S T A R G A T E
AT LAN TI STM
MIRROR, MIRROR
Charybdis -4441
by that particular gate had worked when countless others had refused to cooperate countless times was beyond him. Some kind of reverse glitch maybe, but he wasn't going to question his luck. When he emerged from the gate he indulged in a brief, ecstatic moment of believing he'd finally made it home.
Home.
Just when had he started thinking of Atlantis as home?
Since first setting foot in it, quite possibly. It had felt right in a way nothing and nowhere else had in a long time. Each expedition member had been allowed to bring one personal item. He'd brought a second-hand copy of Tolstoy's War And Peace, which probably said all there was to say about his emotional ties to Earth.
Atlantis had been a new start and a family.
John figured he should have known better than to care. He'd been quite content in that bubble where fate could only be decided by the flip of a unit coin, because he refused to care. His bad for allowing the bubble to pop. Payback was a bitch.
The Atlantis he'd known was gone. In time-honored human tradition they'd got too curious, too cocky, too greedy. The upshot had been wholesale destruction. Not just of Atlantis, and he'd never understood why he had survived. Perhaps it was punishment. He could have stopped it. Rodney McKay, of all people, had urged caution...
S TA RGAT F
AT LAN T I STM
MIRROR, MIRROR
SABINE C. BAUER
To Mom and Dad - because they always said I should...
CHAPTER ONE
Charybdis +32
•ead cocked, the witch sniffed at the pot propped over a hissing, smoky fire. It smelled almost ready, so much so that she felt her stomach rumble. She reached out and groped around the hearth, warily keeping track of what she touched. Yesterday she'd badly burned her hand, which meant that she was getting careless. Carelessness didn't he in her nature, never had, and she'd do well not to let it encroach now, not if she wanted to retain her independence-or at least that pale mockery she chose to call independence. Truth was, she'd starve if it weren't for the alms the villagers brought her; some out of gratitude or in exchange for a potion or ointment, most because they feared her and gladly parted with whatever food they could spare as long as it helped keep her at a comforting distance from the village.
An unthinkable number of years back, she would have sustained herself by hunting, fishing, gathering roots and berries, none of which was possible when you'd lost your sight. She'd schooled herself not to regret it. When all was said and done, it was a fitting punishment for her blindness so long ago. If she had allowed herself to see the danger, then perhaps-
If.
Her old friend, Halling, once had told her that If was the sound of bitterness settling in the soul. He'd been right, about this and a great many other things. What had happened, happened, and it had caused great grief. But she still had much to be grateful for. She had survived after all, and out there, in the village and elsewhere, a new generation of children was growing up. A generation who knew the hardships of living the life of the hunted only from their parents' and grandparents' tales. Besides, she still clung to that fading hope-perhaps it was merely a guilt-ridden dream-that she might yet redeem herself by helping to adjust the outcome. It would have to be soon, though. Very soon, for she was growing tired and careless with age, and the day was approaching when she would be beyond helping anyone.
Having continued their slow search, her fingers brushed against something wooden. "There you are." She picked up the spoon. "Always trying to hide from me, aren't you?"
About to stir the pot, she suddenly stiffened, remaining perfectly still. A warrior's instincts never withered, even when her body did. But by some grace her hearing had remained as acute as that of a much younger woman, though it could have been destroyed as easily as her sight.
There it was again, almost hidden under the burble of the small stream that ran through the cave and provided her with fresh water. The soft clatter of a pebble kicked loose and hitting rock. She was about to have a visitor. It meant she would have to be polite and share the soup. Too bad, but custom demanded it. Sitting back on her haunches and ignoring the pain of ragged joints, she continued to listen.
A few moments later, a soft voice called from the entrance of the cave. "Good day, Mother! Is it permitted?"
Even if she hadn't recognized the step, made heavy by pregnancy, the address would have given away her visitor's identity. Nobody else called her Mother. It was either Wise Woman or Witch, depending on whether the speaker felt the desire to be courteous or to whisper his fear behind a raised hand. Prompted by an innate sense of irony, she had long fallen into the habit of referring to herself as the latter. Nobody, herself included, ever used her name anymore. In fact, it had been so long and in such different circumstances, she had almost forgotten the sound of it.
"Come," she replied. "I didn't expect you, Pirna, and"-there was somebody else there, soft steps, buoyant and barely audi- ble-"Halling the Younger."
The boy drew in a sharp hiss of breath.
"Don't be a fool, Halling," admonished his mother. "She can tell who you are by the sound of your footsteps."
"You shouldn't give away my secrets." The old woman chuckled. "I thought I'd frightened him away for good two days ago."
"You were here?" Pima asked the boy, surprise and anger mixing in her voice.
"Yes." He sounded miserable, a puppy cowering in the knowledge that he'd done wrong. Well, he might have intended to do wrong, but in the end he'd shown the kind of spirit that would have made his grandfather proud.
"Leave him be, Pima. He took my side against his no-good friends who would have pelted me with stones for a dare." Suddenly wishing she could see the boy, she turned her head in the direction where she knew him to be standing. "Jinto, your father, was just as much trouble at your age. I could tell you stories that-"
"Don't tell him, Mother!" Pirna threw in quickly. "Please. He doesn't need to be encouraged."
"As you wish. I barely remember anyhow," she said. Careless again! Telling the story of how Jinto had run away one night and inadvertently set free an ancient evil would have meant dredging up memories she'd be foolish to revisit. She reached out. "Come, help me up, have some soup with me, and tell me what brings you here. Do you want some herbs to speed the babe on its way?"
"It's a thought, Mother, but it isn't why I came." Pima's rough, warm hand closed around hers and pulled her to her feet. "And we won't take what little food you have, though I give you thanks. Let's just sit at the table and talk."
Now that she'd been told that this wasn't a social visit or a request for herbs, she could almost smell the acrid anxiety that edged Pirna's voice and tautened her body. This wouldn't be welcome news. Pima didn't belong to the kind of people who grew nervous over every little thing. Silently cursing the pain in her joints, the witch groped her way onto a stool.
"You should have some soup," she remarked in an attempt to ease Pima into the conversation. "It's tuttleroot, Charin's recipe. Do you remember Charin, or had she passed on before you came here?"
Uncharacteristically, Pima ignored her prattle. "It's starting again, Mother," she said tersely. "Halling and I saw it on the beach. It's starting again!"
"What is starting again?"
"The Cataclysm! We saw fire falling from the sky!" -- - - - --- - - -- -- -
Pima sounded shrill, and the old woman couldn't blame her. For a few moments she battled a surge of dread fierce enough to make her want to moan. At last, common sense prevailed over instinct. The Cataclysm could not repeat itself. She alone among the villagers knew its cause, and the thing that had ripped planets from
their course and fomented untold death no longer existed. Its own power had devoured it. The plasmatic burst of light released by its destruction had been the last sight she'd ever seen.
Brightness vaporizes her retinas, and a tiny rational part of her mind snarls that there is no pain now because every last nerve in her body is too stunned to feel it. But the agony will come. It will come, she knows it and is incapable offearing it. All capacity for fear is funneled into the fracturing of awareness, again and again and again, her very being pulled from itself, bone and muscle split within seconds, each of which lasts eons or more, the fabric of time itself both stretched and scrunched like a fistful of dead leaves in the hand of a giant. At the moment of utmost entropy, when all her presents are irrevocably torn, she has a nightmarish vision of all her futures, and out of all of them only one, only a single one, offers a faint, mocking hope of undoing what has been done.
"Mother?"
The stool jolted forward, creaking over rock, as she started from the memory. She sucked in a deep breath. The air smelled of stale moisture, fungi growing on the walls of the cave, spices and herbs, and the fresh salt Pima and the boy had brought in with them on their clothing. She clung to that mixture of scents, examined each aroma, and let it anchor her in the here and now again.
"Forgive me, child. I was listening, but you know how old people are; they drift away with their thoughts."
A hand folded over hers, pressing too hard. "You looked ter- rifled," whispered Pima.
As well she might have, but the girl and her son didn't need to know why. They didn't need to know about any of this. "I did?" she asked lightly. "It probably was a bout of indigestion. That's another thing about growing old, mark my words, girl! You can't eat tuttleroot soup like you used to. Are you sure you won't try any?"
"Don't treat me like a child, Mother! I can see that you're hiding the truth." Ah, she was a smart one, that Pima. "You think the Cataclysm is coming again and you don't wish to scare us."
"No, I do not think so. And that is the truth." A part of it at least, the part that would most concern the villagers.
"But what does the falling fire mean then?"
"Nothing. You have seen shooting stars?"
"I have!" the boy cried, excitement bubbling in his voice. He sounded younger than she'd ever been, and this was the one great good to come out of the terror.
"Signs from the Ancestors?" his mother added.
"If that is what you wish to believe," replied the witch. "They are small pieces of rock from out there among the stars. They fall to the surface, and as they do so, the air sets them alight."
"The air?" Halling's excitement had given way to profound doubt. "But air doesn't burn!"
She smiled. "Rub your palms together. Fast" The dry, swishing sound told her that the boy was doing as instructed. "Do you feel the warmth?"
"Yes." The sound stopped. "But it doesn't set my hands alight. I don't think I could rub hard enough."
"You can't. But the air can. Hard enough to bum rock."
"You learned this in the city of the Ancients?" Pima asked, her tone soft with awe.
"Yes." It was a he. Her people had traveled the stars since time immemorial, and so had Pima's, but nothing could be gained by making her or the boy long for possibilities lost. What lay out there, beyond the blue of the sky, was inaccessible now and had become the stuff of fireside tales, remembered first-hand by few and soon to be believed only by children.
"But shooting stars don't look like what mother and I saw today," the boy said. "And it wasn't nighttime!"
"Ah, but the larger these pieces of rock are, the more brightly they bum. Some of them are large enough to be seen by day."
"But-"
"That will be enough, Halling!" Pima cut him off. "The Wise Woman has given you your answer. Do you think you're smarter than she?"
Wise Woman! If there ever was an appellation she didn't deserve! If she were wise, none of them would be here. The boy probably was smarter than she.
"Let him be, Pima," she intervened. "He can't help himself. His grandfather was in the habit of doubting. Besides, it can never be wrong to question things. How else would we learn? What were you going to say, young Halling?"
"The falling piece of rock we saw?" mumbled the boy. "It looked as if it didn't want to fall, that's all."
Deep within her uncurled a tendril of hope, tremulous and reluctant. She was loath to let it gain strength, because she dreaded the misery of having to quash it. Every instinct she possessed screamed not to ask, never to ask, simply to forget. Yet not asking would be cowardly, and she'd never been that. A blind fool, yes, but not a coward. And it was possible, wasn't it? After all, neither Pirna nor the boy had ever seen a spacecraft reenter the atmosphere.
As calmly as she knew how, she said, "Do you recall where the piece of rock went?"
"In the end it seemed to give up. It dropped into the sea. If you look from here, uh"-he faltered, realizing that the witch wouldn't be able to look-"it's past the Eastern Shallows, but along, long way past them."
The tendril of hope shriveled and died, and this time it barely hurt at all anymore. Perhaps because she'd grown too tired to care; perhaps because the idea of a jumper after all these years had been too fantastical from the start. In truth, it could have been anything, a rock or a simple mistake on the boy's part.
"Well, it won't come back from there, I should think." She forced herself to smile. "And you two should get back to the village before darkness falls. Pima, send the boy to fetch me when your time comes."
"I will, Mother. Thank you."
CHAPTER TWO
Charybdis -4441
iar! God damn you! Liar!"
The shrieks reverberated from the ceiling, and the crystal Elizabeth had been trying to jam back into place sailed across the room, struck a wall and burst into a myriad shards. The colorful little hailstorm looked pretty. Cheery. Cheery was good. She reached into the open maintenance hatch, pulled out a second crystal, threw it, shuddering when it sprayed from the wall in tiny fragments.
"Liar!" she screamed again, furiously wiping her face. The sobs gradually, madly, turned to hiccupping laughter.
Her hand found a third crystal, and she threw that, too, and the next and the one after that, until the compartment was empty. Silence fell, thick and oppressive, making her gasp for breath. Silence, that's what was wrong with this place. Destroy the silence, and...
And what?
And nothing.
How long had it been? Weeks? Months? Years? She'd lost track. If she activated the mainframe-always supposing she managed to do the impossible-there'd probably be a calendar and clock somewhere, but the glutinous pace of seconds turning to minutes turning to hours was as much of an abomination as the silence. Perhaps more so, because it was proof, staring her in the face and laughing.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," she sang tonelessly, kept singing, kept the silence at bay with it.
The empty hatch yawned at her as if it wanted to suck her in. She didn't like it. Didn't like this room, not anymore. She pushed herself up along the wall, listing like a wino on a bender. And she'd better stick to that wall, too. She was barefoot, and the floor was carpeted with glittering shards of glass or crystal.
What had happened here?
Who'd-
Her toes struck a hatch cover. It fell over, hammering noise through the room. Had she taken it off? A gaping hole in the wall, emptiness behind. Nothing left. A soft, keening sound settled around her, until she realized she herself was making it and stopped. Looking back at the inactive chamber across the room, she gave a small, tired shrug. The glass door stood open, promising sleep and oblivion, but, like every cad she'd ever known, it would fail to keep its promise. Certainly now that the crystals had been destroyed.
Not that it mattered one way or the other. The technology was so far beyond her, she'd never had a glimmer of a chance of fixing whatever had gone wrong. She'd tried, doggedly, during the first endless
weeks. She'd sat on the floor, staring at what looked like eclectic objets d'art, trying to see a similarity to some type of circuitry she might be familiar with and unable to find so much as a trace of damage. She'd swapped crystals randomly, each time hurrying back to the chamber, getting inside, closing the door, waiting. It'd never worked. And at some point-she'd forgotten when exactly-she'd simply given up. Given in. Whatever.
Janus had told her it was safe.
Had he ever even considered this contingency?
"Who cares?" she murmured.
Janus had died more than five thousand years ago. He must have. Somehow she doubted that he'd made the cut for Ascension-he'd been far too much of a loose cannon. Unless he'd simply been the two-faced bastard his name implied, a two-faced bastard to whom the fact that he'd stolen her life was worth a shrug at most. She preferred that. It left room for anger, and anger was the easiest of emotions, one you could keep at boiling point all by yourself. It also was an antidote to the poisonous despair she tumbled into each time she was crazy or desperate enough to contemplate her situation.
As far as she could determine, the stasis system had malfunctioned late in the second cycle. The failsafe had revived her and spewed her out into a nightmare. At first she hadn't known that anything was wrong. Janus had programmed the system to wake her periodically-once every three thousand years-to allow her to rotate the Zero Point Modules that powered the city. She'd done just that, returned to the stasis room, stepped into the chamber, closed the door, waiting to drift off to sleep another three thousand years. Except, it hadn't happened.
Then, slowly, brutally, realization had crept in. She remembered the terror. She was reminded of it first thing in the morning, last thing at night, wherever she went or stood. She was alone in a deserted city beneath the ocean, alone beyond the scope of human comprehension, galaxies and millennia removed from anyone and anything she'd ever known.
Oh, she'd tried to put a positive spin on things at first. There are no problems, just challenges, right? She'd fix it. She'd make it right, somehow. After all, she was Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the President's favorite troubleshooter: Have plan, will negotiate. Have needs, will find food. And she had. She'd found storage rooms with imperishable rations that tasted like cardboard but kept her going. She'd clung to that perverse triumph, not understanding that it was a Pyrrhic victory. Not until she'd finally been forced to admit that her years with the State Department hadn't equipped her to repair advanced alien technology.
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