by Karen Miller
“Where are they going?” said Sam, pressing her fingers to her ears.
Main Street was crowded with what looked like the entire population of the town, all making their way in the same direction: towards Piper’s Peak. Those from the Sheriff’s Office filtered round them and down the steps to join the river of people.
Jack pointed. “There.”
“We have to try and stop them,” said Daniel, grabbing at the arm of a woman who shuffled past out of the Sheriff’s office. She pulled herself free without turning and walked off in the same direction as the others.
“I do not think we would be successful, Daniel Jackson. These people are under the influence of the sound and I believe it would require considerable force to stop them. Even if we were to take such measures, there are too many of them.”
Daniel threw his hands up, clearly feeling as helpless as Jack felt. “Well, we have to do something.”
“Carter, any ideas right now?”
“Without knowing the exact source, or nature, of that sound… No, sir, I’m sorry.”
“O’Neill,” said Teal’c, “I believe there might be one who is as unaffected by the sound, as we are.” He gestured to the other side of the street.
There, watching them through the mass of moving bodies, was the girl from the photograph.
The shrillness of the sound had eased now, the pain in Daniel’s ears lessening, leaving him with a thudding headache and a fuzziness that made it hard to concentrate. The music — because as the shrillness ebbed, it sounded more like music — was still audible, though, and its effect on the people of the town didn’t appear to be wearing off. Still, they drifted past as if in a trance, drawn on to the forest and Piper’s Peak within. The girl was still watching them.
“Well, that’s not at all creepy,” said Jack, and tentatively raised his hand. The girl frowned, a look that was hard to read on her already melancholic face, and then returned the greeting.
“I think we’ve maybe found someone who can give us some answers. Go talk to her, Daniel.”
Daniel made his way down the stairs and across the street, the others following, pushing their way through the slow moving parade of expressionless townsfolk. He approached the girl with caution, thinking she might take fright and run off. “Hello,” he said, wondering if she would even understand.
“You see me,” she said, with something like wonder. Her English was careful and deliberate, her accent Germanic. He thought he’d perhaps have been able to pinpoint the region if only the wooliness would clear from his brain.
“Yes, we can see you,” he said. “Who are you?”
The girl raised her hand, as if to touch Daniel’s arm, but her fingers passed straight through the padding of his jacket. She dropped her hand, the glimmer of hope on her face fading, and sighed. “I remain as nothing.”
“A hologram,” murmured Sam, stepping forward. “Do you know where you’re being projected from? Is it from the mountain?”
The girl only stared at her.
“I’m not sure she gets that she’s being projected from anywhere, Carter,” said Jack, pinching the bridge of his nose. To the girl he said, “Any idea how we can turn that damn music off?”
As if in response to his question, the sound suddenly ceased, and Daniel felt a pressure lift from inside his head, as if his ears had popped during a descent from altitude. The relief was immeasurable. Around them, the steady procession of people stopped and, slowly, they came back into themselves, the empty expressions leaving their faces. The noise of life returning to the town rose, but no one appeared to question why they had been compelled to wander out of town towards the Peak. They simply walked off as if resuming their daily business. Daniel wondered how many had already reached the Peak before the music stopped — and what had happened to them.
Jack rubbed the underside of his jaw. “Okay, so that seemed to work. Now maybe Orphan Annie here can tell us what’s happening with the people of this town and what we need to do to help them.”
But the image of the girl was already flickering, like a bad signal. “You can’t help them,” she said, as she faded to nothing. “The Piper has them now.”
Back at the cabin, Sam popped two Advil into her palm and tossed them back with a swallow of water, before tossing the blister pack to Jack who did the same. Daniel’s headache wasn’t so bad, he said, and he was content with a cup of herbal tea. Teal’c, it seemed, was the only one who had experienced no after effects from the strange sound.
“So I think it’s safe to say that the music came from the mountain,” said Jack. He looked at Sam’s questioning face. “What? That’s where everyone was headed. It’s not a great leap.”
“Yes, but… music, sir? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, aren’t you?” When she didn’t answer, he looked round at the others. “T, didn’t you think it sounded kinda musical?”
“I do not. It was a sound without expression. There was no music to it.”
“Uh, for what’s it’s worth, I heard music,” said Daniel.
“There, ya see?”
“Not that I think it’s really the point. I think we should be focusing on what it was doing to the people, rather than what it sounded like.”
“Yes,” said Jack, frowning and picking at the grain on the kitchen table. “There is that.”
For all that they’d witnessed while the sound could still be heard, Sam suspected that it was what had happened in the aftermath that bothered him most. Not the encounter with the girl, though that was a mystery in itself, but when they’d found Janice wandering on the edge of town. She’d greeted them with a smile, her earlier desperation at losing Nathan apparently forgotten.
“Oh hey, Colonel O’Neill isn’t it? It’s been a while since we’ve seen you in the Post Office. What brings you into town?”
Jack had paused before speaking, as if weighing his words. “We came in with you, Janice. Don’t you remember?”
That now familiar flicker of vacancy had passed across her face, before her smile returned. “Well, you think I’d recall something like that. Like I said, Colonel, I don’t know the last time we spoke.”
“We were looking for Nathan,” said Daniel stepping between them. “Do you know Nathan, Janice?”
Again that look. There and then gone. “Well I can’t say I do. Now I have to get to work, but you all have a wonderful day. It’s some great weather for fishing.” She walked off along the road towards town, calling over her shoulder, “And I hope you find your friend.”
“How many of them are gone, do you think?” he asked now, resting his head on his hand.
“That would be hard to say, sir,” said Sam. “If the people can’t even remember that their loved ones ever existed in the first place, then they’re not going to file a missing persons and without —”
“Carter…”
It had been a rhetorical question, she knew that, but sometimes, when she knew nothing, she felt the need to fill the blanks with what she did know. “Sorry, sir.”
“Alright, if you’ll excuse the turn of phrase, tell me something I don’t know. What might we be dealing with? Teal’c, correct me if I’m wrong, but this doesn’t look very… Goa’uld-ish. Too subtle.” He paused and looked to the side. “Apart from the huge mountain, of course. But it doesn’t seem like their style.”
“The Goa’uld are in disarray, O’Neill, and I have seen nothing like this from them in the past. I believe we are dealing with something new.”
“Alright, so no System Lord crawling out from under the bleachers now that the big game’s over. What else?”
“Uh… I may I have something,” Daniel ventured. “It’s kind of a longshot, but it fits…”
“What is it?” Sam asked.
“Okay, so you’ve all heard of the Pie
d Piper of Hamelin, right?”
Jack looked at him, po-faced. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“I am unfamiliar with this Pied Piper, Daniel Jackson.”
“Forget it, T. He’s talking about a nursery rhyme.”
Daniel pressed his lips together in a familiar expression of forbearance. “Actually it’s a poem. By Robert Browning. You know Robert Browning?” He said this last to Jack who rolled his eyes. “One of the greatest English poets of the nineteenth century?”
“Daniel,” said Sam, hiding a grin and bringing him back on topic.
“Oh. Yeah.” He turned to Teal’c. “The Pied Piper of Hamelin, although retold in verse by Browning, was actually based on a much older tale from thirteenth century Lower Saxony, where a musician clad in motley appeared in the town of Hamelin and lured away all the children in the night. ‘A wondrous portal opened wide, as if a cavern was suddenly hollowed; and the Piper advanced and the children followed, and when all were in to the very last, the door in the mountain-side shut fast’. So what if these people are being taken inside the mountain by whatever the ‘Piper’ might be?”
“I thought it was rats,” said Jack, still clearly dubious.
“Well yes, it was eventually, but the rats came later. It was an addition to the story that happened after the fact.”
“After what fact? We’re still talking about a fairy-tale here.”
“Actually, most fairy-tales are based on pretty gruesome true events. For example, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ was originally about a Bavarian noblewoman whose family used children to work in their mines; children who then ended up grossly disfigured because of their appalling working conditions. She was later poisoned by her husband for political reasons. And ‘Cinderella’ is based on the life of Rhodopis, a woman from Thrace who was sold into slavery to the Pharoah Ahmose the Second. He cut off her feet and replaced them with gold.”
“Aaaah!” Jack cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I prefer the one where the lobster sings about living under the sea.” He leaned back in his chair and regarded scrubbed a hand through his hair. “So, what? We’re dealing with a latter day Pied Piper?”
Daniel shrugged. “Maybe. If the story was based on fact.”
“I guess it makes sense, sir,” said Sam. “The music, if that’s what it was? The trance-like state that it seemed to be inducing in people? And the girl said the Piper has them. Maybe she knows who he really is.”
“Alright,” he said. “Looks like we’re going hologram hunting. Teal’c, did you bring the stuff I asked for?”
“I did, O’Neill.”
“Then let’s suit up, people. And as weird as it feels to say this in my kitchen… SG-1 has a go.”
There was a time when Teal’c had thought he would never belong in any uniform other than the steel-gray of Jaffa armor, but he felt something approaching comfort when donning once more his black BDUs. The civilian clothes he wore while off-duty on Earth always felt like camouflage, disguising his otherness, sitting awkwardly on his shoulders in order to hide his true self. It was necessity of course, he understood that, but over the past eight years, the clothing of the Tau’ri military — of the SGC — had become like his skin. He was a warrior, one of four who had stood on the wall, and this had become his armor.
So it was as they headed to the edge of the forest to seek out the girl with whom they’d spoken. There was an edge among them now that hadn’t been there earlier, and Teal’c knew that it emanated from O’Neill. What had, perhaps, begun as a recon mission was poised to become an all-out offensive on what had stolen the townsfolk from under their noses. As the expression went, O’Neill was not taking this lying down.
“You really think she’ll be here?” asked Daniel Jackson.
“It’s where I took the picture. If she’s watching us, then she’ll know we’re here. If not…” He looked up at the towering Peak. “Well, I guess we know where we have to go.”
“Do you think that wise, O’Neill?” asked Teal’c. “We have no way of knowing what awaits us inside the Peak. Or even its true nature.”
O’Neill’s expression tightened. “Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, huh T?”
They waited while the sun moved into the latter stage of its arc across the sky and the shadows cast by the trees marked the hour. O’Neill pulled off his sunglasses, no longer having need of them in the growing dusk, and checked his watch. “Alright, we’ve waited long enough. Carter, I want —”
Somewhere very close, music began to play.
As one, they moved, bringing their weapons round to bear, but with no fixed target. It was the first time Teal’c had truly heard the musical quality of the sound, though it sounded discordant and ugly to his ears.
Daniel Jackson had closed his eyes. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured.
“Stay with us, Daniel,” hissed O’Neill, punching him on the shoulder.
Daniel started and blinked at O’Neill, before glaring and rubbing his arm. “Uh, ow?”
“Well, don’t get all weird on me!”
“Sir?” Colonel Carter stood a few feet away, her MP5 held loosely in front of her, though Teal’c knew it could be trained on a target in less than a second. She nodded once, gesturing further into the forest. The girl from town stood there, shadowed and ghostly between the trees, watching them with sunken eyes. She looked like one who had been starved for many months.
“Looks like we weren’t stood up after all.” O’Neill inched his way forward. “We’ve been looking for you,” he said, louder. “And something tells me you’ve been looking for us too.”
“For decades… months… centuries…” The girl frowned and looked away, as if searching for words, and then said almost to herself, “I once knew what time meant.”
“You’ve looked for us for a long time?” offered Daniel.
The girl smiled and it looked like gratitude. “Yes. A long time.”
“Can you tell us your name?”
“Yes,” she said. “My name. I have kept that if nothing else. I am Alida.”
As he’d spoken, Daniel had made his way in gradual steps towards the girl until he stood right next to her. Teal’c was prepared to make his move if she made even the smallest move that appeared threatening and he could see the others were too.
“Alida,” said Daniel. “You said the Piper has our people. What did you mean by that?”
Alida frowned and looked further down the forest, in the direction of the town. “These are your people?”
“Every one of them,” said O’Neill in a low voice.
“Then perhaps you can help them where others have failed.”
“We will if you tell us how,” said Daniel.
Alida shook her head, tossing her bedraggled hair across her shoulders. For the first time since he’d seen her, Teal’c thought she truly looked like a young child, displeased with what she heard. “But you are the ones who travel between worlds. You must know how to stop him. That is why I brought him here.”
“You brought him here.” O’Neill’s tone was a razor.
“We have heard of you, the soldiers of the Tau’ri. I believe you are the only ones who can stop him.”
“And so you decided that the people of this town should be sacrificed.”
“If not this town, then it would be another. Are lives of less worth because they are far away from you? He has been here before, of course. Many times. He first took the children of my town, and then others came after.” Her small face puckered as if with old, remembered pain. “He binds them with his music and bends them to his will. It is what he is doing with your people.” She looked further into the forest, towards town where the music seemed to play the loudest. “He takes them even now.”
“For what purpose, Alida?” asked Teal’
c, though he suspected he knew.
“To sell for their labor.”
There was a beat of silence as the meaning of that sunk in, before Daniel said in a strained voice, “He sells them into slavery? To whom? The Goa’uld?”
“The Goa’uld have no need to purchase slaves. They are capable of taking their own. The Piper fears them, for he has stolen many from under their noses and knows his life is forfeit if they catch him.”
“You know the Goa’uld?”
“He picks from their spoils. I know what he knows.”
“How do you know?” asked O’Neill.
But Daniel Jackson had deduced the answer already. “Because he took you,” he said. “You were the one left behind. The child who told the story.”
The girl’s patient smile was that of a teacher dealing with a slow and stubborn pupil. “I was left behind and I tried to warn the others of what he was. But they knew. They’d known all along. They were poor and the children were many, and so they asked him to take us.”
“They let the Piper take you so they wouldn’t have to feed you?” asked Daniel.
“It was a dark choice that they made and I was the only one left to tell of it. And so they summoned him once more, so that I could tell no other. I have been held by him ever since.”
“Held how?” asked Colonel Carter.
“I was frozen, as he freezes all those he takes until it is time for them to be exchanged. Only I have never been allowed to leave. I believe he kept me as a… trophy.”
“Your body has been in stasis in that ship all this time?” asked Daniel, shocked.
“This Piper guy sounds like a real piece of work,” muttered O’Neill.
“After so long, I found that my mind can travel through his ship. He does not know how much I’ve learned to control it. If he did, he would have destroyed me by now. Please, you must help.” Alida’s plea was earnest, but not desperate. Her demeanor was that of one who had lived many lifetimes, though she looked no more than nine human years.