In this AU, the Stargate was never buried. Therefore, Earth has lived forever under the control of the Goa'uld. This has affected both our level of technology, and our cultural development. This world is tough. It's going to be a lot darker than most of my stories. Janet and Jacob will be far more damaged than is typical for their characters. Daniel is quite happy as a polygamist. And Sam is very young and naive. If none of this is your cup of tea don't read.

Jack O'Neill glances around himself carefully. Mere humans aren't supposed to catch onto Goa'uld surveillance techniques, but Jack is no ordinary human. He figured out the concept of a camera when he was twelve.

He knew cameras were a way of saving sights and looking at them later. You had to make sure there were no cameras around before you did anything mildly subversive, or even odd. If you didn't, you didn't live long, and worse, you risked the whole resistance.

Seeing nothing that would compromise the resistance, he lifts the trap door and enters the basement.

"Jack!" Walter exclaims, "That Carter girl published another paper."

"Eh? What about?" Jack asks. He knows that Samantha Carter was a true genius. Unfortunately, she was a strictly 'by the books' scientist. She only studied the few subjects that the Goa'uld encouraged humans to study

"She designed a new naquadah detector. It's too bad that paper will probably be the last thing she ever publishes," Walter adds.

"What?" Jack says. "She's young. She's got years yet to publish."

"She's nineteen, and her father can't put off her marrying any longer," Walter says.

Jack's stomach falls. "Who's bidding?"

Jack hates to think about wife auctions. He's only actually attended one of the things. That was to secure his wife, Sara. Secure her officially, at least. He'd secured her heart long before.

He'd never told anyone, not even his closest friends, not even the resistance, that he'd actually wooed his wife. It'd felt right; the romance, the secret romance. He wasn't supposed to want that. He was supposed to own women, to control them. He'd never wanted power over Sara.

"I think the main bidders will be Jonas Hanson, Meredith McKay, and Pete Shanahan," Walter says.

The beautiful and brilliant young scientist spending her life with any of those men doesn't sit well with Jack. Jonas and Pete had a harem apiece. Jack wasn't exactly sure how many wives each of them had, but he was sure it was more than decent. And Meredith... well, if he acted as badly as he talked, he'd be crueler to his wife than most.

"What day is she up for action?" Jack asks.

Walter looks at him, surprised, "Are you planning on re-marring?"

"She would be a powerful asset to the resistance," Jack defends.

"She seems like she'd be a good mother for Charlie as well," Walter ponders.

Jack wonders if he should reveal his intentions. Explain that he was viewing it more like an employee relationship than a wife. He was pretty sure he could never marry again, not really marry. Sara's death had almost destroyed him.

The Carter woman would be a powerful force for the resistance. And he'd be damned if he was going to let that sweet innocent thing be feed to those dogs.

"I think it's good, Jack; it's about time that you moved on," Walter says. Walter had watched his friend nearly be destroyed by the loss of his wife. And after a year, the grief was still palatable. "The auction is tomorrow night," Walter says.

"You can cancel the recon mission?" he asks.

"Of course," Walter says with a smile.

-0-0-0-

If her mother were alive, she could have given Samantha the pre-auction advice. She would have told her all the things that mothers have been telling their daughters down through the ages.

You don't dress up for an auction. An ugly woman, she's bought for her ability to work. A beautiful woman, she's bought for what she'll do in the bedroom.

You take a little ash from the fire place and rub it under your eyes, and you'll make yourself look tired. You skip your weekly bath. You don't brush your hair for a few days. You wear baggy clothes that give no hint to the form below. Men won't want to take a risk if they don't know what they are buying.*

But Samantha doesn't have anyone to tell her these things. These were secrets that no woman would ever tell a man, for fear of making them ineffective. And Sam's mother hadn't survived her brother's birth. If her father were typical, if he'd had three or four wives, one of them would have taken pity on the gorgeous teenager, and told her the secret. But her father had married no-one but her mother. Even in the seventeen years since her mother died.

So, Samantha unwisely went to the action in her finest attire. She had a good four years on the other woman at action, but she surpassed them all in her beauty.

The women paraded before the crowd. Jack's flinched. This pageantry seemed wrong. He had a feeling that this was not the way this should be done. It was the only way things were done though. He hadn't seen a better way on the few planets that he had traveled to through the god's eye.

It was time now for the pre-auction. Jack moves over to Sam's father. Jacob was a good man. He didn't work with the resistance. In fact, he was a high ranking official within the Goa'uld hierarchy. But Jack had studied his work enough to know that some of his "accidents" and "failures" were systematic and saved thousands of lives. He had also discovered some of the more sneaky ways that Jacob had saved people.

"I'd like to make a pre-auction offer on your daughter," Jack says, sitting next to him.

Jacob's turns to Jack, broken-hearted, "She's my only daughter."

"I know, and she deserves more than those creeps who intend to offer a bid," Jack says.

Jacob sizes him up critically, "How do I know you are any better than those creeps?"

"Listen, sir, I want her to do research for me. That's it," he says.

"What?" Jacob asks surprised.

"I'll offer you enough money that people aren't going to wonder why you accepted the bid, even though I know you don't care about the money. At least, I wouldn't, if she were my daughter. I'm going to give her own bedroom, and freedom."

"You have a lot of wives?" Jacob asks.

"Just one, and she died," Jack says.

"I'm sorry," Jacob says, in a voice that allows Jack to guess more about Jacob's feelings toward his own wife than any research could tell him. "Do you have any children?" Jacob asks.

"I have a fifteen-month-old son," Jack says, "But I'm not getting Samantha as a nanny."

Jacob takes a deep breath, "I'm trusting you with my daughter, the most important thing in the whole world to me. Do you understand?"

Jack nods. "Here is the offer," he says, slipping a piece of paper to Jacob.

"This is double what women go for," Jacob protests.

"And yet it's not even the beginning of what she's worth. There isn't… money enough to buy a human."

Jacob's body language didn't change. He's spent his life in smiling defiance. Jacob could tell that this man, with ideas like this, must be part of this resistance. He'd seen the number of resistance fighters who were killed each year. Granted, a portion of those were falsely accused, but still, being a member of the resistance was a good way to decrease your life expectancy.

"You'll be careful with my daughter's life, won't you?"

"I'll do my best to keep her safe," Jack says, knowing he can't make any promises. He hadn't been able to save Sara. Although, separate bedrooms would at least ensure at least that Samantha didn't die in childbirth like Sara had.

"I accept your bid," he says.

He walks forward, and motions his daughter to come forward.

-0-0-0-

She's disappointed. She was waiting for this day for a long time. She wanted it all. She wanted to hear her bid go higher and higher as she found her worth. She longed for the anticipation and mystery of her who husband would be until the last second.

Not only was Samantha deprived of a chance to show the world how amazing she was, and to hear the highest bidder, but her new husband was kind of old. She had a lot of questions she wanted to ask, but her husband hadn't invited her to speak. It was a serious breach in custom for him to offer her no information on himself. She deserved, at the very least, his name and the number of wives and children that would be in her new home. But it wasn't as if she could ask for it.

She just follows her husband, one step behind, as they walk through the streets.

It's the good part of town at least, she notes. Perhaps the silent bit had been high. Her new husband turns, so quickly that Sam slams into him, into a walkway that leads to a house. It's smallish, but from the outside, at least, it looks well-kept.

He opens the door to reveal a woman who is perhaps a year or two younger than Samantha herself. The dark-skinned woman is round with a baby, and is carrying another child who is somewhere between a year and two. Samantha has never been very good at predicting children's ages, but she guesses it's a skill she'll soon acquire.

"Thank you for watching Charlie, Sha're," Jack mutters.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your new wife?" Sha're says with a smile.

"Sha're, this is Samantha. Samantha, this is Sha're," he says.

"My husband is Dan'yel, they are… well, I don't know quite what to call our husbands. They are friends, but yet they argue all the time. In any case, they spend a great deal of time together."

"So you are not his wife?" Samantha asks in shock.

Both woman look to Jack to see if he is going to answer this question. He shows no inclination to do so.

"Sara - his wife - died," Sha're says, handing the child to Samantha.

Sam's heart suddenly fills with fear. Is she now responsible for a child? Of course, that is part of what being a wife is. She just didn't expect to start being a mother tonight. Especially without the help of other wives to show her what she is doing.

"Come to Daddy, baby boy," Jack says, taking the child from her arms.

His wife must have just died, she thinks to herself. He seems to be taking care of his own child. There is no way that a man would do that for long, unless he had no way of securing a wife for himself.

"I live four houses to the right," Sha're says to Samantha. To Jack, she says, "He's fed, and changed, and just waiting to be put to bed."

"Let's get you to bed, then," Jack coos to his son, kissing him.

"Do you want me to do that?" Samantha offers.

He looks up at her, surprised. "No, he's my son," he says, before disappearing down a hallway.

Sam stands awkwardly in the house that is now hers. She feels as if she should clean something or cook something or do something wifely.

She walks into the other room, and sees the fire is almost out. She puts a log on it.

She isn't hungry, but she thinks he might be, so she starts mixing up biscuits like her mother used to before she died.

"You don't have to do that," his voice says from the entryway, startling her.

"This is what a wife does," she offers, confused.

"Yeah, but I just want you to be a scientist," he says, "You'll have your own room."

She stands there silently for a second, "So, you got me as a slave."

*These are all strategies employed by female slaves in America pre-civil war.