by Stargate
Pressing his fingertips against his eyes, O’Neill said, warningly, “Daniel…”
Daniel sighed. “We can’t. I know. And even if we could, we’d only be saving—how many people live here, do you think?”
“Including the babies?” He shrugged, and lowered his hands. “Five, six hundred.”
“And that’s just one farm, owned by just one system lord. Multiply that by all the system lords out there and—” Daniel shook his head. “It’s days like this I find myself actually agreeing with Kinsey. Wishing I’d never helped Catherine open the damned Stargate.”
“Because ignorance is bliss?” O’Neill said, and sat back. “Bull. You might feel better but this would still be happening. Now that we know, at least we’re trying to stop it.”
Daniel’s expression was despairing. “How can we stop it? It’s too big to stop. It’s systemic. Endemic. It’s a cancer and we don’t have nearly enough drugs to kill it.”
He pushed himself to his feet. “That’s probably what they told Abraham Lincoln,” he said, heading for his bedroom. “Lucky for the rest of us Lincoln didn’t listen.”
“Jack…”
He stopped, hand on the doorknob. Turned. “Daniel?”
Without his glasses, Daniel’s face looked naked. “Be careful with Boaz. You scare him. And you fascinate Mikah. That’s a dangerous combination.”
He smiled, just a little. “I’ll bear that in mind, Dr. Freud.”
“Jack!”
He bit back an oath. “What?”
His expression anxious, Daniel nodded at the closed bedroom door. “Are you okay? With that?”
“Get some sleep, Daniel,” he said, no longer smiling. “We’ve got an early start.”
“You don’t have to tiptoe,” said Carter’s voice in the bedroom’s dense darkness. “I’m still awake.”
He pushed the door till the latch clicked shut. “There’s no lamp in here?”
“Couldn’t find the matches.”
Inching his way forward till he bumped the bed, he sat down on its very edge. “It’s all right, Carter. I’ll take the floor. Just chuck me a pillow and a blanket.”
“And if Boaz decides to look in on us at some point?” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past him, he’s obsessed with making babies. And I don’t think he was kidding about Hol’c, sir. Do you?”
He heaved a heavy sigh. “No.”
There came the sound of blankets being pulled back. “Come on. There’s no point delaying the inevitable. You’re just going to get cold, sitting there.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose I am.” He kicked off his shoes, slid beneath the covers and let his head drop onto the pillow. It felt strange, lying next to a woman after so long. Huh. How long had it been, anyway? Not since Kinthea… or Antarctica. That had been Carter, too.
God. Don’t think about Antarctica, or Kinthea. Don’t think, full stop.
“What’s that?” she whispered.
He listened. “The front door,” he whispered back. “Boaz. And Mikah.”
She made a small sound in her throat. “Pity we don’t have a headboard,” she muttered. “We could bang it, suggestively. That’d keep him happy.”
“We could bounce, instead,” he muttered back.
“And moan,” she replied, then rolled over to muffle a giggle in her own pillow.
He swatted the nearest bit of her he could reach. “Shhh! Shhh!”
Paralysed with silent hysterics, they listened to Boaz and Mikah retire to their own rooms.
“Oh, God,” she said, when it was safe to speak. “I knew I should’ve stayed at the Pentagon.”
He snorted. “I should’ve stayed retired.”
“Huh,” she said, and shifted a little away from him. “Coulda, woulda, shoulda.”
He tried not to care that her hip no longer touched his. The darkness was absolute, pressing him flat to the mattress like an enormous velvet hand.
“You know,” she said, after a little while. “This could be worse.”
He rolled his head on the pillow, even though he couldn’t see her. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not joking.”
“Carter, how could this possibly be worse?”
He felt her shrug. “There could be ice.”
Again, the danger of hysterics. “There could be Daniel.”
“And Teal’c.”
“There were four in the bed,” he warbled softly, “and the colonel said—”
She dug her elbow in his side, shaking with repressed laughter. “Stop it! Stop it!”
“I’ve stopped! I’ve stopped!” He dropped a forearm over his face. “Okay. That’s it. Serious now. We need to sleep.” He took a deep breath. Let it out. “Good night… Serena.”
“Good night, Joseph.”
On cue, together: “Good night, John Boy.”
More muffled laughter. A slow sinking into quiet. Then:
“God, Jack,” she said, her voice small and lost in the darkness. “All the poor babies…”
He wanted to hold her hand. He didn’t dare.
“I know, Sam,” he whispered. “But we’ll save them. Somehow, we’ll save them.”
Silence. And finally, sleep.
Chapter Twelve
It turned out, O’Neill discovered the next day, that preparing the fallow fields meant plowing in troughs and troughs of rotted down animal guts, heads and sundry other parts, smashed up bones and food scraps from the daily meals. But no dead humans, at least not this time. Not that he could see, anyway. And he made sure to look, because he’d accepted Boaz hadn’t been blowing smoke when he said it was what the Goa’uld and their Jaffa henchmen did around here to troublesome humans.
After less than a day in this hellhole he knew, more completely, more intimately than ever before, just what evils the Goa’uld were capable of committing.
Field preparation was filthy, stinking work. Back-breaking. Nauseating. After three hours of solid labor he stopped, just for a moment, to scratch at the damned brand on the back of his shoulder and wipe his sweaty face with his forearm. His blistered hands were smarting abominably.
“I don’t get it,” he said to Boaz, toiling beside him. “You’re the head man. You could assign yourself to any job. Why pick this one?”
“Keep working,” said Boaz. “Hol’c will come soon. Every day he inspects us to make sure we work hard for the god’s glory. If he sees you not working, he will hurt you.”
Even dirty and runnelled with sweat, with flies crawling on his face, he was one of the most extraordinarily good-looking men O’Neill had ever seen. Tall, golden, built like some Greek god brought to life. Compared with him, GQ cover models were plain. All the men here made them look plain. And the women? Hugh Heffner would think he’d died and gone to heaven. The least attractive slave on this moon would own Earth’s catwalks, its fashion shows, Hollywood. Being here was like living in the middle of a Vanity Fair photo shoot.
Man, did I wander onto the wrong sound-stage or what?
It was creepy. For countless generations these humans had been selectively bred for beauty so Yu would be surrounded by humans pleasing to his alien eyes. Nirrti had done the same to Kinthea’s people. Ra, too; those poor kids he’d surrounded himself with were all perfect. Probably they all did it, every last Goa’uld system lord in the galaxy.
He’d never get used to it. Never stop hating it. If he died fighting it, well, like Bra’tac said. Today I die well.
Stretching out his tight neck muscles O’Neill said, wryly, “And if Hol’c did hurt me I get the feeling that wouldn’t bother you much.”
“If it was only you that Hol’c hurt, Joseph?” Boaz said, his expression grim. “No. It would not bother me at all. But Hol’c would hurt me too, for allowing you to stop working. Hol’c would hurt everyone working here now, for your sin.”
O’Neill looked at the score of other men scattered around the ten acre field, slaving away under the hot sun, methodically grinding blood
and guts into the rich brown soil, making it even richer for the glory of a rotten corrupt sonofabitch snakehead. None of them was close enough to overhear their conversation. Good. Because he hated this place worse than anywhere he’d been in his life, even Abu Ghraib, and that was saying something.
It was time to get Jacob’s Tok’ra Resistance on the road.
“Fair enough.” Swallowing a groan, he bent again to his gross task. “So you’re keeping an eye on me, is that it?”
“Of course,” said Boaz. “There is something not right about you, Joseph. You don’t belong here.”
He snorted. “You can say that again.” His stomach rolled, protesting the stench of decomposing entrails. “Boaz… how many children have you sired? Do you know?”
Boaz didn’t answer. Just picked up his two empty wooden pails and walked back to the nearest wagon to fetch more muck from the fly-smothered tubs it carried. He filled the pails with blood and guts, brought them back, and methodically dripped the stinking slop further along the furrow. Then he put the newly emptied pails aside, and continued to mulch the stuff into the clotted earth.
“I have sired twenty-seven get,” he said, not looking up. “Two a year without fail.” His expression clouded. “Twenty-seven living, that is. Not all survived. Thirty-four when the dead ones are counted.”
Thirty-four? God. He must have started when he was still a kid, practically. No older than fourteen, fifteen tops. He looked around thirty now, at least in Earth years.
“How does that work?”
Boaz shot him a look from under his extravagant eyelashes. “You have sired a son, Joseph. You have mated Serena. You know how it works.”
“No,” he said, impatient, as he kept on with his own hoeing. “Not that. I meant… twenty-seven kids. That’s a hell of a lot. Is that all you’ve ever done? Make babies and work in the fields? You’ve never served the Goa’uld in other ways?”
Boaz shrugged. “Like other males I was put to a woman the year before I reached culling age, so Lord Choulai might see I was fertile and could breed true. The child was beautiful. Lord Choulai decreed I should not be culled, but stay here on the farm to sire more get. My sire was culled instead. He was old, older than you, even, and his eyes were not good.”
Something in Boaz’s face—a memory, an echo of pain—told O’Neill that this time culled was just another word for killed. He didn’t pursue it. Raking over old wounds wasn’t going to help him bond with this man and anyway, he really didn’t want to know the details.
He’d have enough to forget about this damned place as it was.
“So… you were born here? You’ve never lived anywhere else?”
Boaz shook his head. “I have never lived anywhere else.”
Or experienced anything other than brutality and fear and rutting like a bull to make babies, slaves, for the use of a parasitic life-form that no sane God in the universe should allow to live. O’Neill let that sink in for a while, and relieved his feelings by smashing more clods of dirt to smithereens.
“What about Mikah?” he said at last, when he could trust himself to speak without screaming obscenities.
Boaz tensed, then relaxed. “What about him?”
“If he breeds true—” He felt his mouth twist, saying the vile words. “Will he stay here to sire more children?”
“No. Only one male of each bloodline is permitted on a farm,” said Boaz, after the briefest hesitation. “If he breeds true he will be sent elsewhere. To another farm. Or, if he is honored, into some other service for the god first before siring his share of get.”
Some other service like being taken as host for one of Yu’s larval offspring, maybe, or a symbiote destined to become another Lord Choulai. Did Boaz even know that happened? Was anyone here aware of the Goa’uld’s true nature? O’Neill really wanted to know, but it was too soon to raise that thorny subject. Revealing the truth about the Goa’uld was a conversation for another day. A day when Boaz wasn’t holding a potentially deadly weapon.
Of course, there was another alternative. Mikah could stay to take Boaz’s place here, and soon after that some slave Boaz once called a friend could be plowing his pulped flesh and bones into a fallow field. God.
Then an even less palatable possibility occurred to him. “But what if your son doesn’t breed true, Boaz? What happens to him then?”
Boaz shot him a sharper look. “He will breed true. All my get breed true, boy and girl alike. Mine is the strongest, purest bloodline on this farm.”
Jesus Christ, the man sounded proud of it. “And that’s good, is it?” he said, roiling with baffled anger. “That’s something to throw a parade for?”
Boaz was equally baffled. “Parade? Joseph, you use words that have no meaning. Stop talking and work. I have the power to punish you. Must I punish you?”
He bit back words Boaz would understand all too well. “No, massah,” he said instead. “Sorry, massah.”
And got back to work. When his own pails were empty again he trudged to the wagon, refilled them, and trudged unevenly back again.
Boaz was watching him. “You are limping,” he accused, his expression stern.
O’Neill considered his gimpy knee. It was giving him hell. Just wait till he got home and had words with Janet Fraiser… “Yeah. So?”
“You must not let Hol’c see you limping.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” he sighed. “He’d hurt me?”
“He’d kill you,” Boaz said starkly.
He straightened, slowly, ignoring his back’s pained shrieking. “And again I wonder: what do you care?”
Boaz’s fingers tightened, loosened, tightened, on the handle of his hoe. “I do not have to like you, Joseph, to value your life,” he said at last. “And a killing upsets the village.”
“Well, Boaz, God forbid I should upset anyone,” he said, and pressed a fist against his howling right sacro-iliac. “Why would Hol’c kill me?”
Boaz looked at him as though he was an idiot. “Limping is weakness. Weakness is not allowed. You might be defective. You might breed a defective child.”
Right. Of course. All hail the mighty gene pool. He nodded. “Okay. Fine. I get the message: no limping.”
Boaz gestured at his hoe. “Now back to work.”
More guts. More sweat. More aching muscles and ripening blisters. Time dragged on. There really was no lunch. Hollow, hungry, parched, he toiled beside Boaz in silence and tried to think of another way to reach this unreachable man. To fulfil his mission here. Mikah appeared, a wooden yoke weighing down his shoulders. Suspended on each side a bucket of water with a cup attached.
O’Neill watched Boaz smile at the boy and stop himself from touching him, ruffling his hair, giving him a swift hug. In his eyes a blaze of love and pride… and buried beneath that, fear. The kind of fear only a parent experienced, or understood. The fear that sprang to life the moment you saw your child for the first time: squalling, bloody, helpless. A tiny scrap of humanity that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. It never went away, that fear. It just grew, as your child grew. With every passing day, week, month, year, the fear sank its claws deeper in your heart and soul.
Because you’d given the universe a hostage. Something it could take away from you without warning or appeal. If you were bad. Or careless. If you didn’t love enough.
Charlie.
Blindly O’Neill took the cup of water Mikah offered him, and poured it down his sand-dry throat. In his ears, his hammering heart.
“I passed Hol’c, Papa,” Mikah said, readjusting the weight of the yoke across his shoulders. “One field away yet. He wasn’t using his fire-brand, so maybe his mood is good today.”
“Maybe it is, Mikah,” Boaz agreed. “So don’t you do anything to change that. Hurry and water the other men, and be on your way. You still have corn to shuck.”
Mikah flashed him a cheeky grin. “Four bushels, I’ll make it!”
Boaz laughed. “You boast? And shall I beat you
if the boast falls flat on the ground?”
Mikah just chuckled, and went to water the other men.
O’Neill watched Boaz watch Mikah walk away, another Greek god in the growing. “He’s a fine boy.”
Caught unawares, Boaz smiled. “Very fine.” Then he frowned. “And not your concern. Get back to work.”
He was sick of work. Work wasn’t getting his mission any closer to completion. “I’ll bet all those other boys you sired were fine, too, Boaz. And the girls. Don’t you ever wonder about them, the ones you saw taken from here? Worry about them? Don’t you want to see your sons and daughters again? Know they’re okay? That they’re happy?”
Boaz’s expression was once more baffled. “They are no longer my concern. They serve the god.”
“And what about Mikah? Will you say the same about him, after he’s taken from you too? Disappeared somewhere to serve the god?”
A spasm of pain flickered over Boaz’s face. “We will not talk about Mikah.”
O’Neill stepped closer. This was it. Mikah was Boaz’s weak spot, the key to breaking the man, he could smell it. “You’re scared sick for him, Boaz. It’s written all over you. You love that boy, the way any good man loves his son. You don’t want him culled. You don’t want him sent away in chains, into slavery somewhere in Yu’s empire where you’ll never see him again. Admit it. This is wrong. All of it’s wrong, you know that in your bones. He’s your son and you want to save him. But you don’t know how.”
Boaz’s face drained of color as his eyes blazed with terror, and rage. “Be silent, Joseph!” he commanded, knuckles white around the handle of his hoe. “I will excuse you this once for you are new here and you do not understand! But if you speak of this again I will tell Hol’c and he will kill you. Do you understand me? Say you understand!”
Damn. O’Neill swallowed other, less harmless curses. Too hard, too fast. He was letting this place get to him. Releasing a sharp breath he stepped back and held up his hands, letting his hoe drop. Lowered his gaze. Submit, submit. Don’t challenge the top dog. Show him your belly. Let him know you know he’s boss.
“Sorry, Boaz,” he said, very quietly. “You’re right. I’m new here and I don’t understand. I was wrong to speak. I won’t do it again.”