“Leo.”
Sam gestured toward the long line with the two ovals in its center, the Goa'uld symbol for 'SI.' “What about that one?”
“I honestly don't know,” Daniel admitted. “It's similar to the middle Egyptian hieroglyphic for the letter 'S,' but — ”
“Terra,” Jack said, his voice distant. Flat.
Daniel glanced up again. Jack stared down at the sixth symbol, but his eyes had glazed over, as if he —
“Jack?!” Daniel leapt to his feet.
“Are you well, O'Neill?”
Jack continued to stare at the ground, his gaze blank, his features slack. It was if he was possessed. If Daniel didn't know better, he'd swear Jack had reverted to his time as a vessel for the Ancient's knowledge.
A shudder ran across Jack's face. “Planeta Terra,” he said.
“The planet Earth? How — ”
Jack knelt down in the sand, one hand stretched out toward the symbols. He stuck a finger in the sand and drew a symbol.
The symbol for Earth.
“Planeta Terra.”
Jack felt his knees press into the ground. He felt the dirt scratch his index finger as he drew the Earth symbol. He even sensed his mouth open and shut, repeating the words, “Planeta Terra.”
But he had no damn idea why.
“Jack?” Daniel's voice. Far off. On the other side of a tunnel.
He was like a man on a runaway train. Out of control, no way to get off. No way to know where it went next. In a sense, the entire experience since falling through the Ancient outpost into — who knew where — was one giant exercise in control, and the lack thereof. He had to control his temper, but now? He had to let go of what? His head? Let some slimy alien jump in and play with his brains?
His finger lifted from the Earth symbol, dropped down to scratch another glyph beneath — right beside what looked like a really bad rendition of the owl on those potato chip bags, except without the glasses. He drew the last glyph.
“Aquila,” his mouth said.
“Of course,” Daniel's distant voice replied. “The eagle that belonged to Zeus, the Greek god.”
“Sir, you did it.” Carter's voice now. “A definite gate address.”
Whoever controlled Jack's actions allowed him to study the seven glyphs.
“General O'Neill!” A hand shook his elbow. “Oh, please wake up.”
“I don't know if that's a good idea, Weiyan.” Daniel again, being Daniel. Worrying.
Somebody better worry. Jack couldn't feel his legs. His entire body became stiff, unmovable.
“Something's wrong,” the Chinese girl cried out. Jack hated the Chinese. Well, not all of them. Just those scum suckers who'd made his life a living hell during Black Ops missions in the eighties, and then when SG-1 had to rescue Daniel from Yu.
That had not been fun.
“We need to help him.”
The hand shook his arm. Smaller, weaker, but it did the job. Jack could feel himself keel over, slowly — as if gravity pulled him sideways — until his face smacked against the dirt. It hurt like hell, but he felt it!
“The building has returned,” Teal'c announced.
Feeling like himself again, Jack stood up. Weiyan kept hold of his arm. “It's okay, thanks,” he told her, gently prying her fingers off his arm. He suddenly felt like an ass for being such a bastard to this kid.
“I am glad you are awake again,” Weiyan said with a smile.
He returned the gesture. “Yeah, that was a hoot. What's going on, kids?”
Teal'c pointed in the opposite direction to the hill Jack had climbed earlier. That butt-ugly squat building was back. Closer this time, maybe three hundred feet away. Standing next to it was most positively, absolutely, a person.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “I'm going to go have a talk with our host.”
“Hold on, Jack. This gate address? It's familiar.”
“So?” He glanced down at Daniel. “Last time I checked — right before I became the second coming of The Exorcist — there wasn't any gate.”
“I think we've been here before. Okay, not here-here, because this isn’t really a place, but some other time. On a mission.”
“And yet, you have no idea what it means.”
Daniel scowled as only Daniel could do — rude yet Jack recognized that he meant well underneath it all.
“Don’t you think there’s a reason we worked this out?” Daniel asked.
Jack squinted, barely able to make out the alien standing beside the building. He thought of him — or her — as an alien, because really? What else could it be, popping in and out like that? The alien wore a bleached-white cape, the cloth flapping against a breeze that had kicked up. A bit of dust swirled on the valley floor around the building. The alien didn’t budge, but it did seem to be —
“Is it waving at us?”
“It appears so,” Teal’c confirmed.
Jack stepped around the graffiti he’d help scribble in the dirt. “Well, whoever it is, they have some explaining to do.”
“Hold on,” Daniel said. “I think we should go with you. In case you have a — ”
“What? A relapse? A good, long look at what senility has in store?” He stabbed a finger at the glyphs scrawled out in the dirt. “Stay here and figure out what that address is about.”
Daniel frowned, but Jack ignored it. He nodded curtly at Carter, Teal’c and the trainee kid and headed off toward the building. He resisted the urge to run, knowing he needed to keep his adrenaline in check. Keep his temper under a tight lid. So instead, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other, shoving his frustrations as far down as they would go.
The ground trembled. Slightly, but most definitely there.
One foot, then the other. No anger, no frustration.
Just the truth, please, with a side of ‘get us the hell out of here.’
The ground kept on shaking, but he kept on going. He switched from watching his feet to looking up at the building. The alien had stopped waving. In fact, it wasn’t even there anymore.
“Damn it.” Jack doubled his pace. If he could outrun the alien, creature, or whatever it was that held them in this godforsaken place, then maybe, just maybe —
With a loud crack, the ground split open barely ten feet ahead of him.
He stopped. Calmed himself down. Deep breaths. Relax.
Get a grip, O’Neill.
Another tremor hit and the crack widened. Was it trying to block his way?
It was an illusion. He knew that. He took another step forward.
The illusion widened. Hell, the illusion became a damn deep chasm. He stepped to the left, intending to go around, but the ground rumbled again. Within seconds, the crack widened, stretching off in each direction as far as he could see.
He stopped just short of its edge and peered down into a bottomless, jagged tear in the ground. He kicked a pebble over the edge and it dropped. He listened for the sound of it hitting bottom.
The sound never came.
At least the tremors stopped. That’s something.
“General!”
Jack whipped around. Carter and the rest were rushing toward him. “I thought I told everyone to stay back.”
“Whoa!” Daniel got there first, halting a few feet back from the chasm’s edge. “I think someone’s trying to tell you something.”
Teal’c came up on his other side, with Weiyan right behind him. “Whomever that someone is, Daniel Jackson, they are no longer present.”
Carter leaned over the edge and Jack restrained himself from pulling her back. “Sir, I hate to ask, but…”
He shook his head. “I swear on my single pair of stars that I wasn’t pissed.”
“Pissed?” Weiyan asked. She hovered behind Teal’c. Jack couldn’t blame her. He’d hide behind the big guy, too, if he had any sense. This entire experience was getting too damned —
The ground shook again.
“Come on…” Now the thing was reading his thoughts!
“Everyone, get back,” Carter yelled over the rumble.
Jack didn’t argue. He reversed course, away from the craggy pit of nothing. That is, until he noticed that the crack was shrinking.
Moments later, the gap sealed up, the ground no different than before.
Weiyan slipped out from behind Teal’c. “How is that possible?”
She took a step forward. Nothing happened. She took another step and the ground rumbled.
Jack joined SG-1 in rushing forward to stop her.
The tremor stopped.
Jack glanced as his team. “Take another step.”
They did. Nothing happened. Urging Weiyan on, Jack led the others in taking several more steps. They walked right over where the ground had cracked open earlier.
A few more paces and Jack held up his fist, the signal for everyone to stop.
This was getting ridiculous.
“All right, fine!” he yelled toward the abandoned building. “I get it!”
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Weiyan called out from behind him.
“It’s all right.” He kept his eyes peeled, hoping the alien would make another appearance. “Piece of cake. We’ll all go together.”
“No, you don’t understand,” the girl sobbed.
Jack turned around to find Weiyan jerking down on her zippered fleece. “What the hell?”
She’d yanked up her pullover. Underneath, her entire lower stomach was covered in blood.
The ground rumbled.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BEIJING, CHINA
1968 MAY 25
Huang huddled beneath the central stairwell of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, clutching the ancient scroll in his hand. Doors banged open and shut. Screams ripped through the air. Gunshots rang out across the many marbled floors.
The Red Guard had stormed the building, determined to fulfill China’s Cultural Revolution by any means possible. Out with the old and in with the new. Their hatred of old customs, culture, habits and ideas had made the diplomatic corps a likely target. If Huang’s bunkmate had not warned him that morning of the Red Guards’ plans to kill diplomats who clung to those ideals, he would not have had the opportunity to rescue his precious find.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs above. Huang retreated further back into the shadows and sat down with his back against the wall. He stuffed the scroll carefully into his faded blue proletarian’s overalls. In anguish, he listened as great sculptures were toppled, paintings were slashed, and tapestries ripped in two. The Red Guards chanted their mantra rejecting the old ways again and again.
The China of Lord Yu was gone. Crushed in a revolt of perilous power mongering, swathed in false promises to the masses. Violence wrecked the streets. Troops of Red Guards killed and maimed anyone who did not fit the ideals of their leader, Chairman Mao. A man who claimed to want great peace and prosperity for his people.
But who acted no better than Lord Yu’s enemies. At times, Huang wondered if indeed Mao Zedong and his ferocious Red Guards were not Anubis or Apophis in disguise.
Huang drew in his legs and rested his head upon a knee. He had made a grave mistake coming to China, allowing his rescuers to do what they believed to be the right thing. When Sir Edmund Hillary discovered him in Antarctica, Huang hadn’t the strength to out-run the Tau’ri. Hillary belonged to a land called New Zealand and along with his countrymen, he had come to reclaim the frozen land. To build bases of operations that would be known as Scott and McMurdo.
In broken Chinese, Hillary had insisted Huang return to what he believed to be his homeland of China. Huang had tried to tell Hillary the truth of his origins. He tried to convince him of the threat to the Tau’ri, of the being of light, but the explorer had only laughed and escorted him to a primitive craft called an airplane. Huang resigned himself to his situation in the hopes that upon returning to the land of his ancestors, he might find the means one day to return through the Chappa’ai and share both news of China and the being of light.
Ten years later, no opportunity had arisen. Huang learned to speak modern Chinese, was given a position as a gardener, and told to be thankful that he had food in his belly and clothes on his back.
Far off in another part of the building, gunshots rang out. Believing himself safe for the moment, Huang withdrew the stolen scroll from his overalls. Upon hearing that all ancient artworks were to be destroyed by the Red Guards, he had taken the scroll from the wall outside the office of the Vice Minister of European Affairs.
He unrolled the scroll carefully. A few black painted pictograms covered the top half of the eight-foot long red cloth. The bottom half showed a man standing by a golden river, its banks swollen. The waters appeared ready to break from their boundaries, but the man appeared calm. Serene.
He bore an imperial tuft upon his chin. Dressed in a red mianfu, the horsehair tail of Lord Yu’s green hat was longer than Huang remembered. Nonetheless, the scroll gave Huang solace. Assurance that his master and lord’s eternal nature might someday allow Huang to return. To be forgiven. To once more take up his mantle as Dragon Guard or perhaps even First Prime.
A door slammed open at the top of the five-story stairwell. Voices murmured. Three, perhaps four men. They began their descent, speaking in calm, hushed tones amidst the chaos.
Huang quickly rolled up the scroll, secreting it once again in his overalls. Creeping forward, he peered up the stairs. Black shoes and blue pant legs climbed downward. He glanced across the stairwell to the exit. The door led out into the rear gardens overlooking a barricaded street. He’d used it often as a means to enter the building when in need of the facilities.
Huang slid along the wall to the door, flattening himself against the cool stone.
Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest.
With a silent prayer, Huang opened the door. He slipped outside, carefully closing the door behind him.
Blooming flowers, budding trees, and great bushes lined the long white building of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Huang had spent much of his time working in these gardens, along with a half-dozen others. Today, however, the gardens were empty, the other workers hiding in their homes in fear.
Behind him, the door began to open, the men’s voices loud with laughter. Huang picked up his gardening pail with its pruning shears and scurried to the closest tree he could find. He pulled out the shears and set to work, stowing his anxiety behind the most placid face he could muster. A worker’s face.
“Halt!” A Red Guard yanked the shears out of Huang’s hands.
Forcing himself to remain calm, he turned toward the guard. Young, with a terrible haircut, baggy blue pants and a green shirt, the man was little more than an over-aged boy, at least fifteen years younger than Huang. Perhaps twenty, maybe twenty-five. Red squares lined each side of his collar.
“Wait, comrade,” said another man behind him. Older, fuller of face and body, the man wore a blue-collared tunic. He had a vigorous manner about him, his eyes darting across the garden, seemingly assessing everything in mere moments.
He gestured for the guard to back away. Narrowing his eyes, he approached Huang. “You are a gardener? A worker for the Foreign Ministry?”
Huang nodded, afraid to say anything that might encourage the Red Guard to attack him with the shears.
The man scowled. “Gardening is a leisure of capitalistic classism. A look backwards, not forwards.”
Huang wanted nothing more than to proclaim his truth. To tell his origins. That by his very nature as a clone of the great Sun Tzu, he was a ‘look backwards’ to what was great, or rather, what had been great about China.
Knowing he must survive, Huang held his tongue. He glanced up into the tree he had been working on. It was a cherry tree.
He returned his gaze to the man and offered a hesitant smile. “I look toward the future, sir. This tree shall bear fruit. Sustenance for those in need.”
The man bowed his head in respect. “An admirable and necessary work. One that we will not keep you from, comrade.”
The man gestured to the guard to return his shears. Huang nodded his thanks and the man walked off, his companions in tow.
Huang allowed himself a silent, but deep sigh of relief.
It was short-lived.
“One more moment,” the man said, striding back to the tree. “Do you know who I am?”
“I — ”
The man raised his hand once more, an almost imperial gesture. “I am your Chairman. The work you do here is good, and I will remember your words. Gardening for sustenance is something China’s people should achieve.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
“Can you read?”
“I can write my name, but reading?” Huang pressed his lips together. He had tried to learn the modern symbols of China’s language. So far, the task had been difficult.
“I have not the time, Chairman.”
“If you haven’t read, then you are not familiar with the old ideologies. I approve.” The Chairman pointed at the Red Guard who took Huang’s shears earlier. “Bring him inside.”
“Chairman?”
“As a worker, he will — What is your name?”
“Huang.”
“As a worker, Huang represents the people. He will make a fine diplomat.”
Huang staggered backward. “But, Chairman, I know little — ”
“You know enough. Learn to read, but read sparingly. Care only for the people, and you will do well.”
“What office should I take him to?” asked the guard.
“Assign him to the new Vice Minister of the Americas.”
“Americas?” asked Huang.
The Chairman beamed. “Have you never heard of the United States?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANCIENT OUTPOST, ANTARCTICA
18 AUG 04/1910 HRS MCMURDO STATION
Another quake slammed through the outpost. George yanked Ambassador Zhu away from the hole as a new wave of snow and ice plummeted from the ceiling. Shielding Zhu with his body, he took the brunt of it, ice and snow pelting his back. The vibrations intensified. He quickly scanned the room to make sure Lee and Simmons were safe. Lee had grabbed on to the Mark IIs while the lieutenant stayed by the hole, hanging on to a nearby column.
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