06 - Siren Song (10 page)

“Who lied?” Sam asked.

“If
you’re
here, I should be free. He
promised
.”

“Sebek?”

He turned his blazing eyes on her. “My
father
.”

O’Neill raised an eyebrow in Sam’s direction. She stared at the kid as it all
began to make sense—lies, truths, bits of information, all coalescing.

“You are the son of Aris Boch,” Teal’c stated, confirming out loud what Sam
was thinking.

Other than dropping his head to his knees again, the boy made no reply.

“Wait a minute,” the Colonel objected. “The Tok’ra said he didn’t
have
a son.”

Sam could remember quite vividly the Colonel’s account of the conversation
he’d had with the rescued Tok’ra and his grudging respect for Aris’ powers of
manipulation. Not that it had worked on them at the time, but Aris was good at
spinning the occasional compelling yarn to get what he wanted.

“They lied,” Aris’ son answered, his voice muffled by his arms. “Everybody
lies.”

It took the President half an hour to call Hammond back on the red phone,
and when he did, he seemed entirely too patient. Too used to hearing that a
member of SG-1 was missing; too confident things would work out fine. Hammond
knew it wasn’t intentional. The man had been nothing but supportive of the
program over the last years of his presidency. But that was coming to an end
now, and SG-1 was the team with more than their share of close calls. If they
weren’t so good at getting themselves out of the enormous trouble they got into,
the President might have called back in five minutes. It didn’t really matter.
Hammond already had his plan in place. Briefing the President was the smallest
part of it.

Around three hours after SG-1’s report-back time had come and gone, Hammond
had sent SG teams 14 and 17 after them, loaded to the gills with protective gear
and heavily armed. He’d looked straight into Major Harper’s eyes and told him,
“Find them, Major,” and Harper had nodded and stepped through the ’gate as
though he had every confidence in the world that he could carry out those
orders. There was no other way to go about it, or so Hammond had always
believed. Fake it until you make it, Jack O’Neill would have said.

Harper’s recon squad was now just a shade over two minutes late.

Hammond had a comfortable chair for occasions just like this one, but he
never actually slept in it. It was as if he had an innate ability that enabled
him to keep his head on straight through the long hours, no matter how many days
those hours stretched into. The coffee helped, too, Air Force dark, strong
enough to hold the spoon upright when he stirred in his sugar. He pored over
files, worked on overdue performance evaluations for his direct reports, went over
inventory and requisition forms, cracked open budget files. Anything to keep him
from composing letters of condolence in the back of his brain, tiny squares of
white paper that loomed larger as the hours went on and were filled with lines
of imaginary black scrawl. Last words, about the fallen. He hated everything
about condolence letters, even the taste of the glue on the envelope flaps. The
visceral memory plagued him.

Harriman didn’t need to page him when the gate activated. He was out the door
and down the stairs, into the control room even before Harriman could get to the
com. SG-14 straggled down the ramp after SG-17, dragging a handcuffed Relosian
with them, his eyes as big around as the ’gate. No matter the reason they’d
brought him back to Earth, this couldn’t be a good sign.

Hammond met Major Harper at the end of the ramp, looked into his eyes again,
and saw nothing but bone-deep exhaustion and disappointment. The Relosian looked
like he might dart for cover any moment, but one of Harper’s men had a big hand
on his shoulder, anchoring him to the spot.

“Report, Major,” Hammond ordered.

Harper threw off the slump of weariness in his shoulders, drawing himself to
attention. “Sir, we’ve been over every inch of that village. There’s no sign
SG-1 is still in the vicinity. They left behind some of their equipment,
including some books and the laptop Dr. Jackson was using for the negotiations.”

“You’ve searched the quadrant nearest the ’gate?”

“Yes, sir.” Harper glanced at his men, then said, “Sir, we double-timed it
over that entire area. There’s nothing there. This one, though, tried to sell us
a load of bull about how there were evil demons in the woods that lure in
travelers and eat them. Not what I’d call a sophisticated cover story.” He
gestured toward the native, who flinched.

“Have you managed to find out what he does actually know?” Hammond asked,
looking not all that closely at the bruise on the young man’s cheek and the
corresponding redness of Harper’s knuckles.

“We think he sold their whereabouts to someone, but he won’t tell us who, or
what they wanted with SG-1. Maybe he doesn’t know, but we haven’t had enough
time yet to find that out.”

“Did you capture him by force?” Hammond asked.

“No, sir. The Relosians seemed to want to cooperate, and their leaders looked
pretty shocked that he might be in on this. They offered him up on a silver
platter.”

“You’re certain they’re telling the truth?” Hammond had dealt with enough
duplicitous offworld governments to know that the wide-eyed innocent ones were
often the ones most likely to torture his people until they gave up their codes.

“Reasonably so, sir, yes.” Harper fished in his pocket and pulled out a
handful of small objects. He let them tumble into Hammond’s palm.

“What are these?”

“These are what they were trying to give Dr. Jackson when he left in the
middle of negotiations. They were concerned that we were backing out of the
deal.”

Hammond sighed and handed the beans back to Harper. “Major, I’ll waive the
debrief. Put together a comprehensive search of the planet using UAV and any
other means you deem necessary. I’m sending SG-9 back to complete the
negotiations.”

“Yes, sir,” Harper said. “Sir, time is of the essence. I don’t know what’s
happened to them, but—”

Hammond stared hard at the Relosian, who stepped back a pace, only to run
into his keeper. Allowing himself a bitter smile, Hammond was gratified to see
he still had the power of intimidation. He turned to Harper. “Find out, Major.
Use any approved methods at your disposal. We’ll send a coded message to the
Tok’ra, to tell them we have a problem that requires their assistance, and
request a meeting.”

“Yes, sir!” Harper turned and tilted his head to his lieutenant. Between them
they pulled their reluctant captive off the ramp and headed toward the
interrogation rooms.

When Hammond turned the corner toward the control room, he found his way
blocked by Dr. Fraiser. “Doctor?” he said.

“Something I can do for you?”

Janet smiled; she looked as wiped out as he felt. “I just thought it’d be
best to be nearby, in case my staff were needed.”

“Wise thinking,” he said, glad as hell her staff weren’t needed. Yet.

“General, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “No more coffee for me tonight. But I could do with some
breakfast. Just as soon as I send this message to the Tok’ra.” He followed her
into the corridor, still focused on the problem at hand.

No matter what they found on that planet, or what the Relosian prisoner
coughed up, it likely wouldn’t lead directly to SG-1. He’d have to find another
way, and the Tok’ra were going to help him find it, like it or not.

“Our—” His lips closed, and the sentence became a bemused hum instead. Still, though, the thought continued on with its own momentum
inside his head, undulating outward like an unfurling ribbon—
empire
—and dividing, options fluttering toward the horizon, each with its own arcing
trajectory:
self, hopes, right, doom.
Even after they’d fallen still
there was the smear of a ghostly afterglow, rumination on possible futures
dissipating like jet trails against a blue sky.

He took a moment to learn what a “jet” was before he went back to staring at
the writing on the vault door. For a second, he could feel the gaze inside shift
with his and roam briefly across the text. But it slid quickly, if reluctantly,
back to him again. His host was appalled. That, Sebek was used to. It was the
undisguised curiosity that was new. Slaves bowed their heads—
kneel
expanded outward and faded—or their eyes flickered across him with fear; the
passing touch of their attention was the breathless, unworthy tribute of
adulation. Slaves spoke to his feet because of his brightness; he could sear
them with his godhead if he chose.

Watching this one become privy to his thinking, though, and mirror him back
at himself through alien metaphors, this was unsettling. Now, Sebek found
himself hunching his shoulders and turning this body away, sheltering, before he
remembered, straightened, and raised his chin. “Our glory,” he said, and then
said it again to hear the voice, to sharpen its softer edges to an appropriate
blade of—
arrogance—
authority. The gaze within didn’t waver. No
matter; soon there would be no need for this one, and Sebek would push it under
the dark water and be alone again in his new royal seat.

But today there was a need for this one. Numb for a second, until he extended
a ganglion and released the required protein, Sebek’s fingers followed the
regular, precise edges of the script in the middle of the door. He smiled.
Before, the words had been mere shapes, blocks and dashes without relationship
to sound. Now, they were embedded in layers of voices,
his
voice in many languages, repeating,
the same message whispered and shouted by many simultaneously, cacophony
contained within the parameters of the text the way echoes are trapped in a
room. With little effort he could focus on one, force the others into the
background, but they continued to buzz at the periphery of his attention,
blurred the way many voices speaking together were blurred, slightly
desynchronized. It was a mystery how the host endured it, this sloppy
overlapping. He could feel the pleasure the host took in this plurality and
shook his head, disdainful. This one was Greek, this one Berber, this,
Abydonian, here, English. Their names came to him easily. The Ancient symbols
slipped into one frame or the other, but fit none precisely.

There were gaps and excesses, divergences, failings and silences, and each
deviation or inexact translation was itself surrounded by a half-actualized halo
of information: this people never developed private property; for that, death
was not a state but a transition. It was an almost overwhelming density of
context. The blue sky was not clear or empty at all, but full of swirling
currents of activity.

Sebek had all the information he needed. But he didn’t know
which
information he needed. The overlapping, contradictory, complexly related
contexts threatened to dissolve into an incomprehensible babble. He went deeper,
seeking fundamentals. It was somewhat familiar, this delving, not so different
from his own genetic recall where long-dead knowing stirred under his attention,
lost its separateness, and became his own. But unlike his genetic memory, the
organization of this mind, its system of relation and association, was chaotic,
tangled and winding and likely to make sudden shifts that turned out sometimes
to be shortcuts, often to be dead-ends. Sebek was used to dredging a mind for
information, but the hosts of the past had been suppressed immediately,
husk-hollow and nothing left of them but the whistling wind-sound of despair he
could choose not to hear. But he didn’t just need what this one knew; he needed
how
he knew it. Not just vocabulary, but grammar. Not just the wine, but
the bottle that gave it shape. He required this one’s presence. It was
distasteful.

He wiped his fingers on his thigh as though they were sticky with the residue of the host’s presence. He forced himself to stop.

Behind him, Aris Boch’s boots scraped the stone, and his sigh of boredom, or
possibly impatience, buffeted Sebek’s concentration.

“Leave us,” Sebek ordered them. He could feel the Jaffa exchanging glances.
Aris’ soft snort of derision was aimed at their reluctance. Turning to face
him, Sebek raised his eyebrow. “And you.”

“My lord,” his First Prime, Ankh’et said. “Your guard—”

“Knows better than to question our orders.” Sebek slid his gaze in Ankh’et’s
direction. “If we repeat ourselves now, it will be the last thing you hear.”
Sebek looked down and nudged the corpse at his feet with the tip of his boot.
Its eyes were open and opaque with cataracts. Blood was caked around its slack,
gaping mouth, its eyes and its ears. It looked like it could disintegrate like
ancient parchment, and he had not used the host for long enough to make it into
such a husk. He felt a tremor of consternation and quickly crushed it. “Take
this. Burn it.”

After touching his knee to the floor, Ankh’et rose to attention. A flick of
his fingers summoned the other Jaffa, and the two pulled the dead host up to its
feet. One held it upright while the other stripped the ribbon device from its
stiff fingers. Sebek held his new hand out to receive it, watching Aris while
Ankh’et carefully put the golden caps into place. This host’s hands were bigger
than the other’s, and the finger-caps were tight. The fingers were swollen a
little, too, a residue of the trauma of blending. Sebek hadn’t been gentle. He
reduced water retention and blood flow to the fingertips just a fraction, and
the caps became more comfortable.

When the device was seated and the Jaffa had dragged the corpse up the
incline into the tunnel, Sebek turned his palm upward and gazed at the crystal
there. It took only a second for the glow to warm his skin with the prickle of
deadly energy.
Die
pulsed, once, twice in his mind, and the crystal
pulsed, too. He spread his hand wide and aimed the device at Aris. Aris was
impassive, his face neither expectant nor defiant as he met Sebek’s eyes. Inside
Sebek, the blue attention watched. Sebek could have allowed the pulsing command
to translate itself into action, but instead he smiled. Aris betrayed no relief.