Heart's Desire (37 page)

Jack made a show of looking to the rest of the team for help. “Have we done any great deeds lately? I can never remember.”

“We saved those people who were stuck in a virtual reality device,” Carter said.

“Okay, that was pretty cool.”

“And we went back in time,” Kawalsky said. “You have to admit that was cool.”

Skaara frowned at him skeptically. “How is it possible to travel in time? The past is past.”

“Major Kawalsky speaks the truth,” Teal'c said. “We did indeed travel into the past, and observed a time of great significance to the Tau'ri.”

“What time is this?” Sha're asked.

“Well, the 1960s were… it was a time when a lot of things were changing in the United States,” Carter said. “We were fighting a pretty controversial war, and there were also a lot of people who wanted… well, who wanted more freedom.”

“In a lot of ways,” Jack said. “Not all so great.”

“What ways?” Skaara asked curiously. “Surely freedom is always good.”

Jack really didn't feel like explaining ‘turn on, tune in, drop out' to Skaara, and looked to Kawalsky for rescue.

“Freedom is greatly to be desired,” Teal'c said. “But with freedom comes the responsibility to discipline oneself. I believe that is what O'Neill meant.”

“Something like that,” Jack said. “This is getting a little deep for me, though. How about the story of how we kept Teal'c from turning into a giant bug?”

“You can transform into an insect?” Skaara turned to Teal'c, looking more impressed than alarmed.

Teal'c remained stoic. “I would prefer not to.”

“Nobody's turning into an insect today,” Daniel said, coming up behind them. “Hi, guys.”

“We brought you more stuff to translate,” Kawalsky said. “Rothman says he has no idea what they mean.”

“Actually, he said he'd like your advice,” Carter corrected.

Kawalsky shrugged. “Same thing.”

“I finished the other ones,” Daniel said. “I'll get them.”

“No hurry,” said Jack. “If we go back too soon, we'll have time to go back to the planet with all the mud.”

“That mud is full of minerals we haven't found anywhere else,” Carter said.

“Even so. The mud will still be there in a couple of days.”

“So will Daniel.”

“Thanks so much,” Daniel said.

Sam smiled at him to show she was teasing. “I don't mind hanging out here. We can tell Skaara about Teal'c and the bugs.”

“I'll skip that story,” Jack decided, standing up. “Want to go take a walk?”

“I, too, am very familiar with those events,” Teal'c said hopefully, but Skaara tugged at his sleeve.

“You must not leave,” he insisted. “You must say if they tell the story truly.”

“We'll be back,” Jack said, and followed Daniel toward the sloping corridor that led from this chamber out to the desert sand.

They were in the lee of the pyramid, and although there was a light wind blowing, they were sheltered from the sand that skated across the ground. The sun was low over the horizon, and the air was already cooling. When the sun set, it would be cold enough out here that he'd wish for a warm wrap like the one that Daniel wore, but for now the stone was warm when he leaned back against the entrance wall.

“So how are things, really?” Daniel said after a while.

“If you wanted to hear war stories, you should have stayed in there,” Jack said. “Kawalsky can't get enough of that stuff.”

“I'll hear it all after you leave,” Daniel said. “Skaara loves to recount the exploits of SG-1. You'd be surprised by the number of times you've single-handedly saved the entire planet, according to him.”

“Ours, or yours?”

“Usually yours. The real story of how you saved Abydos doesn't need much embellishment.”

“You did have something to do with that, too,” Jack said. “If you hadn't been around…” He felt strangely uneasy at the thought, like it was one he didn't want to follow up for some reason.

“You wouldn't have been able to talk to anybody, to start with,” Daniel said. “Besides which, you wouldn't have figured out how to work the Stargate in the first place, so you wouldn't have gone anywhere. You'd probably still be… what were you doing before you got roped into the Stargate program, anyway?”

“Special ops,” Jack said. “Doing a lot of things in a lot of places I can't tell you about.”

“It's not like I'd tell anyone on Earth,” Daniel said.

“It's still classified.”

“Come on, it's not as if I can tell anyone on Earth without sending a message through the Stargate, which would be intercepted by some of the people with the highest security clearance on the planet.”

Jack frowned. “Why do you care so much?” It reminded him uneasily of some situation that turned his stomach, someone pushing him to tell them something he knew he shouldn't reveal. He wasn't sure exactly what, and figured trying to pin down the memory was a bad idea. There were enough choices, and none of them were things he'd care to remember.

“I've just always wondered how someone like you wound up in the Stargate program.”

Jack shot him a sideways glance. “Someone like me?”

Daniel made what was probably intended to be a clarifying gesture with his hands. “Someone who was satisfied with a career in the regular Air Force. I mean, Sam's interest was scientific, and Teal'c wanted to free his people, but I was never sure what made this crazy idea seem attractive to you. Here's someone saying ‘let's walk through this gate to another planet, and oh, by the way, we have no idea what's on the other side of it or whether we can get back—'”

“You said you could get us back.”

“Yes, but there was no way to be sure that I could.”

“I didn't know that.”

“So, what, you had such total trust in me from the moment that we met that you were willing to risk your life and the lives of your men on the idea that I could find and translate alien writings on the other side of the galaxy to get us home?”

“Apparently so,” Jack said.

“I'm just wondering if there wasn't some other reason you wanted to go on this mission,” Daniel said. “It seems strange to me that when you had a wife and a family
—”

“Aha,” Jack said.

Daniel looked a little annoyed. “'Aha,' what?”

“You're thinking about coming back to the Stargate program.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You implied it. You're thinking about coming back, but you're wondering if that would be fair to Sha're. And…?” Jack added, suddenly suspecting there was going to be someone else for Daniel to worry about leaving.

Daniel shrugged, but he smiled like he had a pleasant secret. “It would be bad luck to say anything this soon, Sha're says.”

“So, if at some point in the future that we're not saying is anytime soon, you had a kid, you would wonder if it was fair to him, too.”

 
“Would it be? You've been pretty lucky so far, but you know it's dangerous out there. If I take Sha're back to Earth with me, and then anything happened to me…”

“What does she say?”

“I think she's kind of interested in the idea of coming to Earth, actually,” Daniel said. “She's always been curious. Of course she'd miss people here. I would, too. But I guess I am thinking about it.”

“We could use you around,” Jack said. “Rothman's a lousy translator.”

“He's not really that bad,” Daniel said.

“He translated the writing on this scanning device Carter found the other day as ‘Beware the Giant Chicken.'”

“Well, that's… probably not right,” Daniel said. “He's still working on that one, though, right?”

“So he claims,” Jack said. “I'm just saying.”

“I'll think about it,” Daniel said. He glanced over at Jack. “So there wasn't any particular reason you decided to take the Abydos mission?”

Jack felt that gnawing sense of unease again, but pushed it aside. “No,” he said. “No reason in particular.”

“W
hat is this?” Sha're asked, peering at the sketch of the stone circle that Daniel spread out on the table.

“Have you ever seen something like it?”

She glanced up at him. “Have you?”

“I think so. I thought it must have been from one of the tomb paintings we found in Abydos, the ones that showed the arrival of the pyramid builders and the rebellion against the priests of Ra, but I can't find anything like it in my notes. Do you remember, Sha're?”

“I think you must have seen this thing before we met,” Sha're said. “Perhaps in a museum, or in some other place where you once worked.”

“Maybe so,” Daniel said. He had a sudden impression of a concrete room, somewhere cold that smelled of fresh paint and lingering dampness, and of sketching out the symbols that he could see so vividly on a chalkboard. It didn't look like a museum. A warehouse, he thought, and for a moment he thought he could remember the great circle of stone standing in a tall wooden box in a warehouse, but all of the impressions flowed away like water as soon as he tried to pin them down.

He tried to pay enough attention to dinner not to look ungrateful for it, but he couldn't have said afterwards what he'd eaten. He turned his water glass around in his hand, watching the light reflect in its shimmering depths.

“You are troubled,” Sha're said, taking the glass out of his hand and putting it aside on the table.

“I am,” Daniel admitted.

She drew him to his feet and toward the bedroom. “Come and tell me about it.”

He went to the bedroom window and drew the curtains open, looking out at the trees bowed by the rain. The streetlights glittered gold off their leaves. And yet at the same time, all he could see when he closed his eyes was Egypt. He could almost feel the blowing sand, sand that whispered against the base of an enormous pyramid reaching up toward the bright disk of the sun.

“I think there's something I've forgotten,” Daniel said slowly. “Something important, something that has to do with Abydos and a Stargate and the rebellion against Ra.”

“Surely if it is so important you will remember it soon,” Sha're said.

“Maybe,” Daniel said. “But what if it's something I don't really want to know? What if there's something connected to this Stargate that is so monumental, so earth-shattering that… that if I knew it, it would change everything.”

“Surely not everything,” Sha're said, slipping in front of him so that he could put his arms around her. He rested one hand on the curve of her belly.

“Everything.” He took Sha're's hand and held onto it, hard enough that he thought he must have been crushing her fingers in his, but she didn't protest. She had held his hand this way when… but, no, of course that hadn't happened yet. He'd only imagined what it would be like to hold her hand while she was in labor, racked with contractions and clinging to his hand.

It wasn't the bright labor and delivery suite with its waiting rocking chair that he could picture with the vividness of memory, but a woolen pallet in a room of stone, kneeling in front of her as she cried out, insisting that she push as she shook her head in denial, telling her that she would never lose him. It felt far too real to be a dream, even if the whole scene carried the edge of sick horror he associated with nightmares.

“I dreamed you had a baby,” he said slowly.

“That is only natural when the time is so close.”

“But everything was wrong. I had to leave you, and Kasuf took the baby to hide it, and then I couldn't find it. I never saw it again.”