Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds

by Geoffrey Arnold

 

  A massive wooden beam about the width of one of their feet extended from one side of the tower to the other. From it hung three bells. Attached to the top of each bell was a much smaller wooden beam sticking out horizontally. From the far end of that dangled a rope. Pulling the rope made the bell swing against the clapper. As the rope was released the bell swung back, the other side striking the clapper.

  The bells were a soft copper colour. The ropes were twirls of alternating red and white. The very prettiness making a contrast to the dark walls of the tower was reminiscent of a scene from a HWScary they had wrapped into, with a frightening, brightly coloured clown.

  They would have to crawl along the beam from opposite sides, reach out and jump or fall and catch a rope. Looking down the outside of the tower they had seen that it was a long way down to the ground. Looking down the inside, they saw it was just as far. Imagination was not working!

 

  Looking across and seeing the colours swirling through the other’s energy field, they knew this was not a competition. They needed to work together.

  ‘No time like the present,’ said Tullia.

  ‘I’d prefer tomorrow,’ quipped Qwelby.

  ‘Nutter,’ she responded, with a shake of her head.

  ‘About to be,’ he said as he started to crawl to one end of the beam.

  In position at opposite ends of the beam they looked at one another, licked lips and grimaced.

  ‘Don’t look down,’ was Tullia’s attempt at breaking the tension as they started to crawl towards each other.

  They stared into each other’s twirling eyes, disturbed by the sight yet comforted that each was feeling the same. Reaching the two end bells, they stopped.

  ‘Do it in two. Go for the bar. Land on your stomach. As the bar tilts, slide down…’ Qwelby started.

  ‘And grab the rope,’ Tullia finished.

  ‘Don’t look up,’ Qwelby quipped.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Tullia called out.

  ‘Me two,’ Qwelby called back, sending a picture with the spelling.

  Tullia managed a faint smile.

 

  *

  They leapt and hit the bars. Two massive ‘CLANGS’ shook the tower as they slid off the ends of the bars, fell, and grabbed at the thick ropes. Swinging, they were jerked up and down as the bells swung back and forth.

  Hundreds of squeaking bats launched themselves into the air. They swarmed around, seeking the windows. Too many had awoken at the same time to make their way through those above the bells. A lot of them flew down below the bells, heading for the windows further down. Qwelby was sliding down the rope to get away from them, swinging as several battered into him.

  Hanging on to the wildly swinging rope he heard Tullia’s scream above the deafening sound of the bells. A bat was entangled in her long hair. Another joined it. Trying to free its companion or attacking Tullia made no difference to her. She screamed again. Waved an arm at them, slipped, yelled, her gyrating form swinging the rope around.

  Qwelby was sliding down fast as he batted at the bats with one hand.

  A piecing scream of pure, unalloyed panic cut through his annoyance. Looking up, he saw Tullia had used both hands to free her hair of the bats and the rope was swinging out of her reach.

  She seemed to hang in mid air.

  Ignoring the bats, he gripped his rope with both hands and swung his legs.

  Gravity pressed down on Tullia.

  Qwelby swung his legs again, desperately trying to make the rope work like a pendulum.

  Seeing his twin swooping down on him with her arms reaching out, took him back to a HWAdventure. He had been flying through the air to be caught by the other trapeze artiste. But now he had to catch Tullia. He had to take one hand off the rope. This was real life and there was no safety net.

  ‘ALWAYS TOGETHER!’ he thoughtscreamed as he swung his legs once more and stretched out his hand.

  She grabbed him and crashed into his body. He felt her hand slipping, saw her eyes twirling faster than he’d ever seen, brilliant purple shot through with crimson and ochre. His fingers were straightening, he could not stop them slowly uncurling, watching helplessly as she slid down.

  The rope was running through his left hand. Panic was rising in his stomach as he feared he could not keep his grip. Millimetre by millimetre, in seeming slow motion he watched Tullia slide out of his grip. His mind was frozen, his throat so choked he was unable to cry out.

  He watched her long black hair flying out and up above her head as she fell. Felt her arms wrap around his leg, watched as she slid down, gasped as his body jerked as she stopped to hang, swinging from his foot. He reached up with his right hand and grasped the rope. As hard as he gripped, he could not slow their descent.

  Running through both hands, the rope was burning, burning. He wanted to use his imagination to ease the pain but dared not. He focussed his mind on sending his twin the image-into-action of her holding onto his foot.

  With both hands on the rope he could not look down. Trying to measure how far they had to fall he looked up and saw the bells rushing away from him at a frightening speed. There was a crash and a cry of pain from below, then a jarring smash as he thudded into Tullia. Arms and legs all tangled, they righted themselves into each other’s arms, holding fiercely, searching each other’s energy fields.

  ‘You saved me!’ she cried. ‘Gave me the strength to hang on!’

  ‘I wanted a soft landing,’ he replied.

  ‘Beast!’

  ‘Kaigii.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was time to let out oohs and arghs of pain, run their hands over their bodies and search inside. They agreed. Nothing broken. Lots of bruises and burns.

  ‘Oh Kaigii, your hands,’ Tullia exclaimed, as she gently took them and let them lie on the palms of her own hands. She bent her head and softly hummed healing energy into them, flickers of green light running from the crown of her head all the way along her hair. His hands were badly burnt and she let her soft tears well up and fall, watching the burns start to heal.

  ‘You love me!’ Qwelby exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ she replied.

  Mentally hugging, they shared their healing energies. As new skin spread over his palms, Tullia helped Qwelby up. With an arm around each other they stepped through the open doorway just as the sun dipped below the horizon and Night threw her cloak of darkness over the land. They looked around. Where were they? Far away there was a faint glow from behind the hills, which they hoped was from Lungunu. They stepped forward and shivered as if they had passed through a waterfall.

  Aided by the half moon, millions of stars spread their twinkling light across the snow.

 

  They looked behind them. The bell tower had disappeared.

 

  They looked at their wristers. After XOÑOX had been formed, Pelnak had made a special wrister for each of them. Discovering that the Azurii believed they could capture and measure Time in all manner of differently shaped boxes, and wore them strapped to their wrists, a wrister had become a Tazian fashion fad.

  Pelnak had made all theirs in the pattern of an eye, appropriately coloured for each of them. Around the edge of the central orb a tiny facsimile of Vertazia rotated, matching its daily passage around the sun. There were a number of thought-controlled functions and a multi-coloured communicator that only worked between the six of them.

  A large green arrow on each wrister pointed in the same direction. They swung their arms around and, like compass needles finding North, the arrows continued to point in the same direction. Knowing in which direction to send their thoughts, wearily they leant on each another. Tullia concentrated on sending ‘Home please,’ to their father, whilst Qwelby imaged a fire inside each of them. A few moments later they sagged with relief as they received his thought: ‘Wait.’

  They soon heard a swishing
sound as he arrived on the family PowerSled. Confident that he could master the necessary energies for a short while, he had not delayed to put on a sled-suit which he could have plugged in to keep him warm, instead, he had draped a bright red cape over his shoulders. He helped his children climb aboard and wrapped them in reassurance as they collapsed onto the rear seat and the energy field comfortably snuggled them in.

  They could feel his concern. It was nice. Like his great uncle, he was a quantum scientist. A quiet man who went through life with a slightly bemused expression on his face as though he watched everything from a distance. The twins were pleased that he had come for them. Their mother would be so worried she would have asked lots of questions and drained their energy.

  CHAPTER 6

  UNSETTLINGNEWS

  As the twins walked in through the door, their mother surprised them by not asking any questions. Although looking more than usually harassed she gave each of them an energy feed with a big hug. ‘Go on through to the gather room. Uncle Mandara is waiting for you. I’ll bring hot drinks,’ she said.

  As they entered the room Shandur sat to one side in an armchair, leaving the twins to sit down together on a settee opposite his great uncle. Mandara was sitting in a comfy armchair in his own study, wearing his usual working tunic: dark green with so many pockets they knew it was easy for him to forget in which one he had put whatever he wanted.

 

  ‘There is so much disturbance around Lungunu that it’s not safe to transweave,’ Mandara said, cutting off their thoughtsharing.

  The twins liked him. Like his wife, he was over one hundred and thirty years old, and at that age both of them were termed Elders. Two metres twenty tall, he was a big man in every way. His face had lots and lots of lines on it. They looked like the sort of lines that came to a person who had lived a very long time and who had probably seen everything there was to see. His hair had prematurely lost the family dark brown and was white, shining and long. He was a quantum physicist with a very soft spot for his great great niece and nephew. They loved it when he had fun with them in his own way, especially inventing unusual gadgets for them.

  With him using so much energy by projecting so as to be personally present the moment they arrived, they knew they were in trouble. Both of them, and equally. They didn’t want to reveal how worried they were by holding hands, instead, they casually leant against each other as though tired.

  ‘Are you hurt in any way, on any level?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ they replied together

  He ran his fingers through his hair. Instead of lying down neatly it stuck out all over. With a light that was artfully arranged to be shining from behind the chair he used for projecting, it looked like he was wearing a large, round, translucent hat. Unusually for him his brown eyes were not twinkling, and all the wrinkles on his forehead made a puzzling frown.

  Relaxing at his tone of voice, the twins noticed from his energy field that he was more worried and concerned than angry.

  Lellia, his wife, appeared and sat on one of the arms of the chair. Of average build and a little on the short side, she was a marked contrast to her husband. She usually wore flowing robes of a gentle mix of pastel colours, co-ordinating with the seasons as they passed. That day, soft ivories and creams with hints of palest pinks and turquoises. Her hair was more midnight blue than black, with an unusual streak of white that fell to one side. ‘In sympathy with my husband,’ she would say with a laugh when asked.

  ‘There has been an exceptionally strong eruption of the XzylStroem today,’ she said. ‘There was a lot of disturbance in the Trans-Temporal Energy field. What happened? Are you all right?’ She glanced at Mizena as her great niece entered.

  The twins took the drinks from their mother. She usually wore her shiny, black hair in a single or double braid, with the shorter side pieces hanging free over her ears. They could tell how anxious she had been from what the family called the worry-tangles in the sides. They sipped their drinks as they provided a summary of the strange things that had happened. They were excited when Mandara explained the adventure with the Bell Tower as their first experience of the out-of-space-and-time nature of a NullPoint. Yet they could see that Gumma and Gallia, as they called their great great uncle and aunt, were very worried as they openly shared that the room the twins had found should have remained hidden in its own time-frame, and the trunk should have remained invisible.

  He was relieved that the third alarm had worked, ejecting the twins before they had been able to find any more of his rejected or unfinished experiments. His biggest concern was that they had found the lantern. It was one of his many attempts to recover long lost Aurigan science. He had never been certain whether or not it was working, and had locked it away, concerned that the whole concept was too dangerous to develop.

  That it had worked for the twins raised disturbing thoughts, most of all in Lellia’s mind. She felt that none of the others fully appreciated the intense energy the twins possessed at a deep level.

  Mandara was staggered at the level of skill the children had demonstrated in opening the locks. He had carefully crafted them so only he and his wife acting together could do that. Behind their Privacy Shields, he shared with the adults his concern that the group of six had the power to create such an extremely rare inter-dimensional rift. ‘There are times when you pair are too clever for your own good,’ he said, whilst allowing his aura to show a mixture of concern and pride.

 

  With the twins too tired to successfully shield their jubilation, Mandara shook his head in mock despair.

  ‘I’m worried about that Darkness that seems to have seeped into the MentaNet,’ Mizena said. ‘Kumelanii or Shakazii?’

  ‘It must be the Kumelanii, Lellia replied. ‘They are ultra traditional and intensely dislike the idea of Quantum Twins…’

  ‘Why??’ the twins asked, interrupting her.

  ‘I think it is because it reminds them how far we have fallen since the Aurigan heyday when we had all twelve segments of DNA, fully active,’ Lellia said. ‘They claim it never happened in Aurigan times. But cannot produce any records to evidence that.’

  ‘And it’s because we have three identical segments that Qwelby and I can be… what we are,’ Tullia said.

  ‘Yes. It creates your extremely strong bond. And makes you very special to us,’ Mizena said.

  ‘And I sense an element of fear in their attitude to the twins, especially from the Custodians to whom the Kumelanii look for guidance,’ Lellia continued. ‘But not the Shakazii. As you know, our daughter and her pairbond have worked with them for years. They are forward looking and the only, sadly small, sector of the Tazii who see the disastrous situation facing us.’

  A heavy silence settled in the room as Lellia mentally tightbanded apologies to the adults for having voiced the last few words in front of the children.

  Sending images of restless sleep, nightmares and persistent questioning, Mizena tightbanded her thoughts that it was better that the situation was explained right away

  ‘What is serious is that not just the Kumelanii, but the majority of Tazii won’t face the fact that we are, well, dying out,’ Lellia said.

  ‘??!!’

  She nodded sadly. ‘Our third segment makes us unbalanced. Through an excessive focus on harmony and cohesion it produces our peaceful lifestyle, but with a serious lack of drive, and fertility. Put simply, as each generation passes we produce fewer and fewer children. Our total population is fast approaching a critical number, below which we will not be able to continue with our way of life. Then there will be a rapid descent spiral and…’ She raised her hands in a gesture of despair, whilst thoughtsending images of that being a very, very long time in the future.

  The twins were so tired that Mizena had gently slipped into the surface of their minds without them noticing. She squeezed her husband’s hand at the insubstantial nature of the images, hoping that tiredness meant they had not noticed what wa
s a sure sign of her great aunt’s deception.

  ‘It’s not just that we have to recombine with the more numerous Azurii to have the energy to restore our Aurigan heritage, but, if we don’t… we will die?’ Tullia asked.

  Lellia took a deep breath. She had already bent the truth, now she was faced with telling a direct lie. The twins were tired… She sensed a probing. It had Tullia’s signature. She glanced at Mizena. She had temporised too long. The probing was stronger, now carrying the twins’ joint signature.

  Feeling trapped, she had to answer truthfully. ‘No.’ There was a sense of triumph in their probing as the twins withdrew.

  ‘The Azurii are rapidly driving their world to destruction,’ Lellia explained. ‘To survive, they need our third segment with all that means. Then together we can work to restore our common heritage. Generations, millennia away. But right now we need to reverse the changes that have been made that stifle us.’ She held up a hand. ‘This is something we did not want you to know until you were much older…’

  ‘Adults??’ the twins interrupted.

  ‘Yes,’ Lellia confirmed. ‘I am talking about a time several generations away…’

  ‘In our lifetimes??’

  Once again Lellia took a deep breath. ‘Probably.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Tullia said, dredging up the last of her energy. ‘Why aren’t we doing anything about this?’

  ‘Kumelanii, Custodians, have weaved a web that the two are linked. That the way forward is through the carefully crafted development cycles and that the Shakazii need to return to the mainstream patterns before we can progress. But our people are so afraid of violence that most of them have let themselves be persuaded that recombination can only happen when there is peace on Azura…’

  ‘They’ll never…’ Tullia blurted, her energy field radiating her alarm.

  ‘¡LockDown!’ Qwelby thoughtsent. Called the ShadowMarket, there was a SubNet culture amongst older youths that the twins had been able to worm their way into. Not only had that to be protected at all costs, the twins knew their parents would never approve of some of the forms of energy exchange they provided for what was very definitely forbidden material: deep access into the Archives and heavily shielded knowledge of the Azurii.