Stargate SG1 - Roswell (26 page)

“Aren't you forgetting the little matter of a functioning time machine?”

“We have several options available to us. The simplest would be to recover the time-travel jumper on the planet where Colonel Maybourne was exiled, but that won't give us a transport.”

“But we've got that jumper.”

“Nope. Think about it.” She smiled and nodded at a middle-aged farmhand who tipped his hat as he passed them. Then she turned back to Daniel and added in a low voice, “This is 1947, we didn't take it until 2005. It's still there. And if it isn't there's always Janus's machine on Atlantis.”

Daniel almost stumbled. “You want to go to
Atlantis?”

 
“We have a DHD enabled jumper and access—more or less—to two Stargates here on Earth. We can head to a planet in this galaxy where we steal an Al'kesh or
Tel'tak, retrieve the ZPM from Proclarush Taonas, and use it to 'gate to Atlantis. We've changed our past, which means Elizabeth Weir will never go there, so Janis's time-travel enabled jumper will still be there. With the General able to access the Atlantis database, I should also be able to locate and install some sort of beaming technology.”

“Okay, fine, maybe, but how do we get the time machine back to Earth before Atlantis floods?”

“Dagan.”

“Dagan?”

“It's a planet in the Pegasus Galaxy. McKay's report went into great detail about how he found a ZPM hidden there by a secret Brotherhood. That ZPM will enable us to return to Earth. And once we go back to 1908, nothing we do here will matter, because our history will be restored.”
I hope.
The possibility that this timeline would continue on regardless didn't change the need to get back to
their
timeline.

He tried to keep the doubt from his voice, but Sam didn't fail to miss it. “In which case, should we even be considering rescuing An? Maybe we should just head to New York?”

Sam pulled the packet of Asgard food from her pocket. “I put this in the medical kit, Daniel. I have to trust that I did so for a reason. By the time we return from Atlantis, An could be dead.”

They turned left again, down a dingy alley. Instead of dumpsters, trashcans lined the walls. The absence of graffiti and kids shooting up imbued the laneway with a sense of alienness that Sam found disconcerting. She tensed, expecting a trap or some unseen assailant.

Years of off-world missions together in hostile environments had attuned her sense to that of her teammates, and it was clear that Daniel was having a similar reaction. They'd almost reached the end of the alley when he laughed softly. “Kind of a sad testimony to our future, isn't it?”

She smiled. “Feeling nostalgic?”

“Not really. I mean, I've never lived in this time, so there's nothing for me to be pining for. I laving said that, I could think of
worse
places to be marooned than 1947.”

Daniel was favoring his leg, which prompted Sam to ask, “How's the wound?”

“Fine.”

The reply was too fast for Sam's liking, but she'd seen the injury for herself, and seen him down the antibiotics. There was no telltale damp patch on his jeans. It probably just hurt like hell.

They reached the end of the alleyway. Checking her watch, which she'd set to match that of the diner's clock, Sam glanced back the way they had come. Several sets of steps offered dark comers where they could remain out of sight until—

A motorcyclist zipped passed them along the road—and ploughed directly into the side of a pickup truck piled high with bales of hay.

Although Sam had been expecting the accident, the impact still made her wince. The bike rider, a soldier in standard issue drab, had swerved at the last minute, but, unable to avoid the open tailgate of the pickup, was tossed onto the road while his bike slid with a screech of metal on concrete into a nearby Barber's pole.

The driver of the battered pickup braked sharply, looked around, and unable to see behind him, stared in alarm at Sam and Daniel, who were running to the rider's aid. A half dozen men, two wearing aprons and a third with a large white cape flapping around his neck rushed out of the Barber's shop. “I'll call Glenn!” one of the barbers announced, and hurried back inside.

The bike rider's arm and face were badly grazed, but more importantly, his leather flying helmet had offered no protection against the impact and subsequent fall. His face was covered in
blood and he was lying prone on the ground, semi-lucid.

“Oh, heck!”

Sam glanced up to see the shocked face of the young driver.

The barbershop patrons were also crowding around. “I need a

towel to stop the bleeding,” she announced, keeping her voice authoritative
and assured. The second barber, still with scissors and comb in hand, also hurried back to the shop, while more people emerged from the surrounding stores and gathered around them. Daniel made it known to anyone who asked, that Sam was a military nurse.

Checking his pulse, Sam cautioned the bike rider, “Don't move, okay?” She gently felt his neck vertebrae, before moving his head to one side. He was young, no more than early-twenties, but his neck and shoulder blades were ridged with scars—shrapnel wounds by the look and feel of it.

“How...how is he?”

“Will he be all right?”

Daniel opened his arms wide, to prevent the onlookers crowding too close. “Okay, everyone, how about we move back and give them some air.”

Although there was a reasonable amount of blood, it was typical of a superficial head wound and what looked to be a broken nose. When the bike rider opened his eyes, his pupils dilated instantly in response to the glare from the late afternoon sun. He was a tough kid; he'd be okay, but Sam wasn't about to give anyone that reassurance—just the opposite. “His neck's not broken but he may have a fractured skull. He's concussed at the very least,” she reported.
“I
need that towel—fast. I have to stop the bleeding.”

A siren cut through the mumbled words of encouragement. One of the barbers repeated to everyone what Daniel had told him, that the lady was a military nurse from the base. As planned, Daniel quietly blended into the back of the crowd. Once he was certain Sam had her ride, he and O'Neill would return to the jumper and wait for her signal.

The ambulance was a heavy black vehicle that obviously did double-duty as a hearse. While practical, it couldn't have been too inspiring for accident victims. The young driver, whom Teal'c had identified as Glenn Dennis, hurried out with a First Aid kit in hand, but seeing Sam was already attending to the victim, he turned and opened the rear of the ambulance-come-hearse and pulled out a wood and canvas stretcher.

“I need to keep the pressure on this towel to stop the bleeding,” Sam announced when the driver laid out the stretcher beside them.

“I'm okay,” the rider objected, trying to sit.

“No, you're not,” Sam scolded, pushing him down. “If you try to get up, you could...cause a lot of damage to yourself.”

“Here.” The barber gestured for one of the other men to help. “We'll lift him on.”

“Careful,” Sam cautioned. “It's important to keep him as still as possible.”

The rider was still trying to object, but someone shushed him. “Do as the nurse says, kid.”

Sam frowned and shook her head when he was in the vehicle. “I'm really worried about his head wound.”

“Can you come to the base with him, ma'am?” Dennis asked, securing the stretcher. “I can give you a ride back into town, later, when he's been seen to.”

Stepping up into the cramped rear of the ambulance, Sam smiled gratefully. “That's okay. I'm due to report back there this evening, anyway.”

Dennis nodded gratefully, closed the door behind them, then retrieving his First Aid kit, climbed back into the driver's seat. “It was swell of you to stop and help, Miss. I can patch up a few cuts and splint a leg, but having a nurse right there, well, that sure was lucky.”

“Yeah.” Sam smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Lucky.” She turned her smile to the rider and added truthfully, “You'll be fine. You've got a tough head.”

“Shoulda seen that truck, though,” he groaned. “Sun was in my eyes, I guess.”

The inside of the ambulance was redolent of embalming fluids, tobacco and engine oil. Dennis had the front windows open to offer a little ventilation, but Sam suspected that most of his patients probably passed out from heat exhaustion. She caught sight of Daniel nodding to her from the entrance of the alleyway, then turned her attention back to the soldier, who now seemed more concerned about the fate of his bike than his injuries.

The base was only a few minutes away. Alerted to the arriving ambulance, according to Teal'c, the barrier should have been raised and the ambulance waved through. However, that was not the case. Instead, both gates were closed and the MPs on duty held up their hands for Dennis to stop, blocking Sam's only chance of entering the base to locate An.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Heya,
Johnny, What'll it be? Got some nice pecan pie,” Dorothy asked the new arrivals. She shot Jack a smile when he pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar bill to pay for their meals.

Jack eased himself onto one of the blue vinyl stools. “I'll try some of that pic. Another coffee, too.”

“Coffee and pie,” Brazel drawled.

McBoyle ordered the same, sat two stools away from Jack and turning to face Brazel, pulled out a spiral notepad and pencil. “Okay, Marc,” he said, licking the end of the pencil, “now take it from the top. Tell me a little about who you are and exactly what you saw, all right?”

The pie, complete with a massive artery-clogging dollop of yellow cream, appeared in front of Jack. He opened the newspaper and pretended to read an article about Stalin's denouncement of the Marshall Plan.

“I'm a foreman at Foster Ranch,” Brazel began. “Dee—that's my neighbor's boy—'n me were up at the Hines pasture and we saw all this real strange wreckage, like from a plane crash or somethin'. I've found stuff before, you know, those weather balloons the Army are always testing, but nothing like this. Hell, the sheep point blank refuse to cross the pasture to get to the watering station. Dunno what I'm gonna do about them. They're not gonna last in this heat without water. I'm just trying to do my civic duty and all I want is someone to get out there and clean it up.”

The arrival of the coffee gave McBoyle the opportunity to interrupt. “I got all that. What happened next?”

Brazel gulped down a few burning mouthfuls, then picked up his fork and stabbed the pecan pie with more force than it really deserved. “I dragged some of the bigger pieces into one of the sheds. Took Dee home and showed Floyd and Loretta some of the smaller stuff.”

“Floyd and Loretta Proctor? Dee's parents?”

“Yeah. They reckoned maybe I might get a reward for reporting it. Huh.” Brazel snorted and shoveled pie into his mouth. “Some reward. Next day I was out there and saw these buzzards circling around about two, maybe three miles east.”

“East of the crash site,” McBoyle confirmed, scribbling on his pad.