Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds

by Geoffrey Arnold

  As everyone was getting ready to leave, Anita said she needed to use the toilet. She said quick goodbyes and winked at her mother as she slipped upstairs rather than forcing her way through the crowd of people in the lobby. When she came back downstairs a little later, Oona together with Nils and Jarno and their parents had gone. She grinned at everyone patiently waiting.

  ‘Right, Qwelby. Explain how you are such a good shot,’ she demanded.

  Qwelby returned her grin. Her father was not going to believe the explanation.

  ‘I persuaded the photons to play a game. You know that a beam of light sent from a planet at the edge of the universe eventually returns to its starting point, thus showing that the photons travel in a circle?’

  All heads nodded.

  ‘All I had to do was to estimate the distance from where I was hiding to my target and calculate the required radius for a section of a circle that would join the two points, then leave the rest to the photons. Each time they slipped through the dimensions to find a very, very small universe of the appropriate size. Likâbâlkitâ-Eh!’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ Hannu asked in the silence that followed.

  Qwelby felt himself blushing furiously and was glad that he was fully clothed, otherwise his friends would have seen his bright red colouring spreading all down his chest.

  ‘Erm… It’s what the Uddîšû said when they descended from higher dimensions to fight off our… attackers,’ Qwelby mumbled, relieved that his compiler had provided “attackers” and was unable to translate the Aurigan overtones of “despicable troglodytes of lower dimensions.”

  Taimi took a firm grip on her husband’s hand to still all the questions she knew were bubbling up. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said firmly, smiling at him. ‘Home,’ she added as she rose from her chair and looked at her daughter.

  Anita lingered for a moment on the doorstep.

  ‘Tullia. Tomorrow. Promise,’ Qwelby said softly, looking from her to Hannu.

  ‘You bet,’ she said as Hannu grimaced. Not only was he longing to hear about whatever invisible enemies Qwelby had been fighting, away from Anita he wanted to ask Qwelby a lot more about the stunning young woman he had seen, impossibly illuminated by sunlight.

  CHAPTER 54

  TULIA RECOVERS

  KALAHARI

  Tullia eventually stopped sobbing, looked up and saw that Tsetsana was no longer frozen. She stretched forth an arm, and gratefully accepted the young girl’s arms around her as she staggered a short way and sat down.

  Tsetsana took a bottle of water from the backpack and gave it to Tullia, then took another for herself. She pulled her thick jumper over her head, removed her shirt, bunched it up, wetted it and started gently cleaning Tullia’s body and legs.

  Tullia relaxed back against the smooth rock, both it and her body warmed by the sun. She was in deep shock from losing her twin. They had been in each other’s arms. He had been coming to join her. Then they had been ripped apart.

  In a daze, she watched Tsetsana caring for her. The young girl was so competent, just like the way she looked after her two younger sisters. Looking at Tsetsana’s slight frame, Tullia realised just how big she was in comparison to the Meera. What would they think if they met Tamina? she wondered, wryly.

  Realising that whilst she was warm, Tsetsana would not be, Tullia found the courage to speak.

  ‘Tsetsana, you must be cold,’ she said, relieved that she had not whinnied.

  ‘I was not cold. I was frightened for you,’ the girl said, sounding old beyond her eleven years. She leant to the side, retrieved her sweater and pulled it on. Then continued wetting her shirt and gently sponging Tullia’s wounds.

  ‘There’s a bright red patch on your forehead, like a burn,’ Tsetsana said.

  ‘My horn,’ Tullia replied, her thoughts miles away.

  Noticing Tsetsana slowly nodding, Tullia stared at the girl as she realised what she had said.

  ‘When you healed Xashee, I thought I saw a column of golden light coming from your forehead, twisting around,’ Tsetsana explained, shyly.

  Tullia did not know what to say. Her eyes had been closed. She had felt her forehead throbbing and had assumed it was from concentration.

  ‘Can you stand?’ Tsetsana asked after a while, holding out a hand.

  Tullia took it and levered herself to her feet.

  Tsetsana washed the dust off Tullia’s legs. Wetting a clean part of her shirt, she carefully washed dust away from an aeeay of nasty wounds across Tullia’s back and buttocks. They looked like marks made by large claws. She had seen Tullia on hands and knees struggling against something Tsetsana had not been able to see, then a sudden violent wrenching and blood spurting from the back of the fighting Goddess.

  She licked her lips and continued her gentle sponging, eventually finding her voice.

  ‘You have a nasty bruise here,’ she said, gently touching a long mark. ‘You have another on this side. They curve around your shoulder blades.’

  ‘My wings,’ Tullia said. Once again her thoughts were miles away as she absorbed not just how much Tsetsana had seen, but how simply she accepted it.

  ‘Like the marks and the wounds on the Lord God Kaigii,’ Tsetsana whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ Tullia answered, realising that her compiler never translated “Kaigii” when she used it instead of his name. The Azuran ‘Twin’ did not carry all the nuances of the Tazian word.

  ‘Let alone the complexities of QeïchâKaïgïï in Old Aurigan’, a voice inside whispered.

  Any thoughts Tullia may have had about that were swept away by a startling realisation. Feeling dizzy and unsteady, she swung around and collapsed against the rock face, staring. ‘You saw him?!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, yes! He’s magnificent!’ Tsetsana said, her eyes shining, thinking of the many bleeding wounds he had suffered, in, as she saw it, rescuing her Goddess. Frustrated that she still had not become a woman, she knew her feelings for him were not those of a child.

  Magnificent? Kaigii! You need your head examining. The words never made it through Tullia’s mouth as another shock hit her. She had been in a NullPoint Bubble with Tsetsana frozen outside, unaffected by Time, she thought. She looked up at the sun. It was a lot lower in the sky than when she had stepped onto the footprint. She stored that away as a puzzle for another time.

  Looking back at her friend, Tullia saw a range of colours flaring through the girl’s aura. The rich pinks and soft greens of love. The sort of love she felt for her parents and family and shared with her friends. Even Kaigii at times! There was more: a rich streak of orange. She had noticed the colour before with the Meera, mainly the young men, and especially strongly from Xashee yesterday.

  ‘Of course. The healing! How would I feel if I were injured and Rrîltallâ Taminûllÿâ came to heal me, the great Healer Heroine herself. I would be… gobsmacked! And seen through the eyes of the Meera, an honoured ancestor. Whistling Xzarze, I don’t want that. But at least I am beginning to understand how Azuran energy fields are different from ours.

  ‘Are you all right, Tullia?’ she heard Tsetsana ask. ‘Your eyes are going round like they did yesterday.’

  ‘We call it twirling,’ Tullia said, pulled out of her reverie and seeing Tsetsana kneeling by her, looking concerned. She took the girl’s hands in her own. ‘We eat. I try to explain.’

  Tullia did not want to get sucked back into the feelings of what had happened, especially losing her twin, so she asked Tsetsana to say what she had seen. After patient coaxing she was amazed to discover that not only had the girl seen far more than Tullia had expected, she was even able to help Tullia understand how different what had happened was from a WrapperAdventure.

  There, any Tazian experienced the Adventure as if they had become the chosen character, be that a person or an animal. This time Tsetsana had seen Tullia and a tall and well-built man as if through a sort of mist. And that mist seemed to be made of strange, winged shapes which were much larger than both people
, especially what she assumed was an enormous bird that had arrived carrying the man inside itself. Yet she had not been frightened.

  ‘I felt safe. I knew I was outside. You were protecting me. And,’ Tsetsana bit her lip and looked down. ‘I have The Sight. I had hoped Xameb would train me. I am too old now,’ she finished on a sad note.

  Tullia was excited. It seemed that Gallia was right with her theory about the interplay between the third and fourth dimensions. And probably most if not all Azurii lived in what the Tazii defined as the fourth dimension, that was the three physical plus consciousness. ‘My Great-Great Aunt explains Life like we are born inside a really large onion.’ Using her hands, she described the many layers of that vegetable. ‘And as our consciousness, our awareness grows, so we see more and more layers. Those impressions you had of Kaigii and me being inside animals with wings, that’s seeing another layer.’

  Respecting both Tsetsana’s hope and what she had seen, Tullia offered what she thought was a plausible explanation. Finding no translation for ‘Dragon’, she explained that Kaigii – Lord Kaigii! Twin an Uddîšû? – had take the form of something like a winged, fire-breathing lizard, and she, a stripeless Zebra with a single horn. Because Gods and Goddesses adopted special forms for protection when they were travelling in different worlds.

  How Tullia wished that were true! In an WrapperAdventure one could enter the Form of anything, usually a person but also anything animate. Like all children, the twins had explored everything. This experience had been totally different: the deepest deepstate ever! Yet it had all felt so real. Annoyed she could not explain it to herself, she ran her fingers though her hair, the sun’s rays producing green flickers akin to miniature flames dancing.

  Dancing. Tamina. Flames. Salamander. Attributes. She nodded as she understood what had happened. She was relieved that she had not transmogrified into a unicorn, merely acquired the protective energy form of her inherited Uddîšû. And as all such energy projections worked, she had powered that from her own inner resources. Hence the marks on her physical body. To have that power, I, we must be a step closer to Aurigan energies. A fourth segment makes sense. So, a little Mystery solved. Now for the big one. Why us and what for?

  A soft buzz in Qwelby’s corner of her mind went unnoticed as a chilly breeze swept across the hilltop, telling of the late hour and that it was time to return to the village. Tullia dressed whilst Tsetsana put everything into the backpack.

  ‘Your aura is very strong, Tullia,’ Tsetsana said. ‘I have sensed it faintly before. Now it’s brighter but smaller.’ She held out her two hands, fingers and thumbs spread out, thumbs touching.

  Tullia smiled. That was so like at home. ‘Yes. Concentrated on me for my healing.’ She thought, slipped inside herself and decided. Taking Tsetsana’s hands in hers she leant forward, placed her lips on the young girl’s forehead between her eyes and a little above, and gave her a long kiss, both girls unaware of the green light that was flowing through Tullia’s hair. She focussed all her energies onto the gift she thought she was able to offer, silently asking Tsetsana if she wanted it.

  ‘Kabona. Twana-Udada,’ Tullia said as she drew back from the kiss, watching her friend’s energy field sparkling and her eyes go as round as saucers.

  ‘Thank you. Little-Sister,’ Tsetsana whispered, as Tullia laughed with joy and pulled her friend into a big hug.

  ‘Xameb, our Shaman, we say N-’om K”xausi, changes into an eland when he travels in the otherworlds,’ Tsetsana said as the hug ended. ‘I have never seen that as clearly as I did today…’ The young girl’s voice trailed away as she recalled the images that had appeared before her eyes when Tullia had kissed her forehead. Swirling spirals seeming to flow away from her down a tunnel. A tunnel whose walls were made of many patterns of cross-hatched and wavy lines. Those images had started to appear towards the end of the tribes’ last few healing and trance dances as she fell asleep, or so she had assumed. Then, they had been faint and frightening. Today, not only had they been strong and clear, there was welcome reassurance in that they had been a gift from the Goddess, enhancing her gift of The Sight.

  Tullia’s smile turned into a big grin as the words gave her great hope. Clearly, she was correct with her analysis that the Meera on Haven, or Kalahari as they called it, were direct descendants of the Auriganii. Having only two DNA segments was not a barrier to travelling in the fifth dimension. And Xameb, she struggled as she tried to say his correct title to herself, no wonder he was offering to help her!

  Tullia: statuesque, imposing, exotic, desirable and with an energy drawing people to her as she asked for friendship. An untouchable Goddess desperately needing ordinary human friendship and delighted that Tsetsana had wanted to accept her gift. Innocently unaware of the conflicting emotions she was arousing in both men and women. Not wanting her Goddess status to be reinforced by being compared to the tribe’s respected Shaman, Tullia focussed her gaze on Tsetsana’s eyes.

  ‘Please do not talk about this,’ she said in a firm voice. Not having heard the Meera word for ‘secret’, she wrapped her arms around herself and added ‘Hold.’

  What Tullia had done for Tsetsana was so natural to a part deep within that it was to be a long time before she questioned what she had done, how and why she had even thought she might be able to help Tsetsana on the way to unlocking her innate abilities. And then add that as another possible clue to unravelling The Mystery.

  Tsetsana nodded gravely. She still had not shared her dream with Xashee and now that also would remain a secret. She understood that Tullia was married to the Sun God, Great Lord Kaigii, yet for her visit wanted to be treated as a young Meera woman. And from what she had just witnessed it was clear that both God and Goddess were powerful N-’om K”xausi, whose inner worlds were only to be spoken of by themselves.

  Tsetsana was certain that the Sun Goddess had chosen to be her friend because she had The Sight, and now had made her Little-Sister. Her heart almost bursting she vowed that she would do anything to help bring the Goddess together with her God.

  If only Tsetsana had been allowed to speak of seeing the Lord God Kaigii, the obvious love he and Tullia had for each other, and how she had heard what she thought was them singing in their own language of that love. If only.

  Once again it was dark by the time they returned. Tullia went straight to her hut and quite naturally slipped into long trousers and a thick sweater for the evening. Seated around the little cooking fire, she explained to the family that she had gone into a deep meditation whilst Tsetsana remained on guard for any wild animals. They accepted Tullia’s need to be quiet as they ate.

  ‘You sad, Tully,’ Tomku, the four-year-old daughter of the family, said as she crawled onto Tullia’s lap. She had quickly discovered that the big girl made a comfortable seat.

  Smiling, Tullia started rocking the young girl. Talking Tazian in almost a whisper, Tullia told Tomku of life on her world and the games children played. To the Meera it sounded as though Tullia was singing a lullaby.

  Tullia loved her time with the children who treated her as just another tribal sister. Especially the younger ones calling her by what was like a nickname. Her turbulent emotions slowly calmed as she relaxed into being what she was, a youngster enjoying the role of being a big sister. She even had a little chuckle at the thought that to them she was indeed a “big” sister.

  Deep inside other and much older emotions were stirring.

  CHAPTER 55

  XAALA RECALLS

  VERTAZIA

  Feeling sick in every fibre of her being and with a splitting headache, Xaala rolled onto her hands and knees. I have failed. It’s all my…

  ‘Not so!’ Ceegren’s thoughtsending was sharp. ‘It was my error.’

  Xaala could not believe her ears. Teacher making a mistake? No wonder he sounded so weary and energy depleted. She looked up at him and was startled. His robe, which would normally be infused with a deep rich green, had faded to the palest shade. His
face usually looked like it had been carved from a block of shiny walnut. Now it was just a plain dark brown.

  He gestured.

  She crawled the short distance to his side before settling into her normal position with her legs tucked underneath her, back erect, hands folded in her lap and head slightly bowed. She noticed that her skin had changed. It had lost its lustre, no longer a rich creamy coffee colour but so dull it was little darker than the creamy colour of her normal Acolyte’s tunic.

  As he placed his hand on the top of her head, she felt her crown open and gentle energy infuse her energy centres. A tear started in the corner of each eye. She held back the flow. She knew he loved her but could not show it.

  ‘You have done very well, my child,’ he said in a gentle voice.

  She was stunned by his praise. That was the highest accolade he ever bestowed on her. ‘Teacher,’ she replied, bending right over to touch her forehead to the floor. She could think of no other way to show her obedience. She hoped he understood that was because of her love for him, so different from what she had ever felt for her parents.

  ‘Go. Rest. Recover. No more today.’ As Ceegren spoke, Xaala felt a hand on her arm. Looking up, she saw twelve-year-old Tibor, the new junior apprentice she was training.

  Gratefully, she slipped an arm over his shoulders and allowed him to help her to her feet.

  ‘I am to take you to your grandmother,’ Tibor said as they left the room. ‘She is preparing food and drink.’

  Xaala could no longer hold back her tears. Although she knew he was exhausted, Teacher had still thought to care for her by summoning Tibor and sending instructions to her grandmother, who served as Cook and Housekeeper.

  Having eaten and used the neutron shower to freshen her Self and her clothes for the following day, Xaala slipped into the short robe that she used when meditating. It had been a gift from Ceegren on her twelfth rebirthday. Its pale, silver-tinged, electric blue was intended to protect the open energy field, whilst not inhibiting deep contact. It had been the first time that she had channelled more than just her Teacher’s energies and she was eager to see how different the experience had been.