Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds (7 page)

‘Urgh! Revolting child!’ Tullia exclaimed.

‘Try again,’ said Mandara quickly, stopping Qwelby from responding.

‘Miniature karaoke sets?’ suggested Tullia.

‘No.’

‘Miniaturised twistors?’ Qwelby contributed.

‘No.’ He laughed. Their guesses had given him ideas for more experiments. ‘Personal, Self-Learning, Interactive, Language Compilers, incorporating Pseudo Tetraquarks.’

‘Ehh??’

Lellia gave her husband a despairing look. ‘Try speaking Tazian, Mandara. Not your techno-babble!’

‘It is what they are,’ he retorted.

‘What are they for?’ Tullia asked.

‘For the Elmit Room,’ he replied, looking smug.

‘Gumma! You haven’t?’ Tullia almost squeaked in her excitement.

‘Yes. I’ve managed to put together enough extracts from flikkers to create several Viewings. I am confident that each Viewing is put together from the same, unique series of Azuran programmes, and that there is consistent Azuran language in each one.’

The twins goggled at him, speechless.

‘These compilers are intuitive programmes. As well as Tazian, each contains Reduced Aurigan as a comparator. They will interact with your memories and thoughts as you learn the different Azuran languages.’

‘We learn?’ Tullia asked.

Mandara raised an eyebrow.

‘Compiler, airhead!’ Qwelby crowed.

Tullia grimaced as she realised that her twin had picked up her thought that what Gumma had created was a translator, as opposed to software that would store vocabulary and syntax in their brains.

‘But why do we need to learn their languages?’ she asked, flashing her twin a look that said:
‘You didn’t think to ask that, did you!’

‘Have you never studied Reduced Aurigan?’ Lellia asked, certain the twins had never studied the old Living Aurigan which encompassed multi-dimensional images and feelings.

‘No.’

‘If you had, you would know that as you learn a different language, you discover how those people think differently,’ their mother explained.

‘You mean that if we learn an Azuran language, we will not just understand the flikkers, but also how weird the Azurii are?’ Qwelby asked.

‘Something like that,’ she replied with a smile.

The twins looked at each other.

‘Not so,’ Mizena said, thoughtsharing with her husband that no matter how advanced their children were at times, they still had a lot to learn about Life.

Mandara turned to Tullia. ‘Inside your left ear?’

She nodded, eyes wide with surprise, and gave a little shiver as it slipped inside and said
‘hullo.’

He turned to Qwelby. ‘Right?’

He nodded and twitched his head as it tingled inside him.

Mandara smiled as he noticed their reactions. ‘Good. That’s the Self-Locating element safely anchoring inside your ears. Try them out…’

‘Race you!’ Tullia called as she headed for the door.

‘If necessary, I’ll explain …’

‘No way!’ Qwelby exclaimed, as firmly clasping the satchel under his arm he followed his twin.

‘…how to use them when you come back…’ Mandara finished, looking at the closed door.

The twins raced around the semi-circular entrance hall and up the twirlypoles located in the centre of the main, bifurcated wing of Lungunu, Qwelby following Tullia into the Elmit room in their suite. He stood undecided, go into their bedroom and put on some more clothes or try the compilers? As Tullia turned to him with a drink in her outstretched hand, the fish-tank effect happened again.

He raised his left arm with his fist clenched. Tullia immediately damped down her thoughts, and raised an eyebrow as she put her head close to his.

‘You know that room that’s not in this timeframe?’ Qwelby whispered.

‘Where Gumma’s trying an experiment with Azura?’ Tullia whispered back

‘Yeah.’

‘And we’re forbidden even to try to go there.’

‘We’ll never get a better chance.’

‘How d’you mean?’ Tulia asked, sounding dubious at what he was suggesting.

‘They want to talk about us. They’ll establish a Group PrivacyShield, so we can’t listen in…’

‘Meaning they won’t hear our thoughts either…’

‘And with the Stroems Swirling so strongly, that’ll cover us up even more,’ Qwelby said.

Tullia continued to look uncertain.

‘Afraid of your DragonRider genes when you Awaken?’ Qwelby taunted.

‘Nothing to do with BigMan!’ Tullia spat back, referring to the myth that all boys pretended not to believe, that the more adventurous a boy was before puberty the bigger his emerging masculinity would be.

‘Kaigii,’ Qwelby responded, reminding his twin that as they had identical genes he was just as concerned as to what would happen to him when he Awakened.

‘Come on, Sis, just a look,’ Qwelby wheedled, using their code to acknowledge she was older and offering her the decision.

‘Just a look,’ Tullia agreed, mollified.

They left their suite and headed to where they knew that special room had to be, as that part of Lungunu was missing from the fifth dimension. Holding hands so as to maximise their energy sharing, they waited, facing a wall they knew wasn’t there, Qwelby hoping for another Swirling, Tullia beginning to regret having agreed.

*

Tullia was just about to speak when the wall wavered. Holding in their minds as strongly as possible the concept of a room containing an experiment with Azura, the twins stepped forward and found themselves in a corridor. Everything, even the air itself, was shimmering. They walked to the end and turned the corner. In a dark alcove was a door that looked like an airlock from an Azuran space flikker: dark grey metal, bevelled edges and a large central wheel in a lighter grey.

‘There are twelve bolts connected to the wheel,’ Tullia said as she withdrew her mind from the door. ‘All in light grey and heavily loaded with inertia.’

Qwelby tried to turn the wheel. His hands slid around it as though it was not really there. ‘Temporal discontinuity. We need to adjust the timeframe,’ he said.

‘Backwards to latest opening,’ Tullia suggested.

‘No. Forwards. To when we will open it.’

‘Yeah, of course.’

With all four hands on the wheel, they focussed on imaging it and the mechanism inside changing into dark grey in a very near future.

The fish-tank effect happened again. All the metal was dark grey. They heaved on the wheel.

Nothing happened.

Eventually, with aching muscles, they stood back and examined the door.

They heard humming

‘Why does a door hum?’ Tullia asked.

‘Because it’s happy?’ Qwelby replied.

‘What does a door want to do?’ Tullia asked.

‘Open!!’ they said together, grabbing the wheel, bracing their feet and heaving. The wheel spun and the door swung away from them. With their hands all tangled together they were dragged with it. Hands slipping free, they fell to the floor.

As they untangled themselves and got to their feet, the door swung to behind them. They were mesmerised. One moment they were in a brightly lit room, all chrome and white like an operating theatre. The next moment they seemed to be standing in a total blackness that seemed to go on forever. They hoped they were still in the room and not out in space. As the room morphed to and fro, they were showered with a kaleidoscope of colours.

They hadn’t intended to enter the room, only have a look, but, now they were in it, well, looking couldn’t do any harm, could it…

Slowly their eyes focussed on the only object that seemed constant. It looked like a permanently shimmering, hi-tech, chromium Jacuzzi, large enough to take the whole family. On both sides it was connected to pipes big enough for the twins to crawl through. When the room wasn’t there, the whole setup became translucent and they could see great streams of colours circling through the pipes in opposite directions. When the room was actually there, the colours fountained out of the Jacuzzi-like thing. What the twins did not know was that the energy streams were from an Azuran machine, everything safely isolated and contained in a different space-time continuum – but one which they had just entered.

*

The Large Hadron Collider as the Azurii called the machine, had been warmed up and the latest series of experiments initiated. Two streams of particles were shooting towards each other. When they had accelerated ten thousand times around the ring of what was called the Big Doughnut to almost the speed of light, millions of collisions would happen every second.

All the twins could see were two amazingly beautiful streams of colour flowing like miniature comets in opposite directions.

Tullia mindslipped into one as Qwelby examined Mandara’s array of controls and monitors. They were the most complex he had ever seen and it was going to take him ages to understand them.

‘Dragon’s Breath!’ he exclaimed as he realised that the two streams were going to collide. His urgent thought did not reach Tullia. Every quantum particle of her self was immersed in the beauty and splendour of being what to her was a comet soaring through deep space.

‘Xzarze, Tullia! Why do I have to keep on rescuing you?’ he muttered. He ignored his Intuition’s tart comment that she rescued him just as often, as he mindslipped half into the other comet and half into the controls.

‘Eeyooowww!’ he exclaimed as the power of the comet ripped his half mind from the controls.

<¡HELP!>

Seeking the transdimensional strength of the Stroems, his panicked thought reached them in the microseconds before the comet quantumwrapped him just as the other had done to Tullia.

The twins found themselves hurtling through space, or was it Time, or did they remain still and everything hurtled past them? Whatever, it seemed as though they found themselves inside a great big tunnel hurtling along at almost the speed of light. Around and around they went, in opposite directions. Strange buzzes not so much ringing in their ears as vibrating through their bodies.

Shooting around faster and faster, they felt their bodies getting longer and thinner. Two streams of energy sweeping past each other. Where was the end or the beginning of a line of infinite length?

Sending out powerful thoughts of their desperate need to be with each other, the twins’ electro-magnetic fields interacted and became part of the powerful magnetic fields in the Big Doughnut. The shock ripped through their whole beings.

It felt like a fizzy drink. Not drinking one. Being one.

Scattered throughout the length and breadth of their bodies, each managed one thought.
I have fifty trillion cells in my body. Every single one HURTS!

Uncountable numbers of fundamental particles showered in every direction.

? WHERE AM I ?

.

? WHEN AM I ?

.

? am i ?

.

? ?

.

?

‘They’re growing up so fast since their crystals were attuned to their EraBands,’ Shandur said as the door closed behind his children.

‘It started before they were fourteen, ShahShah,’ his wife pointed out. ‘It’s since Tamina became elderest to Tullia. And that’s well over three years ago.’

‘But I still don’t understand how they can have reached through that adult energy banding,’ Shandur protested.

‘You don’t see them like I do when they are around Siyataka,’ his wife replied. ‘I see how very strong they are. It frightens me at times. Their power. What they can do. Just look how they created that Bell Tower.’

‘Right!’ Mandara said forcefully. ‘Let’s discuss yesterday. We can talk freely without them here. Lellia can add her comments later.’

Lellia had returned and they were well into the discussion when House shook and quivered. Ornaments rattled and a phlock of photons swooped around the room. Unprecedented numbers of electrons swopped places all at once so that everything seemed to flicker in and out of solidity.

Mizena called the twins. She could not locate them mentally.

Shandur tried. No luck either.

‘Don’t worry,’ Mandara was quick to say, ‘I have the perfect answer for that. My latest gadget. I haven’t told you about it because I was waiting until the twins were back with us. It’s part of the Compiler I gave them. I can’t speak with them, but I will be able to say where they are. First though, we have to go to my study.’

Mandara summoned Lift. After being shaken about as Lift bucked to the after-effects of what they assumed was another XzylStroem eruption, it dissolved and left them standing in Mandara’s study. He sat behind his desk and explained.

‘I’d been thinking about how much the twins enjoy going to the Elmits to see the strange things that happen on Azura. Flat screens, not being able to actually be there in the film, fuzzy pictures and time differences, but, you know kids. And watching those incomprehensible flikkers with the twins, we agreed that most appear to be mixtures of two or more transmissions.

‘Well. Shandur and I decided to capture some transmissions ourselves. Obviously we needed to develop a programme that would decipher any language. Then I thought: why not go one better and enable the twins to speak the languages!’

Lellia and Mizena looked at one another and shook their heads.
‘Who’s the biggest child!’
they thoughtshared

‘And I couldn’t help it,’ he added with a smile. ‘Because I am a genius, I built-in a tracking device.’

Shandur nodded. His great uncle loved creating his gadgets as much as the children loved using them.

‘I used a meson and its paired anti-meson. The up or down quark is in the compiler, the down or up anti-quark is here, in what I call the locator. The screen will show where they are on a scalable map.’

When all that appeared on the screen was a fuzzy blur, and no map, Mandara ran a diagnostic. He turned to face the others with a strained look on his face. ‘Both anti-quarks have gone. They must have paired with the quarks.’

‘How’s that possible?’ Mizena asked.

‘Something must have interfered with their interaction separators,’ he replied, his mind already sorting through possibilities.

Lellia took her great niece’s hand in hers. ‘There are other ways of checking on the twins and making sure they’re alright,’ she said in a gentle tone of voice. ‘The men can deal with the mechanical side of quantum physics. We’ll go and explore in a different way.’

When Mizena had married Shandur, in true Tazian tradition they had been taken fully into each other’s families. In the eyes of Mandara and Lellia, Mizena had become their great niece, just as much as Shandur was Mandara’s great nephew by birth.

With heavy hearts, Lellia and Mizena left Mandara’s study, walked down the stairs and crossed over to Lellia’s personal wing on the opposite side of Lungunu. Walking side by side up the stairs, the thick, woodland green carpet muffled the sounds of their feet and all was silent. The soft colourscopes on the walls helped them relax and discuss how to proceed.

Reaching the top of the staircase they walked along the corridor and entered what Lellia called her Homely Room where they changed into GeleleSilk robes of midnight blue. The silk had been mistakenly named after the Gelele tree before it was discovered that the fine threads that appeared on a hot sunny day in the spring were the result of the rainbow-coloured Wenkosi butterflies dropping from their cocoons before taking flight.

Lellia led her niece out of the room and further along the corridor to a very special room at the end. The door was Night, and in the Night stood a beautiful Isuna wearing robes that were both so black and diaphanous that she hardly seemed to be there at all. Did they sparkle with starlight, or were the stars behind her? Mizena could not tell. In her hands the Isuna held a Moon. As the two women neared the door, the Isuna smiled and the door opened.

Mizena stopped with amazement. She had never seen the door before. Her mind told her she was looking at an ordinary door with a painting on it. Her eyes and all her other senses told her it really was a woman holding a Moon standing somewhere in the middle of Night.

As the door closed behind them Mizena saw six walls forming the hexagonal shape of a cell in a honeycomb. She smiled at the impression that she was entering a hive of her beloved bees, how important they were to life on both planets, and hoped that some Azurii still followed the Path of Pollen. Bathed in soft light from the alcoves that were set at different heights in each wall, the golden colour slowly turned to black, different shades of black. As Lellia led her niece to the centre, Mizena felt as though she was walking through a field of black grass.

The centre of the room was a large, sunken circle. In the centre of that circle was a low, round table, on it a dome of the blackest black, so black that as Mizena tried to focus on it, it seemed to disappear. Large cushions were set all around the table. Whilst Lellia was used to sitting in the lotus position she knew that would not be comfortable for her niece. She sent a thought to the floor. Behind one of the cushions a curved segment of it rose up to form a comfortable chair. They settled themselves comfortably, opposite each other.

‘Let’s begin with Tullia,’ Lellia said softly, leant forward and removed what Mizena then saw was the cover over a round ball of pure, clear crystal. The ball had been handed down through generations of Seekers, always female, always members of the family. Sianarrah would serve only as long as she wanted to, but always faithfully, of that there never was any doubt.

The two women looked into the crystal ball, holding in their centres their love for the twins.

A soft mist appeared, swirling slowly. After a while it seemed as though there was a faint hint of lilac in the centre. The mist thickened and Lellia sent gentle, calming energy to her niece. As the mist thinned, they saw a small cloud of lilac being swept along, all round the globe. Lellia leant forward stretching out her hands. Her niece took them and they merged their energies. The swirling calmed and the lilac contracted and deepened until it was a clear purple, gently pulsing. Mizena gave a soft sigh as her daughter’s favourite colour established itself as the messenger of her well-being.

Suddenly it was ripped apart as a series of colours mushroomed out. Mizena gasped with dismay as shades of grey and slashes of black intermingled. Then gasped again as streaks of vermilion shot through, followed by brilliant flashes like bolts of lightning.

She wanted to pull away and cover her eyes, but felt her aunt gripping her hands tightly, maintaining the connection.

A small spot in the centre grew into a mouth with gnashing teeth. It filled the whole crystal. The tiny patch of purple was in the centre of it. The mouth shrank. The ball filled with swirling grey mist as the mouth twisted and turned, chasing the tiny speck of purple.

A thin brown spiral unfolded around the outer edges of the crystal. Rapidly it grew in size, changing colour to a rich dark red, glowing with streaks of emerald green and sun-kissed yellow, bright violet sparkling from its wingtips. It stretched wide its jaws, a tongue flickered and the mouth was swallowed. The dragon grinned, then disappeared, leaving a tall, thin streak of vibrating purple in the centre of the swirling mist that slowly faded away, leaving the ball empty.

As they left the Seliya Chamber, Mizena thoughtsent Cook. The two women had scarcely settled themselves comfortably in the Homely Room before a big pot of Cook’s Special Restorative Chay arrived.

They were half way through their second cup when Mizena saw her aunt’s eyes return to focus and the grim look leave her face.

‘Well?’ Mizena asked.

‘From the size and depth of colour of the purple column, she must be well.’ Her aunt heaved a sigh. ‘But I am sure she is not on Vertazia.’

Mizena choked back a sob. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘The lightning bolts and the mouth. They did not have Tazian energy signatures. I have only rarely seen that energy before. They are what we call the Dark Denizenii. But the dragon. That was a much older energy and protecting Tullia.’

‘But, the Dark Denizenii, they don’t really exist?’ Mizena queried.

‘It’s all the repression of our era,’ Lellia replied. ‘We have come so far from our Aurigan days that negative energies such as fear and hate have become powerful archetypes that not only influence people but can even be used between dimensions.’

‘It was all so confusing. No image of Tullia or even her whereabouts. It was almost as though Sianarrah could not get a good focus?’ Mizena asked.

‘Yes,’ Lellia agreed. ‘There was an unsettled energy with her I’ve not experienced before. She usually knows where we are working. This time all I got from her was that we were both near and far, and what we were seeing was happening now. Yet she didn’t know when ‘now’ was!’ Lellia shook her head, clearly perplexed. She held up a hand to forestall any questions. ‘Remember the strength of that purple. She is alive, well, vibrant. And protected.’

Mizena nodded. ‘Through the male line Qwelby has the genetic inheritance of the Hero of olden days we only know by the name of his dragon: Zhólérrân. Do you think?’

‘Possible. I suppose.’

‘The dragon grinned. Not smiled. Grinned. It’s just how Qwelby looks when he’s got one up on Tullia. She smirks. Sometimes they are different,’ Mizena said as she smiled faintly, feeling the first touches of hope. If they were alive and well, anything was possible.

‘Do you feel strong enough to search for Qwelby?’ her aunt queried.

‘Yes. We know Tullia is alive and well. I must know that Qwelby is.’ Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes.

They returned to the Seliya Chamber and settled into their meditation. As they did so, the crystal ball filled with swirling mist.

They waited.

The mist continued to swirl.

Both women felt their energy being drained into the crystal.

‘No, Sianarrah. No!’ Lellia cried out, reaching for the cover and dropping it over the crystal.

Mizena looked at her aunt dumbfounded. ‘What? Sianarrah cannot find him?’

Lellia looked troubled. ‘I don’t understand. She has never tried to draw that amount of energy from me before. But then, this is the first occasion I’ve used her to scry for people.’ She gave her niece a sympathetic look as she got up. ‘I’m sorry, no more scrying now, you look drained and I know I can do no more today.’

‘No sense of Qwelby?’ Mizena asked.

‘Siahranah must have sensed his energy somewhere…to want to draw so much power from me.’ Lellia decided not to add “somewhen,” her niece had enough to worry about.

They returned to Lellia’s Homely Room. Checking with House, they discovered that their husbands were still working. Feeling in need of comfort, they descended to the kitchen where Cook started to prepare meals for everyone.

*

Earlier, Lift had deposited the two husbands at the door to Mandara’s communications room. They entered and sat side by side at a massive, U-shaped work area.

Hours passed as they worked feverishly, trying idea after idea, testing and rechecking the equipment. Finally, defeated, they slumped in their chairs, staring at each other vacantly. They had tried everything they could think of to get a signal to either of the twin’s communicators. They might have succeeded. They didn’t know, because the other half of the problem was getting a signal back. They had even tried devices similar to Azuran radar and sonar, all to no avail.

When Mandara explained exactly how he had managed to persuade the two mesons to co-operate, the two scientists agreed. The anti-quarks would never have rejoined their quarks unless they sensed permanent dislocation. Neither the mesons, the compilers nor the twins were any longer anywhere in the fifth or seventh dimensions.

They did not need to speak or thoughtshare. There were only two possibilities.

‘House,’ Mandara asked. ‘Correlate the time of when you last were able to monitor the twins’ presence with the shockwave.’ He knew the answer. When he had first heard it hours ago, it was not what he wanted, now it was the only remaining alternative to the termination of their lifelines.

‘A gap of thirty seven minits and nineteen sekonds.’

Mandara thought. What question did he need to ask?

‘House. Correlate loss of monitoring with any other potentially relevant event.’

‘I recorded what appeared to be a faint echo of what I deduce to have been a Spatio-Temporal discontinuity at that precise moment in that part of Lungunu that lies outside my frame of reference.’

Mandara grimaced. When he had first questioned House he should have asked for a complete physical presentation of all records it considered relevant. After all, it was a semisentient.

Shandur looked at his uncle sympathetically. ‘I didn’t want my thoughts to go there until, well… there was no alternative.’

There was silence as the men considered the possibility of what might have happened.

‘Uncle, we’re drained and I certainly am hungry. I don’t suppose you noticed your wife’s thought about eating: in the Garden Room?’