Heart's Desire (4 page)

“Interested,” O'Neill said. “But we need to find out what we both have to offer.”

Walat brightened. “Let me tell you about our wool production.”

 
He proceeded to do so at some considerable length. Teal'c suspected that even Daniel Jackson was hard-pressed to maintain an expression of courteous interest.

“That's… that's really fascinating, and I'm sure that you have fine textiles,” Daniel Jackson said, when Walat reached a pause in his description of new methods for producing dyes from coal tar. “But we produce some very similar fabrics back on Earth.”

“I was actually wondering if we might learn more about your airships,” Major Carter said. “I know that you're not interested in actually parting with any of the ships, but it may be that some of the technology you're using could be of use to us.”

“They are very simple machines,” Walat said. “I am sure nothing in their design could be of use to the Tau'ri.”

“Still, if I could talk to some of the people involved in building them…”

“If you are not interested in our fabrics, perhaps our cheeses? We produce a range of aged sheep's-milk cheeses that store well for travel.”

O'Neill and Daniel Jackson exchanged looks. Walat seemed to catch their expressions, because he said quickly, “You must be tired from your journey. Let us show you to a guesthouse where you can rest, and in the afternoon we can discuss the possibilities for trade between our peoples in more detail.”

“Actually, we probably have to be getting back,” Major Carter said. “But I'm sure we can send a team back later to talk some more.”

“Oh, what's the hurry, Carter?” O'Neill said. “We'd be happy to stick around and talk this afternoon.”

“I was wondering, would you mind if I took a look at some of the art we passed on the way here?” Daniel Jackson said. “The relief sculptures, and some of the inscriptions? It's really very impressive work.”

“If you like,” Walat said, blinking. “Really all of that is old. You should see some of our recent bronzework.”

“I'm sure it is old, but it's still interesting. If you wouldn't mind…”

Walat shrugged. “I will send a servant to show you some of the older parts of the palace,” he said. “If such things interest you.”

“They do.”

“I don't suppose I could see someone about the airships?” Major Carter put in hopefully, but Walat was already standing to go.

“Please wait here,” he said. “A servant will be sent to guide you to your quarters.” He swept out, his robes brushing against the worn stone floor.

“I don't get it, sir,” Major Carter said. “Do you really think there's much here for us? Leaving aside the airships, which apparently they're really determined not to let us get a close look at.”

“You never know,” O'Neill said. “Let's hear them out. Anyway, apparently they have interesting wall… things. Right, Daniel?”

“Right,” he said, although he was also looking at O'Neill a little suspiciously.

A female servant, dressed in a simple wool robe with her hair caught up at the back of her neck, soon came to show them through more winding hallways out into a courtyard that was startlingly green after so many rooms of bare stone.

Small trees shaded a small pool of water with tiny fish flickering through it, and terraced planters were draped with vines that flowered crimson and gold. On one side of the courtyard, a low wall guarded a steep drop to the next terraced courtyard far below. Above it, the mountains filled the sky.

The guesthouse lay against the rear wall of the courtyard, with an overhanging roof that sheltered low benches. Through its arched doorways, at least two rooms were visible, their floors piled with thick woolen carpets laid one over another to form a patchwork of rusts and rich browns.

“Please rest and refresh yourselves,” the woman said. “There is running water within, and I will send someone to you with tea. There is steam heat to keep the guesthouse warm in the evening, but you will not need it yet on such a fair day.”

“It's nice,” O'Neill said, settling onto one of the benches and resting his pack against its side. “Somebody will come fetch us when you guys are ready to negotiate some more, right?”

“Of course,” the woman said.

 
“We'll be here,” O'Neill said. Daniel Jackson was already rifling through his pack extracting a notebook. Major Carter was visibly restless, however, looking about as if in hopes that one of the airships would suddenly appear for her examination. “What, Carter, you didn't bring a book?”

“I'll think of that next time, sir,” Major Carter said. “I'm going to go take a look at that steam heating system while we're just waiting around.”

Teal'c settled onto a bench rather than accompanying her. He was used to ‘waiting around,' and this was a more pleasant place than many to do it, but he did not think she wished to be told so.

“All we need is some fishing poles,” O'Neill said, and stretched his legs out in the sun.

D
aniel panned his video camera across the wall, recording a lengthy inscription about the work involved in building a temple to the glory of the goddess Asherah. It would give him something to do later, working out the translation in pencil, erasing one dry word and replacing it with another more accurate one. If there had been some poetic intent behind the words, he wasn't really in the mood to try to capture it.

The servant who'd been sent to keep an eye on him was waiting patiently while he worked. He'd learned that her name was Anath, that she'd been indentured to the palace as a small child when her father had a bad year with disease taking half his sheep, and that she was far more interested in the airship docks
—
and, he suspected, the airship pilots
—
than she was in dusty inscriptions. He thought Sam might have gotten more useful information out of her.

He was starting to get a sense of personality from this set of inscriptions; the writer complained at length about delays due to weather and the quality of the stone available for building. He tried to imagine carving letters in stone, expecting them to endure for thousands of years, and being able to find nothing better to say than
we built you a temple, but it's not our fault that it isn't a better one.

Then again, what else was there to say about most human endeavors that was honest?
We tried.
People throughout the ages had hoped that some divine being handed out high marks for effort. He suspected the Goa'uld didn't, and wondered what had happened to the unnamed architect, whether these were his last words:
it wasn't my fault, we had a lot of storms…

He realized he'd been filming the same patch of lettering for longer than strictly necessary, and snapped the video camera off.

“Do you want to see more walls?” Anath asked, sounding as if she couldn't imagine why.

“Sure, why not,” Daniel said. “As long as we're here.”

They'd met with the king the night before, over a lengthy dinner in which one tiny plate had been replaced by another in seemingly endless succession. Jack had established in about ten minutes that there was nothing they needed here, and then begun transparently
—
at least, it was transparent to Daniel
—
finding reasons for them to stick around anyway.

By the end of dinner, Sam had somehow decided that it was worth collecting more data on the planet's weather, and Daniel had been promised a tour of the palace so that he could get a better look at what Jack referred to as “all that cultural stuff.” The king, an elderly man with a disconcerting tendency to smile like a used car salesman, had encouraged both, apparently on the grounds that if they stayed around long enough, they'd decide they wanted to trade for something.

It wasn't likely to be sheep. Sam was starting to look annoyed whenever any kind of sheep-related product was mentioned. He wasn't sure if it was just that she was frustrated about still not having been able to get her hands on one of the airships, or that she'd finally realized that Jack was trying to give her a break after Ne'tu and was pissed off at him about it.

When they'd gotten back to the SGC after escaping from the prison planet, Janet had been busy trying to get Jack to sit still so that she could treat his leg and quizzing Martouf about the best way to treat Jacob and Selmak. It wasn't every day that she had a Tok'ra laid out in her infirmary, much less one who was sharing the body of an Air Force general. As far as Daniel knew, Sam had gotten a couple of band-aids put on and gone home without mentioning
oh, by the way, Martouf used a Tok'ra memory device to make me remember how it felt to be tortured and then forced to seduce a Goa'uld prison guard in order to survive.

Not that Janet probably had a band-aid for that, and not that there was any point in expecting enforced rest to fix any of their problems. Still, he understood where Jack was coming from, at least to the extent of agreeing that they probably didn't need a strenuous battle against the massed forces of the Goa'uld at the moment. Jack had looked glad for a moment's rest himself the day before, leaning back on a bench in the sunlight, the brim of his hat tilted down over his eyes.

Daniel couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Jack looking relaxed. The answer might have been
before Sha're died and Jack started trying so hard to take care of everyone else,
and also possibly
never.
It was hard right now for him to remember if any of them had ever felt at ease, and if there had ever been a time since he first came back through the Stargate without Sha're that had seemed like a happy one. And if there had been, what did that say about him?

“Dr. Jackson?” Anath prompted. Daniel shook his head. There was no point in standing around asking himself questions he didn't really want to answer, and it wasn't why he'd asked for this tour.

“Right, let's move on,” he said. He followed her down the length of a hallway cut deep into the stone of the mountain, with condensation collecting in patches on the wall and making the wool rugs underfoot smell musty and sour. “What are we looking at down here?” It had better be carvings, he thought; the damp would surely make short work of any attempt at painting these walls.

“Decorated stones,” Anath said. “They are found from time to time when new fields are being constructed, or in high places where few people go.”

“Ah,” Daniel said. “Well, yes, let's look at the stones.” He wished he felt more genuine enthusiasm. He should, he told himself. Every artifact was important, every fragment of pottery or shaped stone one more piece of a puzzle much bigger than himself. It was fairly indefensible to feel that he wished there were more chance of finding a
good
alien artifact here.

Anath stopped at an open doorway, pushing aside the musty hangings in the doorway for him to step through. He was expecting something utilitarian, stone tools or boundary markers no longer in use, but once she lit a lamp in the small storeroom, he could see the pair of tablets propped up on a shelf on the opposite wall. They didn't look like stone; more likely clay, by the way they were deteriorating badly at the edges.

“These used to hang in one of the audience chambers, but Walat had them taken down,” Anath said. “He said they looked like something out of a temple. Not modern.”

“Walat might want to keep these somewhere dryer,” Daniel said as patiently as he could manage. “Or at least copy the inscriptions on them before they entirely dissolve in this damp. What do they say?” He squinted in the lamplight, and then fished a flashlight out of his pocket.

“It's not writing,” Anath said, sounding amused at his foolishness. “Don't you know what writing looks like?”

So far all the inscriptions he'd found had used either a variant of the Caananite alphabet or the Goa'uld hieroglyphics. There was a great deal more of the former than the latter, which suggested the Goa'uld weren't frequent visitors. In his experience, they didn't like to be confronted with things they didn't understand.

“Well, yes, it is writing, it's a pattern of regular symbols, but it may be using an older alphabet, or an entirely different… oh, hey.” He held the flashlight closer, wishing now for a lot more light. It was hard to make out where the breaks between words had been intended to go, but if the first word ended
there
…