STARGATE SG-1 29 Hall of the Two Truths (9 page)

“Carter?”

Jack half expected to hear her voice, his usual lifeline to consciousness. It was only when his brain finally kicked in that he actually remembered.

There’d be no answering “Sir.” Not now. Not ever.

And no Teal’c. And no Daniel.

Maybe consciousness wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after all. Being dead had been a whole lot easier. Living was what hurt like hell.

Jack lay there and let it. What was the point in getting up, after all? He’d already tried that. The room had spun a few dozen times and then he’d hit the floor. That had been some time ago, judging by the dried blood that was crusted on his upper lip. He had no desire to repeat the process.

In spite of himself, however, he opened his eyes. A black cylinder was pointed right at his nose. The barrel of a P90.

Crap.

With more energy that he’d thought he could muster, Jack rolled out of its way and into a defensive crouch. He’d been right, it was a P90. In fact, it was
his
P90 — he could see that now — resting on the floor next to him. There was the telltale scratch from when he’d used it to fend off some over-zealous, knife-wielding Jaffa a few months back. Siler had wanted to fix it, but Jack had said no. There was nothing like a visual reminder of one’s own mortality to keep a guy on his toes.

Too bad he hadn’t remembered that earlier. He should have ordered his team back to the gate instead of giving in to Daniel’s whining and Carter’s technology fetish. The job of protecting them was his and he’d screwed up. Again. The Goa’ulds might have pulled the triggers, but he’d put the weapon in their all too eager hands.

Jack eyed the P90 for a few moments before reaching for it. Next to it was some kind of backpack and a canteen, neither of which were his. But the gun was. Even without the evidence of the scratch, it had a more than familiar feel.

Ignoring his slightly protesting knee, Jack got to his feet. No spinning room this time, which was a start. He prodded the sack with the tip of his gun, but it seemed to be as advertised. Hooking the strap of the canteen, he lifted that next. Nothing happened. Either whoever had left them was the world’s worst booby-trap setter, or the stuff was as benign as it appeared. Since he was still in one piece, he’d go with the latter.

There was food in the backpack and water in the canteen. Seeing as how someone had gone to the trouble of leaving him with the bare essentials for survival, he figured the least he could do was to oblige them by getting the hell out of there.

Having emptied the contents of the sack on the ground to see what else it might hold — which was nothing — Jack squatted to repack it. He didn’t even hear the footfall until a split second before a hand rested on his arm. The sensation of having been pricked by something sharp was forgotten a second later as he leapt to his feet to face this new threat.

Except —

He blinked.

“It’s me, sir.”

“Carter?”

She stood there. In flesh and blood. Alive. And smiling at him.

“Yes, sir.”

Jack was suddenly light-headed, and happier than he had any right to be. He pushed aside the impulse to hug her and grasped her by the arm instead. She felt warm and solid beneath his fingers.

“But how?” Not that the details were important, only that she was there. “I thought you were dead.”

The gigawatt smile faded into a sympathetic, almost pitying look. “I am, sir,” she replied gently, her eyes locking onto his. “But then, you see, so are you.”

“I’M DEAD.”

“Yes, sir.”

He pointed at her. “And you’re dead.”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded rather matter-of-fact about the whole thing. And here he thought he was the one who’d taken a blow to the head.

“No offense, Carter, but you look pretty damn healthy to me.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure how, Colonel, but I don’t think this is really us.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if sorting through her thoughts, and then opened them. “I mean, it’s us, of course, but not us like we’re used to being us.”

Okay. Now she was starting to scare him. Cryptic wasn’t Carter’s usual M.O.

“Come again?” he said, eyeing her. She tried once more.

“Okay. It’s almost as if the essence of who we are has somehow been manifested into a form that physically resembles how we used to be, so we’re able to talk and walk and do everything we could do while we were alive. But I don’t think these are our real bodies. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re not.”

Jack touched the gash on his lip — the source of the dried blood — and winced. “Oh I don’t know. Feels pretty real to me.” He saw a bemused smile tug at her mouth as she half-shrugged.

“I don’t pretend to completely understand it. But think, sir. You saw me die. We both saw Daniel and Teal’c zatted to death. Odds are, they killed you too. And yet, here we are.”

That part, at least, he couldn’t deny. Still. Carter getting all metaphysical on him? It was weird. Too weird. “Well, here some of us are, anyway.” He looked around. “Where’s Daniel? And Teal’c?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea. When I woke up, you were the only one here. But you were unconscious, so I checked outside. I didn’t see any sign of them.”

“And that’s when you came up with this ‘theory’ about essences and stuff…?” He hated doubting her. It was like questioning whether the sun would rise each morning. But this stuff was way out there. He couldn’t imagine even Daniel coming up with it.

“Well, it’s not exactly
my
theory. Here, I’ll show you.”

Jack followed her to the doorway. Already he could hear the gentle patter of rain on leaves and the singular smell of wet vegetation. Sure enough, a steady drizzle was falling. A heavy fog obscured everything farther away than twenty meters, muffling both sight and sound. It was like being wrapped up in a thick, gray blanket.

“There.”

She pointed at markings that had been engraved on a plaque on the exterior wall of the building. He looked at her askance.

“And you can read this?”

Carter nodded.

“So — what? Suddenly you’re channeling Daniel?” He hadn’t meant for it to come out quite so snide. Carter seemed not to notice.

“I can’t explain it, sir. But when I look at it, I just — I don’t know, I understand it. It’s as plain as English.”

Considering he’d once been capable of both writing and speaking Ancient — or so he’d been told — he wasn’t exactly in a position to doubt her.

“Okay. In that case, what does it say?”

She reached out and ran her fingers over the text.

“
Oh you who sleep, awaken and send forth your soul. Fear not for the shell that remains above, for in its stead your
Ba
shall journey through the realm of the gods. Through Duat shall your shade journey unto the Hall of the Two Truths and upon the scales shall your deeds be measured. In Duat you will be tested and the truth of your heart laid bare.
”

He couldn’t help staring. He was used to Daniel spouting that kind of stuff. Not Carter.

“And that means —?”

“Well, it’s pretty clear, I thought.” She traced a line of symbols with her finger. “
Fear not for the shell that remains above
— that would be our physical bodies, I’m guessing. And this part about the
Ba
journeying in its stead — Daniel said that it was the
Ba
which undertook the trip through the underworld, and Duat is the name of the underworld. I recall NebtHet telling us that.”

“And this is why you think we’re, you know, dead?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense, sir.”

Jack pretended to peruse the plaque to give himself time to think. He wasn’t buying it. Carter foregoing a scientific explanation for a supernatural one? It just didn’t feel right. None of this felt right. Especially when there was a much simpler explanation.

“Or, they could have used a sarcophagus. They’re Goa’ulds, after all. I thought those things were practically standard issue.”

He waited for her response, watching her mull over his suggestion. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. That much, at least, was familiar.

“A sarcophagus does make more sense,” she said finally, nodding thoughtfully. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that, sir.”

And there it was. A sarcophagus should have been the first thing Carter came up with, not some farfetched Ancient Egyptian mumbo jumbo. Sure, she’d been through a lot the past few months. Maybe she just wasn’t completely back on her game, but this was
Carter
, for crying out loud. She was usually miles ahead of him, not running to catch up.

Those warning bells in the back of his head were really going off now.

Forcing levity he really didn’t feel, Jack grinned. “Good. Then it’s settled. We’re
not
dead. I feel better already.”

Her answering smile was hardly one of relief. If anything, she seemed a bit disconcerted. Something was definitely off with her. He’d only seen her this way once before. It had ended up with her eyes glowing and the damned snake in her head calling his name from behind a locked cell door.

Maybe he had good cause to worry.

“Come on,” he said, brusquely. “Let’s go.” He would need to keep his eye on her, but, for now, they just needed to get out of here and find Daniel and Teal’c. As much as Jack knew it was probably a trap, there was really only one destination of choice.

“Go where, sir?”

Picking up the knapsack and handing her the canteen, Jack gestured toward the plaque. “Wherever it is whoever put us here obviously wants us to go — the Two Halls.”

“The Hall of the Two Truths.”

“Yeah. That. The sooner we get there, the sooner we figure out what the hell is going on.” Not that he had any illusions that their journey would be straightforward. Someone had thought to leave him his P90, after all.

Jack paused to look up at the sky. The drizzle had turned into more of a mist, but he could still feel the dampness soaking into his joints. “Just once,” he sighed. “Just once, I swear, it’s gonna be a really nice tropical island.”

At first he thought it was a mirage. Daniel had spent enough time in the desert to know that a combination of sun and shifting sands could create illusions that messed with one’s head. And if that were the case, then his brain really was screwed up, because of all the millions of illusions it could possibly have concocted, this was the last one he ever would have thought of. Or wanted to think of, for that matter.

Except it wasn’t in his head. It was real. As real as the last time he’d seen it. A lone tent in the middle of nowhere, its black-spired top rising high above its golden sides. At the four corners, banners of black and gold fluttered in the constant breeze as the late afternoon sun glinted off the standards atop the canopied entrance.

It was the tent of a queen.

The tent of Amaunet.

Funny how he remembered it so clearly. At the time it had hardly registered. But seeing it again — or, at least, something that looked like it — he knew it instantly. He had died there. Once. And also he’d begun to live again. Slowly. So maybe it wasn’t too much of a stretch that he should find it here, of all places, where he’d died and yet, also, somehow seemed to live.

If
that’s what was happening to him. Which he still wasn’t sure of quite yet.

Reaching the tent took longer than expected. He’d never been good at judging distances. Jack had long ago taken that privilege away from him on missions. Sam was the go-to person for figuring out how far it was between point A and point B. And Teal’c would have known precisely how long it would have taken to get there.

Daniel wondered if they were dead. Teal’c, he knew, had gone down, but what about Sam and Jack? Maybe they were already in the tent, waiting for him.

Alone, Daniel felt vulnerable. Trudging across the valley to the distant ridge he wondered how many pairs of eyes were following him, or how many staff weapons might be trained on him. When the others were with him, he rarely gave such things a second thought. It was odd being on his own like this. Almost like part of him was missing.

The sensation wasn’t exactly new. He often felt like this, even when the others were around. Jack had been such an ass lately, it was having an impact on all of them. But it was more than that. Daniel had been feeling this way for quite some time, as though the others were heading in one direction and he in another. Like he was walking through a valley all alone, taking a path toward some unknown destiny.

An apt metaphor, given the circumstances. Or, come to think of it, were these circumstances the direct result of what he’d been feeling lately? Now there was a conundrum. If he was dead, was this all a creation of his own thoughts and fears and beliefs? Or was it completely serendipitous that he found himself in an actual, physical representation of exactly where his thoughts and emotions had been lately?