The lead monk smiled. “Stargate?” He was tentative, as if making sure he’d heard this odd stranger correctly. “Chaapa’ai?”
Jackson nodded vigorously. “Stargate, that’s right.” Holding out his hand, he repeated, “Hi!”
The monks fell to their knees before him.
Jackson’s hand dropped. “No, no,” he said desperately, “please don’t do that….” He tried to make them get up, without notable success.
O’Neill got up, his hand still on his sidearm. “How’d you know they’d react this way?”
“I didn’t.” He was still smiling, trying to make friends. “But unless we want to get ourselves a really bad reputation, I think we should avoid shooting the first people we meet on a new planet.” He helped the confused head monk to his feet. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”
“You come to choose?” the monk asked.
Jackson, baffled, looked to O’Neill. “Choose?”
O’Neill shrugged. He was still thinking about the fine line between getting a bad reputation and conducting a straightforward military invasion.
“Sure, we can choose. Choosing is good,” Jackson decided. Ever the pedant, he informed O’Neill, “It’s a derivation of Arabic combined with—”
“Yeah, yeah, just ask them to take us to the nearest city,” O’Neill suggested. As long as Jackson was so set on communicating, he might as well get directions.
Somehow it didn’t surprise O’Neill that Jackson had no trouble asking directions. The archaeologist smiled again at the monk. “Would you take us—?” At the same time he held up his hands, fingertips together to form a steeply pitched roof.
Every time O’Neill had ever even considered asking for directions, he’d found his way almost immediately, making the discomfort of asking totally unnecessary. He hated asking for directions. Jackson, on the other hand, had no trouble at all asking, and the monks had no trouble answering. They nodded eagerly to Jackson. “We take you. Yes. Come.”
The monks led them around a bank of trees and swept an arm out, displaying a wide vista, a valley at the foot of the mountain, a valley filled from one end to the other with a city.
“Chulak. Yes?”
The human team was awestruck, each for their own reasons. O’Neill was appalled at the sheer size of the place. What if it was full of Ra-aliens?
“Chulak sounds good,” Jackson stammered at last. “Yes. Chulak.”
The rest of the monks hauled themselves to their feet and prepared to lead them down the path.
“I hear it’s nice this time of year,” O’Neill muttered.
O’Neill had had occasion from time to time to pass through Rome on his way to bases in Germany, Turkey, Spain. In his off hours he had enjoyed wandering through the Eternal City, trading wry observations with the cats in the Coliseum, looking over the triumphal arches and broken marble statues of long-dead emperors. Chulak reminded him of that city, perhaps as it might have been a thousand years ago. The same wide boulevards branched out into narrow little twisting streets with laundry hanging out the windows, ripe smells hanging like a miasma in rubbled corners. The same marble columns, in less disrepair, graced the monuments. It looked like the kind of place a man could find a halfway decent bar but no ice.
“Everyone looks so… human,” Carter murmured.
Human, but with no fashion sense. The people of Chulak all wore the same kind of robes. The Earth team got stares, as much for their fatigues as their obvious alienness.
Well, everybody in ancient Rome probably wore togas.
“Maybe they are… or were.” Jackson was answering Carter. O’Neill gave him a look. Jackson shrugged a little. “The people of Abydos were separated from the rest of humanity for five thousand years. Societies can evolve a lot in that time.”
They just hadn’t gotten around to evolving a Versace or Armani yet.
If this really had been Rome, the building they were approaching now would be the Vatican. It wasn’t domed, though. The monks escorted them up a grand stone staircase, through vast doors, and into a room with two levels, the lower one set up for a royal banquet. Up a couple of steps, the rest of the room was empty except for doors at the other end. The head monk turned and bowed to them, gesturing to the food displayed on the long table, and made an unintelligible introduction. The people already present made room for them, giving their strange attire no more than a casual glance. Their attention seemed to be on the doorways, not the food.
“Why are they treating us like this?” Carter said, nervously fingering her rifle.
Jackson was looking around as if seeking someone particular. “They think we’re gods,” he said absently.
“Incredible.”
“Okay, we’re gods. Now what?” When Carter glared at him, O’Neill shrugged nonchalantly. “Happens all the time.” A group of women wearing nothing much were hovering, eyeing the newcomers. O’Neill eyed them back appreciatively.
“This is a ceremony of some kind,” Jackson said suddenly. “We’ve been expected.”
O’Neill was still appreciating. “All right, if we’re gods, what’re we supposed to choose?”
“I have no idea.”
Somewhere back in the shadows someone struck a gong, and O’Neill dropped all pretense of being on vacation. “Okay, Daniel, I think we should tell them we want to look around—”
He stopped as a pair of Serpent Guards entered the room, carrying large, twisted horns that looked like they might have been made of animal tusks.
The Guards took up ceremonial positions and blew the horns. The monkish escort fell to their knees, bowing their heads to the stone floor. All the rest of the people at the table moved away and also fell to their knees. After a moment Jackson did the same, looking around at O’Neill and Carter.
“When in Rome…” he muttered urgently.
There was such a thing as taking a resemblance too far. O’Neill rolled his eyes and got to one knee anyway, as did Carter, thinking that the last time O’Neill had genuflected to anyone was… probably the last time he’d been in Rome. He declined to bow his head, however.
To the sound of the horns, an elegant couple entered the banquet room, a man clad in gold kilt and breastplate, his eyes outlined in kohl. The veiled woman on his arm was dressed in a tight-fitting dress that looked as if it was made of feathers, a robe in peacock panels, and an elaborate headdress shaped like bird’s wings spread and curved around her head. On her forehead, holding the veil in place, she wore a diadem with a uraeus rising from her brow.
The man in gold lifted the woman’s veil, took her hand, and displayed her to the bowing multitude.
“Behold your queen!”
She lifted her chin in a haughty gesture, a queen overlooking her subjects. She looked impossibly beautiful, remote, cold.
“Sha’re,” Daniel whispered.
O’Neill was unable to stop the archaeologist as he lunged to his feet, leaped over the table, running between the kneeling Chulakians. “Sha’re, thank God. I thought we’d never—”
But the two were surrounded by protective attendants, and Sha’re’s eyes flared with an eerie glow. Daniel, seeing it, stumbled to a stop, and O’Neill raised his rifle. There was no recognition in Sha’re’s eyes. There was nothing human in them either.
“Kneel before your queen,” the golden man ordered.
“Sha’re, it’s me!” He tried to move closer, as if proximity would make a difference “Sha’re!”
The golden one raised his hand. The device wrapped around it flared, the blast knocking Daniel across half the length of the room. O’Neill shouldered his rifle, but Sha’re moved in front of the other man, and the colonel hesitated a fraction of a second.
It was a fraction of a second too long. A Serpent Guard’s staff descended, and the room went black.
CHAPTER TEN
Jackson returned to consciousness and a blinding headache. The shadow leaning over him resolved itself into Carter.
“Sha’re?�
�� he mumbled, trying to sit up.
Carter placed a hand on his chest, keeping him down. “Easy, you’ve been unconscious for hours.”
“I saw her—”
“I know,” she soothed. “We all did.”
“I saw Sha’re!” he insisted, as if she hadn’t answered. “She was…” He took a deep breath. “Where are we?”
“Some sort of holding pen.” It was a feeble description of a huge room filled with hundreds of people of all races, all societies. “It happened fast. Apophis sent you across the room, then a guard zapped the colonel. The next thing I remember, we were all here.”
Jackson began to sit up, one hand on his aching head. This time Carter let him. He looked around, eyes wide as he realized the implications of the multiplicity of prisoners. “Apophis… Apophis. Is that what they called him?”
“You recognize the name?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s from Egyptian mythology. Ra was the Sun God who ruled the day. Apophis was the Serpent God, Ra’s rival; he… ruled the night.” He blinked, looking up at her. “It’s right out of the Book of the Dead. They’re living it.” He swallowed. “What’s he done to Sha’re? I’ve got to find her!”
“We can’t,” Carter said baldly.
“If I can talk to her, I know I can—”
“Daniel, you saw her eyes.”
Jackson wasn’t willing to accept it. “Maybe it’s—it’s some kind of drug—”
“These hostiles are parasites,” Carter said firmly. “They use human beings as hosts. That’s what Ra did.”
“I don’t believe it.” If it was true, if Sha’re was—“I’m sorry. I just… I just can’t.”
Someone tall walked toward them out of the crowd, followed by another shadow.
“If there’s a way outta here,” O’Neill announced to Carter, “I haven’t found it yet. But look what I did find.” He motioned to the shadow behind him.
“Skaara…?”
The boy rushed to him, hugging him fiercely. “Dani-el! Are you okay?”
Jackson tried to smile. “I think so.”
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” O’Neill said, finally noticing Jackson was conscious. There was a trace of surprise in his voice. He hunkered down beside the other man to look him over.
“Dani-el, Colonel Jack told me about Sha’re.”
Jackson looked into the boy’s eyes—the eyes that had been so like his sister’s before she… changed. He couldn’t stand it. “Jack, help me. We can find her again—”
“Daniel.” The unaccustomed genuine sympathy in O’Neill’s voice was worse than any wry comment he could have made. “I’m sorry.”
After a moment he added, “Get some rest. By all rights you should be dead.”
Jackson turned away and closed his eyes.
Behind him he could hear O’Neill talking to Carter. “You still have the transmitter?” A pause while Carter responded affirmatively. “We may have to destroy it. If we can’t find a way to escape, the mission’s a failure anyway. We don’t want Abadaba or whatever his name is to get his hands on it.”
“He still wouldn’t know the code,” Carter pointed out. “There’s half a billion permutations.”
“Don’t take this personally,” O’Neill said sharply, “but… they’re way smarter than we are.”
There was a short silence. Then O’Neill got to his feet, continuing, “Come on, Skaara, let’s keep looking for a way out of here.”
But there was no sound of movement away. Instead the silence grew deeper, frozen. Daniel opened his eyes.
A Serpent Guard, unmasked, was holding O’Neill’s arm in a viselike grip, examining the colonel’s watch. He looked very human except for the golden symbol embedded in his forehead: a massive black man, wearing a skullcap, with sharp, inquisitive, dark eyes.
“What is this?” the Guard said. “It is not Goa’uld technology.”
O’Neill was making a conscious decision not to try to pull away, basing it on the strong possibility that he would lose his arm if he did so. The decision-making process was nearly derailed by the realization that the man was speaking English, and in a not-unfriendly fashion.
“It’s a watch,” he said unevenly. “It tells me the time.”
He staggered as the Serpent Guard released him abruptly, but held his ground. Jackson watched, wondering at the kind of guts that took.
“Where are you from?” the Serpent Guard asked. He seemed to be impressed as well.
“Earth.” O’Neill rubbed his arm surreptitiously.
The information didn’t translate, apparently.
“Your word means nothing. Where are you from?”
Daniel sighed. The literal military mind… Tapping the man on the leg to get his attention, he sketched the Stargate glyph for Earth in the dirt. The Guard stared at it. “My name is Daniel, and this is Jack O’N—” With a violent swipe of his staff the Guard destroyed the drawing in the dirt and walked away.
“Friendly fellow,” O’Neill observed.
“What do you think that was about?”
“Maybe he didn’t like your drawing.” The colonel, in a classic example of unswerving focus on the objective, turned to Skaara. “Come on.” And he too walked off, still determined to find the way out.
Kawalsky supposed that it might be colder in Point Barrow, Alaska, in the dead of winter, but it wasn’t likely. He had slept uneasily all night, partly because he was afraid that he might not wake up again. He made a mental note to tell Supply about this situation once they got back home. They needed to add warmer blankets to the list.
His team was huddled in lumps around him, covered with frost.
“Warren!” His voice felt as if it were cracking. “Warren!”
The lump next to him stirred.
“The sun is… suns are… coming up. We’re gonna be all right.”
Suns. Yes. Two of them, framed by the Stargate as they peeked over the horizon. How the hell could it be so cold on a world with two suns? he wondered.
Warren brushed his hand against his lips, as if he wasn’t sure he could feel them. “We can’t go through another night like that, Major.”
Kawalsky forced himself to his feet. “I know. The colonel shoulda sent us a radio message by now.”
“When do you have to make the decision?” Warren asked. “Whether or not to go back through the Stargate?” Soon, his eyes said. Make it soon.
“That’ll be about when hell freezes over,” Kawalsky said harshly.
“I think that pretty much describes our current situation,” Warren pointed out.
Kawalsky nudged the lump next to him. “We are not leaving without the colonel. Rise and shine, boys, it’s another fine day on Planet Kawalsky!”
In the briefing room on Earth, Major Bert Samuels reported to his superior. “Sir, the warhead is armed and ready for you to give the word.”
Hammond swiveled his chair around, staring down at the sealed disk in the room below. “How much time have they got left?”
“Just under five hours.”
“Well, let’s keep our fingers off the trigger until the time comes, shall we?”
Samuels saluted.
Every entrance, and there were few enough of them, was guarded. Serpent Guards, faceless in their armored masks, challenged them at every door. O’Neill, Carter, and even Jackson spread out, trying again and again to find a way. Skaara kept close to the man he regarded as his hero.
“Sha’re is… dead?” he asked tentatively as O’Neill poked at a stone block.
“Yeah,” O’Neill answered. Then he thought about it, thought about the cold, remote woman they had seen. “No… You know what, Skaara? I don’t know.”
“We must save her,” Skaara protested. “You are a great warrior!” You’re my hero!
O’Neill flinched. “Look at what we’re up against!”
Skaara didn’t want to hear it.
Sighing, O’Neill capitulated. “We’ll try.”
A c
ommotion broke out at the entrance to the room as the huge doors opened. A squad of Serpent Guards cleared a path through the crowd.
Behind them came the dignitaries—in groups of three. Each male-female pair with glowing eyes flanked a third person whose eyes didn’t glow but who wore a garment that left the crossed slits in his or her belly exposed. Marching in front of them, clearly their commander, was the Serpent Guard who had earlier wanted to see O’Neill’s watch. He alone of the Guards showed a human face.
“Shaka, ha! Kree hol mel, Goa’uld.”
Apparently the words made sense to at least some of the crowd; the Serpent Guards herded them into lines, and the people moved into place easily, as if they’d done this many times before. Despite this, it was obvious that they were afraid, not only of the masked guards but even more of the lordly ones those Guards escorted.
“What’d he say?” O’Neill asked Skaara. Carter and Jackson had taken advantage of the commotion to rejoin them.
“They’re going to choose,” Skaara said.
“Choose what?” Carter demanded.
“Who will become children of the gods.”
As Skaara spoke, the end of the procession came in sight—palanquins borne on the shoulders of more Serpent Guards. When they stopped, the canopy was pulled back, to reveal Apophis—and Sha’re.
She was wearing different robes this time, loose-fitting solid panels of color, with long silver earrings and an elaborate jeweled headdress. Her eyes, like those of Apophis, were outlined in heavy kohl, and were chillingly empty of emotion.
“Sha’re—” Daniel whispered. “Jack, help me. Please.”
O’Neill grabbed the other man, preventing him from bodily attacking the Serpent Guards between himself and his wife. “You can’t help her, Daniel.”
One of the Guards gestured with his staff, indicating O’Neill and his team should join the lines of hundreds of people.
The commander of the Guard stood before them, taking a ceremonial role. “Benna! Ya wan, ya duru!” A moment later, he repeated, “Kneel before your masters!”
Hundreds of people fell as one to their knees.
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