She knelt next to Paolo and leaned in close. “How is he injured?”
Paolo turned so she could hear. “He has a broken leg, or so he thinks. We thought you dead.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t far away, but I was knocked unconscious. I’m only bruised, not like our friend here. What about you?”
Paolo showed her his hand, bleeding profusely. “A cut. Nothing else.”
Rona looked down at Andreas, a rictus agony spread across his face. “We need to make him comfortable and check the extent of the injury.” She looked back at Paolo. “Do you have a knife?”
“No. Neither of us have anything. It is all in our packs back at the cave.”
The cave. How long had she been out? They had to get back. Without them, there would be no way for Sarina and Professor Malden to locate and pinpoint their end of the rift. All they would be able to do is guess, which she assumed wouldn’t work, or worse, might bring further problems. She had no idea. Only that they needed to get back to the cave as quickly as possible. She looked down at Andreas’s right leg. From the way he protected it, she could easily tell which of them was injured. At least the limb was at a normal angle. Hopefully not broken. Perhaps a rock or a branch had struck him in the twister, and he only had a severe contusion. She looked back at him and saw him nod. She moved closer and started to feel along his leg from the ankle upwards, using the light pressure of her fingers to help assess any damage. When she reached below his knee, he flinched and let out an involuntary yelp. She revised her assessment: she suspected a shin break, not so bad, at least from the point of view of bleeding to death. She carefully took hold of the cuff of his pants and tried to tear it apart, but it was too tough. Paolo brushed her hand away. “Let me. I have more strength.” He tore a small rip at the bottom of the trouser leg, then grabbed each side and pulled the fabric into a long tear.
Rona held her breath, not wanting to look, but having to anyway. She’d seen enough of damage to her own legs to last her a lifetime. A few centimetres below the knee was their answer: swelling and a large misshapen lump. But no blood and no horrible bones protruding. She let out her breath. Andreas would survive, but he’d need help to move anywhere. Help in the form of a stretcher preferably, and they were out of those.
She looked at Andreas and Paolo, then back at Andreas. She leaned down to speak close to his ear. “It’s not a bad break, but you won’t be able to walk. In a while the body will stiffen around it and the pain may dull, though only a little. We will have to go for help.”
Andreas shook his head, and the effort made him grimace. “No, my brave lady. You must find the cave. If this world survives, then I trust you both to return for me. But if you do not return in a timely fashion, then at least I will not have to suffer my leg for much longer. Go.” He slumped back, panting from the effort.
She looked at Paolo and raised her voice. “Do you know where we are?” He shook his head. Then how were they to know how to get back to the cave? The twister had performed a mighty spinning around game on them, as if to dare them: try to pin the tail on the donkey now, my lady.
She gathered her thoughts. They had to get to the cave so Paolo—and she—could somehow communicate their location back to Sarina. Sarina had said something about Lucio being able to help, even though he was back in the township. Something about a sensitive connection to Paolo. And to Lena and Sarina. She rubbed her head, now throbbing, then stopped mid-rub. Wait a moment. If Lucio knew how to locate Paolo, could Paolo locate him? Talk to him somehow?
“Paolo,” she shouted, “Can you reach Lucio?”
He leaned in. “A little. He appears stronger to me, than me to him.”
She smiled over the wind and dust and raised her voice again. “You remember when the device destructed, Malden said it had made a big hole between our universes?”
He nodded.
“Do you think Lucio may have sensed that when it happened?”
Paolo’s eyes came alive. “Yes. You are right.”
She saw he understood. If Lucio had felt the implosion of the collider, and it had left ripples in the world as Malden had implied, then he might be able to sense where that had happened. And since he knew where Paolo was, they could play a giant game of hot or cold. Take that, twister.
“Then you must attempt to contact him and have him guide us in the right direction.”
Paolo nodded and closed his eyes. Rona took the weight off her knees and sat back. She looked at Andreas, who was looking directly back at her. He gave her a weak smile and lifted his head to speak. She held up her finger, but he was insistent. She bent down to his mouth and tilted her ear to hear his rasping words. “You think well. I see why Sarina chose you. Tell Paolo to try to get Eva to help Lucio. She is more powerful again, and has a similar sense of Paolo’s location.” He fell back and closed his eyes.
Rona laid her hand on Paolo’s shoulder, and spoke in his ear, her other hand shielding the wind. “Andreas says ask Lucio to get Eva to help.”
Paolo nodded, and kept his eyes closed. “Our mother.”
Rona sat back down and hunched against the wind, looking around at the inhospitable terrain, strewn with rocks—and now branches, leaves and undergrowth dumped by the twister.
Paolo stiffened. His head moved, as if having a conversation inside his head. His eyes flicked open and found Rona’s. “He says we are far. He remembers when he last spoke to the girl Lena, and the big white flash. He can guide us ...” he trailed off.
“But?”
“There is a big storm, and we must go across the next mountain.”
Her heart sank. She took a deep breath. “But he can guide us?”
“Yes. And he says our mother is coming to help him. Their part is easy. Ours will be ... difficult.”
Rona looked down, as if to address her own legs. “You’d better work to get me there if it’s the last thing I do.” She stood, adjusted her balance in the wind, and looked at Paolo. “Come on, let’s run. Show me the direction to this mountain. Bet I can beat you.”
Paolo looked at Andreas with pained eyes. He bent to his friend, gently hugged him, then untangled himself with care. Rona reached down and squeezed the man’s hand. “We will meet again. Stay still and conserve your energy.” She fought back the tears and turned to Paolo, who pointed back up the hill she had come down. She nodded.
They ran together, shoulders into the wind, and she tried to control her focus, away from the injured man behind them and onto their destination.
~ 68 ~
From The Heart
“Lights, camera, action!”
Sarina squinted up past the bright video lights at Nathan, who was standing behind a computer tablet mounted high on a tripod, aimed at both her and the easel behind her. “Do you have to say that?”
“Not really, but it sounds professional, don’t you think?”
She was just about to reply when an image started to appear on the tablet screen in front of her.
“Nathan—Mr Tabernacle’s online now! Are we ready?”
Nathan looked at her. Crowded around him were Professor Harrison, Professor Malden, Agent Blanchard and Lena, all smiling at her. Encouraging her. “Are you ready?” he said.
She nodded. The truck had pulled up in a parking bay at the side of a suburban main road to make sure the vision would be steady. A loudspeaker crackled somewhere near her, and she heard a man’s voice blare out at the same time as the dignified, bow-tied figure started talking on the screen in front of her. “Good-o. We’re ready at my end. Hello, Miss Metcalfe, I’m Quentin Tabernacle, I believe we have met before, many moons ago, excuse the pun. May I call you Sarina?”
She nodded—then realised he might not be able to see her. She looked up at Nathan. “Yes, he can see you,” he said, “there’s a camera in that thing,” and he pointed to the screen on the tripod in front of her.
“Good.” Tabernacle beamed at her from the small screen. “Then let’s have a practice run, shall we?”
“Yes, I’d like that, thank you.”
Tabernacle’s talking head turned to one side briefly, nodded, then returned to smile at her. “How about you relax first by telling me why you think we’re in this mess, and what you think you can do to help? Nathan has kindly given me some information, but I’d be very interested to hear it directly from you. I understand you’ve had quite an adventure.”
“Er, okay.” Quite an adventure, yes. But where to start? She cleared her throat and stared at the man smiling back at her from the screen. “You see, there is this parallel world to ours, and my friend Nathan and I helped save them, but a creature from there escaped into our world and caused an imbalance in something invisible called rem. Which made humans start to lose their creativity and intelligence”—she saw Tabernacle spark up at that information and scribble notes he seemed to be passing to someone off-camera—“but Nathan and I thought we could fix it from the parallel world—well we did fix it actually, as you know—but the fix caused an accident with a rem-machine, and it was accidentally sent into the parallel world, and that made the Moon move and make some rift open up between our two universes, so we went to get the machine back, but some horrible weapons dealers tried to steal it and destroyed it—”
The words were tumbling out and with little elegance. Part of her was aware she sounded like an air-head stuck in some fantasy land, but she was powerless to stop herself. Thank goodness they’d given her a chance to relax and practice.
“—which meant we couldn’t fix the rift and our two universes are now sucking each other inside out and if we don’t do something about it in the next few hours ...”
Quentin Tabernacle nodded. “If we don’t do something as a matter of urgency, then I am told by your people it will be irreversible. Sarina, your story sounds fantastic to many—perhaps unbelievable. But even if this is actually true, what evidence do you have that you have the solution?”
After her avalanche of words, she realised she’d gone about it the wrong way. This was supposed to be about painting a picture for the world, not some muddled interview session. She reached back and plucked a handful of pastels from the easel holder, and began to sketch furiously, looking back over her shoulder at the screen while she drew and spoke.
“It is unbelievable. Any kid who woke up in a strange parallel world would think so, and adults would never believe them. But it’s true. And we have a world full of kids who can do just what I can.” She had now finished the outline of two planets next to each other on the canvas, one bigger than the other, and was now making it quite obvious from the green and blue shading that the one on the right was the Earth.
“And what is that, Miss Metcalfe? What makes you so special?”
She focused on the canvas, her hand moving quickly, swapping pastels when needed. “I’m not. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Both worlds now had colour—the bigger one on the right with the greens and blues, the other more earthy and orange-toned. “Scientists have discovered what artists have known for centuries: our creativity has much more power than we have learned to use.” She stopped drawing and looked back at the man on the screen. “The human race has a lot to learn about itself, but we already know millions of kids around the world can use their creative powers in more ways than we knew—and some people are scared of that.”
Tabernacle nodded. “You speak of these anti-psi-kid groups I suspect. I won’t give them importance by using their rather unpleasant acronym. Do you claim to be one of these so-called mind-reader psi-kids yourself?”
She shook her head, and returned to the canvas. “I’m an artist, but these creative powers can come from any form of creativity. My friend Nathan is a genius inventor, even if he is a bit geeky sometimes, and he can do it too.” She had drawn a huge thick black fuzzy division between the two worlds that almost divided the canvas. “We don’t read minds, and we don’t hurt people. But what we might be able to do is fix this”—she put down the pastels and began to smear the black line out across the canvas, in opposite directions with each hand, one into the smaller orange-red world, the other into the green-blue Earth, until the dark line joined the two together and flowed into them—“if everyone works together.” She reversed direction and started to smear the pastel colours from each world, and into the black line, then her hands crossed over and the worlds started to melt together.
She swivelled back to face the screen, oblivious of the others watching, and focused on the small talking head in front of her. “Mr Tabernacle, our universes are being sucked into each other”—she gestured behind her to the image on the canvas—“and we need your help. We need to get enough super-creative kids to come forward and help us use something called rem-manipulation to fix this rift. Can you help us get the word out, and to help anyone ignorant or scared about what we’re doing to understand? I can show this with more pictures.” She turned back and slid sideways to the next canvas, set up on an adjacent easel. Nathan picked up the screen on the tripod and moved with her, and focused the camera. Sarina picked up a pastel and began to sketch.
“Ahem.”
She looked back around from the row of rough icons of kids she had already drawn, to see Tabernacle waving at her to stop. “Miss Metcalfe—Sarina—let me try to understand before you continue. You want us to broadcast your message and help you find more of these super-creative kids, yes?”
She nodded, and ignored his request to stop, turning back to keep working.
“But there is no need for you to sketch all this out—as wonderful as your work is, we have people here—skilled people—who can computer-generate these images. It will be”—he hesitated—“ah, more professional, don’t you think?”
She spun around to face him, and felt the blood rising in her cheeks. “This is exactly our problem, Mr Tabernacle. People who think everything humans do can be done better by a machine.” Out the corner of her eye she saw Professor Harrison flinch and Professor Malden smile.
Tabernacle frowned. “A subject that could take a long time to debate. But assuming you are correct, how does a child watching this know that they are one of these super-creative types, or that they have the power to help? Is there some test you are proposing? Some scientific explanation?”
“Mr Tabernacle, I know you’re an inventor and your mind wants to find a logical explanation. But this is our problem, and the very reason I want to draw these pictures: to bypass the brainwashing given to all kids. Computers and scientists aren’t always right, and the things they do appeal to our heads”—she tapped the side of her head—“and forget we also have hearts.” She turned back to the canvas, working quickly. “Creative kids who want to help will see what I’m creating here and they’ll get it. Not in their heads, but in their hearts. And when they truly get it, they’ll know exactly what I mean, and they’ll want to help. Adults won’t, because they’ll think about it too much. It’s always going to sound weird to most people, but I don’t care about that. We have a world to save, and that’s why I need your help. To communicate directly to millions of creative kids around the world who will see this and understand it.”
She drew back from the canvas and moved so Tabernacle could see the picture in its entirety. The rows of kids she had drawn were now all holding hands, their faces upturned to the Moon she had quickly sketched at the top of the canvas. She reached across with an orange pastel and began to draw lines of energy from each child and up towards the Moon. “In their hearts, any kid who can do what we do, knows this is possible. And they will know we can do it together.” She sat back, her face flushed. She hoped she had enough energy left to be polite when they were broadcasting live.
“You think these ... pictures ... will change world opinion, Sarina? That they will lure these kids out?” Tabernacle was being gentle with her. But why? She looked at her work. Not her best, for sure. Too literal. Then she recognised what she had done; where she had gone wrong. She’d ignored her own message. No wonder Quentin Taberna
cle was being kind—he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. The pictures were what she called ‘head pictures’—no better than well-drawn cartoons. She heard Drysdale’s voice in her ear: No emotion, Miss Metcalfe. Your work lacks emotion.
She looked at Professor Malden with Lena hugging him around his waist, smiling and waiting for her to say something. Father and daughter. She thought of Paolo, Andreas and Rona, their lives depending on her. Paolo, who had almost died defending his father’s honour. Then her own mother, forced to bring Sarina up by herself. Who was her father? She realised she didn’t know, and began to cry unstoppable tears.
~ 69 ~
Unreality TV
“The Dish” Observatory, New South Wales, Australia
Dr. Ashley Green picked up her phone and dialled, keeping her focus on the TV up on the wall. The phone answered immediately. “TJ—are you getting this?”
“Reality TV at its best, dude. Of course I’m watching it, it’s riveting. This kid—”
“Knows what all the world’s scientists couldn’t agree on? You’re not wrong. No wonder we couldn’t fathom the cause. A rift between universes? Who would have thought—but now she’s dropped that hot potato on us, I’m willing to bet my entire salary that all the figures will tally to prove her point.”
“No need to bet, Ash. You’d lose.”
She chuckled. “I should have known. You’ve already run them through?” She almost heard TJ’s vigorous nodding.
“Oh yeah. It’s spot on. Some gravitational-related rip in our reality totally lines up with everything she’s saying.”
The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults) Page 94
