Sister Rainbow begged to differ. "They're injured, Radek. This isn't how we treat people in need of our help. We'll take them with us, listen to what they've got to say, and take it from there."
Charybdis -908
There it was again! A crackle in the undergrowth, as if a foot had accidentally landed on a dry twig-though the notion of anything dry in this place struck him as ridiculous.
Little hairs on his neck stood on end, and Rodney stopped, held his breath, waited.
Nothing. Like the last time and the time before.
Like the last time and the time before, he counted the hogs to make sure that none of them had separated from the herd and was trailing them somewhere in the bushes, which could have accounted for the noise.
A dozen ugly brutes, all present and correct.
And maybe he was just paranoid. In the five weeks since his discovery, he'd returned to the ruins whenever he thought it was safe-in other words, irregularly and only after taking detours so erratic that, more than once, he had gotten himself lost and never even reached the site. Chances were that the sound had simply been a larger than usual splotch of water hurtling from a branch.
Skin all over his body prickling with hyperawareness and nerves, he grabbed his stick a little tighter and started walking again. He could have sworn that he heard another furtive rustle just then but shrugged it off. Hyperawareness and nerves. He was sensitive. He also was running late, and he didn't want to get into trouble again for bringing the hogs back after nightfall. That had happened one too many times lately, and Sahar, no doubt goaded by that nosy zealot of a wife of his, had begun asking some awkward questions.
But sneaking back to the ruins as often as he could had become a necessity. Each time he'd find something else that jogged his memory. He remembered Charybdis now, though the satisfaction of having been right where that was concerned hadn't lasted terribly long. Being right wasn't going to fix his current predicament. Though the technological iconoclasts who were running the planet had never gotten round to trashing the equipment left among the ruins, said equipment had been subjected to what probably amounted to several centuries worth of rain. None of it worked.
Given time and a little bit of ingenuity-and Rodney had a lot of the latter, if he said so himself-he might be able to repair some of it, but whether that would extend to such crucial bits as the dialing console was anybody's guess. That aside, even if he managed to get the gate to work, where would he go? The ruins and remains left little doubt that he was, in fact, on Lantea, trapped in some fourth-dimensional nightmare concocted by Charybdis.
Oh, he'd so been right!
"You're overreacting, Rodney. Let's just see what it can do, Rodney. We've got it under control, Rodney," he rapped out angrily.
And no, he had no trouble thinking badly of the dead. After all, they'd taken the easy way out, sat in some cushy Nirvana or paradise or wherever their personal belief structure said they'd go in the Hereafter, and left him stuck here. It sure as hell lent a whole new meaning to `caller in the wilderness.'
The hogs seemed to have recognized some hidden landmark or caught the scent of home; they shifted gear and broke into a bumbling downhill trot. He stumbled after them, slipping and sliding in the perennial mud and never even bothering to sidestep the small streams that had decided to make the trail their temporary bed.
Fifteen minutes later he emerged from the edge of the forest. Below and surrounded by water-logged meadows lay the jumble of barns, sheds, stables, bunkhouses, and residences that made up the farm. Above and pressing closer hung the leaden bellies of clouds, pushing up against the mountains and waiting to burst. Somewhere there had to be vast stretches of open water for such ridiculous amounts of rain to develop, but the claustrophobic cocoon of rock and forest and fog all around offered no clues as to where the sea might be.
Down on the farm tiny dots scurried about their tasks, and from what they were doing and where they were going, Rodney estimated that it must be coming up for the evening feed. He'd barely be in time. Way ahead, the first hog obviously scented the swill. It gave an excited squeal. At the sound the dots below behaved as if word had gotten out that the Vandals were coming. They stopped whatever they were doing, briefly peered uphill, and, to a man, scattered and disappeared into the safety of the buildings.
Frowning, Rodney froze in his tracks. The weirdness levels in this place were naturally high, but this was a little on the bizarre side, even by local standards. Maybe it was some kind of holiday he hadn't heard about yet. Shaking his head, he prodded the nearest hog and started walking again. He'd find out soon enough.
He found out as soon as he reached the yard.
They swarmed from sheds and stables and-so he had heard something!-down the hillside behind him like some giant cockroach infestation. He remembered the roaches; a local militia he'd first encountered during his brief stay in the city an eternity ago. They were steel-clad and armed with swords and lances and looked purposeful in a less than reassuring way.
Rodney spun around, looking for a bolthole. There was no way out. The yard was enclosed by buildings to make the farm more easily defensible. All the doors were shut and where they weren't shut they spouted armored men. Behind the windows clustered faces, wide-eyed, not with fear as he grasped in a splitsecond's realization but with anticipation; Rilla, glowing with righteous satisfaction, Sahar next to her, trapped somewhere between shame and fury-ringside spectators, waiting for the bull to be brought down to shouts of Caramba (or whatever the appropriate exclamation was) and the rattle of castanets. Rodney had no doubt as to who was starring as the bull.
Throwing down his stick-in a non-confrontational manner, he hoped-he raised his hands. Blood sports offended his esthetic sensibilities, and he'd be damned if he gave them the spectacle they obviously were spoiling for. Besides, he had a remarkably low pain threshold.
"Come on, let's just be-"
The blow struck the back of his knees, made them buckle under him, and Rodney pitched face-down into the stinking gunk that covered the farmyard. So much for striking a conciliatory note... and breathing was a bad idea, too.
His nostrils were blocked, and when reflex kicked in and he gasped for air, he sucked up a mouthful of mud and suddenly remembered that unforgettable occasion when he was forced to fix a problem with the waste disposal system on Atlantis. Same stink. Choking and coughing, he tried to raise his head, an effort made substantially more difficult by the fact that somebody had planted a boot between his shoulder blades. Rough fingers tied his hands behind his back, and then he found himself abruptly hauled to his feet. Raising his face into the perpetual rain, Rodney hoped the downpour would clear off enough sludge to enable him to breathe again.
The roaches closed ranks around him as though they expected him to run. Fat chance of that. He'd never even get past the midden heap. The chief cockroach glared at him from squinty eyes and spat. "Heretic!"
An acidy fist of panic began to pump in his stomach. He was up against the fundamentalist death squad. Every child here had heard the tales, and the stories all had one thing in common: they made medieval witch hunts seem civilized by comparison.
"Look," Rodney began, annoyed to hear that the shivers caused by rain and cold and fear managed to seep into his voice. "I'm not even from here. You're making a huge mis-"
"Silence!" roared Chief Roach. He was worse than Caldwell on a bad day. "Bring him!"
Among gradually more daring jeers from behind the windows, they escorted him into the largest of the barns. It had one thing going for it: in here it wasn't raining.
The center of the barn had been cleared to accommodate a large table, flanked by a couple of smoking braziers. Behind that fetching arrangement stood a large, fur-covered armchair that looked more comfortable than any other piece of furniture Rodney had ever encountered in this place. Then again, so would a bed of nails. Besides, it wasn't the chair that was of interest so much as the personage sitting in it. He was withered and skinn
y and scraggly-bearded and the dyspeptic aura made him a bureaucrat of some sort.
That was good. Bureaucrats had rules, and they lived to abide by them. Rodney was a physicist, and physics was all about rules. Which meant they had some common ground. So perhaps-
The barely formed, anemic little bubble of hope burst with what Rodney could have sworn was an audible pop. On the table in front of the bureaucrat and illuminated by three oil lamps sat the complete contents of Rodney's secret cache; a jumble of equipment, odds and ends he'd one by one salvaged from the ruins, smuggled back to the farm hidden under his cloak, and stashed away under some loose floorboards in a derelict stable. Among them were a handful of still intact control crystals, a meager selection of rusty tools, a laptop that was dead as a dodo but maybe good for gutting, a spiral notebook and pen he'd used to keep an inventory of his finds and jot down any thoughts, and the potential treasure of treasures, a zero point module that might or might not be depleted. His first order of business had been to try and jury-rig a simple voltmeter to test the ZPM. By the looks of it, that plan had just been deferred indefinitely.
Lances planted on the ground, his guards stood in a semicircle around him and stared at the collection on the table as if it consisted of black candles, goats' heads and all the rest of popular satanic paraphernalia. The bureaucrat, on the other hand, didn't seem to harbor such superstitions. When he finally raised his eyes, he ignored the gadgetry in front of him and gazed through Rodney with the expression of a pious but profoundly saddened basset hound.
Great! A true believer...
"Bring forth the witness," said the bureaucrat. His voice, reedy and dry as old leaves, barely rose above a whisper.
Rodney had to strain to hear him over the incessant drumming of rain on the roof and wondered why he actually made the effort. Somehow it seemed far more sensible to just switch off and pretend this was happening to somebody else.
The witness, so-called, was Rilla, Sahar's wife, not that this came as much of a surprise. She must have had advance notice, because she wore finery usually only dragged out for the indoctrination... pardon him, prayer meeting on their half-day of rest. Frilly and in a green that clashed with her complexion, the dress made her look like piece of moldy puff pastry, perfectly matching her intellect. In her and her escort's wake a crowd of serfs thronged into the barn. Apparently the proceedings were public.
Eyes bulging, Rilla took one glance at the official and dropped into an awkward curtsey that made the puff pastry bubble around her. "Master!" she yelped from somewhere amid heaving fabric. "It is such an honor!"
Master?
The honorific was only given to men of Ancient descent. Rodney squinted at the bureaucrat-at best the oil lamps accentuated the gloom, but they certainly didn't brighten things-and noticed the earring the man was wearing. A small red gemstone set in silver made the old boy an Ancient of minor lineage.
"Yes, yes, yes." He sounded supremely bored. "Make your testimony, woman."
Rilla reemerged from the folds of the puff pastry and pointed at Rodney. "This one," she announced, "is a heretic."
"That is why we are here," the bureaucrat informed her. "Tell us what brings you to make this accusation."
"He was late returning with the swine."
"And?"
"Then he was late again, and again."
"That does not make him a heretic."
"It does, too, Master. He was late because he defiled the swine by taking them to a forbidden place."
Explaining that the defilement of swine had been the last thing on Rodney's mind probably wouldn't help.
"The animals' meat is tainted," lamented Rilla. "They will have to be cleansed before you can take par take of them."
Oh please! Since when did ruins carry trichinosis?
"We shall take care of that," the bureaucrat assured her. He seemed remarkably unconcerned by the lethal dangers of tainted hog. "How did you know about this forbidden place?"
"I didn't!" Her air of superiority exploded abruptly, and Rilla looked so terrified that for a moment-okay, a shake at most-Rodney almost felt sorry for her. "I didn't know, Master, and I swear I never set foot in the place. I only found out when I followed him!" She was in her element again, and the terror in her voice had been replaced by pure venom. "He went into the place and touched things and took them. Perhaps I shouldn't even have looked, but I merely watched to be able to accurately report this sacrilege to you, Master."
"I have no doubt of it," murmured the Master. "Those things he took? Are those the items?" A tremulous sweep of his bony hand indicated the collection on the table.
"Yes, Master." Rilla nodded as if she were trying to give herself whiplash.
It was hard not to do the same thing everybody else did, namely stare at the table. But Rodney figured that, if he looked, he'd think about what would happen-or, more pertinently, not happen-now that they were taking away his one, measly chance of getting out of this place. And if he thought about that, he might just lose it, which wasn't an option. He didn't really rate his odds of talking himself out of this mess, but neither did he intend to give them the satisfaction of seeing him rant and wail. Of course, the road to hell was paved with good intentions...
"You saw him take all of these? How many times did you follow him?"
"Only once, Master." The witness turned crimson, which clashed with the color of the puff pastry. "When I'd realized where he was going, I wouldn't set foot in that accursed place again."
"Of course "
Heartened by the approval, Rilla pointed at the notebook. "I did see him take this."
The bureaucrat's fingers spidered toward the notebook, took it, opened it. Eyes straining in the despondent flicker of the oil lamps, the man studied the contents. There was a subtle shift in his face, as if all those wrinkles suddenly had been snapped into harsher angles. He might well have considered the proceedings farcical so far-not that it would have changed the outcome-but now he was deadly serious. Deadly being the operative word. Though he couldn't read it, he clearly was able to identify Rodney's scribblings for what they were: script. Presumably this was the part where things would get ugly.
"Who did this?" The guy's wispy voice had taken on a menacing edge.
The surprise of being addressed directly made Rodney gasp. He inhaled a lungful of oily smoke from the braziers and ended up in a coughing fit that had him choking and wheezing until his eyes watered.
"Answer me!" the official screeched.
The witness gave a panicked little squeal, and the crowd of spectators, who until now had kept up a low-key murmur of opinions and utterances of horror or contempt, tumbled into a cowed hush.
Between two hacks, Rodney squeezed out, "I did."
"Liar! You're a pig herder, boy! You're not even of age yet!"
Oh yes! Rub it in, why don't you? Not enough that he'd ended up marooned in the Dark Ages, no! In causing this almighty temporal mess, Charybdis had seen fit to add a humorous twist by turning him into the Pegasus galaxy's answer to Dougie Howser. Which admittedly had come in handy for purposes of staying under the radar-who, apart from that nosy nemesis, Rilla, paid attention to a teenager? -but right now a little more dignity would have been nice. Because there was only so far you could push a boy genius. "I am a scientist."
The crowd began reciting what had to be the local equivalent of Psalm 23.
The witness reeled back in terror. "Disciple of Ikaros!"
Rodney couldn't help himself. He burst out laughing. Quite hysterically, in point of fact. So much for dignity... Then again, if they thought he was nuts, who cared? Given his situation, a temporary insanity plea probably was as effective a defense as any. "Ikaros was a snotty-nosed wunderkind with delusions of grandeur who couldn't have taught people how to tie their shoelaces." Regaining some of his composure, he added, "I am a physicist." He might as well have told them he was a New Age holistic healing guru. No, actually, that would have made sense to them. "I'm... I'm a scientist."
Uhuh. And yet it moves. Rodney figured he now knew how Galileo must have felt before the Holy Inquisition. He could still recant, he supposed. No... Oddly enough, he was less scared than he'd been before, negative pain threshold or no. He had his pride, and he was a scientist, not a pig herder, even if-
Someone used Rodney's mouth and Rodney's voice to announce, "I am Ikaros."
His immediate impulse was to clamp both hands over his mouth. He hadn't just said that, had he? He couldn't have. So who? Rodney felt a dizzy bout of disorientation and it was all he could do not to scream.
The bureaucrat scowled at him through another stream of smoke from the braziers. "You may try to pretend to be insane, but you will confess quickly enough, and we shall apprehend your fellow heretics. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but alas..."
Insane.
Maybe that's what it was. Maybe he wasn't pretending. Maybe he'd snapped.
The air that filled Rodney's lungs was nowhere near coinciding with his actual need for breath. Lightheaded, with limbs heavy as lead, he focused to squeeze out whomever or whatever seemed to have invaded his mind, hijacked his body. Insanity wasn't an option. His mind was all he had, all he'd ever had.
He saw himself discovering the ruins of Atlantis, saw his hand-his hand?-scratch a name onto a worktop.
Ikaros.
No!
Dr Meredith Rodney McKay.
That's who he was, and he wasn't going nuts!
Oblivious to the silent battle, the bureaucrat heaved himself from the chair and rose to his full height of five foot two and a half "Men wiser and less patient than I shall question you, and you shall not be able to thwart them. Take him to the city," he snapped at the militiamen.
Rodney barely registered the guards grabbing his arms-his arms?-and yanking him in the direction of the door. Either side the crowd parted, silent now, too busy shrinking from him to come up with witticisms like heretic or disciple of Maros. Here and there rose a murmur of disappointment from someone who'd been hoping for a companionable stoning to break up the tedium of the workday.
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