“Because we don’t have anything to waste,” Jack began, and then broke off. “See? We won’t have to worry about it.”
Carter squinted into the sun. An older woman was coming toward them, a basket topped with leaves tucked under her arm. She was scowling, and Jack’s cheerful greeting didn’t seem to improve her mood. Danyel interjected something that sounded polite, and got an elbow in the ribs for his pains. After a minute, though, the woman nodded, and handed over the basket. Danyel fumbled in his own basket, and handed Jack a pouch. Jack produced a couple of baked-clay tablets and the woman took them with a nod and a genuine-looking smile. She moved away, calling something over her shoulder that Danyel translated as, “The true gods bring you luck.”
“So what was that about?” Carter asked.
Jack peeked under the leaves, then tucked them back into place. “We’re going to go sell Ra some fish, Colonel.”
“Apparently not very many of the palace’s usual suppliers want to go there,” Danyel said. “There are all kinds of rumors about the Jaffa locking people up for no good reason.”
“And do we know that won’t happen to us?” Carter asked. She didn’t think she liked this plan very much at all.
“It’s just a rumor,” Danyel said. “She didn’t know anyone it had actually happened to, and she said her sister earned a beaded necklace doing laundry just yesterday.”
“We hope,” Carter said. “Can’t we just sneak in the way we did before?”
“That doesn’t take us to the right places,” Jack said. “Besides, these are very good fish.”
There were half a dozen Jaffa on duty at the palace’s main gate, and she saw Jack give them a measuring glance before he approached, holding out his basket. Carter kept her head down and did her best to look like a servant while they haggled, and then the team leader waved them through the gate.
“We’re to go straight to the kitchen buildings,” Danyel said under his breath. “And not hang around.”
“OK.” It look an effort not to look over her shoulder, but Carter managed it, though her shoulder blades tingled in anticipation of a staff blast. To her surprise, the palace compound was relatively free of Jaffa. There were guards at the entrance to the palace itself, of course, and more moving in and out of the pyramid, but most of the people she saw were human, scurrying back and forth without meeting each other’s eyes. The Queen Mother had agents here, she remembered, and hoped no one else would recognize them.
At the kitchen door, Jack lifted his voice in a nasal cry that made Danyel roll his eyes.
“It’s a traditional fisherman’s call,” he said. “Jack gets a kick out of it.”
“Hey, it works,” Jack said, and turned to smile at the buxom woman who appeared in the doorway. “Hey, Merymaat, want to buy some fine fresh fish?”
The woman’s painted eyebrows rose. “O’Neill —” She broke off, shaking her head, and beckoned them inside. Even in the kitchen’s antechamber, it was sweltering, and the air was heavy with baking bread and what smelled a lot like roast chicken. Jack said something, still grinning, and Danyel translated.
“He’s asking Merymaat what she knows about the young queen. And Aset and Teal’c.”
The woman took the basket, automatically checking over the fish as she spoke.
“She says she doesn’t know anything about a new god, nor has she seen Teal’c, but if we want to know about the queen —” Danyel stopped, gave Jack a sharp and disapproving look. “Apparently Jack and I can take her dinner as soon as it’s ready.”
“Sir,” Carter said.
“Have you got a better idea?” Jack asked, and she shook her head.
“Not at the moment. But I’m working on it.”
Chapter Twenty-three
There wasn’t much to do but wait. Danyel settled himself cross-legged on the floor in the antechamber, thanking Merymaat for the bread and oil and lentils that she dished up from the palace stores. Ra was banqueting tonight, Merymaat said, with food brought from the mothership rather than from her kitchen. She claimed to be just as glad, though Danyel suspected she took it as an insult, too. But tonight there were just the duty Jaffa and the human servants to be fed. And the prisoners. Jack flirted idly as he ate, earning a rap on the shoulder with the heavy wooden spoon that was Merymaat’s unofficial badge of office, and then at last the queen’s meal was ready, covered bowls and rounds of bread packed neatly into a basket.
“I’ll go,” Danyel said firmly.
“We’ll both go,” Jack said, with equal force.
“Carter doesn’t speak the language,” Danyel pointed out. “One of us ought to stay with her.”
“Merymaat speaks a little English,” Jack answered.
That was true, they’d taught all their operatives some English in the first days of the rebellion, protection against being overheard or betrayed. Merymaat had been with them then, an assistant cook who’d lost a child to the Goa’uld, a boy of fifteen taken as a host. Her son was lost, of course, but there had been others who were saved…
“I remember still,” she said, in English, and included Carter in her smile. She held out the basket. “You go now.”
Carter looked as though she still wanted to protest, but Jack stared her down. Danyel took the basket, and Jack hoisted the jar of beer onto his shoulder.
“Back in a few,” he said, and stepped out into the gathering dusk.
Danyel followed him across the dusty courtyard, head down, the basket heavy in his hands. There were a pair of Jaffa at the door of the overseer’s house, and one of them frowned at Jack’s approach.
“You’re new.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I just got back — I’d been hiding, after the gods were driven out, and it’s really good to be back again. Good to see you all back.”
Don’t overdo it, Jack. Danyel kept his head down, the basket under his arm. But at least the queen might hear, and recognize their voices, not be surprised by their sudden appearance, which was probably why Jack was doing it.
“Nice to see that someone appreciates us,” the other Jaffa said, in his own language, and pointed to Danyel. “You. Open the basket.”
Danyel whisked off the lid, let the Jaffa poke through the various dishes. The first Jaffa shook the beer jug, and stepped back, waving them inside.
“We’ll wait and take the dishes back,” Jack said, and the first Jaffa nodded.
“Yes, I know. Go on.”
It was dark in the overseer’s house, and the air was stale, smelling of lamp oil and sweat. Shadows moved on the far side of the room, resolved as Danyel’s eyes adjusted into the queen and the two little boys. She had the younger at her breast, nursing, but the elder glared at them from the shelter of her skirts. Her eyes widened, and Jack put his finger to his lips.
“Keep it down, and I think we’ll be all right,” he said, softly.
“I should have known,” she said, with a laugh that almost broke into a sob. “And Pharaoh?”
“Safe and well,” Danyel said. He busied himself setting out the dishes, clattered the pottery so that the guards would hear something familiar. “He sent us to rescue you.”
“Thank the true gods,” she breathed. “Tell me what to do.”
“Well, that’s what I’m not sure of,” Jack said. He moved from window to window, peering through the cracks in the shutters. “How many guards are there?”
“Just those two,” the queen answered, and filled a plate for the older boy. “At least that I have seen. The back door is barred, I can see that through the cracks, but I don’t hear anyone posted there. I believe it could be opened without anyone seeing you.”
“And that doesn’t strike you as a little odd?” Jack came back to join them, accepted the cup the queen held out to him.
“It does,” she said. “But there are not as many Jaffa as before, and I do not think they intend to keep us here much longer. I’m willing to take the chance.”
“Aset and Teal’c sent word that this i
s a trap,” Danyel said. He looked at Jack. “Well?”
Jack shrugged. “The armory overlooks this house, it would be easy to put an observer there. I don’t see one, but I wouldn’t expect to.”
“So — we try it?” Danyel went to the rear door. “The hinges are on this side, we wouldn’t have to get the bars off.”
Jack shook his head. “Teal’c says it’s a trap, and I believe him. Let’s make sure we know what we’re up against before we risk the kids.” He looked back at the queen. “How often do the guards come in here, search the place?”
“Never,” she answered. “As I said, I don’t believe they intend to keep us here much longer.”
“And we’re not going to leave you here, either,” Jack said. “Trust me.”
“She has a point,” Danyel said. “If Ra moves them to the mothership — even if this is a trap, it’s going to be easier to deal with that than getting them out of the pyramid.”
Jack was rummaging under one of the couches, came up with a sturdy-looking staff. It was no ornamental badge of office, Danyel thought, but as thick as his wrist and banded in bronze.
“See, finding stuff like this doesn’t make me feel good about the situation,” Jack said. “No way the Jaffa would leave that here unless it was a trap.”
“They have staff weapons,” Danyel pointed out. “I’m not thinking a big stick is going to worry them much.”
“You’re just arguing,” Jack said, and the other man sighed.
“Yeah. I know. You’re probably right, but —”
“Let’s get the hinges off if we can,” Jack said. “That’ll give us an extra option. And then I think we need to talk to Teal’c.”
Danyel nodded. “How much more time do we have?” he said, to the queen, and she shrugged.
“You had better hurry.”
Between the staff and the commando knife Jack had carried beneath his shenti, they managed to carve out the mud brick around the pins that held the strap hinge in place. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, Danyel thought, kicking and smoothing the fragments of broken brick out of sight against the base of the wall, but if the queen was right and the Jaffa didn’t look too closely, they might just get away with it. And it wouldn’t take much of an effort to pull the hinges free — the queen herself could probably do it, if she had to.
“You in there!”
Jack swore under his breath, and Danyel dropped to his knees beside the table just as the main door flew open.
“Are you finished, lady?” the Jaffa demanded.
The queen gave him a wounded look. “Nearly. May I be permitted to feed my children?”
The Jaffa gave them a searching glance, and Danyel slid his hand under the low table, his fingers closing over the heavy staff.
“A little longer,” the Jaffa said then, and pulled the door closed behind him.
“OK,” Danyel said, after a moment. “That wasn’t right.”
“Nope,” Jack said. He looked back at the queen. “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to get you out of here. We’ll figure out how to break this trap, and then we’ll be back.”
“I believe you,” the queen said, but her voice wobbled just a fraction on the words.
As far as Cam could see the puddle jumper was in good shape. It was parked in a tight ravine on the edge of the desert on what would eventually be known as the Saqqara Plateau. Daniel had said that in a few hundred years this site would hold the tombs of Hor-Aha’s descendants, incredibly rich archaeological sites where the movie camera that the alternate team had buried had finally come to light, the message from the past that had begun all this, at least as far as Cam’s stream of history knew.
Now it was nothing. There was bare rock with a few lonely thorn bushes clinging to it, a vista that looked out over desert on one side and the unbelievably green river valley on the other side, marshes clinging to the edges of the Nile like a fringe.
The jumper was cloaked but right where Sam said it would be. She walked confidently up to it, holding her hands out in front of her like a mime, touching the edges of something invisible.
Carolyn looked doubtful. “It’s there?”
“It’s here,” Sam said, taking her hand and putting it against a surface they couldn’t see. “Right there.”
Carolyn nodded. “OK.”
“Just think about it being visible,” Sam said. “That’s what Jack does.”
Carolyn frowned, closing her eyes, her mouth moving as though she whispered only to herself. For a long moment nothing happened, and then there was a shimmer like a heat mirage above the surface of a road on a long, hot day. Under her hands the puddle jumper decloaked, smooth metal resting against her fingertips. Carolyn squeezed her eyes shut, an unbelievable look of peace suddenly crossing her face.
“What is it?” Vala said.
She smiled, opening her eyes. “It just feels really good.”
“Maybe it likes you,” Vala said.
“Maybe so,” Sam said seriously. “Jack says that Ancient things have personalities. That it’s weird how they respond to people.” She shrugged. “He said the jumper never really liked him. It acted like an old horse with a flaky rider.”
“I think it likes me,” Carolyn said, running her hand along its side as the tailgate came down slowly. The lines of stress that had bracketed her mouth since they rescued her were gone. Cam and the others followed her into the jumper, the tailgate rising quietly behind them. There was a soft sound as the ventilation systems came on, the hot desert air being replaced by the cool breeze of air conditioning. Lights came on, the control board coming to life as Carolyn slid into the pilot’s chair.
Cam sat down beside her in the copilot’s position. “OK,” he said. “You’ve flown a jumper before, right?”
“Only once,” she said. “And that was with a Tok’ra holding a gun to my head.” Carolyn ran her hands over the control surfaces. “It was kind of dicey.”
“Well, this will be a lot nicer,” Cam said. He was a good trainer. He’d had a lot of people who were nervous in the chair the first time. “So take some time, familiarize yourself with the controls, relax, don’t hurry.” Once they got in the air it would be about two minutes back, so there was no need to have his pants on fire right now. “Just take some time to figure out how everything works and how the systems work for you.”
Sam and Vala sat down behind him, Sam looking over his shoulder interestedly. “What’s that light?” she asked.
Vala squinted, no doubt trying to read the Ancient.
“I think it’s something in communications,” Carolyn said. She frowned as though thinking at it, asking the jumper to show her something. A cascade of blue lights appeared, letters displayed against the inside of the windscreen, Ancient letters dancing like falling water. “I think it’s saying that the jumper has seventeen incoming messages waiting.” Carolyn looked sideways at Cam. “How could that be possible? We just got here with the other jumper a couple of days ago, and if General O’Neill just sent us a message surely he’d send one, not seventeen?”
Cam glanced back at Vala and saw the same thought in her eyes, though of course she voiced it first. “Maybe there are Ancients on Earth,” she said. “And they’ve been calling.”
There was a pair of Jaffa waiting at the kitchen door. “Oh, crap,” Jack said, but it was too late, the path too exposed, for them to turn back without attracting unwanted attention. He pasted on his most guileless smile, and kept walking toward the door, Danyel at his heels.
“Was there a problem with dinner?” he asked, and he could almost feel Danyel wince.
The nearest Jaffa frowned, but before he could say anything, a familiar figure loomed behind him.
“You,” Teal’c said. “The lady will speak with you. Now.”
Danyel made a graceful bow. “Yes. At once. Absolutely.”
“Both of you,” Teal’c said. His face was set in his usual impassive stare, but Jack through he detected a glimmer of humor in the big
man’s eyes. “You will keep a civil tongue in your head, too.”
You’ve just been waiting to say that, haven’t you? Jack swallowed the words, and managed a polite bow. “Right away. Yes.”
“The woman, too,” Teal’c said. “Perhaps these will please the lady.”
Jack set his jar down inside the door. Carter came to join them, her face carefully controlled, and they followed Teal’c back across the courtyard, the other Jaffa at their heels. They were heading toward the palace, Jack realized, and hoped none of the other guards remembered him. He kept his head down, and they passed into the maze of corridors without anyone raising the alarm. They were heading for the Queen Mother’s rooms, but of course that was where Ra would house his fellow deity. The doors swung open at their approach, and Teal’c dipped his head.
“I bring more servants for your consideration, Lady.”
“Excellent.” It was Egeria who spoke, out of the mask of Aset’s face. She waved a beringed hand, dismissing the escort. “Leave them here. I will decide later.”
“Yes, Lady,” the senior Jaffa said, and bowed himself out, closing the door behind him.
“I’m glad we caught you.” That was Aset, relaxing into herself again. “Did you not get my warning? Ra has set a trap —”
“We heard,” Jack said. He kept his voice down, and scanned the walls for Goa’uld technology.
“We are safe,” Teal’c said. “I have searched and found no listening devices.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Danyel said.
“About the queen,” Jack said.
“She is bait in Ra’s trap,” Egeria said. “To recapture Pharaoh.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Jack said, and was pleased to draw an answering smile from Aset.
“There is a watcher in the armory, and a dozen Jaffa within easy call,” she said. “They have left the back door apparently unguarded to tempt a rescue, but the watcher has a perfect view. I’m glad you didn’t try anything, O’Neill.”
“So am I,” Jack said. “All right, kids, it’s time for a change of plans.” The floor underfoot was stone, and he looked at Teal’c. “You wouldn’t happen to have some charcoal, would you?”
STARGATE SG-1-23-22-Moebius Squared-s11 Page 20
