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SSDP: Same shit, different planet. O'Neill's starting to get used to it. (Was this how they felt, those quarterbacks who peaked in high school, only to go off and end up selling insurance or some other shit?) He can't even remember what the damn planet's called; just call it Yekaterinburg, Overseas edition and have done (he always hated Yekaterinburg). Good enough for him that Dani knows -- she can rattle off name, designation, and gate address without so much as blinking. (Speaks the language, too: it's a derivative of Russian. Would probably kill him if she realized he could also put together enough of a pidgin to communicate.)
This used to be his life, three stars and an E-Ring office ago. He remembers the first time he went back through the Stargate after they sent him to Washington with stars on his shoulders (on his shoulders, his tyotia would quip, but not in his eyes). A prickle of anticipation, and he was thinking…
Actually, he has no idea what the fuck he was thinking.
Whatever it was, he was wrong (nothing new under the sun), because these days it's not so much BDUs and a pack and a really big gun as it's dress blues and a handshake (or -- depending on what bucolic little planet they're visiting this time, and Calloway keeps track of that part of his schedule too -- an arm clasp, a ritual bow, or -- on one memorable occasion -- a ceremonial cursing of his counterpart, which had been really goddamn hard to do with a straight face) and usually Dani along to translate and make nice with the natives and glare at him for running his mouth at inopportune times.
Not actually much different than Washington, when it comes right down to it (though in Washington they call the ceremonial cursing by polite euphemisms like "filibuster" and "campaign ad"). These days the head of Homeworld Security (forget five hundred cats in a moose suit; oversight for America's Alien Adventure resembles herding overcaffeinated ferrets) is a rubber stamp for the IOA. Disclosure's coming, and the hordes of bureaucratic chairwarmers are trying to backstop their decisions and justify their existence. (More than their existence; they're trying to justify to the world at large their countries' privileged positions at the feeding trough.) That means when the alien ally du jour wants a meet'n'greet from the legendary Jack O'Neill, SG-1, General O'Neill goes. The IOA is on its way to becoming a bureaucracy like every other : if you can't get quality, go for quantity. The IOA thinks they need all the friends they can get (even useless friends) in case things go South with Disclosure
"In case."
O'Neill could tell them already there's not going to be any in case. (Of course, the IOA's never listened to a word out of Jonathan J. "Jack" O'Neill's mouth.) It had taken all he had not to laugh in their faces when they termed all this glad-handing a "contingency plan". Disclosure will be the goatfuck to end all goatfucks, period, full stop.
These days, he's starting to understand how Hetty must have felt when she was briefing them all those years ago in Russia, getting them ready to go out into the world and get their hands dirty while she sat home by the fire and waited (for values of 'home' that included any one of God knows how many cramped little apartments; after awhile they all started to run together). They also serve who sit and wait, but that doesn't mean they have to like it.
Hetty was always fidgeting with that damn lighter of hers (even later, after she decided she ought to quit smoking) when she briefed them (KGB crest on the front and an inscription in Cyrillic letters on the back and the damn thing weighed a ton because it wasn't actually silver; it was platinum, and he didn't realize until he was forty that while Hetty had told them a bunch of outrageous stories -- a different one each time -- she'd never actually told them where it came from).
He knew the inscription on the back of the lighter by heart, in Russian and in English: the front half (the truer half) of the family (unfunny) joke: God hates a spy (but sometimes, so the corollary went, the devil intervenes). Front half when the mission had gone badly, both parts when it had gone well.
(And really, he's come to think, it's not so much that God hates a spy as that God hates everybody.)
O'Neill, when he was young and stupid (and still too naive to know that pumping his tyotia for information was fruitless: either she volunteered the information or you didn't get it at all), had asked Hetty where the saying had come from, what it meant. She'd pinned him with one of her looks: hot and cold and penetrating and her dark eyes were fascinating in the oldest sense of the word (from the Latin fascinare, to cast a spell on, to spellbind, and it's amazing what a person learned hanging around Dani for any length of time), and all she'd said was, "It's true, isn't it?"
And O'Neill had been forced to agree, and his tyotia had nodded like everything was settled, and said, "Well, there you go then."
It was all the answer he ever got.
#
From the Washington Post, December 8, 1965
GEORGETOWN - Georgetown police are investigating an apparent car/pedestrian fatality that occurred overnight at the intersection of Reservoir Road and Wisconsin Avenue. The body of a man in his mid-fifties was discovered just before 3 A.M. by a motorist traveling northbound on Wisconsin Avenue.
Early indications are that the deceased was attempting to cross Wisconsin Avenue when he was struck by a vehicle, which then fled the scene. The victim's identity is being withheld pending notification of his family.
#
Mitchell and Vala are among those there to see them off (and Dani's had a lot to say about the fate of heroes and legends when the war is over, and O'Neill pretends he has no idea what she means). Mitchell teases her about the suit and shoes; she hugs him goodbye (Hank glares; tough beans, daddy-o, three stars beats two and Dr. Jackson doesn't work for Stargate Command these days).
He thinks (not for the first time) that he wishes she'd met Mitchell earlier. He's never been blind to the spark between them (but Mitchell is honorable and Dani tendered up her fidelity like a promise more precious than gold), and he wishes she'd met Mitchell before she understood what he's known almost from the beginning. It would have broken his heart to see it, but he thinks she might have been happier. Safer. Missed the Ori, missed Ba'al's playroom, missed being the ringmaster for the three-ring goatfuck of Disclosure.
But deal's done, decision's made. They both made their decision a long time ago. One of the few he didn't consciously make. One of the few she didn't understand at a glance. (Brain faster than a speeding bullet, stubbornness more powerful than a locomotive.)
So here they are in their Sunday best, going to see the elephant.
#
The place is post-industrial, but only just; no important -- or even interesting -- technology to speak of, no random ancient (or Ancient) artifacts buried somewhere, not even an abandoned cache of Goa'uld weapons. They're only here because the natives have never actually shot at a Gate Team or offered the visiting linguists up for human sacrifice (which, out here, is practically the equivalent of being offered an official hand of friendship and the keys to the city), and the IOA wants another scalp to hang on its belt. There's a banquet and a bunch of meaningless speeches (and Dani delivers his response in the form of an extraordinarily free translation of "Casabianca", since he has to say something and he's damned if he's going to memorize the IOA drivel).
('Speak, father!' once again he cried, / 'If I may yet be gone!')
It's almost sunset when they finish up their (meaningless) negotiations and everyone shakes hands (this is a handshake world; pity, after today he wouldn't mind engaging in a little recreational cursing) and declares that they are friends and allies all official-like, and the local Poo-Bah kisses O'Neill's ass and O'Neill smiles benevolently. Thank fuck they'll be out of here before dark, because if it's this damn cold during the day, O'Neill doesn't even want to think about the overnight low.
Dani looks more than a little relieved when they're standing in front of the DHD (O'Neill foresees a long hot bath in her near future: while she's smiled and made nice-nice with the locals and acted as unconcerned as they with temperatures that can freeze your balls off), she must have spent the entire day miserable; he knows how much she hates being cold.
And then the Gate is open and their little honor guard of locals is waving bye-bye, come again soon (maybe SG-4 would like the honor of visiting, next time because he sure as hell doesn't) and when they get back home ("home") he'll order a couple of pizzas and Dani can go use up all the hot water in his condo, and then they're stepping through the Gate….
The shock of feeling stone under his feet rather than the familiar metal of the ramp at the SGC, stops him short, and Dani plows into him.
"What address did you dial?" he demands in a whisper.
"Earth," she whispers back, sounding confused and indignant (but she can't see around his shoulder).
This place sure as fuck isn't Earth. (It better not be Earth). Or at the very least, it's not their Earth. The Stargate (the Earth Stargate) now opens into a room done in Early Dungeon, and O'Neill never forgets a flaming brazier. Apparently the Goa'uld conquered Earth this afternoon (the joke isn't funny even in his own head, and he hopes to hell it's going to stay his own head).
#
========================VIA=TELEX======================
17 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
EM: CLIVE SINGLETON, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: LOST LAMBS
JAMIE,
SORRY FOR THE LATE HOUR BUT AM PASSING ON AN URGENT INQUIRY
FOR A FRIEND. DOES OUR SIDE KNOW ANYTHING OFFICIAL OR
OTHERWISE ABOUT THE WHEREABOUTS OF ONE MISS HENRIETTA LANGE?
TIME MAY BE CRITICAL.
FONDLY,
CLIVE
========================VIA=TELEX======================
17 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: CLIVE SINGLETON, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
REF: LOST LAMBS
SINGLETON,
BY NOW YOU'LL ALREADY HAVE HEARD THE BAD NEWS. TELL WALLACE
I'M SORRY.
JAMES
===============================================================
#
Dani steps out from around him and takes it all in with a long blink, then hurries down the steps and over to the DHD. And he feels a spark of pride (she's moving, reacting, didn't freeze up at the impossible, good girl) even as he follows, wondering where the hell she thinks she's (they're) going, because he's been in this elevator before and it's déjà vu all over again: if the Gate system's gone to shit in some new and spectacular fashion; if the snakes really are in the drivers' seat; if the two of them have managed never to be born … then they're up Shit Creek without a rowboat.
She'll think of something. He's sure of that. But he doesn't get the time either to ask or to offer up Homeworld's input: seven Jaffa in armor and a mostly-naked man (First Prime, his mind helpfully supplies) come charging in. (The falcon armor's a nice touch. Hasn't seen much of that since Abydos.)
Mostly Naked Guy (bald head and gold god-mark and lots of Max Factor and he looks familiar and O'Neill isn't sure why) is waving his hands and asking a lot of stupid questions (in Goa'uld, a language that O'Neill mostly doesn't admit to knowing) which is just fine: Dani's banging her way through a Dialing Sequence but these things aren't exactly fast. And the hideout nine he's got won't make much of a dent in that armor.
"Di'dak'dida krenol mei?" Dani snaps at Mostly Naked Guy (O'Neill is running through a mental list of "Jaffa I Have Known And Loved"; no joy) as she pushes the big red button. "Jama! Chel'ets! Kree!"
You dare attack me? Go! Leave! O'Neill can recognize a bluff when he hears one. (Good girl.) But the Big Birds can't (he's reminded again of Abydos). They flail around and that makes them a little too slow to follow Mostly Naked Guy's orders to blow the two of them to hell.
Then the ka-whoosh whooshes and he grabs Dani and out of a corner of his eye he sees a new player enter the game, coming in behind Mostly Naked Guy. A woman about Dani's size, all bare tits and Come to Jesus expression and he grabs Dani and runs because this is no time to think about what he's seeing.
Stone again (but freezing cold -- outdoors -- and he only now realizes how hot and damp the last place was) and he barely has time to register that when he trips and falls down the stairs and he's reminded (dammit) that 62 is a lot less forgiving than 45 ever was. Dani lands on top of him with a breathless-verging-on-indignant squeak (he should've let go of her on his way through), and then he can roll over (clowning about how much it hurts, and he always did that back in the day because his kids didn't need to know about his knees and his back) and take a look around.
When he sees the runes and the hammer and the big stone pillar with the shiny red eye, he knows Dani made the best possible choice. (In any other circumstances, the Alpha Site would have been better, but the SGC brought the Gate there so it might not be there now: besides, he knows Dani's never really trusted any government -- even theirs -- and this once that pays off.) He sits up and she sits up and they wait patiently for Act Two. Thor's Hammer scans them both, right on schedule, locking their muscles until it's done certifying them 100% Snake Free (and it's more of a relief than he thought it'd be).
Welcome to Cimmeria.
#
Her name is Nefirtiri, and she is a goddess. The stars are her footstool, and serpents spring up in her footprints.
(She remembers the Long Ago and the Great Dying. She remembers -- through her mother, Tefnut -- how Ra brought them all to the First World. Ra slew Tefnut for rebellion. Nefirtiri is her mother's revenge.)
The first thing she remembers is the scent of Abydos: spice and dust, blood and bitter resin. (Ra had kept Tefnut's last spawning carefully stored against time of need; it is thousands of years since Nefirtiri's birth.) The second thing she remembers is the fear and rage of the host (not directed at Nefirtiri, not then: her host's people had forgotten their gods). She hated those she had come here with for some small cruelty. It made her easy prey. Nefirtiri gathered up the mind of the host, and its tiny random thoughts, and told Great Lord Ra all he wished to know.
She did not tell him everything.
#
"What just happened?" O'Neill says, getting to his feet. (Brushing off the dark wool topcoat and collecting his cover and they're both lucky to be dressed for outdoors: Dani's in civilian clothes, but it's a pantsuit: Planet Yekaterinburg isn't much for the sight of women's knees -- their loss -- and a coat and gloves but they're still both going to freeze here.)
She has a look like she's listening, though he has no idea to what. She takes a few steps away from the Hammer; the clearing is empty of locals and the position of the sun indicates it's late afternoon. Night soon. They'll need to find shelter. He hopes the locals are still here.
(In whatever "Mirror Mirror" nightmare they've wandered into.)
"Gibbs was a Marine, right? Before he joined NCIS?"
That's left field, even for Dani; it actually takes O'Neill a moment to remember Leroy Jethro Gibbs (dear Zhenya , the Black Knight in their Tournament of Shadows, his kills quick and clean and mysterious).
"Yeah." You know that, Dr. Jackson, what's your point?
"First Abydos -- your team was Air Force."
More stating of the obvious, but he'll play along. "AFSOC. Spec Ops. Pretty blue berets and winning smiles."
That doesn't even get him a dirty look; she's got bigger fish to fry. "So they wouldn't've sent Marines."
He frowns. "To Abydos? They could have. Project Giza had Marine units attached."
She puts her hands over her face, bumping her glasses out of the way, rubbing her eyes. "That was a Goa'uld throne room," she says. "I dialed Earth, and--" She stops. I dialed Earth and we walked into a Goa'uld throne room.
"We'll figure it out." Christ, he wishes Carter were here. He takes a step toward Dani.
"I recognized those people," she says. "One of them was Gibbs." He'd love to have the freedom to give her remark his full consideration, but there are people riding into the clearing. Natives (good) with weapons (bad). "The other one was me," she says.
"We come in peace," he says (loudly enough, he hopes, to get Dani's attention), raising his hands.
Yeah, he's been trying not to think about that.
#
OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Provisional Autopsy Diagnosis
Decedent's Name: Archibald George Wallace.
Autopsy No. 1105B
Age 54 years, 26 days Date of Birth (mm/dd/yy) 11/11/11
Race/Ethnicity Caucasian Gender Male
Final Admission N/A Death Date and Time 12/8/65 0230
(approx.)
Place of Death/Ward/Service: Intersection of Reservoir Rd NW. and Wisconsin Ave. NW, North Side.
Clothing, Personal Effects, Associated Items: Subject was found dressed in a tan WW2 Army issue greatcoat, black fur-felt Stetson brand fedora (size 8 1/4), a grey wool tweed three-piece suit with a Brooks Brothers label, a white cotton long-sleeved shirt (Arrow Brand, 17-inch collar), a maroon rep Countess Mara tie (silk), black nylon dress socks (unknown brand), and black Florsheim wing-tip Oxfords. The heel on the left shoe was worn down significantly. Timex watch (yellow metal) on the right wrist. In left interior jacket pocket, a yellow metal bracelet, bird shaped links. Bracelet is broken. In right exterior jacket pocket, a half-empty pack of Galousies brand cigarettes, a full sealed pack of Marlboros, a lighter, white metal, with a heraldic crest in red enamel on the front and an engraving in Cyrillic characters on the reverse. No one in the office speaks Russian, so we remain unable to translate the inscription.
In right trouser pocket, white handkerchief, black leather trifold wallet (Rolf brand) containing Wisconsin drivers' license, Diner's Club Card, American currency totaling $46.00 (six ones, two fives, a ten, and a twenty), an indeterminate amount in foreign currency, and a matchbook for "Felsenkeller", a bar in Berlin, Germany. There were also a number of coins in subject's pocket, twelve foreign, and two dimes and a nickel ($0.25). In left trouser pocket, a hypodermic syringe and a 3/4 empty bottle of morphine sulphate.
(On plain paper, attatched to form with paper clip) Nate, this is as weird as snake shoes. Not one drop of junk in the body, so why the bottle? Could've picked up the lighter during the war, but not the cash, so what gives? If I were you, I'd find some really stupid rookie to pass this one to before the fit hits the shan. --Dave
Autopsy Date and Time 12/10/65 1030
Forensic Case: YES
Embalmed: NO
Prosector(s): Dr. David Perry
Also in attendance: Det. Nathan Miller, Metropolitan Police
AUTOPSY DIAGNOSIS AND FINDINGS: Numerous scars due to previous injuries, including healed gunshot wounds on right bicep, left thigh in upper right quadrant, left shoulder in lower right quadrant, abdomen (upper right quadrant just inferior to ribcage). Healed fractures to right tibia, left humerus, second and third vetebrosacral ribs on right side. Degree of calcification indicates healed fractures are at least a decade old. Subject suffered blunt-force trauma consistent with having been struck by a vehicle moving at approximately 40 mph, with the most prominent injuries to the left side of the body. Injuries were quite extensive, and a detailed accounting of the subject's injuries appears on page 3 of this report. The most notable findings were as follows: depressed fractures of the left temporal and sphenoid bones resulting in subdural hematoma and substantial swelling of the brain; fractured sternum; four shattered vetebrosacral ribs on the left side which pierced the left lung and lacerated the subject's liver and spleen, resulting in concomitant internal hemorrhage; shattered left femur. Brain damage associated with the skull fractures is unlikely to have been the immediate cause of death, as the brainstem remained intact. Subject most died of exsanguination due to internal bleeding 30-45 minutes after the initial injuries, resulting in cardiac arrest.
CAUSE OF DEATH STATEMENT: Archibald George Wallace died of cardiac arrest associated with exsanguination due to internal hemorrhage.
Signed, this 10 day of DECEMBER 1965
Dr. David Perry, pathologist
Dr. Henry Carlisle, Medical Examiner for the District of Columbia
(Note from Detective Nathan Miller, Metropolitan Police, appended to the case file) Tracked down a Russian speaker (Ivan Andropov, who runs the newsstand by the precinct) and showed him a picture of the lighter. The inscription reads "God hates a spy." He said the crest on the front was for the KGB. I passed the word to the FBI.
#
========================VIA=TELEX======================
18 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
REF: WANDERING MINSTREL BOY
NICKY,
JESUS FUCK TELL ME YOU KNOW WHERE SINGLETON IS, AND FOR THE
LOVE OF GOD PLEASE TELL ME HE'S NOT BEEN ANYWHERE NEAR THE
MERCHANDISE.
YOURS,
JAMES
========================VIA=TELEX======================
18 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
EM: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: WANDERING MINSTREL BOY
JAMES,
WHAT AM I, HIS KEEPER?
N.
========================VIA=TELEX======================
19 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
EM: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: WANDERING MINSTREL BOY
JAMES,
FOUND HIM. IDIOT'S IN HOSPITAL JUST DOWN THE ROAD. GOT
HIMSELF RUN DOWN BY A LORRY YESTERDAY. THOUGHT HE HAD
BETTER REFLEXES THAN THAT. CAN I STOP BEING HIS NANNY NOW?
YOURS,
NICKY
===============================================================
#
That Monday was when it all started. Monday, March 8th, 1996. The day Colorado Springs disappeared in a flash of light. She was on vacation, supposed to head home that afternoon after brunch with a couple of friends from college. They'd all been in the same sorority at Georgetown, kept in touch after. Libby was an attorney. Diane had a couple of kids and a rich husband and ran a bookstore in her time off. Jenny Shepard's pager went off at two-fifteen in the morning (technically Monday, technically she was on vacation). Vibrated itself right off the nightstand and fell on the floor, and kept going off. She was groping for it under the bed when the phone started ringing too.
(That's how she knew it was bad. In an analyst's world, about the only thing that called for all hands on deck at 2 AM was global thermonuclear war.)
The wall had been down six years by then (she'd watched it fall on television, toasted the fruit of all of Ethan's hard work). "Macarena" and "Ironic" were everywhere on the radio. (She'd hated the Macarena, but still knew all the words and the dance). Last week she'd let a fellow analyst drag her to see The Birdcage in the theater. (It was stupid, but Robin Williams still made her laugh.) The Cold War was long since over in all the ways that counted. Her biggest concern (on March 7th) was trying to find some way off the Russia desk (a real dead end now that Ivan was busier with Chechnya and the mafiya than he was in hassling the West) and on to a more prestigious assignment. China, maybe, or the Middle East. Somewhere the action was. ("You'll never get a big promotion if you stay there, Jen. No matter how much you like it," Ethan told her one day over lunch. She'd known he was right.)
She remembers flipping on CNN as she picked up the phone, and thinking she'd accidentally turned on some kind of ridiculous Sci-Fi movie by accident. But it wasn't. It was midnight in Colorado, and Colorado was burning. Not some just corner of it, not just some national forest with pretty trees, not just a ski resort or six. All of it. At least the parts of it that hadn't been vaporized.
She got the details at her desk as the sun rose. Denver was gone, as far as anyone could tell. So were Colorado Springs and Pueblo and all the little towns in between. Nothing anyone could think of was big enough to do that. The bomb (and it must have been a bomb) seemed to have come out of thin air. Over a million dead in a few moments, and nobody to blame. (It would have been a much bigger disaster if they could have found someone (anyone) to blame.) No one came forward. No one claimed responsibility. None of their intelligence led anywhere. Not Russia, not China, not some madman in the Middle East. No one homegrown. The President threatened reprisals (everyone knew what that meant). The intelligence community fanned out, turned over rocks, looked in nooks and crannies and hidden places. The crazies started coming out of the woodwork: religious zealots and survivalist nuts and people who just plain hated everyone. The difference was that now people were listening to them. (They closed the markets for two weeks. It didn't help. The Dow went from five thousand some to a hundred in less than a day. What came after would make the Great Depression look like a child's birthday party.)
And then... nothing.
By June, Jenny was so exhausted she was having waking dreams whenever she sat still for more than a few minutes. But at least she still had somewhere to sleep, on the rare occasions she got to. At least she wasn't starving. At least she wasn't dead. (By then she hadn't been able to reach her mother or her sisters for two and a half weeks. She didn't even want to think about what that meant.) She spent her days combing through garbled broadcasts and fragmentary reports and such news articles as there were in those latter days, looking for clues as to who had done this. As if it would change anything. But the work kept food in her belly, kept a roof over her head. It didn't matter anyway. They were no closer to an answer than they'd been the day Colorado caught fire.
In August, a week after three employees (two secretaries and a computer programmer; not even anyone important) had been dragged from their cars and shot a couple of miles outside McLean, the Company cleared out a sub-basement and turned it into a dormitory for anyone who wanted to sleep there. Jenny didn't even bother to go home for her belongings. (She'd bartered most of what she owned for food and gas already anyway. All she had left were books and old photos. Unimportant, insignificant.)
They made it through the summer (for values of 'made it' that included riots and martial law in thirty-five states, shortages of everything from Crisco to batteries, and photographs of families with babies being turned away from shelters and soup kitchens because the beds were full and the pots were empty), but by October there was no bread to be had, and no one on Earth could possibly provide enough circus anymore to distract Joe Citizen from what was happening right outside his living room window. The only reason no one was calling it civil war is that wars were much more organized. Half of Washington was in flames, and Jenny Shepard had accepted that her family was probably dead. Her mother and her sisters were in California, which might as well be another planet anymore. She'd never know.
(The last commercial flight had been back in July. They kept promising they'd start up again someday soon. Everyone knew they were lying. These days, if you heard anything overhead, it was military.)
It was a grim joke on all of their enemies -- the ones who'd danced in the streets burning American flags and waving signs (in English) that said "Death to America" for American reporters to film -- that the decisive collapse of the American economy had pulled Europe and the Pacific Rim down with it. Things weren't much better anywhere else ("They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain. There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain..."), but at least if there were a thousand shooting wars all over the planet now, there hadn't been a second nuke.
She celebrated Christmas with Ethan: a hoarded bottle of champagne, a roast chicken (first meat she'd tasted in three months), a pie. A tiny scrap of a pine tree he decorated with tinsel and tiny lights. "Old habits die hard, don't they Jen?" he said bitterly, when they were both three sheets to the wind.
Jenny didn't love Ethan Chalmers, but that didn't matter much. Other than a brief teenage infatuation more years ago than she cared to count, she'd never loved much of anyone, really. He was three decades Jenny's senior (her mother, once upon a time, would have had a cat). He was also a deputy director. Jenny told him she thought the white hair made him look distinguished. It wasn't entirely a lie. He was considerate enough (brought her gifts from time to time: pretty things to wear, hoarded chocolate and cigarettes, the occasional precious bottle of aspirin), and he protected her. That was the important part.
By the time the ships (spaceships) came in April of 1997, it was almost a relief.
When there was power, everyone had the television on, watching the cities burn. It wasn't even news anymore, just dull meaningless background noise. The crazy alien bitch broke in to every television channel at once. She looked human. She said her name was Nefirtiri (rouged breasts and gilded nipples; identified with the Great Beast, the Scarlet Woman, and finally -- after thirty-six hours' diligent work by the Research department -- as nutcase archaeologist Dr. Danielle Alexandria Jackson, last seen as a faculty adjunct at the University of California at Berkeley, which somehow figured) and demanded temples and tribute. (After all that had already happened, an alien invasion seemed almost laughable. The analysts joked about it. No one seemed sure what else to do.) The Navy and the Air Force (among others) scrambled everything that could fly: the alien spaceship (bright gold, pyramid shaped; Erich von Daniken's books would have been bestsellers again if there'd been an economy left) was hovering (impossibly) five miles above the South Pole.
Within reach.
No one knows who launched the first missile. Jenny thinks it was probably Russia: motive, means, and a military not running soup kitchens. She saw the missile disintegrate in a flash of purple light, leaving its target unharmed, before the drone spy plane filming the attack was destroyed as well.
Then the alien ship (flying pyramid, Jesus Christ) began to move. It flew slowly westward, destroying cities as dawn reached them. By then every nation on Earth had exhausted its stockpiles of bombs, missiles, drones, planes trying to stop her. Nothing worked. Moscow was the first city destroyed by Alien Bitch. Langley started evacuating its people then. Military buses for the rank and file. Private cars for the well-connected. Jenny and Ethan had been sleeping together for most of a year now. It was enough to earn her a place in his Lincoln Town Car.
Her reflective act of courtesy (one of her last; mark it), insisting Ethan's driver come too, was enough to save her life later.
The roads were clear. Nobody had gas anymore, and besides, nobody knew yet that Crazy Alien Bitch was destroying cities. The only reason Langley'd known was professional courtesy: so far the intel was restricted to the White House and the Pentagon. And, of course, to every other government with observers. And anybody who still had internet.
At the end of eight hours, Jenny was somewhere in Ohio. Once they'd climbed out of the Town Car and Ethan established that he was the most senior person at rendezvous point Bravo (It was a county fairgrounds in the middle of nowhere, Ohio; Langley meant for him to command the post, of course), he set most of the personnel to establishing a permanent camp in the fairground's barns: kitchen and command center and infirmary and the entire dog and pony show.
(Ethan had always been good at organizing people.)
But she knew it was only a diversion when Ethan caught her arm and said, "No, Jen. Stay here with me," when she started to head off with one of the work parties. Some part of her thought she should argue with him. (She kept her mouth shut.) He told her he was only here to get his hands on enough fuel to make his chosen destination. If he'd been able to manage it before they'd left, she -- they -- wouldn't have been here at all. He told her they could all ride this out up at his hunting lodge in Maine. Five of the other Big Dogs at Langley -- the five who together with Ethan called themselves the Berlin Mafia or the Gang of Six and winked at one another like they'd gotten away with something -- were here too. Ethan said they'd all go together, for safety. One of the other men also had his mistress along; at least Jenny would have someone to talk to.
Bravo was chaos. There was no order, no organization (no food, no water, no fuel). Weir -- she was someone from State who'd been sent over to Langley to help them come up with a way of negotiating with the Alien Bitch -- was trying to bring order out of bedlam. And Jenny thought, right up until the moment she had to make the choice, that she was fine with Ethan leaving everyone to rot in the middle of nowhere, Ohio, while he and his cronies (and Jenny Shepard, his pleasant little diversion) took what they needed and hunkered down in the wilds of Maine where Crazy Alien Bitch would never find them.
They would all have gotten away clean if it hadn't been for Weir.
They never talked about that day again, so Jenny never knew how Weir found them out: whether it was a gut feeling, or someone saw something and told her, or whether Weir had just slipped out of base camp for a smoke break (scarce as cigarettes were, it seemed like everyone smoked these days, as if the end of the world had provided a blanket dispensation from paying any attention whatsoever to the Surgeon General's warning).
Jenny was just about to step off the bus where she'd been putting her things and Ethan's (he said a military bus would get through where a private car would be stopped) when she heard Ethan and Weir shouting at each other. She stopped in the doorway (one foot on the bottom step and her hands braced against the frame). She was too far away to make out all of what they were saying, but Weir was gesturing angrily, and Ethan shouted something about "triage" and "necessary sacrifices".
"You can't just leave these people here with no fuel and no one in command!" Weir shouted.
Jenny couldn't hear Ethan's reply (she knew him, though; she was pretty sure it was something to the effect of "Watch me"), but whatever it was he said before he turned away, Weir lunged for him, grabbing at his arm.
Ethan pulled a gun. It seemed to appear out of nowhere. His movements had the calm steadiness of long practice. He thumbed off the safety.
Jenny was off the bus and running across the gravel of the little parking lot before she even knew her feet were on the ground. (Later, she'd say she had no idea what possessed her.)
Ethan's head jerked in startlement when Jenny (his pretty little Jenny, he called her sometimes) interposed herself between Ethan's gun and Elizabeth Weir.
"Ethan," Jenny said, aiming for 'reasonable' and almost making it (amazed at the steadiness in her voice). "Ethan. We need her. You don't want to do this." (Looking back, she'd see that "we" instead of "they" as the moment she made her decision.)
"Get out of the way, Jen." Ethan's voice was tight, his eyes narrow.
"Ethan, please. Just walk away." She couldn't believe she was saying it, couldn't believe the words coming out of her mouth. Jenny took a slow, careful step toward him, looked over her shoulder at Weir. Motioned to her (Go. Go.). Weir stood her ground.
"Don't make me shoot you too, Jen. I will."
(If this had been a movie, Jenny would have made some pithy sarcastic remark and tossed her head defiantly. But this wasn't a movie.) She tried to take a deep breath (she couldn't; her heart was hammering too hard), and kept walking toward him, step by careful step. "Put the gun down, Ethan."
His finger tightened on the trigger. Jenny closed her eyes, heard the sharp retort of a handgun. Opened them a breath later when she realized she wasn't dead.
Jenny Shepard was an analyst. Russian-language specialist. She read news articles in Pravda for a living. She'd never seen a real corpse. (She'd seen pictures, of course. Pictures weren't the same thing at all.) It took her a long moment to realize what she was seeing. Ethan lay on his back (eyes wide and pupils blown), staring up at the clouds. There was a bloom of red in the center of his forehead.
Ethan's driver stepped from behind a parked Humvee, a Beretta in his hand. (Aiden. His name was Aiden. Aiden Ford. Ethan could never remember it.)
"Get his gun," Aiden said, and Jenny found herself obeying without thought. It was warm and greasy in her hand; Ethan already looked unreal.
"You shot him," Weir said, as if the words were a foreign language.
"Him or us, Dr. Weir," Aiden said. (He was young, Jenny realized suddenly. Barely twenty.) "I watched him loading up that bus for the last half hour," he added, and Jenny blushed hotly.
Weir nodded slowly. "Where are the others?" she asked suddenly. "His friends."
Jenny nodded toward the tents. "Bennett and Grey are down at the medical tent. The other three are siphoning gas. I don't know where Lisa is."
"Can you handle this?" Aiden asked. "Because we might have to shoot them, too."
"No!" Weir protested.
"Yes," Jenny said, her voice hard. "We can't trust them. And... we can't afford to spend the rest of our lives watching our backs."
Aiden nodded. "Help me get him out of sight," he said. He tucked his gun away and walked over to the body.
Jenny stepped forward, feeling as if she were floating. As if her existence, bizarre and unreal as it was, had suddenly become more so. With Aiden's help, she dragged Ethan's body behind the bus. Aiden searched it quickly, coming up with a spare magazine for the little gun. "You'll need this," he said.
"I'm surprised you trust me," she blurted.
He smiled. "You saved my life," he said simply. "Now help me save theirs."
#
From the Chilton (Wisconsin) Times-Journal, Week of December 20, 1965:
ARCHIBALD GEORGE WALLACE November 11, 1911 - December 8, 1965 (54)
Rantoul resident Archibald George Wallace, age 54, was killed in an automobile accident on December 8th of this year while on a visit to Washington, DC. Mr. Wallace was born in Rantoul and was a lifelong resident. The former United States Army Major was employed by the US State Department, in which capacity he spent significant time in Europe, most recently in West Berlin, Germany. He was home on leave at the time of his accident.
Mr. Wallace was born on November 11, 1911, to Matthew Wallace and Marie Claire Wallace (the former Marie Claire Brillon) of Rantoul, and served with distinction in the United States Army World War II, being awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for conspicuous gallantry. Upon his separation from the army in May, 1947, Mr. Wallace completed a degree in economics from Georgetown University before accepting a position with the State department, by which he was employed at the time of his death. Mr. Wallace is survived by his sisters Jane Wallace (Mrs. David Baetz) and Margaret Wallace (Mrs. Edward B. Schuller), and by his brother, Henry Thomas Wallace. The funeral will be held at 1:00 pm, December 22, at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Rantoul, following which Mr. Wallace will be interred in the family plot at Trinity Lutheran Cemetery. Flowers may be sent to the church. The family will be at home to visitors after the ceremony at the Baetz house on Orltepp Road from 3:00 to 6:00 pm.
#
Twenty minutes later it was done. As the rest of the Berlin Mafia arrived -- Bennett and Grey carrying duffle bags full of medical supplies, Edwards, Morgan, and Peterson (and Lisa; Jenny didn't know which of them she belonged to) staggering under the weight of five-gallon cans of gasoline -- she and Aiden held them at gunpoint while Weir searched them for weapons. All of them were armed.
"You can't do this!" Lisa said (clutching Peterson's arm, well, that settled that). "We'll die here!"
"Funny you didn't worry about us," Aiden said.
Jenny had the vague impression that Weir was an idealist, a peacemaker, one of the people whose non-violent solutions never (in Jenny's world) solved anything and just bred more violence. She had no idea what to do if Weir decided to just lecture them and let them go. They'd come back. Bad luck always did.
"All right, you have us," Grey said. "What are you going to do? Shoot us? Don't tell me you weren't thinking of doing the same thing."
"I'm going to let you go," Weir said (bingo). "You can take any of the cars and leave."
"What if we don't want to?" Peterson said. "Come on, Lizzie--"
"If you choose to stay, I'll empanel a jury and we'll have a trial," Weir answered steadily. "You were looting. Ohio's under martial law. The penalty for looting is death."
"You have no right!" Grey said. "You aren't anybody! Ethan--"
"Ethan's dead," Jenny said, her voice flat. "I suggest you take the deal. Lisa? You can stay if you want." (She made up her mind then and there to have Aidan teach her all about guns; words weren't going to cut it any more as a means of self-defense.)
The woman's eyes were wide and horrified. Her elaborate and careful makeup stood out garishly against her shock-pale skin. "You're crazy. You're all crazy."
"Fine," Jenny said.
There was a brief argument: Grey wanted to stay and fight; Morgan shouted him down.
Aiden walked them back to the Town Car they'd come in. (When they'd gotten here, Jenny had discovered the trunk held blankets, cases of liquor, cartons of cigarettes and canned goods. They were all on the bus now. "You're either on the bus or off the bus," her interior monologue babbled, souvenir of college days, Kesey and Kerouac, free love and pot parties that would have horrified her mother.)
"Don't come back," Weir said, as Peterson headed for the driver's door. "If you come back, you'll be shot."
"Crazy bitch," Bennett said, his voice ugly. He turned to follow Peterson -- then lunged toward Weir.
Jenny didn't remember pulling Ethan's gun. She didn't remember firing it. But Bennett went down, clutching his stomach and howling in pain.
"Take him with you," Weir said, but the other four were already rushing toward the car. Lisa stared at Bennett for a moment then dashed after them, crying out for them to wait. Doors slammed; the engine roared to life. Bennett was crawling toward them, screaming for them to stop, to save him.
(It was the first time she'd hear someone beg for rescue that didn't come. It wouldn't be the last.)
Aiden dragged Jenny and Weir back into the shelter of two parked cars. Peterson backed and swerved wildly, obviously trying to hit them. He slammed into Bennett instead, knocking him sprawling. Then the Town Car sped away in a spray of gravel. By then they had company: the (second) shot and the engine had drawn attention. At least Weir was good at restoring order.
It took Bennett most of the night to die.
By morning Weir -- Dr. Weir, Elizabeth Weir, UN mediator, PhD from Georgetown -- had organized everyone. Posting guards. Making rules. She'd made a list of things they didn't have and needed. First on the list was a shortwave radio. It would be the only way to get news now.
And Dr. Weir wanted to talk to Crazy Alien Bitch.
#
It's the first time Hetty Lange (old names for new; Lydmilla Anastasyaova Raskolnikov would sneer at the bourgeois imperialism of it all) has been back at Felsenkeller since she came back to Berlin (came back to Archie, came home), and Hetty can't help but feel that the world is the slightest bit askew. (Doesn't want to. Can't help it. She knows all about that saying about how you can't ever go home again.) Same battered wooden bar stools, same cracked leather bumper on the bar, same mirrors advertising German beers up on the wood-paneled walls (the Friends call it their Lebensraum on the Akazienstrasse; the bar reminds her a little of some of the places in Harvard Square she'd used to drink in, a lifetime ago). Even the rows and rows of bottles behind the bars are the same (Archie made her memorize every single bottle once, and repeat them back to him with her eyes closed. Bottom row first. One, two, three, go. For a strange breathless moment she wonders if she can still do it).
Archie takes her coat when they walk in; hangs it up (hers and his) on the rack at the back. (There are some places even now, twenty years after the War, where you don't leave a coat unattended, but Felsenkeller was colonized by the British long before her time. The Americans had their own place, back in the day, but it's under the rubble at the Wall, now. She never cared to find out where the new hot Mission Berlin watering hole was. This is home.)
(Was.)
(That was almost a year ago. Before Russia. Before Milla and Mikhail. Before the harvest of secrets and the little can of film.)
Same, same, same-same. Except that the bartender's different. Franz, not Fritz.
Franz asks what the lady would like to drink. (Fritz would simply have set a Tom Collins down in front of her with a smile and a flourish.) It's jarring. Shouldn't be. (It's been almost a year.) Staff turns over. (Shouldn't be. Is.)
Archie's retained his hat (a battered fedora nobody could possibly want to steal, out of tune with the crisp bowlers and Homburgs of the other inmates) and he sets it down on the bar beside her as he orders for the both of them: Tom Collins. Double Old-Fashioned. Yes, he'll run a tab.
There's a dish of pretzels on the bar; that hasn't changed.
She smiles up at him, takes a deep breath, tries to relax. Sips her drink when Franz delivers it. It doesn't taste quite the same, or maybe she's remembering wrong. (Coming home is a lot like waking up in a strange bed.) She doesn't think any of it shows on her face, but apparently she's wrong.
"It'll get better, Hetty-girl," Archie says, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I promise." Same gold Timex watch, same frayed cuffs stained with ink. At least his hands are the way she remembers them. (He's still the way she remembers him.) Tweed and the smell of Gauloises and old paper and whiskey. She covers his weathered hand with her own.
(That's new too, but this time she doesn't mind it.)
"You should sit," she says, smiling up at him, about to make a comment about his poor old knees, but she can tell from the way Archie's head turns, the way his shoulders stiffen just a little, that he's just seen someone come in the door. Business. Always business.
(One of these days they should find another bar.)
"I just need to have a quick word with David," Archie says, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "Ten minutes at most. Will you be all right by yourself?"
Hetty snorts with a confidence she tries hard to feel. "As if anything can happen to me with half the Friends lollygagging around the place." She smiles. "Go on. Soonest begun is soonest done."
"Ten minutes," he promises, and fishing the pack of Gauloises out of his pocket, he heads off toward the back room. (It'll probably be more like thirty, but she knows Archie tries. It's hardly his fault that Davey Chandler can talk paint off a wall.)
Archie hasn't been gone two minutes when the stranger sits down in the empty seat beside her. It's not quite enough to bring one of her old friends riding to the rescue, but oh, she remembers when there would have been no need, because everyone would have been jammed against the bar, three deep, with Clive down on the end jealously guarding his little kingdom and the blue-hazed air filled with laughter and smoke.
That was then.
(A lot can change in eight months.)
She studies the stranger. Theirs or ours? she wonders, before deciding: neither. Dark hair, a little too long. Trim moustache, neat little goatee. (Probably fancies himself a Bohemian soul.) Brown eyes. Impeccably dressed, every inch of his gray wool suit and crisp white polished cotton shirt bespoke. Italian, if she had to hazard a guess. (Well, there are rich Bohemians.)
Every bit of it is new.
That's enough to get her attention; new from the skin out is the sign of the serpent shedding his skin to put on sheep's clothing (Clive's voice in memory, making her laugh). A mugg's game, Archie would call it: right song, wrong key. Nobody puts on the new that comprehensively unless the old won't serve. She glances (subtly) at his jacket; sees the silver gleam of a cigar case in the inside pocket (Cubans, she's willing to bet, and damn the embargo, but then, it's only a US embargo, isn't it?) The only off-key note in all of this off-the-shelf blandness are the cufflinks (French cuffs; she should be doing better at guessing who he's playing at being). They're obviously old, obviously worn, gold, in the shape of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, every crack and brick lovingly detailed. (Far too nice to be some tourist trinket from Cairo, though it's tempting to think they are.)
She wants to edge away from him, but she doesn't. Bad manners. (Bad tradecraft.) At least six of the Friends between him and the door, and if the stranger were on anyone's List, there are a thousand high signs that would be flashed, and people would have him firmly in hand. Hetty forces her shoulders to relax.
He smiles at her (it makes her skin crawl; something about him puts her on edge), and sets his hat down on the bar to his left. It's gray with a black band (a Trilby, how dashing). Also Italian, and as new as the suit. She forces another deep breath, tries not to show it. He doesn't seem to notice. He says, "I hate to see a pretty girl drinking alone." (As lines go, it's not the worst she's ever heard.)
Hetty turns her head just enough that his gaze follows hers and falls on Archie's hat (it's a horrible hat, but it's homey), sitting beside his barely-touched drink. (Fritz would have leaned over the bar by now, all casual-like and just close enough to the gentleman to intimidate, to ask if she needed anything else.)
"You're with someone," the gentleman says, frowning a little. The surprise he should be feeling doesn't seem to reach his eyes. (She doesn't want to meet his eyes. When she does, she can't help but shudder inwardly. And yet there's nothing wrong with them. Brown eyes. He's handsome. Reminds her, in an odd way, of her cousin Clive.)
"Sorry," she says, infusing her voice with a little artful disappointment and staring down at her napkin.
"Mind if I buy you a drink anyway?" he asks, smiling. She thinks it's supposed to look like contrition. (It doesn't.) "By way of apology, I mean."
(Hetty can't quite place his accent. Johannesburg is closest, but it's not quite right. And Jo'berg and all its chickens stay home for the most part.)
"I can't exactly stop you," she says noncommittally, but she smiles at him a little. (She won't drink it, of course, but that's a game she mastered long ago.)
He orders her another Tom Collins, orders a martini for himself. "Kevin," he says after a moment, extending his hand. No last name, and that implies (again) that he's some collateral; there aren't a lot of last names here.
"Hetty," she says, since it's that or be unforgivably rude.
"I'll wager you're a secretary at the Mission," he says with a slow smile. Flirting, or trying to seem like he is. ("Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly....)
"Got it in one," she says, sipping her half-finished drink. (Looking away from him for one blessed moment).
It's all she can do not to jump away when Kevin (no last name) puts a paternal-seeming hand on her shoulder. She's certain he can feel the tiny shudder that runs through her but there's no help for that now.
"Heady company you're keeping, for a secretary," he says, leaning in close. His breath is hot against her ear. She forces herself to stillness. "I'd be careful if I were you, pretty Hetty."
By the time she can breathe again, the stranger (Kevin) is gone.
#
The weapon the Tau'ri had carried to Abydos was sent back through the chappa'ai. Ra meant it to destroy the First World; Nefirtiri had other ideas. Once Abydos was scoured away to dust Ra took flight in the Boat of a Million Years. If he had gone to survey his handiwork he would have been dismayed (he would have been warned). He did not.
Nefirtiri took the man her host most hated and made him Jaffa; her First Prime. (It was her host's idea, and Nefirtiri could see she was almost ashamed of it, yet she had not tried to conceal it. Nefirtiri wonders what other ideas her host has.) It was his advice she followed (never admitting, even to him, that any of it was not her own notion), in first suborning Ra's court, then his guards.
When she had slain Ra, she executed them all.
It took her until the next Time of Tribute (though Abydos was long gone) to conquer the rest of Ra's domain, and then Apophis's. With these two great armies at her back, she set course, at last, for The First World. (There was rot and rebellion among Apophis's Jaffa; her First Prime saw that clearly. She executed every one of his Primes, his former and current First Prime.) She promised all her Jaffa slaves and plunder; the First World was rich. When she held it as her throneworld, the System Lords would think twice about refusing to acknowledge her as their master.
Willingly or not, her host and her First Prime told her all she must do. The pesthole the First World had become fell quickly to her fleet, and Earth was hers.
If she had not been forced to fight throughout the Empire to claim primacy over the System Lords it would have been a small task to loot it of its living wealth -- and such trinkets as she might fancy -- and then set the survivors to building temples for her worship. But though the war went quickly, it would still be a matter of decades before her fellow gods also worshipped her as her Jaffa and other slaves already did. Nefirtiri girdled her new possession with Mandjet and Mesektet and ruled it from far above.
There was a sweetness to be found in breaking a thing slowly.
#
Elizabeth's little band of Lost Boys (and Lost Girls too) got its shortwave radio two weeks later from a couple of skinny guys in John Deere caps and flannel shirts worn so thin their elbows were practically poking through the sleeves. Kyle and Dan, no last names. Both blonde, both freckled, probably brothers. Jenny figured their enterprising young friends had probably just stolen it from someone else who needed it, but it didn't really matter: Camp Grenada (she didn't know who'd named it) needed a radio too goddamned badly to worry about where it had come from.
The radio cost them three bags of coffee, a couple of bottles of Black Bush (from Ethan's secret stash; he wasn't going to need it anymore), and a bottle of erythromycin. Aiden shrugged when he handed the stuff over, but Jenny knew that come winter, someone was going to pay for the damned radio with their life.
(Second verse, same as the first; little bit louder, little bit worse.)
Jenny figured they'd been swindled, but for once her cynicism didn't seem to be justified. Wonder of wonders, the radio actually worked (electricity courtesy of a couple of car batteries and some jury-rigging). Kid named Tim McGee set it up -- mousy little guy, probably just out of college when the whole mess started, looked like he'd been a chubby kid back when people still got the luxury of being fat -- and messed with the antenna and the dials, and after a couple of minutes, a voice rose above the static.
Black woman, with the sound of someone who was accustomed to talking on the air. (Maybe she'd been a DJ, Before.) She was reading a litany of the dead.
It took her half an hour to get through the 'M's.
That was when they learned Washington and New York were gone (and a lot of other places, by implication). So much for riding things out in Maine. She really hopes Bennett, Grey, Edwards, Morgan, and dear little Lisa made it in time to get blown to hell, but it doesn't matter: they haven't been back.
Dr. Weir still wanted to talk to Crazy Alien Bitch.
Fortunately Dr. Weir was a big believer in democracy (Weir was the kind of woman who went on goodwill missions to LDCs), and Jenny was far from the only voice shouting her down when the ten of them -- Grenada's Camp Counselors -- were gathered in the exhibit hall that night. There were a handful of folks who had been almost-important at Langley (Jenny knew Taylor and Hansen, but none of the others), the four Air Force guys who had gone along to help with the evacuation (no one above the rank of Captain), Aidan Ford (representing the Marines, also a Lieutenant), Elizabeth Weir, and Jenny. She had no idea how she came to be counted among the most important people in Camp Grenada (probably it had something to do with saving Weir's life), but she didn't feel much like arguing.
Someone had dragged out a beat-up folding table and a bunch of plastic chairs from the storage room and set up a couple of the kerosene heaters they'd brought with them. It was a pretty far cry from the conference rooms at Langley (though Jenny guessed cheap plastic chairs and cracked cement floors were probably better than being dead). There was weak coffee in a stainless steel urn that had seen far better days, and sugar, and a little plastic container of powdered creamer, and a paper plate of Oreos. (These days Oreos and coffee with sugar were the equivalent of caviar and five hundred dollar champagne.)
Whoever set up the tables had stuck a little American flag on a stick in a coffee mug and set it in the middle of the table. Unfortunately, Jenny was pretty sure they hadn't meant to be ironic. (Of course Weir smiled when she saw it.)
The meeting ran well into the night.
"We need to find out what this Nefirtiri wants," Dr. Weir said (this was a common refrain for the goodwill-mission set). Weir even almost managed to make it sound reasonable. (Jenny thought Alien Bitch made it pretty clear what she wanted when she started vaporizing cities, but that was a diplomat for you: they always wanted to be sure.)
"With all due respect, ma'am," Captain Sheppard said (no relation, though he sort of reminded Jenny of a younger version of her dad, quick-minded and brash; Jenny got the distinct sense that wasn't a phrase he used too often), "there's a lot of people here, and they're not gonna be easy to move. Maybe the Queen of the Nile will place nice if you call her up and say hi, but maybe she'll fly King Tut's tomb over here and blow us all to hell. I personally don't think we oughta take that risk until we have somewhere safe to stash everyone."
"Besides," a woman with short dark hair added -- another one of the Air Force folks; Jenny thought her name was Calloway, "Our first priority really ought to be supplies. It's almost May. Too late to get much of anything in the ground, really, but we should try to trade for seeds if we can."
She was right, too. They had canned goods and some MREs (they'd said at Langley the rest of the supplies would be following, along with more people, and they hadn't) and a hundred mouths to feed, give or take. The inhabitants of Camp Grenada wouldn't even fill a section at a Cincinnati Bengals game, but here in the New World Order, a hundred people was a hell of a lot.
"If we'd had any damn sense we'd have set the rendezvous point at Disney World," John Sheppard muttered. No one laughed.
Captain Sheppard was the one who finally talked Elizabeth Weir out of placing a collect call to the Mother Ship. (Actually, he didn't so much talk her out of it as talk her into putting it off, but maybe they'd get lucky and Weir would either forget about it or conclude on her own that it was a fucking stupid idea.)
#
It's been ten years since the last time he (they) came to Cimmeria. (Hammer neutralized, Heru'ur landing in force, and a good time was had by all.) O'Neill hangs back while Dani has a nice chat with a fella named Einar, the local chief. She reprises her long-ago chat with Gairwyn (from Midgardr, not from Thrudvang, peaceful explorers, yadda) and it's obvious the Cimmerians have never seen anyone from Earth before (and that's disturbing on so many levels).
She glances at him (they don't need words), and he steps in to make the introductions, and it's "Jack" and "Dani" because he's got a really bad feeling about things and no information and the best thing to do when you don't know anything is to say as little as you can. And Einar asks him if Dani's his wife, and she steps toward him possessively and he says "yes". He and she have claimed a lot of relationships through the years, including father and son, and he's spent too many years of seeing her dragged away from him to do anything other than make the strongest claim he can, now: mine. (He's glad she doesn't have to be a slave here. He hates slavery, even in pretend.)
Einar is a cheerful sort, thrilled to meet folks from the old homestead, and invites the two of them back to the house. (Gairwyn, it turns out, is his wife. Gairwyn's husband was killed when Heru-ur invaded.) It's a long ride by horseback. They ride double, each of them behind one of Einar's warriors, and at the other end, instead of the ragtag collection of wooden huts O'Neill remembers, there's a big honking longhouse. Seventy, eighty feet.
"A whole village might live and sleep in one of those," Dani glosses automatically as he lifts her off the horse. (She remembers Gairwyn's village as well as he does, but he can't tell what she's thinking.)
(He's thinking of butterfly wings.)
Gairwyn comes out to greet them; this time Dani does the introductions, and it's "Jack son of Niall" and "Dani Ljotrsdatter" and Gairwyn offers them guesting and Dani glosses that sotto voce, saying house rules say they're entitled to a week of guest-friendship before they have to leave. (He'll settle for a couple of hours where nobody's shooting at him to figure out what the fuck just happened.)
The inside of the longhouse is dark and smoky (and cold), but at least Cimmeria isn't the only Viking culture they've run into (ran into, past tense, he'll go no more a-roving) and Dani always had a theory that the Asgard wanted to save enough human genestock. For what and against what, considering how many planets the snakes seeded with their enslaved humans, it's hard to say, but it means he's had more than enough practice in drinking beer and singing bawdy songs (there ain't nothing like a Dane). They sit down at the big table and by now they've had enough time to take another silent meeting so he doesn't turn a hair to discover that he and Dani were coming home from a trading voyage to discover their village had been overrun by Ettins. ("Ettins" is Cimmerian-ese for "Goa'uld" so it's too damned close to the truth.) There's beer and some kind of stew and bread, and pity on Gairwyn's part gets them the offer of new clothes. Dani immediately makes a reciprocal gift of everything they've got on their backs, and he sees Gairwyn relax. He knows that look (Captain O'Neill saw it on a lot of mothers' faces): oh thank god at least they have manners.
Gairwyn takes the two of them off to her bedroom (a building-inside-a-building, made of woven branches, and Dani said earlier the custom places the Cimmerian expats definitively as a part of the Meaningless Archaology Noise culture and that's so far beside the point he's a little worried she's in shock) and lays out clothing in piles on the bed. Dani inspects them as carefully as if she's buying them and nods, and takes off her wristwatch (it's gold) and clasps it around Gairwyn's wrist. The two of them do a lot of 'my turn to curtsey, your turn to bow', then Gairwyn leaves.
"Did you have to give away our clothes?" he asks, voice low (half a joke, in the old days he'd teased his way through their missions so she wouldn't know how bad things were). He knows Dani's exhausted, but they'll need to talk as soon as they have the chance. The beds here are drawers. You climb in and they push it shut. He's glad that bedtime's probably early.
"I have no intention of saving the world in a pair of fucking heels," she answers by rote. He sees the expression on her face when she hears her own words. He doesn't want to think about that yet--
"The other one was me."
--because he knows what probably happened (another damned dinosaur farts somewhere in history and suddenly everybody in Stargate Command is wearing togas) and he doesn't give a damn about "why" (never his department, even before SG-1 and his second life; when Mrs. O'Neill's little Jacky arrived at the party things had generally already well and truly gone West), but "how" (as in "how do we get out of it this time?") has always been his business and right now he's got nothing.
"This will be warmer," she adds, tacit apology, and he unbuttons his coat and drops it over the nearest chest and lays his cover on top of it. The silver braid gleams in the lamplight. He wonders if the uniform means anything here.
They turn away from each other as they undress. Tact. As much privacy as they can offer each other. It isn't the first time he's seen her naked on a mission. (The first time, he remembers, Carter had looked mortified. Dani had just looked scared.) He knows her body well. Years have made him safe against the "right now" appetites of youth (he's not sure whether that's a bug or a feature), but imagination (love has little to do with lust; the late and meager lessons of time) makes him redraw her behind his eyes.
She's twelve years younger than he is. Edging up on the half-century mark. She's in decent shape for a woman her age. (She's the woman he loves; the Beltway can keep its pneumatic piranha.) But she's no kid. Time is an unforgiving vandal (he knows that well): skin goes lax. Things sag (jowl and neck, breast and chest and belly, the softening a coming attractions preview of grave-rot and inevitable decay). The vital sheen of youthful skin becomes the powdery texture of age: tiny lines, the crepe-y puckering, skin that's thin and fragile and pale. Not an old woman. Not yet. (Not ever if they don't fucking goddamned fix this goatfuck and he really wants to get his hands on the person responsible.) But not young, and looking at her (dressed or not) he could tell her age even if he didn't know it: her age and possibly her profession and certainly how likely it was she'd be able to kill him.
You never forget the lessons of youth.
And suddenly (in memory) he's back in a room in Berlin. He can see Truman Plaza out the window, or he could if he looked, but he isn't going to look because that means taking his attention off Miss Henrietta Lange (beloved tyotia, combination of mommy, the Blessed Virgin, and all the demons in Hell) and even on four weeks acquaintance he knows that's a really bad idea.
"Every illusion holds the seeds of truth," Hetty said. "Find them. The hands -- the neck -- the wrists -- these will tell you the true age of your target and permit you to assess the degree of threat represented."
"Why do we need to know how old someone is?" Gary asked (Lt. Gary Clark, Minnesota native, Vikings fan, German speaker, fair Russian, dead on the streets of Moscow a year later and a lifetime ago). Gary, O'Neill had realized later, always asked the obvious question, never the right one.
"Because old age and treachery will defeat youth and skill every time, Mr. Clark," Hetty said repressively. "And you always need to know which you're facing."
He wouldn't wish this on his worst enemy, but right now he wishes Hetty were here. Most of all they need information, and back in the day, his tyotia could spin intel out of straw.
He goes through his pants pockets. Clasp knife, yo-yo, wallet, keys (gun in its pancake holster). Once upon a time his personals would have been in his locker back at the SGC, but these are the days of miracle and wonder (this is the long-distance call). He holds them out to Dani; she shrugs. He holds back the knife and the wallet (god knows where he'll put them), and the gun (9mil, and he doesn't think eight bullets can get them out of this mess but he's hanging on to it anyway). His hosts are welcome to the rest.
Dani's already got on shift and skirt. She pulls on the tunic and shrugs her shoulders with the cold. He hands her his gun in its pancake holster. She takes it without comment, doing a twist-and-tuck of her shift and making it vanish. He makes it down to t-shirt and shorts and starts to dress; the pants are baggy and stiff; the shirt and vest are heavy and scratchy. No boots; heavy socks, and Dani kneels down in front of him to tie strips of leather around them just below the knee ("I'll have your guts for garters if you screw this up," a ghost whispers in his mind). The shoes are a kind of leather bag that you wrap around the foot and lace tight. He's going to miss his old jump boots before this is over. Or even his shiny shoes. He tucks his knife and his wallet into his new socks. The guy who invents the Cimmerian man-bag (or, you know: pockets) is going to clean up.
Dani looks happier when she's wearing several layers of homespun, but she's always been a bird of passage, on her way to somewhere else. "Anything I need to know right now?" he asks. (It's been a long time since he shaved the truth with Occam's Razor and he's out of practice.)
"Smile and nod, in the morning offer to help them with any chores, you're safe from personal challenges for the next seven days but this culture has a tradition of fighting for fun."
"What about my wife?" he asks.
She smiles (cool and distant and scared as hell). "Checking things against old mission reports," she says, and then it's time to go back to the party.
Gairwyn (nobody's fool) follows them back a few minutes later, praising the quality of the weaving and dyeing (of their strange Midgardian costumes), and then it's another round of commiseration on the attack of the Ettin on their peaceful village (and he tries not to remember a mission report where Dani wrote about the Goa'uld bombarding DC). Dani praises the quality of their new clothes and starts talking about weaving. O'Neill tunes it all out. It's all window-dressing. (It's all the same gossipy prying he has to endure at every goddamned cocktail party he's dragged to, and maybe some evil fairy godmother he didn't know he had has decided to grant his wish never to have to attend another one.) One thing his exile in the Foggy Bottom wilderness has been good for: he drinks and looks bland, and doesn't give a hint that he's thinking about just one thing.
The Goa'uld have conquered Earth, Leroy Jethro Gibbs has become a Jaffa, and god alone knows what Brave New Dani's up to. (He knows already, and his heart breaks a little. What misstep did they make, and when, and how, that let her become a host? And how can they untwist it?)
#
========================VIA=TELEX======================
20 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: ALEXANDER CORNWALL, MISSION BERLIN, CLAYALLEE 170,
BERLIN
EM: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: BAKED IN A PIE
ALEX,
CONTROL IS STARTING TO POKE ITS NOSE INTO MATTERS. I HAVEN'T
SAID ANYTHING YET ABOUT YOUR CONVERSATION WITH SINGLETON
OR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT HAVE COME OUT OF IT, BUT YOU MIGHT
WANT TO GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT, ESPECIALLY NOW THAT IT'S
COME OUT THAT TWO DAYS AGO TORSTEN BAUM TURNED UP DEAD ON
THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WALL.
NICKY
========================VIA=TELEX======================
20 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
REF: BAKED IN A PIE
NICKY,
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OVER THERE? A THREE-RING CIRCUS?
THE FUCKING OSSIES WANTED BAUM BACK BADLY ENOUGH THAT
THEY WOULD HAVE HANDED OVER THE DOCUMENTS IF SOMEONE
HADN'T CHECKED HIM OUT OF THE LIBRARY EARLY, SO WHY THE
HELL IS HE DEAD? PLEASE ADVISE.
JAMES
========================VIA=TELEX======================
20 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
EM: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: BAKED IN A PIE
JAMES,
THE QUESTION YOU REALLY OUGHT TO BE ASKING IS WHY LA CHALMERS
IS SO INSISTENT ON GOING THROUGH CHANNELS AND DOING
EVERYTHING BY THE GODDAMN BOOK WHEN THERE'S AN AMERICAN
AGENT IN BLACKBIRD'S HANDS. PERSONALLY, I'M CURIOUS.
IF WALLACE DOESN'T SNAP COMPLETELY I'M GOING TO BE VASTLY
SURPRISED.
BEST,
NICKY
=======================================================
#
There hadn't been much food to be had anywhere when they loaded the buses to come to Buttfuck Nowhere, Ohio (as Sheppard so charmingly called it), but Langley managed to send them off with sacks of beans and rice and flour and sugar, some flats of canned vegetables (more precious than gold even before The Bitch showed up in her flying pyramid), a little bit of canned tuna, and all God's Spam. Jenny Shepard went to the best private schools in the East, and Harvard after. She never in a million years thought she'd look forward to eating Spam (but this, as Ethan would have pointed out, was a brave new world they were living in). They managed to trade with the locals for chickens and lambs and a couple of cows. The chickens cost them pretty much all that remained of the liquor Ethan had stuffed into the trunk of his Town Car (Jenny wondered if he'd be pleased to know he was still useful, even in death); the cows cost them a Town Car (locals wanted it for parts to fix a couple of tractors), fifty gallons of gas, and a bunch of medicine Jenny was pretty sure they couldn't spare.
As usual, she was outvoted. (Taylor called Jenny "the junior Senator from California," and smiled patronizingly every time Jenny opened her mouth. If Jenny were less civilized, she'd have promised herself she'd shoot him at the earliest possible opportunity.)
Camp Grenada still had gas, and generators, and clean water, and armed sentries at the gates, and (once word got out) locals trying to shoot all of them and take everything they owned. It was worse when people came to the gates unarmed. Begging to be let in. Begging them to at least take the children. The babies.
(If they did, they'd all starve by Spring. After a while, Captain Sheppard didn't let Elizabeth go to the gates any more. Sometimes Jenny heard shooting. Sheppard didn't talk much these days, and he didn't smile.)
May, June, July, September, October, November. Against all expectations (Jenny was a realist) they survived the next six months. But as much food as they'd brought with them, it wasn't anywhere near enough to get them through the winter. When their scouting parties brought back word there were extensive fields of corn still standing unharvested -- legacy of the agribusiness all over this end of the state -- Elizabeth (ever an innocent, just like every other goddamned diplomat, and Jenny really hoped she'd wise up before she got everyone in Camp Grenada killed) assumed this meant thousands of acres of corn growing wild and free for the taking. They didn't have harvesters (or the gas to run them), but they had a bus and willing hands. Camp Grenada was mostly Company analysts and tech-heads and a bunch of low-level policy wonks from State, with a handful of people like Weir thrown in, but just like anywhere, there were a few guys who had grown up on farms and ranches and were keen to show off their country "cred." They said it would be easy enough to pick by hand. Dried, it would see them through the winter. They could plant their own next Spring.
Elizabeth gave the go ahead. (The harvesting party, so far as Jenny could tell, figured on spending a week or so drinking moonshine 'round a campfire and shooting the shit.)
They sent fifteen guys out to pick corn. Eight of them came back. They weren't even sure who they'd been fighting with. Whoever they were, they had machine guns too, and they apparently weren't particularly interested in talking. Within twenty-four hours, three of the remaining eight were dead of their wounds. (Want to make God laugh? Make plans. Jenny could've told them that, if anyone ever listened to her.)
After that, everyone wanted to fight. Elizabeth said they still needed the food. She had a theory the shooters would have gotten what they wanted and moved on. Jenny tried to argue with her -- out of a sense of obligation, really; not because she thought it would actually do any good. Finally, Jenny just shrugged and helped the second harvesting party load up the bus with guns and plenty of ammo. Turned out it was a damned good thing.
The battle over the cornfield and the combine lasted three days. The only reason the party from Camp Grenada won was that they had more ammunition.
Life wasn't fair, but sometimes it worked in your favor.
#
By the time the last of the daylight has faded from around the door curtain their breath is smoking on the air. It's bedtime (small mercies). Gairwyn shows them to their very own file drawer (they're apparently "Couples Only"), while the young men all spread out beds on the floor around the firepit (swords to hand, and O'Neill wonders what they have to worry about, since it can't be snakes). Dani strips down to skin again while the concierge stands by, so he follows suit. She climbs in and he follows (straw-stuffed mattress under an empty bear; he's slept rougher but that was a while ago), then the kid shoves the drawer shut.
"Hope they remember to open it in the morning," he says.
"Hah," Dani answers. "I wish to god sometime we could get marooned in a primitive culture that's invented Pepsi. What's wrong with water?"
"The beer was watered," he feels compelled to point out.
"It wasn't a feast day." She fits herself against him with the ease of an old lover, pressed up against his side, one leg cocked over his. He puts his arms around her. She's cold.
"Tomorrow we can look up our old buddy Thor and figure out how to get out of this," he says. It's pitch-dark in here (it'll warm up soon, preferably before he loses all feeling in his feet), but he doesn't need to see to read her look of doubt.
"Pas devant la domestiques," she murmurs, and his French is strictly schoolroom, but this one he knows: not in front of the servants.
‹"Sure,"› he says (Spanish is a language they're both fluent in; the Cimmerians won't know it, and it isn't rude to speak in your own language when you aren't in company.) ‹"You remember the Hall of Thor's Might, right?"› ("Thor" becomes "Jueves," the whole point is to fly under the radar if somebody's eavesdropping.) ‹"We'll drop in tomorrow after breakfast and tell him our troubles."›
‹"He won't know us, any more than our hosts did,"› she says, but she sounds more hopeful.
‹"You know Thor,"› he says. ‹"Always happy to make new friends."›
‹"Do you think he can help?"› she asks.
‹"If he can't, we'll think of something else,"› he says firmly (often wrong but never in doubt; the motto any budding leader of men learns in the cradle). ‹"Help always comes."›
The family motto (as it were): Help always comes. Morning always comes. Hold on. Hold out. It was one of the things she forgot, the second time she came back. ("But the cat came back the very next day. The cat came back, we thought he was a goner. But the cat came back; it just couldn't stay away.")
He hadn't realized it (he was really fucking good at not realizing things) until they were huddled in some goddamn damp cave full of roots and crawly little bugs (but not -- currently -- filled with Goa'uld supersoldiers) and (even though crying wasn't really one of those things his Indiana did) she looked like she was trying really goddamn hard not to cry.
Help always comes.
He reminded her, of course. She looked at him like he was a complete fucking lunatic (cut off, in a cave, with the guys in bug suits hunting them; really couldn't blame her there), but this was one of those little axioms that habitually defied Earth logic. Lots of verses in the Gospel of Tyotia were.
Help always comes.
Two cold, hungry, and really fucking miserable days later, Teal'c, Carter and the combined forces of SG-5 and SG-8 showed up, and Colonel Jack O'Neill and Dr. Danielle Jackson lived to hide in some other goddamn cave at a later date.
She rests her head on his shoulder and sighs. Been a long time since he's thought of the cave on PX-whatever-the-fuck; generally when he's sitting at his desk at the Pentagon (swilling coffee and signing memos) he tries to avoid thinking about the goatfucks. Not that his tyotia ever really approved of accentuating the positive, but he's not boots on the ground anymore either.
Or at least he wasn't, until twelve hours ago. But he is (they are) now, since apparently home wasn't where he left it this morning.
Maybe it's in his other pants.
#
There was no National Weather Service anymore to tell them whether the winter of 1997 was better or worse than usual. All Jenny knew was that an ice storm came howling through just after New Years' and they wound up burying six people including Tim McGee and a couple of babies some of their softhearted idiots took in before they'd known any better.
By 1999, survival had almost become normal. Civil servants and low-level analysts had beaten their three-ring binders and their letter openers into pruning hooks, and (while they'd long since run out of coffee) sometimes there was almost enough food. (That summer there'd even been watermelons, and while they hadn't dared real fireworks for the Fourth, someone had found a crate of sparklers in an abandoned warehouse.)
Lt. Collins -- Momma Marge to just about everyone -- baked apple pies on Halloween. One of their tech-heads found a CB radio in a burnt-out truck out on one of the county roads and fixed it; they'd traded it for a bunch of bushels of apples and some sugar. They planted the cores.
Weir was talking about spending the gas and supplies to send a trading mission to Indiana. Nobody talked about fighting back, even the (surviving) military (Aiden and Shep and Momma Marge). This wasn't a Hollywood movie. (Only it was. Alien Bitch drove around in a flying pyramid, for fuck's sake.) It wasn't like fighting their new alien overlords was going to be anything but a lost cause, so the folks at Camp Grenada (like most of the folks anywhere else that they could hear over the shortwave) focused on corn and beans and getting the tractors running (and sometimes shooting at the goddamn bandits who'd loot any settlement with two cans of green beans, but let that pass).
They knew -- or thought they knew; news over the shortwave was sometimes about as reliable as the National Enquirer -- that Alien Bitch had started sending down parties of soldiers (they looked like giant metal falcons if you felt like believing the reports), but so far the bird robots hadn't had much interest in America's Breadbasket, so no one much worried about it. These days anywhere more than about a hundred miles away might as well be the Moon. There was one big upside to the reports of alien Big Birds terrorizing both coasts: Elizabeth finally decided that it might be a bad idea to call up the lady in the spaceship and invite her for tea.
(Jenny really ought to have heeded Ethan's advice from all those years ago: sticking your head in the sand just makes it easier for the assholes to sneak up on you.)
The fires started on November 12th, 1999. Big plumes of smoke on the horizon to the North and East, at just about the right distance to be the two closest big settlements (these days a big city was a couple of hundred people crammed into whatever shelter they could find). They figured it was bandits: they'd been like a plague that fall, and getting more organized by the hour. Elizabeth sent a couple of truckloads of people to offer whatever assistance they could: by now Camp Grenada got on tolerably well with its neighbors (quite possibly because its neighbors were well aware that Camp Grenada had plenty of guns and ammunition, but let that pass). The guys piled into the beds of two battered old pickups and drove off in a spray of gravel, hooting and carrying on and waving shotguns.
"It's getting a lot like Lord of the Flies up in here," Aiden said in Jenny's ear as they watched the trucks rumble off.
"Yeah," she said, pulling her coat tighter around herself with one hand, and shading her eyes with the other. The smoke billowing up from the north was black and oily. The wind felt like snow. It was going to be an early winter. Again.
About twelve hours later, it started sleeting. At least it put the fires out (when the sun came up, they could see them on the horizon, steaming resentfully).
After 36 hours, the two pickups still hadn't come back. There was nothing local on the shortwave -- just the guy in Indiana asking for parts to get a crop-dusting plane up and running and offering ten pounds of coffee in return. (He'd been asking for the last year and a half. Jenny figured Billy Jim Bob would be better off just drinking the damned coffee before bandits came and shot him for it.) By nightfall, Elizabeth and her viziers were closeted in the exhibit hall. Same broken-down table, same plastic chairs. Sorrel-leaf tea in the coffee urn these days; didn't pack the same punch as coffee but at least it kept them from freezing (coffee -- assuming they could get their hands on any -- was too important as a trade good to waste by actually drinking it).
Momma Marge left them a couple of pans of cornbread and a little bit of butter and honey. They started arguing pretty much the instant it was gone. It was obvious the rescue parties ran into some kind of trouble, and pretty damn disturbing that both of them had, because they'd been going in opposite directions. (If they'd been waylaid before they'd separated, they would have been close enough to Camp Grenada that someone would have heard or seen something, even if it was only a loud crash or a couple of gunshots or a puff of smoke.)
"We've got to send someone after them," Elizabeth said almost immediately. "We need to know what happened." (Every time Jenny thought there might be some hope for Elizabeth Weir, she went and said something like this.)
"What," Jenny said, "and lose half a dozen more people and another vehicle?"
"And the Junior Senator from California shows yet again she has no soul," Taylor said, leaning back in his seat. It hadn't been funny three years ago, and it sure as hell wasn't funny now. When she finally snapped, Jenny was planning on shooting him first, the asshole.
"Jenny," Elizabeth said, in her most reasonable voice, "they could have had some kind of accident. The trucks could have broken down. They might need help." (The more reasonable Elizabeth sounded, the more you generally needed to worry.) "And if they've run into something … untoward, we need to know."
"No," Captain Sheppard said. "Ms. Shepard's right. It's both trucks, and the local airwaves have been dead silent. We need to--"
That was when the fuel depot blew up. Whatever the hell it was they needed to do, no one ever did find out.
(Jenny would remember later that there had been a sound, maybe a fraction of a second before every ounce of diesel and gasoline they had stored burst into flame. Part dog whistle, part nails on chalkboard, part electric buzz. It made all the hair on the back of her neck stand up.)
"What the fuck?" Taylor yelled, standing up so quickly he overturned his chair and nearly knocked the table over.
Elizabeth (predictably) lunged for the door; Jenny and Sheppard practically tackled her, took her down to the floor, behind the table. (It probably was going to do them as much good as ducking under your desk when the friendly local H-bomb blew up, but it made them feel better). Aiden wasn't far behind them.
"I've got to--" Elizabeth said, and Sheppard cut her off.
"We need to get you out of here," he said gently. "Dr. Weir. We've talked about this." Aiden held out her coat while she shook her head.
Outside they could hear another couple of explosions (smaller), a fusillade of gun fire, someone screaming. Several someones. Jenny was pretty sure most of the rest of Elizabeth's advisors were stampeding toward the door like a bunch of panicked cows, but keeping those idiots from getting themselves killed at the earliest opportunity wasn't her problem.
"Elizabeth," Jenny said. "You're too important. You wind up dead, we're fucked. Come on."
Between the three of them, Aiden, Sheppard and Jenny managed to wrestle Elizabeth out the back door of the exhibit hall. She was fighting like a wounded animal and swearing at all of them. "Keep your head down, Dr. Weir," Sheppard hissed. "Please."
The night sky outside was red and orange, and smoke billowed through the fairgrounds like some kind of poisonous fog. Just about every building between the exhibit hall and the fuel depot was on fire. The roar of the flames was almost deafening. Maybe two hundred yards to the left, Jenny could just barely make out gunfire. Shouting.
She thought she might see flashes of silver and gold through the smoke. And there was that sound. A rising whine, just before something else exploded. Whine, thump. Whine, thump. And beneath that, the sound of marching feet, encased in metal. It seemed like the lady in the flying tourist trap had found them at last. Or at least her big birds had.
Whine, thump.
"Jesus fuck, Martin, what the hell are those things?"
"I need more ammo!"
"Smithfield, you idiot, get down!"
In the distance, the cows were bellowing in panic.
"Oh shit, here they come!"
Whine, thump.
The flash was actinic, blinding. The explosion knocked them to the ground and left Jenny's ears ringing. If those men off to the left were still yelling, she couldn't hear them anymore.
She and Sheppard hauled Elizabeth to her feet and ran, holding her between them. They ran like panicked animals straight into the dark, tripping over rocks, stumbling into holes, not caring where the hell they were going so long as it was away from the flames and the yelling and those things in shining armor. Jenny hoped to a God she didn't pray to anymore that Aiden was bringing up the rear, but she didn't spend the fraction of a second it would take to look. Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt when she stopped to see what became of Sodom. Jenny was pretty sure that what was going to happen to them if the Big Birds caught up would be a hell of a lot worse. She still hadn't gotten a good look at one, and she hoped she wasn't going to anytime soon.
(So much for military discipline. So much for CIA training.)
It was the kind of heart-pounding, stumbling run that featured prominently in the nightmares that woke you up, panting and covered in sweat, in the middle of the night. Elizabeth fell once, swearing, and they just pulled her up again and kept going. Her steps were irregular; Jenny spared a thought to hope they weren't going to do permanent damage, but the damage those … things … would do would be a hell of a lot more permanent.
Through the outbuildings that used to belong to maintenance and across the cracked and buckling expanse of asphalt that had once been a parking lot and out the big gate and across the road with the sky flickering red and yellow and orange at their backs and into the field beyond where once upon a time summer fairgoers had parked their shiny cars.
Whine, thump. Whine, thump.
Jenny's eyes were swelling shut from the smoke; her lungs were screaming. Bright sparks danced in front of her eyes. They kept going.
Finally, Elizabeth went down on her knees between them like a sack of hammers, breathing like a racehorse that had just run the Kentucky Derby. "Have to rest," she gasped, and threw out a hand to keep herself from falling onto her side.
Sheppard was bent double with his hands on his thighs, breathing almost as hard, but he shook his head. "We gotta … get out of the open." The field stretched out for acres around them, wide and flat and open and exposed.
"Can't," Elizabeth whispered. "I can't."
Jenny's chest was heaving like it might burst, and she could feel her legs trembling. Where the fuck was Aiden? (Probably dead, said a bloodless little voice in the back of her mind. They're all probably dead.)
Whine, thump.
It was closer.
Jenny wrapped her hands around Elizabeth's bicep and tried to haul Elizabeth to her feet. "Gotta go," she said, or tried to say. It was too much. She fell to her knees among the wheat stubble, gasping softly in pain.
That was when she heard it. The rumble of a big engine, the sound of tires spraying gravel everywhere. Coming from somewhere to the northwest, pretty close.
"Fuck," Sheppard said beside her, and Jenny turned her and saw it: the silhouette of a something man-shaped with the head of a falcon, carrying a staff and walking inexorably toward them through the smoke. It wasn't even worth hoping that the thing hadn't seen them.
The falcon-headed thing was leveling the staff at them when Jenny saw where the engine noise was coming from.
Improbably, it was a Federal Express delivery truck, or at least it had been at one point in its life. Now it was more like a Federal Express truck on steroids: big studded tires, and what looked like armor plating in strategic places. Someone had spray-painted "FUCK THE ALIENS" on its side in big orange letters. (Underneath the graffiti, peeling letters read, "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.") The thing was bouncing merrily across the tops of the furrows.
Improbably (even more improbably?), the Schwarzenegger of delivery vans had Maryland plates.
The falcon-headed thing didn't look too impressed. It just lifted the staff thing to the crook of its arm and set its feet. Elizabeth closed her eyes. Jenny thought later that if she'd left them open, she'd have seen the running figure emerge from the smoke, behind Falcon Head, swinging a big axe.
(God knows where he'd gotten it.)
"Kick their asses for me, Jen!" Aiden shouted. He leapt for Falcon Head just as the truck skidded to a stop and the rear doors burst open. Falcon Head turned with incredible speed, swinging the staff, and knocked Aiden aside like he weighed nothing.
It was all the distraction the deliverymen from Hell needed.
Whine, thump.
The fireball caught Falcon Head square in the chest and flung him at least fifty feet.
"Looks like you guys need a ride," a cheerful voice said, and Jenny looked up to see a dark-haired man grinning at her and holding out a hand. He was wearing a battered old trench coat, jeans with patches on the knees, and black jump boots that had seen better days. He was holding the same kind of staff as Falcon Head had been carrying, or at least it sure as hell looked like it.
"The name's diNozzo," the man said affably as he helped Jenny to her feet. "Tony. Welcome to La Resistance."
#
Morning comes too damned early, and every bump and bruise O'Neill collected yesterday reports all present and accounted for, sir. He'd kill for a cup of coffee and two aspirin. Breakfast is a piece of bread and more ale. At least this time it's heated up.
Einar's going hunting; before he can invite O'Neill along, Dani says the two of them would love the chance to see more of the area. She punctuates that remark with a smirk and a roll of the hip that makes Gairwyn laugh. Sex, the universal excuse.
It's a long hike to the Hall of Thor's Might, involving backtracking and circling, and the shoes are about as uncomfortable as he thought they'd be, but they finally get there (another hammer, another big red button). Then it's all: "I am Thor. You are brave to come before me. However, only the worthy may witness Thor's might," and a cheesy hologram of an extra from Das Rheingold.
"This kind of feels like cheating," he hears Dani mutter, as they ace Test Number One (courage) and Test Number Two (algebra). Then they get a hologram of the little grey guy himself, and he and Dani explain about Earth, snakes, Stargate, realities screwed up while you wait, and he figures they'll be out of here before dinner.
But: "I cannot give you the aid which you seek," Thor says, shaking his head. "Cimmeria is safe from the Goa'uld. Be content with that."
"No -- wait!" Dani shouts, but it's too late. They're standing outside again. "Dammit!" she yelps, and hits the button again.
Five minutes later they're back again. Same tests (automatic system, looks like) but at the end, no Thor. She looks at him. He's got nothing.
"C'mon. Let's go for a walk."
There's a nice stream about a mile away, and a nice sunny grass-covered bank. They sit down and he stares at the water and wonders what kind of fish are in there. A nice place to retire (he thinks about his cabin in Minnesota), and he thinks about all the times he wanted to retire and didn't, and how he wants to retire (these days) every time he gets up in the morning, and how Disclosure is less than a year away and how it would be nice to miss it.
(It would be nice if the Poster Girl for Disclosure weren't just about guaranteed to stop some nutcase's bullet along the way, and he keeps trying to convince himself she won't and he hasn't managed it yet.)
"What do we do now?" she asks, and it's on the tip of his tongue to say it's time to pack it in, surrender gracefully, game over, and it probably isn't their world anyway.
But what he says is: "We need to figure out how it happened."
That gets him a rude snort. "Well, we won't do that here."
"Can't go back to Earth," he says. One Stargate to a planet and they know where Earth's is these days.
"In a ship," she says, and she's right, but…
"We can't exactly go to the Tok'ra and ask to borrow the family car," he says. Even if they could find them (again) the only way they'd gotten out of benevolent-yet-permanent house arrest the last (first) time was by offering them Carter's dad as a gesture of good fellowship. (He realizes consciously what he already knew: if Gairwyn and friends -- and Thor -- don't recognize them the change happened long before they went to Nassya and Carter picked up that nasty bug.)
So Jake's dead, and the Tok'ra don't know them, and he forces himself not to wonder about Carter and Teal'c.
They sit there for a long time (Steal a ship? How? And from whom?) and she leans against him and he wonders if she's fallen asleep.
But no.
"Every species has specific drives that determine the expression of its culture," Dani says, and he recognizes the lead-in to one of her long rambling lectures that ends up containing the one fact that can save their asses. He tries not to hope.
"A species didn't cause our little problem," he says, and feels her snort in amusement, hot breath over his skin.
"Oh yeah. One did. The Goa'uld. Or do you think the Ori, or the Lucian Alliance, have suddenly taken up dressing as Horus Guards?"
"Maybe," he says warily.
"I told you Landry should have hustled his ass to find Praxyon," Dani mutters darkly. "I really hate time travel." There's a pause while he thinks about the butt-end of a Titan missle and a week on a Magic Bus. He's still got that jacket somewhere. God knows what she's thinking about, other than the fact that Praxyon was Ba'al's time machine and Ba'al is dead but he might have left it to someone in his will.
"But the point remains," she goes on, "the drives a species possesses and the ways in which they service those imperatives defines their culture. Now, we've always presumed that the Goa'uld are driven by the same desires a primate species would be driven by. That's wrong, of course."
"Wrong?" he says, to keep the conversation going (wherever the hell it's going). They're both terrified, but she's too proud to admit it and he'll never let her know there's anything to be afraid of. At least not while they're both still hoping it can be fixed. (Hope keeps you alive, thus saith The Gospel of Tyotia.)
"They aren't primates. They're an alien parasitic non-mammalian species, and since we can't either interrogate one or dissect one, we have to do a little field work. Fortunately, they've been pretty helpful about letting us know what they want most."
"To rule the universe," O'Neill says (he knows his lines).
"To breed," Dani answers.
She goes on, presenting her arguments as if he he hadn't been there -- for eight years of missions, mission reports (disasters, horrors), encounters with Goa'uld queens (she's chalked up one more -- courtesy of the Trust -- but they were both there for Hathor and Egeria and whatever-the-fuck Anubis's ladylove was named). Everything they know (she says) indicates the whole boy-and-girl thing is an optional extra with the snakes: and apparently even the boy-snakes don't get lucky that often.
(Thank fuck.)
"How does that help us right now?" he asks, more sharply than he means to (sharply enough to make her head whip toward him, but her face is blank). She doesn't answer, just starts another lecture about how the snakes are territorial and non-cooperative, constantly at war with each other (it's how the puny Earthlings managed to beat them, for which he is duly grateful), each one attempting to monopolize all resources, and it's been a long damned time, but he knows this trick of hers. Wherever she's going with this, she doesn't think he's going to like it at all.
"Dani," he says warningly.
"Whoever has Earth is de facto the most powerful Goa'uld in the Empire," she says doggedly. "They all-- When Ba'al conquered Earth in the alternate timeline, he did it from the position of Supreme System Lord, which it had taken him seventy years to achieve."
"He's dead," O'Neill says sharply (knives and darkness and mocking laughter; it isn't the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop), but he has a crawling feeling in his gut that he's lying.
"I'm not," Dani answers instantly, and it takes him a minute to realize she means Other Her. The one that has a snake in her head and his (once upon a time) best friend as her First Prime. "And that gives us some leverage."
They're getting to it now, he thinks. "Really?" he says mildly.
"She came out of nowhere," Dani says with eerie conviction. "Fifteen years ago. I went to Abydos, and she left, and now she has Earth. And Ra is dead -- if he weren't, Gibbs would have been wearing his mark, not hers. And he'd never let an underlord hold such a powerful prize. She must have made herself Supreme System Lord -- or be trying to."
He'd like to say he doesn't know where she's going with this, but he does. Where there are Haves, there are Have-Nots who want to become Haves. (It's a game he played on select chessboards about the time she was learning to walk.)
"So the surviving System Lords are going to be … cautious … about opposing her. The Supreme System Lord controls access to the Queens. Ra did. So she does. It's actually not unheard-of, even among Terrestrial species: the alpha of the pack -- though the behavior is found among avians and other non-mammals -- controls the ability of subordinates to breed--"
She's wandering off down another side-street again, and he doesn't give a damn whether educated fleas do it. "I'm not getting any younger here," he says, trying to keep it light, joking, the way he did when they had Stargate Command at their backs and some idea of what the fuck was going on. (He never thought he'd look back on those days and think they'd had a strong position, but hey: it can always get worse. Thus Saith the Gospel of Tyotia.)
"But they want to. Breed. Pass on their genetic material to a new generation. It's the strongest species drive there is. It's universal. Us. The Goa'uld. And she's controlling it. Possibly even denying it completely. Kill her, subjugate her, take the Empire, and they can. They all want that, but they won't -- can't -- organize to do it. Biology again: they're all rivals. Not just for power, but for sex. Reproduction. It's why they never organized against us. They're genetic paranoids. And right now she's the strongest, but if one of them has an opportunity to destroy her -- with plausible deniability -- he'll take it. He'll even deal with Tau'ri."
"You want us to make a deal with a snake?" he says harshly. You're crazy. (He doesn't say it, because it's so far beyond being a joke that even thinking it isn't funny.) He takes a deep breath. "Did you have some particular snake in mind?"
He sees her eyes flicker (yeah, she does). "Unless you want to try to talk the Nox into a war," she says. "Or the Hebredeans. The rest of the Asgard Protected Worlds don't have spaceflight capability. I don't think we could find the Lucians in whatever bolt-hole they're still hiding in with the Goa'uld in power. And we don't have anything to bargain with there. But the Goa'uld… yes. And without being snaked, because what we've got to sell is a clandestine assassination, and that means going in without a calling-card in our heads that would tell her who sent us."
"Which. One." He's trying not to make it sound like the question comes through gritted teeth. He suspects he doesn't make it.
"The System Lords are either dead or won't risk it," she says. "And probably watched. That lets out Yu, just for starters. Or Apophis, much as I'd like to revisit past triumphs. But…" She shifts, turning away from him, staring out at the stream, at peaceful bucolic Cimmeria where Thor (thanks a lot, old buddy) has invited them to set up housekeeping until Hell freezes over. "We know of a Goa'uld who's flexible and adaptive enough to go for it. Not a System Lord. Someone who's domain was isolated enough -- distant enough -- from Earth to have survived the war. To have stayed out of it, I think."
He doesn't ask, even in his mind, how could you?. He knows the answer to that. SG-1: a (former) Black Ops commando, a (former) Jaffa First Prime, an astrophysicist who could turn suns inside out, and it was Dr. Jackson who was the dangerous one. Because the rest of them had rules, dammit, and sometimes they even played by them, but she never did. (He remembers Mitchell phoning him up after Khalek, sounding baffled and scared and not wanting to say any of the things O'Neill knows he was thinking.) Show Dani a goal, and she'll do anything she has to in order to reach it. She was like that all the way back to First Abydos, but over the years the goals changed. And so did she.
He shoves himself to his feet. He won't let her see his face. (He won't let her see how much he wants to throttle her right now.)
"You're talking about Ba'al," he says. He hates the raggedness in his voice. (Snake. Monster. Meatsuit smiling and smiling among the Washington insiders. Ba'al sent Hetty flowers when he killed Jenny.)
She doesn't answer.
He remembers Ba'al's dungeon. He remembers her screaming. She'd been dead, and now she was back, and he'd thought he'd give anything to have her back (be careful what you wish for, a voice whispers in his mind), but Christ… there?
She couldn't break, because she didn't even remember her own name. He clung to Kanan's secrets and his own, and tried desperately to think of a way to trade Shallan for Dani. He would have. But not if he couldn't figure out a way to make it work, and he couldn't. (Guilt and shame and rage, and he tries to forget when he can, because there isn't that much forgiveness in the world even if he were a forgiving man.)
"No," he says, and walks away. He can't be here now, can't listen to her telling him why it's a good idea, their only chance, their only hope. Can't be here knowing she knows, she knows, and she's still willing to make that choice.
#
By the time he gets himself under control enough to go back for her (it'll look a little odd if they don't show back up at the Valhalla Bar'n'Grill together) it's a couple of hours later. He hasn't been able to stop his mind from hamsterwheeling around the options. He hasn't gotten anywhere.
Maybe the Ancient timeship is still on beautiful P7X-013. Maybe Ares isn't. Maybe O'Neill can get it to fly. (Maybe not.) But to where?
Abydos? It's where Other Dani got her snake. Or maybe it isn't. And if it is… when? Maybe she's Amaunet here. Maybe Apophis came early. (So why the hell is Gibbs a Jaffa?) They can't just go poking around looking for the fracture point. (And it had help, wherever it is. The last time it was Ba'al, sending the Gate on a nice sea cruise before it reached Boston.) Who, what, when, how? (Forget "why". "Why" is because the Universe hates him and Dani both. That's easy.)
If they're going to fix things, they have to know.
Earth is where the answers are.
And hey. He knows where a ship is, right? Problem solved without recourse to fucking snakes, right? (Knives and hands and cool breath ghosting over his skin; laughter in the dark.)
And if they take the timeship to Earth and fail?
He doesn't want to think of that. He has to. (Just as he has to think about the fact that whatever plan he comes up with, he won't be leaving Dani safe on Cimmeria, because the stakes are too damned high to piss away half his chance of success just because he doesn't want to watch her die some last and final time.) If they're caught, snaked, turned inside-out, they'll be handing Ancient technology over to whoever does it. Or the damned thing might break. Or be shot down.
They have to leave it there (hope it's there) until they have what they need to use it. (Plan B is finding Praxyon. If they can.)
When he gets back to where he left her, the shadows are lengthening. She's still there, huddled in a patch of sun, throwing pebbles into the stream. (Ripples. Butterfly wings. Who cast the first stone this time?)
"Come on," he says. "Getting late."
They don't say a word to each other all the way back to the longhouse.
They're on-stage here, but Dani's always been able to lie by misdirection. It isn't so much lying, O'Neill thinks, as a grandmaster level game of "Let's Pretend". It doesn't matter if it works.
Einar wants to talk about venison -- it was what they were hunting today. Deer. The recap bears a weird resemblance to Monday morning quarterbacking in a sport O'Neill doesn't follow, but he finds out it's autumn. Hunting season, because the more deer they take, the more forage there'll be for the survivors. Most cultures (such as the gentle tribal people of Minnesota) do their hunting in the fall. Same reason. In the spring, everything's pregnant, and--
He finds himself thinking about reproductive cycles, and Goa'uld, and stops.
Einar asks him about his family's farm back on dear old Midgardr, and he says the O'Neills weren't much for the whole farming thing. (He thinks of a lake he's probably never going to see again; boats on the water; most of the Clan O'Neill were Navy men.) Einar's asking him what they did, what they do, and he's eavesdropping with half an ear on Gairwyn and Dani (where the talk is about spinning, and goats) and realizes that the headman and his lady are feeling the two of them out, trying to decide if they'll fit, if they have skills and talents that will make them more than a dead weight here.
If they'll ask them to stay.
He doesn't want to think about that (he remembers Edora, he remembers helping Paynan put up that damned windmill; he could probably build one here), and he doesn't want to think that their choices have all come down to this.
But they have. Two choices. Stay or go.
Or go somewhere else. (Yeah, indoor plumbing would be a nice touch.) Dani knows hundreds of Gate addresses, after all. Some of those places are pretty nice (some of them are warmer).
But Dani's right about one thing. Other Her did in fifteen years what it took Ba'al seventy to accomplish. That means a big hot war. That means nothing here may be the way he remembers it. And after talking to Thor, he isn't as confident the Asgard have the clout to enforce their "Protected Worlds" notion. Cimmeria's safe. Everything else is probably up for grabs.
He diverts Einar into a discussion of sailing. The Cimmerians have boats (longships) and there's an ocean a couple of hundred miles to the west of here. Most of the Cimmerians live near the coast; Einar's people are up here to keep an eye on the Stargate. Once they're onto boats, he can pretty much sit back and let the conversation take care of itself: everyone here has gone a-Viking at some time or other, and they all have "No Shit" stories to tell about it. (He wonders if the Asgard relocated any Irish to Cimmeria; he wonders if there's a village out there that builds watchfires on the headlands and watches for dragon-boats slicing silently toward the shore through the morning mist.)
He thinks about P7X-013. If (if and if and if) the timeship is there, and flyable, they could still use it. Pick any point in history. Go live on an Earth that's snake-free, that won't be invaded in their lifetimes.
Only that's running away, and he knows it.
#
One thing you don't need four PhDs to know is that no electricity means you're up with the sun and go to bed with it, too. Soon enough they're back in their file drawer, and he's thinking about the fact that if any job you do twice becomes yours, any place you sleep twice starts to feel like home.
He doesn't want this to be home. But it's safe. And he went back to the war over and over, and then he was sure he was done (more or less; hammer his sword into a dagger, shield into a cloak; politics is war without bloodshed). And he knows what safety is: it's a trap, a thing that tempts you to delay until the chance to win is gone. (Peace or safety? Cake or death?)
Dani isn't talking (any conversation would have to start with somebody apologizing) but she isn't sulking, either -- she's enough of a professional for that. The thought sets up a weird kind of double-vision in his head (two things that can't both be true, like Earth as they left it and Earth as they last saw it) because he's pretty damned old school, and the boys with all the lethal toys were just that: boys.
He thinks of Jenny, pale and sick-eyed on a roadside in France (she's not made for this work; this one will break, Tyotia, I'm telling you). He thinks of Hetty (Auntie, Anya, Tyotia, Queen of the Night, Duchess of Deception, as silent and dangerous as an adder). And all he can tell himself is: that's different. Jenny was fragile and angry and proud; he loved her (but not that way) and his heart broke for her (foreknowledge, Cassandra's curse) the moment he first saw her.
And Hetty…
He'd loved Hetty. Adored her. (Still loves her, with a wary love tempered by years.) But as well try to come to grips with fire or ice. He could never imagine (then, now, ever) taking the sweaty liberties of the tumbled bed with her. She was chaste as snow (dreadful as winter, as the snows in Moscow), inviolate as the Medusa in her mask. He'd come home from the Tournament of Shadows and tried to scrub away her memory with Sara (with marriage, with America). He thinks of Lady Macbeth, scrubbing and scrubbing her hands. Out, out, damn'd spot. It hadn't worked. He'd chased her shadow into a thousand Hot Zones, burying the memory deep. He thought he'd forgotten (he thought he'd survived; that's what you do after an encounter with Hetty Lange: survive)…
Until the day he saw the ghost of Madame Winter in the eyes of a much younger girl. (Unkempt, unornamented; Hetty was always flawless, even in disguise, but the anger, the determination were the same.) And he fell. He's still falling. She's his girl. His lover. (He's old-fashioned enough to dislike the word; too carnal, too blatant. But it's truth.)
Dani is nothing like Hetty.
Shouldn't be.
Is.
He remembers the sorrow in her eyes (Hetty, he's thinking of Hetty) when she sent the two of them off to Poland. (Sorrow, but she'd set her course and wouldn't change it; she was always ruthless about the things that mattered.) He remembers the fear in her eyes (Dani; Hetty never showed them fear) backed by the same ruthless will (only Dani's deti are all herself; she's the one she spends to stem the tide of chaos).
There will be no Cimmeria for her, for them. No safe place from which to watch the stars go out.
It takes him two more days to admit it aloud.
He butchers and salts venison, helping Einar and his folk prepare for winter. Dani churns butter, grinds flour, helps Gairwyn and the women with the thousand tasks of daily life. Of preparation.
Winter's coming. He feels it in his bones each morning. Dani says in another six weeks there will be a feast. The Cimmerians will slaughter the livestock they can't feed through the long cold. Soon after that, she says, the snow will start to fall. (They talk, but not about what she said to him. They hold each other in the dark, chastely, and he feels the tension in her body, the tiny tremors as she nerves herself to the unthinkable, not knowing when it will come. He thinks she'll stay a while longer, hoping, but when the snow comes, she'll go.)
He thinks of Russia more and more these days. In his memory, it's always night, always winter.
He tries to convince himself this plan can work (to convince himself they both won't wind up snaked, tortured, dead, in whatever order you like). He doesn't share her conviction that some Goa'uld (not some Goa'uld -- Ba'al) will just hand them a ship and send them on their merry way. (Where's the fun in that? The snakes are big on fun.) He tries to think of something better, or at least not much worse. Gate to any of a dozen Goa'uld throneworlds. Steal a ship that can get them to Earth. (The rest of the plan is suicide, too, but there's no other option: to fix it, they have to find out how it broke, and there's no other place to go looking.) It's possible. It's at least as possible as going and asking Ba'al for help.
He wants to say this isn't his problem (it is; he swore an oath). He wants to say there's no chance of winning (that doesn't matter; he has to try). He wants to say they'll have a better chance if they just wait a while (but every day they wait is another day something can go wrong).
He lies in the dark and thinks of Poland. Of wars that sleep but never die.
#
It's their fourth day here (unless the Cimmerians count the day they arrived, in which case this makes five) and tomorrow, or the next day, Einar and Gairwyn will ask them to stay, or politely indicate it's time for them to move on. (It will be the former, he thinks; Gairwyn likes Dani.)
"Take a walk with me," he says, as they're dressing.
The look she gives him is shuttered. Not willing to hope, to despair. To guess. They walk outside, past the outbuildings -- byre, sheepfold, smokehouse, granary, latrine -- to the edge of the trees. The air is icy, sharp with the smell of pines (it reminds him of home, of childhood). He puts an arm around her (he can feel her surprise). Their breaths smoke on the air. (It will be warmer in a few hours, a brief bright afternoon. But winter's coming.)
"You think Ba'al's our best shot?" he asks.
"He's not crazy, and he's probably not dead." She answers as if it's that other day, as if the conversation's been on "Pause" in her head. "He's always stayed on the sidelines as much as he could. He thinks. He made the Jaffa for Ra. Kept a court full of artificers, like Nerus. Spent his time -- his wealth, his power -- on research. Experiments. The weaker members of a species do that. Hang back. Stay out of the dominance battles. Sometimes the alphas all kill each other. Sometimes they're so occupied in winning, one of the betas can sneak in. Breed. Or take the Empire. This plan is a good fit for that mindset."
"Exit strategy?" he asks. He doesn't think there's one, but she surprises him.
"Your gun. Teal'c didn't recognize a wristwatch the first time he saw one. Ba'al is isolated. He won't recognize it as a weapon. You can shoot both of us."
"Head shot," he says, because a sarc can bring back a lot of things, but not your memories, your self, if it's spattered all over a wall.
"Yeah," she says, a long ragged sigh.
"Tell Gairwyn we're leaving," he says. (T'were best done quickly.) She presses herself against him for a minute before she goes. He stands there, watching the sun rise. If it's the last time he'll see one, it's a good one to go out on.
When she comes back, she's got a basket slung over her arm, and a blanket, rolled, its ends tied with a long thong, slung over her shoulder. "Parting gifts," she says. "She wishes us luck."
He doesn't answer: we'll need it. It isn't true.
They'll need a miracle.
#
Jenny never does find out diNozzo's story. Nobody's much for talking about the past any more. All she knows for sure is that diNozzo spent the two years they were setting up Camp Grenada in Baltimore, and when he left, it was with a chopped and channeled delivery truck and the decision to kill Alien Bitch. It was him, and a woman named Abby (she'd been a forensics tech at NCIS Before), two guys named Matt and Henry (from something Matt said, Jenny has the idea diNozzo used to be a cop), and a woman everyone calls Sparky. They picked her up (Abby said) in Virginia. No one knows quite how she got there; her drivers' license said Washington, D.C. DiNozzo calls Sparky their mascot. Abby calls her Meredith Rebecca McKay, Merry for short. (Either way the woman is weirder than snake shoes, but Sparky can fix damned near anything. Even the boomsticks the Bitch's toy soldiers like to carry. They've got quite a stash of them now. They've come across the wreckage of some of the little ships -- the hawk-shaped ones -- but even Sparky can't figure out how to make them fly again. Ground warfare it is.) They've gotten good at stakeouts and ambushes -- set up an generator and string some lights and sooner or later you get noticed -- but the only place they know of for sure they can hit is the Golden City.
The first time La Resistance heard about the golden city was the winter of 2000 (when they hid and froze and argued about whether next year was the first year of the new millennium or the last of the old). Three years since Alien Bitch had come. Long enough for stockpiles to run out, for batteries to be drained. Long enough to realize this wasn't going to be over, the Marines weren't coming to their rescue, that this was the new normal.
At first it was only rumors, whispers (broken skips of transmission in the dark on the radio DiNozzo and his geek-girl harem had scavenged from somewhere and rebuilt). Some of the reports said Denver. All the reports said: West. (No one seemed to give a rat's ass that everything from Pueblo to Boulder was a smoking radioactive crater in the ground. It was a destination. It was hope.) Food, shelter, safety, in exchange for nothing more than the work of your hands and the sweat of your brow, and if you were working for the aliens, after three years a lot of people just didn't care any more. The reports that came back were spotty, but as best Jenny could tell (she'd been an analyst once; old skills died hard), at least half of those who tried the crossing died (exposure, starvation, disease) before they even got the chance to succumb to radiation sickness for the glory of their alien overlord. It didn't matter. Thousands crossed the Great Plains the way their ancestors had: on foot, on horses and mules, packed cheek-by-jowl into old yellow school buses with COLORADO OR BUST stenciled across the rear window. Mostly on foot (everyone knew by now that the Bitch's damned tin soldiers watched for vehicles -- for any sign of technology).
When spring came, La Resistance packed up its gear and headed out West too.
They had no intention of helping to build the golden city.
Westward Ho.
#
The sun is high by the time they reach the Gate. They stopped for breakfast beside the stream (the condemned man ate a hearty last meal), but there's still food in the basket. He stops her as she approaches the DHD. (Still wants to convince himself that checking out P7X-013 first is prudent, but what if Ares is there? They can't afford the risk on their way to Samarra.)
"Lunchtime," he says. She looks at him oddly, but doesn't argue. They find a sheltered spot (but in the sun). She spreads out the blanket, and it's the place for a heroic quip, but he can't think of anyway to get "picnic" and "apocalypse" into the same sentence, so he lets it go. A decade ago (a lifetime ago) she'd be babbling about what a fantastic research opportunity going off to get themselves horribly killed is. She's silent. There's still bread, a couple of apples, a leather flask of cider in the basket.
"'Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples'," she says idly.
"You know we're going to die?" he says suddenly. It isn't what he meant to say. This is the point for one of those inspirational speeches he's always sucked at. Or at least some last words of advice on how to not die.
"Jack," she says, and there's urgency in her voice. She shoves the basket aside and kneels forward to kiss him.
He remembers the first time he kissed her (in a time-loop, half crazy with his own personal Groundhog Day). He remembers the second (Ancient tech eating his brain, Hammond in Washington, Anubis on his way to Earth and the Gate shut down). He thinks of the times since: assignations, stolen moments, the weird dissonance of watching her go through the Gate without him when she'd been sleeping beside him hours before, the days and weeks of not knowing when he went to Washington. The brief months of sleeping and waking together, of how was your day, of knowing she'd be there, that they'd made it through to the other side. The rough fabric she wears is scratchy and unfamiliar under his hands.
The universe owes them the chance to say goodbye.
He holds her afterward, looking up at the sun-flare through the trees. It looks almost like stars if you close your eyes a little. Time's wasting. Decision's made. "I don't think you ever said where we're going," he says finally, and feels her stir reluctantly.
"Dakara," she says.
#
Fourteen years on, and they're still alive. (That has to count for something, right?) 'Into the West' sounded a hell of a lot nicer when Tolkien said it. They're in the mountains in Colorado now. A short step away from the Bitch's golden city on its vast plain of glass. (A short step away from her nest.)
Jenny Shepard pulls her coat tighter around herself in the darkness. Once it had been an expensive wool coat; Burberry, camelhair, a ridiculous indulgence on an analyst's salary, but Colonel Jasper Shepard's daughter had been raised to appreciate nice things. She tries not to think of her father. His death (they said it was a suicide, said he was a traitor) came the year before the world ended, and she knows he was murdered -- by Rene Benoit, by La Grenoille, by a merchant of death, latterly outclassed and she wonders what Rene's doing these days? -- but lately she's been grateful: he didn't live to see this.
These days the coat's more patches than anything else. She knows she's still lucky to have it. Others have less.
Sighing, Jenny tips her head back and peers at the stars through the trees. Last spring, she'd found herself staring at the stars through the remnants of some farmer's windbreak in Kansas. This year, it's the spreading arms of lodgepole pines. There's still snow on the ground. The sky is clear and black, and the stars are bright. They've lost fifteen people so far this winter. To the cold, to infections that would have been barely worthy of mention once upon a time.
She wonders if this is living, or if it's dying by inches. She remembers the day the Big Birds attacked Camp Grenada. (They're called "Jaffa", and there are people inside the armor. You can learn a lot of things in fourteen years.) She wonders if it was miracle or damnation that sent DiNozzo and his ridiculous truck. La Resistance. Counting her, Elizabeth, and Shep, La Resistance was eight people in those days. She remembers Elizabeth saying We have to go back for Aiden as the van jounced across every rut in northern Ohio. (Leave no one behind. It was Camp Grenada's unofficial motto.) She remembers diNozzo's answer. There's no point, ma'am. There's no point. He'd sounded more resigned than regretful. Jenny had thought she should feel guilty. Mostly, she felt nothing at all. (Ethan had always told Jenny that in the fight between convictions and starvation, starvation usually won. Credit where credit was due: even in death, Ethan was always right.) All La Resistance could offer was a small chance at revenge, an even smaller chance at victory, and a big chance at death.
After Grenada burned, Jenny was fine with that.
#
In all his trips through the Gate, O'Neill's never been to Dakara, though it figured prominently in the briefings the year he ran the SGC (and the memorably hellish two years that followed, when he was one of the few people who knew they were ass-deep in another interstellar war). It was the capital of the Jaffa Free Nation for about a year and a half until the Ori blasted it to ruins. Just as he steps through the Gate, he remembers why the Ori blew it up: the Ancient device that can destroy the universe. He doesn't think Dani knows where it is, or how to make it work (that was Carter and Jake and the snake), but the thought still makes him stagger a bit. Great time to think of that, O'Neill.
The air is hot and filled with dust. The vest and tunic he's wearing make him itch. He pops a sweat, and for an instant he wishes for his uniform back (he'd really like BDUs and a gun, but while he's wishing for things, why not wish none of this was happening?) The Gate is on a hill. He can see a building in the distance. Palace. There's no one in sight.
Dani takes his arm, looking up at him, worried. He forces a deathshead grin. "Showtime."
"Morning--" she says, but can't finish the sentence. Neither of them thinks morning will come, this time.
They start walking. Halfway there, they see a glitter in the distance. Jaffa. The armor gleams. Bull's heads. An army of minotaurs. (That's new.)
"Ba'al's totem was the bull," Dani says, her voice barely above a whisper. "This is good. We saw so many Serpent Guards because Apophis's domain fell early. His armies were taken by other Goa'uld. If Ba'al doesn't have Serpent Guards--"
He never finds out why that's such a good sign, because the Jaffa arrive. Twelve of them. Toy soldiers for a bored monster. Dani says something -- he doesn't know what -- she's talking snake, staring at the ground. Submissive, non-threatening. Kneel before your god. Skarra had thought the Jaffa were monsters, not men in armor.
The Jaffa leader grabs Dani's chin, forces her head up. O'Neill clenches his fists. They aren't even surrounded. He could grab one of their staff-weapons, take out the whole phalanx before they realized one of the slaves was fighting back. They could go in armed. They could fight their way to the airfield. There has to be one. They can grab a ship. That's what they're here for. A ship.
They're here to suborn a tribal warlord, to convince him his interests lie in helping them, monster or not. (He remembers the scents of cinnamon and shit, overpowering in the wet jungle air, of walking past the palisades decorated with human heads to bribe and coax and flatter another monster into coming out to play. Another life. Another world.) He doesn't move. He can feel the weight of the pistol beneath his tunic. It will take him too long to get it free if he needs it. If he can keep it. Should have taken the shot when you could, Vanya! The voice echoes in memory (merry, mad, and mocking), but he can't place it.
Head Jaffa lets Dani go. She staggers back a few steps. The leader turns toward him and barks out something else. He can tell it's the local equivalent of "and who the hell are you?" but he doesn't know enough Parseltongue to answer.
Dani says something. The leader backhands her without looking. She goes sprawling, clawing to her knees, grabbing at his arm (as if to pull herself to her feet, but he knows it's to hold him still). She speaks quickly, still on her knees, head down. She doesn't wipe the blood from her face. Head Jaffa (can't see his face, but O'Neill doesn't think he's a First Prime; call it a hunch) barks out a few words (most of them are "Jaffa! Kree!" but the big guys always seem to know what to do) and the Jaffa march around to put the two of them at the center of a tidy little box. His shoulder blades itch at having them behind them. Dani scrambles to her feet. Whatever she's said, it's enough to get them all marching off.
The sound of Jaffa marching still makes his skin crawl after all these years, just like it did the first time he heard it.
#
The Jaffa move fast, and it's keep up or be trampled. The inside of Ba'al's palace is dark, shadowy (O'Neill thinks of the pyramid on Abydos, a lifetime ago), chill as a cave. The sound of armored boots on stone is deafening. The throne room they're taken to is the size of a football field. The floor is polished enough to give back a reflection. Everything's black and gold, except for what the audience is wearing. O'Neill's been in plenty of snakepits, from Chulak on down, but there's something weirdly "off" about this one, and he can't bring the thought into focus.
The throne is at the top of a flight of steps, and Ba'al is sitting on it. (If he were going to set up as a god, O'Neill thinks, he'd do something more interesting with his time than sit on a stone chair and stare at people.) He's ready for the whole "kneel before your god" thing when they get there, but he's a little too slow (or maybe the Jaffa are overeager). They knock him down. Hitting the floor knees-first doesn't hurt any less than it did the first time it happened. He looks up and meets Ba'al's eyes. For just a second, he'd swear the bastard looks surprised. Then it smiles. O'Neill looks toward Dani. She's staring determinedly at the bottom step. Her cheeks are flushed -- heat, exertion, pure terror, who knows?
"Remind me next time to be the one who comes up with the suicide plan," he mutters. (The plan looked a lot better before they were committed to it. They always do.)
Ba'al comes down the steps. The moment it starts to move, silence spreads in ripples until the only sound in the whole place is his slow footsteps. It says something. The Jaffa yank them both to their feet. For a moment he's staring right into Ba'al's eyes. He looks away quickly. It isn't as if he doesn't know Goa'uld court etiquette (at least the basics). There's just never been any reason not to piss off the snakes before.
"But you speak the language of our beloved Queen and Mistress!" Ba'al suddenly says in English. It sounds delighted. "How charming! Do go on." Its eyes flare gold, and it smiles (meatsuit). It reaches out to trace the bruises his Jaffa left on Dani's face. O'Neill concentrates on remembering the last time he saw Ba'al. Ripped out of its host and smashed to pulp. Good times.
Dani starts to say something. Ba'al's fingers tighten on her jaw and she stops with a gasp.
"Get your hands off her," O'Neill says. It's still English, but all of a sudden everybody in the room (including the Jaffa) seems to be holding their breaths anyway. Then Ba'al laughs, and turns to him.
"Is she yours?" it asks, all genial malice.
"She isn't yours," O'Neill answers.
"Jack--!" Dani stage-whispers. Her voice is shaking, and O'Neill doesn't think it's part of her "let's grovel to the Goa'uld" act.
"This is my domain," Ba'al says (smiling, smiling). "All within it are mine. Unless you journey here beneath the protection of one of my brother gods. It is death, of course, for a slave to use the chappa'ai without permission."
There's a beat of silence, and just as O'Neill is thinking: fuck it and figuring that going for his gun will at least get them both killed, Dani's back in the game.
"But my lord," she says, hitting "puzzled" note-perfect. "It was you who gave us permission."
"Do you rebuke your god?" Ba'al asks gently, and the meatsuit smile widens.
"I abase myself, Lord Ba'al, and beg for your mercy," Dani says instantly. "In my zeal to serve you, I forgot myself. I throw myself at your feet and place myself beneath the canopy of your wisdom and your power."
This must be boilerplate, because she isn't moving. O'Neill's got his hand on the gun now. He's locked down, mission mode, crunch time, no time to feel or think about might-be-maybe, just this and this and this and when it's time to shoot and when it's time to run. Two at the base of her skull, then he'll try for Ba'al. Maybe the snake isn't wearing a force shield.
Yeah, and maybe they two of them will wake up in their own bed and find out this was all a bad dream.
"In that case, you might as well explain yourself," Ba'al says. "I am famed for my mercy, you know."
"Truly this is so, my lord," Dani answers (O'Neill doesn't know how she can manage it without gagging), "but the tale I must sully my lord's ears with reeks of foul magic cast by his enemies, and I know not where to begin."
This is about the time O'Neill realizes he's fallen for one of Dr. Jackson's patented non-explanations. Take a ship to Earth, check. Get a ship from Ba'al, check. Explain to Ba'al that it's financing the assassination of a rival snake, check.
The part where the miracle occurs is why the two of them are making it this amazing offer.
"Begin at the beginning," Ba'al says. "Of course, I already know everything. But I want to hear it again."
"As my lord commands," Dani says, sounding a little breathless.
At which point they're off into the land of "no shit, there I was", and O'Neill learns that Ba'al is the ruler of Earth and the Supreme System Lord, that he and Dani are two of its most trusted minions (he always wanted to be somebody's minion. Only not), and that they were journeying through the Stargate (from Planet Ykaterinburg, only she gives the address in Gate symbols, not the SGC's algorithm; he's the one who taught her they all have sounds, once upon an Ancient headsucker brain-scrub), when they found themselves in the hands of Topless Snake Dani and her poor taste in Jaffa.
"--and we were forced to flee by way of the Forbidden Place in order to escape," she finishes up (must mean Cimmeria), "and knew that somehow my lord's own work had been stolen and perverted, and his enemies have trifled with the very fabric of Time itself."
"Have they really?" Ba'al asks, sounding as pleased as any kid who's just heard a really kickass bed time story.
"My lord knows all." Dani looks at Ba'al, eyes wild and blank. "My lord knows that she who holds Earth has taken me for her own, and the shame of that is too great for me to bear. Let me expiate my transgression by restoring him to his rightful place so that he may rule as King of all the Gods. His hand will not be seen. Yet all will tremble."
"I do hope so," Ba'al says, turning its head enough so that it's looking at him. "And you. Do you, too, wish my rule to be restored and my name to be exalted forever?"
"Yeah." His mouth is as dry as that desert they just walked through. "Sure."
"Splendid," Ba'al says genially. "Of course this is a trap. Why should I believe you? Why not just make of you… an offering to Queen Nefirtiri?"
At least now they've got a name for her, O'Neill thinks. Nefirtiri.
"Great Lord Ba'al's mercy is vast," Dani says, and there's no emotion in her voice at all now. "As vast as his wisdom. He knows the Queen of the Gods will seek the attack behind the gift."
"Well, then," Ba'al says, leaning forward conspiratorially. "I suppose both of you must die right here."
"You'll never get a better shot at her," O'Neill says. For the third time he meets Ba'al's eyes, and this time he doesn't look away.
"It is true we might fail," Dani says quickly. "If we are taken, even our love for you might fail and we might speak, for the power of the gods is vast. But my lord's power is great, and all covet it, and surely his rival has jealous rivals as well? Surely his wisdom will craft a way to lay our failure at their door?"
Ba'al turns away and walks back up the steps to its throne. It sits down and leans back, still smiling. It steeples its fingers as it looks at them. (It hasn't escaped O'Neill's notice that there are about half as many spearcarriers here as there where when Dani started talking and the rest of the minions are backed up against the walls trying to become invisible.) "So," it says (it's pretending to think things over; O'Neill knows it's already made up its mind). "You want me to give you weapons and send you back through the chappa'ai."
"My lord is pleased to joke," Dani says. "He knows that our desire is a ship for my companion, so that he may once again act as your trusted agent and discover what he can from the surface of the First World. For myself -- with your aid, Lord Ba'al, I will enter the court as its Queen, and--"
"The hell you will!" O'Neill says. He grabs Dani by the arm and yanks her back against him. He's too angry to worry about what Ba'al's going to do next. She planned this. From the very beginning, this was her plan. This.
She's struggling, so he shakes her (he's never felt so much desire to just smack her, not even during First Abydos), and she slams a hip into him and he uses that as cover to get his hands on his gun. If he's quick enough, she'll never have time to know she's dead.
"It will work!" she says, and he doesn't know which of them she's talking to. "She's me -- the wrong me, someone who never should have existed, but me! I can do this!" she says, and now she's talking to Ba'al. "I can be her -- I can kill her, blow up her ship, destroy her! And--"
"And how are you going to do that without a snake in your head?" O'Neill demands. "Goddammit, Dani--"
Ba'al clears its throat. "How very entertaining."
Both of them freeze. O'Neill eases the gun free. Suddenly the ceiling lights up. The gun's ripped from his hand, flying upward. So are Dani's glasses. He feels a burning pain in his leg as the knife in his sock burrows its way to freedom. All three things hit the ceiling with a clunk and stick there.
Dani's staring at the ceiling with a horrified expression.
"Ah," Ba'al says mockingly, raising its eyebrows. "And you're entirely certain that in this world you come from, I am Supreme System Lord and ruler of Earth?"
"My lord--" Dani says, and her voice is a breathless rasp.
Ba'al waves her to silence. "No. You have made your petition and I have heard it. Now you shall experience my mercy."
#
The Jaffa drag Dani away from him and throw her at Ba'al's feet. Then they're all over him, and it's been too damned long since his last rodeo, but oh God, he tries. Ba'al grabs her by the hair as she starts to get up, and it's smiling, smiling...
"I will come for you!" he shouts (a different message for each of them). "You hurt her, you son-of-a-bitch, and--"
"Morning!" Dani cries (last message, warning, hope), as the heavy boys drag him toward a side door. Morning always comes.
He can't see her any more, but he doesn't hear her scream. That's something. It has to be. It's all there is. He focuses on anger. He needs it. He can't afford to worry about her getting snaked, or what kind of backroom deal she just made. She planned this. From the very beginning, this was her plan. This.
To send him off to Earth, and stay behind.
With Ba'al.
They're outside again, and it's unexpected. He's pretty sure they aren't taking him to his execution. Shot in a ditch isn't the snakes' style. He was thinking dungeon, torture, (knives). The nice thing about Goa'uld holding cells is that they're always the same. Sort of like the McDonald's of evil. Promise them everything, give them a dungeon. (Knives.) Hey, at least they're familiar. A place you can escape.
The Jaffa bulls get tired of dragging him after a few minutes and let him walk. He cooperates, because his choices are "die now" or "die later" and if he dies now, nobody's going to be coming back to rescue Dani. He'll find a way. He has to. He can take her back to Cimmeria, and see what Thor's Hammer does (he doesn't want to think he knows, that there's about to be a matched set of Evil Queens duking it out for Earth), and then he can drag her out of that damned Labyrinth and they can argue over whether or not her plan should have worked. (If he can survive.)
They reach the landing field. That's what it has to be. It's covered with tel'taks. They're spaced like the pieces on a chessboard (he thinks of the Tournament of Shadow, and everything old is new again). The guards poke and prod him over toward one of them, and four of them glare at him (as much as you can tell with the armor and the funny hats) while one of them opens up the ship and steps inside.
This is where The Legendary Colonel Jack O'Neill (SG-1) would grab one of the guards' staff-weapons, shoot them all down, take out the one in the ship when he came to see what the fuss was about, steal the ship, bust Dr. Jackson out of the Bad Guy's clutches, and then they'd make a run for the Stargate, returning to the SGC amid thunderous applause.
Only the SGC isn't there right now (leave a message) and Colonel O'Neill has been buried in an unmarked grave with a General's stars through his heart.
Bull(y)-boy comes out of the ship again, and O'Neill doesn't get the chance to ask questions. Two of them grab him and toss him through the open hatch. The deck is still as hard as ever, but he doesn't get time to appreciate it, because he can feel the vibration of the engines, and he sees the flicker of light at the windows as the ship rises up and heads for space.
He scrambles into the pilot's seat. Everything's locked down. He gets a glimpse of the planet below, then everything ripples, and all there is outside the cockpit is hyperspace (like staring into a wormhole from the inside; he knows you aren't supposed to remember the transition, but hey, the theory boys never get it right). Once its made the jump, he's got control. He looks at the console. There's a destination set. It's a string of gate-glyphs.
("Connect the moons, this is the symbol for this planet, that's it. The point of origin. The seventh symbol. We're going home. You're going home.")
He spends an hour checking the ship out as thoroughly as he can (he's no Sam Carter). He drops out of hyperspace a couple of times. No surprises. At the end of it, he has to concede (provisionally) that Ba'al's given him what Dani asked for. This could still be a trick. Or Ba'al could be the sweet innocent unspoiled monster Dani thinks it is, willing to use them because it doesn't cost anything.
You're gonna regret leaving me alive. I'm coming for you when this is over. I'll be back.
The mission. Remember the mission.
Next stop: Earth.
#
Ohio and Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas. The road to Hell, despite popular opinion, was neither easy nor straight. Stopping to forage, stopping to fight, stopping every time the damned truck broke down. It finally died somewhere on the way to Minnesota (they had to detour south to Tennessee to avoid the Great Lakes Hot Zone, and north to avoid the war the Big Birds were fighting with the Free Texas Republic). They joked about forty years in the wilderness. Some of the braver souls started calling diNozzo and Elizabeth Moses and Miriam.
(Would've been nice if they really had been heading for the Promised Land.)
By the time they hit the Great Plains, their rag-tag rebel band was almost a hundred strong. Their ranks swelled every time the Big Birds burned another enclave, and shrank again when people starved or froze or stepped on a thorn or a rock or broke an ankle or got the goddamned flu. (But hey, at least the Bitch and her little bird-headed friends kept recruitment numbers up.) They're in Colorado now (as close as anybody can tell without a GPS), and Sparky's built what Abby says is a kind of Geiger Counter, so at least they won't wander into the Hot Zone by accident. (Elizabeth wants to gather intel first. They'll only get one shot at this. The chatter (voices on the night wind, there for a day or a week then silent) says it takes about a year to die once you reach the Golden City. Abby says that means the radiation won't kill them outright. But it's probably a good idea not to make long-term plans.
The night is chilly and clear and quiet. All the nights are quiet anymore. Once they would have been filled with the constant dull rumble of cars passing on the interstate, with music and bright lights and the drone of televisions. Once. As near as anybody can figure, it's Easter. April 24th this year (Anno Domini 2011, Anno Infernus 14), and Jenny wonders how long it'll be until people stop trying to figure out what day Easter's supposed to be. She wonders how long it will be until they stop celebrating Christmas. (Elizabeth still insists on Thanksgiving too. DiNozzo's right there with her. It's hard to see the point anymore. O' brave new world.)
Father Thomas preached a short service this morning. He talked about the Crucifixion, about the Resurrection. ("And Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.") Father Thomas has a lovely voice. (But Jesus said other things too, when he was on the cross: "Eli Eli lama sabachthani?" My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?) There were spring flowers, and they lit candles, and he talked about the importance of hope (Father Thomas always talks about the importance of hope, about keeping faith, but hope doesn't put food on the table or cure staph infections. Faith didn't keep little Jenn Keller from losing her baby and her life.)
They'd had a rabbi for awhile. Rabbi Greenberg was white-haired and irascible and walked with a cane. He married three couples, the second October La Resistance was together. Presided over the naming of a couple of babies. Rabbi Greenberg died on the long walk across Kentucky. It was a lingering death; delayed them by two weeks. Jenny gave up on deathbed vigils after that.
Jenny knows should be inside at dinner, sitting at Elizabeth's right hand. (She knows they call her 'Weir's attack dog' when they think she's not listening, but she always is.) DiNozzo and Sergeant McPherson shot a couple of turkeys and a brace of rabbits yesterday (they save the guns for hunting, because the bang-sticks don't leave much), and there's roast potatoes and new asparagus and liquor from the still (the last few batches have been less noxious than usual, or else she's getting used to it) and even a pie sweetened with the last of their precious sugar. Maybe they'll trade for more later in the spring. A lot of people get this far and hesitate: Eastern Colorado may be the most population-dense area left. Of course, that means they all spend their time dodging Alien Bitch's raiding parties. (DiNozzo says that's not a bug, it's a feature.)
She can hear voices and laughter wafting out of the big tent, see the little circle of light spilling out of the half-open flat onto the ground. DiNozzo's probably telling jokes again. DiNozzo's spent the last decade and a half telling jokes. Ethan would say it's a defense mechanism. (She's been thinking of Ethan more and more these days. He's sort of like the little devil on her shoulder, whispering in her ear.) She tenses when she hears the approaching footsteps (reflex), but not much; she figures it's someone come to fetch her in to dinner, or else it's just Sparky wandering around again (what can't be cured must be endured). You can't survive a decade (going on for two if the age of miracles is still upon them) at war if you jump every time the bushes rustle, and they post sentries for a reason.
Jenny relaxes fractionally when she hears the low whistle off to her right: just one of the sentries, headed in. She must've been woolgathering to the point she missed the shift change (good damn thing there hasn't been anyone shooting at them lately). She whistles back: all clear.
Only it isn't.
The sentry (what the hell is his name? One of the new guys, and she can't be bothered to learn all their names any more; they die too quickly) is pushing a prisoner in front of him. She unshutters the lantern she's carrying (nearly out of kerosene and guttering, but better than no light at all). It's hard to get a really good look at the stranger in the wavering yellow light, but she studies him anyway. Tall, straight-backed even with his hands tied behind him (something in his bearing says 'military' as clearly as a fucking tattoo), wearing some kind of medieval peasant costume (it's clean and in one piece, too, funny thing). She's pretty sure his hair is gray.
"Found him poking around the north perimeter," the sentry says. "He says his name's 'Murray.'"
The prisoner doesn't say anything, just stands there at something like parade rest.
(Aiden hadn't been any good at parade rest; he'd never been able to keep himself from fidgeting for more than five minutes. Jenny's spent the last fourteen years trying to keep from thinking about Aiden.)
"Murray, huh?" Jenny says, taking a couple of steps forward, and lifting the lantern so she can get a better look at the prisoner's face. (Yup. Grey hair. Clean. He's clean.) "Why do I get the distinct feeling that's not your real name?"
At the sound of her voice, the prisoner goes tense all over, just for an instant. She can see him taking a deep breath, forcing himself to relax: nothing to see here; move along. It's over in fractions of a second. If Jenny were anyone else, she'd probably have missed it. (But Jenny isn't anyone else. If she were, she'd probably be dead like the rest of Camp Grenada.)
"Appreciate the warm welcome," the man says, ignoring her comment. He sounds affable, likeable. There's almost a smile in his voice. Every line in his body is screaming trust me.
Too bad she knows that trick.
Too bad he's soft and round and well-fed and gray-haired. Too bad he's got clean well-groomed nails and doesn't stink. Too bad the lines around his eyes and his mouth say he's over fifty at least. Everyone (at least everyone planning to survive to see next Easter) knows what that means. She takes her Beretta from its well-worn holster (used to be diNozzo's Beretta, but he bet to an inside straight a few years ago), thumbs off the safety. A lot of La Resistance prefers the zap pistols they pull off the dead Big Birds, but she'd much rather put her trust in a plain old, Earth-manufactured gun.
"That's funny," Jenny says, smiling a little. "I never really suspected the Bitch of being so obvious."
#
He's been on Earth about two weeks. Did a careful flyover (dodging the ha'tak in orbit, only the one, small mercies) and saw just about what he expected to: Nefirtiri's hit this place hard. Cheyenne Mountain's gone (NORAD built a hardened site, long before the SGC moved in, but all the combat engineering in the world can't save you from a naquadaah bomb up the ass), and most of the land around it, except for a few small pockets, is charcoal (second-growth coming up at the edges; pretty easy to see where the Hot Zone is). When he saw the crater from orbit, deep and black and shining like glass, he knew, with a sick cold heaviness, what had happened.
They went to Abydos and lost. Ra sent the bomb. (All your base, as the stupid saying went, are belong to us. Jack had never been sure why the geeks found it so fucking funny.)
There's a Goa'uld temple complex going up on the flat place that's where The Mountain was (in the middle of the Hot Zone, why isn't he surprised?) Everything's gold. There's a worker's village around it: striped awnings and nylon bubble tents and it looks like the saddest farmer's market on earth.
He stashed the ship in the burned-out ruins of what used to be Cripple Creek and took the long way around the Mountain. At night, the temple complex lights up the sky for miles. He's stayed away from people as much as possible; figured his best bet was to infiltrate the temple (same old same old). Most of the people he's seen have the look of refugees everywhere. Should've known he'd run into a Resistance eventually. Just his luck.
For a split second O'Neill feels a complete lack of surprise to find little Jenny Shepard pointing a gun at him; back in the day (more like once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away) the relationship between the oldest of Hetty's duckings and the youngest had been adversarial to say the best, and the years hadn't really improved their relationship. Once upon a time he'd teased little Jenny (his Jenny, and he'd called her Vasilisa in his head; she'd be Irina to the world outside their front door) that she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a rocket launcher, but the woman standing here pointing a Beretta at him like she's an eight year old with a BB gun and his head is a tin can sitting on a fence post isn't his Jenny. (His Jenny's dead. Ba'al sent flowers. But that's not actually the problem here.) His Jenny would never have studied him as if she were wondering whether ripping out his liver might be fun. If she had, back in the day, he would never have worried that little Jenny (like Gary before her) was going to get them all killed someday. But the woman in the patched coat, newsboy cap, and battered jump boots ( looking like Mission: Impossible meets Oliver Twist) bears about as much resemblance to Hetty's little Jenny-bird as Tits Divine had to Dani. She isn't pointing the gun at him because of all they've been to each other. She's doing it because she doesn't fucking know him. The look she's giving him is hostile, incurious, and completely without recognition.
She should know him.
She doesn't.
If the fracture point was somewhere around First Abydos, Jenny Sheppard should recognize him. They'd met (after all) long before the mid-nineties.
After his flyover, he'd figured on a trip to back to 1996 (certainly not the best year of his life; he thinks he might hate it at least as much as Dani hates 1969) and Abydos to fix what went wrong. Except it turns out that's not where the break is. That, he supposes, would be too easy. (Round and round and round she goes; where the goatfuck is, nobody knows.) What the hell does Jenny Sheppard having never met Jack O'Neill have to do with Evil Queen Dani and the alien invaders?
He was supposed to come to Earth and find answers. He promised Dani. (Only too late did he remember what the Gospel of Tyotia had to say on the subject of spies and promises.) And he doesn't want to think about Dani, because she's probably (and he doesn't know, dammit, and that's the worst) snaked or dead. And if she isn't (damned unlikely, but he has to consider the possibility Ba'al kept his word), she's out there by herself. Somewhere.
The Beretta doesn't waver as Jenny's evil twin indicates her disbelief in his statement he isn't a snake (is puzzled by him calling their New Alien Overlords "snakes" just to begin with, and that tells him a lot about what they know about the Goa'uld). Is sure he's working for them anyway. (Yeah, and he knows why, too. The lessons of history, and isn't it a bitch he couldn't apply them? Hetty had starved him and Gary practically to death before they'd ducked under the Iron Curtain all those years ago: well-fed Americans might as well tattoo 'I'm a Western spy' on their foreheads and ring up the KGB.) Apparently people under siege by Goa'uld Barbie don't tend to reach the ripe old age of sixty-two, either.
"I know this looks bad," he says (because he has to say something; the woman's pointing a fucking gun at him), "but if you'll give me five minutes, I can explain."
Yeah, because that's going to work out so well.
Fifteen minutes later he's inside what passes for their Command Center. A couple of folding chairs, collapsible table piled high with odds and ends and several clipboards holding ragged assortments of scavenged paper, an assortment of maps (local area, and The Mountain is marked in red on the top one), some kind of portable heater. It looks like an old campaign tent. Not military issue. The paint they used to camouflage it has seeped through the fabric. It looks like their main storage area, too: there are boxes stacked along the walls. Battered cardboard (Downy Fabric Softener and Campbell's Soup and Pringles) and a bizarre mismatched collection of luggage. He lets Samsonite commercials of years gone by play through his head while he looks around.
"If I really was a sn-- one of the aliens, I could have killed you three or four different times before we got here," he says. It's only polite to make conversation with your hosts. (So to speak.)
"Shut up," she says. At least she's been sufficiently entertained to let him live for at least another half hour. (The Gospel of Tyotia: If you can't convince them, at least make them wonder.) He settles in to wait. Bad idea to make small talk when the lady with the gun isn't feeling chatty. (He thinks of snake-baiting in halcyon days of yore with a wistfulness he'd rather not feel.)
After what's probably no more than five minutes but seems more like five goddamn years (and he's gonna have to ask Carter if there's some law of physics that covers how slowly time moves when someone might shoot you at any second), the owner of the tent comes through the door. O'Neill can't turn to look behind him (he likes his kidneys where they are), but he can hear her when she greets Jenny.
"Well," says the newcomer, "you've got to admire the timing."
And suddenly O'Neill is just as glad he can't turn around and that Other Jenny is standing behind him, because he's pretty goddamn sure he doesn't want anyone getting a look at his face right now. He's always hated trips to evil-twin land, especially when he winds up meeting people he knows. Almost any other time, he'd be glad to see Weir, but right now her presence is just another symptom of how thoroughly Reality's gone toes-up. In '96-and-7 she was still doing shuttle diplomacy out of DC; after 2004 she was in Pegasus, making life difficult for the IOA and the Wraith simultaneously (gotta give the woman credit for multitasking). It's hard to come up with a scenario that has her leading the Rebel Alliance. (He saw what was left of DC.)
But Weir's presence isn't what really worries him.
Where (when) the hell did everything go wrong?
#
Two hours and counting, and he's still not dead. He's even sitting down in an actual chair, at an actual table, and Other Jenny's put her Beretta away. He thinks it's more that she got bored than that she's decided to trust him, but at times like these you count the small victories. Elizabeth Weir (who doesn't know him either; no surprises there; they didn't meet until '04) is sitting across from him with her hands folded in front of her; about twenty minutes ago, some kid in a faded brown sweater and a green ball cap's brought everyone in the tent mugs of something that makes the ersatz coffee in the Soviet Union look like Starbuck's.
At least it's hot.
Elizabeth's asked all the standard questions at first (same questions Other Jenny asked, and he gave the same answers): who are you, where did you come from, what the fuck are you doing here? (How much do you know about the Rebel Alliance?)
Jenny asked like the questions were just some kind of ritual prelude, like the drumroll before a firing squad pumps the poor asshole full of lead. Elizabeth really seems to want to know. He can'tt very well tell them the truth, so he tellsd them the truth. Some of it, anyway. (The best lies, so said the Gospel of Tyotia, had something of the truth in them, and Hetty was always right, and Jesus, he knows she's older than God and terrorizing some West Coast featherbed these days, but he can't keep from wishing she were here).
So the story he tells begins, "On 1927 on the Giza Plateau," and he realizes as he says it that he's lost count of the number of times he'd said those words to someone he wasn't supposed to tell. They're like some kind of twisted prayer, a ritual invocation of disaster. He remembers saying them to Hetty in the dimness of a Washington hotel room a week before Jenny Sheppard died for his secrets. He remembers the weight of the little Asgard jammer in his hand (Hetty's lighter had been heavy like that. It was made of platinum. God hates a spy.)
He remembers Hetty's face on the day they buried Jenny. (His Jenny. Vasilisa. Not the sharp-faced woman with the Beretta and the diamond-hard smile.)
He tells them about what NORAD had in the basement in '96. The Stargate (there's no government anymore, so there's no need to honor his oaths. It doesn't fucking matter any more). He's pretty sure they won't believe him, and he's right (alien invasions to the contrary). He tells them about wormholes anyway (as much as he can remember from all the stuff Carter told him that he didn't need to know right now, thank you, Captain). About falling to the ground covered in frost, too disoriented to move (sometimes it's the details that sell it, Hetty always said). He tells them about Abydos (remembers Kasuf and Skaara and Sha're, remembers Dani playing dress-up, remembers leaving her behind. A year later he sent a Kleenex box through the Gate. He's pretty sure he's not getting her back this time.)
Other Jenny asks him how the fuck they'd figured out how to make the Gate work. (His Jenny didn't like to use that word. This isn't his Jenny.) He tells them about the coverstone. He tells them about Danielle Jackson, wunderkind and crackpot archaeologist, and all the while he's weaving together a Cover ID in his mind, because they don't need Jack O'Neill at this party. They need somebody who can know this stuff, and be here, and who they won't fucking shoot.
Jenny says, "So you screwed up." Elizabeth says, "So all of this is our fault?"
"No," he says, or rather Murray does. Murray is bitter. Murray is pissed. Murray was with First Abydos (a Marine, a grunt) and has spent the last decade and some hauling his ass across the galaxy to get home. A modern-day Odysseus, except that happy little interlude with Circe really fucking sucked and Scylla and Charybdis have laser cannons. "It's her fault." (Jackson's. The geek.) He tells them about the dog in the geek's luggage. He tells them she was full of shit, she didn't really know how to get them home. He tells them about Horus Guards and staff weapons and flying pyramids. He tells them Jackson was dumb enough to get her ass snaked, and then they were so far up shit creek it was really shit river, and they didn't even have a goddamn raft.
(That's how it must have gone down; hard to argue with reality.)
He calls Jackson a stupid bitch. That's when they start to listen.
He tells them about the bomb.
"It was a suicide mission," he says. "West sent us there to blow the place up. She told us about the bomb later. The snake. Said they'd sent it back to Earth, only bigger."
Eventually Other Jenny steps out of the tent and comes back with a man O'Neill (Murray) shouldn't recognize. Dark hair, gaunt like all the rest of them. Wearing rags and tatters like everyone else: no quaint medieval costumes here; once the WalMarts are empty they're all going to freeze. He introduces himself: "DiNozzo. Call me Tony."
"Murray," O'Neill says, shaking his hand. He tries to forget he's ever seen the guy before in his life. (He remembers diNozzo – the other diNozzo; his diNozzo, one of Jethro's kids -- well groomed and well fed and wearing a vest emblazoned with 'NCIS' and standing on the pel'tak of a Goa'uld ship. A couple of days later Dani made the poor kid sign about a ream of NDAs, chortling at the thought. It seems like a hundred years ago.)
Behind diNozzo, Jenny shifts her stance minutely. Looking for an excuse to shoot 'Murray.' The Beretta's too obvious. O'Neill's pretty sure from the way she's standing she's got a holdout piece in her right coat pocket.
'Murray' tells his tale of woe a second time. And a third. Abydos, Goa'uld, Stargates. Stargates, Abydos, Goa'uld. Danielle Jackson. They're trying to catch him in a lie, of course. Too bad he's better at this game than they'll ever be.
Once upon a time (in another world) they all came to the Court of Miracles bearing their own gifts, their own salvation and their own damnation: a heart and a brain and courage and ruby slippers, no wizard required. (Jack O'Neill and Jethro Gibbs and Jenny Sheppard and -- before she was lost -- Sofia. Or call them Vanya, Zhenya, Irinka, Raya, call them ducklings, call them St. Henrietta's little ones.) O'Neill had the gift of lies (lies for himself, or for anyone else you pleased), Jethro had his rifle and could, as the saying went, shoot the jockstrap off a gnat at a hundred yards, and Jenny (little Jenny) spoke Russian like she was born to it and had a bright quick mind to rival St. Hetty's own. Sofia -- before she bled out her life on a street in Leningrad -- had, unlike poor Lion, been fearless. Hetty shaped them as a blacksmith shaped iron, in fire and in cold, with the hammer and with the anvil.
O'Neill never forgot her lessons. He's wished he could. He hasn't.
So now they're sitting here around Elizabeth Weir's makeshift desk: Sergeant Murray and Elizabeth and Jenny and diNozzo-call-me-Tony and there's hot fake coffee (best not to ask what's in it; it's bitter and maybe even caffeinated) and they're having a nice little chat. Apparently it's Easter. He runs the dates in his head, adjusts for Ykaterinberg and Cimmeria and comes up with the same date here as in his timeline (and what does it mean that he's stopped thinking of it as the right timeline?) Apparently they were eating dinner when 'Murray' showed up. No wonder everyone's so goddamned pissed off; it certainly doesn't look like dinner's a regular occurrence around here.
DiNozzo says they're on the way to the Golden City to drop a house on the Wicked Witch.
O'Neill can't help but snort. It's not even out of character. Sgt. Murray, the Marine, would think this guy was a dumbass too. "Begging your pardon, sir, but you all don't look like you've exactly got enough people to fight a land war in Asia." Twenty at the most, O'Neill thinks, maybe thirty. A merrie little band, not even a raggle-taggle little army-o.
The Little Rascals all look at each other. They might be really goddamn good at staying alive, but they're shit at secrets.
"If I turn out to be a spy for the Bitch, you can always just shoot me," O'Neill says helpfully.
"Sparky's building a bomb," diNozzo says finally.
O'Neill raises an eyebrow and settles back in his chair. A pile of fertilizer -- even a really big pile of fertilizer -- isn't going to do a hell of a lot of good against a nest of fucking snakes. Since discretion is the better part of valor, and also generally tends to keep your skull lead-free, he doesn't say what he's thinking. Jenny bristles anyway. Visibly. (At least that part's the same; Little Jenny always was thin-skinned.) DiNozzo puts a restraining hand on her arm. She subsides.
(He doesn't think of Dani.)
"The bang-sticks," diNozzo says. "Those staffs the goddamn Jaffa guys carry. They've got a power source--"
"Naquadaah," O'Neill supplies. Tonight, the role of Dr. Danielle Jackson, Chief Officer In Charge of Exposition, will be played by General Jonathan J. "Jack" O'Neill.
"Whatever it's called," diNozzo says, "it packs a hell of a punch."
"Jesus Christ." O'Neill can't help it. "You're lucky your little band of thieves isn't a thin smear across a six-state area."
"Like I said," diNozzo says, putting down his mug, "Sparky's building a bomb."
He hopes to god, whoever "Sparky" is, it isn't Carter.
#
Since they've decided not to shoot him for the time being, they invite 'Murray' to dinner. Because they have a shitty sense of humor, they sit him down across from Other Jenny. He remembers the tough bright woman in diamonds and black satin he met years later at a handful of parties in Washington. Vasilisa, as it turned out, still hated their Tyotia's little Jacky-boy (but not like Jenny hates him now, just for breathing). But now that she's either decided not to kill him, or figures on offing him the second diNozzo's back is turned (he figures it's the latter, but optimism is what gets you through the day), she's turned chatty. She sits across from him and talks coldly, clinically, about failures and acceptable losses and expendable assets. At times, she sounds almost cheerful, like she's selling insurance or used cars or anything other than selling out the boys and girls who put their lives in her hands. (There's more people to what diNozzo calls La Resistiance than twenty; they're spread out over half a dozen hidden camps, and Jenny's talking about using them as shock troops to get the rest of them in to the Golden City.) Assets. Acceptable losses.
His Jenny, like their tyotia before her, always loathed the term assets. Hetty always said little Jenny was her best student. (O'Neill remembers his Jenny, standing on a roadside in Cologne as if she'd been turned to stone, staring down at the boy she'd shot. Her lips had been white. She had hardly spoken for two days after.)
Whoever said there's nothing new under the sun was a goddamn liar.
The turkey is gamey. The vegetables are withered. The moonshine tastes like a mix of lighter fluid and battery acid. His companions are tucking it away like it's got several Michelin stars. After dinner (he turns down a piece of pie to diNozzo's clear relief) they're back in the Command Tent. He gets to meet the rest of the Rebel High Command. He's gotten used to the shocks by now. Some of the names are familiar (didn't Dani mention there was an Abby Sciutto at NCIS?) Some of the faces. Sheppard's here (O'Neill bets he wishes he were still in Afghanistan). It's like he's fallen into the Bonus-Round Hell version of "This Is Your Life", but no Carter, thank fuck.
Elizabeth spreads out the GeoService map of Cheyenne Mountain on the table. It has access roads and perimeters marked. He adds what he can: the edge of the glass crater, the lake (Cheyenne Mountain had an internal spring-fed water supply). What he saw of the worker's tents. (Sheppard is starting to look suspicious, dammit.)
"We need to take the big center pyramid," Elizabeth says, tapping the paper. "From there we can--"
"Blow up a temple, leaving the mother ship in orbit to wipe everyone out," O'Neill interrupts. "What good is that?"
Jenny looks pleased (as if he's confirming her suspicions), Abby looks hurt. Elizabeth just looks tired. "If we show her--" she begins.
"--that you're a threat, without ending her, she'll kill you," he interrupts again. "All you're going to do is kill a bunch of civilians."
He thinks of Abydos, Skarra, the key he wore around his neck, threaded on the chain with his tags. Dani. "I don't want to die. Your men don't want to die, and these people here don't want to die. It's a shame you're in such a hurry to."
"There are no civilians," Jenny says, and laughs, a gunshot-bark.
"You got a better plan?" diNozzo snaps.
"Yeah," he says. "I do."
Dani's dead (please god), cavalry isn't coming. Gibbs is the only one left who knows what happened on First Abydos, and O'Neill has to pray there's a Marine left under the First Prime who wants to die free (he won't think of Teal'c, not here). There's only one place his answers are. It's time for a new plan.
"I have a ship," he says, and the silence isn't suspicious now, it's stunned. "It's how I got here -- back to Earth. It will get you and the bomb up to the ship. Blow it up from inside, and you can take it down."
#
They argue all around it while fake coffee becomes fake tea and then just hot water and more True Believers shuffle in and out and dawn breaks (but morning isn't coming this time). He hammers hard on two points: he's the only one who knows where the ship is, and he's the only one who can fly it. (Should be enough to keep him alive. If it isn't, every plan has a few flaws.) They don't like it. The Rebel Alliance (diNozzo calls them La Resistance, but that sounds so fucking pretentious) still doesn't really trust Sgt. Murray. Surprise.
"Say we get on this ship of yours -- assuming it exists -- with the bomb and you don't take us where we're supposed to go," Jenny finally says.
"How are you worse off?" he asks, and Elizabeth actually laughs. "Send someone with me with a gun. Now, if it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to see what you think you're going to blow up a Goa'uld mothership with. Because if this isn't going to work, you're wasting my time."
There's a brief flurry while Elizabeth produces the schematics. The sketch is on the back of what used to be a paper grocery bag, back when life was still normal. (The handwriting is somehow familiar.) He isn't Carter (and not for the first or the last time he simultaneously wishes she were here and is glad she isn't), but he's pretty sure he understands how the thing's put together.
"Horseshoes and hand grenades," he says, to no one in particular. The Little Rascals look at him. (Now he knows how everyone they dragged into the conference room to convince SG-1 of something must have felt.)
"Yeah," he says, pointing at the cylinders, and if each one represents a staff weapon its owner doesn't need any more, that's a pretty impressive body count. "These things? They're the liquid naquadaah power source for the Jaffa staff weapons. If you can make them blow up -- you can, right?"
"They make great grenades," diNozzo says happily. He'll take that as a "yes".
"--then you'll take out her ship if you get inside its shields." It'll nuke everyone directly underneath it too and maybe flatten the Rockies, but he's pretty sure the Little Rascals know that. (Not with a whimper, but a bang. Right now he wishes he was back in DC. Dani never got her hot shower.)
"And you're volunteering to fly it?" Jenny asks scornfully.
"This isn't my Earth!" he roars in exasperation, and for once tonight, he's told the absolutely unvarnished truth.
#
"Your name isn't Murray and you aren't a sergeant."
"Really?" he says.
He's pointed them in the direction of Cripple Creek and given them a rough estimate of travel time. Has to do that much; it's a long hike. He's spent two days cooling his heels while Elizabeth sorts things out. She figures (it's probably Jenny Shepard, Minister of War, actually) it'd be a good idea if Alien Bitch was distracted while they're flying their bomb into her ship. She's going to send the rest of the Little Rascals to attack the Golden City anyway, on the theory Alien Bitch'll mobilize (and maybe come down in person, yeah, they'd all like that). He wonders how many of them know this is an all-expenses paid package-tour suicide bomb; there's no way for anybody to get far enough away from it to survive, but people are funny.
He's spent two days reliving the high points of SERE School (boiled grass, it's what's for dinner) and sleeping in a huddle of bodies in one of the smaller tents. As a big treat, he gets to stand around outside and look at the sun (no phone no lights no motorcar; not a single luxury). He's always watched. Guns are in short supply, but some of the rebels are lethal with a sling. DiNozzo has an actual slingshot. Yeah, there's a surprise. The high point of his visit to the Mirror Apocalypse so far has been getting an actual pair of boots. Too big, and no laces, but they have them, and Elizabeth says they'd just go to waste. (She's too soft. He can see it in Jenny's eyes. A man with boots can run.)
Most of the merry band will be staying here (he travels fastest who, but they sure as fuck don't trust him that much). Elizabeth argued them into letting her lead the ground assault; she says it's her duty. He gets diNozzo, Jenny (inevitably), a big guy named Greer (who hasn't said two words to anyone in O'Neill's hearing), and...
Sheppard (they call him Shep, here, for obvious reasons) snorts, and steps out of cover. "Yeah," he says, rubbing the back of his neck and putting out the "aw shucks" for all he's worth (only O'Neill knows John Sheppard, and he knows Cameron Mitchell too, and when the cornpone is deployed, it's time to duck), "y'see, thing is, we got us the genuine article. And he says so."
"So?" O'Neill says. Shep shrugs.
"Lie about one thing, lie about the rest of it."
"There's a ship," he says. And all he needs to do is figure out how to keep their bomb from going off long enough for him to get what he needs once they get up there, because he's decided he doesn't give a rat's ass about dying any more, but he told Dani he'd be back for her.
"Yeah, maybe," Shep says, unimpressed. "I just, you know, I just can't make it work out in my head, with you lying and all. So there's a ship, or maybe there's a trap, and you get the bomb, but Sparky can build another one, and we're good at hiding. So what do you get? I mean, is there some kind of re--"
"Shut up!" O'Neill barks.
"Yes sir, thank you, sir," Shep says (smirking now). "Because you know, we don't really need you. It'll take us longer, but Sparky can figure out how to fly your ship. Once you tell us where it really is."
They don't really need to have the rest of the conversation. It's pretty stock. "You think I will?" "I think once--" (name doesn't matter here, but O'Neill thinks it might be Jenny, Jenny with the dead eyes and the razor smile) "--starts working on you, you'll tell us everything we want to know." And there might be a few flourishes about how they all used to have manners and morals and ethics once upon a time, but all that's just window dressing.
"All right," he says. "There's a ship, and I have to be the one to fly it. Just..." Reluctance, Vanya, especially when you're telling them what you want them to know... "I was on First Abydos, like I said. But I wasn't one of the grunts. I led it."
"Do tell," Shep says, but his eyes go wide and his body goes still. "So this really is all your fault."
"It was Jackson!" he repeats (lucky he's got Direct Deposit for that thirty pieces of silver). "Yeah, I was supposed to blow up the Stargate once we got through! Bomb on a timer, go back through the Gate, Earth safe from whatever left the Gate here in the first place. Only the little bitch couldn't get us home. So we all got captured -- me, my men, her. And she fucking sold us out!" It comes out in a rush now, Cover Story Mark 2: left on Abydos as a quarry slave, broke out, dialed the Gate, wound up on another fucking alien planet. "I left them behind. Kawalsky, Feretti -- they were the only ones left. I meant to... I couldn't get back there. I couldn't get to Earth. I hid out. Figured out enough to fly a ship. One of the little ones. Got close enough to steal it. I wanted..." He stops, and the weariness isn't faked. "All I wanted was to go home."
"Yeah, we redecorated the place while you were out," Shep says, deadpan. "Why not say that to start?"
"I'm an officer in the United States Air Force," O'Neill says. "I figured you'd either try to make me take over, or Jenny Shepard would shoot me."
That gets him a wider smirk, but Shep's Air Force. He'll buy it. (Conditionally, temporarily, it doesn't have to hold up forever if it holds up long enough.) Shep holds out a hand. "John Sheppard, USAF, tdy to the Apocalypse."
O'Neill takes it. "Frank Cromwell," he answers. "USAF. Retirement sucks."
It'd be nice to get the chance to find out.
#
They're t-minus however fucking long it takes to find and load his ship; they and the bomb are leaving as soon as it's dark enough to move safely, and O'Neill 's off to dinner with diNozzo at his heels (the condemned ate a not-so-hearty last meal, but apparently Elizabeth is digging into the stores to make this a special occasion -- nice, considering they all have less than a week to live) when O'Neill finally meets Sparky-the-mad-bomber. She's lying on her back in the tall grass beside the command tent, holding a child's pinwheel toy and spinning it with one finger. Around and around and around. It's the sun glinting off the thing that catches O'Neill 's eye and keeps him from tripping over her.
"Jesus fuck," he says, as the woman sits up abruptly, staring at something over O'Neill 's right shoulder. Sandy hair, blue eyes. Gangly. Too skinny, like everyone else here. Familiar. ("I am not going to Russia. Do you know what the food is like in Russia? Besides, I'm a civilian. I don't have to do what you say.")
O'Neill squats down beside her. She's sunburned (fair skin, high altitude). Her nose is peeling. Her eyes are nearly blank. When he tries to meet them, she looks away. "Doctor McKay?" he says.
She jerks in startlement. She still doesn't look at him.
"You know Sparky?" diNozzo demands, sounding shocked.
"Project Giza," O'Neill says, staring at this reality's Merry McKay. "She was on the Pentagon side of the Stargate Program. Hey. Dr. McKay. Do you know me?"
She blows gently on the little pinwheel. It spins.
"Don't bother," diNozzo says. "She doesn't really talk."
"You built the bomb," O'Neill says, putting a hand on her shoulder. She was on the Pentagon side, but he never even knew she existed until the bright lads at the Puzzle Palace sent her to Colorado to kill Teal'c. She gave them a ticking clock all those years ago when T got stuck in the buffer; O'Neill never thought those forty-eight hours would seem like a picnic by comparison to anything. Afterward, Dani swore McKay'd been set up, been told she was working on a hypothetical scenario. Doesn't really matter one way or another now since it happened an entire reality ago. (Don't like what's on? Change the channel.) Underneath McKay's thin shirt, her bones feel fragile as a bird's.
"Bang," McKay says in a wistful voice that's rough with disuse. She looks up at the sky, squinting.
"Don't worry," he says gently, cupping her cheek in his hand. "You'll be able to see it from here."
She smiles.
#
His name is--
His name is--
He sits amid the flickering lights of a hundred candles scented with the costliest perfumes of the Empire, but tonight, kel'no'reem brings him no peace. The name floats below the surface of his mind, tormenting him. He tries to ignore it.
He is Kafele, the Hound of Nefirtiri.
There can be nothing else.
The memories trouble him most when the Goddess is absent. She has only just returned from an absence of many days, and has not yet summoned him into her presence. Kafele wishes she would, though the Divine Presence often troubles him. But when she is here, when she is with him, there is forgetting. There is only duty and the hunt. She has brought the First World low as Ra never dared to do. She has cleansed the Gods of the shame of his weakness and flight.
Here within her great sky fortress Mandjet live only the Goddess's most trusted Jaffa, those she permits to witness her magic at its source. To other Jaffa is given the chance to worship her from afar, to see her beauty reflected in the vocuum, to wonder at the power that strikes down the lesser gods. To those who serve her upon the ship of day is given more: to see the magics with their own eyes; to chain demons to her service when she commands it. To soar through the skies in chariots she has called into being, to slay her enemies with lightning she has trapped in a lotus flower.
She has set Kafele over all her Jaffa. His loyalty is absolute. He is faithful. Always Faithful a voice whispers in his mind, and somehow it belongs to Before. Kafele knows he should not listen, but he does.
Listens to the voice that tells him once he was not Jaffa...
It is almost a relief to be interrupted by the chime of the door. "Enter," he barks, rising to his feet. He cannot imagine who could have the audacity to disturb him at his kel'no'reem; if there were an attack, the sirens would already be sounding.
The door opens. It his not Gahiji, his Second, nor any of the other Jaffa. It is Kesi, one of the palace slaves. She trembles in fear in the doorway, eyes downcast, and Kafele knows why she was sent.
"Speak!" he demands.
"The Goddess... The Great Goddess..." Kesi's voice trembles. Kafele sees the moment when she decides to flee, her message undelivered, but he is too fast for her. He is on her before she takes a step, dragging her inside and closing the door behind them. Only his touch will open it.
"Speak, slave, if you value your life." His hands tighten on her shoulders until her eyes go wide with pain.
"Lord Gahiji--" she begins (they are all lords to the human slaves, they who are slaves to the Gods). "Lord Gahiji bid me say to you that the Goddess has gone to the pel'tak and banished from it all who guard it. He bid me say she permits none to enter there to serve her."
Kesi's voice catches on a sob of terror. Kafele throws her aside. She falls backward into the lit candles; her clothing, drenched with hot wax, catches fire. She whimpers, scrabbling to her knees, clawing at herself in a desperate attempt to douse the flames. Kafele does not remain to see whether her attempts meet with success or failure. He has opened the door again, striding toward the pel'tac
#
Off to see the wizard. Him, diNozzo, John Sheppard, and little Vasilisa. They've got a pushcart made of pool floats and wheelchair wheels to carry their equipment (one bomb, single use, officers for the use of). It took him a week to go from Cripple Creek to the Rebel Alliance, but he was gathering rosebuds as he went. They make better time the other way.
At the rest stops, he counts up the days since Dakara. One to earth, seven to Elizabeth, another seven dicking around while the Little Rascals decide to rent a barn and put on a show, three back to the hidden ship, and that's eighteen days Dani's been in Ba'al's hands. Host, subject, corpse, it's hard to decide which is best and he knows (now, the bitter lessons of compromise) that the snake wouldn't have just let both of them walk, that Dani knew it, that she made herself a hostage to fortune, knowing (hoping, trusting) that he could find the magic reset button and save her.
Dani's always been too fucking trusting.
It's cold on the road, and it rains the whole way, and the Jaffa are out and running around as if somebody's kicked their anthill so they don't dare any kind of fire. DiNozzo babbles and Jenny sits silent ("What are you knitting?" he asked. "Shrouds," said Madame deFarge) and Sheppard just looks worried. By the evening of the third day O'Neill really doesn't give a rat's ass whether or not they pull this off if he can just stop walking. Getting warm would be a bonus.
Cripple Creek was (the last time he saw it) a yuppified former mining town, like most of the little towns west of Cheyenne Mountain. One alien apocalypse later, it's burned out and looted, storm-wracked and flooded out and war-torn. It looks like a thousand places he's been: Bosnia, Belize, Beiruit.
"So where is it?" Jenny demands, and her voice isn't so much suspicious as smug. Expecting betrayal. Maybe even counting on it, and Jenny Shepard died despising him, but he'll take that reality over this one any day.
He thinks she would too, if she knew.
"Come on," he says.
He remembers Cripple Creek Reservoir #2 (as it's named on the maps) as a pocket lake good for a weekend getaway, surrounded by scrub desert you needed a 4x4 to get over. From the looks of things, it was enlarged by the blast, then mostly drained away into Lake Cheyenne on the other side of the range: it's a mudflat with a sinkhole now (not so wide as a church door nor so deep as a well but 'tis enough, t'will serve) and he slogs out across the mud in the failing twilight as the others wait on the shore. DiNozzo holds a staff weapon. He looks like he's posing with the catch of the day.
Goa'uld and Tok'ra tech's all alien, but it all has a close family resemblance. Where mere Earthlings use pointy little boxes (TV remote, garage door opener), the snakes use bracelets. Before he left, he tucked the bracelet that will open up his alien ride at the bottom of a hole he lined with stones and built a cairn on top of. He doesn't know the car key is trackable, but he doesn't know it isn't.
He retrieves the bracelet (the space between his shoulders itches; this is always the point at which the new allies can lose their heads, or hey, it might be a trap set by the snakes) and slogs back through the mud to the shore. Shep and diNozzo look at it curiously. Little Jenny just waits in hopes of shooting him.
"I'm going to bring the ship up now," he says. "I'd really appreciate it if you don't shoot me when I do." Nobody says anything, so he presses the unlocking sequence into the bracelet. The pause that follows is long enough for him to wonder if the ship's still there, and to wonder if he can sell them on Plan B before they shoot him.
Then the ground shakes and the water bubbles and they all get sprayed with icy water as the ship pries itself loose from the bottom of the lake. It hovers for a moment, dripping mud, then homes in on the bracelet and lands itself nearby. (The snakes pioneered point-and-push; it'd always fascinated Carter.)
The hatch opens.
"Gentlemen and lady," he says. Jenny gives him a deadly look.
#
The hallways of the Goddess's great sky palace are empty as Kafele approaches the Chamber of Direction. He is unsurprised. Slaves are lazy and cowardly creatures, quick to flee, and none of the Goddess's Jaffa wish to draw down her wrath by their presence. All fear her.
There is something Kafele fears more, but he does not remember what it is.
The gate of the Chamber of Direction does not open at his approach, but he gained the knowledge of its opening long ago. He touches the gems in the design upon the wall--
--keypad--
--to work the spell, and the door slides open.
The Goddess stands within. She does not sit upon her golden throne, attended by her slaves and her Jaffa. She works the spells within the Chamber of Direction with her own hands, and Kafele watches each wall of gems go dark.
She looks up as the door opens, and for what he sees then he strides the length of the chamber and grasps her arm. She rounds upon him, fury twisting her face.
"Fool! How dare you lay hands upon me?" she demands. She tries to pull away, but he will not release her. The face he sees is that of his Goddess, but he knows this is not she, but some impostor, some ghost, stands now in her place.
"Who are you? You are not the Goddess." Never did Nefirtiri gaze upon him with pity in her eyes.
"She isn't a goddess." The impostor's voice is flat and weary. "You know she isn't, Gibbs."
"I am Kafele, First Prime to the Goddess Nefirtiri. What do you want here?" he growls (he will not let her know that the name she spoke is the name that has followed him through his visions like a hungry ash'rak).
#
"What do you want?"
No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy, and she got here as fast as she could, but if Jack is here anywhere he's nowhere near his tel'tak's communicator. She wasted too much time trying to raise him (okay, and lowering the ship's shields and shutting down the engines) and now the butcher's bill has come due. Unfair for him to see through her disguise at a glance when it's fooled so many (other) monsters in the past two weeks, and she doesn't want to think of Gibbs (her friend, Abby's friend, Ziva's friend) as a monster but the pressure he's exerting on her wrist will break bones soon, and she can feel the grating in the delicate interlock of the wrist, and she wants so very many things (the last three weeks never to have happened) that she's struck mute, and the pressure increases, and the ghost in the machine will heal her (if she lives) but that's the future and the pain is now. Tears (biomechanical and meaningless) start in her eyes, and she sees him flinch at the sight of them, and something about that breaks the logjam in her thoughts enough to blurt out one of the many things she's trapped here with inside her mind.
"I want you to be happy."
He stares at her, and his eyes are rimmed with kohl, and it seems somehow as if it is the greatest cruelty of all that Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS, Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs, USMC, Leroy Jethro Gibbs of Stillwater should be humiliated in this way without even being let to know the deed was done.
"I don't know -- I know, I knew you, Gibbs, I don't know if you were happy, really, but you'd laugh sometimes, you'd been happy, you were content at least, that counts for something right? Maybe it's better. I don't know. It's a good thing, though. I know you'd think so. I knew you, you know -- not the way you remember me, but the way things really were. This world shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't be a Goa'uld, a snake, a monster, she isn't, they aren't gods, whatever they say. That's a lie. "
"Who--" he begins, but she doesn't let him finish.
"You're Leroy Jethro Gibbs. You're my friend. You were, you know. But not here. In a better world. This one shouldn't be. It's an accident. A mistake."
#
"Leroy." The word sounds strange in his mouth. She isn't afraid, he realizes. In all the years of his life (the life he remembers, the life he admits to remembering) the gods have treated him with rage and contempt; the slaves have groveled in fear; his Jaffa have done both.
"Nobody ever called you that. Your friends called you Jethro. You didn't have many, but they were good ones. Most people called you Gibbs. You liked that."
"Your words are madness," he says, but he can hear the sound of the bluff in his voice.
"You had a wife, Shannon, and a daughter, Kelley," the False Nefirtiri says. "I don't know if you remember them. I'm not sure you married Shannon before the past was changed."
He remembers a smiling red-headed woman. Shannon. Her name was Shannon. For the sake of that memory, he does not break the False Nefirtiri's neck. "You cannot change the past," he says, and she laughs. The sound is shocking in the stillness of the Chamber of Direction.
"Oh yes, you can, Gibbs," she says. "All you need is a time machine. And someone did, and if Jack and I hadn't been in a wormhole between Gates we'd be part of this new reality and I know none of this means anything to you -- it wouldn't have meant anything to you before, and you would have said: "in English" and your team would have looked proud because they loved you, they love you, they'll never say it, some of them, but they do -- and we can fix it if we know where it broke. I promise you. Help me. Help us. Please. Jack was your friend. What happened on the Abydos Mission? Why were you there?"
He cannot answer her questions. He does not want to admit to her that the "Jethro" she speaks of so glibly is no one he has ever seen in a thousand nights of kel'no'reem.
He does not know who "Jack" is. It is a Tau'ri name. It is not familiar.
"Help me," she says again, and he doesn't want to tell her he doesn't know how, so he says instead: "I will take you to her greatest secret."
The halls are still deserted as they take their leave of the Chamber of Direction, and Kafele (Gibbs) thinks for the first time of the golden coffin within which his true mistress bides.
Soon she will wake.
#
DiNozzo goes first, standing in the space between the aft bulkhead and the cockpit seats looking thoughtful. Jenny follows. Sheppard pushes the makeshift cart. There's barely room. He seals the hatch. He's still soaked to the skin, but at least (thank fuck) it's warm in here. He settles into the pilot's seat with a sigh and motions Sheppard into the second seat. (Sheppard will watch everything he does to try to figure it out; that's what's going to make the second part of this plan work.)
"We need to get out of here before they come looking," he says. Silence implies consent, so he puts his hands on the controls. "Whoa," Sheppard says, and: "Son of a bitch," is diNozzo's contribution. Jenny says nothing at all.
He gives the same "Goa'uld Technology 101" speech that he's given a hundred times, telling them this is a tel'tak, it's a mid-range unarmed cargo ship, it comes with a cloaking device. It's the patter of the magician (lessons of the past), and it fills the time between takeoff (the mothership is a bright gold spark in the distance along the glowing curve of Mother Earth) and the point where he gets to his feet (still babbling on about tractor beams and other artifacts of a Star Trek future) and walks toward the back of the cabin.
"What are you doing?" Jenny asks, voice sharp (sharp as a Russian winter, cold as its snow), and he doesn't stop, doesn't turn (the assumption of innocence is often taken for the thing itself) as he opens the door.
"Engines," he says meaninglessly, and it's one, two, three steps to the wall, to set the ring platform controls (one of the features of the station wagon of the gods he conveniently left out of his little "welcome aboard" speech) and then two more steps into the rings.
Jenny's raising the pistol as the rings rise up. He sees the muzzle flash, and then bullet, gun, Jenny, ship are all gone. He's standing on the pel'tak of the ha'tak, feeling that dropped-elevator sensation that comes from gambling on the other set of rings being unlocked. If they hadn't been, he'd either be floating in space right now, or lying on the deck of the tel'tak bleeding out.
He looks around. It's empty. At least that means nobody's shooting at him right now but in the long run it doesn't really matter.
Miles to go before I sleep.
He goes to one of the ornate banks of controls (everything old is new again). Means to drop the shields, but most of the systems are already shut down and he doesn't know whether it's a good omen or just business as usual here in the Magic Kingdom. He's pretty sure Sheppard has already figured out how to drive the magic schoolbus, so he's probably got about ten minutes to find Jethro Gibbs, Jaffa Avenger, and find out everything he knows. Then get through the Gate. He heads for the door.
There's one thing Hetty didn't need to tell him, because Captain O'Neill had learned it long before.
No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy.
#
The door before them opens, to reveal the chamber beyond. It is a prison, but a luxurious one, for its inmate too is one of the gods. He is a god who is weak and who has long fallen from favor: no Jaffa save Kafele has been allowed to see him, for the gods exist to receive worship. This god is tended by slaves who are mute and illiterate. Nefirtiri kills them frequently anyway. The god within gets to his feet as the doors open, his expression wary.
"I don't understand," False Nefirtiri says, glancing from Kafele to the god in his kilt and sandals.
"This is the god Tren'kor," Kafele says. "The Goddess has kept him prisoner here since the day she discovered the sarcophagus in which he lay, for he is mad and weak."
"Oh my god," Tren'kor says. "You aren't her. You're Dr. Jackson."
There's a moment of silence. Not so much fear on False Nefirtiri's part as (perhaps) utter disbelief, Kafele (Gibbs) thinks. Then: "You win the complete set of no-stick cookware and the Ginsu knives, Mr. Kort," she finally says. "Now, you want to tell me what happened?"
"It was a mistake!" the god Tren'kor wails. "All I wanted to do was get rid of Hetty Lange -- that wasn't supposed to--"
Suddenly the warning sirens go off, and the lights flash.
"Hold that thought," says False Nefirtiri (Dr. Jackson). "And come on -- both of you."
He sees her seize Tren'kor's wrist, and the godsmetal in her blood tells him she has the right, but she is like none of the gods he has ever seen. Tren'kor looks to him, perhaps in appeal, but Kafele (Gibbs, she says his name was, when he was Tau'ri before the Goddess changed him) will not aid him. In so much, he knows, he does as the Goddess Nefirtiri would have him do, but those are his actions, not his heart.
"The Little Princess is home, and I'm betting Mummy's very cross right now," Tren'kor says.
"If that's what you've been calling her you deserve everything that's happened to you," Dr. Jackson answers. "And if you want a chance to get the hell out of Dodge before you're seriously fucked--"
#
The situation is seriously fucked right now, but at least (it's some consolation, O'Neill thinks) the snakes are going down with the rest of them. There's fighting in the corridors (no plan of battle ever survives first contact with the enemy) and he can hear the flat crack of gunshots interspersed with all the zapping. If he had to guess, his money would be on the rest of the Little Rascals making it to the golden temple and figuring out the ring platform there. (That wouldn't be hard; Nefirtiri's Jaffa look pretty old school, which means running like rabbits from anything approaching serious opposition.)
He's lucky in that it means that if Sheppard's flown the tel'tak onto the mother ship, he's probably going to hold off pressing the big red button. (The bomb actually has one; McKay, no matter what universe it is, has a twisted sense of humor, apparently.) He's less lucky in that he's tried most of the usual places (bridge, throne room, dungeon) and hasn't found Jaffa Gibbs yet. Of course, he hasn't found his way back to wherever the hell they keep the Gate on this thing, and that could be a problem when he's ready to leave.
But hey: he's got a staff-weapon (now), a funny outfit, and an air of authority. He should do just fine while he looks around for the Information Desk (and avoids being shot by the Rebel Alliance). This theory survives about three minutes, until Dani and a couple of backup singers steps out of a doorway right in front of him. The Early Warning System in his blood (he should remember to thank Kanan for that) gives him a heartbeat of warning. Not enough time to run.
Because it isn't Dani.
Too young, too pretty (he thinks, randomly, of Vala), flawless and painted and jeweled. And the monster gazes out of its meatsuit eyes and he thinks the sight may haunt him forever. Its flanking Jaffa stop just behind it as it opens its mouth and exhales, and suddenly the air is filled with the scent of roses and rotting meat. Bile rises up in his throat and for an instant Hathor is conflated with Ba'al (violation and laughter in the dark places), but they can only mark him once.
The look of shock (calculation) and indignation (manipulation) on its stolen face as he steps back is almost funny. He raises the staff weapon, knowing that the motion will cue its guards to attack, wondering if luck and the enemy's total lack of preparedness will be enough to save him this time.
He never sees the flash, but the sound is unmistakable as Spearcarrier One and Spearcarrier Two go down, and Nefirtiri spins around and now he sees another one behind her (another snake, meatsuit, demon, goddess), standing between Jaffa Gibbs and another guy. Only this one is staring at him in horror. It's Dani.
The Bitch Goddess grabs for him, but he started moving as soon as the shooting started. He hits the bulkhead just in time to see Nefirtiri go down.
"Jack!" Dani's running toward him, clutching the wrist of another road show Aida extra. "Oh god, you're alive, you're okay, this is Trent Kort, he's with the CIA, he made this happen and he'll tell us how to fix it, he's a Goa'uld -- Gibbs!"
That last isn't directed to him. And it isn't Gibbs (not really, just like that wasn't Jenny) but he looks up, and O'Neill thinks of Teal'c and a dungeon, a lifetime ago. "Come on!" Dani shouts again, and Gibbs stumbles forward (O'Neill thinks for an instant of Gary, looking up as he was looking down, shot dead in the street in a Moscow winter, knowing only at the last moment what he'd done and what he's lost).
"Where's the Stargate?" O'Neill barks (officer to NCO) and he knows it doesn't fix anything, but Jaffa Gibbs looks a little less lost. He steps over the bodies, and Dani looks toward him and O'Neill would be a lot happier if she looked a little more confident that the First Prime she's just flipped is really on their side. Then Kort opens his mouth and she interrupts her train of thought to hiss at it and then it's time to move, boys and girls, and to hope (among other things) that the right snake is dead, because the rock this doubles act always foundered on was the difference between thirty and forty-six and the woman he's following isn't wearing a lot more than paint and jewelry and that isn't the body he knows.
It's just insult to injury that they're heading toward the gunfire.
Dani (please god let it be really her) breaks into a run when they reach the Gateroom (not letting go of CIA-Goa'uld) and starts to dial. O'Neill's turning to say god knows what to Jaffa Gibbs when (it's the last act after all), the Evil Queen rises from the dead.
She's clutching her stomach, and it's red and wet and black and burned, and he'd known (even at the time) that shot wouldn't kill her but he thought (honestly) it would slow her down longer. It settles the question of which twin has the Toni, though, since she stops for a beat of gloating (he taught Dani better a long time ago) and O'Neill hears the Gate ka-whoosh and he runs. (Cold and aching and exhausted and his cowboy days were over long ago but if it's a choice between here five minutes from now and making this effort he knows which one he'll pick.)
"Gibbs!" Dani screams, and O'Neill looks back and sees him turning, back to them, raising the staff weapon.
"Go!" he shouts, and O'Neill sees someone else running in, and it might be Jenny, might be Elizabeth, but this isn't his part of the story any longer and he shoves Dani (and Trent Kort, Central Intelligence Snake) through the Event Horizon.
He was expecting Cimmeria (what with the Goa'uld maybe right behind them and all) but instead it's beautiful downtown P7X-013. The nice thing is, it looks deserted.
Then Dani turns toward him and her eyes flash.
#
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT, 15 NOVEMBER 1965
OV: Good evening, Fraulein Lange. That is your name, isn't it? Henrietta Lange? It's a lovely name, Henrietta. Do you prefer Henrietta or Hetty?
HL: (no response)
OV: I trust you can understand me, Miss Lange. I'm told your German is quite good. Very … colloquial.
HL: (no response)
OV: It's all right to be shy. I know you've had a bit of a difficult evening, and I apologize for your reception. (Pause) Oh, dear. Please, pardon my bad manners. I suppose an introduction is in order. My name is Otto Voegler, and I'm a Minister for State Security. These are my aides, Hans and Karl. I just have a few questions for you, and I'm sure we can clear this matter up straightaway.
HL: (no response)
OV: (sighs) Would you at least come and sit down, Fraulein Lange? Let me offer you a cigarette and some coffee.
HL: (no response)
#
Diary of Otto Voegler
15 November 1965
Becker contacted me at home this evening to say the subject had been acquired. Of course I wished to assess her at once. Mina was disappointed, but she is a good wife and did not pout. When I arrived at the facility, the subject had already been secured in the interrogation block. My assistants had been notified and were waiting for me.
My initial assessment of the subject was disappointing. A young girl, very slight. It has been my experience that such women are easily persuaded to cooperate. I introduced myself, and indicated that I wished her cooperation. Subject did not at that time respond. I indicated to Karl and Hans that they should proceed.
The subject did not react as expected to being stripped and beaten. In fact, to my great delight, she even fought back. As she continued in her defiance, I indicated to my boys that they should continue the intake procedure.
Even a female who can endure a beating without loss of equanimity tends to succumb to fear at physical violation, but on this occasion this was not the case. (Karl was lucky not to lose an eye, poor boy.) At this point I realized that my Henrietta was an extraordinary individual with whom I could expect to have a rewarding relationship. There is something about her -- a steeliness, perhaps -- that I have rarely seen in the enemies of the State it has been my privilege to attend. I shall have to consider carefully how to proceed so that we may both obtain the greatest benefit from our association.
Making certain the heat was shut off in the holding cell, I directed Hans and Karl to douse the subject and her bedding with buckets of cold water before retiring. I shall visit her again in the morning.
#
"Please, Jack -- I can explain!" she cries, and Christ, he wants to believe there's an explanation (wants to believe the right one's dead) and the hole card he never wanted to have to play is useless if Kort's a snake because he can feel the pingback but he can't tell where it's coming from.
He clutches the staff weapon. He doesn't know what she sees in his face, but she lets go of Kort and sinks to her knees, lacing her fingers behind her head. It only reminds him she's half naked. He manages to pull off the vest and toss it at her. "Cover up."
He's watching Kort. Dani (if it's her) says he's the man with the brass ring. Or the snake. He (it) looks entirely too happy about things just now. Point in Dani's favor.
"I'm sorry I'm sorry I knew you'd hate it but what if the answer wasn't on Earth--" she's talking as she pulls on the vest "--I knew I could infiltrate the court; I could look like her, and if the break was at First Abydos, only it's not, Pangar would still be there and those symbiotes are safe--"
He remembers Pangar. Egeria. The Tok'ra blamed Earth for that one even though they hadn't been involved. "That what you did?"
She looks down and left. Not lying (the lessons of Tyotia are burned deep) because that would be up and right. "Yes," she says. "Ba'al took me there. I gave him the address."
"Took you a while to remember the address for Earth," he says.
"The larvae Egeria spawned were mindless," she says, not answering. "She didn't pass on any genetic memory. It didn't want to control me. But I couldn't talk to it. Can't. Can't talk to it."
"Dani, what did you do?" he asks. (Doesn't want to know. Can't not ask.)
"Doesn't matter," she says, her voice low. "It worked. I went to Chulak. I was right: she killed Ra, then she killed Apophis. She isn't Supreme System Lord yet; she's still fighting. But after Chulak I knew I could pass for her. I came to Earth."
"And how'd that work out for you?" he asks.
"Are you going to shoot me?" she asks. "Because if not, I'd really like to get up and start breaking Mr. Kort's fingers."
"Hey!" Kort says, sounding aggrieved. "I'm not the villain here."
"Snake," Dani says (girl or meatsuit, how does he decide when the stakes are this high?) "You killed someone important, and you changed everything. All I want to know is: who is Hetty Lange and where did you kill her?"
"Kort killed Hetty?"
He doesn't mean to say it, say anything, but he does, and looks toward Dani, and Kort launches itself at him.
It doesn't get there. Dani is fast (he doesn't want to think of the obvious analogy and can't help it), coming up off her knees and body-blocking Kort. She straddles its torso, knees on its elbows, and it's probably strong enough to buck her off except for the fact she's got one hand on its throat and the other covering its nose and mouth.
"Who is she, Jack?" Dani asks, as if she isn't in the process of slowly killing someone (something). "Why is she important?"
"Someone I knew from a long time ago," he says (not true, not even half a story, Daddy, but he doesn't feel like sharing). "You know, it's turning purple."
"Yes," Dani says, as if it's obvious. "You can force the symbiote out if the host is in sufficient distress." She lifts her hand, and Kort drags in a long wheezing breath. "I could do that, but I really don't think it would make a difference. You're complicit, aren't you? Like Ba'al's host was."
New world, new ballgame, new vocabulary (one he never wanted to learn). Once upon a time, in his daddy's war, there were collaborators and kapos and quislings and other very bad people who did what they shouldn't. This time it's 'complicit' which is short for 'complicit host' which means somebody who swallows down a nightmare and decides he likes the taste.
"Ba'al is," Kort says, still gasping a little. "There's a lot you still don't know, Dr. Jackson. General."
Dani looks toward him (how do we play this, Jack?) and a little part of him relaxes, because this is business as usual, and the more of that there is, the less he has to think about the fact that when his back was turned, she went and swallowed a snake. (She says it's harmless; he'd love to believe her.)
"Why don't you tell us?" he says, and Dani gets to her feet and steps back. Kort sits up and looks around ostentatiously.
"Shouldn't we have company by now?" it asks.
Dani makes a rude noise (he wishes he could believe his girl is still his girl). "Marnamai -- or as we know it, P7X-013 -- was held by Ares. Ares was an underlord of Cronus. Cronus is toast. I don't think we have much to worry about. You want to go find the palace?"
"Should keep the rain off," he answers casually.
Not that it looks like rain, but the palace is also the landmark he needs to find Ares's timeship.
If it's there.
#
Nefirtiri's troops hit this place years ago. The bodies were left where they fell. Only the armor remains now. Ares's Jaffa had dragon-headed armor. The pieces are pulled apart. Grass and weeds have grown up through the pieces. He sees teeth marks on the scattered bones.
Dani walks across the battlefield as if it isn't there, pushing Kort along in front of her. (O'Neill tries to decide if she's changed, if she's snaked -- in the worse way, because there are no good ways -- or if she's the same woman he left on the road to Samarra a month ago.) By the time they reach the palace itself, it's late afternoon. (He's trying not to let either of them see how much everything fucking hurts.)
Up the steps and in, and it's dust and leaves and nothing much around but in fine Roman style. "Looks like it got powered down during the fighting," Dani says. "I can see if I can turn it on again," she adds, looking toward him.
"Sure," he says, because he doesn't trust her, and he's going to have to whether he wants to or not, because the snakes don't sleep and he doesn't have a lot of reserves left. She smiles (sad and wistful, looking like his girl, and he's afraid she probably knows what he's thinking) and walks away.
"On the floor," he tells Kort. The meatsuit smirks and kneels (yeah, with Dani gone he can tell that both twins have the Toni).
"It doesn't matter, you know, whatever she's got in her head. You all think it's the aliens who corrupt us, but it isn't. It's being invulnerable. Free of pain. Immortal, or close enough. Think about it, old man. Just imagine--"
He raises the staff weapon and points it at Kort. The thing shuts up. "Let's talk about how you got here and what you've been doing," he says.
"There's a place you don't know about, a planet called Praxyon--" it says.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ba'al's time machine, satellites, thousands of suns," he says. Petty, but it's nice to see the thing blink in surprise.
"Yes," it says. "All right. So we used it to travel back in time. Not to Earth -- in 1965 your Stargate's still locked up in some moldering vault somewhere, apparently -- then we came to Earth by ship."
"We?" He knows this game. Later they'll probably have to get rough, but right now the thing wants to gloat. Fine. You get a lot of information that way. (The Gospel of Tyotia: second verse, same as the first.)
"He isn't dead, you know," Kort says conversationally. "He's here. Oh, you executed one of them. But you left the host alive. Bad move. As soon as your dear Tok'ra allies' back was turned, dear Kevin -- did I mention the host and I are very good friends? -- headed back to what we might call his emergency cache."
He's a good poker player. He doesn't let his face show what he's thinking. They went to Dakara, and the devil they made a bargain with -- the devil he left Dani with -- was Ba'al. Not Alterna-Ba'al. The real one. (The monster in the dark with the knives.)
"So after a brief stop to reprovision, they came back to Earth," Kort goes on. "Of course, the Empire was in a bit of disarray -- your fault, you know -- and Serminwe had made inroads on the rest."
"Serminwe" is a name he knows. The other snake trying to build an empire here. The one who nearly got its hands on all the goodies at Area 51 he's been making vanish. They've been looking for it for a while. All they have is an address somewhere in Eastern Europe and a lot of dead agents.
"What a pity not to be able to reunite little Jenny with her dear father," Kort says. "I know he'd have been delighted to see her again."
"So Ba'al came back to Earth," he says. He can chase that red herring later.
"Of course," Kort says, pretending surprise. "And I suggested -- with all due humility, General, I have been here longer -- that should we remove a particular thorn from his side, the little matter of reconstruction would go much easier."
"Ba'al tried that before. It didn't work," O'Neill points out.
"Ah, well, perhaps," Kort says. "But this time... But where are my manners? Monopolizing the conversation. Do tell me what you've been up to."
"Regicide," O'Neill says with a graveyard smile. "Tell me about Hetty Lange."
"What is there to say?" Kort answers. "Dear creature that she is. Or was. Or is it will be? Time travel is so confusing."
"Look how well it's worked out for you so far," O'Neill answers. He knows what comes next. The snake will try to bargain. What it knows, for some concessions. He wonders what it wants. He suspects it will offer them Praxyon. Fortunately they don't need it. (He hopes they don't need it.)
"If at first you don't succeed," Kort says. "I'm not worried, General. I can be as valuable to you as I've been to ... others."
He's saved from figuring out how to play that by the power coming on. Lights, camera, action (force-shields over the windows). Dani walks in a moment later. She's washed her face, washed the goop out of her hair, and is dressed like an extra out Xena: Warrior Princess. She's carrying a pair of boots and an armload of clothes.
"Think these are close enough to your size, Jack," she says. "I found the kitchen, too."
"Scenic route," he says. He doesn't miss the fact she's added a zat to her outfit.
"Had to find the power room. You know these places. All the good stuff's where the peasants won't trip over it." She tosses the clothes down on the bench and hands him the zat. "Find out anything?"
"Some." He doesn't want to tell her about Ba'al. Not in front of Kort. "Apparently our target date is 1965."
"Good thing Ba'al built us a time machine," she answers without missing a beat (good girl). "Of course you're going to tell us everything, right?"
"My dear gi--" Kort doesn't get through that sentence. She steps over to him and backhands him hard enough to send him sprawling.
"I played a Goa'uld Queen for a month," she says, and her voice is rough and guttural. "And I was very very good at fitting in. Do not tell me you aren't going to tell me how to get home."
"Dani," he says quietly. She straightens up, but she won't look at him.
"An anthropologist's dream, right, Jack?" she says, and now her voice is high and tight. "Going in as one of them? Seeing how they live? I should be thrilled."
"Anything still edible in the kitchen?" he asks. It doesn't (can't) matter that it's Dani. He can't let her come apart here, now.
"Let's go see," she says (falsely bright, falsely calm). "We can tie up the snake after you change."
The new clothes are clean and dry, and the boots fit better than the dead man's shoes he's been wearing. He tries not to mind how easily Dani rips the heavy wool trousers to ribbons. She braids three strips together quickly, then ties Kort's hands behind its back. Then she gags it.
"Don't want anybody trying to come out and play, do we?" she says. Her eyes are bleak. At least they aren't glowing. Right now.
"I don't suppose you found any nice dungeons?" O'Neill asks hopefully, and she beams.
"What's a palace without a dungeon?" she asks. "Come on -- I'll show you."
#
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT, 16 NOVEMBER 1965
OV: Good morning, Fraulein Lange. I trust you spent a pleasant night. Do come and sit down.
HL: Go to hell.
OV: Ah! She speaks! But that's hardly a friendly way to talk to your hosts, my dear. Hans, my boy, would you be so good as to help dear Fraulein Lange to the table?
(Sounds of a chair scraping on the floor. Sounds of a struggle.)
HL: This is all a misunderstanding! I don't know what you want with me! I'm just a secretary at the American Mission!
#
Diary of Otto Voegler
16 November 1965
Becker has indicated that dear Henrietta's cooperation is an urgent matter of State Security. He is a pompous fool. All matters of State Security are important, even urgent, but where is the true service in providing nothing more than a tissue of badly-crafted and contradictory lies? All criminals lie. It is the nature of their spiritual corruption that they perceive truth as a threat. In order to obtain truth, I must offer them the opportunity for redemption first. Only then can they become courageous enough to provide me with that which the State requires.
This morning I chose to begin our interview in my workroom. I had already received her dossier from Becker, but (as I had suspected) it contains little of value. Certainly, if the information it contained were true, the woman who was brought to me would have been weeping and cowering. Instead, she greeted me with vulgar Western obscenity and repeated the threadbare lies I had already rebuked her for.
The redemption of Henrietta Lange will be a great challenge.
#
They leave Kort shut into a reassuringly low-tech stone cell and head for the kitchen. She's leading the way. He's the one with the zat. This is the worst kind of mission: the kind where you get periods of relative safety to evaluate just how hellish the mess is you're going to plunge back into. To second-guess yourself. To lose your nerve.
"Dani--" he says, because they're alone for the first time since Cimmeria.
"Don't," she says. He hears her take a deep breath. "I don't-- I know-- I had to, Jack. It got us Kort. I had to."
"I know," he says, as gently as he can. "And tomorrow we'll get the ship, and find out just what the hell happened."
"In 1965," she says. There's a pause. "I don't think it worked out the way Kort expected it to. Nefirtiri was holding him prisoner. Gibbs said... Kort was her greatest secret."
"All we have to do is get Kort to talk," he says, to keep the conversation going. "It's been chatty so far, but I don't know whether we can trust what it's already said. It said Ba'al's host went and got itself re-snaked. With another Ba'al. Dani... Kort said Ba'al came back in time with it."
He sees her shoulders stiffen as she tries to hide a flinch. "That makes sense," she says, and the tension's back in her voice. "I saw... Jack-- Do you trust me?"
"I don't think you're going to go back down there and let Kort out of the dungeon, if that's what you mean," he says. He knows it isn't the answer she's looking for, but he can't bear to lie to her. In case it's really her (oh God, he hopes it is).
"I named it Homer, you know," she says. "The symbiote. It took me a while to figure out how to make it do what I needed it to. To make me look like her."
"Ba'al help you out there?" he asks (hating himself, but he needs to know the things she isn't telling him: who, how much, and when, and where, the stations of the spy).
"Oh yes," she says, her voice light and suddenly spiteful. "He stuck a knife into me and threw me into a sarc. After that, it was all rainbows and roses."
He won't react. He won't let her hear him react.
"I had to keep using it. To look like her. So I'm hooked again, and there's one here -- I've seen it -- and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wish I could be who you want me to, but I can't, so... Let's get this done, okay? Let's fix it."
"We'll fix it," he says. "Dani--"
"And here's the kitchen," she says brightly.
What Dani says is the kitchen is a weird combination of medieval (he thinks of Teal'c's house) and high tech. She says it's the servants' kitchen, with the undertone in her voice that tells him there's more to know, but he doesn't want to ask this time.
There's bread and fruit and beer and clean water. The stasis boxes (Dani says) run on naquadaah batteries. He makes a joke about bringing one home to use as a cooler. She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. He remembers what she was like when she came back from Jake's idiot masquerade, and this is worse.
This time she was playing the monster.
"You look like hell," she says quietly.
"Fresh air and country living," he says. And a lot of people he didn't want to see again. "Dani... Even if this is all we can do, she's dead. Nefirtiri's dead. There was a Resistance. McKay was in it. She built a bomb. Big bomb. That's what all the fighting was about -- back there. On the ship."
It's not the whole truth, but it's true. At least he can give her that much, and hope she doesn't work her way through to the rest. Because Jethro's dead and Jenny's dead and Elizabeth and Merry McKay are dead, and they haven't saved Earth (not yet) because all they've done by killing Nefertiri is create a power vacuum and the snakes will come rushing in. Whoever gets there first will decide the locals committed herpecide and reduce the entire planet to ash.
So much for the glorious destiny of the Fifth Race.
"Merry was with the Resistance?" Dani asks. "Was she... Was she okay?" Her voice catches, just a little.
"Sure," he says (it isn't lying if it's done out of love). "Took apart a bunch of Jaffa bang-sticks and built a naquadaah bomb. Sheppard flew it up to the mothership."
Dani laughs, and for an instant she's bright and unshadowed. "Bang," she says quietly.
"Bang," he agrees.
There are things he'll tell her about this mission -- if they live -- but he won't tell her the truth about McKay.
#
The palace is full of bedrooms, but by mutual (unspoken) agreement, they grab mattresses and blankets and bunker down outside Kort's cell. It isn't that he doesn't trust Dani (yes and no, the coinflip goes on eternally in the back of his mind), but that he doesn't trust Kort not to break out (somehow) if it isn't being watched.
He'd rather be off looking for the Ancient ship (if it isn't there, if he can't get it flying, they're going to have to get the address for Praxyon out of Kort and won't that be fun) but he isn't stupid. It's been a month of pushing limits, and more to come, and there's no point in trying to pretend he's twenty. (Dani knows how old he is anyway; she finally got Carter to hack his file back in the day when he wouldn't tell her his birthday.)
Kort starts thrashing around when it hears them (Dani didn't untie it when she tossed it into the cell), but she leans against the grid in the door and says something to it in snake, and after that, it's quiet. (O'Neill doesn't want to think about what she said and whether she'd do whatever it is. He doesn't want to think about what he made of her in ten years at the war. But whatever it is, her eyes flash as she says it, and when she sits down against the door, she won't look at him.)
"So maybe you can settle something that's always bugged me," he says (and oh god, mattress and blankets and even if they're still in hell it's heaven). "The flashy thing with the eyes. What's up with that?"
He hears her snort softly. "I wish I was sure," she says. "Archaeologist, not biologist. It's a little like blinking. I can make it happen, but sometimes it just happens by itself. It's probably some kind of signal, but of what, for what, I'm not sure."
"Like fireflies," he says (aware he's drifting, but this is as safe as it gets).
"Yeah, Jack," she says patiently. "Soul-sucking, galaxy-conquering fireflies."
She sounds like Dani. That has to be enough.
#
In the morning she brings him bread and cheese and beer, tactfully absenting herself while he manages to get his boots back on and get to his feet. (Right now he'd kill for two aspirin and a cup of coffee; yeah, the eternal refrain.)
"Hello?" Kort says. "Anyone out there?"
"No one but us chickens," he says. Apparently the snake got the gag out during the night.
"Look," Kort says. "I'm on your side. Sure, I made a few mistakes -- who hasn't? But you can't think I meant things to turn out this way."
"Of course not," O'Neill says. "So just tell me what you broke, and we'll fix it, and you can go back to conquering Earth."
"I'm the only one who can take you there," Kort says. "To Praxyon. To the time machine, the right place and time. You'll never find it without me."
"Go on," O'Neill says.
"Take me with you," Kort says. "I want your word. Everyone knows you'll keep it."
"Nice to know I have a reputation with the snakes," he says. Play for time. The first and greatest commandment.
"You kept your word to Ba'al," Kort says.
Not his word, and not his promise, and O'Neill doesn't want to think about the stranger somewhere out there with his secrets locked up in his skull. The stranger who knows things about him even Dani doesn't know. The one he owes too much to. The one who can make promises O'Neill is honor-bound to keep.
"So give me a little something on account," he says. "A date. A place."
He hears Kort laugh. "Berlin. November 15th, 1965. Forty-six years out of your reach without my help."
"Hold that thought," he says, because Dani's coming back. They both hear her. She's singing something. "King and Queen of Cantelon, how many miles to Babylon?" Giving warning. Announcing herself. He turns away from the cell door.
"She's dead, O'Neill!" Kort shouts. "That's what changed everything! She's dead!"
"Who's dead?" Dani asks, setting down the basket. "Aside from, oh, everybody I've ever known. Good morning, Mr. Kort. I trust you spent a comfortable night?"
"Bitch," Kort snarls, and Dani laughs. O'Neill wishes she didn't find it funny.
Who? Dani signs at him (she's out of Kort's sight). He's glad to see her being careful, but it's time to bring another skeleton out of the closet. Jack O'Neill, oblivious idiot.
"Hetty Lange, I guess -- at least I think that's who it's talking about," O'Neill says (pretending indifference, but it's all starting to take shape now: Hetty dead a decade before Captain O'Neill ever set eyes on her, and he thinks of a spectacular goatfuck in 1982, of how the things he learned in the Court of Miracles saved him and Kawalsky after East Fly. Hetty's death means Jack O'Neill's death, means someone else commands (commanded) First Abydos, means so many things).
"Whoever she is," Dani answers, matching his tone. "I guess we're screwed then. Fine. Let's go back to Dakara and kill Ba'al, then. Again." She sits down beside the basket, reaches in, and pulls the end off a loaf of bread. "But first, let's shove Mr. Kort through the Gate to Cimmeria. I wonder if a complicit host will abandon its snake to save its own life? If so, just think what joys await you, Mr. Kort, in this world you've made for us."
"You won't do that." Kort sounds certain. "Not while you know you can fix it. Save all those millions. Surely there's someone on Earth you miss, Dr. Jackson?"
She smiles again, and this time the expression is angelic and terrible. "There are a lot of people I miss, Mr. Kort. A lot of them were on Abydos, and that's gone. I've gotten used to missing people. After the first dozen or so, it isn't that hard."
"O'Neill!" Kort shouts. "Don't listen to her! We can make a deal!"
"Come on," he says to Dani. "Let's go have breakfast on the sun deck."
#
"So Kort went back to 1965 to kill someone named Hetty Lange, and I got snaked?" Dani asks, sounding faintly indignant.
It's a beautiful day here on P7X-013. Just him and her, a couple of snakes, and a planet full of corpses. "You know I used to do some things -- before the Program -- I'm not that proud of," he answers. (Their conversations have never been linear.)
"Sam said you'd been Black Ops. So did you. Cam said they used to call you "Batshit Jack". Yeah, there've been a few hints."
"Yeah, well..."
"East Fly," she says. (Her eyes are blue as she looks at him. Not gold. Not gold. He knows how fast her mind works, knows there were enough hints dropped through the years for her to make into a story. Her greatest gift to him has always been her indifference.)
"Yeah. This was before that. There were three of us (three that survived): Gibbs, and me, and Jenny Shepard. Hetty trained all three of us. Covert ops. Behind the Curtain. Russia," he adds, because Dani's grasp of recent history has always been erratic.
She looks away. "Tak chto vse eto vremya vy ne nuzhny mne perevesti dlya vas SG- 4," she says in Russian. So all this time you didn't need me to translate for you to SG-4.
"Nyet, nyet, ya etogo ne sdelal," he answers in the same language. No. No, I didn't.
"Bastard," she says mildly, back in English. "So take Hetty Lange out of the picture, and--"
"I die in 1982. I don't know why Gibbs ends up on Abydos."
"Somebody had to go," Dani says, falsely reasonable. "I wonder who led it?"
"Somebody you didn't like as well as me," he says, and hears her chuckle.
"So we go save Hetty Lange," Dani says. "But from what?"
"I don't know," he says. He'd never wondered about Hetty's past. It wouldn't have mattered if he had. She was the Queen of their Court of Miracles, never to be questioned.
"I'm sure we can find out," Dani says absently. "You go find the timejumper. At least that way we get a round trip. I don't want to have to use Praxyon and spend another lifetime in the past."
"Yeah," he says. "I think it's probably getting a little crowded back there anyway."
He hates the thought of leaving Dani alone with Kort. (He's afraid he knows what will happen, and silence implies consent, and there are some things you should do yourself if they have to be done.) But if the timejumper isn't there, or can't be made operational, it will have to be Praxyon, and Plan B, and getting reliable information out of the snake.
(He doesn't want to think that Dani knows this too. That Dani will do -- is capable of doing -- what that involves. He tried to spare her the worst, all those years at the war. He's failed her. He knows that. But they won't fail Earth. They won't fail Hetty.)
#
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT, 17 NOVEMBER 1965
OV: I'm terribly sorry to have to resort to strong persuasion, Fraulein, but if you would just be willing to make an effort, I'm certain we can still be friends. All you need to do is make a start: just tell me the name of your handler.
HL: Frank Sinatra. Or maybe … Elvis Presley. I can't seem to remember.
#
Diary of Otto Voegler
17 November 1965
I have been forced to proceed to the next step in my efforts to persuade Henrietta to accept her redemption. Her head has been shaved, and she has received additional light correction. Bruises, merely. She continues to present no sign of consciousness of the gravity of her circumstances, though I have explained to her carefully that she has been abandoned by her former compatriots and only a full confession of her crimes and transgressions can help her. She remains obdurate, and I find myself increasingly fascinated by the quality of her resistance.
#
It's evening by the time he gets back. God bless Carter and her unshakable faith that anybody could master sub atomic inter-dimensional quantum engineering if she just explained it enough. Her blow-by-blow account of widgets and frammistats and power crystals is evergreen in his memory. It's enough to let him put the thing back together for the very first time. He even risks taking it up (if it blows up, better him alone and Dani will finish the mission, please god, and come and tell him another SG-1 fairytale when she's safely home), and lands it in the courtyard outside the palace.
Dani comes to the doorway at the top of the steps. She's changed her clothes. Now she's in something out of the later King Arthur period. Her hair is damp.
There is no sight or scent of blood.
"It works!" she says happily. "Oh good!" She comes skipping down the steps (still moving like a young woman, but the evening light is harsh and he can see the flawless never-never of the sarcophagus starting to fade).
"Where's Kort?" he asks, more harshly than he wants to.
"Mr. Kort is resting," Dani says primly (but she looks away guiltily). "I put him in the sarc. I broke it, Jack," she says, and there's a note of pride in her voice now. "The locking mechanism. It won't open automatically now."
"But we could open it from the outside?" he asks.
"Ask the Kleinhouse Expedition," she snaps, abruptly irritable. (He hopes to god they aren't going to have to deal with full-on sarc withdrawal, but the snake in her head -- speaking of things he never thought he'd think -- should save her from the worst of it.) "You won't need to, though. He talked."
He goes to her and puts his arms around her. She stiffens at first, then lets her hold him. She keeps her face turned away. He keeps himself from feeling for the snake beneath her skin. "Okay," he says against her hair. "Tell me."
She stumbles over the unfamiliar phrases. She has the information note-perfect, but most of it doesn't mean much to her. (It's familiar ground to him, though, and he wishes that whoever said the past is a foreign country had gotten around to revoking his passport.)
On November 15th, 1965, Miss Henrietta Lange was captured by the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Ministry for State Security, gotta love a good euphemism). They'd received information that she was an American agent who possessed vital intelligence (vital to the West, so of course the East disapproved). Kort says it happened in reality, but her own side got her back within 72 hours through a prisoner exchange.
Not here. Kort arranged for that to go wrong. And Hetty died in East Berlin.
"--so when he was sure, he went back to the rendezvous point, but surprise! Ba'al wasn't there. So he decided to take the long way home. Grabbed a sarc -- there was one in the British Museum, did you know, Jack? -- moved it to a nice comfy deserted location -- Antarctica, as a matter of fact, what are the odds? -- and settled in. Good thing, too, or he would just have been incinerated instead of waking up to such a lovely surprise. Too bad he couldn't use the Gate to go back to Praxyon -- oh by the way, the first thing Ba'al did when he developed time-travel was to go back in time and build his time machine all over again, you'll be delighted to know -- but unfortunately, he didn't know where the Gate was, not exactly..."
She's bubbling with febrile high spirits, and he knows this game of keepaway too well. He holds her tighter.
"And Ba'al went back to the present," he says.
"And met us at Dakara," Dani says. "I think he was waiting to see if he liked this universe better. And then there we were."
"Sweetheart," he says helplessly. (This isn't the time or the place, but that's always been their curse: never the right time, never the right place.)
"But we'll fix it, now," Dani says (he can hear the desperation she's trying to hide). "We'll fix it, and -- it will be like it never happened, right? Any of it? And the Tok'ra will know where Ba'al is, where they sent the host, and we'll find him, we will, and--"
"We'll fix it," he says. "We'll fix everything. I promise." He isn't even sure where to begin. (He won't think about what Hetty says about spies who make promises. He hasn't been a spy for a long time.)
"So," she says, stepping away. "What do we do now?"
"We go for a ride," he says. "What about Kort?"
"Mr. Kort can stay where he is," Dani answers flatly.
#
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT, 18 NOVEMBER 1965
OV: I have to say that I'm disappointed. Such a pretty girl, with such appalling manners.
HL: (Inaudible)
OV: Tsk, tsk. Nice girls don't use such words, Fraulein. But still, I will make this as easy for you as I can. I will list the facts, and all you need to do is tell me whether or not they are true. Your name is Henrietta Lange. You are twenty-five years old. You have been in Europe for nearly four years. You are a spy for the United States government.
HL: (laughs) No, no, no. You have it all wrong. My name is Moneypenny. I work for James Bond.
(TAPE STOPS)
#
Diary of Otto Voegler
18 November 1965
I am delighted to note that progress in the matter of Henrietta has begun. (Small progress, and Becker continues to snap at my heels like the jackal he is, but haste does not create masterworks.) I have continued the water treatment, and made certain that the food she is given is inedible. The cells, at night, are very cold. This morning I arranged for a savory and delightful breakfast, wholly wholesome and innocent, to be served to her once she had entered my workroom. I asked her once again for her cooperation, and expressed my dismay at her apparent determination upon her own destruction. In a most unfeminine display of bravado, she threw the plate to the floor and expressed herself in a gutter argot. It is the first true display of anger I have seen from her, and I am encouraged, for anger is the herald of fear, and fear cleanses the soul.
I called upon Hans and Karl for assistance, for it would not do to permit dear Henrietta to expire for want of feeding. It took them several tries to insert the tube into her stomach, and once they had, I am afraid their overzealousness for her well-being had certain unfortunate consequences. But kindness breeds kindness, as I was careful to explain.
Tomorrow, I am very much afraid, I must begin to provide to my Henrietta a graphic demonstration of that fact.
#
The "Department Store of the West" -- Kaufhaus des Westens -- has been at 21 Tauentzienstrasse since long before Captain Jack O'Neill first breathed the air of Berlin. In 1965 it's a great grey eminence anchoring a block of postwar construction. It doesn't look quite the way it did the last time he saw it (last year, forty something years from now): the top two stories were added later. Here and now it has a nice flat roof, suitable for landing a timeship on.
There's snow on the ground. This is their third visit to Berlin in the last (subjective) hour. The first time they had to get the hell out of Dodge before a B-52 dropped a bomb on them. The second time, there wasn't a Wall (radio transmissions said it was December, 1960). This time Armed Forces Radio is playing "A Hard Day's Night" and wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving and that makes it ten days later than the date Kort says Hetty was taken but it better be close enough.
"Are we here?" Dani asks. "We're on top of a building."
"Yeah," he answers. "We're here. We need to do a little shopping before we go and try to find Hetty." And nobody, please god, is going to come up on the roof looking for a cloaked timeship.
He opens the door. The air smells of snow, and car exhaust. It's the middle of the night. 0145 local, says the Army DJ.
"Cold," Dani says, shivering.
"Come on," he says. "It'll be warmer inside."
He takes the remote for the timeship, and the zat. As he stands up, he sees Dani slip a ribbon device onto her hand.
"I found it in the palace," she says, a little defiantly. "We might need it."
He doesn't say anything. They might.
And he hates that it's an option.
#
The top floor is electronics, toys, souvenirs. Dani wanders through it with the slightly-stunned expression of someone in an unfamiliar museum. (Yeah, they really are in the past.) They find the escalator and walk down it. The fifth floor is home furnishings (it looks like the stuff in his and Sara's first house) and Bridal. Dani wrinkles her nose at the long white dresses in silent commentary (he wonders what she's thinking). Fourth floor is lingerie and health products. He grabs a box of Bayer and then takes Dani through the mysteries of Ladies' Lingerie, 1965 edition.
"Really, Jack?" she asks, holding up a girdle. She looks baffled and a little indignant.
"Sorry," he says, adding it to the pile. "You'll need stockings, too. Take some extras."
Third floor is Women's Fashions. Dani regards a mannequin, impeccably turned out in pencil skirted dress, hat, and gloves, as if she's viewing the ancient customs of a barbaric race.
"You'll need shoes, too. Some kind of ... thing." He wishes for an instant it was Vala on this little vacation. Vala, dropped in the middle of an unfamiliar planet, would still know exactly what to wear. He knows more about women's clothes than Dani does, but that isn't saying much. The last time he saw her in a dress was the last time they got stuck in the past. She'd squalled about it then too.
If not for the mannequins, they'd be screwed. But Dani manages to put together an outfit using them as a template. (Blue dress, bracelet length sleeves, hemline at the knee and he dredges up an ancient memory of the women at the Pentagon -- during his first tour there -- bitching about the services running years behind on a fashionable hemline.) She has to go back up to Four to find gloves, and back again because the ones she comes down with are white (white gloves from Memorial Day to Labor Day, he remembers his grandmother saying). In the Millinery Department, he rejects several of her choices before realizing he's using as his mental template the Church Ladies of his Minnesota boyhood. So be it.
"I hope to god whatever you have to wear is even more awful," Dani snarls as she tries on shoes. (She's had to try on everything; sizes have changed in forty-something years.) He adds a purse to her collection. She tries to sling it over her shoulder, but the strap's too short. It's meant to be worn over the arm. (Purse snatching as a competitive sport is a thing of the future.)
"And what do I put in this so-useful object?" she demands.
"We can worry about that later," he says. (The ribbon device would be a good start.) Money, papers, there are a thousand things to worry about but looking like they belong here comes first.
She growls, and stalks off to the dressing room.
The wait is longer than he expects (and hopes) even though he zatted the alarm system on their way in and there's very little he doesn't know about vintage security systems, actually. Enough to know they're perfectly safe. He's thinking they should find some place in here to hide out, and just walk out when the store opens. They can't wander the streets in the middle of the night with no ID. (They can't save Hetty if they're in a jail cell.) He occupies the wait looting the mannequins. She'll need jewelry.
Finally Dani comes out. She's as unsteady as a newborn colt in the heels, and she's managed to get the hat on backwards (in her defense, it isn't a very hatlike hat).
She's beautiful.
"Zip me up, Jack?" she asks, turning her back to him. "I don't know why they make these things so you can't actually put them on."
"Sure," he says (mouth suddenly dry). He pulls the tiny zipper up to the nape of her neck, does up the invisible hooks, turns the hat around the right way. At least she's remembered to remove all the tags. "I brought you pearls."
"And I didn't get you anything. How do I look?" she asks, walking over to the mirror. She inspects herself critically. He clasps the string of (costume) pearls around her neck, offers her the bracelet. She nods at her reflection, and smiles as she turns back to him, holding out her hand for the bracelet, and for an instant it isn't Dani standing there, it's Hetty. Hetty, his cold and beautiful Queen of Air and Darkness, and Captain O'Neill had loved her with the chaste and desperate passion of a monk to a saint. (But Hetty was no saint, and he was no monk, and he spent years trying to forget all he learned in the Court of Miracles.)
Then it's Dani again, swearing under her breath as she tries to clasp the bracelet into place (over the glove, just like on the mannequins; a quick study, his girl), and he takes her hand and does it for her.
"I can't run in this, you know," she says (trying for irritable, hitting forlorn). "I can't even raise my arms very far. The dress is too tight."
"You look lovely," he says.
She gives him an odd look. "Great. If we run into any sex-crazed barbarians, I'm all set."
(It was SG-1's standing joke: Carter attracted the polite advanced aliens who admired her mind. Dani got the warlords with job openings in their seraglios.)
"Not a lot of them in Berlin." In West Berlin, anyway.
Now that she's dressed (costumed) they can pick out a coat. He rejects her first choice (good and grey), and takes down one in black alpaca trimmed in silver fox. "This'll be warmer," he says.
"Fur," she says, faintly surprised. (He thinks of 1969, of the fugitive wish he'd had -- never spoken -- to stay there. A simpler world, and he knows it's a fantasy. The world has always been hard and grim and complicated. It's only hindsight that makes it otherwise.)
On Two he sheds another borrowed skin. Crisp white shirt and necktie (Dani snickers), shiny shoes and dress socks (not that different from his other life), a conservative blue pin-striped suit with a button-down vest.
"You look like a gangster," Dani says. "You should have a hat."
(Someday he'll remember to thank Carter for introducing Dani to modern cinema.)
Men's hats aren't quite so much of a minefield. Her first choice is fine. She snickers as she hands it to him. (A grey fedora.) "And now, Doctor Jones," she says.
"After all your bitching about that movie you're going to quote it?" he demands.
She starts to say something, but her eyes flash, and she must be able to tell, because she turns quickly away (not quickly enough), slipping a little on the floor. He puts a hand under her arm to steady her.
"I'm fine!" she snaps.
"We'll find some sunglasses," he says.
Whatever she's about to answer, she changes her mind. "At least this isn't 1969," she says instead, trying to make it a joke, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes. (Naquadaah eyes, flashing gold like the sudden flare of a match in the darkness. He isn't going to think of that either. Not right now.)
By 0400 they're done shopping (powder and lipstick for Dani, wristwatches for both of them, a briefcase for the zat and the ship remote -- it adds to his look of sober respectability, he tells her -- wallet and billfold and a few minor items). They retreat to the offices (where he finds a newspaper to tell him that yesterday was November 24th, 1965) and he finds (mirible dictu) a safe. Combination lock. Easy enough to crack (the hell it is; it takes him 90 minutes, those skills are rusty). No papers (still) but at least they have cash now. He's pretty sure that if they're good children, they can move about freely (most places) without showing ID.
"This part really happens, you know," Dani says, as he closes the safe and distributes the pile of looted Deutchmarks between them. He looks at her quizzically.
"This is the part of the past that won't change, if -- when -- we push the reset button," she says. "Stuff from here on. But not this part." She's got the newspaper spread out on the desk. Not the news and the front pages of course (this is Dani), but the ads and the cartoons. Figuring out what things cost. Figuring out how to fit in. (He doesn't want to think about how many times she's done this, even counting the ones she doesn't remember now.)
"You want me to put it back in case somebody gets arrested for embezzling?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "I just hope it doesn't make any difference."
Yeah. So does he.
(He thinks of butterfly wings.)
He dozes. She reads. In the morning they escape and evade their way through the store (the easiest part yet; something familiar), and he leads her out into the half-familiar city. Cold. Gray. Grim. It's not the weather so much as the people. O'Neill hadn't really cared for Berlin the first time he was here. When he left the compound on Clayallee in '82, he'd hoped it was the last he'd ever see of West Berlin. (He supposes he really ought to make peace with the fact that the Blue Fairy hates his guts.) Never mind that 'now' is twelve years before he came to Berlin the first time; this is just about par for life on the Yellow Brick Road, and some details really aren't worth thinking about. It's not even the weirdest thing that's happened in the last decade and some since he tumbled through the Gate onto the sands of Abydos.
He consults a phone book (Dani watches, fascinated) and leads her to a diner Captain O'Neill (a man in a transitory state; no longer Jack, not yet Vanya) remembers. The diner is blue-hazed with cigarette smoke. Everyone smokes here, but thank god it's optional (though if they're here long he's going to take it up again; he's already craving one). They take a booth in the back. She starts to shrug out of her coat; he moves quickly enough to take it from her. Keeps her from taking off her hat when he removes his. "Women don't," he says in a low voice. (He's glad he can't see her eyes just now.)
The waitress brings coffee. He orders for both of them. Dani is watching him closely. He's her guide here, her only source of information on fitting in. It's lousy tradecraft, going undercover without any prep. They don't have any choice.
The conversations around them are half in English, half in German. The place is a favorite hangout for the AP stringers. Back in the day, Hetty used to send him and Gary here to see if they'd stopped looking American yet. (It was a safe place to try out their show before taking it on the road to hell. The test was the language the waitress addressed you in unprompted.) Dani's waiting, he knows, to find out which it's going to be for them, here, today (it's probably why he hasn't gotten another comment about the stupidity of her costume and the local rules: for a galaxy-trotting anthropologist, she's remarkably parochial about Earth).
"Okay," he says (in English). "Step one accomplished." He keeps his voice low.
Dani picks up her cup. She's still wearing her gloves. He shakes his head minutely and she sets it down. Gloves off, he mouths. There's a moment of trouble with the bracelet, but she manages. Picks up the cup again. The sunglasses (catseyed and rhinestoned) and red-painted mouth turn her into a stranger (he was surprised she knew how to use lipstick -- he's never seen her wear any -- she'd lectured him on Ancient Egypt).
She's always said coffee should be a sacrament (a sentiment he found vaguely irreligious, apostate though he was). Right now he's willing to agree, and add aspirin into the mix.
"You'd think there'd've been a fucking protocol manual in that fucking store," she snarls, sotto voce.
"I'll introduce you to Emily Post," he says. It's a joke, and she doesn't get it. He'll have to be careful.
"So what's Step Two?" she asks.
"If Hetty was -- is -- here, she'll be attached to Mission Berlin. I figure we start there."
"But she isn't there," Dani points out (after a beat of incomprehension; she'll know the place as the American Embassy, but it isn't, not here). "She's already been captured."
"Yes." Ten days ago, if they can believe Kort-the-Snake. And they have a ticking clock, and if the timer runs down to zero he isn't sure they can try again. Carter could tell him if they'd blow up the world by doubling (tripling) themselves, but she isn't here. (Maybe he should go and ask her. Maybe he should just go further back and shoot his grandfather.) "And they're the only ones who can help us get to her."
"Why?" Dani asks. "We know where she is."
The conversation goes downhill from there. He loves Dani. He really does. Heart and soul and enough (don't tell her) to throw over the ideals and principles he's lived by all his life if he had to choose between them. He's loved her longer than he (really) loved Sara, longer than the first child he never got to know (born and died while he was away, and it was eight years before Sara would try again), longer than he got to love Charlie (he'll always love Charlie, and miss him). He loves her. But love isn't (quite) blind.
The love of his life knows shit about geography. (Or, really, anything that's happened on Earth since the year zot, but let's be kind about that.) Over breakfast he discovers that she thought Berlin was on the border between East and West Germany, and that due to the prankish humors of mortals the city had been cut in half during the partition of the Reich. When she finds out Berlin is in the center of East Fucking Germany, she's shocked.
She still has no clue what that means.
He's never decided whether it's ignorance or innocence or stubbornness that keeps her from entering the 20th (21st now) century. Sometimes it saved their lives. This time, it's a liability, because to say Berlin is a city of spies is understating the case. It's a city full of goddamned paranoids.
He used to fit right in, a lifetime ago. They all had different names then. Stormcrow. Hangman. Schoolboy. Black Dog. Debutante.
His had been Jester.
Not callsigns (he'd been a pilot once) or even names they used. Names that matched up with other names on a list in a building an ocean away. Back in the real world. The world Hetty took him from, and without Hetty there's no Court of Miracles, no miraculous escape from a hideous goatfuck of a mission gone wrong seventeen years from now, no Colonel Jack O'Neill to save and be saved by Dr. Danielle Jackson on the sands of an alien world. Hetty taught him a thousand ways to lie, and he's been thinking about what Dani said back in the store all night: they can't just zoom in with their magic ship to Ruschestrasse 103, shoot their way in, rescue the princess (the Duchess of Deception) and zoom off again.
"This is the part of the past that won't change."
They have to do it as it would have (might have been, will be) done here, and that means backup, resources, help they don't have. There's only one place to get it.
He's clumsy; can't decide whether he's Jack or Vanya this morning and keeps dropping his knife. Hetty took her darling boys back to her secret lair (O'Neill jokingly called it the Court of Miracles; eventually the name stuck) and worked on them for three months before she so much as let them put a toe across the border into East Berlin. Gary said he thought they were going to Russia. Hetty said they weren't ready, and if he drew attention to himself, Lieutenant Clark, she would exert herself to make it impossible to avoid in the future. Hetty was terrifying. That was probably why O'Neill adored her.
When they ate meals in the Court of Miracles, Hetty had a wooden ruler by her plate. It made O'Neill flinch just a little, inwardly, even though he'd only been Catholic until he left home to live with his mother's people in Minnesota. Hetty told O'Neill to brush up on his Catholicism. There was no way he'd ever pass for Jewish (from the moment he opened his mouth to the moment he dropped trou), and in Eastern Europe it was pretty much Catholic, even more Catholic, Jewish, or dead. O'Neill found his reborn religious faith useful when he was trying to talk God into calling down an airstrike on Hetty.
Hetty told them both they ate like Americans. (O'Neill's protests of being an American died, unmade, when she pinned him with those glorious eyes and a frown of preemptive reproof.) O'Neill was right handed (that was the one thing Hetty, for a wonder, didn't seem to mind), so he held his knife in his right hand to cut meat, and then shifted his fork back into his right hand to eat.
After watching them for all of five minutes, the Queen of Air and Darkness announced that this cutlery-juggling at her table would cease immediately. Every time O'Neill forgot, the ruler came down across the back of his knuckles again, and every time he improved, she just set the standards higher. It was a wonder he didn't starve to death.
He drags his mind out of the past (this isn't helping) and finishes laying out ways and means and a plan made of gossamer and wishful thinking.
"If we're going to go to the, uh, the American Mission, won't we need ID?" she asks, when they've worked their way through breakfast.
He grimaces. Yeah, that's gonna be a problem.
"Is it picture ID here?" she asks. (Just as if this is an alien planet, well, point to her.)
He thinks back (the past is a foreign country). "Not usually."
"You put your wallet into your jacket pocket," she says. "Is that common?"
"Yeah," he says automatically, then: "Dani, what are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking I'm going to get you some ID," she says. "Is there anything exciting I need to know about the women's bathrooms of 1965?"
"Not here." In hotels and restaurants there are still attendants, but a diner isn't that fancy.
"I can't wait," she says. "Last question: can you get a hotel room without showing ID?"
"Nobody shows ID for a room," he says. "You just sign the register." And pay when you leave. He wonders what that says about the brave new world of 2011. More people? Faster rats? "I know a place."
"I just hope it's already there," she mutters.
She gets to her feet. He stands (she looks at him oddly, but apparently timetravel is like riding a bicycle, and it's all coming back to him). She walks away. He sits down. The waitress brings him the check. Dani stops someone (a woman, thank fuck, he hadn't thought to warn her) and heads for the back. He pays. His change comes. On his feet, hat, coat, check the watch (portrait of the unreconstructed male waiting on his lady), collects Dani's coat and gloves (she's forgotten the bracelet), picks up his briefcase, slings her coat over his arm.
She comes out of the back again, purse open as if she's tucking something into it. The next thing he knows, she's collided with one of the men sitting at the counter. He rescues his coffee, but isn't in time to save his glass of water. There's a high-pitched torrent of machine-gun German (Dani), and she's fluttering at him, dabbing with a napkin, looking helpless and lost (and he wonders where the hell that came from). The man speaks German (badly) and is trying to reassure her.
Target acquired, her hands say. Requesting extraction.
That's his cue, he realizes.
He steps forward (helpful Jack O'Neill and his German girlfriend), translates her fluttering apologies (German to English), reassures her it's okay (English to German). Pays for the man's meal ("the lady insists"), and they're out and away. There's enough of a morning crowd in this area to blend into.
"Got his wallet," Dani says. "Now let's get a room."
Pickpocketing. One of the many lifesaving job-related skills useful to a career at Stargate Command.
#
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT, 19 NOVEMBER 1965
HL: I have nothing to say to you.
OV: Has anyone ever told you that you have lovely hands? So strong, so-well formed. Did your parents insist on piano lessons when you were a little girl? Do you still play?
#
Diary of Otto Voegler
16 November 1965
Today we began in earnest, with the removal of the nails. Henrietta's hands and feet are slender and well-kept. It is a pleasure to spend time with a woman who understands that good grooming is the hallmark of true feminine grace.
I believe we have now dispensed with the fiction that she is nothing more than a secretary, and can move forward together.
#
Archie Wallace walks out of Records at one o' clock in the afternoon on Monday, November 22nd. He tells Madeline to go on home; there won't be any more work today. He almost tells her to take the rest of the week off too. (Madeline is the third since Hetty went to meet Uncle Ivan. Trudy got bored and went back to the States; Linda was just incompetent. Madeline's been there three months, and if she's not up to Hetty's standard, at least all the files end up in the right places.) He shrugs into his overcoat, settles his old fedora on his head.
He locks the door behind him, puts the key in his pocket. (He gets a few curious looks on his way out, but no one stops him.) This time of day, the streets are quiet. Too early for crowds of schoolboys, and most everyone else is at work or at home with the children or somewhere else that isn't out and about. The sun is bright enough to make him squint. There are piles of dirty gray snow in the gutters, and every so often a big black car drives through a puddle, kicking up a fine spray of grimy water. (It seems like they're all big black cars here in Berlin.)
Back home it's almost Thanksgiving, the season of free turkeys at the grocery store, cans of cranberry sauce, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (on television and in color). If they'd been lucky, he would have been on a flight back to D.C. with Hetty by now, with her chattering about Thanksgiving with her family. (Her parents, both immigrants, didn't really understand the holiday, but that didn't stop them from trying.)
His feet want to take him to the Felsenkeller (old habits), but at the last minute he changes direction. Felsenkeller is full of absences and ghosts these days. Clive's empty barstool. Hetty's. Too many others.
(Hetty went out to that little bakery around the corner for Apfelkuchen for their dessert. Swore she wouldn't be more than half an hour. She never came home. Archie found her hat and her bracelet -- the one with the little birds, the one he gave her for her birthday -- in an oily puddle in the alley behind the bakery. The bracelet was broken. It had been torn off. That was the 15th. Last Monday. By Wednesday they knew that Blackbird had her.)
The code name Blackbird is a play on the German: spies always like to think they're clever. (All too often, they're wrong.) Otto Voegler, crown jewel of East German State Security. Archie's seen pictures. To look at dear Otto, you'd never suspect he was anything more than a clerk in some minor ministry. Middle aged and handsome, with a pleasant open face, brown hair, and a receding hairline. Wire-rimmed spectacles, at least the last time Archie saw a picture of him. Married; that's the worst part, the part that gives Archie chills. Her name is Mina. They have two young sons. Archie is certain that Mina has no idea what her husband does for a living (what he likes doing to young Western women, what he's undoubtedly doing to Hetty).
Blackbird is as predictable as the dawn.
Two days, and the girl comes home with cuts and bruises and nightmares that will plague her for months. Four and it's broken bones and a fear of the dark. Six, and she'll be in the hospital for days. Any longer than a week, and you're lucky to get her back sane. Two weeks, and you pray that Blackbird sends enough back over the Wall for you to bury.
(Voegler had that little courier of Six's for five days before they were able to trade for her. She hanged herself a week after she got out of the hospital and Six lost all her contacts.)
Hetty's been in Blackbird's hands for a week now.
A week. Seven days.
Last February, Hetty slipped beneath the Iron Curtain like a mouse or a lizard or a little white ghost, and shed her skin. On the other side of the line that separated them from us, she became Lydmilla Anastasyaova Raskolnikov. Little Milla was a good girl, devoted to her country and her Party and the ideals of her forefathers, and for months, Archie wondered what had become of her. (No news is good news, Clive always said, and for Hetty's sake, Archie tried to believe it.) Finally there were blurry pictures clipped from Pravda: Little Milla and her Russian general. She was wearing emeralds. They looked happy.
In October, Archie's little bird flew home again with short hair and diamonds in her ears and a pocket full of microfilm (ashes, ashes we all fall down). Hetty's homecoming should have been a triumph, their first real victory since Philby. There and back again, and no one had been the wiser, though General Lazarev undoubtedly wondered which of his many rivals had made his pretty mistress vanish. When she'd turned up in Archie's apartment one rainy October night, he'd imagined a Thanksgiving homecoming, a few months of leave Stateside, perhaps a medal awarded at a quiet ceremony at the White House.
When Archie looked at the microfilm, he put the champagne away.
Those pictures should have been cause for celebration (the first hard data out of Russia in decades, Gehlen aside), but Archie knew with cold certainty that what many of his colleagues in Berlin would see was a trail of destroyed careers. Ethan Chalmers and his cronies had made their fortunes on cultivating and running the Org, and what Hetty brought home was proof -- tangible, damning proof -- that Gehlen had been lying to them for decades.
Truth was often a casualty of espionage, especially these days. These days Langley (CIA, God, the Agency, as if it were some sort of Platonic ideal) is and, Archie thinks bitterly, ever will be, a fetid nest of men who will coddle and cosset and cater to murderers and torturers and all the worst sorts of criminals provided only that such tender care yields the Agency the power that it craves. (Archie misses the old days, the OSS days, when people, even spies, actually gave a damn about something other than promotions and pensions and lording it over their subordinates and their enemies.)
Archie hid the microfilm (in a teapot at the back of his kitchen cabinet; it was almost a cliché), had a few quiet words with Clive that might or might not amount to anything, put off Hetty's official debrief on the grounds that she needed more time to recover, and prayed. By the first week of November, they were booked on a flight back to Boston the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Archie almost dared to breathe again.
Then came the day that Hetty never came home from the bakery.
Until the telex came early Wednesday morning, Archie allowed himself to hope (to pray) that the Ossies had simply grabbed Hetty for leverage. (A token. A marker. Nothing personal. Nothing to do with Russia, or with the souvenirs she brought home.) Archie told himself that they'd scare her a little (maybe enough to make her cry over the phone, if that were even possible), demand the return of some East German national or other. Maybe the Ossies would give Hetty back regardless, if the Americans rattled their cage enough (wouldn't be the first time).
By the time Control found out otherwise, Hetty had been in Voegler's hands for two days, and Ethan Chalmers, damn his eyes, wanted to play the whole thing entirely by the goddamn book. .Negotiations. Authorized exchanges. Permission from those at the top (Mother may I?) excuses and pointless meetings and quotations from the rule book, and Chalmers saying that Archie should be patient; they needed more information. Archie knew how these things worked (time, and bitter experience). By the time the glaciers retreated (if they retreated at all) in Washington, they'd be planning Hetty's funeral.
("You always knew she was expendable, Wallace," Chalmers said, putting a hand on Archie's shoulder. "And she knew the risks going in." It took all of Archie's self control not to punch him in the face.)
When Blackbird got his hands on that little British courier last fall, Six moved heaven and earth on nothing more substantial than a rumor.
At least Clive had been willing to take a risk to try and get Hetty back. (Archie's pretty sure Clive hadn't asked Station's permission first; he hopes that one good deed isn't going to cost Clive his career.) That was Thursday night. By Friday morning, Clive was in the hospital in a hip cast and Baum was dead. The Ossies'd killed Baum on their own side of the damned wall: that's the part that doesn't make any sense.
And now it's Monday again.
Archie's feet take him to the café without his conscious volition. He's been coming here since just after the War. (Since back when that hat of yours was new, Hetty would say with a wry grimace.) Magda's grandmother Liesel owned the place then. (Magda's father and uncles all perished in defense of Fortress Germania.) Liesel was in her early sixties, still dark-haired and handsome and dignified as hell. (Liesel also spied for the East, but everyone knew it, so that was all right.) Magda was still in grade school then, a scrawny little girl with freckles and blonde pigtails tied with ribbons. She's in her thirties now, with two little boys of her own. (Archie's bones ache with the promise of an imminent snowstorm. He's getting too damned old for this.) Liesel's (Magda's) little café has always been one of the whistle-stops in Berlin's shadow world, a sort of neutral ground in the secret war. It's a place to meet contacts (informants), a place to pass messages, a place to shake hands and make deals that will never make it into the official reports.
But Archie's not meeting anyone today. He tried Gustav on Friday, but Gustav wouldn't take his calls. (No one's taking his calls these days. Archie's been in this business too long not to know what that means. He supposes it doesn't matter anymore.)
It's too damned cold out for tables on the sidewalk (cold enough to freeze your tits off, Hetty'd say when she wanted to shock someone), so he goes inside. The cowbell on the door clanks, but no one but Magda even bothers to look up. The food here isn't great (in all the years Archie's been coming here, it's seldom been better than mediocre), but no one here is particularly curious about anyone else. In a city where some days it feels like it's even odds that anyone you meet is might be a spy, that's a higher recommendation than five Michelin stars.
Magda bustles over as soon as Archie's settled himself at his usual table in the back corner. She starts to tease him about Hetty's absence, but whatever she sees in his face makes her close her mouth on the words.
"Coffee," he says. "Black."
Magda nods, searching his face, and bustles away again with a worried look.
He takes the pack of Gauloises out of his breast pocket, lays them on the table along with the heavy platinum lighter with the KGB crest. Not a trophy, but a gift. ("Next time, I'll shoot you," Ganya Mihailovich said with a smile, patting him on the shoulder and tucking the lighter into the pocket of Archie's greatcoat. "Go with God, Comrade Wallace.") Moscow was a different place twenty years ago.
Archie's fingers trace the old familiar engraving. Бог ненавидит шпион. Bog nyenavidit shpion. God hates a spy.
(Archie remembers Hetty standing on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder at the lighter. "What a horrible sentiment," she'd said, frowning. "I hope that's not your good luck charm." She was wearing the dress with the little blue flowers. She smelled of White Shoulders. "It's truer than scripture," he said with a rueful shrug. "This isn't an easy world, Hetty-girl." That was two years ago.)
He knows with a sick sort of certainty that Hetty is still alive. Blackbird has a timetable. Tomorrow Blackbird will start to break the bones in her feet. He's already pulled out her toenails.
Archie thinks of cyanide, of craving the taste of almonds and broken glass like a drowning man craves air.
Magda comes back with his coffee, sets it down without a word. Cream. Sugar. Little silver coffee spoon. By the time it occurs to him to thank her, she's gone.
#
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT 22 NOVEMBER 1965
OV: Oh, you poor dear girl. You misunderstand completely. I am only trying to help you, to let you go forward with a clear conscience. Won't that be lovely?
HL: (screaming in Russian)
#
Diary of Otto Voegler
22 November 1965
Last night Henrietta and I achieved such an amazing breakthrough that it stunned me to the point I could not make my customary entry in this diary. We had just resumed our work with her hands, when her entire demeanor underwent a sea-change. Her eyes became hard, nearly flintlike, and it was as if she had been replaced within her skin by another girl entirely, a girl whose acquaintance I have not yet had the pleasure to make. Thus far, our exchanges have been conducted in the civilized tongue of Goethe and Schiller. Now she addresses me wholly in the language of the barbarous Slav. Most fascinating of all, she denies utterly that she is Henrietta Lange of the United States of America. It is a point upon which she is most insistent, though she will not do me the courtesy of presenting me with another name under which I might address her.
I write this evening with the greatest excitement, for she has maintained her insistence throughout what I am persuaded was a most taxing -- though how exhilarating! -- day for us both. I tremble with excitement at the thought of tomorrow's discoveries.
Becker remains a fool.
#
Mission Berlin looks almost the same as it had (as it would) when Hetty brought Jack and Gary (her darling boys) over the river and through the woods (where Grandmother turned out to be more than a match for the Russian wolf). Same cement eagles. Same trees. Same fountains. He doesn't recognize the Marines on the door, but (of course) their uniforms are the same. It had been (would be? He's pretty sure he's always going to fucking hate time paradoxes) November then too.
O'Neill can't help but remember (Scarecrow asked the Wizard for a brain. He isn't so sure anymore that it's the sort of thing any sane person would want). The whole thing started that September (twelve years from now, a fortnight and odd days, in fair Gehenna where we lay our scene). Captain O'Neill still (secretly) felt that he looked dashing in uniform. The general's secretary apparently thought so too, given the way she smiled at him when she said, "If you'll just come this way, Captain." She had green eyes and a blonde bob. He was tempted to ask for her number. (O'Neill has no idea why he remembers that; funny the things that stick in your mind after forty-odd years.)
The two Marines manning the front entrance challenge them. That's no surprise. (He'd be worried if they didn't.) They've spent the last few hours behind a closed door (a shabby hotel catering to business travelers; he's said they'll be staying for three days and gave their names as Schmidt, Johann and Maria) using the ID Dani lifted as a template (turning in the wallet unharmed when they were done; Mr. T. Blankenship of Tulsa, Oklahoma (wife Jane, two boys, Mike and David) will have missed it by then but he'll get it back) and a few common household supplies to reinvent themselves. He's Mister Jack O'Neill, boy reporter. (The Gospel of Tyotia, chapter 10, verse 8: a press credential is easy to fake.) Dani is his dashing girl companion, Miss (not Ms., not yet) Danielle Jackson, both citizens of the good old US of A (a reporter for Die Welt or Der Spiegel wouldn't even get through the door). There's no reason to lie about their names (in 1965, he's in high school in Minnesota and she's only a few months old), and it's one less thing to trip them up.
He's got a story all prepared. Freelance reporter, working on a story about a series of disappearances in West Berlin and is it true they're connected to spying? Sure, it's Thanksgiving Day, but the presses don't stop for anything, and it gives them the advantage of a skeleton staff to deal with. The great thing about the world before the Internet is that it might be weeks before the nice folks at Mission Berlin figure out that Smilin' Jack O'Neill and Danielle Jackson don't actually exist. Possibly this is the one good thing about time travel, if there's any such thing as a good thing about time travel. ("The game was so much easier back in those days," Hetty said the last time he saw her in Washington.)
The Marine O'Neill's starting to think of as Tweedle-Dee (the name on the breast of the uniform identifies him as 'Smith'; how generic) takes their credentials and gives O'Neill a narrow look.
It's not much different than the look Henrietta Lange gave him that September afternoon.
It was all very hush-hush when they (for values of 'they' which involved men in Air Force uniforms who apparently didn't have names) dragged Captain O'Neill away from a training exercise and stuffed him on a chopper bound for the Pentagon. All they would say is that the general (who apparently didn't have a name either, how charming) would give O'Neill his orders when he got to D.C. So O'Neill wasn't really sure what he was expecting when the general's secretary finally showed him into the general's well-appointed office (the nameless general turned out to be Harry Chandler, a two-star in charge of Things Best Not Talked about, and that was and wasn't a surprise).
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't the tiny auburn-haired woman perched on the edge of General Chandler's couch, sipping tea from a china cup. Her brown eyes regarded O'Neill shrewdly for a moment (hot and cold all at once and he very nearly shivered) before she looked up at the general and said mildly, "This is he? He certainly doesn't look like much, does he?"
General Chandler had cleared his throat, and glanced from O'Neill to the woman and back again. (O'Neill tried in vain to guess her age, but it was fruitless. She might be twenty or a hundred and twenty.) "Captain O'Neill, I'd like you to meet Henrietta Lange. You two are going to be spending a lot of time together."
By November, they were in Berlin. And here they are again. (It's always a damp, drizzly November in his soul.)
Tweedle-Dee confers with Tweedle-Dum. (Tweedle-Dum's nametag says his real name is McCoy, but that's not much fun either.) Tweedle-Dum makes a phone call. O'Neill can't make out what Tweedle-Dum is saying, and he's turned away so that Dani can't read his lips. After another short conference with his other half, Tweedle-Dum says, "An escort will be arriving shortly, Mr. O'Neill, Miss Jackson."
They're handed off to a set of Army MPs. Tweedle-Dum (he sees no reason to give up the names; these guys all come in interchangeable pairs) shows them to a generic little waiting room. Ugly couch (burnt orange; his favorite color), ugly curtains, ugly little table with a mix of German and American magazines. It's no one's inner sanctum (it's not even a secretary's office), and Tweedle-Dee bringing up the rear implies a certain level of distrust, but at least it's past the front door. O'Neill says helpfully that he had an interview with Ethan Chalmers, and he's wondering if Chalmers's secretary forgot to write down the appointment. Yes, he says, he knows it's Thanksgiving, but Mr. Chalmers said...
Tweedle-Dum gives O'Neill another dubious look, but he leaves Tweedle-Dee outside the waiting room door and disappears somewhere into the bowels of the Mission. (On paper, Ethan Chalmers will be something meaningless and vague, like Secretary for Cultural Affairs or Information Services or whatever transparent buzz State is using to cloak its daggers). O'Neill is about eighty percent sure that the Wonder Twins don't believe a single fucking word of his lovely fresh-minted cover story; then again, getting shot would almost certainly be a real improvement over their present circumstances.
(Hetty always said he was an optimist.)
The first thing Captain O'Neill learned at Mission Berlin was that everyone on the American side was a fucking paranoid. The second thing Captain O'Neill learned was that Henrietta Lange really, really hated the station chief. She called him La Chalmers, or Princess, or the Asshole. Sometimes she even said it to his face. O'Neill suspected the feeling was mutual. In return, La Chalmers sneered at Hetty's boys when he thought they were out of earshot (which told O'Neill exactly how little credit the station chief gave him and Gary; any idiot with a bland expression could eavesdrop). "Those military boys think they're such hot shit, pardon my language Miss Lange," Chalmers said, as if she were a delicate flower of femininity (went to show how much the station chief knew). "They won't make it a week out there and we both know it."
"They'll make it through the year," Hetty promised with steel in her voice. "Just you wait."
They had, too. Thirteen months, then Gary's brains were spattered in the Moscow snow on the street below their apartment and he and Hetty were running for their lives.
Tweedle-Dum is gone almost forty-five minutes (O'Neill knows because he keeps glancing at the electric he clock on the wall, just like a reporter who's irritated at being kept waiting. The Gospel of Tyotia, chapter two, verse five: It's always the details that sell it). O'Neill tries to make small talk with Tweedle-Dee ("How about those Cubs?") but either the man is a selective mute or he's a Cards fan.
Dani just sits there on the burnt-orange couch, silent and sullen, right leg crossed over her left. There's no way to know what she (it?) is thinking.
Finally Tweedle-Dum comes back with a youngish man in a rumpled suit in tow. With a flicker of surprise, O'Neill recognizes Stuart Rogers. The carrot-colored hair and Roman nose are unmistakable. Stew presided over Archives when O'Neill first came to Berlin (when he would go to Berlin; Stew looks a lot younger right now, which O'Neill supposes shouldn't be much of a shock). O'Neill really hopes nothing shows in his expression. Stew was nice enough, and clearly On Their Side, so O'Neill had never understood why Hetty treated Stew (she always called him Mister Rogers) with a sort of icy disdain.
"Mister Rogers will be happy to answer whatever questions you might have," Tweedle-Dum says, with an expression that suggests the exact opposite. "We'll be right outside if you need anything, sir."
Stew studies them carefully (tries to look like he's not, but O'Neill knows the subtle tells, recognizes the way the man's eyes are flicking back and forth). O'Neill's sure Stew hasn't missed that O'Neill's clothes and Dani's are new from the skin out (and O'Neill knows exactly how bad that looks, but there wasn't exactly any hope for it). O'Neill holds his breath, tries not to look like he's doing it. Dani suddenly wakes up and smiles at Stew and babbles like a little brook about the wonders of the American reconstruction of Berlin. (She's cribbed it from the editorial page. Nice bit of tradecraft, but O'Neill's in no mood to admire it.)
Unsurprisingly, the interview with Stew (with Mister Rogers, as O'Neill is careful to call him) is nothing but half an hour worth of bullshit and doublespeak and misdirection (sorry you came all this way for nothing, some mistake, Mr. Chalmers celebrating Thanksgiving with his family, sorry, sorry, sorry), and of course Mister Rogers doesn't know anything about anything (nor does anyone else with the Mission, so far as he knows), and he's terribly sorry that he can't be more helpful. (Nope, no spies here; you've been reading too many lurid novels, Mr. O'Neill.)
As Stew's getting ready to usher them out, Dani pipes up to say that a friend of hers is working here, and she'd promised her mother they'd get together. She's tried phoning, but she thinks she might have the number wrong. Does he (perchance) know where she can find Hetty Lange?
"I'll show them out," Stew says to Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. He doesn't say anything else until he and O'Neill and Dani are standing out in the dingy gray snow.
"If you want to know anything about Hetty Lange," he says, "you'll want to talk to Archie Wallace."
#
The café Stew told them about turns out to be hidden in a warren of back alleys and side streets. It's a sad little place: grimy windows, peeling paint, faded red awnings shading the cramped courtyard with its mismatched assortment of wrought-iron tables (right now they're covered in snow, but surely some hardy souls come to sit out here in the spring). The menu posted beside the door looks like it dates from the War (World War Two; Korea is over and Vietnam is in full swing and a few years from now his younger self will be jumping out of planes into the jungle there). There's a battered Volkswagen parked at the curb.
"I were Archie, that's where I'd be," Stew said. Archie Wallace is Hetty's handler. (Not that either of them is a spy, of course; perish the thought.)
Dani sighs and squares her shoulders and pushes the door open. She should have waited for him to hold it open for her, but at least her body language is improving. (Give her a week or two and she'll fit right in, and Christ, he doesn't want to think about Plan B if they can't get Hetty out.) Right now she looks like herself (like an unimaginable conflation of Dani Jackson and Hetty Lange, and that's a terrifying thought), and it's almost possible to imagine that nothing's happened beyond this unimaginable goatfuck of a time trip. That there isn't something else hiding beneath her skin. (Invasion of the Body Snatchers was always one of his least favorite movies and that was even before he met his first snake.)
The interior of the café is dim and smoky and smells of sausage and fried potatoes. The furniture is worn, but not old enough or interesting enough to be antique. Old photographs and metal plaques advertising German beers line the walls. No one looks up when they walk in except a blonde woman in a cardigan and a blue dress. The place reminds O'Neill of the one in Munich where he and Jenny always met Gustav Schiller to talk business, right down to the customers with their dark, anonymous overcoats and their pointed lack of curiosity. (He tries not to think of the last glimpse he had of Other Jenny's face. He tries not to think of his Jenny's funeral, two years ago in another world. It's a losing battle.)
"I think that's him," Dani says, nodding toward the man at the table in the back corner by the kitchen.
O'Neill would have known him even without Stew's description. Wallace is sitting there smoking mechanically with that stunned expression of blank despair that O'Neill has seen too many times reflected in his own mirror. It makes O'Neill remember Kelowna. (This entire goddamned field trip is full of memories he'd rather not revisit.) Wallace knows that little Miss Lange (Stew called her that, with genuine affection) isn't coming home again.
O'Neill hopes he's wrong. Because Archie Wallace loves her. That's something he doesn't need to be told. He wonders if Hetty loves Wallace. It makes him wonder what she was like before she had her darling boys, before all those cramped little flats in Russia. He tries to imagine her in a dress like Dani's, or maybe in a flower-print frock with little kitten heels, sitting at one of the little tables in the courtyard on a bright spring day. O'Neill wonders what perfume she'd liked to wear. He tries to imagine Hetty smiling, an impish grin lighting her eyes.
The woman O'Neill knew had rarely smiled, save sometimes when he sat across from her at one battered kitchen table or another deep in the wolf hour. O'Neill liked to tease her when they were alone. It was a little like teasing the tiger at the zoo (in later years, Jethro would say grimly that O'Neill must be suicidal), but sometimes he was rewarded with a quiet chuckle and the quick bright flash of Hetty's smile. It seemed to him that Hetty Lange had sprung fully-formed from Zeus's forehead, that she'd always been his ageless Tyotia, fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. But this is twelve years before the first time he ever saw her.
(Dani smiled more too, twelve years ago.)
Wallace looks up from his coffee when he and Dani approach the table. He's lean, distinguished, graying, standing at that bizarre crossroads of middle age where a man might be forty-five or sixty or anything in between. There's a pair of glasses with black plastic frames in his breast pocket. (Reading glasses, probably, since Wallace isn't wearing them.) His expression isn't hostile. It isn't curious. It isn't really much of anything.
"Archie Wallace?" O'Neill asks.
"Who wants to know?" Wallace asks in a colorless voice, studying them. He sounds exhausted, grief-stricken, empty, but his eyes are still sharp.
"Friends," O'Neill says in a low voice. "We'd like to help."
Wallace's laugh is sharp and bitter, but he waves them into the empty chairs at the table, asks the blonde woman in the cardigan and blue dress (her name is Magda) to bring them both cups of coffee, offers each of them a cigarette.
#
Archie comes here every day now. He can't bear the Archives, the sympathy (false and true). He'll sit here, he thinks, until someone comes to find him (Stew, maybe, or one of the Friends) to tell him the Ossies are offering to return Hetty's body. Magda's come and gone several times, refilling his coffee cup, emptying his ashtray, offering him food he doesn't want and sympathy he doesn't dare accept. The pack of Gauloises is three quarters gone, but there's another pack in his coat pocket. He lights another one and takes a drag. Today is Thanksgiving. There's nothing to be thankful for. Voegler's had Hetty for ten days. She's still alive, he thinks. That's the worst.
He looks up as the man and the woman approach him. The man is somewhere in his late forties, early fifties, at a guess. He's about twenty miles south of 'distinguished,' but he's good-looking in a rakish sort of way. His bearing screams 'military', but he's not a Marine (Archie knows that type). Army, perhaps. He introduces himself as 'Jack' (maybe a real name, maybe not; the jury's still out) and his companion as 'Dani.' She's younger, but Archie isn't sure by how much. A glance at her wrists and her neck and the corners of her eyes (she's wearing sunglasses as she comes in; she takes them off now) puts her in her early thirties at most, but something about the way she holds herself suggests she's older than that by at least a decade. She seems uncomfortable in her clothes (stylish wool dress and smart black coat; Hetty would approve), or maybe it's that she's simply uncomfortable in her own skin.
'Jack' sounds like he's from somewhere in the Midwest (Archie suspects Minnesota, though it's clear that it's been some time since Jack last lived there); Dani's speech (she says she's very pleased to meet him, Mr. Wallace) is determinedly accentless (he wonders if English is her first language). 'Jack' says that they're friends, Americans (we're all on the same side, podnuh), that they've come to help.
It would be easier to believe them if every stitch of their clothes weren't brand shiny new. Even their shoes are new. Jack's look stiff enough that they're probably still giving him blisters.
Theirs or ours? Archie wonders (though he isn't sure, after everything, what 'ours' really means), and where were they before they were here? (it's the traditional refrain here in the city of spies). Maybe this is a trap. Maybe they're Ossies. Maybe they're Russian. (Maybe it doesn't matter anymore.) He should send them on their way, but he's not sure how talking to them will really make the situation any worse. In a week or two (Archie has no doubt, if even Gustav isn't returning his calls), the Friends will be planning wakes for Archie and Hetty anyway (whoever traced the microfilm to Hetty will trace it back to him). So he offers 'Jack' and 'Dani' cigarettes and coffee, and asks why they're so interested in risking their lives on behalf of little Henrietta Lange.
"I owe her," 'Jack' says, lighting his cigarette with Archie's proffered lighter, "more than you can possibly imagine."
Strangely, it has the ring of truth. What Archie doesn't understand is why this 'Jack' is studying the little platinum lighter with such intense interest. He reminds himself that it doesn't matter. This isn't Archie's puzzle anymore.
"She's in Stasi hands," Archie says quietly, flicking ash from his cigarette. "She has been for almost two weeks." He's repeated this story so often, to so many pairs of uncaring ears, that it's starting to seem like a litany. (The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want).
"So we'll go over the Wall and get her," 'Jack' says, and Archie can't help but bark a laugh. Maybe they're not spies. Maybe they're just crazy.
"And how exactly," Archie asks (maybe he's crazy too, for not sending them packing this very instant), "do you propose to do that?"
"We'll go in as KGB," 'Jack' says evenly, and now Archie is positive they're crazy, but this seems like such a strange surreal dream (the last ten days have seemed like the kind of awful nightmare that wakes you up sweating at two in the morning) that Archie just keeps talking to them. "They'll roll over for their big brothers from the Worker's Paradise." (When he talks, Archie notices, he stumbles over the slang. Just a millisecond's hesitation, something anyone else probably wouldn't notice, but Archie Wallace isn't "anyone else.")
And he wonders how much 'Jack' already knows, to know that's a plausible approach.
"There isn't time," he says. "That kind of operation will take months of preparation--" (Months of preparation and a native's fluency in Russian, but Archie has to assume that this 'Jack' knows about the language requirement.) "--and Hetty doesn't have months. Hell, she probably doesn't even have another three days. You'd be crazy to--"
"We've got it covered," 'Jack' says with chilling assurance. He exchanges a look with 'Dani' that hints at the sorts of telepathic conversations that Archie used to have with Clive once upon a time during the War. She nods fractionally.
Archie studies her. She doesn't look like much. Dressed smartly, but she's barely even looked at Archie since she and 'Jack' sat down at the table. She took a cigarette when Archie offered it, but then sat there holding (unlit) it as if it might bite her. 'Dani's' the sort of girl the Farmboys might hire as a secretary, but she'd never make it even as a low-level courier. Everything about her screams "terrified American mouse".
And then in a moment, in an instant, 'Dani' changes, so completely that Archie wonders who (what) she really is. Suddenly she's not mousy, but striking (terrifying), almost thrumming with an intensity that makes Archie want to avoid meeting her eyes at the same time he's drawn to her. She gets to her feet, takes a step back as if they're both suddenly unclean, and when she speaks, her voice is like knives. It's flawless Russian (her accent suggests she was born in Moscow and has lived her whole life there). She has no time for this foolishness. They are children, playing at games. Soft bourgeois American dogs. She regards Archie with a sneer, and there's so much matter-of-fact hatred (so much menace) there that it's all he can do not to recoil.
'Jack' looks startled, almost afraid. (Archie isn't sure it's an act.) When 'Dani' (who in God's name is she?) snaps her fingers and gestures impatiently with the cigarette, 'Jack' scrambles to light it. He fumbles for a moment with the lighter before he manages it. She takes a long drag and blows smoke in his face. "Kapitalistichyeskiye svin'i," she snarls. Capitalist pig.
Archie clears his throat, hoping he doesn't sound as shaky as he feels. "All right," he says. "I'm convinced." Something, anything, to put this genie back in the bottle. (If 'Jack' is as good as she is, they could walk into the Kremlin tomorrow and make off with the family silver.)
"Dani," 'Jack' says sharply. "Enough." (It has the snap of command, but 'Jack' looks worried.) There's a moment of hesitation (a moment of what seems like struggle), and then 'Dani' is back, quiet and unremarkable and maybe a little bit shy. She sits down, stares at the cigarette as if she doesn't know how it got into her hands, places it in the ashtray with the care one would use disposing of a live grenade. She takes a deep breath. Puts on the sunglasses again (a little odd, that; it's dark in here).
"We'll get Hetty -- Miss Lange -- back," she says, and she sounds perfectly ordinary. Perfectly American. "Don't worry."
After that it's only formalities.
The list of items 'Jack' says they'll need gives Archie even more conviction that whoever these two are, this is not their first rodeo. Papers (four sets). Disguises (An Ossie officer's uniform for him, a red dress and heels and a blonde wig for her; clothes suitable for high-ranking KGB officers for once they're across the Wall; Jack says they can handle getting across.). A safehouse on the other side where they can change (where it will be Archie's job to see the KGB disguises are waiting). Cars. Weapons.
It will take twenty-four hours or so to get them, and that only if Archie calls in every marker he has left. By the time they can go, his Hetty-girl will have been in Blackbird's hands for twelve days.
"You'll need drugs," Archie says, forcing his voice to evenness. "And cyanide."
#
It is dark, so dark that she can't even see her hand in front of her in the dim light. It seems as though it has always been dark, always been so cold that her bones ache and her breath catches in her chest.
(It seems now as if she has always been in pain.)
Hetty tries to remember the sun filtering through new leaves in April (tries to remember the cherry trees blooming in St. Petersburg. Mikhail took his pretty little Milla to see them, and bought her a lovely gold ring to wear). She can't. All she can see in her mind's eye is the dingy bricks in the alley behind the little bakery, and the gravel and sheen of oil on the puddle when she fell.
When she finally falls into a fitful doze, she dreams of angels.
"Just hang on," they whisper. "Morning's coming."
When she wakes again, it's still dark.
#
This is your fault.
The phrase beats out in time to the hammer of her high heeled shoes against the concrete. In German -- Das ist deine Schuld -- in Russian Это ваша вина; Jeto vasha vina -- in English, English, English--
Speak English. Why can't you speak English, bitch? Are you stupid?
And she clutches the rage to her like a blanket, like a bandage, like armor: someone else's fault. The losses, the horrors, the failures. Every time the impossible slipped through her fingers. All the people whose blood stained her hands (Mama, Daddy, Sha're, Janet, such a long list, so very very long...) while he did nothing but say: Come on. We need to try again.
This is your fault.
This is your fault, Jack.
Your fault.
She's trapped in the past, and if they can't rescue a woman who might already be dead (Archie Wallace thinks she is, dead or dying, he gave them cyanide and Jack called it the gift that keeps on giving), if she can't perform the role she did in the real reality, Earth will be destroyed again (eternally) by the Goa'uld, and Dani will help them. Because A to B to see what happens when Hetty Lange is removed from the equation, and she doesn't understand, because Jack hasn't explained, and it comes around to Jack again (always and forever) and her heart beats fast with hate.
This is your fault.
He's afraid. She knows that and she hates him more, even though she's so terrified she can hardly breathe. They could die here, fail, worse (he hasn't thought of that and her rage is metal under her tongue) be captured and they will torture her undying regenerating flesh to madness and never believe her truths.
She stands in the elevator, smelling dust and disinfectant. The doors open into the cell block: she smells ammonia and iron and sulphur and salt.
There are two guards at a desk and the words she needs to speak boil out of her throat on a tide of rage.
Your fault.
The night commander (young and terrified; they went in after midnight for just that reason) stammers as he tells the guards to give her every assistance, and she can barely keep herself from turning to strike him--
These are the chains I forged in life. Here the monster, here the shadow.
--but at least it keeps her from being afraid. It keeps her hands from shaking as she hands over documents, transfer orders, authorizations. I am a traveler from an antique land. She knows better than to think about later, about the fact this is a fake, a game, a hoax, a masquerade, because thinking about getting away with it will doom it. But she feels a sense of progress as one of the guards gets to his feet, offers her a clipboard, picks up a ring of keys.
The phone rings. The other guard answers it. She can already (enhanced senses, the fruit of her devil's bargain) hear the elevator rumble. Captain Gesicht made all sorts of phone calls upstairs while they were working their way down to where the magic happens.
She wonders what effect it would have on the future if she and Jack just shot everyone here.
‹"Herr Voegler wishes to oversee the transfer of the prisoner,"› the guard says.
‹"Perhaps Herr Voegler would like to accompany the prisoner as well?"› she snarls, and the rage, the rage fills her skin, fills her throat, drives out the cold and the dark and the fear...
She doesn't look toward the elevator. She strides past the desk (she doesn't know which cell is her goal, but it doesn't matter, the guard runs to place himself ahead of her, keys in hand) and Jack follows and little captain Gesicht, and she hears the elevator doors open and somehow (it's imagination, she has to ignore it) the temperature in the cellblock drops several degrees.
‹"Who are you?"› she hears from behind her, (the voice is soft, cultured, Bavarian accent, she thinks) but she doesn't answer. They've reached the cell door, and the guard (propelled by the force of her will) unlocks it.
He pushes it open (after you, Miss), and she steps forward. The room smells of blood, vomit, feces, urine. A small room, windowless, caged bulb above, bunk with a bare stained mattress. There's a drain in the middle of the floor.
For a moment she thinks (will think later, when she isn't letting the monster drive) that they're holding a child prisoner here. She wonders (will wonder) why the child is wearing red slippers, red gloves, then she moves, turns, and the head is shaved, the scalp is bleeding, the ears are cropped and mutilated (blood streaks the neck) but this is no child.
She hears Jack suck in a sharp breath, loud as a shout to her ears: we aren't who we say we are, and it's as if her back has suddenly developed some heretofore unsuspected ability to perceive, because she can see the stricken look on Jack's face, see the horror that jars him out of the seeming that will save them (sees him turn from god to man to corpse like some Eastern ascetic, pointing the way to the dark room with the knives) and so she does the only thing she can do.
She lengthens her stride, hurries forward. "Amyerikanskaya sooka!" she hisses. American bitch. Her words are almost covered by the sound of the slap. The woman goes sprawling. There's blood on her hand now. And that means she can turn back (to Jack, to the monster behind him, plump and smiling like a shopkeeper) and order the prisoner prepared for travel.
(She cannot imagine how the prisoner, how Hetty Lange, can walk or even stand on those bags of ruined meat; she cannot be sure Jack can play his part now and this is your fault, this is your fault, Jack, your fault. and she lets her attention waver for a dreadful foolish second and Hetty Lange is up again, grabbing at her (blood on the uniform blouse), grabbing for her gun, for Comrade Danella Alexandrovna's gun, and there's white behind her eyes and the taste of metal in her mouth and she rages as she tries to keep from killing Hetty and make it look natural. ‹"God damn you, Comrade Gora, are you useless?"› she snarls, and finally Jack is moving forward, thank god.)
(Comrade Danella Alexandrova Ivachenko does not believe in god.)
He fumbles out the leather case that holds the delicate glass-and metal syringe with its freight of nepenthe and she hates him, hates him, hates him (this is your fault) and she sees the anger (finally) kindle behind his eyes and he lays hands on Hetty Lange (Comrade Ivachenko only belatedly registers the sound of hysterical screaming; at least it isn't her own) and she can take the syringe and grab the outthrust arm and sink its terrible gleaming weight into the vein (return to get blood, to be sure she isn't killing the woman they've come to save with a hasty embolism) and drops the expended item into her pocket before she turns.
They call him Blackbird, Voegler, interrogator. Special Minister for State Security. Stasi's creature, who ruins women beyond the dictates of his office and she thinks of darkness, of screams, of slender hands slipping along her arm saying: please, Dani, I know you can do it, please, let me go, and this is the monster who did it all, the zeitgeist with a thousand faces, always the creature of its age, and she thinks of Goa'uld, Lucian Alliance, Ori Priors, Ori faithful, of all the monsters who break things (people) just because they can and desire makes her tremble, makes her cheeks flush, and she licks her lips, looking at him, wanting him.
(The screaming in the darkness, and the wet sounds, and the tears....)
‹"Since you have been unable to produce results,"› she says, holding his eyes, ‹"we felt it this matter would be better left in more competent hands."›
He's spellbound (all the boys want me...) and for just an instant she watches him teeter on the razor edge of denouncing them, arresting them, anything to get the chance to be alone with her (and she wants to be alone with him but there's the future of humanity to consider), but then he clears his throat self-consciously (it's a signal of submission; reading them is her business) and breaks the gaze.
‹"It is unreasonable to expect results so quickly,"› he says.
‹"Fortunately your superiors no longer do,"› she answers. As she walks toward him (strike and strike as her shoes hammer out the accusation against the concrete: all your fault) he steps away, moving out of her way, moving away from her, and Jack can walk Hetty Lange along behind her (frog march, death march) and into the elevator. Captain Gesicht goes with them, assuring Moscow of every cooperation (won't he be surprised when the real KGB shows up in a day or two?) and it's up two floors, and left instead of right this time, down the hallway and out the side door (bloody footprints on the tile, well, that's what an easy care floor is for) with Captain Gesicht holding it for them and she waves a hand, dismissing him, because Hetty Lange is rousing, starting to struggle, clearly a prisoner still but any attention, any delay, will kill them all.
Then they're at the car (black, Mercedes, odd and antique to her twenty-first century gaze) and Jack looks stricken, and Hetty is about to scream.
‹"We're friends!"› Dani says urgently (and oh god, banishing the monster, banishing Danella Alexandrova Ivachenko back to the formless nothingness, raising Dani up to live and think and feel again, is like cutting off her own arm; tears gather in her throat and she wants to scream). ‹"We're here to help you! We're going to get you out!"›
She only belatedly realizes she's said it in German.
Hetty doesn't believe her (Dani wouldn't, in her place), but Jack (thank fuck) has the door open, and right now it doesn't take the strength of the snake along her spine to get Hetty into the back seat. Jack closes the door (they're on their way to safety) and Hetty Lange is struggling, whimpering in fury and terror and pain, and Jack slides into the front seat and they're moving, and all Dani can do is hold Hetty close.
"We're friends," Jack says urgently in English. (Half turning in his seat as they stop at a light, and Dani wants to scream at him because it's Jack, not Colonel Gora, and someone will see...) His hands shape signs that Dani knows as: we will support your position and says: "We're from Archie. Archie sent us. Archie Wallace."
"I swear. I swear," Dani says, forcing Berlin and Moscow out of her voice.
"Do tell," Hetty says, and her eyes are flint hard. She takes a quick sharp breath. "In that case, you can give me a cigarette."
Dani fumbles for one, before realizing that Jack has the case. He passes them back (case and lighter both) and Dani realizes they have a passport to Hetty's trust. She opens the case (puts the cigarette between Hetty's lips; her hands are mangled beyond use and Dani can't imagine what it must take to sit there with them folded calmly in her lap) and lights it. "Archie gave us this to show you," she says, holding the lighter on her palm. "Archie Wallace. He said to bring it back." She turns it over carefully, an archaeologist showing off a find, displaying the inscription on the back. God Hates A Spy. Dani's starting to believe it.
Hetty draws a long ragged breath. The cigarette falls. Dani catches it and places it between her lips again.
"I don't suppose you have a martini in your bag of tricks too?" Hetty says evenly.
"Whiskey," Dani answers. "And morphine." And cyanide (the capsules are cold and hard in her mouth), and thank god they (probably) won't need it now.
The whiskey lasts until they get to the turnover point (ditch one car, switch to the other) along with three cigarettes (which Dani helps with, because they seem almost as important to Hetty as freedom, and she remembers Abydos, and being in the middle of a goddamned alien planet and Jack was putting everything on hold to light up), but she can't get Hetty to accept more sedation, even though every time the car jars she holds her breath.
Then they stop, and Jack says, "I'm afraid both of you ride the rest of the way in the trunk," nodding at the other car, and Dani whispers, "Please, Miss Lange," offering nepenthe once more, but Hetty shakes her head resolutely.
There's a blanket in the trunk, two, and Jack picks up one and Dani lies down on the other, and Jack helps Hetty into the trunk (where Dani cushions her with her body, feeling the blood soak into the clothes she's wearing), and covers Hetty with a second blanket.
#
The trunk slams shut with a final-sounding thunk and it's dark again (it seems as if it's always been dark). Darkness and pain and terror and such as sit in darkness and the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron and Hetty feels her heart start to race--
Hetty Lange, I am Hetty Lange--
(and she clings to it even as she knows that she doesn't dare so much as think that name, not here in the darkness, because he will come, and he will ask -- with knives and fire and worse, he will ask -- and she must not tell him, never, never, never. If she does, Archie will die, and Mikhail.)
And in the darkness, arms tighten around her (it hurts, and yet she wants to weep with relief) and someone says, "Shhhh…"
(There is an angel here with her, in the darkness.)
She feels her breath catch on a sob, and another, and another (my name is Hetty Lange) and she gasps for breath and knows her ribs are broken--
They threw her down against the cement and then one of them kicked her (Hans, or was it Karl?) and she bit her lips against the screams until they bled--
"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry." (We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and what we have left undone.)
"It's all right," the angel says, pressing her lips against Hetty's bare scalp. "It's all right. Shhhh. You didn't tell them anything."
"He broke my fingers," she whispers (confession or plea, and maybe it doesn't matter anymore because she must be dying; Blackbird kills everything he touches). "He broke all my fingers. He was smiling."
He had a lovely tenor voice, and he sang, he sang in English. "Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. She shall have music wherever she goes," and she didn't scream, she didn't--
(even though she knew no one was coming, no one was ever coming, and all she could do was pray for death)
And the angel holds her close (the angel smells of cigarettes and whiskey and Russian perfume, the angel smells like home) and Hetty thinks of her papa, who always came running when she had a nightmare, and she starts to weep again.
"Archie," she breathes (and her breath rattles against her ribs and she knows she's bleeding; she's been bleeding for days, she's been bleeding forever, and they tied Prometheus to the rock with unbreakable bonds, and the vultures came, and came, and came).
"He's waiting for you," the angel says, "in the West. We're taking you to him."
She remembers the smell of tweed and whiskey and Gauloises, remembers smiling eyes and laughter.
(He called her his Hetty-girl and smiled when he said it.)
"Please," she says, "tell him that I love him."
And it's the truth, the plain truth, she told Clive in a drunken haze before she left for Russia and wished she'd been too drunk to remember it after, and swore him to secrecy, and oh she shouldn't have. (She should have told Archie on her birthday, or that afternoon he took her to the zoo and the boy snapped their picture for fifty Pfennig, or that morning when they stood in his kitchen and she made him an omelet and teased him about the state of his pantry--)
and they came for her in the alley behind the little bakery and there were three of them and they tore off the bracelet, all the pretty little birds; it had been her birthday gift, and they threw her in the trunk (another trunk, a trunk without any angels) and there wasn't any more light after that--
"You have to tell him," she whispers to the angel (even though it's rude to make demands of angels.) "Promise."
(My name is Hetty Lange.)
"I didn't break," she says. Prayer and a promise. "I didn't scream."
not even at the end
The angel strokes her head, her scalp (she'd had such lovely hair once, the color of mahogany; lovely hair and hats, and Clive had brought her one from Paris after she stole his favorite cufflinks and held them for ransom and Archie had been properly horrified; that was the point, after all, that and the hat).
"You can tell him yourself," the angel says gently. "We'll be there before long. Just hold on."
All she can do is whimper, and hold her breath as the car jolts along.
It's still dark.
#
Darkness, and the reek of blood, and she cradles the woman in her arms as if Hetty Lange is the child she will never have. Dani ("I'm Dr. Danielle Jackson; we're peaceful explorers.") thinks of torchlit rooms, and screaming, and her own laughter (the snake queen's laughter, the shadow-self) rising above them, hard and bright and mocking.
For this. All for this. For the shattered terrified woman she holds in her arms, trying to cushion her against every jar, hearing her strangled tears and whispered pleas. The woman Jack loves (first and best, she knows, oh, she knows). The woman who sent him down the years to save and redeem her.
"Morning's coming," Dani promises. "It always comes. It doesn't even matter if you believe it, because it's true."
Jack taught her that.
"Please," Hetty whispers, and Dani holds her, strokes her back, tells her she has important work ahead, vital, they're taking her to Archie, and he loves her and she has to live. The words spill out of her now, a gossamer lifeline in the dark, promising Hetty a future of life, of love, of good works. (Morning always comes.) She can feel Hetty listening, she wills all her strength into her, talking on and on. She doesn't know what she says (her voice drowns out the screams in her own mind; her breath against Hetty's face washes away the reek of blood).
"I promise," she says. "I promise, I promise. But you have to live. You have to."
If she doesn't, they all go down into the dark.
#
The little square is dark and quiet. It's the sort of place that no one really goes after sundown. A few blocks away, Berlin's (West Berlin's) nightlife bustles along, in a whirl of glittering lights and people in fur coats and dark wool, and clouds of smoke and laughter floating out of open doorways and into the night. If life were fair (which it isn't, as Archie has known for almost as long as Hetty has been alive; God hates a spy) his Hetty-girl would be among the crowds of people flushed with drink and laughter.
Hetty likes (liked) to dance.
Archie tries to remember her as she'd been on her last birthday (the birthday before she went off to Russia), wearing that garnet frock and those little black heels and a hat that defied description (it had feathers) and had probably cost as much as a small third world country. (Clive would know; he was the one who had to buy it.)
(Archie had scoured the city for weeks, looking for the perfect gift. He finally found it in a dusty glass case at the back of an unremarkable little pawnshop that seemed like a relic from a previous age. A little gold bracelet with links in the shape of starlings. He knew when he held it in his hand that it would fit Hetty as if it had been made for her. She smiled -- oh, how she smiled -- when he said, "Happy birthday, Miss Lange," and clasped it around her wrist. The Ossie bastards tore it off when they grabbed her. Archie found it on the ground in the alleyway behind the bakery, the clasp broken.)
He tries not to think about how long Voegler's had Hetty (Archie can count it out, almost to the hour), what he's probably done to her by now (his Hetty had such lovely hands; she loved her delicate little rings and her manicures and when Archie thinks about her fingers he wants to weep or retch or both because oh, he knows, he knows. He's seen the photos of the blinded, mutilated corpses Blackbird sends; every joint broken, handless, tongueless, their faces a nightmare of gaping holes and bloody lipless teeth. It takes him two weeks to get there. Fourteen days. It's been twelve days since Hetty vanished. She should still have her face, her eyes, intact. (He swallows hard against the bile of nightmare memory.)
(That little courier from Six had only (only!) lost three of the fingers on her left hand. The doctors took them to save her life, and she hanged herself anyway because of everything else Voegler did.)
Hetty's favorite quilt is folded neatly on the back seat of the car (black, anonymous, borrowed), in the front there's a briefcase that holds her well-worn copy of Anna Karenina (she left it with him when she went to Russia, along with a few small boxes of personal things), and a bottle full of morphine and a syringe. If 'Jack' and 'Dani' bring her back, he will wrap her in the quilt and put the morphine in her arm and read to her until she sleeps the sleep from which there's no awakening.
It's the last gift he can give his Hetty-girl. If 'Jack' and 'Dani' got to her at all. If they bring her out. If they didn't just feed her cyanide the instant they saw her, because it was the kindest thing, the right thing, to do.
Hetty believes (believed) in the power of prayer, but it's been years since Archie Wallace believed in a good God. (God -- the good one, the kind one; the Lord leadeth me beside still waters one -- belongs to a little Lutheran church in Chilton, Wisconsin, to Sunday suppers with his Grandma Brillon, to a life Archie hasn't lived since 1941. He's always envied his Hetty-girl her faith.)
The God Archie knows best hates spies.
He parks at the edge of the square and gets out. The night is overcast and oddly warm, and the streets of Berlin are filled with mist that smells of stone and metal. Memory guides him toward the fountain in the center; as good a place to wait as any. The firefly gleam of a cigarette beside it is Archie's first warning he's not alone.
He freezes and stills his breathing, and a million possibilities race through his mind at once. Theirs, Ours, an enemy, a trap, waiting for him, waiting for Hetty, and death (a quick death, by knife or gunshot or poison) would almost be a relief, but he owes his darling girl the chance to see a friendly face before the end. Archie's turning to bolt (hoping the owner of the cigarette hasn't seen him; it's as dark as a witch's cellar at midnight out here and the fog muffles sound), but the stranger calls out to him, cheerfully.
"Another spectator for the rendezvous? I hope you're on our side, because otherwise I think I shall be quite cross with the interruption." The accent is nothing Archie was expecting, Jo'burg with hints of more exotic locales, and it stops him cold. Mossad, maybe (if a long way from home), or the Mukhabarat (same), or maybe CIA (Langley goes fishing in strange waters these days, though the catch isn't always fit for human consumption) because Archie can't imagine what the South Africans could possibly want with the situation. Maybe the man is Six, but the universe probably doesn't like Archie that much.
"Depends on what you mean by 'our side', friend," Archie says neutrally, keeping his distance and putting his hand on his gun. There's still time and room to run; never trust Greeks (or anyone else) bearing kind words and gifts.
"Oh," the stranger says, with laughter in his voice, "the side composed of those of us who have gotten sucked into yet another of Jack and Dani's harebrained schemes. You've met, I'm sure. It's a good thing they're both amusing and easy on the eyes; I've never met a pair so fond of going off-book." The stranger taps ash from his cigarette; Archie can see the sullen glowing point moving through the air.
"You're their handler," Archie says in sudden understanding, and feels something unknot, just a little, in his chest.
"Guilty as charged," the stranger says affably, taking a few steps forward (trenchcoat and fedora, neat black beard). "Kevin Balim, of... nowhere in particular. You understand. I'd be happy to flash my credentials but it's too goddamned dark, and something tells me a flashlight is not exactly the order of the day. Cigarette?"
"Archie Wallace," he says, closing the distance between them. "And I've got my own, but I'd appreciate a light." He fishes the pack of Gauloises out of his coat pocket, taps a cigarette out and into his hand. (Hetty always hated the way they smelled, said that if Archie really loved her he'd start smoking Marlboros like every other self-respecting American.)
"Terrible thing about your girl," the stranger (Balim) says, and the flame from his lighter blooms in the darkness. The lighter is gold. In its wavering light, Archie can see that Balim's of medium height, medium build. The trenchcoat is wool, maybe cashmere: Archie can smell the damp fiber. ("Wool is lovely warm," Hetty said once, "the trouble is, every time it rains you wind up smelling like a wet dog.") Balim's smoking something expensive: Dunhill's, Archie thinks. There's a faint scent of cologne.
Archie takes a drag and coughs in the cold air. "Can they get her back?" he demands. It's rude (he should say thank you, make small talk), but the horrible twisting feeling in his gut won't let him say anything else.
Balim laughs ruefully. "Count on it. If it can't be done, send … Jack and Dani," he says, and Archie has the sense of words elided, and wonders what Balim meant to say before he caught himself (the internal censor is the curse of the spy). "If they can't do it, at least you'll have a nice little war to distract you."
Archie laughs despite himself. He can't help it. "What's their interest in all this?" Might as well keep on being rude; Balim doesn't seem to mind it, and it's not as if Archie has a career to go back to after this.
"My Jacky-boy says he owes your Hetty a favor." Balim flips his cigarette butt into the fountain, takes out a cigarette case, lights another. His cigarette case is gold; something with jewels but it's too dark to tell more. "It must be one hell of a favor, because he's … highly motivated. Before you ask, I have no idea. I didn't exactly get a blow-by-blow of the time he spent in the Eastern Bloc."
"Guess that makes us even," Archie says agreeably, "because my girl didn't mention this Jack of yours to me, either." (He wonders if Hetty ever met 'Dani'; if so, he'd dearly love to know what she'd made of her.)
"Children," Balim says with a chuckle. "I saw your girl -- Hetty, is it? -- across the room at the Felsenkeller once. Little slip of a thing, but Jack's always talked about her like she was some kind of legend."
Archie thinks of Russia, of East Germany, of the little rubber tree in the foyer of Mission Berlin and all the amazing travels it went on in its glorious career as a playing piece in the games of Hetty's early training. "You don't know the half of it," he says finally. "She's the best I've ever run. Both hands full of miracles." He supposes it doesn't matter who knows it now. (He won't think about Hetty's hands as they must be now.)
(There should have been a medal ceremony in the Rose Garden in December, with Hetty in a smart Chanel suit, blushing furiously and looking self-satisfied all at once. Hetty loved roses. If there'd been more time, he would have found some to bring her. Archie supposes the Friends will send them, for the funeral.)
"They'll bring her home alive," Balim promises gently. "Have faith, Mr. Wallace."
They stand in the biting cold and the dark and smoke cigarette after cigarette, Archie Wallace and Kevin Balim. When a cigarette burns down to almost nothing, one or the other of them lights another. It's "Archie" and "Kevin" and "Thanks for the light," and they try to pretend that this is just another midnight drop.
(Archie remembers, in another age, telling his Hetty-girl sympathetically that most of spycraft was waiting, not doing. He remembers thinking how pretty she was. He thinks of the quilt and the syringe full of morphine in the back seat of his car.)
Fortunately, Balim doesn't seem to be the hail-fellow-well-met sort who wants to compare war stories; Archie isn't sure he could have borne that. (Spies are supposed to be silent and secretive. So many in the second-oldest profession aren't. Archie told Hetty once that gloating was bad form.) Mostly they stand in companionable silence and smoke.
Archie tries not to think of his Hetty-girl, but it's like trying not to think of anything else.
Hetty loved roses. (He wants to think of her in the present tense, and can't.) All roses, but particularly the little pink ones called Madame Dore. Clive would have searched high and low to make sure there were some at the funeral, but Clive's in the hospital. Archie wishes any of this made sense.
Who had known enough about what Hetty brought back from Russia to tip the Stasi off? She hadn't even been officially debriefed yet. Why had they killed Baum when Clive tried to trade Baum for Hetty? The East had been demanding Baum's return for six months. Why was La Chalmers quoting the rulebook left, right, and center when his off-book operations were an open secret and half the reason he got the promotion to station chief at such a tender age?
Questions without answers, but they're better than thinking about what his darling girl is going to look like when (if) 'Jack' and 'Dani' bring her back across the wall. Archie will tell her that she's beautiful, of course. He'll tell her as many times as she wants to hear it. He thinks he'll even mean it.
At least she'll get to die warm in the arms of someone who loves her, and not alone in a filthy, frigid little prison cell.
That alone will be a miracle; gloria in excelsis Deo. (God hates a spy.)
After another hour (it seems endless, but Archie's always been good at judging time even when it's too damned dark to see his watch), a car comes rumbling into the square. No headlights. Archie flinches at the sound of gravel and snow crunching under the tires (as loud as a gunshot in the silence) and wonders friend or foe? They'll know soon enough.
The headlights flash twice. Friends. 'Jack' and 'Dani.'
Archie expects Balim to make some comment about the return of his prodigal children (the man never seems to miss an opportunity to make a joke), but Balim says nothing.
Odd.
Archie takes the flashlight from his pocket, flashes it twice. (Thinks giddily, one if by land, two if by sea).
Then the driver's side door opens, and a man gets out. In the dimness, Archie can't make out details (can't even see if the man is wearing a hat), but he's 'Jack's' height, 'Jack's' build. The man goes around to the trunk and opens it. Lifts out what looks to be a bundle of blankets.
Archie's breath catches in his throat.
#
How many miles to Babylon? Three score miles and ten. Can I get there by candle-light? Yes, and back again. O'Neill doesn't know why the old nursery rhyme is running through his head right now. Maybe it's to stop him from listening for sounds from the trunk. Imagining he can hear them (he knows too well what they'd be).
Comrade Gora, KGB Colonel, is gone. Hauptfach Maibaum of the NPA (he's sure Harry would approve, even if the translation isn't exact) crosses Checkpoint Charlie (papers all in order, sir, have a good night) into the West. The fog is thicker here. Easy to get lost in. He douses his lights as he turns into the street leading to the rendezvous point. Ghosts in, flashing his headlights twice.
There's the blink of a flashlight, twice, echoing the headlights.
He gets out of the car, opens the trunk. It's dark here, but Dani blinks at the light. The woman in her arms is motionless. Blood has soaked through the blanket.
"She's alive," Dani whispers.
The woman stirs. "Archie?" she mumbles.
"I'm taking you to him," Jack says (bites back the Tyotia at the end of the sentence; this is not (not yet) his Queen of Air and Darkness.) As gently as he can, he gathers the tiny broken body into his arms, wraps it in the blanket that covers it. She whimpers, and he grits his teeth.
"Wait!" Dani says urgently, scrambling out of the trunk. (The KGB uniform is blood-soaked.) She fumbles for something, then tucks it into the blankets. "Archie's lighter. I said you'd bring it back."
In the dimness, O'Neill sees Hetty smile. "I love him," she whispers, as if bestowing a gift.
"I know," Dani answers.
Then he's turning away, carrying the blanket toward the man who's waiting. Archie Wallace holds out his arms. Jack transfers her gently.
"I didn't break," Hetty whispers through cracked lips. "I didn't talk."
"I know," Wallace says. "I know, dear heart."
"Her hands and feet are the worst," O'Neill says (cold comfort). "Can you get her to a hospital?"
He sees Wallace hesitate, a fractional beat that tells him more than he wants to know. "She came back for you," O'Neill says fiercely. "Don't throw that away."
Wallace meets his eyes and nods once. Then he turns away. O'Neill follows him, opening the back door of the sedan so Wallace can lay her gently on the seat. There's a quilt there (what O'Neill's grandmother would have called a 'ragbag quilt'). Wallace folds it around her and shuts the door.
"Who are you?" he asks quietly, and O'Neill smiles.
"Just a dream."
Wallace nods again and steps around to the driver's side. O'Neill hears the engine start. He's turning back to his own car (got to do something about Dani's clothes, she can't parade through Berlin looking like that) when the voice stops him.
"Hello, Jack."
He freezes. It takes all the willpower he has to turn back and face that voice, but he does.
Ba'al steps out of the shadows. It tosses its cigarette to the ground. There's a shower of sparks like stars. They don't glow as brightly as the serpent's eyes.
"What an exciting chase you've led me, the pair of you. I think I'm entitled to some compensation for that, don't you think? In fact--"
The sentence stops short. Ba'al vanishes like a magician's trick. The fog swirls, and (belatedly) O'Neill registers the sound of a ribbon weapon firing. A heartbeat later, Dani runs past him, stockinged feet noiseless on the cobbles. The weapon coiled over her hand glows red; he sees it flash as she runs.
"Dani!" he shouts, running after her. But the fog's too thick to see clearly. He hits something -- the edge of a fountain -- and falls.
He claws to his knees, swearing, gasping. He knows how this story ends. Ba'al's going to escape, find Hetty and finish her off. It would be a mercy if the thing killed both of them first, but mercy isn't a quality he associates with Ba'al.
The sound of the gunshots is flat and sourceless through the distorting fog. He counts them automatically. Eight. A full clip.
Then nothing.
Silence.
He counts his heartbeats, getting to his feet as quietly as he can. He and Dani reconnoitered the square yesterday by daylight. He summons up a mental picture, tries to orient himself. Tries to decide where the shots came from.
He doesn't dare call out. (You never know who might be listening.)
A sound. At first it's meaningless noise. Slowly it resolves.
"King and Queen of Cantelon, how many miles to Babylon? Eight and eight, and other eight."
A figure in the fog.
Dani.
She's covered in fresh blood. Her face. Her hands.
"Will I get there by candle-light? If your horse be good and your spurs be bright."
She's singing softly. It's the same thing she sang on P7X-013, the day he went to get the timeship.
She stops in front of him, swaying a little, as if she's drunk. Her eyes flare and gutter.
"Ding, dong, the witch is dead," she sing-songs. "Went to bed and bumped his head and he didn't get up in the morning. Can we go home now, Jack? I'm tired."
#
========================VIA=TELEX======================
27 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY WESTMINSTER LONDON
EM: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70 TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: LOST LAMB
JAMES,
AS OF 0500, THE GIRL IS BACK, ALIVE. THE AMERICANS HAVE HER.
SHE'S BEEN TAKEN TO THE 279th ARMY STATION HOSPITAL. THAT'S
ALL I KNOW RIGHT NOW.
YOURS,
NICKY
========================VIA=TELEX======================
27 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
REF: LOST LAMB
NICKY,
I CAN TELL YOU FOR DAMN SURE IT WASN'T US, AND I DON'T THINK
IT WAS THE AMERICANS EITHER. CAN'T HAVE BEEN SINGLETON
ACTING ON HIS OWN, SINCE HE'S IN HOSPITAL IN TRACTION. WALLACE
WON'T GIVE ME A STRAIGHT STORY.
STILL AND ALL, YOU'D THINK LA CHALMERS AND THE REST OF HIS
CRONIES WOULD BE HAPPIER TO HAVE THEIR LOST LAMB BACK.
JAMES
========================VIA=TELEX======================
28 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: ROGER SPENCER USIS 939 DOUGLASS DR. MCLEAN VIRGINIA USA
REF: REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
NICHOLAS,
PREVAILING ON YOU IN THE HOPES THAT YOU NICE ENGLISH CHAPS
HAVE MORE IDEA THAN WE DO ABOUT WHAT IN BLAZES HAPPENED ON
SATURDAY. WE HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO DECRYPT THE TRAFFIC BUT
ROUND ABOUT SIX HOURS AFTER THE GIRL WOUND UP ON OUR SIDE OF
THE WALL, MOSCOW STATION BEGAN SQUALLING LIKE A WET CAT, AND
MY SOURCES SAY OUR DEAR FRIENDS THE STASI STARTED HOUSE TO
HOUSE SEARCHES IN THE EAST.
ASKED WALLACE. HE SAYS FOR ALL HE KNOWS THE GIRL WALKED
HOME.
LOVE TO SARAH.
ROGER
========================VIA=TELEX======================
28 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: JAMES DAUGHTRY, UNIVERSAL EXPORT LTD. 54 BROADWAY
WESTMINSTER LONDON
EM: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
REF: LOST LAMB
JAMES,
UPDATE ON THE GIRL FRIDAY SITUATION. THOUGHT YOU'D WANT TO
KNOW THAT THE YANKS HAVE WHISTLED HER AND WALLACE HOME.
I'M NO DOCTOR BUT I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE MOVING HER.
YOURS,
NICKY
========================VIA=TELEX======================
30 NOVEMBER 1965
TO: DAVID CHANDLER, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: ARCHIBALD WALLACE, MISSION BERLIN, CLAYALLEE 170, BERLIN
REF: STATESIDE CONTACT
DAVEY,
I DON'T KNOW WHO SIX HAS STATESIDE OR IN DC RIGHT NOW, BUT I'D
LIKE A MEETING AS SOON AS YOU CAN ARRANGE SOMETHING. IT'S ABOUT
MISS LANGE'S HOLIDAY.
DOC SAYS SHE'S DOING ABOUT AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED. YOU
MIGHT SPREAD THE WORD. I'M SURE EVERYONE IS WORRIED.
REGARDS,
ARCHIE
========================VIA=TELEX======================
8 DECEMBER 1965
TO: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: ROGER SPENCER USIS 939 DOUGLASS DR. MCLEAN VIRGINIA USA
REF: ARCHIE WALLACE
NICHOLAS,
GENUINELY HATE TO BE THE BEARER OF BAD NEWS, BUT MY SOURCES
SAY ARCHIE WALLACE WAS FOUND DEAD IN DC AT 0251 YESTERDAY
MORNING. LOOKS LIKE A CAR-PEDESTRIAN ACCIDENT. DON'T KNOW IF
ANYONE ELSE HAS LET YOU KNOW YET. MY CONDOLENCES. I KNOW HE
WAS A FRIEND.
ROGER
========================VIA=TELEX======================
8 DECEMBER 1965
TO: NICHOLAS MAKEPEACE, UNIVERSAL EXPORT GMBH, 70
TIERGARTENSTRAUSSE, BERLIN
EM: STEWART ROGERS, MISSION BERLIN, CLAYALLEE 170, BERLIN
REF: ARCHIE WALLACE
NICKY,
THE WAKE IS SET FOR 1830 TOMORROW NIGHT AT THE USUAL SPOT.
LA CHALMERS SURE DOESN'T LOOK LIKE HE'S CRYING MUCH, DOES HE?
TWENTY BUCKS AMERICAN SAYS THERE'S NOT GOING TO BE AN INQUIRY.
NO WORD YET ON HETTY.
BEST,
STEW
=======================================================
#
"What if--?" Dani says.
"Just dial." He doesn't want to think about "if". He wants to step through the Gate and be back at the SGC and find April, 2011, just where he left it, all fixtures intact. And the next time they want him to go through the Gate they're going to have to use a tractor.
The place is Cimmeria. The time is now. It's snowing. The timeship is safely stashed in a cave about half an hour's walk from the Gate. The world (please God) is the same one they left six weeks ago. When they go through the Gate, they'll know. He flew them here and dragged Dani out of the ship ("Where are we, Jack? Aren't we going back to Earth?") and threw her into the path of the Hammer.
Then he took the timeship up the mountain and waited for her to walk out.
She was crying.
("He never meant anyone any harm!" she'd screamed at him when she saw him. "He'll be so afraid! I left him alone in the dark!")
He'd slapped her. He's never hit anyone under his command, never struck a woman in anger. But Dani isn't under his command any more (if she ever was), and he isn't angry. He's afraid. Not of her (never), but for, because even if the symbiote she took is one of Egeria's mindless zombie snakes, there are a lot of ways to lose your soul.
Your humanity.
And sometimes your humanity is the only weapon you have left. And without a weapon, the darkness falls forever.
She'd staggered and gone sprawling. But her eyes didn't flash. So he picked her up and hugged her and told her they were going home, yes, right now.
"I named him Homer," she'd whispered. "He never meant anyone any harm."
They'll go home, O'Neill thinks. They'll go home and he'll get drunk and maybe she will too and they'll pretend none of this ever happened.
She presses the symbols on the DHD slowly, carefully, as if care and deliberation can summon a happy ending. The Gate spins. The chevrons lock. Quantum improbability fountains out, settles.
"Come on," he says, taking her hand.
They walk up the steps and through.
#
The ramp is solid under his feet. Metal, not stone, and he's enveloped by the familiar underground smells of the SGC (dust and metal and recycled air and generic Lysol with a hint of eau de diesel exhaust), and it's all he can do not to sink to his knees and kiss the ground like Odysseus come home to Ithaca at last (he's spent fifteen years hearing the story quoted in the original Pig Latin; he shouldn't be surprised at the references that have colonized his interior monologue).
(I think you will not escape the shaker of Earth who holds a grudge against you in his heart.)
Hank is there to meet them, full of effusive (fake, but effusive) welcome. It's O'Neill's first clue that they're back right on schedule. Hank isn't much of a general, but he's always excelled at kissing ass (that's what's gotten him so far, it's why O'Neill picked him, after all). If they were late, he'd be on the phone in his office covering his ass. (Ditto for if they weren't expected yet.) O'Neill thinks suddenly of La Chalmers. (Past and present were never meant to be neighboring countries.)
Hank's brought them an honor guard, of course (competence and the need for pomp and circumstance have always had an inverse relationship). And it's "Welcome home, Jack, Dr. Jackson," and lots of handshakes, and surely everyone notices that they're not wearing the clothes they were wearing this morning (six weeks ago), but no one says anything. God knows weirder things have happened in the name of Making Friends With Their Alien Allies than wholesale changes of clothes. (The Tin Man set off down the Yellow Brick Road one morning and came home with a heart, after all.)
Still, General Hammond would have at least mentioned it. (General Hammond would have recognized the uniforms.) It probably would have been some cutting remark, but underneath would have been the question he was really asking: Are you both all right? (George was like Hetty in that.)
O'Neill's not sure how he would have answered.
He steals a glance at Dani. Her expression is carefully neutral. (It would be anyway; she and Hank loathe each other with a lovers' passion. But now he's caught a glimpse of the girl behind the mirror, and he wonders what it's concealing. Grief? Relief? Fury?) He finds he can't quite meet her eyes and wonders, idly, which of his numerous failures is gnawing at his conscience. God knows Dani's borne the brunt of them.
He wonders if he'll be able to meet Hetty's eyes when he sees her again.
(I didn't talk. I didn't break.)
God hates a spy, said the back of the lighter, and Captain O'Neill asked Henrietta Lange what it meant, and all she ever said was, "It's true, isn't it?"
Now more than thirty years later, Captain (General) O'Neill finally understands.
She weighed almost nothing in his arms. No more than Charlie had.
(He thinks of butterfly wings.)
And he realizes that in all the years he spent at her side it had never occurred to him to wonder who Hetty was, who she'd been before the Court of Miracles. Not then or anytime after (not even when she stood beside Jenny's grave two years ago and, for the first time in O'Neill's memory, wept). She'd always simply been his tyotia, magnificent (terrifying) and ageless. (The Queen of Air and Darkness. The Snow Queen. The Duchess of Deception.) He'd never thought of it because she'd never wanted him to. Hetty (aunt Anya) would say, dismissively, that nothing good ever came of dwelling on the past.
No matter who that past belonged to.
For a few hours, O'Neill's able to push those thoughts back down into the darkness where they belong (along with all the stations of the cross: Moscow and St. Petersburg, East Fly and Abydos, Los Angeles and Kelowna and all points in between). He drags Hank into his office (looks nothing like it did when it used to be O'Neill's; these are the days of miracle and wonder, and apparently of very large china eagles), says he'd like a Gatebuster whistled up from Dreamland and sent through to Praxyon yesterday and he isn't going to say please.
Hank starts to mount a protest, and O'Neill snaps, "I know you've found it. I actually read the reports sometimes, you know." (Hank did his best to bury that little find; he's unimaginative (stupid) enough to think the IOA needs a time machine. Dani said Ba'al rebuilt his time machine in the past somewhere, but you dance with the devil you know.)
Hank puffs up a little, but O'Neill knows good ol' Hank isn't actually going to do anything. He can't. In the game of Roshambo, Homeworld trumps the SGC and three stars trump two, and the only places Hank can possibly go with his tale of woe are the Joint Chiefs and the President, none of whom are interested in listening to Hank Landry of the SGC about anything whatsoever.
Finally he picks up the phone on his desk (black phone, red phone, give a dog a bone: SG-1 came rolling home. Or at least, its ancient remains) and makes a call and rattles off a lot of authorization codes.
For the first, and probably the last, time, O'Neill thanks every deity that he can think of that it's Hank and not General Hammond (or Carter, or Mitchell, or for that matter, Sergeant Siler) running the circus, because George Hammond would have put two and two together and come up with five and asked what the Gatebuster O'Neill just ordered had to do with his and Dani's pleasant little visit to Yekaterinburg earlier today.
Fortunately, Hank Landry's not that intuitive.
O'Neill says, "I'm so glad we had this little talk," and gets to his feet.
At 1845 (praise God for modern military efficiency), they send a very large bomb through the Gate to Praxyon. O'Neill (in borrowed BDUs, showered, shaved, and fed) is right there in the Gateroom to see it off.
It will never feel like you've won, Hetty's voice (his tyotia's voice) says in memory, and O'Neill represses a shiver. (The cold. It's nothing but the cold.)
"Bang," he says to no one in particular.
(Butterfly wings.)
#
EPILOGUE:
Jack calls Hetty (calls her at home, which is unusual in itself) out of the blue on a warm (elsewhere crocuses would be raising their twilight heads above the snow) Saturday afternoon in April. So many afternoons are warm in Los Angeles, even sometimes in January, and for a long time it had seemed alien to her after so many years and so many endless gray-white winters in Eastern Europe. She had come here because she never wanted to feel that bone-deep cold again, because she didn't want to see men and women in wool greatcoats, because she didn't want to be reminded. She's just coming in from the garden when the phone rings, the smell of earth and leaves and flowers on her hands (and Jenny's roses are budding again, to bloom before their season, a wild profusion of yellow and orange and pink, Bourbon roses and damask, alba and centifolia, and she has cut blossoms from their canes even in October).
Hetty picks up the phone, one of the old ones, the kind a person used to rent from the phone company, heavy and unwieldy with a long curling cord; she's since replaced most of the phones in the house with the modern cordless sort that seem to break every couple of years -- Hetty lives in a world of planned obsolescence these days -- but she keeps this one for nostalgia's sake. A piece of history. She can't help but wonder who's calling. If it were an emergency, one of the children (probably Callen; he's the usual harbinger of doom) would have called her cell phone, and none of her friends would be calling at this hour on a Saturday because they know she's always out in the garden and might not (probably won't) hear the house phone ring. "Lange residence."
"Tyotia?" Jack's voice sounds strange, at once uncertain and terribly relieved. Hetty can't imagine what the occasion might be. Jack doesn't know her birthday -- none of the ducklings do, nor do most of her friends; it's not a date she's keen on acknowledging -- and it's neither Christmas nor the anniversary of Jenny's death, which are the two other times Jack might call her at home. (He's invited her to come for Easter; she thinks she might go, if only to meet that girl of his.)
"Who else would it be, Jack?" Confusion (the flora of our lives could guide occasions. Without confusion on their frisking way) makes her voice more tart than she intended; Hetty's never liked mysteries, whether her own or anyone else's.
"Are you all right?" Jack sounds concerned (there is an edge of fear in his voice that she is not used to hearing. Fear for her? Why?). "Is everything all right?"
"I was in the garden," she says mildly, unsure of what he's asking. "Has something happened?" She'd been at a party with him in Washington three weeks ago when she'd been there to testify before a Senate subcommittee (and she resented Leon Vance's asking far more than she had ever resented Jenny's; then again, Jenny had actually asked whereas Leon's requests were questions in grammatical form only), and the only thing that had made attendance at one more glittering function full of toasts and tiny canapés remotely bearable was the fact that she knew Jack hated these affairs more than Hetty did herself; misery loves company. They had both been fine then (or at least as close to 'fine' as either of them got anymore; these were strange days) and Jack (her darling boy) should know that Hetty would have called him if something changed that might concern him. (The areas she will allow to fall beneath the aegis of Jack's concern are charted by celestial geometries and watched over by angels.)
"No," he says, and he laughs softly, and she suspects he wants her to think that he's just mildly embarrassed, but that's not what she hears. Hetty's not sure what she hears in that laugh; a world of meaning with no key to the language. "Nothing's happened," (thank God, his tone says, and she really can't fathom what might be going through Jack's head. He can be inscrutable at the best of times, but right now he's making less sense than usual). "I, ah, just wanted to hear your voice."
She's left the back door open. She can hear the birds chirping outside, mostly house finches and house sparrows; city birds. It's a nice day. "Are you all right, Jack?"
"I'm fine now, Tyotia," Jack says warmly, and she knows he means it. She wonders what he means by 'now'.
(She wonders, Jack being Jack, if she'll ever find out).
#
CODA:
It took Dani a long time to find it.
She found other things first. Things she'd never wanted to find.
Two weeks after that night in Berlin, Archie Wallace died in a random accident in Washington DC. He never got the ever-after she'd promised Hetty, and it feels like a betrayal.
She's met Hetty Lange now (for the first or second time; you decide). A tiny, formidable, impeccably groomed woman. She runs some kind of NCIS operation on the West Coast these days. She's fine (able and terrifying and ageless; she tells stories about surmounting Everest that Dani helplessly believes).
Hetty didn't recognize her, of course. The only time Hetty ever saw her was over forty years ago, and it was dark. (It's always dark these days, it seems. Dani thinks the darkness must be inside her. Maybe their whole visit to East Berlin was conducted in bright sunlight. And sometimes she thinks of the horror on Ba'al's face when she blew its head off, and she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.) (They're still hunting down the host, of course. They can't be sure whether it died back there or whether it was somehow re-spawned when they rebuilt the world.) Hetty gave her an odd look when they met, but Dani suspects it had more to do with her clothes than any sort of recognition. (She likes Hetty, but upcoming Disclosure or no, she wishes Hetty would give up the notion she's a fashion victim in need of immediate rescue.)
And Jack is the house that Hetty built, and if Jack and Gibbs don't talk about Poland (she still doesn't know why), she and Jack don't talk about Berlin (or Cimmeria, Dakara, Marnamai). Or Pangar (they especially don't talk about Pangar). In fact, they don't talk about a lot of things, but then, they never have.
They certainly haven't talked about this.
She opens the envelope and takes out the photo. There's no identifying information on the back of the photograph, just a place and a year: Berlin, 1963. The ink is blue, the penmanship careful and old-fashioned. She turns it over in her hands. Old, black and white (yellowed a bit from long storage). The edges of the photograph are wavy, antique. Judging from the trees in the background, the picture was taken in early autumn. September, maybe. (When she thinks of Berlin these days, Dani remembers fog and darkness and old dirty snow crunching underfoot and then she tries to avoid thinking of it any further. She knows she couldn't have stopped what happened, that no one could have stopped what happened, that in some sense it had always happened just that way. It doesn't matter.)
The trees, Dani imagines, were (when that moment was captured) a riot of blazing orange and red and yellow. It seems only right, perhaps, that the monochrome image has faded like an old memory: she feels as if she's gazing into a world as ancient -- and as long-vanished -- as Nineveh and Tyre.
(The photograph had been both harder and easier to get than Dani had imagined. Nearly impossible to find -- it had taken months, and Sammy had been a little appalled at the number of favors Dani spent on the enterprise, but that was okay. This isn't Sammy's story to know. (Dani hoards and spends stories like bright coin, like the only enduring currency there is. She and Hetty are twins, sisters, in that way.) But for the events an endless November night in Berlin, it wouldn't have been Dani's, either. She'd eventually found the picture in the hands of a great-niece: her name was Andrea and she was round and blonde and cheerful and had three little boys and custody of her grandmother's photo albums.)
"I never knew him: he died almost ten years before I was born. No one, not even my grandmother -- that would be his sister, Dr. Jackson -- ever knew who the woman was. I guess she's sort of the family mystery." Andrea had shrugged, smiling faintly, then turned and sternly told her youngest to stop hitting his older brother.
It hadn't taken much to get her to give a nearly-meaningless old photo into Dani's keeping.
They (the man and the woman in the photograph; he in a battered dark wool overcoat of uncertain vintage and a hat that had been in its prime probably ten years before, she in an expensive and beautifully-cut suit (it's a middle grey in the picture, maybe garnet; that's one of Hetty's favorite colors), dark hair impeccably coiffed) are standing in front of the stone elephants at the entrance of the Berlin Zoo. (Dani can imagine the young man walking up to them, offering to take their picture -- a souvenir -- perhaps Archie Wallace had smiled down at his companion and allowed, "Just this once, it will probably be all right.")
Archie, Dani remembers, was not a tall man, and a bit stoop-shouldered besides (she suspects that last was an affectation, meant to give the impression of absent-minded harmlessness, and it worked). The woman is wearing heels (they all wore heels then, and dresses, and makeup). Even so, her head doesn't clear Archie's shoulder. She's smiling into the camera, an expression of mischief in her eyes.
Hetty.
Dani almost doesn't recognize her, but for the brooch she wears (Bohemian garnets. Hetty's mother's before it was Hetty's, Dani knows that story). The woman in the photograph is not the woman who huddled beside Dani in the back seat of a black car a year ago (forty years ago), broken and fragile and fierce as an injured falcon fallen to earth. She is not the still, serious woman that Jack still calls Tyotia. This Hetty (frozen forever in time, frozen in a moment before that winter night, before her last birthday gift, before Russia) is vibrant and smiling with a young woman's brash confidence in an endless future; her gaze and her grin dare the universe to do its worst. (Dani wonders what she must have been like, this Hetty from Before.)
Archie (Dani only remembers him twisted with guilt and grief, but in the photo there's a gentle half-smile on his face) isn't looking at the camera at all. He's gazing down at Hetty fondly. They're in love. Dani wonders if he ever had a chance to tell her.
"It's so dark," Hetty had sobbed against Dani's shoulder. "I hate the dark." And she'd answered: "Just hold on. It will be all right. Morning's coming. Morning always comes."
She said that to Hetty because Jack had said it to her, and Hetty had told him, and the dizzying Ouroboros of cause and effect is something Dani tries not to think too hard about. But Hetty knows many of the secrets now. Quantum mirrors. Other Earths. Other selves. "Do you think there's a world," Hetty had asked her, "where we got to be together? Where we were happy?"
Maybe there is. Maybe in some other When, some other Where, morning came and night didn't follow. Maybe on some other Earth, Hetty walked out of the hospital on a bright February morning, Archie hovering solicitously at her elbow. Maybe he went down on one knee right then and there, and offered to make an honest woman of her. Maybe she laughed, and said she'd never be honest, but she'd be happy to marry him anyway. Maybe the world hadn't ended.
Maybe they lived happily ever after.
But that world isn't this one. Here all they have is memories, bright stories. Hope.
Hope that morning will always come.
Dani tucks the picture carefully back into the envelope.
She'll give it to Hetty the next time she sees her.
#
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Welcome to our sea cruise on the Good Ship Walloping Window Blind. This all started about two years ago when , in the throes of having "Both Feel In Their Own Small Way" betaed within an inch of its life, asked the musical question: what would happen if Trent Kort borrowed Ba'al's time machine? The answer is: This.
It's always so much fun writing a story set in the near past. Really, only autologous root canal can compare for fun and excitement. And there were still things we couldn't fit in to the story without having somebody step out of character and address the reader, and this is not a Joss Whedon Joint. So (in no particular order):
Jack and Dani leave the SGC for Ykaterinberg Overseas on April 6th, 2011. While they're gone, Ba'al and his minion Trent Kort (who doesn't get a Goa'uld name in this one but hey, we have at least one more story to write in this 'verse) go to 1965 and change history. It isn't a really big change until 1982, when Jack O'Neill dies in East Berlin on a mission codenamed "East Fly". Because of this, in 1996 the First Abydos Mission is commanded by Colonel Francis Makepeace, USMC. Because he has never met Hetty, Gibbs is not married to Shannon (just roll with it; I swear there's a good explanation) and so he's still in the Corps. He, too, is attached to First Abydos.
It's Gibbs who shoots Dani's dog on Abydos. Makepeace refuses to allow exploration, so the party never finds Nagada. When Makepeace and Dani are brought before Ra, Dani has no motive to save Makepeace; he attacks and is shot dead. Since Dani has not had the time in Nagada to learn the Abydan dialect, she can't communicate with Ra, so Ra has her snaked. Nefirtiri tampers with the bomb Ra sends back through the Gate, lowering its destructive power. Afterward, she plots Ra's destruction, making Gibbs her First Prime. Once she has seized Ra's empire and Apophis's, she conquers Earth, leading to the events and the world that Jenny Shepard lives through. Jack and Dani's story rejoins Earth's in an April 2011 that is very different than the one they left.
The 1965 Jack and Dani arrive in is the baseline unaltered one, since the changes don't begin until Hetty fails to affect the people she'll meet in later life. In this version of history (which may, according to one theory of time-travel, actually be the true and only one) Hetty has not been exchanged for Baum after three days of captivity, but is still in Stasi hands. Trent Kort ambushes Clive Singleton at the exchange point and shoots Baum to make sure the trade cannot not be accomplished. Ba'al and Kort actually arrive in Berlin enough earlier that Ba'al is able to buy Hetty a drink at the Felsenkeller early in November. He then goes back to the changed present (double-crossing Kort, over which I do not weep), discovers it is not all that he would have it be, and bunkers down at Dakara to consider matters. When Jack and Dani show up, he provides them with aid, then returns to 1965 Berlin to see if they manage to make it there. (He really should be entirely dead now, but we have been very much confused by our plot and are not sure.)
At the cafe, Archie guesses Jack and Dani's ages as (roughly) late forties (Jack), and early thirties (Dani). As this story takes place in 2011 (Stargate SG-1 ends its run in 2007. Counting in the time implied by the two movies, it's 2010 by the time Dani arrives in Washington. Our previous entry in this 'verse, "Said The Joker To The Thief", takes place in April of that year. "At Midnight All The Agents" takes place in November of 2011, with Disclosure set for June of 2012), Jack (b. January, 1952) is 61 and Dani (b. June, 1965) is 46. The advances in medicine and nutrition immediately post-war gives moderns a much more youthful appearance (and, actually, a different body shape) than their counterparts of 40 and 50 years ago (check out Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison next to an actual photo of Jim Morrison for an illustration of this).
The Source Gehlen that dooms Archie and Hetty is real, though we've taken minor liberties with historical events. Reinhard Gehlen was a spymaster for the Third Reich. His area of specialization was Russia and Eastern Europe. Following the war, he provided the same service to the Americans, setting up and running more than 4000 agents, many of whom were ex-Nazis, at the height of his power. For many years, the Gehlen Organization (as it was named) was America's only source of intelligence behind the Iron Curtain. But the information Gehlen provided to the CIA was false. It is now known that he exaggerated the state of Soviet military preparedness in order to goad the United States into taking a more warlike and aggressive stance. Germany and Russia had been traditional enemies for centuries, and it is probable that Gehlen's endgame was to goad both superpowers into a mutually-destructive war that would pave the way for a resurgent Germany. Gehlen died in 1979 in a comfortable well-pensioned retirement. It is likely that even if Archie Wallace had passed on Hetty's information it wouldn't have done any good. The CIA was repeatedly warned against Gehlen by Soviet defectors. It ignored all information received.
DISCLAIMER: We tried to get everything right, especially geography and places, but Google doesn't return much when you ask it specifically about West Berlin in 1965. The use of "Universal Export" in the British Intelligence telexes is a nod to James Bond, of course. The USIS (United States Information Service) has often been accused of being a CIA front, but it's actually a real government thing. The address given for it is allegedly that of the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. The address given for Universal Export is the old address of MI6, and the reason for it's nickname "The Circus".
I am still irritated that I could not find a hotel to place Jack and Dani at, but every one I found was either bombed flat or on the wrong side of the Wall.
All real things are misused and mishandled at our whim, of which we have a lot. All unreal things have either been borrowed (by us) or invented out of whole cloth (also by us). All mistakes are clearly somebody else's, since we've proofread this thing about a dozen times.
Friday, March 30, 2012 -- Saturday, July 14th
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