He chanted as he climbed the steps, hearing the sound of the Ark accompany his voice, the sound of humming. It was growing in intensity, rumbling, filling the darkness. The Ark's power, the Ark's intense power. It moved in Belloq's blood, bewildering, demanding to be understood. The power. The knowledge. He paused near the top of the steps, chanting still but unable to hear his own voice now. The humming, the humming - it was growing, slicing through the night, filling all the silences. Then he climbed more, reached the top, stared at the Ark. Despite the dust of centuries, despite neglect, it was the most beautiful thing Belloq had ever seen. And it glowed, it glowed feebly at first and then more brightly as he looked at it. He was filled with wonder, watching the angers, the shining gold, the inner glow. The noise, too, rumbled through him, shook him and surprised him. He felt himself begin to viabrate, as if the tremor might cause him to disintergrate and go spinning out into space. But there wasn't space, there wasn't time: his entire being was defined by the Ark, delineated by this relic of man's communication with God.
Speak to me.
Tell me what you know, tell me what the secrets of existence are.
His own voice seemed to be issuing from every part of his body now, through mouth, pores, blood cells. And he was rising, floating, distinct from the rigid laws of logic around him, defying the laws of the universe. Speak to me. Tell me. He raised the ivory rod, placed it under the lid, then labored to pry the lid open. The humming was louder now, all-consuming. He didn't hear the klieng lights explode below, the showers of broken flass that fell like worthless diamonds into the darkness. The humming - the voice of God, he thought. Speak to me. Speak to me. And then, as he worked with the rod, he felt suddenly blank, as if he hadn't existed until this moment, as if all memories had been erased, blank and strangely calm, at peace, undergoing a sense of oneness with the night around him, linked by all kinds of connections to the universe. Bound to the cosmos, to all matter that floated and expanded and shrank in the farthest estuaries of space, to exploding stars, spinning planets, and even to the unknowable dark of infinity. He ceased to exist. Whoever Belloq had been, he was no longer. He was nothing now: he existed only as the sound that came from the Ark. The Sound of God.
"He's going to open it," Indy said.
"The noise," Marion said. "I wish I could put my hands to my ears. What is that noise?"
"The Ark."
"The Ark?"
Indy was thinking about something, an eclipsed memmory, something that shifted loosely in his mind. What? The Ark. Something to do with the Ark. What what what?
The Ark, the Ark - try to remember!
Up on the slab, at the top of the crude steps, Belloq was trying to open the lid. Lamps were exploding in violent shows of sharded glass. Even the moon, visible now in the night sky, seemed like an orb about to erupt and shatter. The night, the whole night sky, was like a great bomb attached to the end of a short fuse - a lit fuse, Indy thought. What is it? What am I trying to remember?
