*
Once again there was silence, this time as the adults stared at the children whose energy fields were quivering as they slammed shut all connection. An essential element of growing up was discovering how to break the rules and not let too much of that show in the aura, be that triumph or fear of being caught. No parent needed to threaten a child with ‘bogeymen’. If too much sense of wrong-doing seeped into the individual’s aura, hints would slip into the MentaNet and might be detected by Readjusters. The result – a fate far worse than any imagined bogeyman.
‘Bedtime,’ Mizena said firmly. Her children were exhausted. Their aura LockDown was so extreme as to be unprecedented. That would have to be approached very carefully, and she and her husband had some serious talking to do beforehand. ‘You’ve had enough for one day. Look at your depleted auras. Right now you need something to eat and a good night’s sleep.’
‘Tomorrow, we’ll all get together here,’ Mandara said. ‘Now, don’t worry about today. Tomorrow, we’ll make sense of that all that has happened.’
And so, with those reassuring words, he rose from his chair, tripped over, and vanished with a surprised exclamation. Forgetting that he was in his own home of Lungunu, and not actually sitting with his family in Siyataka, he had moved the wrong way around his chair and knocked over a table with his drink on it.
Everyone heard the faint hum of a HouseCarl, followed by: ‘Tch, Tch.’
Exhausted, the twins managed a feeble high five.
‘We programmed Lungunu’s HouseCarls to make that sound,’ Qwelby explained.
‘When they clear up after Gumma,’ Tullia added, as they followed their parents into the kitchen.
‘Why do they only co-operate when it’s to cause mischief?’ Mizena thoughtsent to her husband.
Shandur merely grunted, trying to conceal both his amusement at what the children had done to the HouseCarl and his pride at their level of skill.
Too tired to eat, Tullia snuggled up to her mother. Qwelby cleared his plate, looked at his twin’s, then pushed it away.
‘You must be tired!’ his father said sympathetically.
‘Mmpf,’ his son agreed, flopping onto the table.
A few moments later the twins were settling down for the night sharing a collection of images and feelings, and sad that Tullia had had to leave the lantern behind when descending the bell ropes.
Tullia’s journey to Haven with descendants of the Auriganii was logical. Qwelby to Azura was the puzzle. Was that the future, when he was an adult? Was he going to go there as part of a Tazian mission to reunite the two races… whilst Tullia was on Haven… bringing all three races together… setting in motion the restoration of their full Aurigan heritage?
Tingling with excitement, they imaged a strange mixture of a scene: half Azuran flikker, half HoloWrapper Adventure of imagined Aurigan times. Flanked by a dragon and a unicorn, they were two Venerables, each known as “Purple”, and wearing totally over-the-top robes, presiding over the celebrations of the restoration of the Aurigan Dynasty…
CHAPTER 7
A GOOY MESS
The day after the twins’ disturbing adventures started well. Washed and dressed, they stood looking out of the bedroom window. They were trying to adjust to the fact that they had spent a large part of the previous day not merely working together, which was not unusual, but openly admitting that they needed to rely on each other.
That had been their life until they were twelve. From then on, each establishing their own identity had become very important. Even so, that had to be within the structure of their intense and unique genetic relationship. For a time they each had had their own bedroom-cum-study. More often than not they had ended up together in one room or the other, often squashing their four best friends in with them.
Eventually, they had persuaded their parents to let them have the attic as their domain for everything: a combination of individual spaces and sharing spaces. One large room artistically, or not according to their mother, divided into spaces for sleeping, studying, playing and a separate room that Qwelby called GirlySpace. Even Tullia agreed that she spent far longer in that corner then he ever would.
One day they would discover that Siyataka’s roof had been changed to its unusual shape shortly before they were born, that their extensive wheedling, carefully explaining how easy it would be to convert the attic, had been unnecessary, and that their parents had so enjoyed the twins’ inventiveness that they had made them wheedle for longer than originally intended.
*
Recalling how good it had felt when Tullia had cuddled up to him, wanting to be cared for, Qwelby decided to humour her by letting her arrange his thick hair into her latest style for him. As he watched in Mirror the green lights flickering around the comb and brush, they thoughtshared their feelings about their Out-Of-Body experiences.
Their Images quivered and their faces grew older. Tullia’s hair became full of thin plaits interwoven. A style she had never effected. Qwelby’s hair had grown so long that it was pulled back behind his head in a mane. They sensed each other trembling with anticipation, and saw the dull yellow of fear flickering at the edges of their auras.
Tullia pushed her twin’s hair into a fringe, then swept it away as she broke eye contact and steadied her anxiety. ‘Breakfast.’
Feeling excited, a little fearful and in need of reassurance, instead of sliding down the twirlypoles they walked down the stairs side by side, careful not to hold hands. They were fifteen-years-old. Togetherness was one thing, getting mushy for a second day running was not on.
*
Their mother was very much a homemaker, taking pride in managing the family farms at Siyataka and Lungunu, giving instructions to the domestic appliances, and occasionally even cooking by hand. Full of living wood, Kitchen looked and felt old and rustic. ‘An energy balance with the all the hi-tech equipment in my husband’s part of the house,’ she would say to surprised guests. As she moved around Kitchen it filled itself with a sound like branches happily rubbing together in a soft breeze.
As they all sat down, the miniature twistors in Tullia’s earrings broke away from their restraining gluons. Chaos resulted. The kitchen ended up looking as though a whirlwind had swept through it.
Mizena was so upset at the mess in her kitchen that she turned the clock backwards. Back upstairs Tullia adjusted her earrings, then the twins went downstairs, and the whole morning dissolved into chaos for the second time.
Time-travel was both theoretically possible and believed to be actually possible in the eighth dimension. In their worlds of the fifth and seventh, it was as though anyone that went back in time found themselves in a cocoon and unable to step outside of reality. Going forwards in time never happened.
In desperation, their mother reversed the clock again, further back in time. The twins awoke and this time Qwelby tried to help Tullia firmly fix the twistors in place. Try how they might, the family was unable to avoid what fate had in store for them that morning, and Mizena fled from the kitchen in tears.
Shandur sent the twins to Barn, correctly judging that the twistors could not go too far away from their homes in his daughter’s earrings. He needed them all out of the way whilst he thoughtsent to the Helping Hands Agency. In no time at all several “Pairs of Hands” as the young Apprentices styled themselves, arrived and helped clear up the mess.
When order had been restored, and Shandur had the earrings safely locked in a box, he patiently coaxed his wife out of yesterday and reminded the family they were going to Lungunu. As a treat, he said they would all fly their twistors and go the long way round.
Riding what looked like a permanently revolving, elongated corkscrew the size of a PowerSled required a very sophisticated saddle and a lot of skill. Twistors chose their own colours to reflect their personality. Against his father’s suggestions Qwelby had chosen his favourite: bright red with orange stripes.
CHAPTER 8
TULLIA LECTURES
As they were nearing Lungunu, ignoring his father’s thoughtsending, Qwelby swooped low over a forest, looking pretty with its mass of yellow winter berries standing out against the snow. Unfortunately, they were not berries but the crests of SentryBirds. Startled, the whole flock rose up, shrilling their alarm calls. The large aegiele with its bright red breast was their most feared predator. Seeing the bright red swooping down on them, they attacked, shooting streams of ochre coloured goo like semi-liquid chewing gum that they used to trap the small rodents that were their favourite diet. Qwelby and his twistor were covered in it.
As the family arrived at Lungunu and settled their twistors into the cradles, Lellia appeared with TAC, the third assistant cook. To Qwelby’s surprise, Lellia was happy. She was working on analysing the SentryBirds’s goo and was delighted to have so much to use. The downside was that he was not able to use the neutron shower for his clothes and helmet which would not be cleaned until much later in the day.
Qwelby was sulking. Like his twin, he had been wearing the flying suit given to him on their rebirthday three months ago: emerald green with bright vermilion slashes that looked like flames. With ‘one on him’, as Tullia described his childish moods, rather than go to their suite and find some more clothes, he stomped into the Gather Room wearing what any Tazian boy wore underneath a flying suit: snug shorts and a tank top. He consoled himself with the fact that the satchel with their uncle’s gizmos in it was clean, having been safely stored in the twistor’s saddle box.
Designed by Lellia, the Gather Room was a charming blend of furnishings in a modern angular style within a traditional room, the soft pinks and oranges of the gently moving colourscopes on the walls giving a feeling of warmth. Set against one wall which, with tiny lights twinkling against the deep blue represented the enormity of space, pride of place was given to a series of Living Statues of those Uddîšû whose genes were borne by the various members of the family. In any other setting that would have been ostentatious, but the Gather Room was used almost exclusively by the family. On the rare occasions when other people were present, the Statues disappeared into the seventh dimension.
At the other end of the sofa, Tullia was still happily wearing her flying suit. They were so stylish that youngsters often wore them even when not flying. Hers was a rich, deep purple with flame-like patches of bright violet. Like any flying or body suit, many of the bright patches contained artfully hidden, teethless zips, called szeames.
Tullia was always very careful only to put in her pockets the tiniest things that she might ever need. There was no way she was going to spoil the look of her suit by having bulging pockets like some boys did.
‘With the KeyPoint only a day away, the latest experiments being conducted on Azura are stressing the XzylStroem,’ Mandara said. He nodded to his great nephew who knew that the Academy of Discoverers was becoming increasingly concerned by the successes Azuran scientists were having on practical levels.
‘That is dangerous,’ Lellia added, her eyes looking from Tullia to Qwelby. ‘To remind you. A key function of this, the first XzylStroem, is to maintain all other five in balanced harmony, and the link with Azura.’
‘Oh do stop that!’ snapped Qwelby at Tullia, who was absent-mindedly playing with her szeames. ‘It’s really irritating.’
‘Don’t blame me!’ Tullia snapped back. ‘It’s not my fault you got bird shit all over your flying-suit.’
‘It’s not…’
‘Enough!’ Mandara said. ‘We have a lot to talk about. Seriously.’ He thoughtsent to the twins to concentrate. The brief flaring in the their energy fields settled, he focussed his attention on them
‘In order to discuss what happened yesterday,’ he continued, ‘you will need some background information. Knowledge you will not be taught on your college days, but left for you to discover for yourselves when you are much older. Knowing how much you have asked all of us about yourselves, and that you have searched the Archives, will you tell us what you have learnt about Auriga, and our race’s background. It will save boring repetition.’
‘And correcting anything that needs…’ Lellia added, with a smile.
Tullia glanced at her twin who nodded. No point in them mindmelding as each knew exactly the same as the other. She uncurled her legs, then curled them back underneath her the other way round. She felt a humorous tickle in her mind. It had Qwelby’s signature.
‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ Tullia asked, in her best imitation of her favourite Assistant Educationer, thoughtsending her twin a smile. ‘Then I’ll begin.’ She smiled sweetly at the adults. ‘This is with all six of us working together.’
‘Each Essence emerged from the primal chaos onto Auriga in the third dimension, a baby bounded by Form and Time, just like on Azura.’
The room went cold as the adults withdrew behind a Group PrivacyShield to share their shock that the youngsters had been able to discover that. How? It was so securely shielded.
Looking smug at their obvious consternation, Tullia waited until their auras settled.
‘Evolving over increasingly longer periods of time, the Essence moved into successive higher, faster, vibrations of the other dimensions.
‘Four. It acquired consciousness and became a proper human being. No real change externally as it was still bounded by Form and Time.
‘Five. It gained a very limited elasticity of Form and Time. Just like us today.
‘Seven. She or he learned how to exit Form and adopt any appearance they liked. Again just like we can. We think that the Auriganii were able to remain in the seventh for much longer periods than us.
‘Eight. Time-travel is said to be possible in the eighth, so, and we are…’ Tullia’s lips quirked in a smile as she received her twin’s clear thought: ‘Not guessing’ ‘predicating that life in the eighth was totally without Form.
‘Nine. The Space Wars suggest that Auriganii combined into amorphous groups. That must have been there, because:
‘Ten. We know that is where we go to merge into The All.
‘Our two biggest assumptions are.
‘That all the way through that life, the Auriganii had increasing numbers of sequences of DNA being activated on each transition.
‘The sixth level of vibration, or dimension. No direct information. We think it might be like Kaigii and I wrapped into in an HWAdventure, where it’s a sort of tunnel that enabled the Auriganii to move across dimensions.’
Tullia smiled. Sulking was childish. But, well, he was only a boy. And always Kaigii.
‘We don’t understand how they were able to use a space ship to leave Auriga and travel across several galaxies in only forty thousand sun cycles, when they had to take life in the third dimension with them. Even if they could warp space-time-consciousness, we know they had to travel within planetary systems because of the fighting. And that must have been to search for a new home planet and get food and stuff for the people. Unless…’ She felt her twin’s encouragement.
‘We know the Auriganii lived for at least two thousand years, so there would be an awful lot of older, faster ones compared to those in the lower dimensions. We think those of the highest vibrations were able to wrap their energy fields around the space ship. And.’ She took a deep breath.
‘They lived on some sort of space food. Energy from distance suns, well stars really.’ She finished talking in a small voice, expecting, hopefully polite, derision. The last part was all so fanciful.
‘Well, Chief Educationer Tullia Rrîl’zânâ Mizenatyr, that is impressive,’ Mandara said, smiling, whilst Tullia’s face split from ear to ear with a big grin. She was mindbathed in approbation. She felt Qwelby join her. ‘Fair’s fair Kaigii. What I’ve explained is what all six
of us worked out,’ she thoughtsent. Full of confidence she continued.
‘There was great Darkness that was difficult to penetrate around how the Auriganii DNA sequences degenerated from twelve down to three segments for us and two for the Azurii. And…’ Not liking what they had sensed, she sent a pleading thought to her twin.
‘We are taught that there was a terrible war amongst the Azurii that caused the separation,’ Qwelby said as he took up the story. ‘From the feelings we got in the Archives it was like around the Space Wars but much worse. There were these terrible feelings of guilt and shame. Why, if the war was amongst the Azurii? We think there must have been war here on Vertazia as well. No facts. It was like the Darkness was trying to cover up that “we” were fighting. With the Space Wars the feelings of the violence were bad, but always there was the sense of it wasn’t “us” that was causing it. We know from our history that we were only defending ourselves in those times, don’t we Dad?’
With the DragonRider genes that he had passed onto his son, and because of their unique relationship, also to his daughter, Shandur nodded. ‘Yes. Always only in defence.’
‘And we’ve never found any more information about us. That’s weird,’ Qwelby said as feelings of frustration ran strongly through the auras of both twins.
‘Very weird,’ Tullia added, looking almost accusingly at her parents.
‘Tullia, Qwelby,’ Mandara said. ‘I have to tell you that I found it very difficult to discover all the data you must have uncovered. From which, by the way, I have drawn very similar conclusions. Except. The war was entirely amongst the humans. It was the side effects of that destroyed our bases, and thus our ability to translocate to Azura.’
He shielded his thoughts that it had been so difficult to drill down to find some of the data that he suspected a deliberate attempt had been made over the centuries to hide the more revealing aspects. Around those areas there had been an unpleasant, dark, energy. What was of even more concern were the stories that over the centuries a handful of researchers had been mind damaged. That was attributed to Aurigan defences around ancient and forbidden areas.
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