“Take a deep breath, now,” Haynes warned her in a slightly more sympathetic tone. “What you're gonna see, well, it's not of this Earth.”
Without waiting for her reaction to that announcement, he nodded to the middle-aged MPs standing outside doors labeled 'Operating Theatre Two', and sucking in a lungful of nicotine-tainted air, reached for the handle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Ah...choo!”
“Gesundheit.”
Vala turned to see Howard coming down the basement steps, Mitchell right behind him carrying a midsized crate he referred to as a tea chest.
They had been holed up in his stuffy old cellar for almost a week now, and being the good little military automaton he could be when he was feeling pigheaded, Mitchell had refused to allow them to go out, even at night, in case they messed up Carter's precious timeline. “Excuse me?” she said.
“It means 'bless you'.” Howard glanced back at Mitchell and then stepped into the basement and moved aside several more tea chests to make way for the new arrival.
“Why would I need to be blessed just because I sneezed?” Vala really didn't much care, but she was bored out of her mind since Howard didn't appear to own useful things like the Internet or television. Even radio broadcasts were yet to be commercialized, so she'd learned, which meant they'd been subjected to a unique form of torture. Mother Lovecraft owned a device called a Victrola, and apparently only one record—which she played obsessively. If Vala had to listen one more time to Handel's choral music from 29 June 1888 at The Crystal Palace in London, she was going to go upstairs and do some serious damage.
“It's German,” Howard explained, shuffling around a mostly empty coal bin, trying not to get his polished shoes grubby. “In the old days, some people believed that your soul left your body when you sneezed. The blessing is to protect you until it returns.”
Mitchell, who was watching his footing as he negotiated the last steps, cursed when a large black insect scurried across his foot. “Damned 'roaches.”
“Fascinating.” Vala ducked beneath a low beam—her head had acquired several painful bumps before she'd learned to adjust to the height—and batted away a newly formed cobweb. Not that you could tell for certain because the entire room was held together by cobwebs, this one just happened to have an inhabitant—and climbed over a second half filled coal bin in order to reach them. “Did you know that the Egyptians pulled people's brains out through their nose? That was Osiris's idea by the way. Thought it was a huge joke when she'd convinced her followers that it was their ticket to the afterlife.”
The miserable pool of light offered by the single naked bulb failed to hide Howard's reaction to that piece of information. During their first days down here in this coffin-sized hole, he'd disputed her take on Egyptian mythology until he'd come to understand that her experiences had been firsthand—well, as first hand as Goa'uld memories could be.
Qetesh had aligned herself with her father, Ra, mostly in an effort to curry favor while she schemed to overthrow him and acquire his armies. Unfortunately for Qetesh, O'Neill had bumped off Ra at a singularly inopportune moment. Rather than aiding Qetesh by creating a power vacuum, the assassination had in fact placed her in a very vulnerable position. She'd barely managed to escape to a backwater section of the galaxy, licking her wounds and wondering exactly how and why things had gone so terribly wrong.
Mitchell lowered the tea chest and pulled out a knife to lever off the lid. “So.” Vala rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “What goodies are inside this one?”
Despite her feigned enthusiasm, anticipation was the last thing she really felt right now, having been subjected to several such openings of chests during the past week. Howard's grandfather, Whipple Van Buren, had, it seemed, been filthy rich when he'd died. A few greedy moneylenders called bankers and some atrocious mismanagement of the family assets had resulted in Howard and his mother being fleeced of anything of real value. All they'd managed to bring along were several tea chests filled with—as far as Vala could tell—utterly useless junk.
The lid came away with a splintery crack.
“It was your stories about Egypt that made me realize the connection, you see,” Howard explained, reaching into the chest and tugging out handfuls of straw.
“Connection?” Mitchell asked skeptically.
“Which particular stories?” Vala ignored the look of rebuke she knew—without even looking at him—that Mitchell was giving her. They were stuck here, and she'd had to do something to entertain herself. At least Howard appreciated her tales, even if at first he'd had difficulty buying them.
“All of them. My grandfather traveled to Egypt, you see. He amassed quite an impressive collection of old manuscripts and artifacts. The bank took most anything of value, of course, but this one box... Well, it's...” He paused and edged away from the chest. “I...I should warn you, I suppose.”
“About what?” Mitchell reached into the chest for another fist full of straw.
“Wait!” Howard grasped Mitchell's arm, then bit his lip and chewed nervously. “Grandfather was involved in... To be frank, I'm not entirely certain, except that he was a—” his voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper—”high ranking Mason.”
“Surely not!” Vala replied in an equally conspiratorial tone. Of course, she had absolutely no idea what that was supposed to mean, but clearly it was something dire. She straightened up and looked at Mitchell, and asked in a normal voice. “What's a Mason, anyway?”
“Shhhl” Howard said, looking over his shoulder. He turned back to them and continued in a hushed and nervous tone—for no reason Vala could ascertain, because old mother Lovecraft was out for the day. “The night before Grandfather died,” the young man explained, “we were all at home together. We'd been planning to attend a concert, but it was snowing too heavily. It was around nine o'clock, I suppose, when I heard a peculiar hissing and thumping coming from the attic. I looked up and said, 'Hey, what's that?' and jumped up to go and investigate. Grandfather grabbed me by the arm and said, 'Nothing! Pay it no mind, lad, hear?' Well, gosh, I would have, but...his face.”
Howard looked like he was about to burst into tears—again.
Vala sighed. All the young man ever needed to be pulled out of these depressive funks, however, was a hug and a reassuring smile. “Go on, Howard. It's all right, you can tell us. We're you're friends, right?” She ignored Mitchell's rolled eyes and put her arm around the boy.
With a wary eye on the tea chest, Howard continued. “The stark terror on Grandfather's face was something to behold. I didn't think he was frightened of anything, until then, but that night... He was mortified. I could see it in his eyes. There was something dark and terrible in the attic to which he would not give a name—at least, not to me.”
Vala smiled stoically. Howard seemed to have a great need to embellish his stories with lengthy strings of descriptives presumably designed to add a weighty horror to his tales.
“When Mama retired later that evening, Grandfather called me close...”
She glanced at Mitchell whose eyes were already glazing over, as Howard continued his tale, which now seemed to involve reliving much of his grandfather's adventures in Egypt. And it took a while. Even Vala was starting to formulate excuses to leave the basement, having long since stopped paying attention to what Howard was saying, when the boy finally mentioned something about a set of secret tunnels beneath the Giza plateau, leading to the tomb of Osiris.
“Whoa!” Mitchell said. He'd apparently been paying more attention that Vala. “Osiris's tomb wasn't found until the Steward expedition, and it wasn't found near Giza.”
Well, that was news. Qetesh had often wondered what had become of her one time sister and mortal enemy. “Really?” Vala said. “How do you know?”
“It's all right there in SG-1 's files. And more to the point,” Mitchell turned to Howard, “Those tunnels weren't found until 1998.”
“That was in SG-l's files?”
“Daniel Jackson's reports.”
“You actually read those things?” Vala was truly amazed. “I thought they were doorsteps.”
“That's doorstops.”
Howard stared at Mitchell wide-eyed. “I think...” He gulped loudly. “I can't be sure. Grandfather wouldn't go into much detail, so I think it had something to do with the Masons, but in any event, he told me that instead of finding Osiris's tomb, the guides led him to a portal connecting our world to another world, where jackal headed humans roamed the land and unspeakable horrors took place.”
Rigid with surprise, Mitchell shook his head in disbelief. “Your grandfather found the Stargate?”
Folding her arms and feeling more than a little put out, Vala punched Mitchell on the arm. “And you tell me off for telling the boy anything that might mess up history? First of all you blab about the tunnels in 1998, and now you tell him all about the Stargate.”
Eyes darting between them, Howard added, “Grandfather didn't mention anything about a star gate. He saw only a great metallic rim capped by stone. It was not far underground, he said, but that he feared a cave-in would bury all of them at any moment. A German expedition had been in the tunnels several years earlier, and removed the device that allowed one to travel through the ring to this dark and evil realm.”
Mitchell nodded thoughtfully. “That tracks. As far as we know the DHD was taken to Germany in the late 1800s and was then nabbed by the Russians at the end of World War II.”
“World War II?” Howard asked, eyes rounded with curiosity.
“Another planet.” Mitchell explained glibly, in an impressive display of quick thinking. “Don't worry about it.”
“But you said the Russians took it from Germany. How could your world wars be on another planet if they're Russian and German?”
Get out of that one without making things worse, Colonel Smarty Trousers, Vala thought silently, amused by Mitchell's stony look. He didn't deserve rescuing, but she was feeling generous. Turning to Howard, she said, “All sorts of people have gone through the magical ring your grandfather found to this 'dark and evil realm'. German, Russian, Klingon...”
“Klingons aren't real, Vala,” Mitchell pointed out. Apparently he didn't appreciate her help nearly as much as he should have.
“So you say,” she scoffed and then turned back to Howard. “The point is, you promised to keep everything a secret, remember?”
Howard nodded eagerly. “I remember.”
Satisfied Howard was diverted from asking too closely about the many world wars Earth seemed to inflict upon itself—so many they'd taken to numbering them—she turned back to Mitchell, “What this means is that the Stargate Howard's grandfather found is presumably somewhat more accessible than the one sitting down in Antarctica.”
“There's a second portal to this dark realm hidden in Antarctica?” Howard gasped.
“A whole city, in fact,” Val elaborated. “Built by the Ancients. Except it's gone, now, to Atlantis. Anyway, be that as it may be, as I understand it, the DHD there has finally run out of power, and the missing DHD in Egypt could be a bit of a problem. So,” she gave the tea chest a gentle kick, “what's in the box?”
“I was getting to that.” The lip-biting thing started up again before Howard picked up his tale. “Grandfather died that very same night. The doctor told us he'd had a stroke, but I overheard the morticians talking. One of them said that in all of his years, he'd never seen such a look of horror on a man's face.” Howard's eyes began watering up, and his bottom lip began to tremble.
“Was it something the Masons did?”
The young man shook his head. “I sneaked up to his room. While the mortician was preparing Grandfather for burial.”
“And...” Vala coaxed, fearing he would break down completely before finishing his story.
“He saw something truly beyond the imagination of any sane man.”
“Which was...?”
“He was working on Grandfather's face. Trying to soften his expression for the viewing, I suppose, by massaging his face muscles into a different position. When he opened Grandfather's mouth he found...”
“What?” Mitchell demanded impatiently, almost destroying all Vala's hard work getting the story from him.
Howard jumped in fright. “A small winged dragon wedged inside his throat!”
Although a bit of an anticlimax, given the build up, it prompted Vala into releasing the boy and scrambling for her zat gun.
Mitchell was faster—only because he was actually carrying his weapon—and immediately brought it to bear. “Okay, son, exactly what is in the box?”
Alarmed, Howard's eyes grew as large as saucers and he stumbled back away from the chest until he was hard pressed against a stack of barrels. Rather than answer the question, though, he determinedly continued on with the story.
“After a few days, a terrible smell came from the attic. I plucked up the courage to go and see for myself, and found a small jar on the floor, surrounded by a puddle of foul smelling fluid.”
Val had heard of similar containers and so had Mitchell, it seemed, because he had lowered his weapon. “Canopic jar,” he said. “That's how Jackson had a run in with Osiris.”
“You mean Osiris was stuffed in a jar all that time?” Vala grinned. “Oh, he would have loathed that! How wonderful.”
“She.”
“What do you mean, 'she'?”
“Osiris was a 'she'.”
“Took a female host, did he? Well, I suppose I should have expected that.” Vala turned to Howard and treated him to a reassuring smile. “Do you think we could maybe skip all this utterly fascinating ancient history and get to the part where you tell us there's something more interesting in that tea chest than a broken Canopic jar?”
The boy stared unblinking at the chest. “I...I packed some other things that I found nearby.”
Vala stepped closer to the chest. She studied it for a moment and then turned to Mitchell who had, without prompting, raised his weapon again.
“You will only zat me once if I do happen to encounter a live Goa'uld, won't you?”
Mitchell hesitated for a teasingly long time before he grinned and nodded. “Only once.”
Cringing, she stepped forward, plunged her hand into the straw. She felt something metallic, which was a relief. She wasn't sure what she would have done had it wrapped around something slimy. Vala withdrew the item and held it up for I Mitchell and Howard to see.
It was Herbert George's gold handcuff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Daniel wasn't entirely happy leaving Sam to enter the base alone, but he knew there was nothing more he could do. And it wasn't like she was breaking into an Ori ship. This was Earth and the only alien elements were that of a different generation.
They'd agreed to maintain radio silence once Sam was in the ambulance. Daniel had edged away from the crowd and backed into the deserted lane heavily shadowed by the setting sun. Once safely out of earshot, he checked in with Teal'c, who confirmed that after a brief delay, Sam had made it through to the base. Walking to the entrance of the alleyway he quickly made his way back along the road. The military were currently engaged in a frantic process of disinformation and cover up, which meant that any minute—
A Buick pulled up in front of the diner and a heavyset, gray haired man climbed out. Red faced and glowering, he slammed the car door shut, pulled on a cream Stetson and strode into the diner.
Daniel quickened his pace, reaching the door just in time to hear the new arrival, presumably Walt Whitmore, the owner of the local radio station KGFL, announce, “C'mon Marc, we'd best get you out of here.”
An hour and a half earlier Whitmore had—if Teal'c's information was reliable—been threatened with the loss of his license if he broadcast his interview with Brazel or mentioned the discovery of the wreckage or bodies. In a monumental blunder, the same authorities—the FBI—would fail to stop the printing of the story the following morning i
n the Roswell Daily Record. That headline would, in the years to come, position Roswell as the Mecca for UFO buffs and conspiracy theorists, the world over.
Daniel followed Whitmore into the diner. Jack was already at the counter trying to pay his tab. His request was lost amid a growing argument between Whitmore and John McBoyle, the reporter from the competing radio station, KSWS.
“Now hold on there a minute, Walt,” McBoyle objected, standing between him and Brazel. “Unless you've got some sort of exclusive with Marc, here, I've got every right to interview him.”
“It ain't me saying you don't got the right, Johnny,” Whitmore responded. “Why don't you go back to the station and ask Lydia what the goddamned FBI did when she tried to put the story out on the wire services? Same as they did to me.” He pulled off his hat and slammed it furiously onto the counter. “They threatened to revoke my license, can you believe that?”
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