07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  The banks of surveillance monitors, the computers, a couple of electron microscopes were easily identifiable, but most of the scientific equipment was Greek to Hammond. Either side of the monitor banks, a large window opened onto an operating theatre. Along one wall stood several empty glass containers. Fish tanks? Hardly. The opposite wall housed nine large steel drawers. Morgue drawers. His gaze drifted back to the OR below, the gurneys there, the operating table.

  “This isn’t where they held Carter,” said Maybourne, as though he’d read Hammond’s mind. “She was a couple doors down. If there’s time, I’ll show you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll pass.”

  “Suit yourself. So, let’s see what we’ve got.” Maybourne walked over to the wall with the drawers, pulled the nearest one, and grimaced at the body inside. “Oh boy!”

  George Hammond felt grateful that the corpse was frozen. If he’d had to contend with the smell, too, he might have thrown up. The pale torso looked like something had eaten its stomach from the inside out. “What in God’s name is this?” he croaked. “Some Level IV virus? Hemorrhagic fever?”

  “No. Even the NID aren’t crazy enough for that. Besides, this isn’t a containment lab.” For once the slick facade had crumpled, and Harry Maybourne actually looked troubled. “Whatever they’re doing, it’s definitely not healthy.”

  “Obviously not, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with the Marine base on ’335”

  “Check his dog tags.”

  He was right. The dead man was a Marine. “What the hell?” whispered Hammond.

  “Yeah. Two months ago nine Marines dropped off the planet. Nobody knows what happened to them. Looks like we just got a pointer.” Maybourne closed the drawer, flung himself into a chair, and switched on a computer. When the machine started to boot, he hit F8, switched into DOS mode, and entered some kind of code, fingers flying over the keyboard. “It’s a backdoor I made for myself when I was still a member of the club. Bypasses the security program.”

  Moments later a list of folders popped up. Lots of folders. He dipped in and out of them, randomly opening files, skimming over information, moving on to the next.

  “What are you looking for?” Hammond asked.

  “I’ll know when I find it.”

  “How about this one?”

  The folder was called Series 3.7. Shrugging, Maybourne opened it. Nine subfolders. Nine names, one of them identical to the name on the dead man’s dog tag. They’d found the vanished Marines alright. “Good guess. You play the lottery? You should, you know.”

  Somewhere on the lower floors a door slammed, putting paid to any further search for information. Maybourne slipped a DVD from his pocket, placed it into the RW drive, and began downloading the files. The burn seemed to take forever. As soon as drive stopped whirring, he snatched the disc, put it back into its jewel case, and shut down the computer. “Let’s hope the stuff copied alright. We don’t have time to check.”

  Out in the corridor they could hear voices, hurried footfalls—three men at least, probably more. As quietly as they could, they raced along the hall, back the way they’d come. It wasn’t quietly enough.

  “Third floor!” somebody shouted.

  Seconds later a tall, bulky figure emerged from the stairwell, cutting off their escape route. Skidding to a halt, George Hammond longed for his sidearm, securely stowed in a Washington hotel safe. Nostalgia was nipped in the bud when he recognized the man. Wrong time for wishful thinking.

  “Drat!” He turned on his heel, retracing his steps, Harry Maybourne right beside him.

  At their six, Adrian Conrad was gaining, and there was no staircase at the upper end of the corridor. Maybourne hung a right, hared into a nurses’ station and through a door opposite into an equipment store. Dead end, and Conrad had reached the station. For want of any other bright ideas Hammond slammed the storeroom door, wedged the backrest of a chair under the knob. It’d last five minutes, if that.

  Inside the storeroom were three rows of metal shelves, holding linen, the world’s most comprehensive collection of bedpans, and nothing even remotely resembling a weapon. Outside, Conrad was working on turning the door into matchsticks.

  “Now what?” gasped Hammond.

  By ways of a reply, Maybourne took three steps to the rear wall and yanked open a flap. “Laundry chute.”

  “You gotta be kidding!”

  “Wanna wait for him instead?”

  As if on cue a door panel cracked under Conrad’s onslaught. Hammond dived into the chute head first, hurtling down three floors and landing on a pile of dirty linen in a laundry cart, without time to reflect on the synchronicity of his and Jack O’Neill’s luck. A rumble above announced that somebody was on his way. He scrambled from the cart, clearing the landing zone. Seconds later Maybourne arrived, followed by a roar of fury.

  The ex-colonel disembarked and pushed the cart out from under the chute. “That should slow him down,” he stated. “Talk about anger management issues.”

  “Oh, he has. And I’m sure he’ll make his feelings known when I hand you over to him, gentlemen.”

  The disembodied voice came from a swirl of steam that obscured the ill-lit maintenance tunnel, but Hammond didn’t need visuals to recognize the owner of that lazy drawl. “Playing with the rats, Colonel?”

  “Given the company you keep, General, I suppose I should be the one asking that question.” Simmons materialized from the steam cloud, aiming a Glock 17 at them. “Now, if you’d please raise your hands and step out from behind that cart. You, too, Maybourne.”

  “About to graduate to murder, Simmons?”

  “What murder, General? SG-1 has tragically disappeared, and you’ve been abducted, probably killed, in DC. So who’s to—”

  The report of the shot hammered from walls and pipes and seemed to compress the steam. A gun tumbled through the air, and Hammond, half deafened, saw rather than heard Simmons’ shout. Clutching his right arm, the colonel broke to his knees.

  “Jack sends his regards,” said Maybourne, holding a Beretta whose existence he’d previously neglected to mention. “Shame your back wasn’t turned.” Still keeping his bead on Simmons, he picked up the Glock, tossed it at his companion. “You may want this, General.”

  Hammond caught the gun, shook his head. “So help me, Harry, you’re starting to grow on me.”

  “Don’t panic. It won’t last.” Grinning, Maybourne pointed down the tunnel. “Exit’s that way.”

  It happened so fast, the skin seemed to slough while it lost its glow and turned dull and yellow. Angry black moles appeared where cells broke down, always in the same places; in the middle of the left cheek and on the chin, growing voraciously. Unless treated in time, he—the real one—would die from skin cancer. Lines and wrinkles crawled like cobwebs, scoring deeper and deeper, until the face looked like an ancient, leathery apple, dry and waxy to the touch—if she could touch it. She wanted to, wanted a way to beg forgiveness, offer comfort, warmth, make it easier for him. And him. And him…

  She’d lost count, couldn’t remember how many.

  I can tell you, healer. I even can show you, if I choose to do so. I can show you all of them again. Every single one of them.

  “No!” Janet’s teeth were rattling so hard, she could barely talk. “Please… It isn’t necessary.”

  Why bother talking? There is no need. I know. I always know.

  “I’m human. Talk is what we do.”

  But, human, you keep telling yourself how inhuman your actions are. Why pretend?

  Janet couldn’t remember, was too cold and too tired-to remember anything, and Nirrti’s laughter hammered through her skull and seemed to crush the breath in her lungs. At last the pressure eased, though never enough to feel free or forget the presence in her mind.

  Inside the tube muscles atrophied, joints thickened with gout and arthritis, the spine curved and vertebrae fused as discs shrank and were reabsorbed. His eyes were staring at her—they always did.
First with the innocent curiosity of a young animal, then, though there was no rational thought and never would be now, with a visceral awareness and terror of what was happening to his body.

  She reached out, touched the glassy surface of the tube; a gesture as ineffectual as anything else she could have done. She still couldn’t help it, because she knew what was coming.

  The eyes, blue and staring, turned milky with glaucoma, and like a child alone in the dark he began to sob, toothless gums bared, gnarled and shriveled hands groping the inside of the tube. It lasted a minute, two, three—too long, however long. Then the movements stilled, slowly, almost gently, and the ancient body died cell by cell. The amniotic fluid—Janet had no idea what else to call it—inside the tube darkened to purple as its molecular structure and properties changed and it began to break down dead flesh and bone into their component proteins.

  It will feed those worthy of survival.

  It made sense.

  The thought had come unbidden, and Janet tried to push it away, knowing it wasn’t hers, couldn’t be hers. But the others had to survive. Survival was important. Survival meant lives saved. She was a doctor. She saved lives. She was saving lives.

  Very good. You are beginning to understand. I am proud of you.

  She could feel it. It felt warm, soothing, soft like a down blanket, and it somehow eased the terrible coldness of the lab. The need to hang on to the feeling became overwhelming. That and saving lives. No time to lose. She moved on to the next tube, found the crystal that would trigger the aging process, pushed it deep into its socket.

  The clone inside the tube began to alter, decaying before her eyes, silently and rapidly. All of a sudden she was trapped in a flutter of a memory. She’d seen this before. The face in front of her was overlaid by another, familiar somehow. The process then had been slower, not as efficient, and it had enabled her to win that race against time.

  She’d found out how this worked. Or something very much like it. Nanites?

  Somewhere inside her mind Nirrti gave a chuckle of surprise, and the sensation was pleasant. She also sensed something else, swirling red and violent and entirely unashamed of its greed. Nirrti wanted him. The other one. The one familiar, the one who hadn’t died.

  It seems I am indebted to you. It would have been such a waste, and I have plans for him.

  “It was none of my merit. The process was flawed.” There was something else, Janet recalled. Someone else. Someone who’d helped. But she didn’t mention it. If she did, the glow of pleasure surrounding her might diminish and she couldn’t bear that. It was too cold to risk that little bit of warmth.

  Luckily, Nirrti didn’t seem to have noticed, still preoccupied with the revelation. A wave of scorn trawled through Janet’s awareness.

  The process was flawed indeed. Pelops was a fool who accepted boundaries without testing them. His method took a hundred days to induce death of old age, and he was happy with it. I can gestate life in hours, destroy it in minutes.

  “You are a goddess, Lady Nirrti.” Janet hadn’t meant to say it, but in retrospect there didn’t seem to be a reason why she shouldn’t. It was true, after all, wasn’t it?

  Laughter flooded her mind, not the mocking onslaught she had learned to dread but a more intense burst of the delight she’d sensed earlier. Then it gradually ebbed and flattened, until Janet was alone again. Alone but not unobserved. She knew that now. The goddess was all-seeing.

  Another tube, another crystal activated, another clone shriveled and died. Gestate life in hours, destroy it in minutes. Janet smiled. She was aiding the goddess.

  From far down the endless row of tubes came the dry scrape of a door sliding open. She ignored it, not permitting herself to be distracted. Footsteps approached, halting and diffident, and finally slowed to a stop behind her. When she turned at last, she found herself facing the… What was he? Father, brother, alter ego—all of the above—to the things she was ordered to obliterate?

  It appeared to perturb him. Pale as death, he watched himself wizen until he was ancient beyond recognition and incapable of sustaining life. In a flash she understood that this was the fate that awaited those who displeased Lady Nirrti; they died a hundred deaths.

  The freezing air in the lab became more tangible again and seeped into Janet’s bones. Shivering, she crossed her arms, hugged herself. “What do you want?” she asked, if only so as not to think the unthinkable any longer.

  “Lady Nirrti wishes to see you,” he hissed, his voice harsh with a hatred that begged for punishment.

  “Will you take me to her? I don’t know where she is.”

  “The Jaffa”—the word dripped boundless rancor—“waiting by the door will take you.” His gaze rose at last, edged to the nearest tube and its contents, arrested there. “According to her I’m the one who has made them deficient, so I’ve been ordered to finish this task.”

  The giggle broke free without her volition, but she made no attempt to stifle it. The irony of the punishment was sublime, biblical even. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. The offender commanded to eradicate himself.

  She giggled again, turned, and quickly walked along now empty tubes and toward the door. The instant it slid open, she was wrapped in deliciously warm, moist air. As promised, two Jaffa were waiting for her, the same clones she had found so abhorrent earlier. She couldn’t remember why now. They were quite beautiful, tall and broad-shouldered and dark-haired, with deep green eyes. Lady Nirrti was right. You couldn’t have too many of a good thing. Janet burst out laughing.

  Tentatively at first, then more boldly, she stroked the chest of one of the men and suddenly realized that she had been too wrapped up in work and caring for her daughter to—

  She had no daughter. She’d never had a daughter. She’d stolen an alien child, the rightful property of Lady Nirrti, and had withheld that child and—A sequence of images flashed through her mind, one more vile than the other, until her whole body tingled with shame. The cold seemed to creep back, and she grasped that it had nothing to do with the temperatures in the lab. It was inside of her, a legacy of her transgression.

  Trying to control a shudder, she nodded at the Jaffa. “Let’s go. Lady Nirrti is waiting.”

  They led her down into the vault. From there, the ring transporter took her to the roof of the building; a terrace high above the jungle. Below stretched an endless sea of green, bleeding into a scarlet sky. A huge sun was setting, cupping half the horizon, and now and again brilliantly colored birds burst from the canopy as if to take one last look before dusk fell.

  “Pretty, is it not?”

  Janet spun around, again aware of the icy lump of guilt within her. She dropped to her knees. “Lady Nirrti, I—”

  “Quiet.” Under a red and gold sunshade fluttering gently in the breeze stood the goddess, looking at her sternly but not unkindly. Willing to forgive? “You wish for my forgiveness, yes? You wish to prove yourself to me?”

  “Yes, Lady Nirrti. I beg you.” Janet was shaking with cold, felt tears streaming down her face. “Please,” she whispered.

  The goddess moved toward her, touched her shoulder. Under the heat of Lady Nirrti’s touch, the ice began to melt at last. Radiant warmth spread from her hands, burning and soothing at once. “Rise, child. What is your name?”

  “I have no name, mistress. You haven’t seen fit to bestow one on me yet.” The answer pleased the goddess; she could tell from the warmth leaking into her, and she rose toward its source like a flower toward the sun.

  A delicate hand, framed by a ribbon device, cupped her face. “I shall name you.” Lady Nirrti smiled. “You shall be called Mrityu, my daughter.”

  She rolled the sounds through her mouth and mind and decided they tasted good. Strong. “Thank you, mistress,” whispered Mrityu. “But I still wish to prove myself to you.”

  “You shall. Oh, you shall.” Lady Nirrti’s laughter danced on the evening air like sparks of light and sunshine. “Come with me. I wi
ll show you your task.” The goddess led the way under the sunshade, casually flicking a hand at the mounds of silk-covered cushions strewn across the stone floor. “Sit.”

  Despite the invitation, it struck Mrityu as disrespectful to seek her own comfort before the goddess was seated. So she waited until Lady Nirrti had settled on a pillow and only then sat down herself. “Please show me, mistress.”

  A recess in the floor released a dull gray orb, which slowly ascended until it hovered at Mrityu’s eyelevel. She recognized the device; a communication globe. The grayness under its surface began to boil and swirled apart on the image of two people, a man and a woman. The woman was injured, and the man was attending to her.

  “Do you remember them?” asked the goddess.

  Somewhere beneath the warm mists that filled Mrityu’s mind a memory stirred, faint and shapeless. “I do… I think.”

  “Good. You are to bring them to me.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Character Displacement: Artificial divergence of characters in related species whose territories overlap.

  If you thought about it, the method of lighting was ingenious, not to mention environmentally friendly. Nothing necessarily new—archeologists had hit upon the same trick sometime in the late eighteen hundreds—but this had to be older by several centuries, perhaps millennia. While his fingertips stroked the shiny silver disk, Dr. Jackson studiously avoided actually looking into it. His reflection was a bit of a shocker right now. Besides, the principle of the thing was far more interesting. There were dozens and dozens of these mirrors mounted in strategic places and refracting the surface light all throughout the maze beneath the ruins.

  “Daniel!”

  He whirled around, blinking into the gloom behind him. It’d been growing steadily dimmer for a while now, which meant that it had to be late afternoon at least, perhaps evening already. They’d left the wardroom two hours ago, and he’d been on point ever since—a classic case of the blind leading the maimed. Or, as Jack had put it, Daniel might not be able to see where he the hell was going, but at least he could run there if necessary.