Chapter 4

"Didja hear that, Carter?" O'Neill raised his eyebrows at her meaningfully. "Ka-whoosh vic has a twin." He rocked back on his heels and gave her his most childish smile. "You might have some 'splainin' to do."

"Sir, I didn't kill her on purpose."

"Of course you did. You wanted the shoes."

Sam looked down to where the shoes still gleamed on her feet. "Sir—"

"You might want to take those off before we see Sis."

Sam hesitated briefly. She bent and tried to unfasten the buckle on the right shoe. She couldn't. The left one was equally immovable. "Uh, sir?"

"Can't?"

Sam could only shake her head.

"I was really, really afraid of that."

"I couldn't have known what would happen. I was only trying to help."

"Jack knows that, Sam," Daniel sighed. He turned back into the team, so that once again they formed a huddle. "What now? We could just use the naquadah generator and dial home. . ."

"But would that not leave the people of this planet subject to the whims of this woman?"

"Yeah, Teal'c. We should probably pick up some reinforcements. Come back with a couple other SG teams, take care of her, and then download whatever it is that has Daniel so excited."

"I believe he refers to it as 'meaning of life' material."

"Meaning of life stuff, T, he calls it 'stuff'."

"I called it that one time, and you people can't leave it alone."

"Well, coming from the usually verbose Dr. Daniel Jackson, 'meaning of life stuff' was surprisingly unpretentious."

"Oh, so now you think I'm pretentious?"

"I've always thought you were pretentious—even after I finally found out what it actually meant."

Sam—for the briefest of moments—actually considered clicking her heels again. If only to make it stop. The thought of the two of them frozen with these childish expressions on their faces actually filled her with the kind of pleasure normally associated with Christmas mornings and really good first dates. With a lingering sigh, she chose the high road, instead.

"Guys," Sam interjected, "we have to make a decision. Colonel, do you want me to hook up the generator? Or do we go to the Tower?"

Daniel spoke first. "I just don't think we can leave this woman here—she might harm the Mazdans, and she might figure out how to get the repository out before we even get there."

"Daniel, are you sure that this brain-sucker thingy is so important?"

"I hardly believe that the Ancients would choose to build the Tower, and then go through the trouble of depositing a device housing the repository here without a good reason."

"But do you think that the information is that important?"

"I don't know, Jack, I've never had it in my head. Did you think it was important when it was in yours?"

"What if it's the Ancient equivalent of the collected works of Matt Groening?"

"Well, then, Jack, to you that would qualify as important, now, wouldn't it?"

"At least it would be more interesting than—'Hey guys, there's about three thousand pages of alien text. Do you want it in chronological order, or order of most important verb phrase?'"

"So now you're mocking me?"

"Yes, Daniel, I mock you."

Sam instantly reverted to wishing for clicking. She could have shot them, but that would have scared the little people.

"So help me guys, I've had a crappy enough day as it is—do you always have to act like children? If the two of you don't grow up a little bit, so help me I'm going to spank you and send you to your rooms."

Teal'c quickly hid a smile behind his staff weapon. Daniel and Jack both stared at her as if she'd sprouted a third boob.

Jack, of course, had to actually answer her. "Promise?"

----OOOOOOO----

Forty five minutes later, they had finally reached the outer southern edge of the farmlands. The road had wound around the town for a while before finally entering the agrarian areas outside of Mazd's center. Sam led the four of them, hiking at a bruising pace. She knew that Daniel and the Colonel trailed behind her on purpose. She could hear them whispering.

She wasn't sure if they could handle the pace for the full forty clicks—she knew the Colonel's knees would start to complain sooner rather than later. With each stride, she counted. She had heard once that counting helped to lessen stress and build the patience necessary to deal with difficult people. Some expert she'd seen on Oprah had touted the method for mothers of small children. Sam figured that she qualified.

She was up to two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six. She wasn't feeling it yet.

"Hey, Sam, wait up."

She slowed her pace while Daniel jogged up next to her.

"So, did you lose?"

"Did I lose?"

"What was it, Ink-a Dink, or Rock, Paper, Scissors?"

Daniel had the grace to look sheepish. "Teal'c chose a number between one and ten. I chose six. It was five."

"What number did the Colonel choose?"

"Eleven."

"Of course he did." She muttered more than spoke.

They walked steadily for several long moments before Daniel spoke again. "I'm a little concerned about you."

She sighed, "I know."

"I mean. You're the steady one. You're the one that we all rely on to keep things grounded and figure things out. Having you—uh," he faltered and resorted to gesturing inanely in front of him.

"Witchy?" Sam supplied—perhaps a little too easily.

"Witchy. Having you witchy is a little unusual."

"Oh, come on, haven't you all tried to figure out exactly where in my cycle I am? Don't you guess that it's all just hormonal and in another week I'll be fine?"

"We haven't discussed that sort of thing. I mean, ewww—no."

"I can raise my eyebrow skeptically, too, Daniel, see?" And she showed him.

"No, Sam, this is different." Daniel reached out and tugged at her sleeve. "This is not normal."

"So you're saying I have a normal witchy and an abnormal witchy?"

"Why do women do that? Turn things inside out? Guys seriously can't win for losing. Even Sha're did that to me, and believe me, it translates exactly the same way in Abydonian."

Sam smiled. "Look, Daniel. I know. And I appreciate your concern—and your friendship. I really do. I'm just a little tired of being everyone's Mommy."

"I don't think you're my mo—Whoa."

----OOOOOOO----

The farmland hadn't reached as far as they had originally thought. They had passed maybe three or four farmsteads before climbing a steep hill, at whose top the farms abruptly ended.

Instead of neat little farms and fields, they now faced an entire valley filled with flowers. Bright yellow flowers as far as the eye could see.

Daniel, of course, instantly sneezed.