Qwelby nodded. ‘Yes. I am already starting to understand Finnish.’
‘You?’ Hannu queried. ‘I thought your translator…’
‘No. It doesn’t work like that. It just stores the words and the way of using them in my brain. A mixture of a dictionary and a grammar.’
‘Think simply!’ exclaimed Anita.
Qwelby looked at her. ‘Ah, you mean like a young child?’
‘Exactly!’ Hannu said.
‘All the time?’ Qwelby looked unhappy.
‘No,’ Viljo said. ‘With all of us here you can speak normally. But with everyone else. Speak simply.’
‘Why?’ Qwelby was very puzzled.
‘We can’t learn a language as quickly as you. There are many people here on Earth who will want to take you away and experiment on you to discover the truth about you.’ Unaware of it, Viljo was reinforcing Qwelby’s fear of ‘The Authorities’.
‘Okay, Viljo, it looks as though you have to fill Qwelby in with his background,’ Paavo said.
‘Dr Jadrovitch is Czech,’ Viljo replied. ‘I don’t remember if he told me where he grew up.’
‘That doesn’t matter, Dr Keskinen,’ Hannu said, seizing the initiative. ‘We find a small village in a far corner of the Czech Republic. Search on the internet for some basic information. Qwelby talks about his home as if it was that village. The important thing is that Qwelby speaks so little Finnish he cannot say much.’
‘All that I can understand,’ said Seija with a smile. ‘But Qwelby doesn’t sound like a Czech name.’
‘He can have ‘Newman’ for his family name,’ proffered Anita. ‘Obvious really, isn’t it?’
Qwelby chuckled. ‘I like it. At least that is true, in a way.’
‘I know ‘new man’ is chelovek novy in Russian. But what in Czech?’ asked Hannu.
‘Chelovĕknový,’ was Anita’s swift response. ‘And Kopecký for his first name. It is a real name. It means Hill and he arrived here on a hill.’
Qwelby looked upset. ‘But my name is Qwelby.’
‘That’s okay,’ explained Anita. ‘We can say that Qwelby is your nick-name. You’ve chosen it because you don’t like being called “A hill”.’
‘You’ve got it all planned, haven’t you,’ Taimi said in admiration.
Anita smiled and nodded. ‘Yes. I was thinking all last night.’
‘Okay,’ said Paavo bringing the attention of the three children back to him. ‘You understand what Dr Keskinen has said. You, Qwelby, must be very careful how you speak to other people. And you two must remember he is Czech…’
‘Right, Dad. Got it. Can we go skiing now?’ Hannu interrupted.
Paavo looked at his watch. ‘There’s less than two hours of daylight left.’ He glanced around the other adults. ‘All right. And Qwelby, remember. Try not to speak at all today. Just listen. Okay?’
Qwelby nodded, his seriousness making him look a lot older.
‘Your eyes!’ Anita exclaimed. She had been watching Qwelby, fascinated by how he changed so much, telegraphing all his feelings especially through the shading of the colours in his eyes. ‘You’ll need to keep your ski goggles on all the time,’ she explained. ‘Shame,’ she added at the thought of the almost hypnotic quality being shut away.
‘I’ve got a pair you can have,’ Paavo said. ‘They’re quite dark.’
‘And you two,’ Viljo said looking at the two Finns. ‘Remember. Speak simply to him!’
‘Yes, Dad, we understand!’ Anita confirmed.
‘Yes, Dr Keskinen,’ said Hannu, trying to look serious as he jiggled with excitement. Who knew what powers “his Alien” had!
The two fathers shared a look, turned and nodded to their children.
‘Thanks Dad,’ the youngsters cried in unison, leaping to their feet.
‘I’ve got an old pair of boots should fit you,’ Hannu announced as the two boys ran up the stairs.
‘Meet you there,’ shouted Anita as she dashed into the lobby, heading for her coat, boots and home.
Qwelby’s eyes lit up. As he followed Hannu up to his room the thought of action swept away his feeling of unhappiness at the deception, and put to the back of his mind the problem of how he could possibly talk about his home as if it were on Earth!
After dinner the three gathered in Hannu’s room and they had a long talk about deception. Between them they agreed that Qwelby was playing a game. The rules forbade him from speaking his own language; he had to tell as few outright lies as possible and being ‘economical with the truth’ as Hannu put it, was a specific requirement. Even so, Qwelby was very unhappy as it was such a big conflict with the whole of his life and Tazian values.
Failure in a game on Vertazia would have little consequence beyond an almost certain and usually embarrassing forfeit, especially if Tamina had a chance to get her own back on himself or Wrenden for all the tricks they played on her. Whilst it had been made very clear that failure in this game could have very nasty consequences, he had serious doubts that he could consistently tell untruths for very long. On top of that was the worry about making an innocent slip of the tongue. Speak like a little child made sense!
‘You must think about Tullia a lot,’ Anita said.
Qwelby shook his head. How to explain?
His friends felt the room grow cold as Qwelby’s purple centres disappeared and the ovals of his eyes turned pale violet. The room warmed as his eyes returned to normal. But he looked old and haggard.
‘I’m only half here, on the surface of your world,’ he replied. ‘All the energy connections I’m used to. None of them are here.’ He did not mention their auras, they were so weak compared with Tazian fields and a lot of the time he had difficulty understanding them. ‘Without Tullia in my mind, I’m only half complete. So I’m only a quarter here. And that quarter is desperately trying to focus on functioning in your strange world.’ He waved his hands.
‘It’s made worse by the fact that so much of the simple, solid stuff is what we’ve seen in flikkers, and is not a lot different from what we have at home. Knives, forks, cups, skis. For a moment my mind can blur and I think I’m visiting family who work with the Shakazii. They try to live more like you.’ He sighed. There was too much to explain and without Tullia he did not have the energy.
‘Not having her in my mind is like a permanent ache. I have thought about her a couple of times. Big mistake! I flick to her corner in my mind and that ache becomes a fierce pain.’
‘Your parents. A rescue?’ Hannu asked.
Again the room went cold whilst Qwelby thought.
‘Skiing today has been totally different from at home because working with energy is not possible. I came down that simple, little hill, what you call a baby slope. My focus on what I was doing was so intense I was not aware of anything else. My vision a straight line to the bottom. Somebody could have crashed into me and I would not have known until it happened!
‘At home I would know where everyone else is and what they are doing. I would not have to judge the quality of the snow and have to think of the difference that makes to how to turn and stop. I would know!’
He stopped talking as he realised he was almost shouting in his frustration. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself.
‘My whole life here is like that. Focus on the here and now.’ He paused, looking at his friends’ faces and auras. He saw acknowledgement, if not understanding.
‘Thinking of home, parents, rescue. That’s like the other people on the ski slope. I dare not take my mind of the here and now. When we are together, then I, we, will be able to think of other things.’
Qwelby settled into bed later that night with mixed feelings. In spite of skiing being difficult, with everything so solid and unresponsive that he felt like a beginner, Hannu and Anita were becoming good friends. He could not even go to Kaigii’s corner of his mind and share his deep concern with her. Oh, Kaigii, where are you? I miss you. He winced as pain stabbed through his head. If he told
her that she would ask what was wrong with him. He could almost hear the scorn in her voice. He would give all his remaining years of energy credits from his studying to hear it!
Leaving the light on, he rolled over to go to sleep. He wasn’t afraid of the dark itself but he didn’t want to be plunged into a nightmare by all the thoughts that he knew were waiting in the shadows. The most worrying was an opposing mixture of fear of being attacked if he left the house by himself, the thought of how to make better use of what he had learnt when he and Wrenden copied Tamina’s dance movements, and a scary sense that somehow he already knew.
Yet there was one consolation. He was aware that thoughtsending did not work like on Vertazia, but something did. As he was telling his story with passion and feeling, he had seen from the way their energy fields were responding that he was taking all his listeners with him. As he sank into himself his Intuition provided the answer. Through his voice they had received his thoughts, images and feelings. He was able to thoughtwrap Azurii!
He sat up with a jerk, wide awake. Was this it? ‘The Mystery.’ A clue to the purpose of Quantum Twins? Were they destined to live on Earth? Spearhead the reunification of the two races? Be a bridge to the Auriganii on Haven? Flying between the two planets would mean dimension shifting… and the ability to go home!
He reached for Tullia and almost cried aloud at the fierce stab of pain. Feeling sweat break out all over his body he held his head in his hands and sagged back against the pillows. A kaleidoscope of images assailed him.
Too much. Too much…
CHAPTER 43
TULIA EXPLORES
KALAHARI
Tullia awoke to her fourth day with the Meera feeling muzzy from half-recalled dreams. At some point she was sure she had seen a girl with a pink face and long, blonde hair. As she tried to remember more, she had the strange feeling that she had seen the girl before. Then she remembered the plans for the day. She was going to visit the Tsodilo Hills with their interesting energy. The first step in creating a meditation link with Kaigii.
Before her mind took her thoughts to the empty corner of her mind, she pictured Wrenden. The two boys were inseparable, and forever in trouble no matter how much she and Tamina tried to organise them. Imaging Wrenden was good, because Kaigii would be in the background, safely outside her internal link with him.
Out of bed, a quick wash in cold water and into a tank top and shorts. Although it was still chilly, for her the day would soon become comfortably warm, whereas as she joined Xashee and Tsetsana they were dressed for what was to them another cold day.
Although the hills were not very tall, the highest being about four hundred metres above the desert, she found the paths were not easy with lots of rocks and boulders in the way. The more she was shown, the more she was in awe of the hundreds of paintings that covered the hills. She could not find words to describe them. Magnificent, stunning, beautiful, did not convey the energy they exuded.
‘Lots of people from other countries have come here and dug up parts of the desert. They’ve made lots of measurements, trying to estimate how old the paintings are.’ Xashee shrugged his shoulders. ‘It doesn’t matter if they are thirty thousand years old, fifty thousand, or some say seventy. The paintings were created by our ancestors to honour the Gods who created the world and everything that lives in it.’
As Xashee explained the various paintings to her, Tullia found the one of the whales and penguins the most amazing of all, in the middle of the desert, hundreds of kilometres from the sea and thousands of kilometres from the cold seas in which penguins traditionally lived.
Later that day she was taken to what was called the Female Hill. There, Xashee showed her a giant footprint, centimetres deep in the rock. ‘That is the mark made by the Creator God as the first man was lowered onto our world,’ he said. ‘That’s why the Hills are known as the Mountains of the Gods.’
He glanced at his sister, and gave a tiny shake of his head. He was not going to say anything about the Serpent or the Cave. Tullia either knew or she did not.
Tullia stood in the depression, wondering. Xashee had told her that the San had come to Kalahari about seventy thousand years ago, and outsiders had found what they needed in the way of evidence to prove that. What were then the Auriganii had arrived on Vertazia about seventy five thousand years ago, after staying on Haven for a time. She knew Time was very different in different dimensions, but not how that worked. Was it possible that these people were the descendents of the few Auriganii who had not left Haven? Goose pimples ran all across her skin and the red patches flared uncomfortably hot.
Tullia was in a dream as they made their way back down the hillside. On top of the energy of the Hills she had been absorbing all day there had been a special feel as she stood in the footprint. She did not know what it was, but was aware that it was triggering a response from deep inside her. She felt energy spiralling along the two channels either side of her spine.
The path was narrow and there was a long drop to the desert floor. Half of her mind was carefully watching where she was putting her feet and hands, the other half was wondering how she would answer if she was asked about her life as the Daughter of a Goddess.
She thought: Tell the truth. They would never understand it!
With a shiver and an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach, she realised just how far away she was from home and how different life here was compared to Vertazia. Worst of all, the space where Qwelby usually lived in her mind was still blank.
Determined not to cry, she stood still and took several deep breaths to calm her nerves. Resting one hand on the rock face at the side of the path she turned to look out across the land. On this side of the hills it was more like a desert than the bush. Switching her vision, she looked at the lines of the planet’s magnetic field. A childlike sense of awe at the hidden beauty of the planet as she switched between the two visions took her back to when she was learning how to switch perceptions. Lost in thought, she ran the fingers of one hand through her long, black hair and flicked it across her chest, watching the green sparkles from the interplay with the magnetic field.
Now, she felt the land embracing her with its energy, and understood what Xameb meant by rooting herself into it so as to draw on that energy to help reconnect with Kaigii. The whole landscape shimmered as if with heat haze and turned into what she thought of as a real desert: great sand dunes like waves in the sea marching to the distant horizon. Deep within herself she sensed the new vision was calling to her. She shivered as the dunes disappeared and once again ran her finger though her hair, this time flicking it back over her shoulders.
Further ahead and below, her two guides had turned to see if Tullia was alright. As they looked up, they saw a tall and imposing figure standing very erect, her hand resting on the rock as though she owned the hills. Staring into space with her hair reaching down to her waist and framing her head against the pale blue sky, Tullia seemed to be reaching out to other Gods. As she ran her fingers through her hair, green lights flickered along its length.
Tsetsana trembled. It was her dream again. Shimmering green highlights had been in that Siska’s hair. It must have been Tullia visiting her, foretelling her arrival. Not to Xameb their N-’om K”xausi, but to her!
What did it mean? Was she being asked to be a special friend to a Goddess? One day she hoped to be taken by Xameb as his student, and become a Sangoma. But now, surely she was too young, too inexperienced. Was that why in the dream the Siska, Tullia, had worn the traditional clothes worn only by older girls and unmarried women, as if to say that even though she was a Sun Goddess, she was similar to Tsetsana?
She wanted to tell her brother of her dream. Yet each time she had been going to, something had happened to prevent her. Should she tell him now?
‘Walk on,’ Xashee said. ‘It’s not right to look at the Goddess like this.’
All sound had stopped and the gentle breeze no longer tickled her skin. Tullia’s consciousness was in
-between time and space. Am I one of their ancestors? They see me as one of the Gods who brought them here, living on a different planet? Gods. It seemed as though fire sparkled in every cell of her being. Magnetic storms. A flood engulfing a valley as large as a continent. An island sinking below the sea. The whole world shaking. Terrible loss. Pain as though her heart had broken in two. Searching. A river. A pyramid. An indistinct image…
Sight returned to her eyes along with a feeling of panic. She looked out across the desert. It was not the verdant green valley of the flood she had just seen. But. She had to save her people. Bring them to the mountain top.
Careless of the uneven surface, she ran down the narrow pathway. Rounding a corner, startled as she almost ran into her guides, she tried to stop. A stone gave way beneath her foot. Her leg shot forward and she started to topple sideways over the edge of the path. In horror, her eyes focussed on the rocky outcrops all the way down the side of the hill to the desert floor, a long way below.
A cry of alarm escaped her lips as, unbid, here eyes switched vision in two stages, leaving her looking at the gravity waves pressing down on everything and which were about to send her crashing down the jagged rock face. Trying to regain her balance she flung her arms out wide and felt a hand grab her arm. Twisting round, she collapsed into Xashee. As they fell down on the edge of path she heard his cry of pain as she landed on top of him. Her momentum was rolling her off him, out over the edge. Her free hand scrabbled uselessly at the smooth rock face. There was nothing she could grasp to save herself.
Her legs swung over the cliff face and she dropped, feeling her arm slip through Xashee’s hand until her fall stopped with a jerk as his grip held around her wrist. She could not help looking down the rock face. A picture from years ago flashed through her mind.
In a tantrum, she had hurled at Qwelby a special doll that Gumma had made for her. She had missed her twin and the doll had struck the corner of a piece of furniture and fallen to the ground with its head, legs and arms severed from the body. She imagined that was what she would look like if she were to fall.
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