"Ah," mumbled Jack and shrugged. "No big deal. You know what I've been doing in the bad old days. It involved a lot of that."
"Glad we cleared that up." Daniel broke into a cautious grin. "Tow can we get some dinner?"
"You got a death wish? If the rest of the place is anything to go by, they serve boiled newt as- Oh crap!" Watching his nemesis approach, Jack wondered if it was too late to change the entree back to boiled newt.
Poletti in tow, Norris had emerged from the com shack and strutted across the square. "O'Neill! Sergeant van Leyden wants to see you."
"In which case Sergeant van Leyden can drag his ass out here. If he asks why, tell him to read up on privileges of rank." Norris's face said that this was exactly the reply he'd hoped for. Jack didn't like it. Time to stir things up a little. "By the way, Norris, what were you doing at the gate this morning?"
Haughtiness gave way to consternation, and Norris's jaw worked hard. Eventually he snarled, "I was waiting for Major Warren. We were expecting him back. Not that it's any of your business."
"We? Who's we? That happy little family you've got here?"
This time the shock tactics didn't work. Norris smirked. "Look, O'Neill, you two can either come with us or-"
The motion, a blur in his peripheral vision, told Jack that the unspoken threat had just become the only option and that it was gonna be ugly. He spun around, managed to block a blow that nearly broke his arm. His fist, aimed at Poletti's solid gut, missed by a mile. God, this guy was fast, way too fast! Jack was going for his gun when a punch to the kidney made him arch back helplessly. As he sank to his knees, pain tinted the planet's crescent brilliantly red, until the Stooges appeared out of nowhere to join the fun.
Curly's face smiled down on him, and Norris bleated a lame, unexpected protest. Then they were all over Jack, pinning him down, flex-cuffing his wrists, leaving his ribs screaming. Six feet away lay Daniel, tied up and motionless, nose busted, lip split, blood glaring from an ashen face.
"Take them to the gate," a whole new voice ordered, sounding like its owner was enjoying the spectacle. "Send them... home."
Sergeant van Leyden, Jack presumed.
It was near sunrise by the time Teal'c awoke, remembering little, except that the injury must have been grievous, else he would not have slipped into a healing trance. Then the forest, alive with the howls of its creatures, brought the events back to him.
He cautiously pushed himself upright, neck craned to look at his shoulder. A large bloodstain had soaked from where the fabric was torn and down the front of his shirt. Drenched by the pervasive damp, it was already beginning to blend with dirt and sweat. The wound itself had closed. Only a rosy scar, standing out starkly from dark skin, marked its location. That and perhaps some minor twinges and residual stiffness in his shoulder. In time, scar, twinges, and stiffness would fade, and they were a small price to pay for his folly.
"Shek kree a kek, hsshak!" he hissed, furious with himself.
Had he let himself be fooled like this as a raw recruit, Master Bra'tac would not have wasted any time or effort on whipping him. Master Bra'tac would have sent him home to his mother, to learn how to spin wool and tend small children, because Teal'c was not fit to become a warrior.
"Hasshak!" He spat again and pushed himself to his feet.
The shelter in the tree was empty, as he had feared. Dug into the ground he found a deep hole, filling with moisture. This was where Dr. Fraiser had hidden her dagger. Near the hole lay a small piece of rock; a whetstone, no doubt. There was nothing else the tree could tell him, and Teal'c stepped back out into the open, noting with some astonishment that she had not taken the backpack or any of the weapons, despite the fact that he had hardly been in a position to stop her.
Why had she left without supplies or arms? And where had she gone?
He could not visually recall her leaving, because he had been slipping from consciousness, but perhaps... Teal'c returned to the boulder that had secured the entrance, sat down once more, and closed his eyes. In his mind he saw the doctor's drawn face, her gaze lucid for the first time in days, agonized with the realization of what she had done. Then the image went black. This was when he had begun to drift. But he had still been able to hear; the sounds as clear and precise as they became in the split-second before sleep.
He's already dead.
Said aloud as if in response to something or someone-what or whom?-and with a distinct undertone of apprehension. The doctor had told an untruth, and she had been afraid of being found out. Not just about the lie. She had had the opportunity to kill him and refused to take it. Twice. First when she had only wounded him; the second time when he had lain helpless. Instead of striking, she had backed away, slowly and with great difficulty-a child, aware of the cost of disobedience but disobeying nonetheless-and then she suddenly had turned and run.
With perfect accuracy, his memory mapped out the volume and direction of the sound her footsteps had made. When his eyes snapped open, he stared at a tight gap in the undergrowth. Teal'c rose and retraced her path, unsurprised when he could not find boot prints. The ground, bog-like and resilient, returned to its original state within minutes. However, on the bushes themselves several thin twigs were broken and leaves crushed; unmistakable tokens of passage.
Dr. Fraiser's choice of escape route bewildered him. To the east, the terrain became easier, sloping gradually into a broad river valley. Logically, if a person were fleeing from something, they would tend to take the easiest path for best possible speed. Indeed, Teal'c himself had done so three days ago, fleeing from the beasts that had attacked them. Dr. Fraiser had done the opposite. She had turned west, choosing the most difficult and dangerous route, uphill into the mountains and back toward the Stargate-and the beasts. Why?
"To go home," he murmured in answer to his own question.
In her ramblings, she had repeatedly expressed a wish to return home. At the time, it had struck him as the most rational thought she was conceiving. Now he wondered.
Even when she had shown no sign of improvement, he had clung to the hope that the condition would be temporary. But he was no longer sure that it was madness at all. The assault on him, in its preparation and execution, spoke of a cunning that was fundamentally unlike Dr. Fraiser. Not because she lacked the intelligence and determination, but because she lacked the callousness. The fact that he was still alive proved it. If not madness, what then?
Teal'c knew of one thing that would explain it, and the thought sickened him to such an extent that he refused to entertain it. But whatever the case, he needed to find her, even if it meant temporarily abandoning his search for Major Carter. At this moment Dr. Fraiser was the more vulnerable of the two, although Major Carter, too, had been injured, and it was impossible to predict her current state of health.
In the name of a false god Teal'c had led men into battle, more than once, and thus the weight of responsibility he felt was as familiar as it was unwelcome. Unwelcome not because he sought to shirk it, but because he knew the consequences error could entail. His own father had fallen victim to them, murdered for failing to please the whim of a would-be god and win an unwinnable skirmish. Holding himself accountable, he had calmly accepted his punishment-as indeed had O'Neill, who had become his own judge and jury. Neither man had conceded that responsibility without error could not exist.
If there were no risk of error, what weight could there be to responsibility? They went hand in hand, one the dark side of the other, and the conclusions O'Neill had drawn were wrong. The penance he inflicted on himself was unjust and would be warranted only if he were a god possessed of omniscience.
Teal'c decided that, should he escape with his life, his friend and brother would need to be reminded of his patent lack of divinity.
Fuelled by sudden resolve, he turned back, collected the pack and his staff weapon, set off on the doctor's tenuous trail of broken twigs, crushed tendrils of creeper plants, bark scraped from tree trunks. Irrespectiv
e of the difficulty of the terrain, all traces were on a line that led uphill and west as straight as a bird flew. It was as though Dr. Fraiser followed a beckoning voice, imperious and seductive.
Further up in the mountains, the ground became marginally drier, and here he found footprints -mostly indentations made by the tips of her boots. She had been moving fast, running at times, and continued for longer than she should have been able to sustain such a frenzied pace. If Teal'c was right, the will that governed her would drive her on relentlessly and past the point of exhaustion. And if he was right, it meant that a Goa'uld was on this planet.
More than four hours into his pursuit Teal'c reached a small stream and followed it upriver, until it widened into a pool. Halfway along its northern shore, he discovered the impression in the mud. During his first winter on Earth, O'Neill had explained to him a game Tauri children liked to play. It was called Snow Angels, and O'Neill had obliged by throwing himself to the ground and demonstrating its mechanics. This looked similar-the shape of a body etched into the soil, legs splayed, arms stretched wide.
Dr. Fraiser's physical strength seemed to have flagged at last. She had tripped over a root and fallen face down into the mud. From there she had gathered herself and crawled to the water's edge, presumably to drink.
"Shek kree," Teal'c muttered, dismayed.
He knelt, scooped up a handful of water and, careful not to swal low any, sloshed the sweat from his face. Tepid and smelling sickly sweet, the water was less than refreshing. It also was tainted, Teal'c knew not by what substance. When he had first come upon the creek two days ago and several miles further downstream, he too had drunk from it, but his symbiote had neutralized most of the contaminant. Other than a passing dizziness there had been no ill effects. However, he could not tell what harm it would do to Tauri physiology.
Some, he surmised. Dr. Fraiser had risen again, but the footprints, plainly outlined now, were uneven and staggering like a drunkard's. He trailed the unsteady path and two hundred meters further up found a rock where she had rested. Though not in the position he would have expected. Instead of slumping onto the smooth stone directly, she had walked around it and sat facing uphill.
Why? Whom or what had she been watching?
Teal'c eased himself onto the rock, absently noting that his shoulder ached; a reminder that, while the symbiote was able to accelerate his body's healing process, it required the rest of kelno'reem to do so properly. It would have to wait. Rotating his arm to loosen cramped muscles, he suddenly realized that the maddening cackle and chatter of the jungle had ceased. The only sounds were the tap of condensation dripping from branches and the splash of a reedy waterfall at the western end of the lake. Other than that, the forest was quiet.
His fingers inadvertently tightened around the staff weapon, and he fought off a sense of foreboding. Then his gaze traveled upward, against the motion of the water, over black rock and plants shining with moisture, until at last he saw what Dr. Fraiser must have seen.
Atop the cliff and its cascade rose, gray as ghosts, the ruins that housed the Stargate.
Dr. Daniel Jackson felt distinctly claustrophobic. The rock walls reared toward a starless corridor of olive drab sky, and the uneven ground wasn't designed to enhance physical or spiritual balance.
Send them... home.
As he walked-alright, tottered-Daniel mulled the three words over, the linguist in him fascinated by that beat before home. Somehow the pause suggested that there was no place like... home. It could be interpreted in all sorts of ways, none likely to coincide with his preferred definition. For instance, the-
He stumbled, felt a hot bolt of pain rattle through his head, heard the snigger of the goon behind him, and swore under his breath. You'd think that, if people insisted on converting your face to raw hamburger, they'd at least have the decency to order a sedan chair for you afterwards.
"You okay?" whispered Jack.
"Shut up!" barked Mr. Poletti, the echo of his voice bouncing through the canyon.
"Fine," Daniel said quickly, careful to keep Jack on his right, in order to hide the left side of his face. The goons-dead ringers for a mob of Jaffa-hadn't been kind enough to give him a moment to take off his specs. That pair, too, was trashed now, though it didn't make that much of a difference. He couldn't see out of his left eye anyway, and so far he'd been unable to ascertain if this was because the eye had swollen shut or because, this time round, he'd actually lost sight in it.
Either way, it livened up the hike. One of the rarely considered benefits of stereoscopic vision was the fact that it allowed for depth perception. He'd found out the hard way while running around in that stupid eye patch-one of the reasons why he'd discarded it three days earlier than prescribed by Doc Fraiser. His shins had been unable to stand the strain.
Right now, his shins didn't worry him. What did worry him was being funneled through the canyon that led to the gate. That meaningful pause seemed to preclude the literal meaning of home, which left a euphemism popular among romantic novelists - along with eternal rest. Odds were that he and Jack would be lined up against the cliff for a quaint old execution by firing squad-blindfold unnecessary in Dr. Jackson's case-with subsequent disposal of their remains through the Stargate.
What do you mean, General Hammond? They gated back three days ago.
The thought that this might be precisely what had happened to Sam and Teal'c and Janet made him sick. Only sheer, undiluted fury at the prospect of never finding out why kept the churning in his gut at bay. It wasn't just scientific curiosity. Daniel wanted to know whom to haunt.
The goons prodded them around a narrow bend, and suddenly the rock walls parted and opened out into the crater.
"Keep going," advised Mr. Poletti.
More prodding, but strangely enough not toward the cliff but toward the gate. One of the Marines broke into a trot, overtook, and headed for the DHD. He made no attempt to conceal the address he was dialing. He didn't need to. Daniel himself had dialed it countless times over the years.
Earth.
He heard Jack's sigh of disbelief, seconded the motion, and wondered how General Hammond would respond to having them returned in this not quite factory-sealed condition. With a decidedly undiplomatic note of protest, Daniel assumed. The thought was cut off by the whoosh of the event horizon, and then the wormhole established, drilling a clear blue circle into murky air.
"In your own time, gentlemen," said Poletti.
"You'll have to uncuff me," Jack muttered. "I need to enter the IDC."
"I'll do the honors." Poletti smirked and started punching numbers into the transmitter on his wrist.
So this was how it'd go. No blindfolds and last cigarettes. Just bugs on the windshield, and next time Sergeant Siler cleaned the iris, he'd wipe off some familiar-looking subatomic particles. Daniel never for a moment believed that Poletti had entered a valid code.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that five of the goons had formed a semi-circle behind him and Jack, discouraging any foolhardy notions such as running. Out front, Poletti had climbed the dais.
"Bon voyage, gentlemen," he brayed.
Jack started walking. Evidently he wasn't immune to niceties of phrasing either. If he thought they were going home, he'd leave last, after seeing his one-man-team safely through the wormhole. Daniel caught up with him in front of the event horizon.
"Stop jostling for pole position," he hissed.
"They say it hardly hurts at all," Jack hissed back.
"Who says?"
"The particles." And then Jack was gone.
Two seconds later Daniel concluded that the particles were lying through their teeth. But conscious thought and sensation folded into merciful black, until he shot from the far end of the wormhole, screaming and in free fall. Images took on a snapshot quality; an oppressive flood of green, age-old masonry, the still figure sprawled between ferns below. He hit the ground hard, though moss and mud cushioned most of the impact.
The Hereafter didn't exactly live up to the advertising. Then again, there always was the possibility that he wasn't quite dead yet.
Groaning, he rolled over and struggled to his knees. The gymnastics shook loose an avalanche of throbs that felt like it wanted to exit his head through his left eye. He ignored it and shuffled over to Jack who seemed to be coming round, his face bone-white under a mudpack.
"Love what they've done with the gate room." Jack blinked up at the canopy. "Where the hell are we? Mato Grosso?"
"Doesn't look like Brazil to me." Daniel sniffed, squinting at the blur of a monumental structure behind them. High in the wall, the gate formed the third eye in a stone-carved mask that placidly gazed down at him. "My money's on Angkor Wat."
"What encore?"
"You know. The Khmer temples in Cambodia."
"Didn't know they kept a Stargate there."
"Uh, they don't, I guess. If they did, somebody'd have found it by now." Glancing at fuzzy walls and reliefs again, Daniel said, "This is amazing. We definitely need to check out this place. It could-"
"Daniel!"
«H?„
"We don't know where we are, we're hogtied, we've got no weapons or supplies, and we- Holy buckets!" Jack had finally turned his head to get a spectacular view of Daniel's face. "You know, you're... Nah, I won't say it."
"Won't say what?"
«Uh-uh."
"Jack?"
"I'm not gonna say you're a sight for sore eyes."
"Very funny."
"That's why I didn't say it." He winced. "Can you see anything at all?"
"Not out of the left eye."
"Crap."
Accompanied by a lurid selection of curses, Jack maneuvered himself onto his side, facing away from Daniel. Who was watching the performance, knowing that it had to hurt like merry hell and wishing he could make himself useful.
"You need a doctor," he offered lamely.
"I'll consult the first medicine man who's got his shingle out." Jack wiggled his fingers. "Chew through the flex."
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