07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  The coffee wasn’t too bad, and Hammond took another sip and waited until the girl was out of earshot. “Right. What the hell is going on? And don’t even think of bullshitting me. Kidnapping’s a federal offence, in case you’d forgotten.”

  Tearing into his apple pie, Maybourne observed, “Our boy Jack’s got himself in trouble again, hasn’t he?”

  “What do you care? You shot him!”

  “I’m hurt!” He put down a heaped fork and sent Hammond a baby-blue look of wounded innocence. “You mean Jack hasn’t told you? I didn’t shoot him. I can guess who did, but it wasn’t me. I mean, why would I?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you do anything, Maybourne?”

  “Hutch. I’m serious, George.” The baby-blues turned cold as he finally dropped the Endearing Goofball routine. “If you’re in my… predicament…you’ve got to keep an ear to the ground. I do. So I hear things. Lately I hear that Jack screws up an exercise past recognition, decimates his own team, and resigns. Then I hear that somebody out Cheyenne Mountain way is sniffing at a high-ranking Marine who happens to have organized said exercise. Then I hear that the NID doesn’t want said high-ranking Marine sniffed at and is proposing to remove the sniffer. And then you get sent to DC, which is the last place you ought to be, on some lame excuse and with a couple of NID heavies on your tail. How’s my hearing so far, George?”

  Wondering who’d redefined the meaning of Top Secret and when, Hammond snarled, “Accurate. Except for one detail. Colonel O’Neill didn’t resign.”

  “Where is he? He isn’t at home. I tried to get in touch with him.”

  “Off-world, and I shouldn’t even tell you that much.”

  “General, what do you think those guys in the sedan were going do to? Ask for directions? They had orders to solve the NID’s problem. You’re hip-deep in it, and I’m the only ally you’ve got right now. You’ll have to trust me.”

  Trust Harry Maybourne. As far as George Hammond was concerned, the ex-colonel had all the credibility of a psychotic rattler. On the other hand there was no getting away from the fact that Jack O’Neill trusted him, and Hammond knew better than to ignore Jack’s instincts. Repeated threats to shoot Maybourne notwithstanding, Jack actually liked the guy. Not that he’d ever admit it. And Jack had publicly revised his opinion as to who’d parked that bullet in his arm.

  “What’s in it for you?”

  Maybourne smirked. “Jack’s got that quaint loyalty thing going. If anything happens to you and he finds out that I could have stopped it, he’s gonna come after me and bust my ass. I’d like to avoid that scenario.”

  “Christ! I could get court-martialed just for being seen with you,” drawled Hammond. Then he leaned forward, nearly knocking over his mug. “If I ever hear so much as a whisper of this from any source other than you or me, fm gonna come after you and bust your ass. Are we clear on this, Colonel?”

  “Crystal.”

  Doubting his judgment all the way through, Hammond laid out the entire story for Harry Maybourne. Who rapidly lost interest in the apple pie. By the end of it he was attacking the tabletop with his fork.

  “This is uglier than I thought.” He quit stabbing, rummaged through his back pocket, produced an envelope, and slid it across the table. “I’m hoping the Air Force’ll pick up my expenses.”

  “For what?” asked Hammond.

  “Two tickets to Seattle. I gotta show you something.”

  The faces, serene and beautiful, seemed to be smiling at her in approval. They were everywhere, on walls, pillars, doorjambs, and they wore elaborate hairstyles and headdresses shaped like pagodas. There were full-length statues, too; countless round-busted, wide-hipped women, their arms raised gracefully, and men almost too pretty to be male, though you could hardly miss that they were boys. Some talked to her, or so Janet thought. Or perhaps it was the voice speaking through them. It had got louder and more distinct since she’d entered the city. Another sign that she was close now. Close to home.

  But mostly she knew because she felt at peace. There was no noise at all. The cackle of the rainforest had stopped as soon as she’d stepped through the great gate. No noise, and none of that merciless itch to run, run, run that had driven her to collapse yesterday. She could take her time now. And she would. So much to see, and it would be a shame to rush. Suddenly she realized that this had to be the same kind of excitement that drove Daniel.

  Whom?

  Janet gave a small mental shrug, unwilling to get into an argument, and went back to studying her surroundings. The voice acquiesced. In front of her stretched a broad corridor—well, not exactly a corridor, seeing as it had no roof—that led to a sun-flooded hall of pillars. The ground was covered with grass, short and thick and velvety.

  “So who’s mowing the lawn around here?” She giggled.

  Obeying an impulse, she took off her boots and socks. The grass felt as luxurious as it looked, warm and springy under her feet. It practically begged her to skip, and so she skipped all the way into the hall, finally forcing herself to stand still and look around. The ceiling soared sixty feet above her head, crumbling with age in places. Plants had nudged their way through brittle masonry, and some of the vines, studded with delicate, fragrant blossoms, brushed the ground. No telling what this hall had been once. Perhaps a throne room, something out of The King and I. Janet started whistling a tune from the show, then cut herself off, surprised at a giddiness that wasn’t normally hers.

  There is nobody here to see or hear you. Why be embarrassed?

  Because.

  That is no answer.

  “It isn’t me!” she shouted, the sound whirling around pillars and vines and toward the lofty ceiling like a living thing.

  Oh, but it is.

  A second later it was her whirling and skipping around pillars and vines, whistling “Shall We Dance?” and curtsying to an invisible king. The laughter of the voice bled into the hall and drifted through the ceiling on shafts of sunlight.

  She wanted to scream, yell at it to stop, and found she couldn’t, because she had to skip and whirl and whistle, whistle like a madwoman, whistle a tune she didn’t recognize anymore, eerie and frantic and alien. Somewhere in her mind, compacted by utter panic, formed the thought that she was going insane.

  No. No. No. No. No. “No!”

  The wail, released at last, broke the compulsion, made her feet arrest mid-skip, and she stumbled and fell hard. No grass here. Red stone tiles, rough and unforgiving. She skinned her elbow and curled into a ball, whimpering like a child.

  It was a joke. Only a joke.

  “Leave me alone!”

  No reply this time, but miraculously that indefinable pressure lifted. The voice was gone. For now. For the most part. She slowly pushed herself up, no longer trusting the peace, needing to get out of this hall never to return. Shadows of laughter still hung in the air like a foul smell, and she couldn’t bear it.

  Across the room, at the end of an alley of pillars, opened a tall arch, curtained by a cascade of water that glittered like diamonds in the sunshine. This was the only exit, unless she were to turn back, and she knew she couldn’t do that. Not if she wanted to go home. Carefully groping her way from pillar to pillar, half expecting her body to go berserk again and trying to avoid the stares of the faces, she edged closer to the arch. It reminded her of the Stargate, and this familiarity calmed her.

  She feared the water, though. Yesterday, parched with thirst, she’d drunk from the stream and got violently ill. As far as she’d been able to tell from the symptoms, it had been a mild form of botulism. Mild because you didn’t usually survive once you experienced double vision and respiratory impairment. She’d dragged herself to a small, dank cave at the bottom of the falls where she’d spent the night, shivering and heaving. Some time after midnight she’d fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, only to be woken at sunrise by the jungle’s dawn chorus. She hadn’t wanted to leave, but the voice had reasoned with her for a long time, warning her to c
limb the cliff, lest her captor would find her.

  Not her captor.

  “Teal’c,” she whispered defiantly. “His name is Teal’c, and I’m glad he’s alive.”

  There was no answer. She hadn’t expected it, because she and the voice had had this one out, too. The voice had known all along that she was lying, seeming amused—pleased, actually—rather than angry about it. But she should move on. She had to. And the only way to go was through the arch. If she tried to turn back, the skipping and whirling and whistling would start again.

  The cascade beyond the arch sparkled, painting rainbow patterns of light on the floor. It looked nothing like the water in the stream. This looked pure, utterly perfect. As she inched toward the brilliant curtain, one hand gingerly relinquished its contact with a pillar. The stone, unchanging and immobile on her skin had reassured her. Anchored her. She was scared of letting go, but unless she let go, she wouldn’t be able to find the way home. Slowly she extended her arm, fingertips scoring transparent furrows into the veil of water.

  It was cool. Cool and delicious and inviting, and it smelled of sun-yellowed summers and racing home after school to head out to the swimming hole. It smelled safe. She watched a sheet of water slide up her palm and to her wrist like a shimmering glove. It lifted bits of dust and dirt, rinsed them away, and left her feeling clean for the first time in days.

  Smiling, Janet abandoned her last hold on the pillar, stepped onto the broad stone threshold under the arch and stood misted by spray for a moment. Something wonderful lay beyond that curtain of water. Home.

  The thought drove her forward, through the cascade, her bare feet losing the ground almost instantly, and she fell, fell, fell, shattered the black mirror of a pool, and sank, aching from the impact, into airless silence. It was so cold, her first instinct had been to gasp. Icy water searing her throat and lungs, she slid deeper into blackness, unable to tell if her eyes were open or if her body even tried to swim.

  Then her toes touched the bottom—soft and bumpy, though it wasn’t silt. It felt like fabric and skin, but she couldn’t allow herself to care, couldn’t help whomever had drowned here before her. Pushing herself off with more strength than she’d believed she could muster, she shot back toward the surface, black fading to charcoal fading to insipid green.

  Her lungs were screaming for air, and a madly sucked-in breath made her convulse with coughs and sent her under again. Flailing and kicking, knowing that, if she went back to the bottom, she’d stay there, she paddled for the rim of the pool, only to find shining stone walls; black obsidian, too high to reach the edge and too perfectly crafted to leave any cracks for purchase. And even if she could have reached, her arms and hands were cramping with cold.

  Wasp, she thought. Wasp in the lemonade pitcher, flitting and buzzing until its tracheae were clogged with sugary yellow liquid, and then it suffocated. Very slowly. But first it’d go all still.

  She turned onto her back, let herself drift to save what strength she had left. Shining black walls on three sides around her. Twenty meters away, in the shadows at the far end of the pool, tumbled the dark veil of the cascade, endlessly, brilliantly lit only at the very top, where the arch was.

  Do you beg my forgiveness?

  “I’m sorry,” she croaked through a hurting throat. “I shouldn’t have sent you away. It was disrespectful.”

  The surge of laughter, boisterous and mocking, was as awful as it had been in the throne room.

  What makes you think you could send me anywhere?

  “I—”

  You are nothing. I am everything.

  “I realize that.”

  Do you beg my forgiveness?

  “For what?” She genuinely didn’t know.

  You did not ask my permission to bathe.

  It was true. She hadn’t. She hadn’t even considered it. The voice was right to be offended.

  “Please forgive me,” she whispered, fighting back tears. “Please.”

  As the voice remained silent, the shadows deepened, and she began to sob, terrified of dying without having been granted absolution.

  Very well. I shall forgive you this once. Have you finished bathing?

  “Yes! Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Water lapped into her mouth and down her throat, tasting stale and putrid.

  Then you must get out now.

  “But I—”

  Words turned into indistinct burbles as she sagged beneath the surface. Punishment. It was her punishment for refusing the voice. She had to get out. Had to try at least. The voice wanted her to. Choking and jerking desperately, she raised her head above the water.

  A ray of sunlight pierced the foliage far above, burned the shadows of the pool, and picked out the relief in the pool wall. A hand, set in a circle, and the sunbeam seemed to have ignited a warm welcoming glow, a warmth that promised rescue and safety.

  Janet knew she’d seen it before, couldn’t recall when, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she touched it.

  Breaths like hiccups, coming in short, ragged heaves and too loud. Way too loud. Sam Carter pressed her face into the crook of her arm to muffle the sounds. She shouldn’t be cold. Not when she could taste the viscous heat of the jungle, steaming from black soil and trickling from leaves. Viscous, icy heat that hauled her body into a spasm of shivers. She fought it down, trying to remember why it was important not to be heard. Nobody here to hear her, was there?

  Besides, it was raining. The monsoon cloudburst tattooed a machinegun rattle on the foliage and fizzed into vapor the second it penetrated the canopy. Humidity had to be at a hundred percent, and if you breathed it was instant emphysema. White mist everywhere, reducing her surroundings to coiling phantasms. Nothing seemed solid anymore, everything had become spongy and gluey, like the mire under her feet. Her fingers tightened around the air root of a mangrove she was clutching for fear of cutting loose and drifting away.

  Ten yards to her left, invisible through the steam, though she would have found it blindfolded—she’d been staring at it most of the night—was the spot where the hell hog had died, flailing and snorting and screeching, fangs bared and slick with mud and blood. The others had trotted up and down along the edge of the swamp, agitated by the sight of one of theirs being killed over something as soft and weak as her; red marble eyes shining with scary intelligence, as if to say that, if she ever ventured out of the bog again, they’d be waiting and she’d be toast. Or maybe to tell her that the hog that had hurtled after her into the swamp would burrow up through the mud and—

  “For cryin’ out loud, Carter! Get a grip!”

  It didn’t work. The words were what the Colonel would have said—close enough, anyway—but her voice, reedy and cracking with thirst, sounded nothing like his. Didn’t sound like her own either. Maybe the hell hogs had eaten that, too.

  “Get a grip,” she whispered. “Get a grip.”

  The one thing guaranteed not to get her out of this, were fever-addled speculations about porcines that IQ-tested in the top two percentile. And it wasn’t just her who’d have to get out of this. It was Teal’c and Janet as well, and they were her responsibility.

  Responsibility.

  Good word. Six syllables that excused a multitude of sins.

  Duty was good too. And shorter. Snappier. Best used for murder.

  But it hadn’t been murder, had it?

  What then?

  Mercy killing?

  Where was the mercy in shooting a fellow human being like some lame horse or rabid dog?

  But she’d done it. She’d done it, and there was no getting away from it. No escape. No choice. Just a duty.

  After yesterday’s—yesterday’s?—encounter with Macdonald the Jaffa, she’d doubled back onto the path, retraced his steps, followed those ungodly, inhuman screams. Tactically stupid, yes, but what else was she supposed to have done? Could have been Janet screaming that way. Or Teal’c. Less likely, but still, he was her res-pon-si-bi-li-ty.

&n
bsp; Whose responsibility had the kid been? Crowley’s? Norris’? Who’d write that letter to his parents, his siblings, his partner?

  We regret to inform you… of what? Training accident?

  He’d been a Marine.

  But he isn’t a Jaffa, that much is glaringly obvious. Before suspending him from a lintel, somebody has seen fit to dress him in something flimsy with leather straps. All around him the hell hogs dance their frenzy, snapping and gouging. She seems to have forgotten how to move or feel and wishes he d stop screaming, just for a moment, to let her sanity reassert itself. And then the screams do stop, just for a moment, just long enough for his lips to form one word.

  Please.

  He isn’t asking for her to come and cut him loose. They both know there’s no way to get to him, and even if she could, it would be too late.

  Please.

  Sam flees into the comfort of memory, back to an afternoon on the shooting range with her father, a lifetime ago. She unsafes the Beretta, adjusts her grip just like Jacob had shown her—

  “There. Watch your right thumb, Sam. If your knuckle sticks up, the slide’ll skin it on the recoil.”

  —and sights on a smile of pure gratitude that explodes the memory. Her hands start shaking, and she forces herself to relax and aim again, praying he’ll forgive her relief at his being a stranger, not a friend.

  She squeezes the trigger gently, oh so gently, a kiss of a kill, until the report of the gun smothers the roar of the hell hogs. In the leaden silence that follows the kid’s scent must have changed. No more fear, no more pain, no more life, no more appeal. The beasts back off, squealing their displeasure, and wheel around to come for her. Against all instincts and training, Sam empties her last clip into the mass of bodies, howling out her grief and—