Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds (4 page)

Qwelby was puzzled. A moment ago he had been looking down through a window, now he was only metres away from what had to be Azurii. He tried to move. He was stuck inside something. Inside whatever it was he could just squirm around a little. Then it struck him. He was in the snowman!

Roaring Xzarze! I’m in my energy body. On Azura!
‘Busana!’ he called, naturally using Tazian as the only language he knew to say “Hallo.” There was no reaction. ‘Buuuusana!’ he yelled. Still no reaction. The youngsters could not hear him.

‘Flaming Werebeasts! This is madness. If I go back and tell Kaigii I don’t know what’s happening, she’ll hold that over me for the rest of my life. Xzarze. No!

‘Seventh dimension,’
his Intuition said.

‘Blazing Novas, of course!’ he exclaimed, and opened his memory to those studies. Relaxing, he composed his body as best as possible, breathed deeply and steadily and settled into his Kore. Then he expanded his energy field out through the snowman, into the ground and far enough to encompass the two youngsters.

He discovered that it was the first heavy snowfall of the year and the whole village was out for the day celebrating with snowball fights and making snowmen. He was inside one of several snowmen in a row facing a forest at the side of what in a few days time was to become the local ski slope. Midwinter was some time away. That was why there was a fuzziness to everything. He had gone back in time!

How many times had he dreamed of this, played with Wrenden at being slow, clumsy Azurii, stuck on the ground, confined to travelling in boxes on roads and unable to use image-into-action. Alright, he was stuck in the snowman, but Dragon’s Breath! this was amazing, better than any deepstate he’d ever experienced.

The boy he’d seen a few moments ago was talking to him. Or that was how it seemed. Wearing a dark blue anorak with the neck of a blue and white sweater showing, Qwelby named him BlueBoy. Unable to hear or be heard he felt frustrated.

The girl appeared. She was wearing a lilac anorak with a white scarf around her neck. Under a multi-coloured woollen hat her long blonde hair fell over her shoulders. It was not as long and thick as most Tazii, but there was something about her that Qwelby liked. He named her LilacGirl.

They looked just like Azurii did in flikkers, except seeing them for real they did not look quite so ugly with their horizontal eyes, small noses and mouths. The boy was a lot taller than the girl and both had white skin with bright red cheeks.

He saw that they were happy, shy, liking each other, not knowing what to say. They must be meeting for the first time. But how weird! How on ’Tazia did they manage without reading each other’s energy fields? Then he realised. Their auras did not spread out past their thick clothing, but he was still able to see them!

‘Seventh dimension,’
his Intuition said.

Qwelby wanted to meet them. Once again he tried to move, wave, call out. Nothing happened. Then they turned their backs on him, looking up into the sky.

Qwelby followed their gaze and saw a faint image. It looked like a small, round blurry cloud with two dark objects in the middle. ‘That’s me. Up there!’ he called out, and felt stupid when they did not react.

Still looking up into the sky, they moved closer to each other. Hesitantly, each reached out a hand, touched, and held. They turned to look at one another, faces pink from more than the cold. Their lips moved.

‘You’ve seen us! That’s me and Kaigii, up there, somewhere,’ Qwelby said aloud, desperately hoping that something would change and they would hear him.

In an instant, the energies changed. Three boys had arrived, all with pale faces, pink cheeks and short, blonde hair. Two were shorter than BlueBoy, the third was about the same height and bigger built. BigBoy was speaking. His arm lashed out straight towards Qwelby. He did not have the room to duck! The fist passed right through him.

‘Roaring Xzarze!’ Qwelby exclaimed, for no-one to hear, as an altercation proceed in front of him.

One of the boys made a grab at the girl’s hat. BlueBoy stepped in the way. There was pushing, then a fight. The biggest boy stood watching with his arms folded as BlueBoy held his own for a few moments against the other two. Then he and one of his attackers went down in a tangle with BlueBoy on top.

Seeing blood on the face of the attacker, Qwelby was nearly sick. Violence simply did not exist on Vertazia. All Tazii knew how violent the Azurii were. After a lot of persuading, Discriminators had eventually allowed Tazii to see the make-believe violence in Azurii KiddyKartoons. But this, this was real, human to human. He had been stunned to witness that. And now real, human blood!

The other boy drew back his leg to kick BlueBoy. LilacGirl grabbed the attacker’s arm. He swung around aiming a punch at her face. BigBoy stepped in between, his mouth working, red anger flaring in his aura. Pushing the girl away, he grabbed the boy’s arm, spun him around and kicked him hard. He fell down into the snow. Out of the corner of his eye Qwelby saw LilacGirl fall on top of BlueBoy who had been getting up, bearing him back into the deep snow.

BigBoy walked across to where the first attacker was still lying in the snow. With lots of angry red still flaring through his aura, he kicked him to get up, then turned and kicked the other one.

Qwelby could see from their energy fields that the two boys in the snow were not badly hurt, but there were strong, dirty yellow streaks of cowardice running through their auras. They got up looking shamefaced. Qwelby did not understand why BigBoy was angry with them. From the gestures, it had seemed as if it had been BigBoy who had told one of the others to take the girl’s hat. Punishment for their failure? What a weird world!

By the time Qwelby thought to look around, BlueBoy and LilacGirl were almost out of sight, holding hands as they walked downhill. He smiled, thinking that was nice, yet puzzling. Their energy fields were showing soft pinks and pale greens. They liked one another. But he was sure from his energy sensing that had not been present when the girl had arrived. They looked about the same age as himself and Tullia, so too young to be interested in each other.
Ah, but, Azurii. . They live shorter lives so grow up quicker than we do. I can’t imagine being interested in a girl.

He felt dizzy, hollow, was he fainting?

*

Tullia had become concerned as her twin had gone very cold. She knew it was a sign of travel in the seventh dimension. But was still unable to believe that he had gone without any preparation as Lellia had always said that wasn’t possible. She remained there looking through the window with an arm around him. The window was misting up from their breath. With her free arm she wiped it away.

Taking her twin’s weight as the window closed and he sagged against her, she spoke to cover up her relief that he had returned from wherever.

‘LAIM boy,’ she said, but without the usual bite in her voice. Standing for “Look After Idiot Male”, it was what she and her friend Tamina used for Qwelby and Wrenden when they had got themselves into a mess by being stupid.

Qwelby shook his head. ‘Not my fault, Kaigii. Not this time. I was just looking. Then I was in the snowman.’

As she helped him sit down, she could see his eyes twirling fast, the purple shot through with vivid splashes of red and orange.

‘Out of your body?’

‘Dragons Breath! But it was exciting,’ he added.

Before she could ask him about it, the lantern hummed and the window reappeared. They saw the desert again. They were too tired by everything that had happened to get up and look closely. Slowly their minds asked why, as they were looking up at a picture, they seemed to be looking down on a scene that was outside.

Qwelby was aware that his twin had gone very still. Mentally he felt for her. She was not there. And she was cold. The cold of having left her body! Tenderly, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to lean against him. It felt good. However much they competed, underneath it all they were one.

*

Tullia was high up above the ground, as though looking through the window at the same desert. But there was no window and a different group of people. Expanding her energy field she was vividly aware of everything that was taking place and, just as in a dreamstate, understood what was happening.

Several dark-skinned women wearing little clothing were gathering plants and roots. It was mid-morning and the sun was burning down from a clear blue sky. It was mid-summer and soon the temperature would rise close to forty degrees, far too hot for work.

They stopped working. She saw a skinny girl slump into the semi-shade of an acacia tree. The girl’s mother produced what looked like a potato. Oval, white, the size of a small fist, she handed it to the girl, who passed it on to her smaller sister. The younger girl bit into it, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and returned the food to the older girl.

Several others were also eating. When they had finished, the whole group gathered up the plants and tubers they had collected and headed for home, carefully wending their way past bushes that carried needle-like spikes. Reaching their village, the women moved to sit in the shade of small, conical shaped huts made of what looked like very long, grey grass.

With a jolt, Tullia felt herself swoop down and land on the red sandy ground inside the village. She looked around for the two young girls she had noticed and a little way away she saw a group of young children sitting cross-legged in a semi circle. Opposite them and almost facing her was a slender young man. All were almost naked.

The man looked up, right at her. She gulped. What to say? Then he looked back down and she saw his mouth move. He was speaking and she could not hear him. He had not seen her. She looked down at her legs. ‘Whistling Xzarze! Where are they?’ She jerked her head up as she realised she had spoken aloud. No reaction from anyone. They had not heard.

Rapidly she ran her hands down her body, legs and feet. ‘I AM here. It’s just that I’m invisible! Blazing Novas, that was a shock.’ She took deep breaths and calmed herself whilst she reviewed the available data. She’d thought she’d been in a dreamstate, now she was as certain as could be that like her twin she was travelling Out-Of-Body. To be able to feel herself as normal meant she was in her InForming Matrix, the energy body that was effectively the blueprint for her normal, fifth dimensional body, and allowed Tazii to travel in the seventh dimension.

She reassured herself by walking around. There were a lot of footprints all over the sandy soil. She thought she saw the tiniest depression where she stepped, but… she was not sure.

Having moved to the side of the group she saw that various items were spread on the ground between the man and the children. There were nuts, leaves and berries, a small piece of creamy coloured root, a short thin stick of dark wood, a loop of string, a twig and then what had to be jewellery. She recognised a bracelet, two earrings and a necklace, all made from a mixture of what looked like white and dark brown beads. After a while, the man covered everything with a cloth.

It was a memory game Tullia had often played. ‘HornsFlute! This is exciting.’ She walked up and sat at the edge of the group. When the man took the covering away she was ready to play. When the items were covered again she started whispering to herself as she recalled what she had seen.

A sort of tickle on the crown of her head made her look up. The skinny young girl she had first noticed was looking at her, not straight on, but out of the corner of her eye. Tullia felt a shiver run through her. She licked her lips and, feeling stupid, waved her hand. The girl turned her head to look straight at her. Then turned back again, obviously trying to see out of the corner of her eye.

Movement. Tullia saw the young man turn around and signal to the girl to go away.

‘Xzarze!’ Tullia cursed him aloud, and saw the girl turn back, look right at her, then shrug her shoulders and continue to walk away.

Tullia was annoyed, she was sure she’d just been about to make contact with an energy sensitive girl. Very dark brown skins, black hair, lovely soft energy fields, a gentle people. The girl’s hair, an interesting style closely woven over her head. And the jewellery most wore, simple necklaces and bracelets made from natural materials. ‘Native’ seemed to be the right word.

Tullia felt herself sinking deep into the energy field of the village, information flooding in. The girl and boy were brother and sister. She was responsible for the younger girls as she was the oldest girl-not-yet-woman.

That must mean she’s in her second Era.
Tullia thought.
Yet
s
he’s much too small to be that old. Can’t be more than six or seven.

Tullia saw sunbeams spreading across the ground. The sand became darker red and the individual grains grew larger and started to move into a pattern. She felt meaning unfolding…

‘Data overload,’
her Intuition said. And she toppled towards the dark red ground.

Qwelby felt his twin sag against him as she returned.

‘EPT,’ she murmured. ‘HornsFlute! It was amazing.’ She knew her eyes were twirling rapidly. So rapidly she felt dizzy. ‘Tell later.’ She snuggled her head against her twin’s shoulder. Well, he always wanted to look after her. He could. Just for now.

EPT, Qwelby mused, Extra Physiological Travelling, a fancy title used for travelling out of one’s normal body. The easiest way for any Tazian to do that, and all they could manage at their age, was to use what was termed the InForming Matrix: the energy body that in essence was the blueprint for their own fifth dimensional Forms.

Qwelby felt nice, cuddling his twin. She was ten minits older than him, and to his intense annoyance not only believed but acted as though she had to look after him. But it was his duty to look after her, she was only a girl. And he sensed she wanted reassurance that the icy fingers he sensed in her were not premonitions. How could they be?

By itself, using the InForming Matrix for travelling was not a matter for concern. They had done it before with special preparation and as a form of lucid dreaming, but this was completely different. They had only been looking at pictures.

With that they agreed that they needed to share the detail of what each had experienced.

‘I’d like to go there for real, meet the people I was with. Their lives look so different from ours,’ Tullia murmured later, still deep amongst her memories from the sharing. Perhaps it was the strangeness of still allowing herself to enjoy being comforted by her younger twin that let her be enfolded in his excitement at the more vivid sensations he had experienced.

Qwelby could not believe his ears. When he talked about visiting Earth, it always started one of their arguments. He never understood why. She enjoyed looking at Azuran flikkers as much as he did. Admittedly for different reasons: he was into adventure whereas her interests were more for clothes and hair styles.

‘I like the heat,’ he said, turning to look at his twin. ‘But I prefer snow and skiing to having sand getting into everything.’

‘One world each and we’ll share experiences,’ she suggested.

‘Yeah. Double the fun,’ he said with a laugh, knowing it could never happen.

In the dark their eyes appeared brighter than normal. Each saw the others gently twirling. Mentally they shared that each had experienced the same sensation: as though every cell in their bodies had tingled, accompanied by a impossible sense that that had happened before – a long, long time ago.

Tullia pulled herself out of her dreamy state and her twin’s encircling arms, and rubbed the centre of her forehead, watching him rubbing the crown of his head. Their eyes twirled faster as they wondered at their actions: as if they had just removed the headgear they had worn for playing Dragons and Unicorns when they were younger.

‘Let’s find the Morgarcon and discover a way out,’ Tullia said, breaking the discomforting sensation.

‘Anything useful in the bag?’ Tullia asked when the torchlight had not shown any signs of a possible exit.

There was the one item that had already been in the bag. Not knowing what it was, Qwelby decided to try that. He pulled out a box that was about the size of a book. As he showed it to his twin, it didn’t look like something that was coloured black, rather it looked so black that it wasn’t there. But he knew it was as he could feel it resting on the palms of his hands and see his thumbs on top.

‘Here,’ he said, passing it to his twin.

Tullia took it in her hands and gasped. It felt alive.

Carefully she put it down on the floor and took her hands away. It disappeared. She reached out a hand and rested it on the box. It reappeared.

They heard each other swallow.

‘What are the three E’s of Learning,’ Tullia said.

‘Enquire, Explore, Experiment.’

‘So?’

Nervously, Qwelby picked up the Mogarcon and turned the dial, watching the display for a gadget that might help. A picture of an eye appeared in the side panel. He showed it to his twin who grunted her approval.

He pointed the Mogarcon at the box and pressed the trigger. It hummed and the lid lit up with the words:

~

Unidirectional Transweave Projector

Experimental Prototype

~

‘What?’ asked Qwelby as Tullia exclaimed, ‘Not possible!’

They knew that for teleportation to work there had to be a unit at either end, and each always had both a transmitter and a receiver.

Holding his breath, he pressed the trigger again and ran the muzzle around the edges of the box, jumping back as it started to move. The lid folded back and the box opened out. Very thin, rigid sheets of duraskin spread out until the twins were looking at a shimmering rectangle, large enough for one person to stand on, with a narrow, shiny, metallic-looking edge. Then, from one of the longer sides, a page sized sheet of duraskin slid out, lit up and turned into a monitor screen. At the bottom was a row of entry fields and a tiny numeric keypad. As they watched, words appeared on the screen.

~

Enter Co-ordinates

TriNumeric

Or

Visual

~

They agreed, that was logical. TriNumeric would be altitude, latitude and longitude. Not knowing any of those they would have to use Visual.

Whatever destination they agreed to image, a Darkness appeared preventing them from visualising any of them clearly enough. The Darkness was not tangible, yet it had a foul smell.

‘We need help,’ Tullia said.

‘Yeah. Our friends?’ Qwelby suggested.

‘Yes. But focus on one,’ Tullia said

‘Errm…’ he thought of Wrenden, but he knew what Tullia would say.

‘Tamina.’

‘Agreed.’

Tamina was Tullia’s elderest, a sort of caring older-sister-cum-guide. Nearly seventeen-years-old and approaching the end of her fifth phase of creativity, she was the most sensible of the six of them, well most of the time anyway.

Into their sending Tullia added an image of a smiling bird, which she knew Tamina would understand. She watched it become swallowed up in a cloying feel of the same Darkness, hoping it would get through.

A few moments later a relieved Tullia was able to pass on to Qwelby that contact had been made and Tamina would return in twenty minits.

About 24 Azuran minutes,
thought Qwelby. And wondered why he was thinking so much about that strange planet.

They relaxed, relieved that the end of their disturbing day was near.

Twenty minits later the twins felt the combined energies of all four friends. Tamina had gathered together Wrenden, her almost fourteen-year-old brother and fifteen-years-old Shimara and Pelnak. With the Darkness swirling around, even all of them together found it impossible to hold a visualisation of any specific destination strongly enough. Reluctantly, they agreed there was only one concept on which they could all focus. ‘Up, Up, and Away.’

After a few moments a picture of a beautiful blue sky with one or two fluffy clouds formed in their minds. Then the top of a bell tower.
A bell tower, what’s that?
It looked so peaceful and …

A click came from Mandara’s machine and the soft humming grew in intensity.

The screen showed a large number
10

*

Disoriented, their teeter turned into a painful fall onto a hard surface. They pulled themselves up into sitting positions and grabbed at one another as they gasped in dismay. They had landed on a narrow walkway that ran around a circular tower made of dark stone. Looking up there was a domed, black roof. Around the walkway were several small windows.

Their eyes locked, each saw the other run a tongue around their lips. Slowly, they looked back up. Dozens of bats were hanging upside-down from the roof. The name ‘Belfry Bats’ slid into their minds. They gulped.

Staying on hands and knees, each crawled to a separate window, grabbed hold of the stone sill and looked over. Far below all was peaceful. A wide expanse of grass that stretched away to a low range of hills.

The twins had never been up a bell tower before. In fact they were sure there was no bell tower at Lungunu. They looked all around. No sight of the house.

‘Lungunu must be the other side of those hills,’ suggested Qwelby.

‘And the snow stopped over there,’ Tullia tried to sound as though she believed that.

‘Would fit,’ he agreed.

‘Yeah,’ she said, unconvinced.

They could not see any obvious way down from the bell tower. No lift, no graviton descenders, no stairway waiting to be thoughtprompted into appearance. Thinking that around Lungunu it was always a sensible precaution to have non-quantum items in reserve, their peered over the edge. Not even any ladders or challenging handholds in the smooth walls to be seen.

They looked at the ropes dangling from the bells and shook their heads.

Feeling more unsettled than ever before, not daring to stand up on the narrow walkway they had landed on, they crawled to each other and sat down with their legs dangling over the edge. They merged auras and tried to restore contact with their friends.

Darkness.

With mounting panic they tried Dad, Gumma, Gallia and their mother.

Thick, smelly Darkness.

They looked into each other’s twirling eyes, purple shot with greys and browns and even yellows. Whatever was preventing them reaching outside, was not preventing them from sharing. They watched as each pair of eyes settled down and a soft purple colour returned, although still tinged with ochre.

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.