The Rainbow Maker's Tale (30 page)

A shadow crossed her features,
and I waited for words to explain whatever it was that had made her
unhappy. They didn’t come.

“You’re drifting,” I whispered
into her ear. “Where have you gone to this time?”

Cassie tilted her hand out of
mine and began twisting my fingers between hers instead. "I was
just wondering, why you’re always so interested in finding out how
everything works.”

"Why are you happy to go along
with what you're told without stopping to wonder why it is that
way, or whether it even makes sense?" I replied, mimicking her
slightly dreamy tone of voice.

"Fair point.” She pulled
herself up to a sitting position. "But, can you tell me something
that I’ve been told
and
believe, that's actually
incorrect?"

I didn’t miss the defiant way
her chin rose, as she issued me this challenge. Cassie only seemed
half-serious, but the problem for me was that I had uncovered so
many lies, there was almost too much to choose from.

In the end, I left it up to
her. "You can take your pick,” I offered.

"My pick from what...?"

The long list of lies we’re
told about the world we live in
.

It was true, but maybe a little
harsh. I decided to go with one of my more recent discoveries, as
an example. It would test how much Cassie could actually question
the way we lived, and maybe also give me the chance to show her one
of my biggest secrets.

"How about this?” I paused for
a moment, making sure Cassie was listening. “The viewing screens do
more than transmit conversations and messages. They monitor us, as
well."

"They do
what
?!" Cassie
scoffed, rolling her eyes at the sky.

I frowned, turning away. "You
think this is a joke!"

Maybe I should have expected
her disbelief, even though it was Cassie who had asked me. Her
reaction disappointed me – I wanted to share this with her.

"I'm sorry.” Cassie
apologised.

I felt her fingers on my
shoulder, trying to get me to turn around. But, I couldn’t
move.

She tried again. "Tell me
how...? Tell me how you know...?"

"You won't like it."

"Try me," she insisted.

I took a deep breath, and began
again. “A few months ago I broke the viewing screen in my room. I
was messing around, doing something like we’ve done today, and
caught the edge of the screen with my fist, pushing it out of place
– ”

“How hard did you hit it?”

“Hard enough,” I shrugged the
question off. “Anyway, I was worried I’d get into trouble for
breaking it. So, I got some of Father’s tools from his office and
undid the screen, with the intention of re-setting it in the frame.
I hoped no one would be able to tell that anything had happened and
I wouldn’t get any hassle from my parents.”

Cassie nodded for me to
continue, not offering any further questions.

“When I pulled the screen out,
I’ll admit I didn’t finish what I’d started off doing straight
away. There were all sorts of wires and circuits in there, which
distracted me and, well, you know me…”

“You had a dig around to see
how it worked.”

When Cassie finished my
sentence, I couldn’t help but smile at how well she knew me.

“So…” I continued, “I got some
more tools out and dismantled the screen and speakers, making sure
I remembered where everything went so that I could put it back
together afterwards – ”

“I can’t believe you did that!”
She looked over to me. “What would have happened if you couldn’t
get it back together?”

“I thought you said I was good
at engineering?” I pouted and tried to sound offended. It was a
good attempt, but I didn’t really pull it off. Or, so I
thought.

“Well you are – but you might
not have been able to – ”

Cassie was scrambling for
words. She
had
fallen for it, I realised with a smirk. She
looked over at me and I quickly wiped the smile off my face, but it
was too late. Cassie’s sharp eyes re-focused on me with a
glare.

“You didn’t know you could put
it back together!” She accused, smacking me lightly on the arm.

“Nope,” I grinned. “But, I
figured I’d just trash the screen beyond repair if that happened
and say that I fell into it… Anyway, that’s not the point. When I
was working through the speaker components, alongside the coil that
transmits the signal there are the receivers that act as a
microphone. What was odd, was that there were two microphones, not
one as you would expect.”

“Two?” Cassie echoed.

I nodded.

“Could it be to give a better
reception – pick up more from the room when transmitting?”

It was a good suggestion. “To
be honest, I did wonder that myself at first when I saw them.
Although, the microphones are so sensitive that shouldn’t be
necessary. Then, I wondered if it might have been a back up to the
main microphone – to save any maintenance being done immediately,
if one part failed.”

Cassie jumped on the idea.
“Maybe that’s what it was,”

“Not really,” I shook my head,
wishing it could be that simple. “I followed the circuits they were
fitted to. Only one ran into the standard communication system that
operates throughout the space station.”

“What was the other attached
to?”

Cassie sounded intrigued. It
was shame I didn’t have a better answer for her.

“I don’t know. All I could do
was trace the connection back to its origin point. It was
transmitting along a completely separate system…one I had never
seen before.”

“That
is
odd,” Cassie
agreed, twisting her fingers absent-mindedly through the grass.

“That wasn’t the only odd part.
The second microphone was also on a different kind of switching
system to the first one. It appeared to be automatically triggered
by movement or sound, rather than the main manual controls of the
viewing screen.”

“Could it be a fault on the
system? Connected into the station incorrectly or an earlier model
or something...?”

I stared at her, impressed by
how easily she had taken the information in her stride. How she
immediately tried to work out
why
something was, the way it
was. She glanced up, aware of my scrutiny, warmth flushing her
cheeks when her eyes met mine.

“That’s one of the things I
love about you,” I smiled. “You’re always looking for the
alternative. Nothing’s ever black and white –”

“I know – I’m sorry – I’m
always asking a dozen questions when you’re just trying to tell me
something. It’s a bad thing.”

Why was she apologising?

“No, it’s a good thing – a
useful thing,” I reassured her. “As much as I like to look into
how
things work, it’s the
why
that usually frustrates
me. You always seem to be able to look at things in a different way
and come up with the why…”

Perhaps Cassie’s alternative
perspective would offer something I hadn’t thought of, on this
subject.

“So…what do you think the
why
would be in this case? Why would there be a transmitter
in every viewing screen that doesn’t relate to the normal uses we
have for them? And why would it automatically trigger on movement
or sound within the space?”

Cassie didn’t flinch under my
barrage of questions, she just came right back at me.

“It’s not every screen is it –
you’ve only seen it in the one you broke haven’t you – could it be
a mistake?”

It was a rational suggestion
and it would have been a sound place to start, except that Cassie
had forgotten that she was speaking to me. As soon as she finished
asking the question, she guessed what I had done.

“How many screens have you
dismantled to check?” she demanded.

“A few,” I admitted, trying to
downplay, because Cassie looked quite shocked. But, then I laughed,
suddenly angry with myself for lying to her.

What was the point?

I sighed, and told the truth.
“Not a few; a lot.”

Cassie frowned. “All of them
have the second transmitter?”

“All of them,” I confirmed.

“How did you even find that
out? When did you get the chance to take apart any screens outside
your apartment?”

“I told you before, my parents
work long hours – just like yours.”

“Still – how did you get into
other places to take apart screens without anyone seeing you?”

I should have known she would
have realised there were gaps in my story. Every gap was a secret,
and I certainly had a lot of those. I gave myself a shake. If I was
committed to telling her the truth, I might as well get on with
it.

“I used this,” I said, reaching
into my trouser pocket and pulling out the wristband I always kept
there. I held it out for Cassie to see.

For a few moments, she silently
examined the band. Her gaze ran back and forth, taking in the two
short plastic threads attached to each side of the rectangular
sliver of metal.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I
think
it’s metal,
although I couldn’t tell you what kind.”

“Metal?” Cassie stroked her
finger over the surface of the small sheet that sat on my palm.
“What makes you think it’s made of metal?”

“Even though we’ve never worked
with solid metals it seems to fulfil several of the properties
we’re told they have.”

I turned the wristband over to
show Cassie the other side. As I did, I found my own finger
brushing the smooth, cool surface. I relished the sensation:
different to how any other material in the Family Quarter felt. For
some reason, I always found the feel of the metal reassuring: as if
my discovery of it and what it could do
really
meant
something.

“Where did it come from?”

Of course, she would ask me the
most difficult question first.

“I found it in Father’s office
– among some of his work tools – I’ve seen a few similar things
since, but this is the only one I found that did anything.”

Cassie’s eyes widened with
surprise. “Why were you searching through his office?”

“I know – I shouldn’t have been
doing it.” I stopped myself from adding that I wasn’t sorry. “The
first time it happened, I was looking for a tool to help me with an
experiment for school, and I found another piece of metal lodged
inside his toolkit. I’d never seen anything like it before and
wanted to find out what it was, what it could do…”

“And what did it do?”

“Nothing…nothing at all,” I
confessed, my memories of disappointment at my first failed
experiments colouring my tone, before I shook them off and
continued with the story. “But, I couldn’t believe Father even had
something like that. He’s always told me he worked on the internal
systems of the space station, within the Family Quarter and there’s
no metal here at all – the only place we’re told they used metal is
in the outer structure.”

“So what does that mean?”

“I’ve never been able to decide
what it means. I couldn’t ask Father because I would get into
trouble for what I’d done. I couldn’t tell anyone else in case it
got Father into trouble – maybe he’d been into an area he shouldn’t
have been in – or someone who worked on the outer structure had
given it to him and he had hidden it…”

Cassie sat back, simply
watching me, her expression sympathetic.

A heavy sigh squeezed out of my
lungs, huffing into the space between us. “I just didn’t know what
to think,” I told her, being completely honest. “Then over time I
found more pieces – I know I shouldn’t be searching through
Father’s work stuff, but I couldn’t help myself – I had to know
more about them.”

“And now you think there’s
something else to it.” Cassie spoke slowly, framing her words
carefully as she correctly guessed why I had such issues over such
a small thing. “It wasn’t just a one-off and so you think your
father is involved in something he hasn’t told you about because he
shouldn’t be doing it…? Or, that he’s lying to you about what he
does…?”

I nodded, in answer to her
half-asked questions. “I just can’t believe there’s any reason
Father would have these things, if he wasn’t working on the outer
structure.”

Cassie’s head bobbed, as she
silently agreed with my theory.

“And, if he is working there –
why are we being lied to about the work engineering do?”

“I always thought we were
situated centrally in the space station; that the outer structure
was quite separate from the Family Quarter and closer to the
Retirement and Married Quarters.”

I could see Cassie working
through each element as she spoke, seeing the ways in which what I
was telling her didn’t fit with the world we were told existed
around us.

We all knew that the
overarching rule of the Family Quarter was to stay safe and protect
the family unit: the future of the human race was always the most
important thing. Outer structure work was dangerous, so it was done
by people from the Retirement Quarter who were past the age of
having and raising children. Only very occasionally would trained
people from the Married Quarter work there, because they still had
an important role in the propagation of the species. And
never
did anyone from the Family Quarter go to the outer
shell – death was not supposed to be a part of our lives here.

Cassie was still mulling over
her thoughts out loud, and I tuned back in to her voice. “You can’t
pass between the zones unless you make a permanent personal change
– so how would your father be working in that area?”

“Another thing I don’t know!” I
laughed, turning away before she saw the bitterness I felt, at
having struggled with this same question for so long.

I gazed out across the Family
Quarter, taking in the neat lines of the avenues, the green parks
and white buildings. It didn’t look real from up here. It looked
like something a child might build, tidy and perfect, but lacking
the reality of life. Only dolls could live there.