“But if they’re asking for our help…”
“I didn’t hear anyone asking.”
Daniel shook his head, and Sam took advantage of the pause to jump in. “Actually, sir, Rhionna also implied that she knows something about the shield.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out the scrawled map the woman had pressed into her hand. “The note says to meet her here, after dark.”
The colonel scowled at the paper and after a long moment snatched it from Sam’s hand. “And if we help her, she’ll tell us what she knows.”
“That was the implication, sir.”
He looked up from the map, met her eyes through the dusky light. “You trust her?”
Which meant it was her call, her responsibility. She held his gaze. “Yes sir, I think I do.”
“Colonel O’Neill,” Teal’c said, half turned back the way they’d come. “Men are approaching. If we wish to meet with
Rhionna Channon we must evade them. I do not believe Pastor
Channon would permit us to talk with his daughter.”
“He’s right,” Sam said. “I got the distinct impression that she’s
persona non grata
among the Elect—especially with that guy, Camus.”
“Which is probably a good sign,” Daniel chimed in, hands still deep in his pockets. “Maybe she really does have some useful information.”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Sam agreed. She glanced over at O’Neill. “Sir?”
He was studying the map, memorizing it, then scrunched up the paper in his fist. “Okay, we meet with her and see what she has to say. But that’s all. We are not—repeat,
not
—gonna get dragged into another mercy mission.”
Sam just nodded. Daniel scowled, but wisely held his tongue.
“The men are coming from the direction of the Chapel,” Teal’c said, choosing to ignore the tension. “I suggest we head in the opposite direction.”
In silence they moved out. Teal’c taking point and the colonel covering their six, they melted into the shadows of the empty city.
* * *
The ritual of dinner on Third Night had long been a pretence of normalcy on the part of Rhionna Channon and her father. Their conflicts, both personal and political, were left outside for the duration of the meal, and by some unspoken agreement, their relationship returned to the happy, settled state they had known before. Before she had started questioning the Ark and its purpose. Before she had begun to see the world as it truly was. Before she had been to the Cove.
During their dinners together, for just a few hours, it was as if nothing had changed. Her father was just her father, and her love for him was untainted by the new truths to which her eyes had been opened.
Tonight, though, that fragile peace had been shattered, and it was because the strangers had come. Rhionna toyed with her food, now as cold as the atmosphere in the room. At the other end of the table her father had finished his meal, though he looked to have enjoyed it no more than she, and she guessed that he had forced every bite down his throat just to prove a point. All is as it was, his actions said, all will remain as it was. The strangers will learn nothing and they will leave. Our lives will continue on as they have always done.
But Rhionna could not let the strangers leave having learned nothing. Every instinct told her that those four people had not only the power to help her, they had the courage too. She remembered the sullen challenge in the eye of their leader, Colonel O’Neill, and the hopeful questioning of the one who had introduced himself as Daniel Jackson. It was a tenuous optimism, but one she clung to. Change had to come for Ierna’s people. Of that, at least, she was certain.
“Is the food not to your liking, Rhionna? I can have something else prepared if you wish.” Her father smiled, though the expression was brittle. It was clear that he had no intention of acknowledging the tension in the room. Things unspoken. It was the way of the Ark, and Ennis Channon was a loyal follower.
“It’s not the food that isn’t to my liking, Father.”
He looked away and took a sip of his wine before saying, “I have no wish to listen to your complaints tonight, girl.”
She gave a gasp of laughter. “Complaints? You make me sound like a surly child! This is more than a temper tantrum.”
“Well, that’s certainly what it sounded like this evening.” Her father finally let some of his anger show through.
Rhionna sighed and sat back. The scene she had caused at the chapter had been unfortunate, the public argument with Tynan Camus and the players doing her cause more harm than good—the people of the Ark already considered her something of an oddity—but it had been a necessary diversion to allow Major Carter and Teal’c to escape. She could only hope that the tactic had worked, that the strangers would meet with her as she had requested in her note. “I have apologized for that. It was ill-judged.”
“Your behavior embarrasses me, Rhionna. It embarrasses the Elect.”
“Damn the Elect!”
Ennis jerked to his feet. His wine glass clattered across the table, leaving a trail of red droplets in its wake. “Your words are blasphemy, girl!”
“Why? Are the Elect divine now? Have they finally achieved the state to which they have aspired for so long?”
“There is but one God.”
“Oh, Father, spare me the platitudes.”
Ennis took a breath and resumed his seat. “If you would ever come to hear the Message you would not think them platitudes. Why do you persist in opposing God’s will?”
“I have no wish to discuss theology with you this evening, Father,” she said, weary of the tired argument. “Sometimes I think that even you do not believe half the things you say.”
“It is the Message. It is our law.”
“It needn’t be.”
“There is no other way.”
“Because no one has looked for it!”
Her father shook his head. “Rhionna, my child, I fear for you. I fear for what’s to become of you. Not as your Pastor, but as your father. I don’t know why you continue along such a dangerous path. You must see the futility of it. Why are you so intent on saving those who are beyond salvation?”
“Because I don’t believe that they are. And you may call it heresy. I call it humanity. I don’t understand how you can turn from the truth.”
He looked down at the table and drew his finger through a droplet of spilled wine. “Do you still spend your time there? Outside?”
“It’s best that I don’t answer that.”
He nodded; apparently her response was answer enough. “And are you still…do you still…?” He faltered, then said with a sneer, “The Seawolf. Do you spend your time with him?”
The pain was unexpected and powerful. Rhionna swallowed against the sudden constriction in her throat. “No. No, not now.” It was all she could trust herself to say, but it seemed to appease her father.
“I believe Brother Camus would yet have you, you know,” he said. “You will be Pastor one day, Rhionna. It would be an advantageous marriage.”
Whenever her father raised this subject, a favorite of his, Rhionna was always vocal in enumerating the reasons why such an idea was repellent to her, but tonight she hadn’t the strength. There were greater battles to fight. She just wished that she could count her father as an ally. “The strangers… They can help us. They know about
Sciath Dé
. Perhaps this is the chance we have waited for.”
“I have awaited nothing.” His eyes narrowed and he said, “Did you have anything to do with their escape?”
Rhionna toyed with denial, but decided she did not care if her father knew her role in this. “I want them to know the truth.”
He brought his fist down on the table, sending the upturned glass crashing to the floor. “Rhionna!”
“Please, Father! Please let them help us.”
For a moment he said nothing, simply stared at the shards of crystal on the floor, and in those few seconds hope was bright. Had she, at last, managed to persuade him that the truth could not be hidden? But then he raised his eyes to meet her and all she saw was resignation.
“This is the way of the Message, child. The Sun is our Lord and our Judge. There is no way to change that.”
And with her father’s words, Rhionna knew that her course was now set. The meeting with the visitors would change everything, and there would be no turning back.
The night
had grown dark, and when Teal’c looked up he could see no stars through the dome that shielded this city from what lay beyond.
He did not speculate as to what that might be, but his instinct—what O’Neill would call his ‘gut’—told him that it was dangerous. Too much was hidden in this place, too many lies told in the guise of truth, for him to believe that all was well on the world of Ierna. And so he kept his guard raised, his attention ranging out beyond the whispered discussions between his team, and into the city at large. Even from this distance he could see the white flicker of the screens that projected the Message onto the vast sides of towering buildings, he could hear the distant hubbub of a city, and beneath it all he could detect the tramp of booted feet. Teal’c did not doubt that they were being hunted by the men who served the Elect.
But they did not come close to the place Rhionna Channon had selected as a meeting point, which made him at once thankful and suspicious. Daughter of the Pastor, her loyalties remained unclear despite her protestations. The Jaffa on Chulak had an expression for such situations—bait your trap with Satta-cakes, not gruel. He would be vigilant.
They awaited her in a deserted plaza beneath a vast, empty tower. At the center of the space a flat rectangular structure, about as high as his waist, sloped down toward a circular area surrounded by a low wall. Once, perhaps, it had been a fountain trickling into a pool but now both were dry and dusty. O’Neill sat on the edge of the slope, swinging his legs to mark his boredom, however the tight grip he maintained on his weapon belied his feigned indifference. Major Carter had her back to them all, covering the other entrance to the square. And Daniel Jackson was studying the footage he had taken on his camera, his face ghostly in the light shining up from the screen.
“…really, it’s quite remarkable,” he was saying, gaze intent and brow creased. “We’re looking at a culture that apparently dates its existence from a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Yes, apparently,” O’Neill said. His eyes were hidden beneath his cap, shadowed in darkness. Teal’c did not need to see his face to hear the cynicism in his voice. Neither did Daniel Jackson.
“I’m not saying they sprang into being a century and a half ago,” he said, his tone skirting irritation. “But there’s clearly been a significant loss of knowledge about their own history. And a retrograde step of that magnitude is almost always the result of some kind of societal cataclysm—war, plague, disaster. Huge population loss.”
“Collective amnesia?” O’Neill had stopped swinging his legs and sat very still. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
After a silence Daniel said, “There are plenty of reasons why people forget their own past, Jack. Almost none of them involve memory stamps.”
“Yeah, and almost all of them involve some smart-ass in a suit rewriting history to make himself the good guy.”
Daniel Jackson switched off his camera. The small light disappeared and left him in the shadows. “That’s a fair point—history, as they say, is written by the victors.”
“Question is, who’s the enemy?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?” Daniel Jackson stood up and stretched. “That’s why we’re meeting Rhionna.”
“Is it?” O’Neill didn’t move. “Is that why we’re here, Daniel? Because I thought it was to get hold of the shield.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive aims.”
“Daniel’s right, sir,” said Major Carter. “Rhionna may be able to help us find out more about the shield.”
“Sure,” O’Neill said. “At a price.”
“You don’t know that, sir.”
“Oh, I think it’s a good bet.” He jumped down from the fountain, his boots drumming a dull boom from the bottom of the empty pool. “There’s always a price.”
“Now you just sound cynical,” Daniel Jackson said.
“Yes,” O’Neill agreed. “That’s because I
am
cynical!”
“It may be a price worth paying, sir.” Major Carter had half turned from her post. Teal’c could see the gleam of her eyes in the dark. “If that shield really could help defend Earth from attack by the Goa’uld…”
“A price worth paying.” It was a muted echo. “And what if the shield turns out to be a crock, then what? What if all that happens is us ending up saving some other screwed-up world from itself while we get— Then what? You still think that’s a price worth paying, Major?”
She was silent a moment. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I think it is.”
O’Neill didn’t answer, just muttered something indecipherable under his breath.
“Come on, Jack,” Daniel Jackson said, “you’ve never made this just about the standing orders before.”
“Yeah, well P3R-118 changed my mind.”
In the silence that followed Major Carter turned back to her watch, but Daniel Jackson was not so wise. “That’s just one place.”