by Crane, J. F.
AND THE LIGHT OF THE SUN SHALL SCOUR EVIL FROM THE LAND—Sunrise, Chapter Three, Year One.
But it was the words on the other side that provoked a sudden thrill of adventure. She stuffed the note into her pocket. “We’ve got to find the Colonel and Daniel. Now.”
Chapter Three
Daniel reached the bottom of the box and paused for a moment, staring at the empty plastic container. By its side, on the desk, the magazines sat in a neat pile, being fussed over by their archivist.
And if that wasn’t a misnomer he didn’t know what was.
He took in a slow breath, held it for a beat, then let it out carefully. Patience wasn’t exactly his strong suit, not when it came to history—or, more pertinently, to the destruction of the very fabric of history. “Tell me,” he said, lifting his gaze from the box and running his eyes over the shelves in the so called library, “are these magazines all that are kept here?”
Liam blinked at him, eyes twitching. He was hiding something. “We also keep copies of each chapter, of course.”
“What about other books?” Daniel pressed. “Ah, stories? Fables? Accounts of things that happened before…” He floundered for a moment.
“Before the Flood?” Liam offered.
“Yes!” He stood up straight, almost knocking over the stack of magazines in his eagerness. “Exactly. Before the flood.”
“There is nothing,” Ennis cut in. “It was a time of sin that has been long scoured away.”
“But there must be something,” Daniel protested. “Some records or—”
“I said there is nothing!” There was no mistaking the anger in Ennis’s voice, nor the edge of threat. His hands were clasped before him, twisted tight together, and in the light of the fading sun Daniel saw sweat beading on the man’s wide forehead. “Such matters,” Ennis said in a more collected tone, “are only for the Elect.”
“The Elect.” Jack shifted where he stood, his attention switching from Daniel to Ennis. “And who put them in charge? I’m gonna take a wild guess that the Elect weren’t actually elected.”
“We,” Ennis replied, chin lifting, “are elected by God to lead our people. Our seats are handed down through generations.”
“Right.” Jack eyed him for a moment, but didn’t say anymore.
A hereditary council then. Daniel had difficulty picturing Rhionna Channon taking on the role of Pastor some day.
Jack took a step toward the table and thumbed a copy of the magazine. Liam sucked a breath between his teeth and his hand twitched towards Jack’s arm, but he didn’t dare stop him. “Let me get this straight.” Jack’s comment was directed at Daniel. “This is a library of TV Guides?”
Letting out a controlled sigh, Daniel looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Bread and circuses,” Jack muttered, dropping the magazine back onto the desk. Liam reached for it, smoothing his hands over the cover. “We’re not gonna find—”
“Colonel O’Neill.” Sam’s voice crackled from Jack’s radio, making both Ennis and Liam start. “Do you copy, sir?”
Jack toggled his radio with obvious relief. Clearly, this high up, the signal could get through. “What’s up, Carter?”
There was a pause, and then, “Any luck at the library, sir?”
“It’s a bust. How’s the après-church party?”
“Interesting, sir. Teal’c and I are headed your way, ETA about twelve minutes. I’ll give you a sit-rep then.”
Jack shared a look with Daniel. “We’ll meet you outside. O’Neill out.” He shifted his stance toward Ennis as suspicion crawled across the man’s face. Sam hadn’t said much, which probably meant she had something to tell them—something she didn’t want Ennis Channon to hear. “Apparently Carter and Teal’c want to see the sights too.”
“Your words are strange,” Ennis said. There was a meaningful pause, and then, “The Sungate is not far; I can have you escorted there if you wish to depart.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “What Jack’s trying to say, Pastor, is that we’d like to look around some more—if that’s okay with you. If the shield we’re looking for did once exist here, we might be able to retrieve some of the technology and that could help both our peoples.”
“Look around you,” Ennis said. “My people are not in need of assistance.”
“But mine are,” Daniel persisted. “And if we can make it work, the shield could help us defend ourselves against a terrible enemy. We found a device on–”
“Daniel…” There was a warning note in Jack’s voice, but Daniel ignored it. You had to throw a little bait to catch a fish. Jack should know that.
Ennis’s eyes turned sharp with fear. “Device? What device?”
“We think it’s a fix, a way of making the shield work.”
“And you have it with you? You have brought it here?”
“No,” Jack lied, before Daniel could answer. “No, it’s still back on Acarsaid Dorch, where we found it.”
Liam had been replacing his magazines into the plastic box with a reverence Daniel recognized, but at the mention of Acarsaid Dorch his hand stuttered like a CD skipping mid-track, and his breathing hitched in a half-swallowed gasp. Interesting.
“You are a stranger here,” Ennis said into the silence that followed, “and so cannot know that speaking of the Other Place is forbidden to any but the Elect. It was a place of apostasy, and memory of what occurred there has been burned from the lips and minds of our people.”
Jack fixed him with an appraising look. “Has it?”
Ennis said nothing, his expression closed and defensive. Trust Jack to push it too far. Silence mushroomed between them until, with an intake of breath, Ennis said, “I must bring this matter before the Elect. You will remain until I do so.”
“Sure. Why not?” To Daniel’s ears, Jack’s reply sounded more like ‘The Hell we will!’ But Ennis seemed satisfied and bowed his head.
“I shall take my leave,” he said, clearly trying to hide his anxiety, but the half-strangled voice and sheen of sweat on his face gave him away. “I must return to the Chapel before the Elect depart. Professor Kermit will see to your needs until I send men to escort you back to the Council chamber.”
“Oh, I bet he will.” Jack offered a crocodile smile and waited, stock still, until the elevator doors shut behind Ennis. Then turned to Daniel, the smile falling away. “We’re outta here. Now.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Now?”
“Kermit, where’re the stairs?”
Liam looked up, blinking. “Stairs? Through that door, but there are a great many and I should really—”
“Daniel—now.”
Refusing to jump like a raw recruit, he turned to the archivist. “Ah, we appreciate you showing us your records,” he said. “And if you do come across anything—you know, maybe something old tucked away somewhere—anything that mentions the Sciath Dé, please contact us.”
Liam’s expression tightened again, and he didn’t answer, just watched. His teeth were clamped together hard enough to make a muscle jump in his jaw. And as Daniel turned to follow Jack out the door, he could feel Liam’s eyes on his back, boring into him until he stepped into the musty corridor and let the heavy door swing shut behind him. The staircase was situated at the end of the hallway, beneath a window dusty in the fading daylight. Jack was already heading down.
Daniel hurried after him. “And we’re taking the stairs because…?”
“Because Carter and Teal’c have some intel, and I wanna be out of here before Caulder’s goons show up.”
There was silence. Daniel hesitated, then said it anyway. “Ennis.”
“What?”
Jack didn’t look around, but Daniel could see the tense set of his shoulders. He almost wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “It’s Ennis’s goons, you said, ‘Caulder.’”
Administrator Caulder, a man so blinkered by the need for survival that he’d enslaved half his population to keep the oth
er half safe. Even at the end, after they’d shattered the lies and broken through to the world above, Caulder hadn’t understood what he’d done wrong.
I was protecting my people—our civilization. Would you do different?
“Just keep walking,” Jack said, not commenting on his slip of the tongue. “The sooner we get out of here the better, I don’t trust any of these bastards.”
“No,” Daniel sighed. “You never do.”
* * *
It was a strange sunset, Sam thought, as she and Teal’c made their way through the empty streets. The light was so diffuse that half the sky gleamed a misty orange, but there was no cloud strata within the dome to make it spectacular, nothing but a gentle fade from white to apricot to nightfall. There was something sterile about it, something that made Sam want to take a deep breath of wild, clean air. It reminded her too much of a different domed city, holding out against the ice. And she wondered what this city was hiding from—and what secrets it kept.
“Major Carter.” Teal’c stopped dead, poised like a cat on the hunt. “Movement ahead.”
Following the direction of his gaze, she saw it too. A flicker of a shadow in one of the side streets, close to an ugly gray building. She eased her zat out of its holster and, with a glance at Teal’c, moved into the shadows. Teal’c did the same, his steady presence behind her feeling like a solid wall. She’d missed him, she realized, during the weeks she’d been Thera. She’d missed this sturdy counterpoint to Daniel’s bright passion and the colonel’s mercurial temper. Perhaps that was why the team had flown apart in the power plant, because Teal’c hadn’t been there to anchor them.
Daylight was fading fast now, the speed of the sunset suggesting they were located close to the equator of the planet. Holding up a fist, she signaled Teal’c to stay back while she approached the corner of the street. She flattened herself against the wall, waited and listened. In the distance, she could hear the jangle of Sunrise music coming from one of the many screens, and, underlying that, the thump-thump of booted feet. Military, without a doubt, just like the building in front of her, with its slit windows and bunker-style ground floor. Sounded like Tynan Camus had figured out they’d gone AWOL.
Then, around the corner, she heard what might have been the whisper of fabric moving, the slightest scuff of a boot. Time to make her move.
Zat held in both hands, she snapped from cover, feet braced and finger tight on the trigger.
“Damnit Carter!” The colonel’s P90 swung away from her, just as she lifted her own weapon.
“Sorry, sir.”
Behind him, Daniel said, “A little jumpy, guys?”
“Enemy territory,” the colonel snapped.
“You don’t know that.”
“Daniel…”
“Colonel O’Neill is correct,” Teal’c said, rounding the corner to join them. “There is much we do not understand about this world; we must proceed with caution.”
Daniel held up his hands in defeat. “So, what did you find out?”
“Well, for a start,” Sam said, “I spoke with Rhionna Channon—Ennis’s daughter. She certainly has no love for the Elect, and she says she needs our help.”
“Here we go.” The colonel angrily kicked his boot against the wall. “This is always how it starts.”
“Ah, because this is why we do the job?” Daniel’s brow beetled, his hands plunged into his pockets. In the fading light, the lenses of his glasses gleamed bronze. “What kind of help?”
Sam shook her head. “She didn’t say.”
“Okay, first,” the colonel said, prowling back toward them, “this is not why we do the job. We’re not the Intergalactic Red Cross! Second—”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap about standing orders!” Daniel said. “Weapons technology isn’t the only reason—”
“Defense technology,” the colonel said, “is the only reason we came here. We’re here for the shield. That’s it.”
“But if they’re asking for our help…”
“I didn’t hear anyone asking.”
Daniel shook his head, and Sam took advantage of the pause to jump in. “Actually, sir, Rhionna also implied that she knows something about the shield.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out the scrawled map the woman had pressed into her hand. “The note says to meet her here, after dark.”
The colonel scowled at the paper and after a long moment snatched it from Sam’s hand. “And if we help her, she’ll tell us what she knows.”
“That was the implication, sir.”
He looked up from the map, met her eyes through the dusky light. “You trust her?”
Which meant it was her call, her responsibility. She held his gaze. “Yes sir, I think I do.”
“Colonel O’Neill,” Teal’c said, half turned back the way they’d come. “Men are approaching. If we wish to meet with Rhionna Channon we must evade them. I do not believe Pastor Channon would permit us to talk with his daughter.”
“He’s right,” Sam said. “I got the distinct impression that she’s persona non grata among the Elect—especially with that guy, Camus.”
“Which is probably a good sign,” Daniel chimed in, hands still deep in his pockets. “Maybe she really does have some useful information.”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Sam agreed. She glanced over at O’Neill. “Sir?”
He was studying the map, memorizing it, then scrunched up the paper in his fist. “Okay, we meet with her and see what she has to say. But that’s all. We are not—repeat, not—gonna get dragged into another mercy mission.”
Sam just nodded. Daniel scowled, but wisely held his tongue.
“The men are coming from the direction of the Chapel,” Teal’c said, choosing to ignore the tension. “I suggest we head in the opposite direction.”
In silence they moved out. Teal’c taking point and the colonel covering their six, they melted into the shadows of the empty city.
* * *
The ritual of dinner on Third Night had long been a pretence of normalcy on the part of Rhionna Channon and her father. Their conflicts, both personal and political, were left outside for the duration of the meal, and by some unspoken agreement, their relationship returned to the happy, settled state they had known before. Before she had started questioning the Ark and its purpose. Before she had begun to see the world as it truly was. Before she had been to the Cove.
During their dinners together, for just a few hours, it was as if nothing had changed. Her father was just her father, and her love for him was untainted by the new truths to which her eyes had been opened.
Tonight, though, that fragile peace had been shattered, and it was because the strangers had come. Rhionna toyed with her food, now as cold as the atmosphere in the room. At the other end of the table her father had finished his meal, though he looked to have enjoyed it no more than she, and she guessed that he had forced every bite down his throat just to prove a point. All is as it was, his actions said, all will remain as it was. The strangers will learn nothing and they will leave. Our lives will continue on as they have always done.
But Rhionna could not let the strangers leave having learned nothing. Every instinct told her that those four people had not only the power to help her, they had the courage too. She remembered the sullen challenge in the eye of their leader, Colonel O’Neill, and the hopeful questioning of the one who had introduced himself as Daniel Jackson. It was a tenuous optimism, but one she clung to. Change had to come for Ierna’s people. Of that, at least, she was certain.
“Is the food not to your liking, Rhionna? I can have something else prepared if you wish.” Her father smiled, though the expression was brittle. It was clear that he had no intention of acknowledging the tension in the room. Things unspoken. It was the way of the Ark, and Ennis Channon was a loyal follower.
“It’s not the food that isn’t to my liking, Father.”
He looked away and took a sip of his wine before saying, “I have no wish to listen to
your complaints tonight, girl.”
She gave a gasp of laughter. “Complaints? You make me sound like a surly child! This is more than a temper tantrum.”
“Well, that’s certainly what it sounded like this evening.” Her father finally let some of his anger show through.
Rhionna sighed and sat back. The scene she had caused at the chapter had been unfortunate, the public argument with Tynan Camus and the players doing her cause more harm than good—the people of the Ark already considered her something of an oddity—but it had been a necessary diversion to allow Major Carter and Teal’c to escape. She could only hope that the tactic had worked, that the strangers would meet with her as she had requested in her note. “I have apologized for that. It was ill-judged.”
“Your behavior embarrasses me, Rhionna. It embarrasses the Elect.”
“Damn the Elect!”
Ennis jerked to his feet. His wine glass clattered across the table, leaving a trail of red droplets in its wake. “Your words are blasphemy, girl!”
“Why? Are the Elect divine now? Have they finally achieved the state to which they have aspired for so long?”
“There is but one God.”
“Oh, Father, spare me the platitudes.”
Ennis took a breath and resumed his seat. “If you would ever come to hear the Message you would not think them platitudes. Why do you persist in opposing God’s will?”
“I have no wish to discuss theology with you this evening, Father,” she said, weary of the tired argument. “Sometimes I think that even you do not believe half the things you say.”
“It is the Message. It is our law.”
“It needn’t be.”
“There is no other way.”
“Because no one has looked for it!”
Her father shook his head. “Rhionna, my child, I fear for you. I fear for what’s to become of you. Not as your Pastor, but as your father. I don’t know why you continue along such a dangerous path. You must see the futility of it. Why are you so intent on saving those who are beyond salvation?”
“Because I don’t believe that they are. And you may call it heresy. I call it humanity. I don’t understand how you can turn from the truth.”
