The Rainbow Maker's Tale (33 page)

Click.

The new page opened. Nearly
every scanner report for Cassie in the last hour had warning flags:
heightened adrenaline, erratic pulse rate and red marks, showing
abnormal brain activity.

What had happened to her?

Even as I tried to pull
together a connection between the scan results and what Cassie
might have experienced since she left me, I was removing the
abnormal files from Cassie’s data feed. I dropped all the
information into a hidden folder on my portable screen, for further
investigation, and then cleared off the warning notes from her
profile. When I closed down the screen, everything looked
normal.
Now I needed to speak to Cassie, to find out why it
wasn’t.

Activating the viewing screen
in my bedroom, I entered Cassie’s details and waited for the call
to connect. The screen changed from black to Cassie’s face – in
close up – a few seconds later.

“Hi!” She gushed, as soon as
she answered the call.

“Err. Hello?”

It sounded like a question.
This was
not
what I was expecting. Cassie sounded giddy and
was fidgeting around like an impatient child.

“Did you get the results we
wanted from the research streams?”

Search stream…what was she
talking about?
I must have shown my confusion, because Cassie
began explaining.

“I had an idea about that I
wanted to
talk
to you about.”

Cassie’s eyes met mine, through
the screen, and I saw then. She was terrified. Looking beyond her
face now, I saw that she was in her living room, and that her
parents were stood close by. We couldn’t talk with an audience, and
Cassie looked desperate to get away.

“You know what – I forgot to
get dinner on my way home – can you meet me and we’ll get something
together? We can talk about the research then if you like.” I hoped
I sounded natural and bright. Something in my stomach felt like a
weight, and in that instant I wanted nothing more than to charge
into Cassie’s home and rescue her.

Cassie’s eyes closed briefly
and I recognised her relief, before she exclaimed “Me too!” with
fake excitement. “Let me check if that’s OK.”

She didn’t even have to ask her
parents, her father was already answering before she spoke. It
sounded like: “No problem – you should go – you have to eat after
all.”

Hearing this, I pulled shoes
onto my feet. “Shall I meet you at the Green Zone junction?”

“Sure,” Cassie replied
cheerfully. “I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.”

Those couple of minutes felt
like forever as I paced in tight circles around the junction. The
mirrors were beginning to tilt, and shadows between the apartment
buildings were growing gradually longer.

Why was it taking so long for
her to get here?

I turned in the direction of a
soft flapping sound, and saw Cassie racing towards me, suddenly
appearing from the shadows. Without a word, she slammed into me –
nearly knocking me over – and threw her arms around me.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded,
catching her arms and pulling her back. My eyes scoured every inch
of her face for some explanation as to what was happening.

I was about to repeat my
question – finding no answers in her face – when Cassie shook her
head at me. With a gentle nod of her head, she pointed at the
freestanding viewing screen, a couple of metres away from us, in
the middle of the junction.

I pulled her close, putting my
lips to her ear. “We need to go somewhere?”

Cassie bobbed her head in
confirmation. I let her go, but took her hand securely in mine and
we walked away from the junction.

Leaving the Green Zone behind
us we approached the central plaza and passed The Clinic. At the
café we had eaten in the night before, Cassie steered me inside and
we took two meals out with us. Questions burned my insides,
fighting to get out – but I couldn’t say anything until I knew we
were safe.

“Where are we going?” I
asked.

“You know,” she said “We can
talk there.”

I nodded and slipped her hand
into mine again. We would go back to the park.

“It’s very dark,” Cassie
observed, as we reached the entrance to Park 42.

Through the gloom ahead, the
only light I saw came from a single viewing screen and scanner at
the gate. “I’ve never noticed any lights when I’ve been here during
the day.” Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “Are you sure you
want to go in here? I wouldn’t want to risk you falling again.”

“I don’t think we need to go
too far,” Cassie whispered back, throwing a glance in the direction
of the viewing screen. “What kind of range do you think the screen
transmitter has?”

“The same as usual I expect,” I
told her, before realising what she was actually asking me. “I
think
both
transmitters would have the same reach: about ten
metres or so.”

“Good.” Cassie squeezed my hand
and pulled me through the gate.

The darkness was thick around
us. In the distance above the tree line a faint glow from the
residential zones and main plazas managed to cast some dim shadows
across the clearing where we sat, huddled close together with our
backs against a tree.

“Are you going to eat?”

Cassie had discarded her food
plate on the floor as she sat down and not looked at it since.

She shook her head. “I
can’t.”

“OK.” I tossed my own plate
aside, similarly disinterested. “What’s going on?”

Taking a deep breath, Cassie
began talking. And she didn’t stop.

Yesterday, Cassie had spoken
with Ami and Patrick on the viewing screen. Everything had been
normal – she’d even finally admitted to Ami that she liked me – but
hadn’t told her about the accident. I realised that this must have
been the conversation Patrick repeated to me when I’d seen him.

Was that only twenty-four
hours ago? It felt like much longer
…

That night Cassie had dreamed
about them. It had been a nightmare, really, because she’d seen
them being dragged from their beds by a group of men and taken
away.

That seemed strange. It was
oddly violent, for someone who lived in the world we did. What
would inspire such dark ideas and details – the pictures had been
so clear to her: gloved figures, clothed in black; people talking
to one another without speaking; Ami’s parents helping them take
their own child away.

“And you think the suggestion I
made, about your subconscious being able to tap into people’s
thoughts, makes your dream real? That’s a big jump.”

Cassie shook her head and I saw
tears spring to her eyes, even in the dim light.

“Ami’s gone, Balik. Her and
Patrick have gone.”

“Gone?”

Cassie drew in a ragged breath.
“When I left you today, I went to Ami’s apartment. I saw her
neighbour, who told me that Ami had eloped. Her parents were gone
too.”

“Gone?” I echoed myself, my
brain not working fast enough to make the connections Cassie was
between Ami’s elopment and her missing parents.

“To the Retirement Quarter!”
She spat out, her lip curling into a sneer of disbelief.

“Did Ami elope?” I asked, my
voice quiet.
Was she disappointed that her friend had left her
behind?

“NO! Ami didn’t elope – she
wouldn’t have – she promised she would tell me. And, she always
hated the idea of eloping. She always said that when she was ready,
she would be one of the few people who actually said goodbye to
their friends properly. Ami wanted me to wave her through the
entrance to the Married Quarter. I don’t believe – I
can’t
believe – that she would change that.”

The words toppled out of
Cassie’s mouth, bouncing over one another. More tears fell. I
reached out and wiped them away with my thumb.

“That isn’t everything.” Cassie
said, calming down a little. “I’m hearing more people.
All
the time…”

At these words, I was
immediately reminded of the brain scans I had hidden in her
profile. It reinforced my theory about what was causing Cassie to
show as abnormal in the system. It was showing up, every time she
heard someone.

“I’m scared, Balik.”

Cassie’s eyes lifted to mine,
willing me to know what to do. I still had no idea. “What is it
specifically that scares you?”

“Specifically? I’m scared of
everything and nothing – I’m not even sure anymore!” Her eyes
closed. “It’s like I can feel something all around me, not just the
voices, but something more…it’s pressing against me all the time,
trying to break through.”

“But, you think it is similar
to the voices…has there been anything else you can pin-point as
being connected?”

“Ami’s neighbour, when she
spoke to me, I saw images inside my head. They weren’t from
me.”

“What kind of images?” I
wondered aloud.

“She kept thinking about a
mark, but it was red, not black.”

“I’ve never heard of one being
red before.”

“Neither had I. Before I saw
Ami’s arm last night –
her
mark had turned red.”

“Her mark changed?” I’d never
heard of that. I couldn’t even see how that would be possible.
Maybe an ink fault?
That seemed unlikely.

“Not just hers. Patrick’s had
changed as well.” Cassie said.

“What? How is that
possible?”

She shrugged. “All I know, is
that I’ve never heard of a red mark before. But, Ami’s turned red.
And what I saw inside her neighbour’s head was definitely red as
well.”

“You think you actually saw
something from inside someone’s mind? Not just a voice?”

“Definitely,” Cassie said, with
a finality that unnerved me. “When I came to your apartment, I was
worried something might have happened to you – when I saw your
Mother and spoke to her, it happened again: some images, some
thoughts.”

“You saw inside my mother’s
mind?”

Cassie shifted uncomfortably,
but didn’t answer.

“What is it? What else
happened?”

“The same thing that I think
happened with that woman today. I got the pains at the front of my
head.” Cassie pointed to her temples. “It felt like something was
trying to get inside me.”

The front of her head…
It
was the same area that had shown up strangely on the brain
scans.

The air whooshed out of my
lungs, as another realisation smashed into me. Another adult had
tried to use a similar skill to Cassie’s, on her. Not just any
adult – my mother!

“It’s not just your Mother.”
Cassie said, as if plucking the thought from my head. “I heard my
parents tonight. They were talking to each other, without speaking.
Just like the people in my dream.”

More details poured out. The
more Cassie talked, the more I began to see the connection between
her dreams and what was happening to her.

“I can’t make sense of it,” I
admitted at last, shaking my head hard, as though it might shift
the neurons around and make them work better.

The things Cassie had told me
about her experiences – with her parents, Ami’s neighbour, even my
own mother – they were strange to the extreme, almost unbelievable.
But that wasn’t the issue: I believed Cassie. Like every other lie
I had exposed, it appeared that the adults of the Family Quarter
knew. It shouldn’t have surprised me that they would be involved in
this – whatever
this
was.

The thing I couldn’t grasp was
what purpose the lies had. Rather than becoming clearer to me, the
more I knew about what was happening, the less I understood.

If it had been some natural
change Cassie was experiencing, then why were we not being told
about it? An evolutionary change was not impossible to imagine. In
fact, it seemed the most likely explanation, as the adults appeared
to have this same ability and were using it on us…

If that were the answer, what
reason would they have for, not only excluding us from this, but
physically removing us from one area to another under the
masquerade of eloping?

I tried to run through the
things we knew, piece-by-piece, looking for the missing link. The
adults had this ability, but no children other than Cassie – as far
as we could tell – shared it. The systems that monitored our health
and behaviour were specifically designed to seek out this anomaly
amongst the children, and report it for immediate investigation.
As if it was a problem, and not something they wanted to
happen…

That made sense, I
realised.

Why would our parents not want
us to develop the same abilities that they obviously had? I decided
that they wouldn’t need to hide this, if there was not something
more sinister going on. And they would not need the violent men in
black, that Cassie had seen in her
dream
, if this was a good
thing. The final piece, that I still couldn’t place, was what all
of this had to do with our marks…

“You’re the one who said you
always felt that there’s been something missing – something not
right – about the station.”

Cassie prompted me,
interrupting my silence. She was right of course, but I had no idea
what all these new revelations meant. I could see her face turned
towards me in the half-light: expectant and afraid. I had to give
her something, even if I didn’t have much.

“Yes,” I agreed with a nod.
“But, I was thinking more along the lines that there are things
being done beyond our knowledge, and that we’re excluded from them
in order to protect us. I wasn’t thinking that our parents were
communicating amongst themselves without speaking and abducting us
forcibly for transfer to the Married Quarter!”

There was a long silence. I
could only suppose that Cassie was as lost as I was and so I just
let her be quiet.

“We’re going to have to get
back, before our parents start looking for us.” Cassie’s voice
sounded raw, as if she was crying.