The Drift

by Diane Dru Botsford

  “I am willing to journey with you, General.” Weiyan placed a hand on her forehead.

  “Yeah.” General O’Neill shuffled his feet. “I don’t think that’s such a hot idea. Teal’c?” He jerked his chin toward the ground.

  “You must conserve your strength.” Placing an arm on her elbow, Teal’c eased Weiyan down to the ground. “When we do find a means of escape, we will undoubtedly need your help.”

  “Teal’c’s right.” Sam scooped up the general’s pullover and used it to wipe Weiyan’s stomach. “The bleeding’s stopped again. What I don’t understand is why this started all of a sudden. There’s no wound.”

  Weiyan dropped her gaze. “Earlier I noticed my stomach was damp, but thought it only sweat.”

  Teal’c lowered himself to the ground beside her. “Whoever has placed us here is most cruel.”

  General O’Neill grunted. “Just once I’d like us to meet a technologically advanced race bent on being nice.”

  “Don’t forget the Tollan, sir.” As soon as Sam mentioned their former allies, she regretted it. Thanks to the Goa’uld, they were all dead.

  Shoving the thought aside, Sam patted Weiyan’s shoulder. “Stay put. You’ll bleed less.” She nodded at Teal’c who had taken up residence beside the young girl.

  “I will assist her if needed.”

  Satisfied, Sam joined General O’Neill and Daniel a few feet away.

  “That guy keeps popping in and out,” the general said. “What the hell is that about?”

  “We don’t even know if it is a guy,” Daniel said.

  “Guy. Girl. What does it matter?”

  “The general’s right, Daniel.” Sam shaded her eyes to scan the building in the distance. The sun’s lack of movement alone was a clear indicator that they weren’t in a natural environment. “The one thing we do know is that whoever it is, they want us to go forward together.”

  “Maybe.” The general shifted his stance forty-five degrees to the right of the building. “But what about sideways?”

  “What good will that do?” Daniel asked.

  The general nodded toward the building’s far right. “I saw some rubble earlier. While on top of that hill.”

  “Rubble.” Sam raised an eyebrow, unsure where the general was going with this.

  “That’s right, Colonel, rubble.” He draped an arm around Daniel. “And we all know how archaeologists love rubble.”

  Daniel glanced at her and then General O’Neill. “And you think where there’s rubble, there might be something else to explain — ?”

  “How the hell to get out of here? Yes, Daniel. What do you think, Carter?”

  Sam exhaled, relieved to try something and even more, relieved to see the general back in a constructive frame of mind. “I’m game. Daniel?”

  “I’m always up for rubble,” Daniel said. “What about Weiyan? Should we take her with us?”

  Sam thought about that for a moment. “I’ll stay behind.”

  “Negative, Colonel. We might need you.”

  “Sir, if you’re right, and if heading on a diagonal from the building doesn’t cause another seismic event, we could try this in phases. You two go first. If you find anything you deem worth securing a new position for, signal us. I’ll cross, then Teal’c can bring Weiyan.”

  “Works for me.” General O’Neill clapped his hands together. “Let’s move out.” He raised two fingers in the air and then pointed toward their destination.

  With a parting lift of an eyebrow, Daniel followed.

  The two men trudged forward, or rather, sideways. Sam couldn’t help but wonder what had spurred General O’Neill into action and dare she admit it, a better mood.

  Twenty feet. Thirty feet. She held her breath, steeling herself for another tremor.

  Fifty feet. General O’Neill turned around and waved.

  Relieved, Sam waved back.

  “Rats in a maze, Daniel.”

  “Jack, I don’t think that’s what this is all about.” Topsoil spilled from Daniel’s fingers. So far, he’d recovered a few marble shards, several large splinters of polished wood, and a three-foot wide granite pedestal — the same stone that had held the obelisk.

  If they were inside some kind of holographic projection, someone was going to a lot of trouble to spare no detail.

  “You’re right about one thing,” Daniel said. “Rubble pretty much describes what we have here.” Without any tools, he had to dig with his hands. It was slow, tedious work. He used his fingertips as a brush, sweeping back one area, and then the next. Sure, he could just plunge in and hope for the best, but if he broke something — a bit of stone, or something that could be a clue — he’d regret it.

  “I’d kill for a pair of sunglasses,” Jack muttered, standing a few feet away.

  “You could help me sift through this.”

  “You’re the archaeologist, not me.”

  Daniel lifted his head, the relentless sunlight near blinding him. “Do you want to find a way out of here or not?”

  “Someone needs to stand guard.”

  “Against what? Another earthquake?” Daniel jabbed a finger toward another small mound of dirt, bits of marble, and granite. “Tell me the big bad general isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”

  “Big bad, my ass.” Jack sank down beside the other mound and grabbed a handful of dirt.

  “Careful,” Daniel warned. “Go slowly. We don’t want to miss anything.” He demonstrated how to sift through the dirt.

  “Hey, if it gets us out of here, I’ll pick this apart speck by speck.” Jack got the hang of it pretty quick — which should have surprised Daniel, but it didn’t. When motivated, Jack had a knack for picking up skills if the need arose.

  After watching him excavate for a few moments, Daniel returned to his own efforts. Eventually, the loose dirt he’d brushed aside gave way to more firmly packed soil.

  And a definite chunk of granite.

  “Found something.” He carefully swept away the soil packed around a three-inch wide, foot-long vertical piece of smooth granite. “This looks like a piece of the obelisk!”

  Flipping it over, he noticed blocky indentations along the back. He brushed away the embedded dirt and there they were, the letters P and E. The first two Ancient letters for the word Pedion.

  “That’s good, right?” Jack took the granite chunk from his hands.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure what we can do with it, though. We already know the planet’s name. We need the rest of the obelisk if we’re going to make any sense out of this.”

  “If you found that, we’ll find the rest and you’ll figure it out,” Jack muttered. He returned to his work with the topsoil.

  Something had been eating at Jack earlier. That much was clear to Daniel. Feigning nonchalance, he cleared away more dirt from the immediate area. “So, what’s going on with you, anyway?”

  “Digging like a kid in a sandbox. Wanting to ring the neck of whoever decided to treat us like lab rats.”

  “We’re not rats.”

  “Oh, sure, you say that now.” Jack shrugged. “But hey, we’re trapped somewhere and need to get out. Same old, same old.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Daniel deliberately kept his focus on digging. “You’ve been acting wonky since we left the SGC for Antarctica, and now — ”

  “Wonky?”

  “Yes, wonky… Ah!” Daniel found another chunk of granite. The letters D and E. He placed it next to the first piece.

  “Sweet.” Jack handed over a matching piece of granite, this time a good four inches wide and twice as long. The Ancient block-style letters for L, Y and S.

  Daniel laid the granite down beside the others. He looked toward Jack, hoping to pick up their conversation where it’d left off, but Jack had returned to digging silently, a clear sign that he wasn’t interested in talking. With a sigh, Daniel carried on sifting dirt.

  Finally, Jack spoke. “Since when did ‘wonky’ become part
of your vocabulary?”

  “Don’t change the subject. Something’s eating you.”

  “Actually, I think that is the subject.” Jack waggled a dirt-covered finger toward him. “You’ve changed these last few years.”

  “I’ve changed?”

  “Yeah, you have.” Jack attacked a new mound, no longer being careful. “Since coming back from Oma-land. For one thing,” he tossed a handful of dirt aside, “you’re snarkier.”

  “And that’s bad, how?”

  “I’m not saying it’s bad, just…” Jack shrugged. “Be careful. You’ll get yourself in trouble.”

  Daniel snorted. “This from the king of snark.” And that’s when it hit him. “You’re changing the subject again.”

  “What do you want me to say? I’m getting tired of — ”

  “This is about what happened on Tegalus, isn’t it?”

  Jack single-mindedly tore into a new mound. “I can distinctly remember telling you on the plane that — ”

  “You think it’s my fault the Caledonians launched the missile strike. That’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Trust me, Daniel, those jerks had it coming.” Jack flashed him a tight grin. “As far as I’m concerned, you can get caught up in all the civil wars you want. Just do me a favor and get together with Teal’c. Maybe the two of you could schedule your mishaps a little further apart.” He plunged his hands back into the dirt. “Bring Carter while you’re at it.”

  Tegalus. Teal’c’s near-death experience in the virtual chair. Sam’s capture and torture by the Replicator Fifth…

  Daniel rocked back on his heels. “You don’t blame me,” he realized aloud. “You blame yourself. You think you could — ”

  “Found another piece.” Jack tossed over a fist-sized rock.

  With a shake of his head, Daniel uncovered the letter I. He laid the granite piece down beside the others. “We’ve been at this for, what?”

  “Twenty minutes, I guess.” Jack waved his wrist in the air. “No watch. Which is really annoying, by the way.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t mean the digging. I mean the Stargate Program. We’ve been at this a really long time. The losses, the near misses — ”

  “It’s all part of the job.”

  “Maybe being a general’s your problem. You’ve drifted away from who you — ”

  “Daniel…” Jack’s voice took on that warning tone, the one that said ‘stop pushing.’ He shoved both hands into the hole he’d pulled the last stone from. His shoulders jerked a few times until he fell back on his rear, another large chunk of granite in his hands.

  Daniel wiped the thick dirt off Jack’s latest find, discovering the final letters U and M. The Ancients’ version of an M always surprised him, looking more like a blocky Y.

  “There are benefits to being a general, you know.” Jack wiped his hands on his pants. “Best parking space in the lot. Well, next to the NORAD commander, that is. Plus, I get to eat great commissary food, sit back — ”

  “Not here, Jack. You can’t sit things out while we’re trying to figure out how to get off this world.”

  “You don’t think I know that?”

  Daniel laid the last piece down beside the others. “What I think doesn’t matter.”

  “Stop trying to play shrink. You’re not very good at it.” Jack jerked his chin toward the obelisk fragments. “I don’t think we’re going to find anymore chunks of this stuff.”

  “This doesn’t make sense. On the original obelisk, there was writing here.” Daniel pointed to an empty area below the middle letters. “Where did it go?”

  “Does it say Pedion Elysium?”

  “You’ve had the Ancients’ knowledge downloaded into your head, you were forced to learn the language yourself to get out of that time loop, and you still can’t read Ancient?” He traced the first few letters and sounded out the pronunciation slowly for Jack to follow along.

  “Stop!” Jack put his hands over his ears. “There’s only so much information this brain can handle at once, and Ancient just isn’t high on my list of priorities.”

  Daniel fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, then. It says Pedion Elysium.”

  “Which clearly someone, or something, wants us to see. The question is, why?”

  “You think the being that talked to Teal’c — this alien — is playing a game with us?”

  “Yeah, and this,” Jack waved a hand at the granite pieces, “is a clue to that game.”

  “Maybe it isn’t a game.” Daniel stared at the words. He’d managed to work out a gate address — thanks to Jack’s odd little Ancient Repository relapse — but so far, he couldn’t figure out why that address was important. “Could the alien be trying to tell us something? Something we need to know, but for whatever reason, the being has to be sneaky about telling us?”

  “Sneaky?” Jack snorted. “That’s a snarky word if ever I heard one.”

  “Maybe it is, but unless you can tap into any last shreds of the Ancient Repository like you did earlier — ”

  “Did not.”

  “Did so.” Daniel deliberately glared at Jack. “This is important. We need to know the significance of this name or — ”

  “We’ll go on being rats in a maze.”

  Teal’c stretched his legs out. Fatigue washed over him, a moment’s weariness he allowed in hopes that like a wave it would crest and become no more. He sought inward for his strength, believing he had only to grasp —

  A hand pressed against his knee. “You all right?”

  Teal’c opened his eyes and forced himself to smile at Colonel Carter. “I am simply performing a moment’s kelno’reem.”

  “Kelnor-what?” asked the young girl sitting beside him.

  “Kelno’reem. A meditative practice to steady the mind.”

  “I thought you didn’t do that anymore.” Colonel Carter’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “At least, not since your symbiote was removed.”

  Teal’c knew he should speak the truth to his friend, but as there was nothing she or anyone else could do, he said nothing.

  Fortunately, Colonel Carter had more pressing issues to attend to. Weiyan Shi no longer bled, but she could no longer stand, either. She had paled considerably. A sheen of sweat covered her forehead and her lips were pale. Teal’c exchanged worried looks with his teammate, aware that each hour that passed diminished the chances of her survival.

  “I wish to go home,” Weiyan Shi whispered. She reached out her hand to him.

  Under other circumstances, Teal’c would not lie, but this young woman — barely more than a child — required comfort. As if she was his own, he took her hand, pressed it firmly in assurance. “Even now O’Neill and Daniel Jackson seek a means of escape.”

  “That’s right,” Colonel Carter said. “We do this all the time. Get into trouble, figure it out, jump back through the Stargate, and — ”

  “But General O’Neill said that without a Stargate, we have no means of escape.”

  Teal’c squeezed the girl’s hand. “You do not know General O’Neill as we do. He often jokes in impossible situations.”

  “It’s a deflection thing,” said Colonel Carter. “The general’s just trying to keep things light so everyone can focus.”

  Weiyan Shi coughed. “He has not joked very much in my presence.”

  “He just needs to get to know you.” Colonel Carter lifted a hand above her brow and looked further into the valley.

  Gently releasing Weiyan Shi’s hand, Teal’c followed her line of sight toward the location of Daniel Jackson’s and O’Neill’s dig. The two men appeared to be pulling items from the ground. “Perhaps they have found something of value.”

  “I wish we had radios,” Colonel Carter said wistfully.

  As did Teal’c. Nonetheless, they needed to know if any progress had been made. “I will attend to Weiyan Shi while you confer with the others.”

  “A
nd risk having the ground crack open again?” asked Colonel Carter. “I don’t know, Teal’c. We’d agreed to wait for a signal from the general.”

  “As O’Neill and Daniel Jackson were able to proceed, perhaps the being which keeps us here will allow you to do the same.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to the guys and if they’ve found anything, I’ll signal you to join us.” With one last reassuring smile for Weiyan Shi, Colonel Carter headed toward the others. Teal’c watched as she carefully repeated their steps, moving on a diagonal to the building’s right. Assured that she would not come to any harm, he looked back at Weiyan Shi. The girl had curled up on her side, her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell in a somewhat steady rhythm.

  Teal’c closed his own eyes again. Striving for a moment’s balance, he inhaled deeply. He could not perform a deep level of kelno’reem now that his symbiote had been removed. That said, he could still assert some level of control over the rhythm of his heart, the temperature of his body, and even the tumultuous nature of his mind when necessary.

  He exhaled forcefully, expelling worn breath out through his nostrils. He inhaled once more, allowing the warm air of their surroundings to fill his lungs. He looked inward, imagining the air mixing with his blood.

  “You fool the others,” Weiyan Shi said by his side, “but I can see that you aren’t well.”

  Teal’c bowed his head. “Admittedly.”

  “You aren’t human, are you?” Weiyan Shi pushed up to a seated position. “You speak English like the Americans, but you use different words, as if — ” She sucked in a short breath.

  “Are you in pain, Weiyan Shi?”

  Pressing her lips together, the girl nodded curtly.

  “Should I retrieve Colonel Carter?” He began to rise.

  Weiyan Shi grabbed his leg. “Please, stay with me. I’ll be all right. I’m just tired. Like you.” She tugged at his pant leg. “I’ll try to feel better, ok?”

  “You use the word ‘try’ very often.”

  “Isn’t that important? We should always try to do what is asked of us.” This last she recited as if from a child’s nursery rhyme.

  Crossing his legs, Teal’c pointed this out.