Heart's Desire (42 page)

“Was in part true.”

“Some of it,” Daniel said. “I just hope you know that the part where I said that I hated you and was waiting for the opportunity to kill you wasn't one of those parts.”

There was a glimmer of humor in Teal'c's expression. “You would find that difficult.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Had the device worked as you hoped, it would have been a useful weapon in our fight against the Goa'uld.”

“That would have been nice, wouldn't it?”

“We will continue in our efforts to locate Sha're's son.”

Daniel closed his eyes for a moment against the slanting afternoon sunlight. “Yeah. We will.”

Whatever happened if they found him, it wasn't going to be anything like his fantasy life. The child had the genetic memory of the Goa'uld. Daniel wasn't sure what they were going to do with that, but he was pretty sure it wasn't going to involve his getting to take the boy home to Abydos, or for that matter to an ordinary apartment on Earth. It wouldn't be safe for anyone on Abydos if he did. Or for anyone on Earth.

And the child would still be Apophis's son and not his, and Sha're would still be dead, and all the paths that he'd thought had opened up for the rest of his life when he married Sha're would still be closed. All but the one that led, endlessly and demandingly, through the Stargate.

 
“And we will defeat the Goa'uld,” Teal'c said. “In time.”

Daniel glanced at him, realizing some part of what he must have seen. “We will,” he said. “Just apparently not today.”

S
am pieced her way downhill, trying to cover Reba and Keret without tripping over her own feet in her weariness. She stopped as they did, and glanced past them to see the deep ravine that cut across the hillside, wider than she remembered it being at this point on the slope.

“This may be a problem,” she said.

Keret considered the expanse. “If we threw a rope, we might catch it on those rocks, there.”

Reba gave him a scornful look. “That wouldn't take a child's weight, let alone yours. And we don't have a long enough rope.”

“We may have to double back the way we came,” Sam said. She glanced at Jack, trying to gauge whether he could make it back without help. He'd done a lot more climbing than she bet Janet would have recommended, and they were both dead tired. Daniel didn't look much better, although Teal'c seemed his usual steady presence.

“Let's think this through first,” Jack said. “So we aren't climbing back and forth all afternoon. Teal'c, how about you go scout and find us a way down?”

Teal'c nodded. “I will do so.”

“Blast the lot of you,” Reba said, and sat on one of the more stable-looking rocks nearby, resting her forehead against her fists; after a moment, Daniel sat down near her, looking warily sympathetic.

“You could sit down,” Sam said to Jack.

He gave her a sideways look. “And then I'd have to get up.”

“Point,” she said.

“I really did think the device was for locating things,” Daniel said. “I'm sorry. I think maybe I wasn't exactly at my best when I was doing those translations.”

Reba laughed, a bitter, humorless bark. “I should have known I couldn't be so lucky. And then when you did whatever you did back there, I thought
—”

“Let me guess,” Daniel said. “You'd found a fabulous treasure.”

Reba looked up, her eyes stormy. “What do you know about treasures? You've never served the goddess. You don't even believe in her.”

“You're not impressing me as the God-fearing sort,” Jack said.

“I would have been her most loyal servant if she had only looked my way. If Saba hadn't left me behind, if they hadn't left me
—”

“Who's Saba?” Sam asked.

Daniel glanced up at her. “Reba's childhood friend. Apparently they hoped that one of them would be chosen to be her host and the other one could be her servant, but she just took Saba as a host and left.”

“My supposed friend,” Reba said. “I learned better.”

“Your friend Saba probably had nothing to do with what happened,” Daniel said. “Once she was a host, she wouldn't have had any control over what Asherah did with her body.”

“I should have been her host,” Reba said. “I worked and studied, and got nothing for it, and just when I had another chance, you people had to ruin it.”

“Another chance,” Daniel said, sounding like the words left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I thought at first that if I brought her the prisoner, she might change her mind, but then when you told me of the Ancient device, well. Everybody wants something, don't they? Even the gods.”

“You were planning to sell the device to Asherah, weren't you?” Daniel said wearily.

Jack looked exasperated. “That's just what we would have needed. A Goa'uld with the ability to find anything they wanted. Like, say, us?”

“That would have been bad, yes,” Daniel said. “I thought she wanted treasure.”

“Keret may not be able to see any further than a full hold and a full belly, but we're not all like him,” Reba said.

“At least it would have been my full hold and my full belly,” Keret said.

“I saw the goddess,” Reba said. She set her jaw angrily if she were trying not to show some more revealing emotion. “She said she was pleased at my gift, and she smiled at me. She said she saw now that she should leave Saba and take me as her host instead. We were going to sail her ship among the stars.”

“She would have controlled your every action,” Daniel said, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“And I would have sent Saba back to the temple to sweep floors for the rest of her life and look up at the stars where she would never be.”

“Saba would have been dead,” Sam said.

Reba glanced up. “I prefer my revenge.”

“It wouldn't have mattered what you wanted,” Sam said. “The Goa'uld don't let their hosts live after they have no more use for them.” That was one difference between them and the Tok'ra. Even dying, Jolinar had protected Sam, who she hardly knew, who meant nothing to her but a refuge taken in desperation.

She understood now how hard that must have been for Jolinar, who never gave up, who wanted so much to live that she had taken two unwilling hosts against her own most sacred principles. It must have been so tempting for her to keep fighting for her own life until she was too weak to prevent her death from causing Sam's as well. But in the end that had been what mattered most to Jolinar, that she die as she had lived, as a Tok'ra and not as a Goa'uld, and she had comforted herself at the last with the thought that Rosha would be proud of her…

“You're lying.”

“She's not,” Daniel said. “Have you ever heard of anyone taken as a host returning? Even in old age? Are there even any legends about it? Because I can tell you, it doesn't happen.”

“They live out their lives in service to the goddess,” Reba said, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice.

“No,” Teal'c said. Sam looked up to see him standing a little above them on the slope. “If you will not believe the Tau'ri, believe me. I know the ways of the Goa'uld well. They do not release their hosts willingly except at great need, and they would never permit a former host who might reveal their secrets to live. If you had persuaded Asherah to abandon her current host, she would certainly have killed the woman at once.”

“And that should matter to me?” Reba said, tossing her head dismissively, but Sam wasn't convinced.

Neither was Daniel, apparently. “I think it does matter,” he said. “Doesn't it?”

“Blast you,” Reba said. “I can't even hope for it, now, can I? Not without thinking of her dead.”

“It's not something you ought to be hoping for,” Jack said. “Having a Goa'uld in your head, moving you around like a puppet
—”

“Your god should strike you down for such talk,” Reba said.

“I think he may have tried,” Keret said. “You should have seen the storm we came through.”

“They're not gods,” Jack said, frustration clear in his voice. “They're alien snakes who like the whole god act because it gets people to bring them lots of treasure and do their laundry for them.”

“You mean like the High King?” Keret said, with a sharp smile.

“There are many kinds of servitude,” Teal'c said. “You cannot persuade them that they are enslaved if they wish to believe themselves free, O'Neill. They must come to discover the truth in their own time.”

“I don't think we're going to be sticking around that long,” Jack said.

“Even so,” Teal'c said. “Perhaps the device of the Ancients may help them to find their paths.”

Reba shook her head. “By showing me things I can't have?”

“By showing you what you'd give up to get what you think you want,” Daniel said. “And what you wouldn't. I think that's what this thing was originally for.”

Jack gave Daniel a sharp look. “You're saying this was supposed to be some kind of learning experience?”

“Probably, the way the Ancients thought about it. I think the idea was to help people figure out what they really wanted. What they really wanted most.”

“Everybody knows that,” Jack said.

“Not everybody,” Daniel said. He looked at Sam, not quite a question, but with a definite flicker of curiosity.

“Mine wasn't really that different from real life,” Sam said. “We were home, and everything had always gone really well. So well that I got suspicious about it. It didn't seem realistic for us to never have had any major problems.”

“That wouldn't be realistic, no,” Jack said. He looked like he was running out of both patience and energy, his jawline dark with several days' growth of beard and his eyes shadowed. She didn't ask what he'd seen, but she didn't think she had to. She didn't think any of them did. They'd all seen the picture he kept in his locker of the family he didn't have anymore.

And Sam… all right, she missed her mother, but that was an old ache, one she'd learned to live with a long time ago. That was something she'd have had to face someday anyway, something everybody did. She wished they hadn't ever made any mistakes, but that wasn't possible. They'd known when they started exploring the galaxy that it was likely to cost a lot of pain and a lot of lives, and they'd all signed on to do it anyway.

And if they'd never met the Tok'ra, if Jolinar hadn't made a desperate attempt to stay alive by taking a host who would carry her through the Stargate, her father would be dead, and they wouldn't have learned half as much as they had about Goa'uld technology. If she hadn't been Jolinar's host, personally, they all would have died on Ne'tu.

She thought Jolinar would have agreed with her completely that it was worth it to still be alive.

“I think maybe I understand what you're saying,” she said to Daniel. “It's not such a bad thing to think about what's really important.”

“Which right now would be getting out of here,” Jack said.

“I believe I have found a path,” Teal'c said. “We must go carefully. The ground near the ravine still shakes.”

“You mean it's shaking
now
?” Sam said. “Oh, that's not a good sign.”

Jack turned to her. “Carter?”

“We may have seriously destabilized this hillside,” she said. “If enough of the underground chambers have collapsed
—”

“Up,” Jack said, and no one hesitated in starting to scramble up the hillside.

S
am was still hoping she was wrong when she began to feel the ground shaking underneath her, and heard a growing rumble like thunder that was all too close for comfort. She couldn't afford to stop and look back, but she risked one glance over her shoulder even as she was climbing. Down the hill buildings were collapsing, the earth beginning to buckle and slide, the chasm widening as rocks splintered.