04 - The Morpheus Factor

by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead)

  He shook his head, angrily. “Not true. The little silver guy showed up with some more apples after you were all asleep. Dammit, I knew better!”

  “If you were drugged, then so were we all,” the Jaffa reminded him. “And as I said, everything appears to be as it was. Nothing is missing or disturbed.”

  “That’s unusual all by itself.” The colonel took a deep breath, considering. “Hell. Maybe we were all drugged for some reason. I think I like that better than the thought that I fell asleep on watch.”

  “It is very serious,” Teal’C remarked, “but in this case no harm seems to have been done.”

  O’Neill gave the Jaffa a wry smile. “That makes it perfectly okay then,” he said in a tone that said clearly it was anything but. He moved to join Carter at the mouth of the cave. “All right, Major, what do you see out there?”

  “Trees, sir. A park, maybe, or a forest. There’s a footpath—I think the way we came up here last night.”

  “So far, so good. Teal’C?”

  “Yes. I also see trees.” He paused. “And a small, gray-striped animal eating grass at the base of the largest one.” He paused again. “The animal has gone away.”

  “Somebody wake up Daniel. I want to know if it’s unanimous. And if it changes, speak up.”

  Teal’C nudged the archaeologist, and with a startled snort Jackson finally woke up. “Huh?”

  “Up and at ’em, Daniel.”

  “Huh?” Jackson fumbled for his glasses and stared blearily through them at the others, looked around and shuddered convulsively. “God, what a dream!”

  “I’ll see your dream and raise you a nightmare,” O’Neill snapped. “Come on. I want you to look out here and tell me what you see.”

  Still groggy but amenable, Jackson heaved himself to his feet and peered out the mouth of the cave. After a moment he removed his specs, rubbed his eyes, smothered a yawn, and put on his glasses again.

  “I see trees,” he stated definitively. “Many, many trees. And a path. So what?”

  O’Neill took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what. So far we’ve got cute little aliens, some wildly different perceptions of this world, and me falling asleep on watch.”

  “And bad dreams,” Teal’C added.

  “And bad dreams,” O’Neill agreed. “So what does that add up to?”

  “Uh, not much?” Jackson asked, yawning.

  “I don’t fall asleep on watch, Daniel.”

  “Well, you’re not perfect either, Jack. Look, it’s a new world. Maybe you’re allergic to something here. Antihistamines always make me sleepy. Maybe the smoke, or the food, or something else in the air, or all three just had that effect on you. Nobody’s hurt, right? Nobody’s been captured or tortured or—” At the look on O’Neill’s face, Jackson shut up.

  “Some of the aliens are coming,” Teal’C reported. “I see the silver one.”

  “And isn’t that Eleb?” Carter asked, glad to help change the subject.

  The two little aliens, brown and silver, were indeed moving quickly up the path toward them, dodging between the trees but making no attempt to hide. A moment’s consultation indicated that all four of them saw the same thing: short aliens, consensus on fur color, same number of fingers—three—on each small hand….

  “But wait a minute,” Carter said as Eleb got closer. “What’s that they’re carrying?”

  Daniel rubbed his eyes and looked again, just to be sure, as the Kayeechi caught sight of all of them gathered in the mouth of the cave. The Kayeechi waved to them merrily. “How the heck did they get their hands on a zat gun?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I don’t care how,” O’Neill snapped. “On alert.” He paused, then amended, “Yeah, I do care. We didn’t bring any zats with us, did we? We’re not missing any?”

  “We did not bring them this time,” Teal’C confirmed. While the zatnickatel, a Goa’uld weapon, was usually a standard part of their armory, their availability was limited while Earth scientists continued to try to figure out how the damn things worked. This time they had relied on standard military issue, except, of course, for Teal’C’ energy staff. “And all of our weaponry is present and accounted for.”

  The members of the team not already on their feet rose and scrambled for their weapons, trying hard to behave as if this was the casual and normal way that a Terran exploratory team got up every morning, as the Kayeechi came up the path to the mouth of the cave. The aliens weren’t making any threatening gestures; they were simply armed with weapons that, by all accounts, they shouldn’t have. And by the way they were holding the things, perhaps “armed” wasn’t the best choice of words either. They didn’t seem completely clear on the distinction between barrel and butt.

  “Welcome, welcome, morning greetings,” Shasee chirped as he came up to them, holding the Goa’uld weapon awkwardly in his three-fingered hands. The silver-furred one looked tired, a rim of red around his copper-colored eyes. Elbe was moving slowly, favoring one leg. “Did you dream well? Was your sleep good to you?”

  “Not exactly,” O’Neill growled.

  Jackson, as team anthropologist, stepped in. “Uh, well, pretty good. You look tired. Did you dream well?”

  The two aliens didn’t appear to comprehend his attempt to return what looked like a ritual greeting. “We wish to welcome our guests on this new day,” Elbe said.

  “Well, er, thank you,” Jackson said lamely.

  Impatient of the courtesies, O’Neill cut to the chase. “What’s that you’ve got there, Shasee? Elbe? And where’d you get them?”

  The aliens twisted their faces in a version of a smile and stepped up to Carter. The team tensed; O’Neill had his sidearm half out of its holster.

  But the aliens merely held the zat guns out to her. “Please see,” they said. “Is it perfect?”

  Carter took the weapons cautiously, and the rest of the team exhaled and relaxed minutely. Carter tucked one into her belt and turned the other one over in her hands, examining it from every angle, and then she looked first at O’Neill, and then at the alien. “Yes,” she agreed. “It’s perfect. Where did you get it, Shasee?”

  Shasee tittered and held out his hand for the gun. When Carter made no indication that she was inclined to give it back, he exchanged a worried glance with his companion. “Please?” he asked. “It is perfect? It works? Please return it.”

  “Well, it looks perfect,” Carter temporized. “I don’t know whether it works or not. I’d have to test fire it and… stuff.”

  “There are more Kayeechi coming,” Teal’C reported from the crest of the little hill. “And they have—they appear to have—an energy staff.”

  It was true. Four more of the little Kayeechi were coming up the path. Two were carrying the ubiquitous braziers dangling on chains, with threads of nearly colorless smoke flavoring the air. Another had armfuls of new-looking baskets heaped with fruit and bread, while yet another was lugging several large flasks. The last was hefting a Jaffa energy staff, dragging it by the wrong end and catching it on the bushes as he came. Fortunately it wasn’t entirely easy to trigger an energy staff unless you happened to know what you were doing, but the careless way the little guy handled the thing made it clear that he had absolutely no idea of the extent of the destructive power of the weapon.

  “What the hell is going on?” O’Neill asked. His team, recognizing a rhetorical question when they heard one, wisely did not attempt to answer.

  Puffing, the alien finally made it to the group and promptly offered its burden to Teal’C for review.

  Teal’C accepted the staff and examined it. He kept his own staff close at hand, with his body between it and the assembled Kayeechi, who were trying to get a good look up close.

  “It appears to be a fully functioning weapon,” Teal’C said. With a glance at O’Neill, he triggered it, and the bulbous firing end separated into four distinct leaves surrounding a core of energy.

  “Fire it please,” the alien who had dragged i
t up the hill said. It—it wasn’t clear, from close up, whether the little one was male, female, or something else entirely—was watching Teal’C’ every move intently.

  “Where did you find this?” Teal’C asked gruffly. His imposing glare had no impact, for once. The little alien, whose fur was a delicate rose pink, merely watched the dark, capable hands curled comfortably around the shaft as if it might miss something vital if it removed its gaze.

  “These things are ours,” Shasee answered instead. He was still holding out his hand to Carter, waiting for her to return the zat gun. “They are like yours, but they belong to us.”

  “How do you know they’re like ours?” O’Neill asked. “I mean, that staff looks like Teal’C’, sure. But these other things? We don’t carry anything like that.”

  Shasee closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he would rather be doing almost anything than arguing with this bizarre visitor to his people. “Car Ter said that this was perfect, so she must be familiar with it.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said, “but are you familiar with these things? Do you know what they can do?”

  “Show us,” the rose-colored alien piped up.

  O’Neill sighed. It was difficult to get past the perception that these small, downright cute beings were children, clamoring to play with dangerous weapons, but it was obvious from their demeanor, both the night before and now, that they were not. He didn’t want to introduce any snakes into Eden, but the snakes were already there. If the aliens had found a storehouse of Goa’uld weapons, it was better that they know how to use them than they should find out by accident. He shuddered, remembering Charlie with an ache that would never completely go away.

  Not only that, but if the Goa’uld or their Jaffa slaves had a store of weapons on this world, it changed his own plans considerably. He needed to know more, and the easiest way to get the information would be to cooperate with the natives. And if he could make a deal with them for those weapons, so much the better.

  “Teal’C, were the Jaffa in the habit of stashing away weapons and supplies on worlds they weren’t visiting much?”

  “No,” the Jaffa answered. “Not while I was First Prime. It would be considered wasteful. Also, it would be seen as a lack of faith in our Goa’uld masters, who supplied us with whatever we needed.”

  “The Tok’ra?” Carter suggested cautiously. “Might they have been here?”

  “You tell us,” O’Neill said. “You’re the one with Jolinar’s memories.”

  Carter shook her head. “Not that easily, sir. And even if she didn’t know about it, doesn’t mean they don’t do it.”

  “The weapons had to have come from somewhere,” Jackson pointed out, “because here they are.”

  “Yeah. Here they are. Go ahead, Teal’C,” O’Neill said harshly. “Show them what it can do.”

  Teal’C raised the staff to his shoulder in one smooth movement and fired. The rose alien was still watching him, and so missed the sight of a large boulder being blown to splinters behind him.

  The rest of the aliens, however, including Shasee and Elbe, did not. There was a shocked silence in response to the explosion, and then another of the aliens cried out something the team didn’t understand.

  The rest of the crowd, however, did, and they converged on Teal’C, allowing him a circle of free space to move within but jammed together, separated from him by an invisible barrier of personal space. With O’Neill’s assent, the former Jaffa First demonstrated how the triggering mechanism worked and how the staff was fired. He was a little more reluctant to let the rose alien try, however, particularly when the little one had to struggle to balance the long staff in its short arms. Even Shasee was drawn away from Carter long enough to make an attempt, but the staff was simply too long and too awkward.

  The zat gun, however, while still large for most hands, was far easier to handle. That made it more accessible to the Kayeechi—and made O’Neill correspondingly more uneasy.

  “Look,” he said. “If you fire this at someone and it hits, the first time it will hurt them. Badly. The second time they die.

  “The third time, they disappear. It is not a toy, it is not a joke. It is a weapon, a terrible weapon.”

  “Yes,” Shasee agreed. “Very terrible. Show us.”

  For all the warnings, the Kayeechi didn’t seem to really understand the power they were dealing with. Despite their misgivings, however, the team showed the Kayeechi how the zat gun operated. The aliens were delighted and lined up eagerly to try it out. Several trees disappeared as a result.

  By the time everyone had had an opportunity to try the zat gun, Elbe had organized the food into another picnic feast, this time without the canopy. The ubiquitous incense burners were set in place and lit. Roughly woven cloth was laid out as if for a picnic, and the food and bread and wine were laid out and SG-1 invited to partake. The weariness that had characterized all the Kayeechi on their arrival had evaporated, and they were chattering to each other eagerly, passing the zat gun around. At least, O’Neill noted, they kept it pointed to the ground; humans unaccustomed to such things would have inevitably pointed them at each other. He could only hope that the repeated practice had used up the charge.

  “Come and feast with us!” Elbe invited them as the small party of visitors sat on the ground around the impromptu picnic rug and looked up expectantly. The energy staff and zat guns had been set, almost reverently, in the middle of the feast.

  Jackson, Carter, and Teal’C all looked at O’Neill.

  “In the middle of shooting up the landscape, I don’t suppose anyone happened to let it slip where they got these things,” the colonel asked. Even though it was obvious that this question was anything but rhetorical, no one ventured an answer.

  “I still think we ought to pack up and haul out of here,” he added. He had an uneasy feeling he’d said that before.

  “We really need to find out how these people manage to change our perceptions,” Daniel objected mildly. He had bread in his hand, he tore off a piece and ate it. When O’Neill raised an eyebrow, the archaeologist shrugged. “Hey, it’s breakfast. It’s not bad.”

  “This from a profession that lives on fried ants and buttered scorpions?”

  “Only in the field.” Jackson was oblivious to the jape. He’d heard it too many times before.

  “It may be the source of the hallucinations,” Carter pointed out.

  “We were experiencing altered realities before we consumed any native foods,” Teal’C said. “That would seem to indicate that the food is harmless. Besides, the natives eat it without apparent harm.”

  “The natives don’t exactly share our biology,” O’Neill growled. But the argument made sense. The trees had walked long before they’d met any of the Kayeechi. He turned his attention to the Kayeechi with the energy staff.

  “Eleb? Eleb, where did you get this?”

  The brown-haired alien laughed as if at a tremendous joke. “We found it,” he said. “Come and eat. Rejoice with us.”

  O’Neill took a deep breath. “If we eat with you, will you show us where you found these things?”

  Vair laughed again. “Oh yes. And taste of this. It is very wonderful.” He held out a flask.

  O’Neill took it against his better judgment. Only the fact that none of the aliens had ventured anything like a threat against any of them—and a growing thirst—persuaded him to give the liquid a very tentative sip.

  It was “very wonderful.” It tasted of chocolate and oranges, or cherries, and it had just enough of a bite to make it interesting. The bread was warm and flavored with honey and herbs, and the fruit was almost like Earth’s, but just different enough to be intriguing. He sampled food and drink again, trying to identify the flavors, and a part of him noticed that he was relaxing. His better judgment didn’t seem to matter quite so much anymore.

  The Kayeechi, once they realized just how interested the Earth team was in their possible weapons cache, were more than happy to drop hints
and then change the subject, drawing them deeper and deeper into conversations about manners and tactics and life on P4V-837. The team ate and drank within the perfumed circle of friendly aliens, tried to encourage them to talk, passed their new flavor discoveries around. Shortly thereafter, they were all peacefully asleep once again, and the aliens crept quietly away.

  Once more the water was cool against his skin, sliding soft and refreshing with the little movements he made to maintain his depth and equilibrium deep in the ocean. The cool flow was interrupted this time by an awkward belt arrangement; across his back he carried an energy staff, and at his side a zat gun.

  The underwater coral city—it was more distinctly a city this time, with streets crammed with traffic, buildings with doors and windows—was still under siege. The invading octopi were still tearing at the buildings. The windows and doors were actually giving them a better grip. And beside him, Vair waved at his weapons, the alien’s red hair floating through the water like a scarlet veil.

  Clearly, he was supposed to help defend the city, using the weapons.

  It wasn’t his fight. He didn’t know anything about this battle, and he had no intention of taking sides without more information.

  In a hazy way, he knew he was dreaming, but he felt no particular desire to awaken.

  Desperately, Vair reached for the energy staff, trying to tug it loose from the straps that held it in place across O’Neill’s back. O’Neill pushed the alien away, and in their struggle, the staff came free and drifted down to the sandy seafloor. Vair dived after it, and O’Neill kicked hard to get there first. As he claimed the weapon, Vair took his hand and pointed.

  Not ten meters away, one of the octopi had a small coral-creature in his tentacles, and the massive beak was poised to crunch through its skull.

  O’Neill had a solid conviction that anybody who was trying to kill a kid was by definition not a good guy. He raised the energy staff and fired.

  The bolt of energy flashed, sizzled, and dissipated in the water.

  He tried again.