The Rainbow Maker's Tale (48 page)

We
were
less human,
because we were trained to be that way by The Collective:
farmed
like animals, doesd up with
chemicals to supress our moods and enhance the characteristics they
wanted in us. When Cassie finally filled in the blanks for me, I
was shocked by the extent of their systems, even though I’d been
the one questioning things for years.

Part of me had always felt that
the Family Quarter was a beautiful cage to keep us in. Finding out
I was right had not been as satisfying as I had hoped. The truth
was so horrific, it just made me wish I’d been wrong all along;
while everything Cassie had told me, made me hate them even
more.

Perhaps, it was my hatred for
the creatures who had taken us away from our home that was driving
me on with such zeal
… Or maybe it was because I
just couldn’t exist without some kind of problem to solve. This was
certainly a
new type of challenge, I smiled to myself.

Time had lost all meaning. I
had no idea how long it had been since I’d last moved from the
console chair and the muscles in my shoulders and back were like
rocks. That wasn’t going to stop me, not when I was
this
close!

“Is everything OK?” Cassie
appeared at my elbow, surprising but not distracting me.

What had she said?
I
wasn’t really listening. She sounded worried. Maybe it was the
alarm that had woken her – I couldn’t do anything about that right
now, it was tracking and so I needed the insistent
beep-beep
noise to let me know it was still working.

“Yeah, sure,” I muttered,
hoping it would answer whatever question she had asked.

There it is!

The long-range chart I’d been
using to trace the probe’s position was just about to merge onto
the short-range chart. We were getting closer and a new system had
just appeared on-screen, the details blossoming more fully as the
data was received and manipulated in the processor.

Maybe, maybe!

It was looking better every
minute now… I scanned the other screens, watching the data from the
charts flow into the pod navigation system, allowing it to adjust
automatically towards the point of interest I had programmed
in.

“What’s that?” Cassie was
pointing at the furthest screen, squinting to make out the data on
chemicals, temperatures, gas levels.

“Environmental probe results,”
I replied, without looking up, too busy re-adjusting the pod
position in relation to the new information coming in from the
short-range chart. We were out by a few degrees.

“An environmental probe?”

“I sent one out a few days ago
– maybe a week – just after I got the orbital routes
re-mapped.”

“And what did the probe
find?”

“Hmmm…” I replied, still typing
and not having heard what Cassie had asked. Did she sound
frustrated? Had she asked what I found?

Oh, not much, just water,
oxygen, soil, plant debris…

“Balik!”

My fingers froze for a moment
when she shouted and I paused long enough to coherently answer what
I guessed was her question about the probe. “It found an
environment that looks viable.” I resumed work.

“Where – is it close?”

There!

I clicked on the new option
that had just become available on the probe. It was some distance
away and proving slow at returning the detailed image data
collected. The system paused for a few seconds and I hung on
desperately. The screen where the environmental results were
displayed flickered and changed.

At first the new image was
completely black, then a bright light glowed to life. I stopped and
stared. As we watched – Cassie was as mesmerised as me – a large
illuminated curve emerged from the black screen, as though the
probe was focused on a spot some distance away. Gradually, the
image became clearer, taking on the appearance of a golden hoop,
suspended in the darkness. Every second that we watched, the
crescent shape grew wider and bigger.

“What’s that?” Cassie murmured,
turning towards me.

My eyes rose to meet hers and I
was barely able to choke out an answer. “I think it’s a
sunrise”.

We watched as the light grew
wider and illuminated a dark sphere, which sat between the probe
and the huge star beyond. It was a planet, not a moon. As the light
fell over its surface, the planet blossomed into colour: blue,
white and green.

Earth.

“You think that’s Earth?”
Cassie gasped, guessing the same as me.

I looked up at her. I did not
want to be wrong about this, although I didn’t think I was.
Everything suggested it was Earth.

“Do you think that’s Earth?”
Cassie asked me again.

I took a deep breath and told
her the truth. “Yes. It’s Earth.”

That’s our future.