The shekinahs were gone, too, but that wouldn’t last. As long as the Black Knight was active, it would continue collecting energy from the sun, transmitting it to the Ark, to create more and more of the creatures until the cavern filled up with them.
Another blast was inevitable.
The first explosion had nearly brought down the entire cavern. Jagged cracks ran up the walls and crisscrossed the floor. The air was thick with dust, and piles of rubble showed where the ceiling was starting to give way.
The next detonation would entomb them all.
There’s not going to be a next one, she thought. It’s time to shut this thing down.
“Bring back the sun,” she said, speaking in a clear voice. “Turn off the Black Knight.”
Nothing changed. The light continued to shine, growing brighter and brighter with each passing second, and she knew it had not worked. The Black Knight was still absorbing some of the sun’s power, transferring it to the Ark, while diverting the rest of it away into the cold of space.
What did I do wrong?
She tried again, imagining a gigantic mirror, spread out like a planet-sized umbrella above the Earth, and then visualized it disappearing and returning everything to normal, but even as she repeated the command, she knew that this second attempt had also failed.
Maybe I need to get closer. She started toward the Ark.
The coverings were gone, blown away along with everything else, revealing the ancient relic in all its glory. It looked a lot like the various representations she had seen, except for the size — it was much larger than in the movies, because the prop makers hadn’t known about the length of the Sacred Cubit. The cherubs on the lid, the Mercy Seat, were different. Multi-winged, multi-headed, and multi-eyed, they were mythological creatures instead of the traditional depiction of men with wings.
It occurred to Fiona that she was one of only a handful of people, living or dead, to have ever seen it.
Even fewer had done what she was about to do now.
Gallo’s voice reached out through the gloom from behind her. “Fi, don’t touch it.”
But she did.
Visions of the past slammed through her. Moses, an ancient warrior king, the cow-batteries, and the true origins of the Black Knight, the Ark, and the orbs, and how they all worked together. Fiona stumbled backward, the memory dump hitting her like a physical blow, but she managed to stay on her feet. “It’s real,” she whispered to herself.
“Fi!” Gallo cried out again. “Talk to me.”
“I’m okay,” she said, turning, searching the chamber again.
There you are.
She hurried across the rubble strewn floor to the spot where Pierce and Lazarus lay. The latter was already stirring, shaking off the effects of the shekinah detonation faster than the others. He stared up at her. “Fiona? Are you okay?”
There was no time to explain. She pushed past him and knelt beside the crumped form of the Abba Tesfa. He was unconscious, but what Fiona needed did not require rousing him. She slipped the turban off his head, and then reached under the breastplate, rooting around until she found the two objects concealed beneath.
Urim and Thummin, Pierce had called them. Revelation and Truth.
She knew intuitively which was which. The memory metal was Urim — Revelation.
She already had the piece of memory metal from Arkaim though. What she needed was the other one, the clear crystal sphere.
The Thummim.
Truth.
The oracular Eye of the blind seer Tiresias, which the castaway king — remembered in legend as Odysseus — had brought back from the Underworld and given to Moses on the slopes of Mount Sinai. Odysseus had washed up there after his ship was destroyed, not by literal sea monsters named Scylla and Charybdis, but by the tsunami wave generated after the sudden explosive eruption of Thera in the Mediterranean. He had landed on the island of Helios, an occurrence she now understood wasn’t simply chance. She would use the Eye now to find the hidden word that would unseal the Ark.
The true name of God.
She held the crystal up to her own eye and looked down at the golden plate affixed to the front of the priestly turban.
The transparent sphere flipped and distorted the image, causing the strange script to wriggle and squirm. She tried to hold the crystal steady but the word kept shifting form, morphing into different words, which despite being written in a forgotten language, she was able to read.
Wilderness…
Mountain…
Lightning…
Destroyer…
Creator…
Womb…
Almighty!
I am the sun and the moon… the lightning and the river and the wilderness.
The name was all those things, and many more.
The letters became fixed, a single word written in the Mother Tongue, but nevertheless revealed to her. She turned to the Ark again, formed the image in her mind, and spoke the word.
The energy reverses, flowing back to the damaged collector, which orbits high above the world, and then it seeks out the damaged, malfunctioning fragment.
Six thousand miles away, the Roswell fragment ceases to exist, along with the antenna array, most of the HAARP facility, and a troubled man named Ishiro Tanaka.
And daylight returns to the world.
SIXTY
The explosion had rung Pierce’s bell a little, and even though he had looked away and covered his eyes when the shooting started, he now saw everything through a murky green haze. Nevertheless, he could tell that something had changed. The persistent electrical hum… The light, rising and falling… The shekinahs…
Gone.
All of it.
“It’s over,” he whispered. He blinked in a futile attempt to bring the world into focus, and saw Fiona. “You did it.”
He thought he saw a weak smile on her face. “Yeah.”
Then he noticed the Ark — or rather, the lack of an Ark.
It was missing.
His eyes widened.
Did we destroy the Ark of the Covenant?
“No!” Fallon scrambled to his feet and rushed toward her.
“Fallon!” Pierce’s shout went unheeded.
The billionaire’s reaction caught even Lazarus off guard. Fiona retreated a step, but Fallon wasn’t interested in her.
He dropped to his knees where the Ark had been.
“No,” Fallon repeated, dragging his fingers over the floor, as though trying to find some trace of the artifact’s essence. “No. No.”
He rounded on Fiona. “What did you do?”
Lazarus sprang to his feet and started toward them, and Pierce wasn’t far behind. Fiona, however, stood her ground.
“I hit the self-destruct button. The Black Knight is toast.”
“No!” Fallon raged again, and before Lazarus or Pierce could reach them, he drew the unfired pistol from his belt and thrust the muzzle into Fiona’s face. “Bring it back.”
“It’s not coming back,” she said, holding up her hands, displaying the memory metal ball from Arkaim and the crystal sphere from Tesfa’s breast plate. She squeezed them in her fists, and the relics crumbled like pieces of Styrofoam. “Ever.”
“No.” Fallon said again, grinding his teeth together. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Fiona’s lips moved again, but before she could say anything, a section of the cavern ceiling, loosened by the explosion, broke free and came down right on top of Fallon, squashing him like an open hand slapping a fly on a tabletop.