It was the sense of falling that jerked Vala awake, leaving her momentarily disorientated as she tried to remember where she was. She sat up quickly, blinking away the remnants of sleep as she took in her new surroundings after memories of crashing through the door the night before. The room was rectangular and made of large sandstone blocks, all neatly wedged together until they rose to meet a flat roof. It was clear from the spider webs hanging from the roof and the drifts of sand against the walls that the room hadn't been opened in a very long time. The air was dry and cool, and there was a light breeze blowing in from the semi-open door.
Daniel was next to her, laying on one side with his left arm curled protectively up and over his right side. "Daniel," she called out gently as she inched closer to shake his right shoulder. Getting no response, she pressed fingers to his cheek, then his forehead, and then finally ran them through his hair, pulling back when she felt the slimy touch of fresh blood.
Vala sat back and searched the room for her pack, finding it wedged in the opening of the door and suddenly remembered having put it there to stop the door from closing again. She grabbed the medkit and rummaged through its contents to find the last of the field bandages.
"Come on, Daniel," she said as she wiped away the blood, assessed the wound and applied the dressing. "As much as I might enjoy watching you sleep, it does get rather boring after a while."
He groaned softly as she wrapped the last part of the bandage around his head and tied it off. "Well, at least you're responsive. Always a good thing."
He cracked one eye open and looked up her. "Vala?"
"Uh, huh. And you remember my name. Now how about yours?"
"What?"
"Your name." She sighed heavily when he frowned back at her. "I'm Vala and you are?"
Daniel rolled onto his back and dragged his left arm with him, still clutching his ribs. "Daniel," he said after a moment and then almost as an afterthought, added, "Jackson."
"Oh, good. Now that that's settled."
"Where are we?"
"Bad weather, tsunami, boat, island, ruins, room."
"The abridged version?"
"Of course. I figured if you can remember your name you might at least recall our little tropical island excursion from yesterday, which ended with falling in to this lovely room in the middle of a lightning storm."
"That explains the bright light I saw before..."
"Fainting?"
"Passing out."
"Actually," she reached behind and grabbed her flashlight from where it landed last night. "I hit you with this when I landed on top of you."
"What's another lost brain cell to add to the collection."
"I did apologize but you had already-"
"Passed out?"
"Not quite. More of a swoon." Daniel pinned her with a hard stare. "Okay, so a very manly swoon. And you being unconscious at the time means that my version of events is all we have. So swoon it is."
Vala turned away and strode further into the room, stopping just a few feet later when she saw something at the far end. "Ah, Daniel?"
"Still sleeping here."
"Oh, well then, I won't bother mentioning the rather large statue at the end of the room."
"Help me up," Daniel asked, holding out his left hand. "Slowly."
"I really don't think-"
"Vala."
"One helping hand coming up." On reflection, Vala quickly realized that standing up might not have been Daniel's brightest idea, when he almost took a nose-dive back down to the ground. "I did try to warn you," she chided.
"Took it under advisement."
"Yes, because it's so unlike you not to listen to me."
"Can we just move?"
"Only if you promise you're not going to puke everywhere."
Daniel flipped her the bird.
"I'll take that as a maybe, shall I?"
~oOo~
There was no mistaking the distinctly male form of the statue. In the heroic context of early Greek sculptures, the proportions were exaggerated in both structure and pose. Daniel tried to think back on the various representations he had seen of Atlas, from the old man crouched low with the weight of a heavy globe on his back, to the bronzed marvel in New York that represented the Titan in his purest form with the heavens held high in his hands.
The smooth-stone statue was the masculine twin of the one on Madrona, right down to the suggestion of movement through the flowing of hair and clothing. Only instead of one hand reaching to the heavens and the other swept back to hold the Touchstone, this statue had one hand raised above the head, while the other reached behind to hold up the bottom half of a celestial sphere.
"Daniel?"
"It's... Atlas." He looked over to Vala and saw the confusion on her face. "I thought what I found in the archive was merely a reference to the idea of Atlas. He's a Titan, a player from Greek mythology, which I realize you know nothing about, but bear with me. When the Olympians defeated the Titans, Atlas was forced to stand on the edge of the earth and hold Uranus on his shoulders."
"And Uranus is?"
"Father Sky. The son and husband of Gaia, who was Mother Earth. Legend has it that the Olympians made Atlas hold Uranus on his shoulders to keep him from returning to Gaia. Uranus is the personification of the sky."
"All very interesting, but where does the Touchstone come in all this?"
"I'm not sure." Daniel stepped forward and reached out to touch the base of the statue. "If this is Atlas, then it's likely the statue on Madrona is Phoebe."
"Husband and wife?"
"Ah, no. No. Phoebe was often regarded as the goddess of oracular intellect and prophecy. She also governed the moon with Atlas. Something to do with the assignment of Titan and Titanides to one of seven planetary powers. She was paired with Titan."
"And the Touchstones?"
"Still don't know, but as I told Sam earlier, there are some historians who take the mythos of Atlas further by expanding on his association with navigation and astronomy to include acts of heavenly retribution."
"Let's pretend I don't know what that means."
"Severe storms, floods, quakes..."
"Ah! That I do understand. Taphir said this was a temple?"
"To his people, yes, but I doubt it started out that way. We still don't know for sure who created the Touchstones, only that they're used to control and alter the climate of a planet by moving a series of calibrated rings."
"Someone had to show these people how to use the devices."
"Yeah, and that's the kicker. It's likely the knowledge was passed down from one generation to another, but the source of that knowledge has been lost."
"Otherwise, you would know who created the stones."
"Seems reasonable."
"Like your chicken and egg theory?"
"I'm sorry... what?"
"Chicken and egg. Really, Daniel, it's all so logical."
"It is. It is?"
"Yes, darling. The address to this world came from?"
"Ah..." He had to think quickly. "The Abydos cartouche! It came up as part of Sam's cold dialing program, though I'm not sure why we couldn't connect-"
"Which means?"
Daniel stared hard at her for a moment and then lifted a hand to rub at his forehead. "It means the people on this world were probably taken from Earth and transplanted here by some Goa'uld."
"Or?"
"Or... they were taken from Earth to someplace else and then brought here sometime in the recent past. The Madronans said their Touchstone was approximately 900 years old."
"And if we assume the Touchstone was used to terraform a planet?"
"The people had to come after the stone. I mean, the planet would have been uninhabitable prior to terraforming."
"And whoever made the Touchstones wouldn't leave them laying about in the open for someone to stumble over."
"No. The stone on Madrona sat in the hand of a statue of a woman dressed in an ancient Greek chiton-"
"Your Phoebe."
"Well, yes. The Madronans wore clothing that pointed to an early South African influence. This means whoever created the stones either had to leave some historical record on how they worked, how to calibrate them, or-"
"They were about when the new population arrived. Which begs the question as to why they left in the first place."
"I'm missing something here."
"Oh, I don't know, Daniel, you seem to be working this out quite nicely."
"No. No, that's not it. You and I," he waved a hand back and forth between them, "we don't normally work this well together. Usually, you're annoying me and I'm-"
"Trying to get rid of me?"
"Actually, I was going to say 'trying to educate you', but I can see how it might look like I'm trying to-"
"Get rid of me. Well," she shrugged and offered him a half smile, "maybe I decided it was time to pay some attention in your lectures. Can't promise I won't stop annoying you, though."
"Oh, don't go changing on my part." Daniel stepped back from the statue and looked about the massive base. "Well, we have the statue but no Touchstone."
Vala had moved to one side of the pedestal and was frowning at something on the ground. "I wouldn't say that."
"What have you got?"
"Not a what... a who."
TBC
