The Rainbow Maker's Tale by Melanie Cusick-Jones
* * *
Beep-beep-beep.
I reached across and switched off the alert that was telling me we had been onboard the pod for seventy-one hours. Swallowing thickly, I glanced down at Cassie who was still asleep on my shoulder, before settling back against the pillow. My eyes were wide open, just as they had been for the past few hours while Cassie slept soundly in my arms.
In an hour’s time we would have to eject Joel’s body from the pod, to maintain the illusion that the pod was completing its normal function removing waste. When I re-programmed the navigation systems the day before, I had found a transmitter that appeared to connect back to the main systems on Hope. It hadn’t proved too difficult to send a false message through the system back to Hope, indicating that the main navigation system of the pod had corrupted and would not rebound now due to the error. We would have to release Joel’s body from the pod, just in case it was being monitored, then I would set the pod to drift onwards along the same course, before letting the transmitter connection drop an hour or so later, suggesting that a total malfunction had occurred. My entire plan was based on knowledge of The Collective’s technology I had found in the file system on the pod. It was just one more thing to add to the list of things that had been put here to help us.
Cassie sighed softly and rolled over, cuddling closer into me. She opened one eye, before closing it immediately.
“You’re awake again,” she muttered.
“Just thinking,” I kissed the top of her hair, dodging the accusation in her tone. “The seventy-one hour alarm just went off, but I didn’t want to wake you yet.”
“Oh. At least you weren’t just watching me sleep again – that was getting creepy.”
“Ha-ha. You’re a funny girl.” I smiled, just managing to maintain a deadpan tone.
Cassie smiled, her eyes still closed. “It’s funny because it’s true.”
“Smarty pants.” I kissed her hair again, my mind already drifting.
Even though we had talked about what would happen with Joel, I had not been able to bring myself to tell Cassie about what I had been forced to watch happen to him back on Hope. They had been friends – spending all that time together at The Clinic – it was hard enough for her as it was, without me adding to her pain. And so I kept my secrets, just as she was keeping hers.
Since we came aboard the pod, Joel’s body had remained in one of the small compartments dotted around the walls, where waste was stored. Except in our case, we had found most of the other spaces filled with supplies and equipment, rather than waste – yet another helping hand from Cassie’s mysterious benefactor…
We lay together in silence for another twenty-minutes and I wondered whether Cassie might be dozing again. “We’ll need to get started soon,” I prompted her, easing my arm out from beneath her neck and rolling out of the bunk.
Standing up I shivered as my feet touched the floor. It was cooler on the pod than it had been on Hope: the systems on the craft were not as powerful or particularly oriented towards human transportation I supposed, we should count ourselves lucky that it had an air handling unit and a basic gravity system.
Cold. A smile crept over my face as I walked to one of the compartments and removed another thermo control blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. For the first time in my life, I felt cold: a natural reaction to an environment that wasn’t perfect or controlled. Just like I had tasted hunger and thirst when The Collective held me prisoner. All of these were new experiences for me…all were things that reminded me just how real and human I was.
“Are you cold again?” Cassie asked from the bed.
“A little.”
She kicked the thermo blanket away from her legs and stood up, crossing the small room and wrapping her arms around me, reaching beneath my blanket to hold me tighter.
“I hope you’re not getting sick.”
Squeezing her back, I tried to be reassuring. “I don’t think so – I feel fine – just a little colder than normal, but I think it’s the pod. You probably don’t feel it because you’re a girl and carry more fat than I do.”
“Carry more fat...?” She repeated in a warning tone.
“Just a little,” I patted her non-existent tummy gently.
Beep-beep-beep.
The sound of the alarm interrupted whatever Cassie might have been about to say. Her eyes flew towards the console. “Is that…?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, answering the unasked question.
“Oh.”
Cassie stepped away, leaving a cold spot where her warm body had been. “There’s nothing for you to do, everything is set up.” I wanted to reassure her, and clear away the desolation that now shadowed her eyes, but I knew there was nothing I could say that would make a difference. Cassie gave no indication that she had heard me. “We’ve got thirty minutes now until – well, until – it’s time.”
“Oh,” Cassie said again. She wasn’t looking at me: she was staring at the compartment where Joel’s covered body lay.
“We have nothing to do but wait. Why don’t we have something to eat?”
It was a terrible suggestion and I knew it. I was sure Cassie felt about as hungry as I did right now, but it was the first thing that had popped into my head. Without saying anything, she took a seat at the single small table in the pod, which divided the living area from the main pod console. I bustled about in front of the pod compartments, locating two bowls and some dehydrated soup. Disappearing into the tiny bathroom – where the only sink was – I added the requisite amount of water to the package of soup, before taking it back into the main area of the pod to put into the hot box to cook.
“Why do you think The Collective even had a pod like this?” Cassie said abruptly. She might have been talking to herself, but I answered anyway.
“There was something about it in the files I found.” The hot box pinged and I turned away to remove the sachet of boiling soup. Ripping the top off I poured it haphazardly into the two bowls I’d set onto the table, struggling with just one good hand.
Cassie pulled a bowl towards her, but did not pick up her spoon. She was waiting for me.
“This is an old model pod – the manual made some references to it having been used to transport humans from elsewhere, but that the small size and lack of restraining areas made them impractical. Some of them – like this – were re-fitted as waste pods for…” I drifted from unemotional and informative, to not being able to finish my sentence.
How could I say: “disposing of humans” when we were waiting for Joel’s body to be released?
I swallowed the lump in my throat, but still couldn’t get the words out. I picked up my spoon, then put it down. Cassie placed her hand over mine and we sat in silence, as our soup went cold and time moved on.
Cassie stood beside me in front of the compartment. Joel’s body was visible through the small panel in the door, although you didn’t really see much of anything as he was covered with a white cloth. In some ways, the blank emptiness looked almost peaceful, which he deserved. Dying was hard; but death itself, by comparison, seemed easy.
Winding my fingers around one of Cassie’s shaking hands, I squeezed her gently. She reached forward and rested her palm against the clear panel of the door, as though she were reaching out to pull Joel back inside.
“There’s nothing we could have done for Joel.” I whispered, knowing that she was wondering if there was some other way things might have worked out.
When she nodded at me, I knew she was ready to say goodbye. I leaned over to the panel beside the door and manually entered the ejection code. A moment later bright white flames engulfed the shrouded figure inside the compartment. It was a few short minutes before the outer door opened and the fire and ash was pulled into space.
I turned away, expecting Cassie to follow. She didn’t.
“It was because of me, you know.” She said, staring into the empty waste compartment.
“Joel – being here – it was because of me. The system they had, The Collective needed us, but we had to fall in love to make it work…”
What she was saying didn’t make much sense. However, it was the first time Cassie had offered information unprompted, so I leapt on it.
“The Collective needed us – what for?”
“Their civilisation was failing, some disease infecting them all, killing them.”
I shrugged. “What did that have to do with us?”
“Nothing – at first. A group of them left their home, searching for planets with life on them that might hold a solution for combating the virus. They are the ones that created the space station.”
“They were from another planet – not Earth – and found us as they were searching for a cure?” I remembered Joel, laid out on a table, his body being pulled apart by those monsters. That was some cure they found.
Cassie turned then, searching my face. I don’t know what she was looking for.
“They started off peaceful – logical, really – not as bad as we found them to be. It was desperation that drove them so far.”
Desperation? I didn’t care what their rationale was – they were parasites, surviving by feeding off us. My stomach rolled as I remembered the commander – he wasn’t just a parasite, he was evil. It took me a few seconds to force the feeling away.
“Did you see what they looked like, without the body-suits?” It was hard to imagine another race of beings, and in my head I was now picturing locust-like insects.
Cassie shook her head. “Only through a link to The Collective – just flashes – nothing clear.”
“What are they?”
She stared at me, a flash of sadness creasing her features before she answered. I hoped I wasn’t pushing her too far – I just needed to know what she did.
“They were like a plant, sort of. On their own planet they lived in water – it was very similar to Earth, which was what brought them in the first place. You were right about the size of the space station; it was much bigger than we were told it was. Most of it was given over to the living space of The Collective, when they weren’t working in one of the breeding grounds.”
Breeding grounds? That’s what the Family Quarter must have been. “They bred us?” I guessed aloud.
Cassie nodded. “There were several areas they maintained – our Family Quarter was just one of them.”
“And our parents were part of The Collective too?”
“The people we knew as parents – yes. They called them Keepers. I don’t understand it completely, but being apart from the rest of The Collective made them weaker. That’s why they were so excited about the idea of us changing – it meant the end of their turn working in the breeding grounds and returning to their normal environment.”
“Our human parents are dead?” I guessed, already knowing the answer.
“They took people from Earth originally, but they were too violent and wouldn’t accept the control of The Collective. Your – I mean – our parents came from Earth, but they were the last groups: The Collective changed the process after that – it was too difficult to manage. Now they use us to breed the next generation, before they – they ”
Unshed tears made Cassie’s eyes gleam and I knew exactly what she was unable to say. I remembered the room where I’d seen Joel die…I remembered what they had been doing to him, and all the others that lay on tables around him. Everything Cassie said tied into what I had seen: they used us to propagate and re-fill their breeding grounds, then ripped our bodies apart to harvest what they needed.
I had been wrong. They were all evil. The Collective – one entity – no one part of that could be absolved of responsibility. Not even the man that had helped us. He still allowed all the others to die.
“Consuming us – our blood, our organs – held back the progression of the disease. It wasn’t a cure, but it gave them more time to keep looking.”
I frowned. “How did that even work?”
Cassie paled. “They mixed their cells with human DNA at the embryo stage, to make it compatible.”
Compatible? Palatable more like! “They were eating us?!”
She shook her head. “I told you they were more like a plant than an animal – it would be blended into the water they lived in – they absorbed it.”
What. The. Hell. No wonder she’d been so quiet – this was a lot to get your head around.
Wait a second.
“Their DNA is in us? Those creatures are inside you and me?” My skin began to crawl, as if I could feel something poisonous moving through me.
“No. It should have been. But not you – you didn’t have it added – you were a blip in their system. An anomaly.”
I was different? A freak – that’s what the commander had called me. How long had they known? “How was that possible?”
“It was an accident. System failure.”
I swallowed. “And you?”
Cassie looked through me. “I was the same as everyone else: two-per cent Collective DNA.”
My legs wobbled beneath me. This was too much. I found a chair and without looking, dropped down. “That creature – ”
Cassie threw me a pained look – stopping me in my tracks.
I tried again. “That man told you all this?”
“Most of it. Some I saw when I was connected to The Collective when I left the Family Quarter.”
“And you believed him?”
“He was helping us to get out – why would he bother lying?”
I suppose…My mind whirled on. “You said he helped you because of your mother – your genetic mother – how did he know her?”
“We’re first generation Balik. Our parents were brought from Earth – less than twenty years ago.”
Just twenty years? They told us we’d been on the SS Hope for over a century – that we were fifth generation descendents.
“Do you know what this means? There might still be humans on Earth – we might have somewhere to aim for!”
“Human.” Cassie echoed, her voice flat.
The final piece dropped into place and I realised what she’d said earlier, but I’d not picked up on. I understood what was wrong.
“Hey,” I was on my feet, gathering Cassie into my arms. “This doesn’t change who you are – you’re not like them. You’re like me. Two per cent is nothing!”
Cassie’s head shook against my chest. “You hate them – for what they’ve done. Part of that is in me!”
“No,” I said firmly, pulling her back to look at me. “They are not in you – not the bad stuff – just a small, tiny part to make things work. It’s nothing. You are the reason we got out.”
The last part was a guess, but I thought it must be close to the truth. It would certainly explain how Cassie had heard The Collective’s silent communications.
She nodded, confirming that my speculation was close to the truth.
“He told me they look out for it in the Carriers – that’s what they called us. It’s rare, but it happens now and again: we develop their traits.”
I thought of the brain scans Cassie had triggered, and which I’d deleted from their monitoring systems. She was right. “Did he say what would happen now, when you left the space station?”
“Being away from the rest of them – The Collective – the ability should fade. From what I saw, their strength lies in being close together.”
“You’ll stop hearing people’s thoughts?” I asked.
Knowing now what had caused Cassie’s skill, I wanted it gone. I couldn’t stand the idea of taking any of that with us.
Her gaze lifted to mine and lingered, as if she was trying to look inside my head for the answer. “Yes,” she said, finally. “It will fade. It already is.”