me. “So, do you have a question – or was this
just an excuse to get closer to me?” It was so naff – and out of
character – I couldn’t help grinning.

Naturally, Cassie came right
back at me with something better, calling my bluff when she replied
in a cool voice. “I have questions. But, I can move somewhere else
to run through them, if that’s more comfortable for you?”

That shattered my illusions of
appearing suave and confident. Maybe I should stick with being
myself. “You’re just about perfect where you are,” I told her,
adjusting my arm so that it encircled her waist more fully. This
was the closest I’d ever been to Cassie – or any girl for that
matter. Unless you counted yesterday’s emergency examination, but
it would probably be frowned upon to count that as even vaguely
romantic.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take
me too long to show Cassie how to run the searches and ten minutes
later she was back at her own terminal running some sequences. I
could tell she was bored: she was fidgeting in her chair and
bouncing her foot back and forth, heel glued to the floor, toes in
the air.

I hadn’t bothered trying to
look at my own stuff following Cassie’s interruption, just in case
she wanted to see my screen again. And so I needed a new
distraction. It didn’t take long for me to find one.

“Cassie?”

“Yes.”

“You know yesterday, when we
were in the park?”

There was a pause. Then a
cautious sounding “yes.”

“Have you thought any more
about what happened?” I sounded too hopeful and I knew it.

“Nothing happened.”

“Oh. OK.”

* * *

“What about now?” I was hoping
for a different answer to the twelve previous times I’d asked the
question.

“How many times do I have to
tell you?” Cassie hissed. “I CANNOT hear what you are
thinking!”

“Maybe it’s something to do
with attunement?” I mused, ignoring Cassie’s angry expression and
staring at her head. Or maybe the key was not in conscious thought,
but subconscious…

“Can you let it go?” Cassie
turned away, focusing her attention back on her screens. “I feel
like I’m some sort of experiment or research project for you!”

“Come on – I’m not that bad – I
just want to see if you can do it again.”

Cassie spun back around in her
chair to face me, and I thought she was just going to tell me
again
that nothing had happened. So, I was surprised when
she actually said: “I’m dealing with it.”

Dealing with it?
If that
was the case, then it meant that there was something to
deal
with, didn’t it?

“It was just a strange
coincidence,” she added.

The two statements didn’t add
up. She was saying it was nothing but a coincidence, but also
telling me that she was dealing with it. It couldn’t be both. And,
the fact that she was avoiding eye contact only made me believe it
more. There was
something
.

“You’ve barely looked at your
screen since we’ve been here.” She admonished. “We’ll not find
anything to discuss in our research document if you don’t at least
try and focus – I don’t want to fail this.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured her.
“Firstly, we can’t fail as it isn’t a test. Secondly, I don’t need
to focus to pull together observations on the data they’ve given
us: I’ve already got five lines of investigation searching as we
speak, with research hypotheses ready for each. And thirdly,
you
are a much more interesting subject than any of the
stuff we’ve got here.”

She scowled in response.
“Thanks for not making me feel like an experiment.”

I tried not to laugh. She was
very cute when she was angry, and it was quite distracting.

As I watched, Cassie pulled out
an automatic discourse headset, and very deliberately pulled it on.
I assumed this was to let me know that the conversation was over. I
chuckled, then picked up my own headset and put it on, mimicking
the extremely serious look on Cassie’s face.

“So – can we try again?” I
asked, when I caught her peeking back at me.

At first I thought she was
wavering. Her face relaxed from the frown momentarily, and I took
that as a good sign. But, she didn’t answer me and the silence
began to fill the small room, like an invisible, suffocating
cloud.

Reluctantly, I turned back to
my own screens, ignoring the data scrolling across them. All the
joking had gone now. It just hurt that there was obviously
something she knew about this, and that she was hiding it from me.
How could anything be that bad, compared with what she knew about
me?

“
Why are you hiding this
from me?”
I asked her silently, unable to say the words
aloud.

“Look…” Cassie said, pausing
and taking a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hide anything
from you. It’s just this whole thing, with you believing that I can
hear what you think…it’s too strange. Implausible”

My heart stopped. I swear it
did – just for a second, but it
did
stop. I turned to stare
and found myself looking at the back of Cassie’s head. The headset
was in position, above the cascade of dark hair, and her eyes were
fixed on the screen in front of her. I couldn’t have said a word
then if my life had depended on it. Cassie was answering the
question I had just asked myself, not her. But, the important thing
was that it was
in my head
– I hadn’t said it out loud. If I
were going to
say
it, I probably would have worked harder to
sound a little less hollow and despairing.

My heart re-started. Where my
badgering had failed, it seemed straight forward honesty had
succeeded. Albeit, honesty that I had not offered her through
choice… Cassie was still talking, and I realised that I was getting
exactly what I’d wished for. Cassie was revealing secrets about
herself, to me, that I doubted she had ever told anyone before.

“I can’t really understand it.
And, more than anything, I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of
freak.” Cassie broke up her serious words with a soft scoff, and
sounded lighter when she continued. “I promise, once I’m feeling a
bit better we can experiment all you want. As long as you promise
not to try and dissect me or anything.”

I couldn’t believe it. Whatever
had happened the day before in the park, was happening again now!
But this time Cassie was fully conscious, and appeared to be
controlling whatever it was that made it possible for her to hear
what was in my head, rather than what I said aloud. If I was
allowed to experiment, as she had just said, then I might as well
start now.

“
You promise?”
I asked,
letting the words hover inside my head; just as I had a moment
before when I thought I was just talking to myself.

“I promise,” she confirmed.

“
Can you look at me and say
that again?”
I asked internally.
“I want to see your eyes
and make sure you’re telling me the truth.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, whirling
in her seat to face me. “I promise that you can experiment all you
want with me to see if I can hear what you’re thinking.”

“
Thanks – that’s all I
wanted to hear.”
I replied silently, and watched as Cassie’s
jaw dropped to the floor.

“I – just – heard – you – ” she
stammered,

“I know,” I told her, pulling
the headset off and speaking out loud again. I was unsure if it
would scare her if I kept just thinking things at her. Cassie
seemed almost as shocked as me, which was odd. A few moments
earlier, I had been convinced that she knew what was going on and
was just hiding it from me.
Is it possible she had been hiding
it from herself, too?

It would probably help if I
explained what I thought happened. She just looked confused, and a
little unwell if I were truthful.

“It started when you put the
headset on – or when I put it on – I’m not sure which.” I tilted my
hand from side-to-side as I tried to work out what had happened
first. I found I was confusing myself now, which wasn’t a great
start. I decided to try a different approach. “What was the first
thing you heard?”

Cassie was still staring at me.
Her eyes were half-glazed, as though she was just waking up and not
completely aware of what was happening. I waited for her
answer.

“You asked me why I was trying
to hide this from you… You sounded a bit…”

Upset?
I didn’t bother
to say it when her words trailed off, although I guessed that was
what she had heard in my head. Instead I muttered “I know,” and
then let the enthusiasm take over. “Try it again!”

Without seeming to consider
what she was doing, Cassie did as I asked. Her eyes found mine and
locked on. I tried to be as calm and focused as possible, hoping it
might help her.

There we sat. I pushed words,
thoughts, questions, at Cassie… Nothing happened. I waited and
tried again. Her eyes remained on mine, but as more time passed
there was only silence in the room.