Daniel took a deep breath. “We’re from the future,” he said.
It took a while to get through the explanations, and Cam was beginning to wonder just how much Daniel was telling her as they sat in the corner and sipped the thin beer. He was about to go over and remind Daniel that he was supposed to be getting information, not giving it, when there was a shout from the compound. He turned to the door, felt his shoulders sag with relief as he saw the other Daniel and Carter crossing the dusty compound. They looked as though they’d been dragged through a mud puddle, but it was obvious they were unhurt, and he couldn’t help grinning.
Neither could O’Neill. He slapped Danyel on the back and offered Carter an approving nod to go with the grin. “We were starting to think the crocs got you.”
Danyel rubbed a streak of dirt on his jaw. “Yeah, well.”
“You know better than to go swimming,” O’Neill said.
“We didn’t have much choice,” Danyel answered. “Look, I’m filthy and dead tired and I want a bath and bed, and I’m sure Colonel Carter feels the same.”
O’Neill waved his hand. “Go, go.”
Danyel paused, gave him a sudden grin. “And yes, thank you, it’s good to be back.”
“Crocodiles?” Cam said, to Carter, who nodded.
“Yeah. One really big one that didn’t like where we decided to land.”
Which begged the question of what they were doing on the river in the first place, Cam thought, but he knew the simple answer — escaping — and Carter looked just as tired as Danyel.
“Tamit will draw you a bath, too,” O’Neill offered.
“Thanks,” Carter said, and she trudged after Danyel toward the back of the compound.
Cam glanced back at the main house — he really should go find out what Daniel was saying — but before he could move on, one of the Egyptian soldiers came trotting over to O’Neill. Cam thought he heard his own name, and sure enough O’Neill lifted a hand.
“Hang on a minute, will you? Seems this Marik wants to talk to us.”
“I don’t really want to talk to him,” Cam said. He sighed. “Do we know what he wants?”
“Nope.” O’Neill squared his shoulders. “I guess we should find out, Colonel.”
Hor-Aha had ordered the Tok’ra confined in a small room at one end of the stable building, with a high window too narrow for a man to fit through, and a single door. It was open, Cam saw, letting in what breeze there was, and Marik was sitting against the back wall, the guard watching him impassively. Marik scrambled to his feet at their approach, and the soldier laid his spear across the opening, barring his way.
“Colonel Mitchell,” Marik said. “And General O’Neill. Thank you for coming.”
O’Neill looked at Cam. “He’s all yours.”
“Thanks very much,” Cam said, under his breath. He said, more loudly, “What do you want, Marik?”
“To make amends,” Marik answered.
“Boy, that’s a tall order,” O’Neill said.
Cam pretended he hadn’t heard, though he pretty much agreed. “Did you have something particular in mind?”
“You’re going to fight Ra,” Marik said. “No, no one’s told me, but there isn’t any alternative. Let me fight with you. I’m Tok’ra, it’s what I was born to do.”
“Sorry.” There was no way in hell he was going to let Marik out of that cell, not after the trouble he’d already caused. Cam shook his head for emphasis. “You’re staying right here.”
“I can be of use to you,” Marik protested. “I’m from your own time —“
“And were willing to screw up the timeline to get what you wanted,” Cam said. “Sorry. You’re staying right here.”
He turned on his heel, and O’Neill moved with him, nodding. “Good call, Colonel.”
“The Tok’ra are just pure trouble,” Cam said, with more bitterness than he’d meant, and headed for his own quarters.
“So.”
Jack looked up to see Danyel looming over him, and made a gesture that encompassed both the empty stool beside him and the beer jar. Danyel gave a little smile and seated himself, reaching for the ladle.
“Do we actually have a clever plan?” he asked, after a moment, and Jack sighed. He’d been hoping to avoid that question just a little longer, but, no, no one — least of all Danyel — was going to let him off the hook.
“I told you my clever plan,” he said. “And now we’ve got three puddle jumpers.”
“One of which barely flies,” Danyel said. He paused. “But, on the plus side, we’ve got someone else with the ATA gene and a working knowledge of Ancient policy.”
“What exactly did you — I mean him, the other Dr. Jackson.” Jack shook his head in frustration. “What did he tell her?”
Danyel gave him a sideways look. “You know I wasn’t here.”
“Uh-huh.”
Danyel sighed. “Well, if it was me — I’d have told her the truth. It just makes sense.”
“Not to mention you’re a terrible liar,” Jack said. “And she’s an Ancient.”
“Not exactly,” Danyel said, in the tone of voice he reserved for lost causes. “She has the ATA gene, just like you.”
“But she’s actually met some Ancients,” Jack said. “She’s a lot closer to one than I am.”
A shadow crossed Danyel’s face, was gone so quickly Jack couldn’t be sure of what he’d seen. “That has good and bad points.”
Jack rested his back against the wall. “If you — the other you — told her what’s going on, what’s that going to do to the timeline?”
“Potentially bad things,” Danyel said. “But — I assume I, he, got some kind of promise, and she must know what it would mean to her descendants. The Ancients are gone, Jack, even now. She’s got nothing to gain by changing the future.”
“That you know of,” Jack said, but he felt obscurely reassured. “OK, we go with that for now. Which leaves us with 3 invisible spaceships and somebody who was around the last time one of Ra’s buddies got his butt kicked. That has to improve the odds.”
“What does?” That was Sam, dropping to sit cross-legged beside them. She had a shallow basket under her arm, held it out to reveal rounds of bread still warm from the oven.
“Ai,” Danyel said, and Sam blinked before the name registered.
“Oh, right. She seems very sensible. And she has a lot of courage, flying here in that wreck.” She paused. “I think we ought to give her as many parts as we can spare.”
“You’re assuming she’s going back,” Jack said.
“We can’t just keep her,” Danyel said.
“Can’t we?” Jack reached for his beer, not meeting their eyes. “That’s one way of making sure she doesn’t tell anybody anything that’s going to change the timeline.”
“That’s — not a good idea,” Danyel said.
“It would be wrong,” Sam said briskly. “And, from a practical standpoint, extremely difficult. Unless we’re planning to destroy the puddle jumpers, which I think is a bad idea, we’d have to keep her locked up forever. We’re not going to do that.”
“We’re not?” Jack smiled in spite of himself.
“No,” Sam said. “We’re not.”
Vala eyed the stranger — Ai, she called herself, a child of the Ancients. Vala wasn’t at all sure how she felt about the Ancients in general. No matter how much Daniel argued that the Ancients couldn’t act, that there were good reasons to think that intervention would only make things worse, and the Ori were certainly some evidence of that, she found it hard to come up with a description more positive than “unhelpful.” But Ai wasn’t an Ancient, she reminded herself, and even if she had been, she wasn’t one of the Ascended ones who had all the power, but never intervened. She was more like Myrddin, or really one of Myrddin’s grandchildren, and from the look of the puddle jumper, her colony was well on its way to losing itself in the local population.
She looked lost, Vala thought, standing there wi
th her arms folded just a little too tightly across her chest. There was a line between her eyebrows, the faintest hint of a frown, not displeasure but concentration — and had she been wearing that egg-shaped pendant before? It was remarkably undecorative, a pale gray ovoid much smaller than the hen’s eggs she bought at the grocery store when she was trying to live like one of the Tau’ri, and Vala frowned in turn. If I was an Ancient, I’d have a way to translate unfamiliar languages discreetly, she thought, and put on her brightest smile.
“Darling!” she said, and made sure her voice was loud enough to reach Mitchell and the rest of SG-1, huddling beside the other puddle jumper. “That’s a very pretty necklace. You don’t mind letting me take a look?”
She reached for it as she spoke, and saw the moment that Ai surrendered.
“No, it’s not just jewelry,” Mishihase’s First Engineer said. “It’s a translator.”
“A translator!” Vala repeated, for Mitchell’s benefit. “How very clever of you!”
She had Mitchell’s attention now, and Teal’c’s, and they both turned and came to join her, Teal’c’s eyebrows rising in unspoken question. Ai’s mouth tightened, and then she relaxed with a rueful smile.
“You can’t blame me for trying. It’s always wise to find out as much as possible about strangers.”
“Indeed,” Teal’c said. “Then we may presume that this is an Ancient device?”
“It only works for those with the blood marker,” Ai said.
“So it wouldn’t do me or Teal’c any good,” Mitchell said. “OK, I got that, not that I wanted it anyway. What I am concerned about — how much did Jackson tell you, anyway?”
“Enough to understand that you are worried about changing your people’s past,” Ai answered. “And, yes, that is a grave thing. But I submit that it is more important to drive Ra from this planet, and for that I believe you will find me useful.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean we can afford to let you go,” Mitchell said, and there was what sounded like genuine regret in his voice.
“Let us ford that stream when we reach it, and not before,” Ai said. “In the meantime, do you want my help or not?”
Mitchell smiled slowly. “Yeah. We do.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
His other self was sitting cross-legged in the shade of the courtyard wall, squinting at a scroll unrolled in his lap. A younger scribe sat with him, busy with ink and reed pen, making notes as Danyel dictated to him. Daniel hesitated, not wanting to interrupt, but his other self looked up before he could back away.
“Nothing important,” Daniel said quickly. “I can come back.”
“No, we’re done.” Danyel looked at the scribe, who dipped his head.
“I will make the copies, Danyel, and bring them to Pharaoh.”
“And one for Sa-Mantha, too, please.”
“Of course.” The scribe finished gathering up his equipment, and disappeared into the house.
Danyel looked up at him, squinting again. “I’d suggest going inside, but it’s a lot less crowded here.”
Daniel nodded. He was abruptly overtaken by a memory of everyone on Abydos crowding into Kasuf’s tent. He and Sha’re had ended up jammed into a corner, and she had ended up in his lap, which hadn’t exactly helped him pay attention to the matter at hand… He shook the thought away. This was Egypt, not Abydos, and he had something equally important to deal with. “I wanted to talk to you about coming back with us,” he said.
“I don’t — I’m not sure that’s possible,” Danyel answered.
Daniel settled himself in the dirt at his other self’s side, rested his back against the brick wall. This early in the morning they were still cool, and the shade was pleasant. “I think it is. In fact, I think you can all come back. If you want.”
“It’s taking a hell of a risk with the timeline,” Danyel said. “Not to mention that having two versions of us in the same place — I’m surprised we haven’t had problems already. I’ve been worried about Sam. And Teal’c.”
And not about us, Daniel thought, unsurprised. Or at least not that either of us would admit. He said, “That’s right, you — our timelines diverged before that.”
“Before what?”
“Before —” Daniel stopped, trying to think of a good way to sum up a situation that had been bizarre even by the relaxed standards of the SGC. “Due to an unfortunate incident involving massive energy weapons and a black hole, we ended up with I think it was sixteen versions of SG-1, all from different alternate universes, but no entropic cascade failure. The Carters and Dr. Lee theorized that the universes were all similar enough that there wasn’t a problem. And our universes — well, they’re different timelines within the same universe.”
“I think that still makes them different universes,” Danyel said. “Though certainly it would explain why you and I aren’t having problems.”
“And Sam and Teal’c — and Jack, though that’s not entirely relevant in this case — may have been from a more different universe, but they’re now firmly established in this one.”
Danyel pushed his glasses into a more secure position. “I think I want to talk this over with Sam.”
Daniel nodded. “Yeah.”
“So.” Danyel gave him a sidelong glance. “What did you really want?”
“I think you should come back,” Daniel said. “All of you.”
“I’m already there,” Danyel pointed out. “Or — you know what I mean.”
Daniel nodded. “And I say this without false modesty, two of us would be useful. As would two of Sam, and Teal’c —”
“Teal’c can’t come,” Danyel said. “Egeria needs him.” He smiled then, not entirely pleasantly. “And what about Jack? One retired colonel, one active-service general — that’s a bit awkward, don’t you think?”
“We’ve done weirder,” Daniel said, thinking of Jack’s teen-aged clone, and Danyel nodded.
“OK, point. But —”
“You don’t want to come back,” Daniel said. He blinked, started. How had Mitchell noticed that, and he hadn’t? This was himself he was talking about, he ought to know what he’d want. “That’s what this is about. Never mind all the arguments, you don’t want to leave.”
Danyel tipped his head back so that it was resting against the wall. “No, I — I suppose I don’t.”
Why the hell not? Daniel swallowed the words, knowing how he’d react to a direct question, and narrowed his eyes at his other self. “And so you’re going to talk everyone else into staying?”
“They can make their own choices,” Danyel said. “Ask them.”
“We will,” Daniel said. “But — they’re your friends. And it’s a dangerous place to raise a child. Snakes, scorpions, diseases that could be cured in a heartbeat at home…”
“You think I don’t know that? That Sam doesn’t know that?” Danyel glared at him, then shoved himself to his feet. “Do you really think the SGC would just, I don’t know, give us our old jobs back? Jobs Sam and Jack never actually had?”
“It would be a waste not to,” Daniel answered, standing with him. He wasn’t entirely sure it was true, but it was better to get them back first, and then worry about the details. “Are you being fair about this? This may be what you want, but what about them?”
Danyel’s fists tightened. “That’s a low blow.”
“Is it?” Daniel paused, ready to duck when the other man took a swing at him. “Remember what happened the last time we stayed behind.”
For a second, he thought Danyel was going to hit him, but then Danyel shook his head.
“No,” he said. “This isn’t Abydos.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
“Isn’t it?” Daniel called after him, but there was no response.
“So this is the plan?” Carter asked. She hoped she didn’t sound quite as dubious as she felt, but from the expression on Mitchell’s face, he was thinking the same thing. “We’re going to use the two — sorry, three —
puddle jumpers to bluff Ra into leaving Earth for fear that the Ancients will retaliate.”
“After you and her, the other you, figure out a way to keep Ra from taking the Stargate with him,” Mitchell said. “Yep. That’s it.”
“I am in agreement with Colonel Carter,” Teal’c said. “There are many unanswered questions about this plan.”
“You think I hadn’t noticed?” Mitchell asked. They were sitting in the doorway of the storeroom that they had been allotted as quarters, making the most of a mild breeze. Vala had acquired a parasol somewhere, Carter noted without surprise, as well as a jewel-handled fan. She could probably have a handsome young soldier to wave it for her if she made an effort.
“It’s a typical Jack plan,” Daniel said. He was looking tired, Carter thought, probably from the strain of translating so much. “OK, kids, let’s try this incredibly unlikely idea, and see if we can’t make it work.”
He had O’Neill’s intonation down perfectly, and Carter grinned in spite of herself. “The basic idea makes sense,” she said. “We know that Ra doesn’t want to risk being attacked by the Ancients — his mothership won’t withstand a direct attack — and we also know he doesn’t want the other Goa’uld to know he’s screwed up. So if he leaves, and they bury the Stargate — he won’t be back.”
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