07 - Survival of the Fittest

by Sabine C. Bauer - (ebook by Undead)

  At the end of the corridor, two blurry figures emerged from the shadows; Jack all but carrying Sam, and never mind that it had to be murder on his ribs. “Daniel!” he called again. “Wait up!”

  “I can go faster, sir,” Sam chimed in immediately.

  “I don’t recall anybody asking your opinion, Carter.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Daniel could hear the forced cheeriness in her voice, didn’t like it. She was holding on too hard, wasting strength she didn’t have on reassuring him, herself, and first and foremost Jack. Who, by Daniel’s estimate, was about nine tenths along the way of blaming himself for the entropy of the known universe.

  At least he’d agreed to scrapping Plan A, which had been Jack going off on his own to find a sarcophagus that might not even exist or, if it did exist, might be on the other side of this godforsaken planet, while Daniel and Sam sat tight in the wardroom. The prospect of getting killed and/or eaten in the process hadn’t seemed to deter him—there was a surprise!—but what had clinched the argument in the end was the question of whether Sam would still be mobile if he had to come all the way back and then take her to wherever that hypothetical sarcophagus lived.

  “Any sign of the exit yet?” he asked when they caught up.

  “Can’t be far now. Up there.” Daniel jerked his chin at a flight of stairs twenty yards down the corridor. “We’re definitely on or near the upper levels. See how the halls are wider and more ornate? A floor down they didn’t have those wooden pillars either, so—”

  “Daniel.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just… just get us to where we’re going, okay?”

  Daniel bit back the obvious reply; namely that he didn’t have a clue where they were going. Or that the odds of his spotting an inscription saying Sarcophagus This Way with a little arrow underneath were negligible. Instead he simply nodded, turned around, and headed for the stairs, trying not to feel like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria. Everyone knew how that story went; Gandalf, consumed by a fire demon, ascends to a higher plane of existence. Not just yet, thanks all the same.

  Halfway up Daniel realized that the quality of the light had changed to something more… immediate, for want of a better word. And it was brighter, not by much but enough to be noticeable. Instinct and habit made him want to run up the steps. He curbed the impulse and checked his six.

  “Keep moving! We’re okay.”

  Jack’s definition of okay had to be the most elastic of any word in the history of linguistics, but now probably wasn’t the time to discuss it. Daniel kept moving, as ordered. About to crest the top of the steps he slowed, listening past the soft shuffles and gasps on the stairwell behind him. It was quiet, no voices, no noises of any kind. Suddenly something brushed his face. He recoiled, winced in embarrassment a second later. A draft. Seemed his nerves were stretched a little more taut than he liked to admit.

  The draft picked up, turned into a breeze, warm and heavy with the scent of flowers. He inched out into a vast room. Like everywhere else, it was decaying; wooden carvings rotting in humid air, friezes suffocating under lichen and creepers, masonry crumbling and inviting in its own destruction. Still, you could tell that the room—maybe a covered market—would have been grand once. And in one respect it was very different from the endless succession of chambers they’d passed since leaving the wardroom.

  “Looks like a parking lot,” offered Jack, lifting Sam over the last couple of steps. “Where do I pay?”

  “At the exit.” Pointing across the room, Daniel grinned.

  One wall was missing, replaced by a row of wooden pillars. Between them, sunlight splashed onto marble tiles, painting the floor a deep red. Past the pillars, grass and foliage and the gray frontage of the buildings opposite.

  “Cool. Now where?” Jack asked.

  Daniel gave a small shrug. “If they built this along the same lines as the temples in Angkor, the center of the complex is right at the top of the mountain. So we keep going up.”

  “Fine.”

  “Sir, this is pointless,” Sam murmured, eyes closed, propped up between that staff weapon and Jack’s arm around her waist. All pretense at reassurance gone, she sounded like she didn’t care anymore. Like it didn’t matter anymore. “You can’t—”

  “You’re tired, Carter.” Jack didn’t look at her when he said it. “We’ll check what’s up the road there and then take a break.”

  His tone, as falsely upbeat as Sam’s had been earlier, precluded any argument. Daniel took it as a command to move out, started walking again, through the market hall and out into the open.

  It was more than a temple precinct, he thought, desperate for something, anything, to distract himself. This had been a city once. The so-called road was a narrow stretch of lawn lined with statues, and it branched out into numerous smaller side streets. The roofs peaked into a myriad spires and pagodas, and above them rose the canopy of the forest and a lavender evening sky. Birdcalls here and there, and an overwhelming sensation of peace he’d known to be deceptive ever since he and Jack had discovered the mangled corpse on the temple wall. Still, it would do for now. There even was the far-off whisper of a waterfall, just to up the Zen factor.

  As they drew closer to the massive structure at the top of the grass road, the whisper gradually turned into splashing. The road funneled into what might have been an audience hall. Soaring ceilings, tall columns, more statues, and at the far end some kind of dais that would have held an altar or throne. Opposite the dais, pink light streamed in through an archway screened by a cascade of water. Daniel had found his waterfall.

  “Might as well rest here,” Jack announced and steered Sam over into a corner that would cover their backs while still allowing a clear view of almost the entire room. Once there, he carefully eased her to the ground and nodded at the staff weapon. “Mind if I borrow this, just in case? I’m gonna go find some fire wood. Your teeth are rattling.”

  “Sir—”

  “Thanks, Carter.” He picked up the staff and rose. “Daniel, stay with her. If I’m not back in thirty, clear out and find that goddamn sarcophagus.”

  Daniel watched him disappear among the pillars and turned to Sam. She was beyond pale, and fever and exhaustion had punched olive smudges under eyes that looked too big for her face. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it?”

  “Twelve point three,” she rasped, tried to shift to a position that didn’t hurt and eventually gave up. “You’ve got to talk to him, Daniel.”

  “I’ve got to talk to him? What makes you think he’ll listen? He hasn’t listened to you, has he?” Daniel squatted and offered Sam his canteen. She took it, drank greedily, handed it back.

  “Thanks. And no, he hasn’t. Last time I tried, he started talking about hockey and some highly involved maneuver he called a fishhook. I lost track after the third preparatory pass.”

  It coaxed a chuckle from Daniel. “I can explain it to you if you’re interested. Side-effect of watching one too many hockey games with Jack.” His amusement faded, as if evaporating in the jungle heat.

  “Right now he’s about as amenable to reason as Colonel Kurtz. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this.”

  “I have,” Sam said quietly.

  Daniel shot her a sharp look. He couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t been there, but he could guess, and he suddenly understood the origins of his own certainty that he wouldn’t die out here as long as Jack was around. Jack would flatly refuse to let him die. Of course, there were limits even to Jack’s powers of refusal. Right now Daniel was staring at one of them.

  Sam had unwrapped the bandage to reveal a wound looking twice as bad as it had a few hours ago. Around the edges blisters had formed, filled with brownish fluid, and she inspected them, sick fascination on her face. “I guess that clinches it,” she muttered, one finger carefully pressing down on the swollen tissue. Gas escaped, crackling softly, and she flinched. “Think he’d listen to that?”

  Wi
th sudden determination, she angled for her backpack, fished out the medikit, removed an ampoule of morphine and a syringe.

  “Sam, what are you doing?”

  By ways of an answer, she snapped the top off the ampoule, dipped in the needle, pulled back the plunger, popped the cap back over the needle and dropped the syringe in her lap. Then she fumbled for her belt, dragged it from the loops, and cinched it around her thigh.

  Finally, she gazed up at him. “I could do with a hand, Daniel. For starters, that tourniquet’s nowhere near tight enough.”

  The sudden lump in his throat got in the way of replying. Of course she was right. Thirty seconds ago he’d have said it was the only sensible thing to do. But being faced with it somehow put a different complexion on the issue. He could hear the wails of a child on Abydos, and his stomach flipped. “Sam, are you absolutely sure?” he croaked. All of a sudden Jack’s crazy notion of looking for a sarcophagus seemed entirely logical. “What if… What about your career?”

  God, Jackson! You’re really clutching at straws, aren’t you?

  “Medical separation. Are you going to help me or what?” She cocked her head, studied him for a moment. “Look, Daniel, I know this isn’t fair. But I don’t want the Colonel to have to do it.”

  Which, fair or not, precisely coincided with Daniel’s own sentiments. He took a deep breath, willed his hands to stop shaking.

  “Okay. Where’s your knife?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Conrad.” Outside the ambulance, the detective apologized for the tenth time. Next the obsequious creep would offer to lick Conrad’s boots. “We, uh… There were rumors that you’d, uh, passed away, sir.”

  “Do I look like a ghost to you, detective?” Conrad laughed, a perfect mock-up of the real item, and slapped the man’s shoulder for emphasis.

  “No, sir.” Dutifully, the detective chortled. Then he slid another withering glare at the two beat cops who’d been summoned to the scene by a neighbor with acute hearing and had proceeded to arrest Simmons and his pet Goa’uld.

  Simmons devoutly hoped that the pair would end up directing traffic for the rest of their natural lives. He shifted on the gurney, just as the paramedic inserted a probe into the wound canal. “Ow! Goddammit, watch what you’re doing!”

  “Sorry, sir.” Blushing, the woman steadied his arm. “The lidocaine should be working by now. I can give you another shot, but you really ought to let us take you to the ER.”

  “No! I haven’t got time for that. Just get the hell on with it.”

  The only glimmer of satisfaction Simmons could wring from the situation was the fact that Maybourne, son of a bitch that he was, had managed a clean shot. The bullet had gone in and out, missing the bone, and CSI had found the damn thing embedded in the tunnel wall. What they hadn’t found, thankfully, was his own Glock. The gun might have detracted a little from the surprisingly convincing tale Conrad had spun to the police.

  Speaking of… Through the open doors of the ambulance, Simmons had been able to admire the red and blue lightshow the police cruisers projected onto the facade of St.-Christina’s. Now the detective’s stocky shape interposed itself between him and the vista.

  “You alright, sir?” The detective, clearly one of Seattle’s finest, screwed on a solicitous face.

  “I got shot in the arm! How do you think I am?”

  “Uh, sir?” The man climbed aboard. “Mr. Conrad has cleared up the, uh, misunderstanding and filled us in on what happened, but I’ll need a statement from you, too, sir.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” Just as long as it took his mind off the paramedic’s clumsy ministrations. A flash from somewhere beyond the police cordon exploded in his eyes, and Simmons swore. His portrait plastered all over the six o’clock news was the last thing he needed. At least they hadn’t spotted Conrad. Yet. “For God’s sake, get those vultures out of here! Now!”

  At the detective’s nod a bunch of his minions descended on the representatives of the media and drove them from sight and earshot. “Alright then.” He perched on the gurney opposite. “So you’re Mr. Simmons. Mr. Frank Simmons?”

  “Colonel.”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Colonel Frank Simmons. And no, I’m not in uniform, but then I don’t usually wear it to bed either.”

  “Ah. Sorry. And your employer is…?

  “A government agency.”

  The detective was starting to look pleasantly pained. “Which agency would that be, sir? There were a few dozen of them last time I checked.”

  “That’s classified.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What I do and who I work for is classified, Detective. Can we leave it at that?”

  “For now, sir.” Head bent, the man scribbled something on his notepad. The overhead light illuminated flakes of dandruff sprinkled over greased-back black hair. “So, tell me, Colonel. What were you doing in the old hospital?”

  “Mr. Conrad was giving me a tour of the premises. You do realize that the hospital is his property?”

  “Yeah, we know that. Still doesn’t explain what you were doing there, sir. Not at that time of the night and in the basement of all places.” Apparently Mr. Detective was smarter than he looked.

  Fine. Simmons made a show of waving away the paramedic who’d just put the finishing touches to the bandage around his arm. Then he sat up and leaned forward until his face was inches from the policeman’s and he could smell breath laced with coffee, donuts, and pepperoni pizza. “Detective,” he whispered. “I’m not supposed to divulge this to you or anybody else, but in the interest of clearing up this matter I’m willing to reveal certain information that is highly classified. Can I trust you to keep this information to yourself?”

  The detective returned a slow, bovine stare and finally nodded.

  “Mr. Conrad’s company is carrying out some research and development for the Pentagon. Part of this research is being conducted at St. Christina’s Hospital.”

  “In the basement?”

  “Mr. Conrad was showing me the ventilation system that serves two of the laboratories. And that’s all I can tell you I’m afraid.”

  This time it seemed to have worked. No more probing in that direction. Instead the detective scratched an old pockmark on his cheek and said, “Fair enough. But see, it still doesn’t add up, Colonel. Mr. Conrad thinks the two men who attacked you in the basement were addicts looking for prescription drugs. Now, if I were in those guys’ shoes, the basement’d be the last place I look.”

  Simmons gathered his injured arm and placed the hand in his lap. Hopefully the local anesthetic would wear off soon. He’d rather deal with the pain than with a limb that felt dead like a prosthesis and wouldn’t move unless he manipulated it. Pushing aside his discomfort, he dredged up a smile, finely judged, midway between understanding and condescension. “Look, Detective, don’t get me wrong. I have the highest respect for Mr. Conrad. In his field he’s a genius, no doubt about it. However, he’s also a recluse. Which means that he can be a little naive when it comes to the kind of thing you and I deal with on a daily basis. Those men weren’t junkies. For starters they were well outside the usual age bracket.” Simmons blew out a breath for effect. “I also recognized one of them.”

  “Come again?” The detective snapped upright on the gurney, all but shivering with excitement.

  “The man who shot me is a former colonel in the US Air Force, convicted on high treason and espionage charges. About two years ago he managed to escape from Leavenworth. His name is Harry Maybourne, but he also goes by Charles Bliss and a string of other aliases. Odds are he was trying to find out about the research Conrad is doing for us.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “Never seen him before, but you may safely assume that he’s no choirboy. Somebody like Maybourne doesn’t waste his time with amateurs.”

  “Yeah. Reckon you’re right on that one, sir. We’ll send out an APB.”

  “Well, if there’s nothing else…” Simmons
’ tone left no doubt that there was to be nothing else. He eased himself off the gurney, grateful to find that standing up posed less of a problem than he’d imagined.

  Pocketing his notebook and other paraphernalia, the detective got up too. “I’ll get a car to take you and Mr. Conrad wherever you’re going.”

  “That will not be necessary. I have a driver on standby.” The voice sounded relaxed and came from the rear of the ambulance. Conrad stood leaning against the door, one hand extended. “Here, Colonel. Let me help you.”

  The Goa’uld grabbed Simmons’ left biceps, harder than necessary and smiling in the knowledge that there would be no protest in front of witnesses. He was playing mind games again. Driven by a brief surge of panic, Simmons meant to reach for the remote that controlled the naquadah collar, then it dawned on him that he was defenseless. The remote was in his right pocket, to be activated by a right arm that currently dangled from his shoulder like a lump of cold flesh.

  Conrad’s smile broadened. “Mind your step,” he said, guiding Simmons down from the ambulance. “Do not worry, we shall not have to go far. The vehicle is waiting at the next corner.”

  One piece of good news. Simmons’ NID agents had had the smarts to clear out and wait on the sidelines as soon as they’d heard the police sirens. The only ones to get caught had been he and Conrad, who’d come to look for him in the basement.

  Simmons and his escort passed the police cordon. As soon as they were out of earshot, he yanked his arm free. “Don’t ever dare to touch me again!”

  In the red light strobing from the cruisers, Conrad’s face looked truly alien. “As you wish,” he whispered, still smiling.

  “And you’d better remember it!” Simmons headed for the SUV at the corner, forcing himself not to run. Behind him he could hear Conrad’s footfalls, their steadiness seeming to mock him.