Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds

by Geoffrey Arnold

  CHAPTER 23

  XONOX

  The day after Qwelby had almost been rescued from within the Stroems, Wrenden was still at Lungunu. He was so distraught at his failure to rescue his BestFriend that he had been moved to the Caring Room. Not only would he not speak, Cook was unable to get him to eat even her most tempting treats. Tamina refused to leave his side. She had confided to Lellia: ‘Most of the time he is a thorough-going pest. But I’m used to that. Qwelby will never forgive me if I let him come to harm.’ Feeling she was beginning to sound mushy, she had hastily added: ‘And who else will I have to boss around!’ Shimara and Pelnak had returned to their homes.

  The parents of the four youngsters had come to Lungunu that morning. They were all very unhappy at the danger the children had been in, but each was torn in opposite directions. They accepted that the aeons-old esting traditions, the relationship of elderest and youngerest, bound together Pelnak, Qwelby and Wrenden. Then Pelnak and Shimara had their own bonding, which their parents had to accept was due as much to them as their offspring. Finally, Tamina was elderest to Tullia, who was quantum twin to Qwelby.

  They agreed that the buildings that Wrenden and Tamina had described seeing were definitely not Tazian. Various explanations were offered but none sufficed. No-one had the desire to mention the terrible possibility that Qwelby might be trapped in the NoWhenWhere.

  It was only after much soul searching, and with heavy hearts, that the friends’ parents agreed that their children could make one more visit to the XzylStroem to search for the twins. But only one, when Wrenden was fully recovered, and only after Mandara had installed further security precautions. It was the mothers of Shimara and Pelnak, twins themselves, who summed up the situation: ‘Xátuyé osiy nola nola osiy xátuyé. (six all one and one all six). XOÑOX they are,’ they said together.

  Hearing TwinSpeak, Mizena fled from the room in tears, followed by her husband.

  When the friends’ parents left, Mandara and Lellia returned to the damaged section of Lungunu to continue with repairs. Exploring the Accelerator room was their top priority.

  CHAPTER 24

  TRACES

  It was late the following afternoon when Mandara and Lellia returned to the main part of Lungunu, satisfied that they had completed the final element of such repairs as could be made. They were exhausted and settled to rest in Mandara’s study while everything settled into place. They agreed to wait until they had definite news before contacting their great niece and nephew.

  Some time later a soft tinkling of bells presaged House’s announcement. ‘The Portal has been re-established.’

  Thanking House, Mandara got up from he was sitting and turned to a section of the bookcase. It swung open at his request and he stepped through. Lellia followed and the bookcase swung back as they started to walk along the staircase in the pitch dark. They were very careful not to allow their feet to tell them whether they were going up or down, because the stairs weren’t really there in that dimension. ‘Along’ was a much safer thought to hold.

  After a little while the darkness faded and they saw that they were now walking along a corridor. The walls were still badly marked as through flames had ripped along them, peeling paint off. Yet the walls never had been painted. The apparent burn marks were slowly sliding down the walls like so much coloured rain down a window, whilst the seeming peeling paint, carried on peeling down in strips, revealing underneath a soft magnolia colour that just begged to have a pretty colourwash applied to it. A corner appeared. They turned it. Set back in a dark alcove was a yellow and red streaked, dark grey door.

  ‘That wheel should be light grey,’ Mandara said in a hoarse voice. Taking a deep breath he pushed the door. It moved. ‘Impossible! The locking mechanism is in a different timeframe to the door. Or rather, it was.’

  He pushed the door wide open. The draft caused a cloud of red dust to blow about and scattered a few pine needles and snowflakes across the floor. The room was in chaos. Half of it was there and half flickering in and out of existence. A sharp tang of ozone overlay the burnt smell. The Jacuzzi-like container had turned black with vivid orange streaks along its sides, the liquid colour trickled down, puddling on the floor like mercury.

  As a form of safety cut-out, House possessed a number of discrete subs-routines that covered potentially dangerous parts of Lungunu. After the twins had created a personalised Image of House as an aged and trusted Retainer, with Mandara’s permission, they had personalised its sub-routines, naming them Guardians. Mandara spoke to the Guardian of the Room. With tears running down its disembodied, blue face, it explained how the twins had disappeared.

  ‘As you know, I can only control energy at the quantum level. I cannot control the multi-phasic supra-dimensional energy that is the core of a human being. I could not stop them sending their thoughts in and…’

  Finally admitting that the twins were no longer on Vertazia, Lellia sighed and leant against her much bigger husband. Really, she had known all along. Since the moment of the major disturbance in House, wherever she was she had been aware of the Stroems’ energies: exceptionally strong and steady, calming the other five Stroems. And underneath that, an unusual hint of almost personal disturbance.

  She was an hereditary Orchestrator, but only because she had the skills. Even though she worked well with the Stroems, like all other Orchestrators she knew little of what they really were. Aeons ago in what was termed ‘The Golden Era’ there had been twelve StroemWells, none of them shielded in Caverns. For the first time she wondered if her researches into the lives of the Azurii would have been better devoted to exploring what had caused the loss of the six Wells.

  Mandara closed the door as they left the room. ‘I will need to come back and restore the timelock,’ he mumbled half-heartedly.

  Looking at their clothes, Lellia noticed they were speckled with a mixture of red sand, pine needles and snowflakes that were melting now they were out of the room. She brushed a few specks of red sand onto the palm of her hand. ‘Feel how heavy these pieces are,’ she said proffering them to her husband.

  He picked up a few grains up and grunted. ‘Not really heavy, lighter than I would expect but…’

  ‘You’re right, my dear. More solid. More ‘there’ somehow,’ she said slowly, not liking where her thinking was leading her.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Mandara said. ‘Playing all those games that challenge them to develop their innate skills.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Breaking into forbidden areas of House.’

  ‘We have all helped them to become who they are,’ Lellia said, taking his hands in hers. ‘Hoping to avoid the introversion and short lifespans that we are told affected the previous pair of Quantum Twins… and discover the reason for their existence.’

  Mandara nodded, accepting what his wife had said.

  ‘Getting them back will be a challenge worthy of the Arch-Discoverer,’ she added.

  Her husband grimaced. He was the best. He had no false modesty. It was why he had been acclaimed as Arch-Discoverer when he was still so many years away from becoming a Venerable. Together with the different skills of his wife and nephew, supported by Mizena’s solidity, if anyone could do it, they could. And then there was the whole of the Council of Discoverers to call on.

  CHAPTER 25

  CUSTODIANS

  The Custodians were Traditionalists who considered themselves to be the successors to the Guardians of Aurigan times, and Keepers of the True Aurigan Teachings

  In essence, all Tazii were traditionalists, accepting that they needed to energetically combine with the vastly more numerous Azurii in order for both sub-races to reactivate all their DNA and thus recapture the amazingly beautiful life of the Aurigan era. Yet they were also fearful of any connection with the Azurii, accepting what the Custodians taught, that the endemic violence on Azura was due to a Violence Virus.

  On the position of Arch-Custodian becoming vacant, the chosen successor underwent a secret initiation, spend
ing a complete lunar month in The Fount of All Knowledge and Truth. That month was to allow each new incumbent to come to terms with the contents of a secret DataStore within the Archives. And to become reconciled to having to bear for the rest of their life the burden of knowledge which, if revealed, would destroy the Custodians and mean the certain end of the prevailing Tazian way of life. A way that had been inculcated over the millennia by generations of Custodians.

  The secret DataStore had been created millennia ago by otherwise forgotten Aurigan technology that totally concealed all indications of its presence. Having been established in the era before the substantial degradation of DNA it also contained its own defences: the Labyrinth.

  Since he had been chosen as successor to the then Arch-Custodian, Ceegren had been manoeuvring to have the unique, month long initiation result in the holder of that office being accepted as the undisputed leader of the Custodians. A marked departure from Tazian tradition whereby the titular head of any organisation was just that, without any more power then was conferred by their personality. Then through that acceptance, be appointed as Arbiter of the Spiral Assembly, the very loose form of Tazian government. In view of the situation posed by the twins, he now saw both as essential and urgent.

  At one hundred and sixty-two, he was a Venerable. Two metres fifteen tall, broad shouldered, his physical presence matched his personal power. As was usual at his age, his orbs had expanded to completely fill his eyes, giving him two ovals of deep sea green, and his cognomen of Ceegren.

  Amongst the secrets revealed to him over twelve years ago had been the nature of Quantum Twins. Over the millennia there had been several other pairs, all of the same type as Qwelby and Tullia. Although vastly different from the QeïchâKaïgïï, it was clear from their uniform difference to all other Tazii, including all other twins, that they had the potential to display greater abilities and power than any other Tazian.

  Ceegren was not the first Arch Custodian to fear that eventually a pair might develop whatever the full range of those extra abilities might be, with potentially devastating consequences for the Custodian’s grip on Tazian society if that power enabled them to access otherwise embargoed records in the Racial Memory Archives. That fear had been the hidden agenda behind the eventually successful manoeuvring by several successive Arch Custodians to have the age of adulthood, along with the increasing limitations applied to most Tazii at that ceremony, moved from the end of the third era to the end of the second.

  From early on he had taken a discrete interest in the twins and their family, especially because of the presence of powerful Uddîšû genes. Inspired by Lellia’s interest in Azura, the family had researched Azuran myths, discovering how many were derived from distorted memories of the early Aurigan period on Earth. As knowledge of the twins’ disappearance and how that had happened spread through the MentaNet, what had been faintly amusing now gave him cause for alarm.

  Ceegren knew that if the children were to be away from Vertazia for any length of time then, freed from the millennia old, tightly age-governed developmental pattern that was an integral part of Tazian society, they were likely to at least start to develop their innate Quantum skills much earlier than normal. Frustratingly, he could only guess at what those might be. The worst case scenario was that on their return to Vertazia they would discover the Labyrinth, would find the Tazian equivalent of Ariadne’s Thread, defeat the Aurigan equivalent of the Minotaur, discover and then broadcast the secrets.

  That would end all his dreams. He had convinced himself that those were not about personal ambition. Rather, he saw his plans as merely the necessary means to enable him to fulfil what he had come to believe to be the purpose of his life: to return the errant Shakazii to the fold of Traditionalism. He accepted that to achieve such a worthwhile goal would require the “persuasive” efforts of Readjusters. To that end he had been carefully cultivating Dryddnaa, at one hundred and twenty-four a comparatively young yet already formidable Chief Readjuster.

  Added to his own personal prestige, being Arch Custodian gave his views great weight but, in true Tazian tradition, he did not have the power to rule. He would have to find very convincing reasons to persuade all Tazii to accept that the twins must never be permitted to return.

  He could not even start by revealing the truth to his most trusted supporters. He had been so terrified of the consequences should he ever let slip anything of the terrible secrets to which he had become privy, that at the end of the month-long induction period he had decided to swear an oath of silence, naming his hero, the great Traditionalist Insûmâne Haa-Zeyló as witness. That oath was binding: physically, mentally and psychically.

  Achieving a planet-wide consensus would take planning and time as he would have to work slowly through the inevitable layers of Tazian society, starting with the Inner Council, then the Senate, and as they in turn worked with the Convocation of all Custodians, he would start discussions with the upper echelons of other key groupings of Tazii. And, at the same time, find ways to frustrate the attempts the family would obviously be making to recover their offspring. A family which included the Arch Discoverer, Vertazia’s greatest inventive scientist.

  As my plans are for the future good of the whole race, maybe Life will respond. Given the Arch Discoverer’s scientific link with Azura, it is possible that the children are on that planet where violent death is an everyday occurrence. An accident may befall them. A lasting accident… He abruptly stopped his thinking. Some thoughts were never, ever to be contemplated

  A few days after the news of the twins disappearance had been disseminated, the family spread the tidings that both were considered to be alive and one of them was believed to on Azura. Ceegren immediately summoned a meeting of the Senate, a large group of the older and more powerful Custodians. Full of sympathy for the plight of the twins, he played upon the fears of the almost certainty that they would be infected by the Violence Virus.

  With the discussion becoming bogged down with no clear agreement in sight, Ceegren owed much to a timely contribution by Dryddnaa. The highly respected Chief Readjuster explained she was confidant that she would be able to establish sufficient protocols to ensure the necessary quarantine, treatment… and cure if necessary. The connotations attaching to the words “treatment” and “cure” falling from the lips of such a powerful Readjuster sent a shiver through the assemblage.

  The treatment provided by a Readjuster, variously called a Psych or Psi Doctor, generally ranged from gentle counselling to mentally adjusting individuals to enable them to happily conform. At the extreme end of readjustment were the almost automaton-like consequences of being “Cured”. When Dryddnaa requested that, in order for each child to be adjusted as little as possible and especially to avoid the extreme consequences, she needed to work without their twin-link being restored, a unanimous decision was reached.

  With genuine expressions of regret, the Senate agreed that in order to reduce the chances of infection, and maximise the children’s chances for their future lives, they should be kept apart both mentally and physically. And, sadly, the family had to be prevented from communicating with them, as successful communication would also enable the twins to link.

  No references were made either to time or quarantine. It was a typical Tazian decision, dealing with the immediate situation and avoiding the more serious decisions that almost certainly would have to be made in the future.

  How the children were to be brought back was a mattert for the Academy of Discoverers. Although that was headed by the twins’ great-great uncle, Ceegren knew there were members of the Academy who would see the advantages to be gained by agreeing with his suggestions.

  *

  Ceegren returned to his estate with mixed feelings. He had achieved only the minimum he wanted, and that only as the result of an eloquent address by Dryddnaa. He had allowed himself to be carried away by his own prescience and almost overreached himself. With the situation regarding the twins providing the perfect lev
er, he needed to accelerate his plans. For that he needed powerful help, and Dryddnaa had already made her bid to be included. It was a bid he had to accept as she could be a key ally, yet he was troubled by her obvious ambition.

  He needed to tie her closely to him. Having been a member of the Senate for several years, four years ago he had brought her into the Inner Council when she was accorded the status of Elder, at the earliest possible age of one hundred and twenty, disconcerting several other older and longer serving Custodians. At some point soon he would offer her the co-ordinating role of the team to be established to deal with the Shakazii. Taken together with his obvious support, that should set her on the path to eventually becoming the Arch-Readjuster.

  Given her support for him and his projects, the energy exchange balance would be neutral. Neither would owe energy to the other. Rather, the mutually beneficial working partnership that had started years earlier when Dryddnaa had persuaded the younger Custodians to support his appointment as the chosen successor would be firmly cemented in place.

  There was a delicious irony. The consequence of the restrictions imposed on most Tazii at the time of achievement of adulthood at the end of their second era, was the resultant inertia of the majority of adults. For his plans to succeed, Ceegren had always known there would come a time when he needed to harness higher vibrational energies: those of twiyeras between twelve and twenty-four. With their focus on each individual annual phase of development they were so much easier to manipulate than adults.

  With events now requiring him to accelerate his plans, the biggest problem he faced was the lack of a charismatic youth leader. The LifeLine of the boy he had chosen, who had been serving as his acolyte for many years, had been terminated in an unfortunate Omnitor accident. The replacement he had chosen and who was now serving as the younger of his two acolytes was far too young.