The Alignment: Ingress

CHAPTER 18

It was a beautiful, balmy evening when Conrad Yeats arrived at the tavern to meet Hank Johnson for drinks and to catch up. Not much had changed that Conrad could see, except the lights of the sunken Sea Academy out in the bay, now a dive-for-gold tourist trap. As for the bathroom in back with the sinister trapdoor for abductions, Conrad had collapsed the shaft with a small pipe bomb. Smoke was still pouring out, along with a few shouts, but the kitchen staff had contained the fire.

Conrad found Hank at the same table overlooking the cove, sucking down his “Nelson’s Blood” made from a recipe that hadn’t changed since Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson’s body was embalmed in a rum keg on his return from Trafalgar for his burial in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“Well, if it isn’t the respectable Doctor Conrad Yeats, back from washing his hands,” Hank said as Conrad sat down and ordered the house ale from the Portuguese barmaid. “How is your pal Abdil Zawas?”

“Happy now I paid him off with the gold you gave his brother Ali back at the family villa on the Red Sea,” Conrad told him. “He knew where to find the vault in the villa, but he’s going to stay in Switzerland. He thinks the colonel is out there somewhere.”

“I doubt it, but anything’s possible,” Hank said. “We may never know what happened to him or Smith and his mercs.”

“Hell, Hank, I don’t even know what happened to us down there.”

Hank shrugged. “We beat some bad guys,” he said and took another swig of his rum. “It’s kind of like a western where Clint Eastwood cleans out one town, but there’s another town just as bad down the dusty trail.”

“I mean with the Queen of Sheba,” Conrad pressed. “When we strip the myth, who was she really?”

“She was a good queen,” Hank said, obviously defending his girl. “She ruled as well as she could, and probably didn’t dwell more than she had to on the reality that her wealth came from a hellhole deep in a continent shaped like a skull.”

“Hellhole,” Conrad repeated. “That’s an understatement. Wouldn’t surprise me if the concept of hell itself came from that pit.”

“Well, her miners clearly cut too deep, hit the dark XM deposits and started mutating,” Hank said. “So did her priests, and then finally the queen herself.”

Conrad nodded. “So that’s when she decides to see wise King Solomon in Jerusalem for some supernatural help. She’s heard all about the Ark of the Covenant in his Temple, which is sitting on the biggest portal in the known world. She shows up with her pile of gold, frankincense and the like.”

“Yep,” said Hank. “And I’m thinking Solomon told her to build the jungle portal to disinfect her people, which she did, then sealed the place up and left. She would have forbidden her subjects to disclose the dark XM portal or anything else about the wisdom of Solomon. She probably returned to her palace at Meroe and never left after that. But some kind of stonecutter — one of her masons or Solomon’s — probably wanted to record a way back to the mines. So he cut a coded relief to make a map, which was what my illuminated illustration of the Queen of Sheba was based on.”

Conrad looked up at the stars over the cove. Virgo was sure shining bright tonight. “Wow, I guess we both found what we were looking for.”

“You mean my banking theory about Solomon, the gold-laundering alchemist?” Hank laughed. “I stand by my theory. Einstein called compound interest the greatest secret of the universe.”

Conrad said, “I’ll grant you that.”

“And I’ll grant you that the two portals we found in Africa could well be your legendary Pillars of Creation,” Hank offered. “The crater portal could be considered the natural — as in fallen nature — Pillar of Chaos. And the nearby portal made from Solomon’s tech, the one that ends up in the jungle, that could be considered the man-made or artificial Pillar of Order.”

Conrad could see that. “You could almost call them the Pillars of Good and Evil, like the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.”

“Or its inspiration,” Hank said. “But now we’re heading off into Serena Serghetti land.”

“Don’t I know it,” Conrad said darkly. “But if the truth behind the Queen of Sheba was supposed to be some big secret, why include it at all in the Bible?”

“To remember.”

“Remember?”

“Yeah. It means nothing to the uninitiated. But to those who study the arcana, the metaphysics, it’s a tangible reminder of the wages of sin.”

The barmaid had finally returned with Conrad’s pint, which sloshed pleasantly onto the table. “But who gets to know the truth?”

“Those who are smart enough to go looking for it between the lines, in what’s not said.” Hank raised his glass of rum.

“Cheers to that, mate,” Conrad said, clanking his glass against Hank’s. “It sure was a hell of a trip. How about another round?”