Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds (35 page)

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.

Sitting in the lotus position she faced Mirror. Her crystal of dark grey-blue Xalulan was a heavy piece that in both looks and name was suited to a male. Even her name was a variation on Xallan, a boy’s name. With the strong male genes that she had inherited, no wonder she looked like an overly tall, lanky boy! Was that why she had never found favour with her parents?

‘Xaala! Stop snivelling,’ she berated herself. ‘In a few weeks time I will enter my sixth phase of integration. I will never be pretty. But Ceegren does not want a pretty airhead. He wants me to be mentally and psychically the best. And I do excel at everything for which he trains me.’ Through Mirror she looked at her crystal. ‘I am sorry, Xalulan. You serve me well. And at least my HorseMane hair is my own, unique, girly style!’

Gently caressing her powerful crystal she asked her Memory for a composite replay. If any further tagging and cataloguing was required, that would be done when she recalled for Ceegren. Relaxing through her breathing, she sank into her Kore.

She felt her whole self expand as the power of three Tazii flowed through her. She swelled even more as she realised it was her power that was leading the way like a bright torch piercing the dark night. She held herself in place high up above the planet, the apex of a triangle of which the base was formed by the Abominations.

As the dark energy flowed down to them she realised that they were fighting back with an energy far greater than had been expected. The third dimension was acting as an amplifier. Worse, even as the fighting progressed, what had seemed a beautiful rainbow was in fact a message of disaster. They were connecting! And she was being pulled into it. But she needed to be there, in the centre, acting as the channel for the energies that were seeking to keep the twins apart.

She sensed their great need to be together. What were those strange feelings flowing through her? Angrily, she thrust aside the MemoryTag that said ‘love’, cursing herself for wondering. Abominations like that could not know true love, what she felt for Teacher.

As the fighting continued, it was clear that the boy and girl had been infected with the Azuran Disease. Otherwise, how could they so viciously attack the dark clouds that were seeking to block them, and then unfairly forcing Teacher and the others to send ever more threatening images.

She knew that the powers of Quantum Twins were supposed to be great, and that the only previous pair had been of no use to the race as adults because they had became impossibly introverted. This pair felt different. And what was worse, not only had their four friends risked their lives trying to make contact, they also had possessed the power to fight through all attempts to prevent that.

She realised that there was a special energy between the twins and their friends. It reminded her of the stories of the beauty of Aurigan times. What was not beautiful was that the way their friends had fought had shown that were already half infected. If the twins returned they would connect with those friends and the Disease would spread at a terrifying speed across the whole planet.

A strong energy infused her, sending terrifying creatures to cauterize the twins’ mental receptors, and cut them off forever from each other and the MentaNet. Even as Xaala felt pride that her thoughts had been received and were being acted upon, she screamed with pain as fire ripped through her and the creatures were flamed out of existence.

But why the vitriolic energy? Xaala asked herself, sensing that was not directly related to the fear of the twins reconnecting. Instead, it seemed to come from a foul Darkness. An eons old mixture of overwhelming shame and guilt that… fed the Custodians?

Her thoughts were brushed aside as a new sensation rippled through her. Dragon energy was flowing through her feet and being sucked out of her head by the welcoming embrace of Unicorn energy. The Abominations would connect!

Just in time, Xaala pulled herself away. When Ceegren required her to recall, he would see that it was on the Unicorn that the energies must be concentrated. Although equally strong, the Dragon was vastly more aggressive.

She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Dry, she returned to her bedroom and settled down to calm her mind by meditating on the words of the Great Traditionalist, Insûmâne Haa-Zeyló.

Although Tullia was exhausted from the battle with the dark forces she was in too much pain to sleep, and although mentally reconnected, as yet there was no thoughtsharing. Having poured all her love into her twin she had little energy left for herself. She knew she should go out into the bush and bathe in the moonlight to help restore her inner reserves. But with being so viciously attacked and physically forced apart by what had to have been Tazii, she needed to think. She sat on the pile of blankets that served as her bed and sank into her Kore.

In front of her a young man lay on a medcouch. One of the DragonRiders, his body horribly burnt by the primitive but effective particle beams used by the Solids. One part of her mind was in his, shutting down his pain receptors, another part was analysing the damage.

Keeping erect the four long and slender central fingers of each hand, she folded over the two slightly shorter, opposed, outer ones until they were touching the centre of her palms, then folded down the other four to meet them. Having activated the interstitial energies of the sixth dimension she opened to the needs of the Rider. In great swathes from either side she felt healing energy flowing into her Kore. Golden energy flowed out through the centre in the middle of her forehead to combine with the streams of green energy flowing from her sensitive fingers which she manipulated around the areas needing healing.

It had been another long battle, fighting off the attackers in the third dimension. Throughout the fighting she had been flying astride her winged unicorn in close contact with the warriors, the two of them tending to minor wounds of Riders and Dragons. The fighting had ended long ago and she and her fellow healers were now working with the most seriously injured as they were brought out of stasis.

Her body longed to be free of the tight ultralilac skinergysuit without which her tired energy field would have lost its focus and she would have slipped into the higher, formless reaches of the seventh dimension. Although she could heal from there, and with less energy expenditure, she knew the physical presence of the Unicorn Kèhša was an inspiration to all her healers.

There was another pair of hands, seemingly inside her own. They only had five digits. Long though, they were shorter than her six. How was it possible for anyone to heal with only five digits?

Five fingers! Tullia felt dizzy as she slipped back and forth between the two scenes with their one link – the power of the energy flooding into her through her shoulder blades as if wings were joined there, and then out through her forehead as if through her horn. She tried to argue that she was not a winged unicorn but a Healer who rode on them. With tears running down her cheeks her protests were stilled as she was increasingly immersed in the beauty of the flow of healing energy, and amazement that she must have accessed the seventh dimension as she had given Xashee healing. With even Mandara saying that the eighth dimension was no longer accessible to the Tazii, it had never occurred to her just how deeply she had gone in connecting with her Uddîšû genes.

And her life, in spite of the heart-aching absence of her twin: she felt more freedom than ever before. Was it possible that in some ways life on Mars amongst the descendants of the Auriganii was better than life on Vertazia?

A soft buzzing made her look up. It was the dragonfly. Its red body and tracery of red and green wings clearly visible in a patch of starlight at the edge of the open doorway. Seeing her twin’s favourite colours took her back to the time they were in each other’s arms, and then to the previous occasion in the stairwell. Thoughts, realisations, tumbled through her mind.

The children they had seen with the snowman. The Meera on Kalahari. Gumma trying to restore Aurigan technology. The strength of their Uddîšû genes. Doubled because of their twinergy, their power so strong that they had stopped played games against their friends as they always won. Instead, it was always girls against boys. Tazii DNA was Azurii plus one. Quantum Twins just had to be Tazii plus one. A step closer to Aurigan twelve segments. As she opened her eyes and looked out into the night sky, a faint buzz in Qwelby’s corner of her mind accompanied the extra bright twinkling of a star

‘Oh, Kaigii, why do we have to be away from Vertazia to discover what we are?’ With no sense yet of thoughtsending working, she continued to speak aloud. ‘Freedom? Freedom from a mental and psychological blanket of excessively structured development? And Gallia says that’s even imposed on many adults!’

She stared at the myriad twinkling stars, momentarily imagining each one was an Aurigan looking down on her, encouraging her to take the next step in her thinking, to discover the real reason for her and Kaigii to be as they were.

‘Enquire. Explore. Experiment. We WILL Succeed!’
she tried to thoughtsend as sleep finally captured her.

*

Qwelby closed the door to his room as Hannu left. He stood for a moment gazing at the PowerObject that his friend had placed on the bedside cabinet, before collapsing on the bed, exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. If the images he had received were true, and not merely memories from WrapperFantasies, then there were four more to be found: to create their best hope of being rescued.

Gingerly, he reached out a hand and rested three fingers lightly on the smooth face. It was warm. Unnaturally warm. Energy flowed up from deep at the base of his spine as images appeared. Five points of light marking the five points of a pyramid. He knew without a shadow of doubt that the additional fourth segment that he and Kaigii possessed was the key to tuning in to the PowerObjects. They had needed to find the first to trigger the sequence. A soft buzz in Tullia’s corner of his mind drew his attention.

‘Of course, what we saw from the stairwell, there must be one where Tullia is. That’s why we are where we are. I must thoughtsend her. Then three more to find.’ He withdrew his fingers and rolled onto his back.

He did not know how long he lay there before awareness of his surroundings returned. With limbs feeling like lead, he undressed. Catching sight of his reflection in the full length mirror on the wardrobe door, he stood there examining his wounds.

His sense of pride was replaced by a feeling of revulsion at the level of violence he had exhibited. His reflection shimmered and it seemed that there was a much taller figure clad head to toe in a single, tight fitting, multicoloured garment. He was not on Vertazia. The other could not be Image, yet it seemed that the newcomer was speaking to him.

‘An Aurigan Warrior fights only in defence. You have no need to feel regret or sadness at what you destroyed. They were only energy constructs. You are right to be proud of your wounds. They were honourably incurred.’

A picture came to Qwelby of Oona’s upturned face, her bright blue eyes wide open with admiration. She had rested her head on his chest. That had hurt. But he hadn’t minded. He knew that feelings for girls were not supposed to awaken for at least another eighteen months. Yet being with her had been nice. For a moment he felt her there again with his arm around her.

Wanting to experience those warm feelings again took him back to the very different feelings he had experienced as he and Tullia had clung to each other.

As he climbed into bed, wishing she was in her own bed next to him, tiredness pulled him into a deepstate. He was flying through space, seated on a magnificent Dragon, its wing-beats stirring the stellar winds as they approached a planetary system at the edge of a pair of galaxies shaped like a butterfly.

He felt his muscles straining against the tight fitting, iridescent scales of his dragonsuit. Watched as his six long fingers lovingly caressed his mount’s sensitive ear ridges as they headed towards home. Home, a beautiful sphere composed of a fine tracery of multi-coloured light, slipping though space and time. The home that he and Kaigii had created, and that they were now sworn to protect.

A great swathe of stars disappeared. A space rift had formed, its centre a black hole extruding from another universe. Stretching across millions of kilometres it looked like an ultra thin pair of lips. The top lip was the crashing of red and yellow waves on a sea shore, the bottom lip the reflection of the upper one. It was roiling its way towards him with the HomeSphere directly in its path.

He did not have time to wait for any warriors to join him. Thoughtsending an alert he mindmelded with his Dragon. Zhólérrân folded his wings and together they plummeted down towards the very centre of the black hole.

‘Wait! Dragon Kèhša.’

The Unicorn Kèhša’s appeal filled his heart with regret. He would never see her again. She was not a warrior. Did not, could not understand.
‘A man has to do what…’

Fighting to prevent the intense gravity from crushing him was taking all his strength. Yet he needed more if he was to insert the right mixture of energies that would destabilise the black hole and allow it to be sucked back into its own universe.

A pair of eyes appeared in the distance. Ovals of straw yellow with unusually large emerald green orbs. They flared and hurled bolts of lightning at him, enwrapping within her energy that of all his warriors. And the healers!

‘¡Fight! ¡Warrior Kèhša Of All Dragons! ¡Fight!’ the accompanying Aurigan symbols demanded.

Wondering why the eyes were like Tamina’s… a tapping sound brought him out of his deepstate. Looking around, he found the source of the noise. Flapping its wings as it tapped on the window was what had to be a baby Horned Snow Owl as it exactly fitted Hannu’s description of what he had seen in the woods that night. With its two ears standing up on either side of its head, the unusual tuft of hair between them looked just like a miniature horn. No-one else had seen it and Hannu had been teased that all he had seen was one of the owls common to Finland.

About to dismiss the incident as overexcited, Tazian image-into-action, the persistent tapping made Qwelby focus his vision acutely. Between the owl’s ears he very clearly saw a miniature horn, complete with spiral striations. The effort required to focus his fifth dimension sight through the slow vibrations of Earth drained the last drop of his energy. As he slumped sideways onto the pillows, trying to thoughtsend
‘Together soon’
, he felt he was hallucinating as he fell asleep hearing Tullia’s voice.

‘Enquire. Explore. Experiment. We WILL Succeed!’