06 - Siren Song (20 page)

“Focus, focus,” she told herself and forced her eyes open to stare at the
ruddy mouth of the stove. They weren’t all that far from the bunker they’d
escaped, right on the edge of the
ha’tak’s
late-morning shadow. Her eyes
strayed to the faint outline of the lattice window. She wondered which way the
sun was moving, and pictured that shadow sliding like the blade of a sundial
across the valley floor, marking time.

Beside her, Teal’c’s hands twitched fitfully and he mumbled something she
couldn’t quite hear. Patting his shoulder, she said, “shh shh,” and continued
pacing out the city in her head. This little hovel was, in fact, pretty swank
compared to most in the neighborhood, what with two actual brick walls and a
door covering and all. It sat at the centre of the shanty town sprawled on the
edge of the black river. The
ha’tak
stood between them and the entrance
to the mine. She’d glimpsed the glowing geometry of its gold apex between the
leaning remains of towers and the slumped and tumbled ruins of what had once
been pretty impressive buildings.

But she’d had to keep her eyes on her feet for the most part to keep from
tripping on the heaved and uneven surface of the alleys and dropping Teal’c—again. The third time, two of Brenneka’s men had finally done more than get her
and Teal’c on their feet, the larger of them taking some of Teal’c’s weight and
helping her guide him down the narrow passageways deeper and deeper into the
ramshackle settlement. That last time, they’d fallen onto a broken face, a blue
mosaic eye as wide as she was tall staring up past them at the grey sky. Pulling
herself to her knees and then to her feet to sling Teal’c’s arm over her
shoulder again, she’d noticed that none of the six people with them had stepped
on that eye, each of them skirting it carefully. Behind her Aadi and Brenneka
had whispered in unison as they passed, but she hadn’t been able to make out the
words.

It had taken forever to cover what couldn’t have been more than a kilometer,
and Teal’c had gotten heavier and heavier until, by the time Brenneka had pulled
back the sheeting and ushered them into the shelter, Sam and her helper had had
to drag him, his boot-heels bumping over a mosaic sea, curling waves made of
tiny squares of glass embedded in the floor. Now, she absently picked at the
grout between the squares and wondered what the Colonel was up to, how long
Teal’c would be out, whether or not they should eat the remaining power bar or
save it for trade, and finally, whether she and Teal’c were grateful guests or
prisoners. Mostly, she tried not to fall asleep, because two stoves floated in
the gloom in front of her eyes sometimes and sometimes just one, and her head
was pounding so hard that the sound of the rain seemed to rise and fall, now
nearer, now farther away, like she was swaying… swaying.

“Eat,” Brenneka said.

Sam’s head snapped forward as she woke, making the floor rock and twist as if
it really were an ocean. She flattened her hands on the mosaic either side of
her, and sucked in a few deep breaths while she waited for the world to settle
again. Brenneka was holding out a bowl and thrust it forward against Sam’s
knees.

“Eat something. You look terrible.”

Sam couldn’t stifle a laugh, and when she tried to duck her head, pain shot
up her neck and made her wince. Rain was still rattling on the roof, so she
couldn’t tell if the sound Brenneka made was an answering laugh or not.

She accepted the bowl, tipped it to look at the thin, whitish slush at the
bottom. “What is it?” she asked, trying not to grimace. It didn’t smell like
anything at all.

“Nutrient paste.” Brenneka sat down and leaned back on her hands. “It doesn’t
fill you up, but it makes the machine bum well enough.” She pointed at the
window, then leaned back again. “They shovel it out for us every two or three
days in the square. And on special days, if we are quick, like Aadi there, and
if we can get into small spaces, there’s squig.”

Sam stopped with her cupped hand halfway to her mouth. “Squig?”

Aadi stirred and held his curved fingers up to his mouth to imitate fangs.
“Little hairy things with thin tails and tiny eyes. Live down in the dark
places.”

“Rats,” Sam said. Another galactic constant.

“The eyes are the best,” Aadi added with a wistful lilt to his voice. “I
always get the eyes if I catch them.”

Sam licked the paste off of her fingers and tried not to think about rat-eye
delicacies. The paste didn’t taste like anything either, which she decided to
take as a blessing—although the bowl was empty too soon. She eyed the second
one next to Brenneka’s hand.

“For the Jaffa,” Brenneka said. “If he wakes up.”

“When,” Sam corrected.

Brenneka’s shrug was identical to Aadi’s, part indifference, real or feigned,
part caginess. “The worm should have healed him by now.”

Putting down the empty bowl, Sam laid a hand on Teal’c’s forehead. His skin
was hot, but the tattoo was cool under her fingers. She wondered if he could
always feel the shape, the weight of gold stamped into him.

“What is it?” Brenneka asked, and Sam looked up to see her pointing at the tattoo. “I’ve not seen this one.”

“It’s the mark of Apophis.”

“But what is it?”

Sam tilted her head and peered at the gleaming image, more silvery than gold
in the rainy light, ran her fingers gently over it, realizing that she’d never
asked Teal’c to explain it. It hadn’t seemed right to talk about it. Daniel
would know, though, and she wondered why she’d never asked him. She would, first
thing when he was back. With a tentative finger, she traced the arcs and curves,
and she sighed. “It’s a serpent at the center of the world,” she speculated, her
fingers moving along the lower half of the oval, “Earth,” the inner cupped line,
“sea,” and the top half of the oval, “sky.” Part of her wished that Teal’c would
wake up and be affronted at this intrusion.

“Arrogance,” Brenneka observed.

Sam caught herself shrugging. “I guess after a few thousand years they start
believing their own advertising.”

Brenneka’s expression of hatred was eloquent. “A worm that declares itself a
god is still a worm.” She picked up Sam’s bowl and inspected it for scraps,
running a finger around the inside, then licking the residue off of it. “We
remember the gods. Sebek isn’t one of them.”

Sam thought of the giant mosaic eye staring blankly at the sky. Was that the
god or was it the people looking for one? She stretched out one leg and then the
other, wincing at the stiffness in her knees. It sure didn’t seem like there was
anybody looking back at this place. Walking through the Stargate for seven years
had taught Sam what godforsaken looked like. The rain seemed to drum directly on
her skull and, as she slumped back against the wall sodden with weariness, it
seemed like the whole galaxy was filled with broken people, broken, angry and
indifferent gods. Good riddance to most of the latter. But still, the eye stared
up at the sky, waiting for something. The edges of the tiles on the floor bit
into her palms as she tried to find a comfortable position against the uneven
bricks. Teal’c mumbled again, his hands clenching and releasing.

Brenneka was right: the symbiote would have been well on the way to healing him by now. Giving up on the idea of getting comfortable, Sam
said, “We -1 have to get back into the bunker.” � Brenneka laughed, a short,
disbelieving bark.

“I’m serious. If I don’t get to our gear, Teal’c will die.” Remembering
Teal’c’s warning look when she’d been about to mention his need for tretonin to
Aadi, she hesitated. No show of weakness. She glanced down at Teal’c’s paling
face. Too late for that. “Not just from the wound, either. He needs a special
medicine.”

Brenneka looked skeptical. “The worm—”

“There is no worm. He lost it.”

“He’s Jaffa.”

Sam could see her struggling to put what seemed like mutually exclusive facts
together. Sam shook her head impatiently. “Yes, but he’s different. The Goa’uld
destroyed the Jaffa’s immune systems when they engineered them as hosts, but
we’ve been able to synthesize a drug that releases the Jaffa from their
dependency on the symbiote. Without that drug, they die.”

Brenneka considered this for a moment. “Seems to me that you’ve given them a
new kind of slavery. Maybe he’s better without it.”

“He’ll die.”

“You say he fights for freedom. Well, freedom has its price.”

Sam yanked on the thong around Brenneka’s neck and pulled the small vial at
the end of it out into the dim light. The
roshna
inside was a pale blue
glow. “For you, too?”

Brenneka snatched the vial back, stood, and walked out of the hut. If there
had been a door, she’d have slammed it.

Although they weren’t prisoners in any meaningful sense of the word, no
visiting Tok’ra was ever allowed to leave the base without escort, and they were
always under the watchful eye of security forces while at the mountain—even
Jacob, whose security clearance had been the highest possible before he left the
Air Force. But now the military considered him alien, apart from them,
inseparable from his symbiote. It was hard for Jacob to remember a time when this hadn’t been status quo for him, this combination of trust and mistrust,
friendship and suspicion, with which even old friends now greeted him. Even
George had his moments of doubt, and Jacob couldn’t blame him. If someone had
told him ten years ago he’d finish his days living on other planets with a snake
sharing his body, he would have had them locked up in a padded cell. Tough to
wrap his head around, even now.

Snake?
Selmak’s thoughts slid into his consciousness, like slender golden
threads.
You have learned this term from O’Neill. It is a most derogatory
way of thinking of your brethren.

I know.
Jacob didn’t have to apologize. Selmak was already aware of his
feelings on the matter. Not like he was able to hide them.

Malek means well, but he pursues an agenda separate from that which benefits
our Tauri friends.
Selmak was watching Malek, seeing him through Jacob’s
eyes. He prowled around his quarters like a trapped cat. Jacob was familiar with
that restless anxious feeling. It never went away when he was underground. He’d
grown accustomed to living in the tunnels, but he’d never managed to overcome
that feeling of being locked away inside the earth, buried. Trapped. Like a
vampire, hiding in the dark.

Vampires?
Selmak was deeply amused.
Your analogy leaves much to be
desired.

Not literally. Well… maybe a little bit. But it’s only an expression.
Sharing nearly every thought and feeling with Selmak had become easier over the
years, but once in a while, Jacob felt a pang of regret for his lost privacy.
Selmak always understood and withdrew at those times, but he was always at the
back of Jacob’s consciousness, a sentient hum underlying all of his other
senses.

It was odd, standing inside the mountain that was so familiar to him while
carrying on a conversation no one else could hear. The thought made Jacob smile,
and it amused Selmak as well.
Crazy old human,
Selmak said fondly.

Not as old as you.

Malek glanced up at the open door and frowned as the SF passed by on his
routine rounds of the level. “I do not believe we should remain here at the beck and call of the Tauri.”

Jacob quested gently to see if Selmak wanted to handle the conversation, but
he was content to let Jacob continue. Unlike Malek, who usually dominated his
host by mutual agreement, Selmak had no such presumption that his voice and
presence were superior. Jacob wasn’t troubled when he encountered a dominant
symbiote, but he was often grateful Selmak wasn’t one of them. “Only a few
operatives have reported back, and none of them had any information.”

“But you believe they will.” Malek tilted his head and gave Jacob a
calculating stare.

“I believe it’s possible, yes. I went through the list of old enemies
George’s people drew up. There are a few leads there, but not much we can follow
up quickly. It’s going to take time.”

“I do not intend to remain here until they are found,” Malek said. “I can be
more useful elsewhere, engaged in the search.”

Jacob knew that for what it was—he’d been just as desperate to get out of
various tunnels. Malek also wasn’t the type to sit on his hands. “George hasn’t
asked me directly, but if we do get intelligence, I think he’s hoping we can do
something about it.”

“And this after he said explicitly he did not expect such a thing.”

“To expect and to hope are two different things.”
Not in the case of most
Tauri,
Selmak chimed in. Jacob ignored him. “At any rate, Selmak and I are
agreed: if it’s possible, we’ll offer our help.”

“Your agreement is irrelevant, Jacob. Your desire to assist is commendable,
but I doubt the Tok’ra Council will sanction it.”

“Your point being?”

Malek’s eyes narrowed. “My point is simply that the position of the Council
has not changed, regarding what must be done.”

Jacob glanced up at the SF again, then pushed the door of their quarters
shut. Malek barely had time to react before Jacob shoved him back toward the
wall, one hand on his chest like a ten ton weight. A flicker of fear crossed
Malek’s expression, swiftly replaced by disdain.

“That’s my daughter we’re talking about,” Jacob said softly, and shoved Malek again. “Do you understand that? I’m not going to let anyone kill
her if it’s within my power to prevent it.” One more small push, and he closed
his fist around a handful of Malek’s tunic. “Certainly not you.”

Restraint, my friend,
Selmak said, and this time he was harder to ignore.
Reluctantly, Jacob released Malek. Selmak eased away, satisfied that Jacob was
able to control his temper.