only has the one piece,” Reigel muttered.
Nicholas looked at him puzzled.
“There are three pieces of the stone. Tandore… The man, who controlled the Marshal, already has one.” He looked at Nicholas reproachfully. “The second is... missing, and the third…” Reigel held the knife in the air by its blade.
“Stone. You mean the stone in the ring?”
“And here.” Reigel handed the dagger to him.
Nicolas looked at his knife with new eyes, but it was exactly as he knew it. “I know this knife better than any, and there is no stone.”
“The handle.”
“What of it?”
“It’s made of closely bound leather thong.”
“Obviously.”
“Unwind it.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“It will destroy it.”
“If you so wish you can replace the thong.”
“No it can’t. This knife is an enigma; of all the blades I have used none compare: its balance is unique. Some knives you throw by the blade, others by the hilt, yet others slide from your palm. This knife does all three. If I unwind the grip… I do not know the consequence?”
“And tomorrow you will have no need to know?”
Nicholas looked at him.
Reigel felt uncomfortable saying what he had, but he still picked up a splinter of wood. “Unwind the thong,” he insisted.
Nicholas gave a look of resignation. “Any other time I would refuse.” He reluctantly began to dig into the handle. They both said nothing more during the several minutes it took to pick out the embedded loose end; then Nicholas had second thoughts and looked up pleadingly.
“Go on,” Reigel said uncompromisingly.
Nicholas began to unwind. It soon was obvious that beneath the thong was a tightly fitting soft leather pouch. Now Nicholas looked at Reigel perplexed. He began to tease the edge, but after many years it had become sealed to the knife. At last the edge gave, and came loose. Now Nicholas hesitated, the pouch was obviously not an integral part of the knife, as it slipped off and he stared in disbelief. The handle was white metal; intricately carved and with gold patterned inserts. This alone made it a thing of beauty, but set in the pommel was a small, sand coloured jewel. It was something he recognized instantly. “It’s the same stone as the ring?” He said mesmerized.
He knew it was there but still Reigel had to hide his own surprise. “The second of the pieces.”
“It must be worth a fortune.”
“Probably several.”
“I... I never knew,” Nicholas stuttered.
“Neither were you supposed to.”
“But all this time?”
The safest secret is with one who does not know he holds it.”
Nicholas handled it with a care and reverence he had not had before. He looked at the hole in the panel. “I treated it with disrespect.”
Reigel smiled. “It was made to suffer use.”
Nicholas remembered how he had used it. “And people have suffered at my hand because of it.”
“It is a knife, and a knife has a purpose. I doubt you are the first to use it for what it was intended.”
Nicholas was almost powerless to take his eyes off it, “This is the stone you speak of?”
Reigel nodded.
For long moments Nicholas was captivated by it. “Did my mother… did they know?”
“I cannot say… Maybe they did; and maybe one day they would have told you?” Reigel left Nicholas with his own thoughts for a few moments more before he spoke again. “What has passed has passed, but we still have your present problem to contend with.” He gestured out to the Drakken.
“Problem? Yes, I thought rather more than that?”
“I have not finished what I started to say; come, it could be that we are overheard here.” Reigel moved towards the door waiting only to ensure that Nicholas was following.
They walked down the corridor and into an alcove. Reigel sat back on the couch, patted the seat against him, and waited until Nicholas sat.”
“I spoke before of the civil war, and how both factions were aided by people from…” Convincing the youth that people lived on other planets had been difficult enough to explain so Reigel decided for him to understand time travel was too much to ask. “A very different place. It was in secret; at least it was intended to be, and though collaboration was hidden it was discovered and stopped, but some weren’t. One was the project of a group of aeronautical scientists and engineers. They were supposed to be working on a revolutionary weapon that could have become the turning point in the war. It’s a common claim, and in every war there are always rumors of secret weapons that can change the balance: most are propaganda, but this one wasn’t. The one thing that they ran out of was time. It was just bad luck: if such a thing exists, but almost as they were ready the plague that marked the end of the war swept over the land. They were left with their prototype but no way of building more. Around them the civilization they knew collapsed. So with nowhere to go they stayed in their labs. Time passed and they died or dispersed, and the Basilisk project was absorbed into the realms of myth.”
“I know of the legend of a Basilisk,” said Nicholas. “A look from its eyes could kill, and its breath would turn a victim to stone?”
Reigel raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’m impressed, not everyone knows of such a creature.”
“I didn’t, but my mother spoke several times of a Basilisk. I wish now I had paid more attention, but I do remember the longing; or regret that she showed when she spoke of it.” He shrugged. “I was young. At the time all I thought it was a ploy or threat to keep me in order.”
“No doubt it was,” said Reigel unconvincingly.
“And maybe she wanted to tell me something that she dared not?” Nicholas replied sadly.
“That we will never know; but what I do know, is that the time was late in the annihilation war; they were deep underground in a tunnel, and that was where most people’s knowledge ended.”
Nicholas instantly made the connection. “The rebel base?”
Reigel nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought at first, but it has been used by your friends, and they hadn’t found any secret laboratory. So I couldn’t see how it could be the right place. But then there were the pieces of the stone almost at the same location, and the desperate activity in your district to locate the heir. It could have been just a big coincidence, but for some reason everything was happening right here. It’s too big a risk to leave for the Marshal to accidentally discover.”
“So you being at the base was not to assist the rebellion?”
“Actually I never helped the rebellion; I assisted in minor ways, maybe a bit of advice, but mainly what I did was focus their own thoughts.”
“But you did more than that for me.”
“I did what I did to give you the chance to fulfill your destiny.”
Nicholas smiled. “I had one before that thing?”
“What I discovered, was that the scientists work had been well advanced; but as the war had more or less played out, and all that was left to fight for was devastation, the urgency would have gone out of their work. They likely lost heart, and purpose, and finally gave up. Sometime after that their supplies would have run out, and they would have been forced to re-enter the outside world. Maybe one day someone brought the plague back: we don’t know.”
Nicholas sounded disappointed as he spoke. “Then it cannot be at the base. Antony told me the animals had been there for generations; if that is so then someone must have survived to tend to them?”
“The relevant point is that if anyone did, they had little interest in the work that had been done; at least not a scrap of evidence exists to tell any more.”
“So whatever they were doing still has to be found?”
“Well actually no; I said it was too dangerous to let the Marshal stumble onto the complex, so I kept on looking.”
>
Nicholas could sense what Reigel was leading up to. “You found it?”
“The location was contained in a poem.”
Nicholas tilted his head. “A poem… a verse?”
Reigel nodded.
“That doesn’t sound very credible.”
“Someone sympathetic to the federation of the time knew of what was happening... They ensured that a descendant learned the poem, though that descendant had no knowledge of what they knew.”
“That hardly seems the safest way to pass information on?”
Reigel shrugged; he had thought exactly the same “Anyway this verse, read in context with how it was written down, became a code. The code became a series of numbers. Those numbers represented a co-ordinate and the coordinate gave me the entrance.”
Nicholas looked curiously at Reigel. “What kind of weapon was it?”
“You mean could it fight the Drakken?” Reigel breathed in deeply. “It was never tested in battle; but there is no reason why it could not hold its own.”
“Then if only it was here; not in that faraway place, many lives could have been saved.”
“If it was used by the rebellion it would have given the Marshal an excuse to unleash the Drakken.”
“But he has.”
Reigel smiled. “Yes, and in war you only bring out the ultimate weapon when you are sure your enemy does not have the same.”
Nicholas was almost bursting with interest.
“The future of this, and lands far away depend on the victor. Mars is poised to rewrite the past to its own suiting, and ensure this planet remains in its dark age. If that were to continue, over time the colonies will waver and fall into the grip of totalitarianism. All this and more; can or will