Chapter 2
Daniel was beginning to get more than a little frustrated. In three hours of tramping across rolling grasslands lightly wooded with the ubiquitous clumps of mixed pine and hardwood trees, they'd found absolutely no sign of anything that could even remotely be called civilization apart from the burned-out husk of the Goa'uld city near the 'Gate. No buildings, no roads, no paths other than what Teal'c had deemed to be nothing more than animal tracks. Just the buzz of insects in air warmed to summer temperatures by a pair of suns, the rustle of a light wind through grasses and leaves, and the chirping of birds in the patches of woodland.
If there were still people here, they could be hiding. Maybe they were even more isolationist than the inscription at the 'Gate indicated. It was obvious they wouldn't stand for Goa'uld tramping around their planet, but the part about safe passage had suggested SG-1 might be welcomed in some fashion. Maybe the message really boiled down to "don't bother us, and we won't bother you."
The suns were drawing closer to the horizon, and Daniel was sure Jack would call the mission off any moment now. Under other circumstances, Jack might've done so before now, but he seemed so convinced the people here would be valuable allies. He might be right, but that didn't count for very much if they couldn't find anyone to actually negotiate with.
Up yet another hillock, grasses slapping against his knees. Daniel bowed his head and yanked the brim of his hat down a little further, hoping to block out the rays of the lowering suns. He almost walked smack into Sam's back and didn't even have a chance to apologize before she yanked him down to the ground.
They'd found what they were looking for.
He stared slack-jawed for what must've been a full minute before he was able to gather his wits enough to dig his binoculars out of his pocket to get a better look.
They were… beautiful. There was no other word he could think of, in any language he knew either fluently or superficially, that described them more perfectly than that one word. Beautiful. And all of the related meanings and textures and layers – exquisite, compelling, awe-inspiring, elegant. Harmonious even in their silence, graceful even in their stillness.
They were tall, sleek and muscular, with long, three-jointed arms. Their legs, although they had a single joint midway down like human legs, seemed to be able to bend either forwards or backwards. Ranged along the slopes of the valley below, they were posed in various postures, most of which would've been impossible for a human to duplicate.
Their skin was mottled brown and green, and were it not for the film of iridescence that flowed over every part of their bodies, they might've blended perfectly into the tall grasses that swirled down the valley. Their glistening faces were raised in near perfect unison towards the setting of double suns, the scattering of clouds above the horizon reflecting every color of flame imaginable.
Their heads were crowned with fascinating patterns of bony ridges and swirls of earthy pigment, a fractal landscape of asymmetric perfection laid out in living flesh and bone. Yes, beautiful – exotic, hypnotic, yet somehow terrifying simply because of their extreme strangeness.
Some of them were standing or sitting alone, while others were grouped in pairs or larger clusters, sometimes merely in close proximity to one another, sometimes touching, sometimes twined together like the contorted beauty of Rodin sculptures. There was a ponderous sense of quiet meditation about them, disturbed only by the occasional shifting of a grouping, the adjustment of the position of a limb, a drawing together or pulling apart from another one of their kind. The movements were infrequent and slight, almost as if they were simply stirring in their sleep, flickers of light gliding along oddly muscled appendages.
"Well, this is certainly… different." Leave it to Jack to turn understatement into an artform. Then again, maybe he was just being precise in his own way. "Okay, campers, any suggestions?"
Daniel lowered his binoculars and glanced over to Teal'c and Sam where they were hunkered down near the ground on his left. Teal'c raised an eyebrow and Sam just shrugged her shoulders, so Daniel turned back to Jack and said, "Maybe we should try to move in a little closer, see if we can make contact." It was a simple suggestion, nothing fancy, but somehow it was very unappealing to him. He couldn't figure out if he was actually afraid of these creatures or simply unwilling to disturb the poised beauty of their silence.
Jack pushed his hat back on his head and squinted up at the sky. "Not much daylight left." He paused, then looked back over at his team members. "Is it just me, or is anyone else getting the creeps?"
Daniel looked over at Teal'c and Sam again. Teal'c was frowning, and Sam nodded very slightly. Really, the thing that was giving Daniel the creeps was the fact that Jack had suddenly gone from gung-ho about tracking down new allies to ready to call a retreat just as they'd found their potential new friends.
Daniel wouldn't have necessarily picked the phrase "getting the creeps" to describe his reaction to the aliens, but he was certainly… disturbed. Fascinated in an uncomfortable sort of way. Okay, close enough for government work. He turned back towards Jack and raised his hand, waggling his fingers to add his vote in the affirmative.
"I guess it's unanimous, then." Jack jerked his hat firmly back down onto his head and adjusted his grip on his rifle. "Let's head back to the 'Gate. We can regroup and reevaluate, maybe bring a UAV through to launch from this side to gather a little more intel on these guys. Then we can think about coming back."
Daniel pushed himself up onto his knees and looked down to stash his binoculars in a pocket. He was just about to rebutton the pocket when he suddenly got the distinct feeling he was being watched by something that wasn't human. He looked up very slowly and saw the blinking flash of hundreds of pairs of upwards slanting, silvery eyes, the dark slash of vertical pupils gazing cat-like toward him and the rest of SG-1. "Uh, Jack," he said, reaching over to tug on the other man's sleeve. "I think they've seen us."
Jack's answer was the click of the safety being flicked off on his rifle. Sam followed suit a bare second later, and Daniel heard the almost subliminal whine of Teal'c's staff weapon powering up. He thought it might be a good idea to draw his gun too, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything other than stare back into that sea of alien awareness.
It took a moment for him to realize they were moving – swiftly, with fluid grace and easy, loping strides that barely disturbed the tall grasses. Like upright serpents slithering across a field. It was astonishing how quickly they moved, too quickly for Daniel to react beyond registering stunned amazement. He heard Jack calling for his team to fall back, but he couldn't move. His knees may as well have been fused to the ground. He couldn't recall ever having seen anything so completely awe-inspiring and utterly terrifying as that rolling mass of alien flesh, threatening to overwhelm them.
Retreat turned out to be impossible in any event. The aliens were too quick, too well coordinated. They flowed around and pulled up just short of SG-1, leaving a perfect circle of waving grasses vacant around the team. Daniel craned his head around, observing that Jack, Sam and Teal'c had assumed defensive postures, their backs turned to one another, weapons facing outwards, slow steps bringing them closer to him until they were all in a tight little knot at the center of gently stirring greenness ringed by staring silver.
"All right, Daniel," Jack said very quietly, "you got your wish for a closer look. Now how about making nice-nice with the natives?"
"Oookay." He swallowed hard and very slowly pried his knees up off the ground, keeping his hands in front of him, palms upward to show he wasn't holding anything. Empty hands were as close to a universal sign of peace as he could think of. Under other circumstances, he might've added a smile, but the aliens didn't have anything he could see that approximated a mouth – just the two eyes on either side of a ridge running vertically down their faces. The ridge was perforated with a series of small holes – some sort of respiratory organ? He guessed the long, slanting folds down both sides of their heads might be auditory organs, or maybe he was being too anthropomorphic in his deductions.
He swallowed, took a slow, deep breath. "Hello. We're explorers from the planet Earth. I'm Daniel," he pointed to himself, "and this is Jack, Teal'c and Sam." He made a generic wave back over his shoulder, figuring they could straighten out who was who later – if they managed to communicate with the aliens somehow. The lack of mouths made him doubt very much they would be speaking English. Or speaking, period.
Still no response of any kind, unless blinking could be taken as an answer.
There was one alien standing slightly forward of the others, almost directly in front of him. It might be the clan leader or it might be the local untouchable, but he had to start somewhere. Taking a deep breath, he held one hand out toward it, not sure what to expect.
The gesture definitely produced a result. The aliens pulled back a good ten yards in almost perfect unison – all but the one his hand was held out towards. That one did just the opposite of its fellows and took a few tentative steps forward before pausing and tilting its head.
"It's okay. We mean you no harm." A stupid thing to say when the rest of the team was still pointing their weapons, but he'd learned to accept the necessity of using guns defensively, and sometimes even offensively. He just hoped this wasn't a case where either would be needed.
He held his hand out a little further and was rewarded by the alien very quickly closing the remaining distance. It was roughly the same height as he was and stared directly into his eyes for several moments, enough to notch his unease up a couple of degrees. Then it dipped its head and nudged its forehead up against Daniel's hand, making him think of the way a cat butts up against a person when it wants to be petted. He almost laughed in relief, but stopped himself, not wanting to startle the alien.
Okay, this was really weird, but hey, if head rubbing was the accepted form of greeting on this planet, who was he to criticize? At least having to face just one of them at a time instead of the entire group was helping to keep his jitters under control.
He awkwardly patted the top of the alien's head, noting that the skin covering the profusion of cranial ridges was smooth and cool, somewhat like a snake's skin, but not segmented by scales. Cold blooded? He withdrew his hand and nodded at the alien as it raised its head and peered at him with what he would characterize as a quizzical expression, if the expression were on a human face. He nodded again and smiled, then squelched the smile as it occurred to him that making a gesture the alien wasn't physically capable of returning might be interpreted as an insult.
"Way to go, Daniel," Jack muttered close behind him. "I think you may've just picked up a new pet."
Daniel briefly considered making a retort along the lines that maybe it was a pet with an appetite for smartass colonels, but he set the thought aside and concentrated on doing his job. Communication wasn't entirely limited to speech, after all, and he seemed to be making some kind of progress with gestures. The alien was holding its hand – thin-boned, four-fingered and thumbless – out towards him.
Okay. When on P453T9, do as the, uh, shiny green and brown aliens do. He bowed his head and pressed it up against the alien's outstretched palm. It didn't move its hand at all, and he was about to pull his head back when its long fingers stirred and slipped gently through his hair and over to the side of his head. Its touch was cool against his scalp, soothing in a way. His eyes closed, and he found himself leaning into the touch, feeling it joined by another set of fingers on the other side of his head. So maybe there was something to be said about this form of greeting after all. It was certainly very pleasant.
He frowned as it occurred to him that the contact could also be interpreted as intimate. The thought startled him, and he began to pull away, only to feel the alien's grip tighten on his head. He carefully tried to tug himself away, hoping not to cause any offense, but now the alien's fingers were digging into his scalp. He didn't recall seeing anything like fingernails, but that's exactly what this new sensation felt like – sharp fingernails pressing into flesh.
"Uh, okay, you can let go now. I think I've had enough." The pressure didn't let up, though. If anything, it increased. In fact, it was getting painful. He felt something warm beginning to drip down the sides of his head. Panic bubbled up into the back of his throat, and he barely managed to keep his voice from cracking as he said very quietly, not wanting to agitate the alien and possibly cause himself further harm, "Jack? Uh, do you think you could help me out here? I seem to be stuck."
"What do you mean, you're stuck?" On the surface, Jack's tone was pure annoyance, but Daniel knew him well enough to sense the hint of apprehension underneath.
"It won't let me go. It's digging its fingers into my scalp. I– I think I'm bleeding." He had to fight to remain calm. If he lost it now, the entire situation could very easily degrade into something very… messy.
The sound of Jack's rifle being cocked was accompanied by a firm command for the alien to back off. It didn't seem to be reacting to Jack, though, either to the sound of his voice or to the pointing of his rifle. If anything, the pressure on Daniel's head was increasing even more. It felt like the alien's fingers were somehow working themselves into bone. Horrible pressure, with the sickening anticipation of an impending crack.
Daniel had thought it was only a simple greeting ritual. His mind raced around theories, trying to decide if the alien meant to harm him, didn't realize it was causing pain or had simply gone berserk. The other aliens certainly weren't making any move to stop it. From what he could see with peripheral vision, they were still standing in their encircling mass, although now their heads were bowed, eyes turned to the ground.
"This is your last warning." Jack's voice seemed somehow muffled to Daniel. Must be because of the buzzing in his ears. It felt like his head was being slowly crushed in a vice. Any second now, his skull was going to crack, and there was nothing he could do about it. His vision was beginning to blur. Maybe he'd get lucky and pass out.
Abruptly, the pressure let up and the pain vanished. "No, don't shoot. It's okay now." The voice was his, but the impulse to speak definitely wasn't. There wasn't anything even remotely okay right now, apart from the fact that the pain had stopped, and he wasn't even too sure if that was necessarily a good thing.
He didn't have the chance to wonder any further about what was going on, though, as an explosion of bright stars and darkness shorted out all five of his senses.