“Skaara?” The word was full of gladness, with the slightest edge of uncertainty: a do-you-remember-me greeting. It was interesting seeing O’Neill show uncertainty, a new, perhaps more vulnerable side to him than she had seen before.
As Carter watched, the boy smiled back, white teeth gleaming. Then he shoved his weapon into the hands of someone next to him, and gave O’Neill a passable salute. Uncertainty gone, O’Neill crisply returned the gesture and moved past Jackson to embrace Skaara in a bear hug.
“I did not think I am seeing you again,” the boy said when he could get his breath.
O’Neill stood back from him, looking him up and down as if at a long-missed child at a family reunion. Carter could almost hear his “Look how much you’ve grown!” He was grinning, delighted. Kawalsky and Ferretti were grinning too.
Jackson cleared his throat gently. O’Neill, brought back from whatever memories he was comparing to the present, looked up, recognized him, and went to shake his hand. “How are you, Daniel?”
“Good,” Jackson said simply. “You?”
It was as if nothing special had happened, two friends who had been apart for a while running into each other in downtown Abydos. Carter shook her head. At least in greeting Skaara, O’Neill had demonstrated something beyond his usual sardonic self-possession. Now he was firmly back in character. It must be a guy thing, she thought cynically.
“Better,” he said, “now that I see you guys are okay.”
Kawalsky and Ferretti joined the reunion. Carter and the other two soldiers, feeling more than a bit left out, shuffled uneasily as they shook hands and slapped shoulders.
“Greetings from Earth, Dr. Jackson,” Ferretti said.
Jackson smiled. “Hello, Ferretti—Kawalsky.” He turned to draw a woman forward out of the shadow of the pillar she had been hiding behind. “Sha’re? Don’t be shy.”
Sha’re took Jackson’s hand and ventured out, blushing. She was a beautiful woman, with long blue-black hair and a distinct family resemblance to Skaara. Jackson’s attitude toward her was protective, gentle as he slipped an arm around her. Despite herself, Carter felt a quickly quashed flash of envy.
O’Neill, exercising the gentleman part of the officer-and mandate again, took Sha’re’s hand. “It’s good to see you again.” She smiled and blushed even more, and the colonel leaned over and kissed her cheek.
Not military, Carter thought indignantly. Not military at all. She turned away from the reunion and began examining a stone panel set next to the Abydos gate. Someone had to keep their mind on duty, after all…. The panel was a double ring of the Stargate symbols, encircling a large dome of translucent, roughly polished material that looked like fractured rose quartz.
“So. I knew it was only a matter of time before you had to tell the truth about us still being here,” Jackson was saying.
O’Neill shrugged in acknowledgment. “Why the militia? Has something else come through?”
Jackson adjusted his glasses. “No. Just taking precautions. Why?”
Half listening, Carter traced the symbols on the small panel. With a jolt she realized what it was. “This is how they controlled it! It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a control system for the gate on Earth!”
Somewhere through her shock she could hear O’Neill’s mildly exasperated “Captain…”
“Look how small it is!”
“Captain!”
This time she heard him. The whip crack of his voice brought her around to see the rest of them staring at her.
Recovering herself, she stepped forward to offer Jackson her hand, carefully avoiding looking at her commanding officer. “Dr. Jackson, I presume. I’m Dr. Samantha Carter.”
“I thought you wanted to be called ‘Captain’,” O’Neill observed. Carter didn’t bother to dignify that with a reply. Jackson glanced at the colonel but seemed to take his snideness for granted.
The archaeologist finally exerted some control over the conversation. “What’s going on, Jack?”
O’Neill turned back to him. “We’re here because six hostile aliens came through the Stargate on Earth. Four people are dead; one’s missing.”
“One of them looked like Ra, Daniel,” Kawalsky added.
The surrounding natives, particularly Skaara and Sha’re, understood enough of what was being said to know that there was trouble. The mention of Ra confirmed it. The room buzzed, and several of the boys shifted their grip on their weapons.
Jackson polished his glasses, a gesture that looked more like a nervous habit than a necessary one. “Well, they didn’t come from here. The boys take shifts guarding it thirty-six hours a day, every day. We’d know if they came through here.”
O’Neill let out a long breath. “Well, they came from somewhere, Daniel. I’m gonna have to look around.”
Jackson nodded. “I think I can help you find out who it was, but it’s going to have to wait until the sandstorm is over.” Then, as if remembering his manners, “We were about to have our evening meal. Why don’t you join us?”
The room next to the Abydos Gate room had all the signs of being inhabited by a scholar, with stacks of notes on material that looked much like papyrus. It was a living and cooking area too. A mouthwatering smell rose from the metal dish on the fire as Sha’re stirred.
The dish, Carter noted, didn’t fit in with the apparent technology of the people of Abydos. It was dented but too shiny.
Apparently O’Neill noticed it too. “I’m sure the people at MIT will be happy to know their million-dollar probe also makes very good cookware.”
Daniel looked a trifle embarrassed. “Well, um, it got pretty banged up when it came through the gate into our barricade so we… made use.” He looked at Sha’re, who laughed and fed him a piece of meat. “And it is nonstick titanium, so…” He smiled at Sha’re in return. “Very good. Perfect. Beanaa wa.” To the rest he added, “Everybody try this.”
Carter followed instructions. The only part of the dish she could identify for sure was rice; the meat tasted, of course, like chicken. The vegetables were surprisingly crisp and tasty for having been boiled for who knew how long.
“This too,” Skaara piped up, filling a canoe-shaped drinking vessel from a leather bag. He offered it to O’Neill, who was seated in place of honor near the fire.
“What is this?”
“Drink!” the boy said, eyes dancing.
O’Neill sniffed at the cup. “Moonshine? Skaara, did you make this?”
“Moon. Shine?” Skaara tried out the new word, looking down speculatively at his creation.
“As in booze. As in you’re not old enough to drink. Give me that, for crying out loud. Daniel, what’re you teaching these kids?”
Sha’re laughed again and snuggled next to Daniel, who smiled too, ducking his head and surreptitiously reached for Sha’re’s hand. O’Neill took the cup from Skaara.
“Our little soldiers are growing up, Colonel,” Kawalsky said.
“Yeah, I’m so proud.” O’Neill looked extremely doubtful. Carter was glad that he was the one who had been selected to try whatever it was. She wasn’t sure she could handle it.
She was part of the feast as a member of the team, and therefore also an honored guest—perhaps not quite as honored as O’Neill—but she could see the women chattering excitedly behind their hands about her. Sha’re, sitting beside Daniel, was spending more time feeding him than eating herself. Carter wondered if the women usually ate separately from the men here. Very possible, considering their cultural origins, but none of her business, she reminded herself.
“You try!” Skaara urged.
O’Neill shook his head. “Okay, but too much of this is bad for you, you know that.”
“He knows.” Daniel’s remark was almost as dry as O’Neill’s.
O’Neill sipped and gasped as the drink hit his throat. “Oh, aggghhh. It’s pure alcohol!”
“Moon. Shine.”
“That’s great, Skaara.
Really.” O’Neill caught his breath. His face flushed red. “I… couldn’t be more proud.”
Grinning hugely, Skaara reached into a pouch on his belt, producing a cigarette lighter. He presented it to O’Neill with an air of someone finally surrendering a sacred trust.
The colonel blinked at the offering, startled, then shook his head. “I quit smoking. Besides, I told you to keep it.”
Skaara tilted his head with an are-you-sure? gesture. When O’Neill nodded emphatically, the boy ran away, clutching the lighter.
“You know he’s never had that out of his sight the whole time you were gone,” Daniel remarked.
“Really?”
O’Neill might pretend otherwise, Carter thought, but she could tell that the colonel was touched. It was amazing, really: Daniel spoke of “the time you were gone” as if it was nothing more than a temporary interruption in O’Neill’s relationship with this place and these people. The colonel, and Kawalsky and Ferretti too, had history with these people, she realized. They really mattered to the officers. It helped explain why O’Neill had… misstated… matters in his report. She wasn’t sure she could have blown them all up either.
A different side of the colonel indeed. She found herself eyeing him speculatively, wondering what other surprises that facade concealed.
“So, this man who looked like Ra,” Daniel went on matter-of-factly, “he must’ve come through another Gate.”
That jerked her out of her musing. “As in Stargate?” O’Neill asked, as startled as she was.
“What other Gates?” she demanded. “The Stargate only goes here.”
Daniel waved his hand in a gesture—just a second, let me swallow this—and then said, “Well, um, I think you’re wrong about that.”
Carter was outraged. Who did this dirty, scruffy archaeologist-gone-native think he was? “I was there. We ran hundreds of permutations!”
Daniel nodded: “Yes, yes, of course you did, I’m not saying you didn’t work very hard. But you didn’t have what you need.”
“What are you talking about, Daniel?” Despite the familiar address, the military edge was back in O’Neill’s voice.
Before Jackson could answer, Skaara stuck his head back in the door. “Daniel, the storm is passed.”
The archaeologist nodded. “I’ll show you.” He bounced to his feet. Sha’re immediately rose to stand beside him. “Sha’re, ben qua ri, Jack, and his friends… to see the vili tao an.”
The mixture of English and Abydos dialect seemed to work fine for communication. Sha’re, however, was clearly upset. She gave all the team members, including Carter, an unhappy glare.
“Bonni wai?” It seemed she wanted to come along.
“We won’t be gone long,” he soothed her. Leaning over, he tried to give her a little kiss on the forehead. Sha’re was having none of it; she embraced him, giving him an all-out, passionate kiss. The audience roared and cheered.
Sha’re finally broke away. “Good-bye, my Daniel.”
Jackson, stunned and possibly short of oxygen, stood there, staring at her. Finally he shook himself free of his testosterone-induced coma and forced himself to step away. If that wasn’t a promise to come home to, Carter thought, nothing ever was.
Jackson, still blushing a fiery red, backed away from his wife and out the door, clearly almost as unwilling to leave her as she was to let him go.
They came out of the great pyramid of Abydos into the sunlight, whose glare reflected off the pale sand. “Can’t say I missed this place,” Kawalsky groused, squinting. Ferretti and the other two had remained behind in the shade and coolness of the pyramid room to set up their equipment.
“Come on,” Jackson said, leading them down a steeply inclined ramp at least one hundred feet long, out of the building and onto Abydos proper.
Samantha Carter stopped two or three times as she went, the first time to look up at the three moons hanging huge in the daylight sky, then at the sheer size of the pyramid. It had to be at least ten times the size of Cheops’ monument on Earth. The storm had drifted pale lemon-colored sand over the long ramp, but the pair of obelisks that marked the end, or the beginning, of the walkway still pierced at least eighty feet of sky.
“This is just incredible!” she breathed.
Daniel gave her a deprecating smile. “Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Flying an F-16 over Iraq had not given Samantha Carter a real appreciation for what it was like to take a little walk in the desert. She slipped and slid up and down sand dunes, ignoring the glances O’Neill and Kawalsky gave her and the aborted effort to give her a hand up when she landed on her tailbone at the bottom of one particularly steep slope.
They circled around the little town—wherever they were headed, it wasn’t there. The place looked too small to hold five thousand people, but since she never got inside, it was hard to tell. She could see a mud wall and some roofs but not much else. There must be a spring there; the food they’d eaten had to be grown somewhere, and Abydos didn’t look like it supported much mass transport. Off in the distance she caught a glimpse of something that looked a lot like a woolly mammoth as imagined by Steven Spielberg, but there were no roads. Just sand and, eventually, hills, covered with large boulders and small grayish shrubs.
It was certainly easier to walk on rock than sand. Looking back at their path, Carter was surprised to still be able to see the pyramid that marked the location of the Abydos Gate. She’d thought they’d come much farther than that.
“C’mon, Captain,” O’Neill said. The men were waiting for her up ahead. Any chinks in that ironic armor had closed right up again.
A few steps more took them into a fissure in the rock; the fissure led to a cave. The darkness—and drop in temperature—was a shock compared to the blinding sunlight outside.
“I decided there had to be more to this place, so I started exploring,” Jackson explained, almost as if apologizing. “Just the area around the town and the pyramid at first. After about a month I found this place. Captain Doctor, you’re going to love this.”
One by one, the boys who came along as Daniel’s honor guard and escort lit their torches. O’Neill and Kawalsky, taking a more practical approach, used flashlights.
They were needed. Even though the place already contained two tables, each bearing a circle of nine blazing torches with a tenth in the middle, they were needed.
The cave was immense. The roof peaked far over their heads. The walls were lined with carved black marble obelisks. Against one wall were a pair of enthroned statues of Egyptian gods, thirty feet tall. The statues faced a giant emblem carved into the opposite wall. The channel of the engraving had been filled with molten gold, creating an iret wadjet, otherwise called an eye of Horus.
But even more amazing than the wadjet-eye were the lines upon lines of carvings that occupied the walls of the room, floor to ceiling, between the obelisks. The towering stones too were covered with symbols. Unlike the eye of Horus, the symbols covering the rest of the room were not Egyptian, but combinations, variations, and permutations of the symbols on the Stargates.
“My God,” Carter breathed. “This is amazing. This is the archeological find of the century.” Or of the millennium. Or of the ages. She unlimbered her flashlight, shining it across the engravings, the carving on the obelisks. “Have you been able to translate it?” So eager to capture the images she was almost fumbling, she put down the flashlight for a camera and started taking photos.
“I think so,” Jackson said diffidently.
“What’s it say?” O’Neill wanted a practical answer.
“It doesn’t say anything, really. Actually, it’s sort of a chart, more of a map.”
“Of?”
“Well, I haven’t been able to analyze all of it. I mean, look at it. It would take my whole life.” He sounded absolutely delighted at the prospect. An archaeologist’s version of job security, Carter supposed, and without the irritation of writing a grant proposal either. She sympat
hized wholeheartedly.
The flash wasn’t working well enough, and she broke out her video camera.
“Daniel”—O’Neill’s exasperation was clear—“we don’t have that much time. What’s it a map of?”
Jackson nodded, stepping back to point at the rock as if he were in a lecture hall pointing at a very large overhead projection. “Well, the symbols seem to be separated clearly into groupings. Each grouping is attached to others with a line. And each grouping of glyphs contains seven symbols.” He passed a hand through his hair, searching for simple words. “So you can see where this is going, of course.”
“Tell us anyway,” O’Neill said with a hard-held patience.
“All the symbols are on the Stargate in the Abydos chamber. I’ve also been able to chart some of them in the Abydos night sky. Or at least pretty close…”
This was not the clear, concise explanation O’Neill was waiting for. Daniel Jackson shook his head, unable to believe his friend couldn’t see what was, to him at least, glaringly obvious.
“Jack, I think it’s a map of a vast network of Stargates. Stargates that are all over the galaxy!”
Carter looked up from her camera. “I don’t think that can be, Doctor.”
“Why not?”
Carter could feel herself arming for an academic battle, may the best citations win.
“Because after Colonel O’Neill and his team came back,” she explained, “my team tried hundreds of symbol permutations, using Earth as the point of origin, and it never worked.”
Daniel nodded eagerly. “I tried the same here, but it didn’t work either. I figured the destinations I tried are destroyed or buried. But some of them somewhere must still exist.”
Carter shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Daniel, undefeated, leaned forward. “Then where did your Ra look-alike come from?” He appealed to O’Neill as adjudicator. “Look, I don’t pretend to know anything about astrophysics, but couldn’t the planets change? I mean, drift apart or something like that, to throw this map off?”
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