The Rainbow Maker's Tale

by Mel Cusick-Jones

  There was scorn beneath his words and it irked me, although it was his second comment that caught my attention. It sounded as if he had experienced violence on the station itself. That was something I’d never heard before, or even considered: we’d always been told that the peace and segregation agreements were decided before our ancestors left Earth…is it possible that the violence followed them to the SS Hope?

  “It’s very impressive, of course, but it won’t get you anywhere.” The same man spoke again, his eyes raking across my face, searching for some kind of a response.

  Was it possible that I was still managing to conceal my thoughts from them? I wouldn’t have thought it possible, especially in my panic during the fight, but perhaps I was wrong.

  “Huh.” Was all I said; I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of distracting me. Whether they expected me to fight back or not, whether I had any chance of winning or not, it didn’t matter. I was going to fight them, with everything I had. And I wasn’t going to wait for them either.

  Focusing on the more vulnerable looking figure I feinted towards them, encouraging him to try and catch me. He took the bait and lunged, but his injury slowed his approach and seizing the moment of weakness as his weight pulled him forwards, I grabbed hold of his wrist. With a single, sharp jerk I yanked him in then forced him roughly to the ground. The snap of a shoulder dislocating cracked through the otherwise silent room.

  I loosened my hands and stepped back, leaving the man on the floor, expecting him to stay down. Within moments he was getting back to his feet. It was obviously a struggle, but mainly because of his injured leg and arm, not because he was writhing in agony – as he should be. What the hell were these people? How could someone stand such pain?

  The injured man leaped for me as soon as he found his feet, despite his right arm being near useless and hanging limply at his side. From the corner of my eye, I saw the other man circling to attack as well. A hand gripped my arm: it was the wounded man trying to pin my arm down, but he wasn’t strong enough. I pushed him away easily and he fell to the side. Unfortunately, the second figure was faster: his arms wrapped around my chest in an instant, locking my arms tight to my body.

  Struggling to free myself I spun around, trying to dislodge the heavy man. As we whirled past I saw Cassie move in the shadows.

  No!

  There was fear in her eyes, concern for me and I knew that she was going to reveal her position to try and help.

  “DON’T!” I screamed through gritted teeth. The word choked off when my assailant clamped his arm around my throat. “Please,” I begged inside my head, hoping that Cassie would hear me without spoken words.

  I couldn’t breathe. The man’s arm had become a vice around my neck, reducing my movements to nothing. Terror flamed inside me, pushing me to struggle harder, but I couldn’t shift him.

  They must have sensed me weakening because his companion approached now, a syringe in his good hand, primed and ready.

  NO! I would not give up.

  With my right leg I kicked backwards at the shin of the man holding me, aiming for the soft spot on his foot when I couldn’t get a clear shot higher up. It should have hurt him: the impact jarred my heel and ankle. Nothing changed though – his grip remained tight.

  I tried again, shoving hard against him and pressing my feet into the floor to lever myself backwards. It was enough to move me away from the syringe and three paces back we slammed into the wall. The impact loosened his grip for a precious moment and I pulled my arms loose.

  Mobile once more, I lunged forwards, smashing my forearm into the man’s throat as he approached with the needle. He fell to the ground and this time he did not move.

  I had no time to process being surprised at my sudden success, as the other two men – the one who’d not approached me so far - flew ferociously at me now. There was nothing I could do to get away. The first man grabbed me around the chest again: pinning my arms against my sides, his forearm pulling hard on my throat. I was instantly immobilised. The leader was already on the floor, diving for the syringe that was still in the limp hand of my fallen attacker.

  There was no way to resist them as they wrestled me to the floor, kicking my legs from under me, choking me into submission. My hands and feet lashed out ineffectually and I knew it was over: they were going to take me.

  “NO!” I shouted out to Cassie, hoping against hope that she was not thinking of doing anything stupid, like trying to help me. I was beyond that now. Dragging up the images from my memory I pushed them out to her, reminding her of the promise she’d made me only a short time ago. “No matter what happens to me – you will get out of here.”

  I bucked my hips, still trying to wriggle free. With an angry grunt, one of the men shifted his weight onto my chest, straddling me and preventing my legs from lifting up to kick at them. My arms burned as they were pressed into the floor, held tight at the elbows. As the needle slid into my arm I felt a small prick, and then…nothing. For a few seconds the drug had no effect, then it swam deeper into my system and began to take hold.

  At the edge of my sight, things began to get fuzzy. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but it only got worse. One of the men leaned in close over my face, but all I saw was a pinky-coloured oval.

  “Where’s the girl?” he asked.

  I’m not speaking to you, bad man. A little sing-song voice floated through my mind and swinging my head away from him, I slurred: “not – saying – ”

  With the last conscious thought I could summon, I did my best to protect Cassie. I pictured her alone and scared, cowering in a dark corner of an engineering plant room. From my memory, I picked one with lots of pipes and cabling so that it would not give them a clear target.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie,” I whispered to the darkness inside my head…then I let it swallow me.

  Chapter 21

  Consciousness came back to me slowly. I became aware of my body first: muscles aching from the fight in my parents’ apartment. My neck was stiff from lying at an odd angle…the surface beneath my head was firm…the floor maybe? And my tongue was fluffy and tasted of acid when I swallowed.

  I wanted to open my eyes to sit up and look around, but even lying down I could tell I was still too dizzy from the drugs to be able to do that. So, I listened instead.

  Everything was quiet really. I could make out no sounds beyond the soft whir of an airflow unit and my own breathing. After a while of listening to nothing, the dizziness and nausea began to pass and I was able to open my eyes. When I sat up, the room swam and even with my head between my knees, it took a good thirty seconds to stop. Blinking seemed to be a major task: when my eyelids drooped they didn’t want to open again.

  What was in that syringe?

  More time passed and I found myself looking around the small grey, windowless room I was in and wondering. I wondered where I was. I wondered about Cassie: what was she doing, where was she, was she safe…? After a while I took to wondering about what was going to happen to me, but I didn’t have any positive answers to offer and so I stopped thinking about that.

  Instead I counted my bruises – there were quite a lot – and analysed the fight in the apartment. There were so many things I’d noticed that weren’t right, but hadn’t had time to process when I was in the middle of everything: now I had some time on my hands. I began with the obvious things.

  Each of the men had been stronger than I expected. Not just a little stronger: they had been unnaturally strong, in relation to their stature and build.

  What would cause that?

  Drugs, perhaps, but the difference seemed too big from what I could remember. When they’d managed to hit me, it was like running into something solid, not a flesh-and-blood person. The same when I hit them: even their weak spots felt more substantial than I would have believed possible…perhaps they wore some kind of flexible armour… But, why would they need armour? What had they said about not having to fight…I dragged the words up from my memo
ry.

  “What you can do – it’s unusual – we haven’t seen real fighting for quite a while now.”

  I was unusual – I’d always kind of known that – but perhaps I was not as different from other humans on the SS Hope as I’d always thought. If those men had experienced fighting on the Station, surely that meant that life had not always been as peaceful as we were led to believe…and how old did they look? The same as every other adult I’d ever seen in the Family Quarter: thirty, maybe forty years old. Did that mean within the last generation there had been violence on the station? Perhaps there was truth in their system after all: we were separated for our own safety…

  That would be quite a nice and neat explanation, if it weren’t for the fact that the men appeared to experience no pain from any of the blows I landed on them, with the exception of when I caught that one guy across the throat. When I hit them, my main successes had been related to momentum, using their movements and weight to dislodge them or unbalance them…but for all of that, none of their reactions demonstrated that they felt any sort of pain.

  How could you stand on a broken leg, or move normally with a dislocated shoulder?

  Their reactions had been all wrong. You could not experience that level of pain and not show it. I pictured Cassie after her fall: the limited movements, intense pain around her shoulder, nearly blacking out…

  When Cassie had been injured, the effects were immediate and debilitating; just as they had been with the children I saw at The Clinic, when we dealt with them after accidents. I didn’t believe for one moment that Cassie was weak and these men were not. Their reaction to their injuries was just the same as their extra-strong bodies: unnatural.

  Children.

  The word bubbled through my mind, as if it were significant. For a few moments I could not think why, but then I realised what my subconscious was telling me. We only ever treated children at The Clinic – some were about our age, but I had never seen an adult being taken for treatment.

  Why had I never realised this? I could have kicked myself for not seeing something so obvious before now.

  What connected all these things? I began laying out my observations one by one.

  The adults I fought with didn’t feel pain; the adults in the Family Quarter didn’t appear to get sick or have accidents that need treatment. Their bodies felt different to ours: the normal points of weakness did not exist, and they were much stronger than they should be.

  Then there was the mind communication. Again, only the adults seemed to communicate with one another using just their minds – with the exception of Cassie, it didn’t appear to happen in the children and young people. And, they worked hard at hiding this ability from us.

  Did they hide it to keep us safe?

  In many ways that would make sense: so much of what we did or didn’t do was connected to protecting us, from what I had seen.

  Until now…

  That was true: the situation had changed. What happened in the apartment confirmed everything Cassie had said – everything she had seen in her dreams. What I couldn’t understand was why the adults would work so hard at keeping us safe, but at the same time, have no issue with removing us violently from the Family Quarter. The sedative they had given me had not diminished my memories… Did that mean they didn’t care what I remembered…?

  My list of observations made nothing clear. I found myself asking the same two things over and over: how could any of this be possible? And what did it mean. Unfortunately, right now I didn’t have an answer for either question.

  * * *

  The door to my room slammed open – I’m not sure when I’d begun thinking of it as my room, but that seemed to fit – and three men entered. All of them wore the same black day-suits as the ones from the apartment. In fact, as my eyes focused on the man in the centre of the group, I recognised him as the leader who’d injected me with the sedative.

  “Hey,” I said, with a half-wave of my hand. With no real idea of what was going on, or what might actually happen to me, I had few words to share. I didn’t even bother standing up from the corner where I’d settled.

  The group paused a few paces away. I thought the two unfamiliar men looked a little nervous. Not the one in the middle: he looked…odd. A strange mixture of anger and excitement coloured his features. I was so accustomed to adults with impassive, near-emotionless faces, that seeing someone agitated in this way was unusual. I won’t lie: it unnerved me.

  “Where I am? What am I doing here?” I asked, directing my question at the man who was obviously in charge. With some effort I was able to keep the fear I felt from leaking into my voice.

  “It’s not a time for questions, Balik – not yours anyway – we’ll be taking you elsewhere for an…interview…shortly.”

  My heart sank at his words. The way he said it did not make an interview sound like a good thing.

  “Where am I – why am I here?”

  No one answered me and in those few, short seconds, I felt a shift in the atmosphere. I didn’t want to sit any more: it felt wrong to be looking up at the men from a position of weakness. Tipping myself forwards I intended to get to my feet, but that never happened.

  The man who’d been speaking leapt at me, grabbing me roughly by the shoulders. I have no idea how it was possible, but he managed to clamp my arms to my sides immobilising me, at the same time as dragging me to my feet. His strength was abnormal. It was terrifying.

  Caught off guard by the sudden attack, I didn’t even try to fight back. They had me where they wanted me – wherever that might be – I just hadn’t expected more violence. It wasn’t necessary.

  “What’s the matter, boy – no fancy kicks and punches now?”

  His face was inches from mine, words sneering and filled with contempt. I struggled hard, hoping to break his grip on me, but it was useless.

  “I’ve not lost anyone in years!” He growled, pulling me closer, squeezing me even tighter. “And then you come along – a little genetic freak throw-back – and with a lucky blow take out one of us.”

  I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it. I had nothing to say.

  His voice became a whispered hiss. “You’re going to pay for what you’ve done to me…and then you’ll tell us where your friend is hiding.”

  For the first time since the men entered, I’d found out something useful. Cassie must still be out there: if they hadn’t found her, that could only be a good thing, couldn’t it?

  He let go of me so suddenly that I fell backwards onto the floor, hitting my head, hard, against the wall behind me. The commander – that’s how I thought of him now – straightened up, a small smile twitching at his lips, and headed out of the room.

  “Make sure he does as he’s told,” he ordered the two guards he left behind. His words were spoken aloud for my benefit, not theirs – he was threatening me.

  * * *

  It was obviously time for my interview.

  The door slid open, two men entered and the door closed behind them. Now, I stood as soon as they appeared, knowing that I couldn’t afford to put myself in a position of weakness again. With my back pressed into the wall I waited, and watched them.

  The two men hovered by the door. Both looked small and weak, but I knew that meant nothing. They were inhumanly strong, these creatures. I’d learned quickly, but not fast enough to protect myself back at the apartment. Now it was different: I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by fighting back. And, even better, knowing that everyone has a weakness, I was sure that I had guessed theirs.

  Waiting for them to come back, I’d had time to think about the commander: what he’d said and how he acted. His unconcealed violence, in front of his men, told me that I was not safe here. I hadn’t been able to fully work out what being a genetic throw-back meant, although I suspected it had to do with my aggressive behaviour.

  What I realised was that he sounded most angry when he talked about losing someone. I could only assume that I’d
killed, or severely injured, the man that had gone down in the apartment when I hit him across the throat.

  A lucky blow, the commander had called it. Ironic that he would use that word given our society’s preference for logic and reason over luck…but I believed he was right, it was lucky – for me – in more ways than he might have guessed.

  I had already decided to fight. They were still looking for Cassie and perhaps distracting them by causing trouble here was the best assistance I could give her. It scared me that I might not be concealing my thoughts any longer and didn’t want them inside my head.

  What better way to stop them wanting to talk to me, than making them want to hit me?

  When I put it in words, it sounded like a terrible idea, but it was the best I had and anyway, I suspected that being thrown around by the commander had been just the beginning…attacking might be my best defence.

  My attention flicked back to the two men. They remained close to the door, although one had moved forward a little way into the room. He was closer to me. Just as before, I detected fear. It was in the way they stood, baton-like weapons clutched tightly into shaking hands. It was in the way their eyes followed my casual, minute movements as if I might explode at any second. I wondered again about being a genetic throw-back: perhaps they hadn’t seen anyone like me in a long time, perhaps they weren’t prepared for me.

  “How are we gentleman?” I offered a cordial smile with my words, which neither man returned. “I believe it must be time for my interview.”

  Ignoring my last remark, the man closest to me took another step forward, his colleague by the door copying him a moment later.

  “You are to come with us. There is another room for you to be interviewed in.” The man at the back spoke with stilted words.

  “That sounds jolly.” I pushed myself away from the wall.