Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds (9 page)

Tamina leant forward, extending her hand and the object.

‘Right in the centre you can see seven semi-circles. No particular pattern. The twins said they represented the seven dimensions of life. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine.’ She looked around the adult’s faces. ‘We’ve never heard of the sixth dimension but the twins said it was there.’

Mizena held out her hand and received the object.

‘Heavy!’ she exclaimed. ‘And old.’

‘No, we made it less than two years ago,’ Pelnak said.

‘No. I mean the energy is old,’ Mizena replied. Noticing her husband’s raised eyebrow she turned to him. ‘I’m not just a happy farmer, mother and house-wife. Don’t forget my genes,’ she said in reference to the genes she carried of Rrîltallâ Taminûllÿâ, the great healer-heroine of Aurigan times.

‘It was all very strange,’ Wrenden explained. ‘We just did what they said. No discussion at all. And the twins were… different.’

‘It was their eyes,’ Shimara said. ‘All the time we were working the fine rims around their purple orbs were silver, instead of their usual, you know, Tullia lavender and Qwelby violet.’

‘And their ovals were rimmed with silver,’ Pelnak added.

‘It was like
Invaders from the Nebula
,’ Wrenden said, referring to a Sci-Fi HoloWrapper popular amongst the younger children, ‘and they’d been taken over by the aliens.’

The object was passed round to Mandara.

‘You have created a very powerful Talisman,’ he said, feeling the energy. ‘This one interfaces with the sixth level of vibration. What do you know of that?’

The youngsters and Mizena shook their heads.

‘We know so little of the time before the Great Divide. Our researches,’ he indicated his wife and Shandur, ‘indicate the sixth dimension to have been a vibratory band on the side, so to speak. Not a level through which the Auriganii lived in what seems to have been the long journey through all the levels.’ He paused.

‘Keep it simple, my dear,’ his wife said, reaching out to rest a hand gently on the big mans’ arm and using the contact to ensure tight-beaming of an accompanying thought.
‘This is not the time to mention the inner hexagon and the power of its links.’

‘No. Your expertise. But you worry me. How much power are they unconsciously tapping into, and where did the twins learn all this?’
Mandara tight-beamed back as he appeared to take time to consider his words.

‘In the manner in which you have explained that you formed your group, you have managed to reproduce what I believe was a powerful Aurigan ceremony, by which you have created a separate and distinct energy entity capable of accessing the sixth dimension. One that has far more power than all six of you put together. I think that explains how you were able to create the Time Bubble and the Bell Tower.’

The youngsters shared looks of surprise, amazement and excitement.

‘What do you use this for?’ Mandara asked.

‘There is so much information in the Archives that is age restricted,’ Pelnak answered. ‘Since we formed our group, all six of us exploring together, we can access well beyond our age limits.’

‘Such as?’ Mizena asked

‘Science for me,’ Pelnak answered.

‘Azura, for me and Qwelby,’ Wrenden said.

‘Dance and fashion for me,’ Tamina added. ‘And fashion for Tullia, of course. And she explores healing and what it would mean to devote her life to that.’

‘I like bits of what the girls explore,’ Shimara explained. ‘I like the idea of combing them to create new energy schemes of interior decoration, houses and furniture that can adapt themselves to people’s needs, emotional as well as physical.’ She blushed as she glanced at Tamina. ‘And asking you to help make them beautiful.’

‘And Quantum Twins of course,’ Tamina and Wrenden said together.

All four adults nodded their understanding. Given that the whole race lived in tune with the underlying energies of the cosmos they were convinced that there had to be a particular reason for the existence of Quantum Twins. Hoping to find information amongst the very old and degraded records, Mandara and Lellia had devised powerful and discrete search protocols. They had not been able to discover any more than they had already been told.

‘And we all want to know more about the lives of our ancestors,’ Pelnak added to nods from his friends.

‘It sounds like you have accessed knowledge several years ahead of you, at least into the tenth and eleventh phases,’ Mizena said in admiration.

‘And beyond,’ Wrenden added. ‘But that’s adult stuff and it’s, well, boring.’

The adults laughed as a feeling of relief spread amongst them that the children still were, at least sometimes, children.

‘How do your Educationers react to the knowledge in your work?’ Mizena asked.

‘We don’t put any age restricted stuff into our college work!’ Pelnak replied in a horrified tone of voice.

‘The Educationers are all adults and they’re… boring.’ Wrenden’s voice tailed off. ‘But you’re not,’ he added quickly.

Everyone could see the
‘Why not?’
hanging in the air above his head.

It was as though the room itself sighed as Lellia received thoughts of permission from the other adults. The lighting dimmed and the sky turned to night. Instead of the sun, hanging above their heads was a planet streaked with dark reds and blacks and with a purple ring around it. The traditional image for Auriga in its last days.

‘I will save you a long and technical history lesson,’ Lellia said. ‘It appeared that the basis for the violence was in some of the exploration, creation, achievement and reward sequences of our DNA. Now, by the time adulthood is achieved, each Tazian has been calibrated and, dependent upon the individual, certain restrictions are applied as part of the ceremony. Putting it far too simply: the calibration is on a peace/aggression index related to co-operative effort/personal achievement.’

‘Oh, great. I’m in for a full dose then,’ Wrenden said bitterly, referring to his genetic inheritance from the Uddîšû Ngélûzhrâ Khèrñîszón.

‘Surely we need adventurers and explorers,’ Tamina said, tightbanding her brother her thought that it was about time he let go of that Hero’s other attribute of Trickster. It had only been a few days ago that he had played his latest trick at a family meal with the twins present.

Black hens laid eggs larger than all others, and occasionally even larger sky blue ones with a lot of rich yolk at the narrow end. Tamina loved those soft boiled. As she had gone to crack the shell the egg cup had morphed, turning the egg narrow side down. By the time she had discovered that it was glued in position and had had to eat though the white, the yolk had gone hard, totally spoiling her special treat. She had grimaced and shaken her head, as if in sad dismissal and deliberately disarming her brother. She had then mentaformed an arm into a snake and hissed.

All Tazian boys had a degree of snake phobia before their Awakening and becoming men. At times Tamina used that to get back at her brother, using real snakes. On that occasion Wrenden had jerked back and succeeded in partially blocking the energy. Qwelby had gone pale and rushed from the room. Tullia had groaned, clutched her stomach and bent over.

‘He’s terrified,’ Tullia had said. ‘I never send snake images, no matter how much he annoys me. I feel his fear. Kaigii. Identical twins.’ She had given Tamina a lop-sided smile. ‘You couldn’t know. We hide that very securely.’

Tamina had only recently experienced her Awakening and was coming to terms with what it meant for her. How she was going to help Tullia through that when her youngerest reacted as a boy as well as a girl was a question she had filed away to explore later.

‘We do need them.’ Lellia’s words cut through Tamina’s reminiscing. ‘It depends on their level of co-operation.’ Her accompanying thoughts were expressing her long-standing concern about the basis on which such decisions were made.

‘Oh, he can do that all right,’ Tamina said, in a sour tone of voice. She was remembering one of the more audacious tricks that her brother and Qwelby had pulled off. Entering her bedroom she had seen a sphere of water balanced on the top of the door. It had taken her too long to think through the unbelievably advanced level of skill of ‘the pair of pests’ as she and Tullia called them. It was not even real water that was being released from a mental force field. She was being made to imagine the water. By the time she had realised that, she had allowed herself to feel soaked through.

‘It was only several centuries ago that it was considered that one more change was needed to maintain total peace and harmony,’ Lellia continued. ‘To have adulthood achieved at the end of the second era rather than the third. That deliberately denied to most Tazii what used to be twelve years of active exploration and personal, individual development.’

‘Why?’ all four youngsters asked.

‘It was feared that as increasing numbers of Tazii espoused the philosophy of the Shakazii, and equally many other Tazii were pressing for implementation of the more extremist interpretations of The True Aurigan Teachings, there would be conflict.’

There was a long silence whilst the youngsters absorbed what they had learnt.

‘Did you sense any opposition when searching for the twins?’ Lellia asked.

A variety of ‘no’s’ and shaking of heads provided her answer.

‘That would be most unlikely,’ Mandara commented. ‘If I am correct, they were linking, or trying to link, within the discreet boundaries of their own energy entity.’ Not normally given to seeking reassurance, he glanced at his fellow quantum scientist. Shandur nodded his agreement.

The youngsters felt a chill as the adults withdrew behind a Privacy Shield to share their thoughts. As Orchestrator of the First XzylStroem, responsible for maintaining the planet’s six XzylStroems in balance and thus the link with Azura in the third dimension, the final decision had to be Lellia’s.

Warmth returned as the adults finished their discussion. Lellia carefully searched each youngster’s aura. She acknowledged that their EraBands were holding well to their developing selves. She stilled a sigh. Twelve was so young to be considered mentally developed. Yet it had been so for millennia, with emotional maturity being achieved over the next twelve years, before growth was dramatically slowed. Momentarily, she allowed her regret to surface at the change from the original Tazian timing of three eras totalling thirty-six years.
At least three have their crystals and Wrenden will have his soon
.

‘We have thoughtsent your parents. They know how keen you are to mentalink with the twins. They have agreed with a visit to the XzylCavern. With the sixth dimensional energy of the talisman linking all six of you together.’ She flicked a quick thought to her husband, and received his confirmation. ‘You four stand the best chance we have of making a connection with the twins. Tamina and Pelnak, you are elderests for Tullia and Qwelby…’

‘And Qwelby’s my elderest,’ Wrenden said. ‘We have fun together,’ his voice breaking as he shot a glance at his big sister, who was the butt of many of their jokes.

‘So that’s what you call it, you little squirt.’ Tamina’s repartee lacked any bite. She knew that Qwelby was not only her brother’s elderest but also his BestFriend who he hero-worshipped.

Taking a deep breath, Lellia got up from her chair. ‘I will introduce you to the Stroems. We’ll have to walk. Lift doesn’t like going there.’ Door closed quietly behind them.

‘Don’t you think its strange, wrong, that we know more, far more, about the Azurii than we do about our own history?’ Mandara asked Shandur and Mizena rhetorically. ‘Not just Auriga and that incredible journey, but even the early years here, before we separated into… what? Two watered-down offshoots of the same race?’

*

The friends followed Lellia to the top floor of the central and rearmost wing of Lungunu. There was a small bridge that spanned the two halves of the largest of the five wings. From the centre of the bridge a door opened onto a short corridor. At the end was a doorway that looked like an ordinary, semi-translucent, three-layered iris. To one side was a neat little booth with a door. It looked like the sort of object that just demanded Tazii youngsters to discover how many they could cram into it at once.

Lellia explained. ‘One at a time, relax back into Chair. When asked why you are here, you will say: ‘First visit.’ You will be fitted with a XzylStroem helmet and insulshoes. If you cannot see or hear, just think that and the helmet will adjust itself.’

One by one they went into the booth and came out looking like bug-eyed, steel grey hedgehogs on Bad Hair Day. No-one knew how it had started, but the annual Bad Hair Day had become a cult anti-celebration for youngsters in their second Era between the ages of twelve and twenty-four. Twiyeras as they were called. The winner from each category, short hair or long hair, was known as “The Mary”. They were presented with a miniature facsimile of a traditional shepherd’s NeutrinoCrook, and wore an outfit made of simuseashells for that night’s party.

When Lellia came out of the booth with her own helmet, she explained. ‘The visuglobes will act like strong snowshades. Inside the XzylCavern everything will seem to be in varying shades of grey, except the Stroems. There is a much greater exchange of neutrons than normal. Everything will appear to be flickering in and out of reality. Don’t think about it! Enough of what is there, and is there for long enough, for everything to act as though it is solid.’

She made eye contact with each youngster in turn and waited until they nodded, nervously.

Knowing how much Tazian children enjoyed watching Azuran transmissions, she bent over, grew a hunchback and walked through the door with a heavy limp saying: ‘Walk this way.’

‘Wasn’t that hunch on the other side?’ asked Wrenden.

Lellia smiled. He had picked up her reference to one of his favourite Azuran flikkers.

The triple iris was the first part of the StroemLock. Mandara liked his little bits of showmanship. When all five people were in the Lock and the third iris closed with no other doorway to be seen, the walls of the Lock shimmered out of existence.