The Rainbow Maker's Tale

by Melanie Cusick-Jones

  * * *

  We had been silent for a while, but that seemed to be OK. Cassie had accepted everything I’d told her about the scanner systems and how I used the band to get around them. I’d given her a lot to think about; it was her turn now.

  I rolled closer to Cassie, interrupting her quiet musings. She turned towards me and I cupped her cheek in my palm, making sure I had her full attention again. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you have something to tell me…” I let my thumb trace the half circle beneath her eye, where the skin was darker than usual. “You still look tired you know?”

  “Thanks!” She spun away immediately.

  “I’m just concerned,” I said, rolling after her, so she couldn’t avoid me. “And you can’t exactly tell me that there’s nothing wrong. I already know you’re hearing things that no one else can!”

  “That makes me feel much better,” she grumbled, still avoiding eye contact.

  “It should make you feel better.”

  I pulled her back to face me, despite her resistance. I already knew enough about her secret that she couldn’t deny it, so why was Cassie so against us finding out more? I tried to encourage her to see it the way I did.

  “What you’re able to do might be a new step in evolution for mankind…or something special to you…or a result of living on the station…” Or caused by something they had given us, disguised as vitamins…

  I decided to store that last, random thought away for later. It was something I hadn’t actually considered, before it popped into my head just now, but it sounded plausible. Or, as plausible as anything else! I knew it must be scary for her, but how could she not find this exciting? Just a little bit?

  “Are you trying to tell me that I’m hearing what people are thinking because of cosmic radiation or exposure to some unknown chemical?”

  They were certainly possibilities.

  Cassie scoffed at her own suggestion. “To be honest I think that’s the least likely explanation of any!”

  “Really…? So, you have given this some thought already.”

  “A little,” she conceded, “maybe…”

  “You’ve heard my guilty secrets.” I pointed out. “It’s good to share and I’ve got the time right now. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  And she did. Cassie told me that it had started with her dreams, several weeks ago – I made a mental note to go back and check her records to see if anything specific had happened around that time. At the beginning it had been snatches of words and sometimes images of places around the space station: very normal and familiar, but not hers.

  Cassie had put this out of her mind, but when the examinations started and she began using the automatic discourse headsets, it got worse. Although she hadn’t fully guessed at the time, it sounded like she had been picking up on other people’s thoughts and answers to the exam questions.

  The headsets had been the main factor today when Cassie had heard me. Perhaps there was something in their construction, or the way they extracted information directly from our minds, that Cassie was picking up on…

  I sat back when she finished speaking. There had been a lot of information to take in and it would take me some time to process it. To help me along, I wanted to clarify some things.

  “From what you’ve said, there’s been a complete shift from this being something that affected you subconsciously – you were always asleep – to now, when you heard me, and that woman today. You consciously tuned in to what we were thinking.”

  Cassie shook her head. “I wasn’t trying to hear anything from you today, remember? The first time I heard you was just because we both had the headsets on. But, the woman on the way over here…”

  “You said you felt like she tried to hear you? As if she was able to do something similar – consciously – that you’ve been doing by accident?”

  Cassie nodded.

  That was interesting. If Cassie was right, then it made this much bigger than something that only affected her… The key elements: the effect of the headsets; subconscious and then conscious ability to do this; maybe other people being able to do it… It couldn’t all be a coincidence, could it?

  We lapsed into silence for a while. In the quiet I turned over ideas in my head and wondered what possible options there were to connect the strange things happening with Cassie, to everything else I thought was wrong with the station – perhaps the link was there?

  “So…what do we do?” Cassie asked, eventually interrupting my thoughts.

  What could I say?

  When I looked at Cassie I saw fear in her eyes, and I hated that. It was even worse that I had no real answer for her.

  “What can we do, when we don’t really know what’s happening?” The question was more for me than her, but Cassie answered anyway.

  “Perhaps we need to pay more attention – to try and figure it out.”

  I tipped my head to the side as I considered her suggestion, before concluding that it was the only choice we had right now. “I’ve done this for a long time already, but you’re right. We need to think about everything we know, everything we’ve been told – there must be some clues in that to what’s happening with you.”

  Cassie nodded back.

  I wasn’t convinced that she was going to like what I was about to suggest. “I think we need to do some more experimenting – to try and work out what the limits are to what you’re able to do – and maybe work out how you’re doing it.”

  She groaned. “Always the scientist.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I laughed, trying to lighten her mood. “Think about it – if we look at how your talent works, we might be able to understand why it’s happening.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed. Her eyes clouded with fear. “So, you don’t think I’m going mad then?”

  Was that what she thought – that she was mentally ill? No wonder Cassie hadn’t wanted to talk to me about what was happening to her.

  “In all honesty – if you were just hearing random voices, then I’d have to say maybe...”

  Cassie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, and I couldn’t help but laugh, which probably wasn’t the most reassuring thing to do. I held up my hands to ward off her anger.

  “But, but, but… We know that you’re hearing what people are actually thinking. It’s not your imagination creating the voices, but something real – something that would seem almost impossible – but it’s happening.”

  Apparently Cassie accepted this, as the anger emptied from her face. “So, what now?” she asked.

  “We review the facts…”

  “OK.”

  “From what you’ve told me, I’d agree with you that it sounds like when you’re unconscious – normally that would mean asleep, but obviously yesterday was an exception – that you’re picking up on people’s thoughts, maybe even their dreams and seeing them in your own.

  “Other than that, the only time you’ve ever heard anyone was when you were both using an auto-discourse headset, which might mean that the headset is tapping in to the same brain functions that are triggered when you’re unconscious.”

  “Except today,” she reminded me. “I think I heard the Medic when you were leaving Medical Records today – it was all a jumble, but I’m sure it was him. Then there was the woman when I was coming here this afternoon.”

  “So…that could mean whatever is causing it is getting stronger, or your ability is getting more powerful.” It seemed like a good suggestion, before I realised that the improvement wasn’t consistent. “You’ve not heard anything from me whilst we’ve been here?”

  “Not a peep,” she confirmed.

  “Then maybe there’s something else – another common factor?”

  “Perhaps,” she sighed, “but I can’t imagine what. And I still have the feeling that the woman this afternoon was expecting something from me when I heard her thoughts. As though she could hear me inst
ead of the other way around.”

  I sighed myself. “I’d forgotten that part.” There was so much to consider, I needed time to pull things together. Right now, my thoughts had no order or sense to them.

  “No – it couldn’t be!”

  Cassie bolted upright beside me. The sudden movement made me jump, and I turned to look at her in surprise.

  “You said before about my dreams being people’s thoughts, maybe even snippets of what they were actually doing…?”

  “Yes – ” I began, but stopped when she rolled away from me. I dragged my fringe away from my eyes, to look at her properly. The sudden change – from resignation to fearful babbling – was bizarre. “Are you OK? You seem upset – did I say something wrong?”

  “No,” she replied through tight lips, “it’s not you – it’s Ami – I’ve got to go.”

  “Ami? What does Ami have to do with anything?”