“You’ll want that.”
“Thanks.” Danyel wound it around his shoulders, trying to keep the driest parts next to his skin. He’d warm up soon enough once they got moving, but for now — it wasn’t very pleasant.
Carter fumbled for her paddle. “Where are we?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Danyel found his own paddle at last, wedged into the stern. They were surrounded by mist and black water, the bank a darker shadow, the stars fading overhead. It was about an hour before true dawn, from the position of the stars. “Downstream from the palace.”
“I had kind of figured that out,” Carter said. “So what do we do now?”
“We get off this sandbank,” Danyel said. “And then — keep going downstream, I think. We’ll find a village soon enough, there are enough of them along the river. We’ll get our bearings there.”
“OK.” Carter dug her paddle into the mud, pushing them away, and Danyel backed water at the same time. The boat rocked, but didn’t move.
“Again,” Carter said, and pushed harder. The paddle slipped, flipping a clot of mud away with a splash, but this time the boat rocked free. Carter fell forward, caught herself, and Danyel backed water as hard as he could.
“Quick, before we’re stuck again —”
Carter dug deep with her own paddle, and together they got the boat turned and steadied, steering around the tip of the sandbank. Danyel relaxed a little, setting himself to paddle, and after a moment Carter matched his stroke. Down the river, then, he thought, and when the sun comes up, we’ll know where we are. We’ll find a village and make our way home — his home, not Carter’s. And Carter — Carter wasn’t dead. They’d really done it, fixed the time line so that SG-1 had never taken the puddle jumper back in time to find Ra’s ZPM. Jack, the original Jack, and Teal’c, and Carter had never been killed in the rebellion. It was as though a weight lifted from his shoulders, a guilt he thought he’d put behind him long ago. It had been his bad idea that had started it, his bad idea that had gotten them all killed, but they’d managed to fix it, Jack and Sam and Teal’c and the other self he hadn’t met. No one had died, and he — had Abydos again. Or something better.
He was grinning like an idiot, and Carter glanced over her shoulder. “What?”
He thought for a moment about parrying the question, pretending it was nothing, but in that moment he couldn’t bear anything less than honesty. “You’re alive,” he said, and Carter looked back at him again.
“What — oh.”
“It worked,” Danyel said. “We managed to stop my stupid plan from ever happening, and everything’s all right. Well, more or less, and assuming that we manage to drive off Ra, but —”
He stopped, not sure he was making sense, but Carter nodded. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, after a moment. “Being stuck here, I mean. We could probably bring you back, I don’t think it would disrupt the timeline too much.”
“It doesn’t,” Danyel said. “Bother me. And I don’t want to go back. I’m happy here.” He paused, trying for a lighter touch. “Besides, two of Jack in one place…”
“Might be awkward,” Carter agreed, but he thought she’d heard what he hadn’t said.
They paddled on in silence, the light slowly spreading along the horizon, paddling just hard enough to keep the boat steady in the current. The air was warmer now, with day approaching, but Danyel was still glad of the linen around his shoulders.
By the time the sky had lightened enough for them to see the opposite bank, Danyel was fairly sure he knew where they were. They were still upstream of the house, but only by a few hours’ walk. If they were lucky, they were still above the potters’ village, and they could get food and water there. He was definitely hungry, and once the sun came up, they’d need water.
The sky to the east glowed, red, then gold, Horus ascending, and the first white-hot sliver of the sun-disk rose above the horizon. It was no wonder people worshiped the sun, he thought, not for the first time. Sunrise over the black land came like a blast of trumpets, the god leaping up with a shout, pouring light and life onto the plains. Carter shipped her paddle and they drifted as the sun rose, the enormous disk pulling free of the horizon, the haze puddling at its base as though it was formed from a bed of molten iron.
“It’s spectacular,” she said at last, when the sun had risen far enough that they could no longer look at it. “No wonder you want to stay.”
That wasn’t why, or not the only reason. But he couldn’t deny that it was part of it, either, these moments of pure, heart-stopping beauty. An ibis lifted from the reeds, black against the glowing sky, and his breath caught in his chest. “It doesn’t hurt,” he said, and lifted his paddle again.
The current was flowing faster here, and there was more debris in the river, coming probably from one of the villages they had passed in the dark. Danyel did his best to steer around the largest of the floating objects, but first one and then another thumped against the low sides. Something else scraped unpleasantly against the underside of the hull, and a few minutes later Carter said, “I hate to mention it, but my feet are getting wet.”
“Yeah. Mine, too.” Danyel couldn’t see a hole, but he could definitely feel that there was more water than there had been. It was coming in more quickly, too. He could see the smoke of cooking fires rising from the potters’ village, a mile or so ahead, maybe a little less. They’d probably make it, if the leak didn’t get any worse.
They covered maybe a third of the distance before Carter had to stop paddling to bail, and it wasn’t long after that that Danyel began angling toward the bank. The reeds grew thickly here, breaks had the trodden, polished look of crocodile wallows: not at all where he would have chosen to land, but choice didn’t have anything to do with it.
Carter emptied another pot-full of water over the side. “It’s gaining on me,” she said, and Danyel nodded.
“I’d noticed.” He dug his paddle deeper into the current, the boat wallowing, awkward. “I’m going to put us ashore there —”
Carter dropped the pot she’d been using to bail, picked up her paddle, and together they drove hard for the bank. At last the bow touched the slick mud, and Carter drove her paddle hard into the ground. Danyel sloshed his way forward, and together they dragged the boat the rest of the way onto the shore. Water spilled out over the stern, and finally Danyel saw where a seam had split. There would be no repairing that, not with anything they had in hand. That meant they’d have to walk the rest of the way, first to the village and then home: not impossible, not even that difficult, but first they had to get out of the reeds.
Carter drew her zat, letting it unfold to check the mechanism. Danyel did the same, scanning the ground for what he hoped would be a safe path. And then they both heard it, a grunt and a roar and a rushing through the reeds. Danyel flung himself aside, saw Carter dodge the other way, and then they both brought zats to bear. They fired together, and then again. The crocodile staggered as it turned, but gathered itself for another rush. Danyel backed away, firing, heard and saw Carter’s zat blasts hit home along the animal’s back. And still it kept coming, slower now, but still digging its claws deep into the mud, hauling itself forward. The narrow jaws opened, showing crooked teeth and puffy flesh. Danyel aimed for the head, the tiny brain, and fired twice more. Carter fired, too, and the crocodile roared. It lifted its head, and then, abruptly, collapsed.
“Come on,” Danyel said. He wasn’t entirely sure the thing was dead, and he didn’t want to wait to find out. “Let’s go, we’ve got to get to the high ground, to the road…”
Carter gave the crocodile a wide berth — he guessed she wasn’t all that sure it was dead, either — and together they scrambled up onto the road. They stood for a moment, breathing hard, and then Carter folded her zat.
“How big do you think it was?”
“About the biggest I’ve seen,” Danyel said. It had to have been over nine feet long, even allowing for the exaggerating effects o
f pure terror, and it had taken far too many shots to finally put it down. Two shots to kill a human, but a crocodile?
“I hit it at least six times,” Carter said. “And I’m guessing you did the same.” She shook her head. “That was one tough crocodile.”
“They grow that way here,” Danyel said, and couldn’t avoid a quick glance into the reeds. “We should probably get moving.”
“Good idea,” Carter agreed, and they set off down the road.
Chapter Twenty-six
“Colonel Carter will no doubt return in good time,” Teal’c said.
Cam shaded his eyes, looking out over the river in the early morning light. “Yeah.” He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Carter and Danyel had been gone way too long with no explanation that could be good. If they’d been captured…
Carolyn came and stood with them, a steaming mug of tea in her hands. She looked better, had some color in her face again, and Cam gave her a smile. “How’s it going?”
“Not bad. I’ve had a look at some minor injuries, but there’s nothing that stitches and time and rest won’t fix.” She took a quick sip and then stopped to blow on the surface of the tea to cool it. “Where’s Colonel Carter?”
“Not back yet,” Cam said. He understood why this job had given General O’Neill gray hair. He thought he could see some hairs turning himself.
Teal’c frowned, turning abruptly, and Cam cut off whatever Carolyn had been going to say to follow his gaze in the sky with the long practice of someone used to spotting aircraft.
“What’s that?” Carolyn said, looking up at the glint of silver that approached far too rapidly.
“I believe it is another puddle jumper,” Teal’c said evenly.
“Crap.” Cam swung around. “Teal’c, get O’Neill and Hor-Aha. We’ve got a problem here. And get Daniel too.”
Carolyn grabbed his arm. “Wait. Does that mean…?”
“It means the Ancients got tired of us not answering the phone,” he said.
The other puddle jumper vanished suddenly, cloaking no doubt when it registered the mothership parked at Giza. But that didn’t mean it was gone. There was a wind that came from nowhere, a cloud of dust blowing up from the courtyard, whipping around Teal’c as he hurried back into the house. Sam came out, shading her eyes and looking up, O’Neill just behind her, and Cam jogged over to him.
“What’s up?” O’Neill shouted above the whipping wind.
“Another puddle jumper,” Cam said, his P90 at port arms. Best to be prepared, though he didn’t think it was likely the Ancients would shoot first and ask questions later.
“Landing,” O’Neill said, straightening himself up as the wind began to die. In a moment a familiar stubby shape materialized, a puddle jumper just like theirs.
Only not. This jumper had been through the wringer. Cam could see that in a heartbeat. The surface was pitted and scorched, the windscreen cracked along one side, and the surface was not smooth because here and there bits had been welded on, panels removed and cable tacked across the smooth hull. This puddle jumper was an old wreck, barely flying, held together with spit and duct tape. The back gate opened.
It was the woman from the messages, her hands held well away from her body as she carefully came down the ramp. She wore loose trousers of heavy brown cloth and a white wrap shirt, her black hair pulled back in a long pony tail. Her eyes went to the weapon in Cam’s hands, flickered over the others and back to him, saying something that of course he didn’t understand.
“Hi,” Cam said, the muzzle pointed away from her. She clearly knew what firearms were. “I’m Colonel Cameron Mitchell.” Of course that would mean as much to her as whatever she was saying did to him.
Daniel came hurrying out of the house and stopped, sizing up the situation in a moment. “OK.” He burst into another long series of words Cam didn’t understand.
O’Neill nudged him. “Here we go again.”
“Welcome to the Black Land,” Daniel said in Ancient. “This is the realm of Hor-Aha, who is the Lord of the Two Lands. I am Daniel Jackson.”
The woman nodded back gravely. “I am Ai, First Engineer of the Mishihase.”
“You’re an Ancient?”
Ai put her head to the side. “I do not know what you mean.”
“Are you one of the people who came to this planet from the city of Atlantis?” Daniel asked.
Her expression cleared and she came to the end of the ramp, her hands still held plainly in view. “No. My mother’s father was one who came as a man, and my father’s mother came as a baby in arms, carried through the Ring with the other transport orphans from Tinun. My other grandparents were Mishihase.” Her eyes flickered over the assembled group, Hor-Aha appearing in the doorway behind with Teal’c. “But you must also be a child of Atlantis, or at least far-kindred.”
Daniel nodded, conscious of everyone waiting for him to translate, but feeling like he ought to go on a bit first.
“Some of us are, though I am not. O’Neill is, and also Dr. Lam.” He gestured to them respectively.
“Which settlement are you from?” Ai asked, her brow creasing. “I didn’t think that any of the other gateships survived, and yet we picked one up on our sensors.”
“From none of them,” Daniel said, taking a deep breath. “It’s a long story.” He switched back to English. “This is Ai,” he said. “She’s the engineer of a group of descendants of the Ancients that I think, though eastern history is not my specialty, are probably in the Kuril Islands or Hokkaido, a place called Mishihase.” That was his best guess, anyway. “I think this is going to be a long conversation, folks. It’s probably best if I sit down and talk to her and we don’t all stand in the courtyard to do it.” Hor-Aha looked confused, and Daniel repeated the whole thing again in Egyptian.
“OK,” Mitchell said, herding people back toward the house. “You do that, Daniel. Figure out what her story is. But you know…”
“I know I can’t tell her too much,” Daniel said. “I get that.” Though how he was supposed to make any of this make sense to someone who could perfectly well look at their stuff and tell it had never come from this time and place, or from the Goa’uld either…
He invited her to come inside and have refreshment, sitting quietly in a corner of the main living room while everyone else tried not to stare. O’Neill brought them something to drink, bending over with a raised eyebrow in his white boxer shorts and gold necklace to deposit two stoneware cups of beer like the most surreal cocktail waitress Daniel had ever seen. He was never going to let Jack live this down once they got back. Provided their timeline stayed intact and they could get back.
Ai took a polite sip. “You said you were not from one of the settlements?”
“No,” Daniel said. And that was a line of questioning he ought to avoid, at least until he got a better read on her. “How many are there?”
“There were seven originally,” Ai said. “When we came to this world as a refuge we knew that our numbers were too small for us to be viable as a population. We had dropped below genetic viability, and we could not replicate our great cities with the very limited supplies we had and the small group of people who could build the things we used. We were refugees, Daniel Jackson, not a colony. Many of those who came were people of the City, not soldiers or engineers or builders. Many of them were people who had been evacuated to the City from other places, from other stands against the enemy — children, non-combatants, the old. Even we get old, Daniel Jackson.”
“I know,” he said. “And so you split up?”
“We divided into seven settlements, as we knew our footprint on this world must be lighter. Our scouts and ambassadors had come here for some years, and we knew a number of friendly peoples who would welcome the things we brought. We brought doctors and better ways of fishing and farming, things that were useful. There were seven places where it seemed we could live among friends and benefit one another. I am from the settlement in Mishihase.”
“The clusters of the ATA gene,” Daniel said. It all made sense. Seven clusters around the globe, the ATA gene spreading from places where the Ancients had once lived, southern Britain and the horn of Africa south of the Gulf of Aden, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Bulgarian Black Sea coast…
“The ATA gene?”
“That’s what we call the genetic marker that allows one to use your technology,” Daniel said.
Ai nodded. “Yes, we know what that is. It’s recessive, and therefore becomes rarer the further removed one is from the people of Atlantis.” She crossed her legs, taking another sip of the beer without looking away from his face. “I am the only one of my three siblings who express it.”
“Which is why you can fly a puddle jumper. Er, gateship.”
“Yes.” Ai nodded again. “I carry it from two grandparents, a double recessive expressed from each parent.” Her eyes slid away to Carolyn, who was talking with Sam on the far side of the room. “But your friends are also children of Atlantis?”
“Through many, many generations.” Daniel shook his head. He was going to have to come out with it sooner or later. “How did you know about the Goa’uld?”
“As you no doubt know, those who came from Atlantis have lifespans many times longer than the people of this world. When they had dwelled here many years these other travelers came, the parasites you call the Goa’uld. We thought they might become friends, but we were wrong. They came first on a slave raid, surprising the people of the Circle Sea settlement and killing many and taking many more. After that we fought. We did not have many gateships left by then, as time and age took their toll, but we did what we could. We used an installation beneath the ice armed with the last weapons of Atlantis, and for a time we drove them off. Years passed. And then they returned. Once more we drove them away. Once more they returned.” Ai shook her head sadly. “But we are not what we were. Those who came from Atlantis are gone, for the most part, for age catches even us. This is the last gateship we have, the last on the planet. I risked all on this flight, bringing no one with me for I could ask no one to share the danger, in hopes that the other gateship we sensed was that of friends who could help us, some scattered remnant of our people. Without the gateships, contact between the settlements has been lost, and when last the Goa’uld raided Mishihase we barely managed to protect ourselves.” Her eyes searched his face. “So who are you, Daniel Jackson? If you are also children of Atlantis and their allies, where do you come from? Who are your friends descended from through many generations? I do not believe your doctor is from the Circle Sea or the Coast of Birds. Her face is more like to Mishihase, but I have never seen her before.”
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