(BOOK THREE)
Gabriel
looked out of his study window, onto the spacious lawn beneath, where Laura and
Belle lounged on sun-beds, talking and enjoying the hot Argentine sun. It had been
mere weeks, yet the stump of Belle’s hand was now fully healed over. The girl,
if girl she could be called at her actual age, still didn’t know what to make
of it. Automatically, she still went to use it as though the hand was still
there, where it had been for more than sixty years, and cursing when she
realized it was not. A trick the nerve-endings played on the body.
Gabriel could still ‘feel’
his own wings, though in fact they had been severed from his body almost two
thousand years ago. His shoulder blades still twitched occasionally, the
muscle-groupings still there and still eager to exercise, yet they would never
know such exercise again.
He had
given Belle’s problem much thought over the last few weeks. A physiotherapist
had been booked to help his daughter acclimatize herself to her lost limb, and
an artificial prosthesis had been commissioned. Belle was ambidextrous, like
her father, and so could still write, but reading was something she now had to
do one-handed, as was most of the other things in life she had taken for
granted, such as washing and dressing herself etc. Even fastening a pair of
jeans one handed was awkward and a chore.
Going over
to one of the paintings on the wall of his study, Gabriel pulled it on it’s
hinges away from the wall, revealing the hidden safe behind it. Fingers twirled
the combination lock this way and that, until the final click was heard, and
then Gabriel pushed the tumbler inwards, releasing the final lock, before
operating the handle, and drawing the heavy door open.
Inside
this safe, Gabriel did not keep money or documents, but it did indeed contain
treasure of a sort. He drew out the shiny segmented metal belt, sceptre and
amulet, which had gathered dust in there since the safe was first installed.
Gabriel
had first obtained these articles over 1500 years ago, and had kept them in
various secure establishments over the years, but had recently had them
scientifically examined in one of the many research labs he secretly funded.
The findings had been vague enough of themselves, but put together with what
Gabriel knew of their origins, and a very different picture emerged.
The dull
coppery-looking metal plates of the belt were some sort of solar panels, though
the metal itself remained unidentified. X-rays revealed inner-circuitry. A
simple switch on the side of the buckle caused the belt to vibrate. Gabriel had
measured the frequency of the vibrations. Presumably whomsoever was wearing the
belt at the time would also be made to vibrate at that same frequency, though
he had yet to try the effect upon himself.
The amulet also had a switch, a small
depression on it’s underside, hardly big enough for a fingertip, which when
pressed caused a sudden burst of radiation lasting barely a millisecond.
Gabriel could only guess at it’s function. The rest of the necklace seemed
purely ornamental.