"You went full Eco there. Never go full Eco."
It just grow'd, like Topsy. A hundred thousand words ago I was on a yacht off Malta with a bottle shaped like a falcon. Any outline since has been playing catch-up.
Up until the last chapter I was more-or-less on track for the final rising action of Act III and resolution within the next 5-6 chapters. But SG-1 too smart for me, and blabbed Horus' big plot a lot earlier than I intended. So, we'll see. Maybe there is more to this thing after all.
And my apologies for all the obscure references. I'll back off now. I promise.
Abbington Estate, Surrey, England: 51.15°N 0.25°W
Dying for King or Country — or equally uncaring gods — was a fool's game. "Bob" had tried his hand at service to his country, but now, like so many others in his field, he worked to suit himself. He intended to live well and play hard and it didn't bother him one bit that he'd probably die young.
The client was a thin-looking bleached-blond with a nasal middle-America accent, goth make-up and a black leather outfit that probably cost more than a Barrett M107 with that factory-fresh smell of lightly-oiled steel. She'd given her name as Alice, which was no more hers than Bob was his. But Trent had set up the meeting, and Bob trusted him. She'd agreed to his price and he'd assembled a small team — mostly former soldiers as well (with the exception of Craig, facetiously titled "the master of unlocking" within their small circle for his skill in hacking security systems.)
Bob thought it was probably overkill. She needed an object, "A small, personal memento," out of a country mansion. Going in armed instead of sending a couple of skilled second-story men implied either she didn't care about collateral damage, or that she was sending a message. Going for full-out mercenaries, though, meant either the client was a complete idiot, or that she was lying to him.
He was going to go with the later. It went with the territory; betrayal or arrest were more a threat than the (too infrequent, for his taste) firefight. He did not like, however, where the op was going down. He vastly preferred working in Central Africa, the always-friendly Middle East, or amid the fragments of the former Soviet Union. The UK was a lot less casual about gunplay on their shores, and the officials there were downright hostile to bribes. It would not be a good place to get caught.
The money was good. It would have to be, Bob reflected. The more time he spent watching Alice, the more certain he was that this was the only job he was going to do for her. This wasn't just because he'd heard rumors. Her connection to Trent came from Senator Rutland's son, who had employed several people Bob knew — and lost them in mysterious circumstances somewhere in Bolivia.
Alice was part of that same drifting set of international playboys as James, traveling corners of the world far from the short-list of hotspots the paparazzi hovered vulture-like around; places where they could smash up things and creatures then retreat back into their vast carelessness (and equally vast reserves of wealth hidden within Matryoshka-doll nests of holding companies and numbered Panamanian bank accounts.)
There was in her voice and carriage and features a spoiled entitlement, an attitude that (against all evidence) the world had wronged her and her driving ambition was to make it back to where she was supposed to be. None of which was that unusual in and of itself, but within her eyes Bob believed he saw the spark of true madness.
He was going to change his opinion. It wasn't foolishness or undisclosed dangers that led her to pick a full fire team of very well-armed help to pick up her trinket. It was, instead, the need to see something burn.
"So." The lanky, muscular young man sighted down the nickel-plated automatic. "The Septics are arriving Tuesday."
"Zip," his friend chided, pushing the fashionably long hair out of his eyes and looking somewhat concernedly at the similar weapon on the table in front of him. "Be nice to our guests."
"I don't mind telling you, man, I'm in two minds about this." Zip turned his hand sideways to examine his weapon, then set it down on the high table that separated them from the targets. "Lara's gone off the grid. This woman Carter and her friends may have an idea where she's gone and if there's any way we can help." He trailed off with the last.
"But neither of us is comfortable with giving away secrets to outsiders," Alister said it for him. He pushed at the side of the heavy metallic thing in front of him. It slid slightly, gently knocking into the loaded magazine. "I'm not comfortable with this, either," he said. "I mean, what kind of archaeologist carries a gun?"
"The kind that wants to hang around Lara Croft," Zip said dryly. "Look, I'll walk you through it. This is a SIG-Sauer 9mm automatic. Now, first thing is to pick it up." He was rapidly warming to his lesson. "Right hand, magazine in the left."
Alister sighed, shrugged inside his suit jacket, gingerly picked up the gun. He held it carefully, making sure not to put his fingers on any of the various triggers and levers and other mysterious moving parts.
"Magazine," Zip prompted. He gestured; the magazine was already in his own weapon.
Alister tried, realized it didn't fit, turned it around and that time it slid inside. Seeing Zip's frown, he pushed further, harder than he thought he should be pushing, until he felt a "click."
"Now rack it," Zip said, too patiently. "Pull the slide back."
Alister gripped the top part of the gun. It slid back towards him with an oiled smoothness, but it had a heavy spring. It got away from him, and as it snapped forward the gun threatened to slip from his fingers as well. He caught it up with a frantic grab.
"If I may, sir." Winston was instantly at his elbow, gently but firmly pushing the gun back in the direction of the targets…and away, Alister belatedly realized, from very nearly pointing at his friend. He nearly dropped it in truth at that point.
"It's all good," Zip grinned. "But let me show you the safety. It's the tab on the left, right above the magazine release. Push it down."
Alister pushed. The magazine dropped free and hit the concrete floor with far too much noise.
"Above the magazine release," Zip said with a wider grin. "Here, let me put mine on safe and I'll help you pick that up." He pushed, there was a click, and he turned towards his friend.
"If I may, sir," Winston's arm was just as gentle. But just as uncompromising. "Your instructor may have momentarily forgotten," he spoke with a smooth rapidity that evinced not a hair of tension, "That the P226, like many automatics of its type, lacks a manual safety. The decocking lever renders it drop-safe, but it will still fire upon a firm pull of the trigger."
It took Zip a moment to wade through the Oxford English. He may have blanched, then — not that it would show — and he quickly moved his finger away from the trigger and the gun away from his friend.
"Now, then," Winston said jovially, a schoolteacher glint in his eye. "Place that magazine back on the table. The first thing we will do, Mister Fletcher, is properly clear and then inspect your weapon…"
Alister found himself doing just that. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zip wince, shrug, and then fall in beside him for the day's lesson.
"I feel like the first Mongol horseman to reach the Great Wall of China," Daniel said. Their driver had approached the massive Jacobian manor from the South, giving them the best perspective on the three-story central building and the flanking wings built from the red-brown bricks of the royal palace that had come before. All about them was green and pleasant land; the sprawling grounds of the estate backed onto public land (former deer park, current golf course and all).
"Did not the Warriors of the Great Khan go around that fortification, Daniel Jackson?"
"Teal'c, at the time Temujin rose to power the Mongol tribes were so poor some accounts describe them fashioning clothes from the stitched-together skins of field mice. Class disparity is a lot tougher of a wall to breach. Look," Daniel gestured, where a white-haired man in black morning coat and grey vest waited to greet them. "They have a butler. They. Have. A. Butler."
Abbingdon Estate was impressive, from the manicured grounds to the rows of tall, multi-paned windows (the architect had no fear of the Window Tax) to the rampant lions along the parapet. "Heck of a crash pad," Daniel muttered.
"The Magazine of Forbes estimates 4.6 million for the building alone," Teal'c delivered another one of his surprising bits of expertise.
"It's rare to find one of these old mansions in private hands," Daniel said. "A lot of them are in public trust — a surprising number have been turned into schools."
"The magazine also estimates Lady Croft's personal wealth as somewhere in excess of 900 million," Teal'c volunteered. "Although if he were real," he amended, "Scrooge of the McDuck Clan would place significantly higher in their list."
Their car stopped and the driver opened the doors for them. The butler — rather, majordomo, Daniel thought — greeted them calmly. "Mister Fletcher relays his regrets for not meeting you at the station," the man said. "You will find him and his associate in the Morning Room, where they are being well-plied with their morning coffee."
He gestured economically with one white-gloved hand. "Stewart will see to your bags. I am needed urgently in the West Garden. Now if you please, the Morning Room is this way…"
"So how did the historic meeting go? I have to tell you, I was expecting bloodshed." Carter was using Skype, but she'd turned the camera off. It was late enough in her day she wasn't inclined to try to look presentable. Given the time difference between Colorado and Surrey, though, that would have been even harder for Zip. She'd been amused to see Zip had connected through at least two different anonymizers, with his MAC spoofed as well — right down to the top of the RAID array he seemed to be using.
Everything Zip had told her about his friend and associate Alister had painted him as far too Daniel-like. Daniel at his worst; academic, pedantic to a fault, imaginative and flighty and far too easily enthused about every bit of folklore and myth and outright tall tale about the ancient past. Both were equally opinionated as to their pet theories, and Carter had never met two of that ilk who believed in the same outré theory.
"Me too," Zip admitted cheerfully. "They are getting along like a house on fire now, though. I fear we've unleashed a new horror upon an unsuspecting world."
"So there was no friction at all?" Carter had trouble believing this.
"Well, sure. Their first meeting was spectacular. It got better, though, after Daniel shot him."
"Shot him?"
"Yeah, with that zat nickle telly…that raygun your guy was carrying around. Seriously, what kind of…"
"The kind that regularly fights aliens," Carter said dryly.
"You people lead interesting lives," Zip said. "I didn't understand a word of what they were fighting about," he complained. "The first thing Alister asked about is if your Daniel still believed the Great Pyramid was built two thousand years too early. And then they were off, yelling things about Snuffy-roo and Key Ops and the Sphinx, and something about the counting of the cows."
Carter laughed. "I can picture it exactly."
"And Alister asked if he thought the pyramids kept razor blades sharp, too. And Daniel said something about all myths having a kernel of truth to them. And Alister asked him if that included the Tooth Fairy. And Daniel went on a long discussion of which kings made what kinds of markings in a burial chamber and Alister retorted by talking about some fellow named Imhotep."
"Did he mention Tana Leaves as well?" Carter asked, intrigued.
"No, they went off on more discussion of ramps and rollers and how a Japanese construction company had demonstrated how you could move one of the stones, and Daniel was snarking about some guy named Thor with a balsa-wood raft and how knowing it could be done wasn't proof that it had been done, and Alister snarked back about Ancient Aliens with magic ray guns levitating stones…and that's when Daniel shot him with one."
"Give him my sympathies," Carter sounded anything but. "I've been shot by one of those myself."
"You people do live interesting lives."
"So…what do you think of our guests now? Wait…is that a revolver? What kind of…"
"The kind that was reluctant about letting you talk him into this in the first place," Alister said a little sharply. From the evidence, he was still feeling the effects of yesterday's argument. Or, rather, the fireworks at its climax. "This is a Detective Special," Alister said. "From the collection, of course. I thought perhaps a smaller gun would be easier to handle."
Zip silently let his friend be led through the safety and loading procedures by the ever-polite Winston. He couldn't see but was quite sure there was a twinkle the older man was carefully hiding. There were several things he had somehow managed not to say…not until Alister pulled the trigger.
He almost but not quite put the hammer in his forehead as the gun jerked back. "Special isn't the name of the gun, it's the name for the high-powered cartridge," Zip remarked casually, then. "And have you noticed how short-barreled guns seem to have a lot more recoil?"
"What?" Alister said. "What?"
"They're noisy, too," Zip grinned.
"So, let's recap here." Alister was cushioned in the extremely comfortable library. As was Daniel, with the exception that he obviously itched to open each and every one of the enticingly rare and obscure books in the place.
It was mid-day, and the others had wandered off (excepting Winston, who although invisible at present would uncannily poof into view the instant he was needed). Alister was recovered from his first-hand experience with Goa'uld weaponry, if you didn't count a certain weakness and a Novocain-like tingling in his back teeth. Basically, enough remaining symptom to let him indulge hedonistically in the tea and Jaffa Cakes and insist that Daniel do all the pouring for him.
"Goa'uld show up on Earth circa 8,000-6,000 BCE. With starships, probably, as they are dragging what becomes the Giza Stargate with them."
Daniel nodded. "We've pretty much confirmed from the logs of the Antarctica Gate that it was the original Earth gate, abandoned millions of years ago."
"And there you go again. I don't want to sound like Lord Kelvin here, but you keep pushing the timeline a lot further back than seems reasonable. But we digress. The Goa'uld bring concepts of centralized rule and the agricultural revolution. Which I agree are interdependent concepts. Agriculture is a communal activity in a way gatherer-hunter lifestyles are not, and the efficiency of agriculture is necessary to support specialists; artists, warriors, rulers."
"And writing," Daniel said. "Which is necessary for the management of any large community."
"Again I object — there is too much variety in progenitor writing systems — just as there is in the staple crops of early agriculture — to think a single source is responsible. But let's table that for the time being. I'm quite willing to entertain the idea that outside — literally alien — influences were behind the early societies. Even if it does smack of von Däniken and his ilk. It is just some of the timing that bothers me."
He was holding back on his guest. Alien interference in early human history wasn't just part of the thesis he'd been working at for a good fifteen years, but was something he'd seen and held tangible proof of.
"The pyramids are but one part of the problem," Alister continued. "If the Goa'uld instructed humans how to build them, why was the later Old Kingdom struggling to invent them as if they were working from scratch? If pyramids were developed when we think they were, why did Goa'uld ships have that form already?"
Daniel answered thoughtfully. "Our Samantha Carter suggests the pyramid shape is an easy framework to 'grow' a hollow-core ship around. Why they want it that way, I don't know. Sam said something about standing waves in a gravitic matrix and those are the only words I understood for the next hour. So I've got two ideas."
"Oh, hello Zip. Our other guest settled in? Oh; while you are up, could you fetch me that plate?"
Zip got up, frowning, and did that. He threw himself back in a well-stuffed leather armchair before replying. "Strange dude," he said. "I left him to amuse himself. Told him to go explore the mansion or something while you guys talked shop."
Alister gave him a silent nod. Zip was checking up on him. And on what he might be telling Daniel. He turned back to his more academically-inclined guest. "As you were saying?"
"First idea, we don't really know what early Goa'uld ships were like. They may have been quite different. Ra was the pre-eminent System Lord for thousands of years, and whatever he chose to do would put an indelible stamp on their culture."
"Plus Ra was among the first to move to human hosts," Alister said. "And controlled the source. So as Goa'uld slaves and hosts were dispersed out across the Stargate network, they were bound to carry much of the forms Ra had set with them."
"So I'm willing to admit that the Goa'uld may have borrowed from locally-grown culture and traditions," Daniel said. This was a huge admission from him, Alister sensed. He found himself wondering about the background of the other archaeologist. He had read that Daniel's parents had died when he was young, and it was just possible that he, like so many drawn to the idea of godlike aliens, was looking for an all-knowing parental substitute. Even if the Goa'uld were a poor parent indeed.
"And the other idea?"
Daniel made a a short brushing-away gesture. "Or, Cheops is thousands of years older than we thought, and humans copied the idea."
Alister took the thought further. "We've talked already about the 'Old Gods' continued to be venerated long after Ra left. So the later pyramid building, even the rest of the Giza group, might be a sort of cargo cult act. Trying to bring back the wealth and stability and certainty the gods had provided by mimicking some of their attributes."
"Or," Daniel argued, "Let's not denigrate the intelligence of our ancestors. This could be a knowing and intentional appropriation of existing symbols of power."
"Like Taharqa, that Nubian ruler of the Egyptian 25th Dynasty who had his face carved on a sphinx to show he was a proper Pharaoh? The 25th built pyramids back home, too."
He hit the cakes and tea again as he thought. Zip tried hard to look bored and uninterested instead of thoroughly confused. Zip was smart and highly educated, contrary to the streetwise image he tried to project, but he wasn't a specialist in Egyptology. Neither was Alister, come to think of it, but he'd taken the opportunity when this get-together was suggested to bone up a little.
"This connects to my other problem with language," Alister said after an interval. "You've shown examples of the decorations on Goa'uld ships. And other writing like the Abydos Gate List." He was still trying, but he couldn't help pronouncing it like the ancient city, instead of as Daniel had been using it. "But the thing is, those are clearly developed hieroglyphs. Heck, the Abydos gate addresses are enclosed in cartouche — which weren't in use before Sneferu."
He turned to Zip, who had not quite hidden his look. "Fourth Dynasty," he explained tersely. He turned back to Daniel. "Before that, royal names were enclosed in the serekh. And that's far from the only development in hieroglyphs, which continued to evolve out clear to the time of Alexander. Did the Egyptians forget how their own language worked after the Goa'uld left, and have to re-invent it over the following centuries?"
"Well, they did by the time of the Ptolmiacs," Daniel retorted. "Cleopatra's contemporaries had to carve out the Rosetta Stone just to translate from the old language to their modern Coptic." He wasn't really making an objection, though.
So Alister brought in the big guns. "And thus we come to Osiris," he said with a gleam in his eye. Daniel looked honestly confused.
"Osiris is a Greek name," Alister said. "Actually, a Latin transliteration of the Greek. It's actually pretty close, as such things go, to the original Egyptian, which I'd transliterate from the hieroglyphs as 'Wesir.' Taking the vowels from the later Coptic, of course. Zip, you probably don't know this, but for historical reasons a great many of our terms for ancient Egypt are Greek in origin. Question is…why would the Goa'uld be using those pronunciations? Or are you trying to claim that for thousands of years their own slaves were getting the name wrong, and it took the Romans to stumble upon the right pronunciation?"
"The humans on Abydos called their living god 'Ra,'" Daniel objected weakly. "Even though we know the Coptic for the Egyptian sun god is 'Re.' And Teal'c, he didn't, uh, work for Apep. That Goa'uld called himself…oh, dammit. Apophis."
"Oh, just try to tell me that isn't Latinate!" Alister chortled.
"I give up." Daniel threw up his hands. "Cultural diffusion flows both ways."
The Great Hall was too quiet, even with the small but cheerful fire in the massive fireplace, and the gleaming and blinking of lights and soft hum of cooling fans behind the acrylic barrier that separated Zip's "lair" from the rest of the hall. Teal'c paused, as patient in his immobility as a hunter, to take in the atmosphere and admire the decor, before moving to one of the doors.
Something puzzled him about the painting over the fireplace. The couple there: older but surprisingly fit. The man had that focused look of an accomplished warrior, and the woman had in her high well-defined cheekbones a clear genetic link to Lady Croft's more strongly-sculpted exoticism. Obviously her ancestors, but something had caught his eye. Something that seemed out of place.
When further examination revealed nothing he shrugged with just the slightest controlled ripple of his well-muscled shoulders. Then picked a door at random.
The hallway he found was in warm brown stones with massive pillars like a fortified house. Woven tapestries hung in the spaces between them, and the light was muted, filtered through tall stained-glass windows along one side of the L-bend. Soft music came from hidden speakers; a delicate, rippling ostinato on piano and various sorts of pitched percussion. Teal'c found it quite soothing.
Completing that long hall and pulling open a massive wooden door, he found himself at an indoor pool. The room was mostly stone and tile with light coming through a glass conservatory roof. Along the sides were statuary, female warriors behind Trojan war shields, spears stretched out over the sparkling clear water, and strange fish-creatures with broadly flared tails. There was a mezzanine level behind a classical balustrade, but no obvious access to it from the ground floor.
Striped curtains hung in front of semi-open changing rooms paneled in polished wood. The Jaffa warrior left those alone. His eye was caught by slight but unmistakable scrapes in the floor near one of the seemingly massive stone fish. There was a convenient wooden rod affixed to the plinth, looking like but in the wrong place to be a support for someone discovering wet tiles with bare feet.
Teal'c shrugged again, wrapped his hands around the rod and pulled. The statue slid across the floor with unexpected ease. Behind it, in an alcove now revealed, crossed as if on display at a Museum of Ancient Arms, were a shiny and practical-looking classical trident — and an extremely modern spear gun.
"Curiouser and curiouser," the big man said.
"So, Carter, tell me honest. Are you making these calls just to write up a proper report for your General, or is it because you like talking with me?"
"Who said it had to be one or the other?" Carter replied. "So. Cargo cults, eh? That's a good one. Feynman popularized the term. I mean, outside of anthropology. So what did they come up with after that?"
"Well, around dinner they finally settled down to trying to figure out what this Horus dude had been getting up to since Ra left the planet. Khasekhemwy, Alister said then. I said, what's a Khasekhemwy. Alister said 'about five or six stone.'"
Carter laughed aloud at this. She had a warm laugh, Zip decided. Self-assured, even controlled. Not like the shrieks and giggles of some women. Like at least one he'd recently been dating. Enough of that. "Anyhow, turns out there was kind of a fight between Horus worshippers and Set worshippers and this Khasy guy seems to have smoothed things over. His serekh — that's like a cartouche only different — had both gods on it instead of the one."
"You know what cartouche comes from, right?" Carter mentioned. "Cartridge. Napoleon's men came up with the term while they were kicking around Egypt figuring out how to bring some of it back with them."
"Yeah, and we've still got all kinds of troubles about the Elgin Marbles. Makes you feel sorry for the curators at the British Museum."
"So the Brain Trust thinks this is evidence of Horus trying to guide Egyptian civilization, and fighting off and on with former supporters of Ra…or other System Lords trying to cut themselves a slice of the Tau'ri pie?"
"Yeah, something like that. Not sure it's going to help. I mean, we know there were ancient aliens giving out all sorts of trinkets. Doesn't help us much in discovering their motivations."
Carter became more serious. "You seem oddly certain for someone to whom all this stuff about the Stargate is strictly second-hand," she said.
"Yeah, about that." Zip still wasn't ready to tell all. Nor, he was very sure, was Carter and the organization behind her being entirely forthcoming. Even if Daniel Jackson seemed personally incapable of keeping a secret. "Lemme just say, Carter, that I've seen things. I've seen things you wouldn't believe."
"Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion?"
Zip's jaw dropped. "C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate," he said. "Damn, Carter. You've got geek creds! And you a hacker, too?"
"Back in the day," she told him, "I went by the handle Acid Burn."
"Whew!" Zip said, "You…wait a minute. Oh, now you are just messing with me!" He started to laugh.
"It's a seminal movie that helped shaped popular conceptions of hacker culture," Carter said. Then cracked up. "I kid. Can I tell you how much I love that movie? It's so bad…!" She turned semi-serious. "Actually, though, it doesn't do a bad job in depicting the Phone Phreak era."
"WarGames did it better."
"I assure you, Zip, any Professor Falken working for us does not get access to an outside line."
"Yeah, you don't want some Mathew Broderick playing Tic Tac Toe on your Dialing Computer."
"Um…among other things."
"So," Zip said thoughtfully. "You are connecting from home. Does that mean you aren't recording this?"
Carter didn't answer.
The next morning, Zip showed up at the target range still blinking sleep from his eyes. "I see you found something lighter…but what is that thing?" Winston looked on, amused. "It looks like something that came off a sci-fi- movie set." The weapon in question was aggressively angled with a smoothly tapered curve almost to the muzzle. It was shiny, with white grips; all adding to the space-age appearance.
"Whitney Wolverine," Alister named it.
"A semi-automatic in .22 LR from 1956," Winston expanded.
"You would not believe the guns Lord Croft had in his collection," Alister added. "This one's cast aluminium. Cool-looking, isn't it?"
"Wait, wolverine? Like, Wolverines!" He said the last in an approximation of a rebel yell.
Alister blinked. "Yes, like the member of the weasel family. Which, I believe, is often used as a mascot by the Yanks in that pansy game they insist on calling 'football.'"
"Not what I meant — ah, forget it. If I had to explain it, it wouldn't have the impact."
"I've been thinking about those Goa'uld of yours," Alister said. They'd moved from the library; for no good reason Daniel could see they were currently in Zip's "batcave" of electronics. It felt comfortingly familiar to Daniel. Although he did have an apartment off-post, it did seem like he spent most of his waking hours in the steel-lined tunnels deep below the mountain, filled with similarly blinking and beeping technology. Not exactly the life he expected when he began studying archaeology. Or even the life he expected when he stumbled upon what had seemed at the time clear evidence the Giza pyramids were much older than anyone had thought.
"So the idea is that myths, the stories and oral traditions that have come down to us through the ages, may be garbled accounts of actual events. I think this denigrates the intelligence and creativity of our ancestors; it substitutes the skills of a story-teller with a gape-mouthed misunderstanding of what was happening in front of their eyes. But anyhow! One of the many incidents that springs to mind is a story from the Book of the Heavenly Cow."
"Hathor," Daniel said with a sour look.
"In synopsis, humans are rising in rebellion against Ra — sound familiar? — and he sends Hathor to punish them. She gets a little too into it, basically goes genocidal, and refuses to be called back. After consultation with the other gods Ra makes up a batch of beer dyed to look like blood and spreads it on the ground. Hathor licks it up, falls over in a dead drunk, and humanity is saved."
"Yeah, I can see it," Daniel agreed. "As I told you earlier, the Goa'uld going by that name was a sensualist and a skilled geneticist. Mother goddess and genocidal killer in one package. And I like the beer angle."
"Of course," Alister grinned. "Beer. Possibly the real spark that ignited the agricultural revolution. For without an organized society, you can't brew. With beer, though, you've got a ready-made ritual and a way to make the local water potable. That's half of the tools of an agrarian society right there. Beer; the true genesis of civilization!"
"I'll drink to that!" Zip said. He didn't turn, though, from where he was writing code or sending emails or whatever he was doing on his massed banks of computers and monitors.
"And kind of you not to point out," Daniel's tone was biting, "That the text you mention came out of the Amarna period. Hathor herself was poorly defined right through the Old Kingdom; it isn't until later that the full regalia of horns and sun disk, sistrum and ankh and all that comes together."
"Ah, but she's already a cow on the Narmer Palette," Alister grinned.
"So, yes, it certainly sounds like our Goa'uld. Ra is burning for revenge, Hathor genetically engineers a plague, but plans change and she has to be tricked out of finishing us off. But I agree with your underlying point, Alister. It is too easy to decide that this one interpretation of an old myth or an ambiguous image is the right one, and let yourself be blind to all other interpretations."
"Like seeing the King Pakal sarcophagus lid carving as an astronaut in a space capsule?"
"Oh, now, that was just cruel!"
"So maybe no Seven Plagues." Zip entered the conversation Apparently he had been listening. He held up a hand, "Hey now. I know that's a lot later. But I'm still pretty confused over the whole Ra thing."
Daniel took this one. "The uprising was around 3,000 BCE. You have to remember, as powerful as Goa'uld or Jaffa may be individually, there were a lot more Helots than there were Spartans. Err, which is to say a slave revolt is possible. On Abydos, Ra tried to prevent another one from being organized by banning writing. Which gave us a difficult time trying to figure out the gate code to get back home but that's another story!"
"I follow so far," Zip said. "And they bury the Giza Stargate so he can't come back that way. And then what?"
"Well, this is where the historical record is extremely sketchy. For all that we know about Ancient Egypt, the first three dynasties are largely a mystery. Even the lists of kings we have mostly come to us from later efforts — like the Palermo Stone chiseled up early in the Fifth Dynasty — to make some sort of record of their origins. First ruler we are relatively sure of is King Narmer, but even he may be a composite character, or a representation of a process of unification that took several generations."
"I've even seen it argued that the Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt aren't actually that; that on the Narmer Pallet they represent different roles of the King; civic versus religious, for instance," Alister chimed in. "We're not even sure Narmer is a proper name. I mean, think about Djet, the Serpent of Horus. Another name that sure sounds meaningful, eh? And we can't possibly forget King Scorpion."
"I'll take the Palermo Stone over the Scorpion Mace-head," Daniel scowled. "In any case, for all appearances our Horus was working to smooth the transition into local rule. It was probably bloody — politics usually are, particularly the politics of the Ancient World — but there's nothing here we can take to the Asgard. I think we need to hunt for a smoking gun a little later on."
"Wait…." Zip was looking from one to the other, stuck several words back. "Scorpion? There's a Scorpion King?"
"That's another interesting thought, though," Alister mused. "Serpents. There's serpent gods, serpent cults, serpent men even, in mythologies across the world and right up to the present. Makes you wonder if there's a Goa'uld symbiote behind any of them." Daniel had given him the gist of the story of the Worm of Marienberg (he assumed that Lara Croft would have briefed her assistants about the Prague adventure in any case).
Daniel sighed. "Not really helping. And we're still no closer to figuring out where your boss went, either."
The first find of the day was shortly after breakfast. More doors, more long halls of muted lighting; daylight filtered through sheer lace curtains of French cotton and tiny accent lights on the hanging paintings and some of the smaller antiques. More soft music, although this had a wind instrument added that made Teal'c think of his home village on Chulak.
And another high-ceilinged room, natural light through an industrial-looking roof of flat glass panels set in exposed steel framing; a look that went with the unpainted cement walls and highly varnished wood floor. It was obviously a gym, even without the thick blue mats that spotted the floor, and the gymnastic equipment that stood about. Multiple panels of sculpted fake rock were attached to the walls, multicolored plastic rocks bolted to those in turn. Teal'c had heard of this. It was an indoor climbing wall.
He was no climber. Jaffa strengths were wasted in aerial gymnastics; they were most dangerous on level ground. But he could certainly do calisthenics here. Which he did, then showered in the convenient adjoining facility. There were even sweats in the changing room. In his size. He recalled questioning Daniel Jackson upon their first night here, when he had discovered his room apportioned with sufficient candles to be conducive for a night's kelno'reem.
"Butlers," Daniel Jackson had said, with a shrug. "English Butlers," he expanded when Teal'c continued to look at him. "They're magic."
Suitably refreshed, Teal'c continued his exploration. He found a hall with a checkerboard floor where swords and axes and other bladed weapons were arranged in abstract patterns high on the walls. They were of excellent craftsmanship, if archaic in style, and seemed to cover a variety of cultures.
Full suits of armor stood sentry. One had the sliding metal plates and the tall helm he had been taught to associate with the (overly romanticized, as far as the Jaffa could tell) conception of the European "Knight," another was in segmented hoops over a red tunic and was displayed with a short broad-bladed sword and a long stabbing spear — Teal'c believed this might be a "Roman."
Another appeared to be made out of plant fibers but was gorgeously painted; that was presented complete with a what appeared to be a mahogany club with bits of obsidian forced into its striking surfaces. The last, in this gallery at least, was a suit of close-spaced plates woven together with silk cord in intricate patterns and topped with a wonderful helmet that looked like someone had taken Darth Vader's and added a towering pair of horns. It was presented on a low stand of lacquered wood.
Facing across from these were two framed paintings and an unframed print. One showed a steep, rocky hillside that looked quite peaceful until one noticed that the clumps of dull green were men crawling purposefully upwards, pressed tightly to the rock; trying to move upwards against what Teal'c assumed must be snipers on the heights. The title was as opaque to the Jaffa; "Anzac, 1915."
On the other side, what was perhaps an Indian prince, bare-chested, sat with legs crossed, eyes closed in meditation. Behind him the muddy ground torn by many horse hooves suggested a battlefield lay around him, but any detail was lost in the smoke. This one was titled "Ashoka at Kalinga."
The central image was small, probably a commissioned reproduction of a larger work. It was proportioned like a mural and painted only in shades of grey. It was bold, almost geometric in the stark simplicity of the forms. Near the center the head of a horse rose, screaming, tendons standing out, from flames and bits of building and bits of bodies. A bull in the upper left corner looked on, inscrutably. A single word or name was scrawled in a bold, careless cursive, "Picasso."
The Jaffa moved on. The next interesting room was a small sitting room with an extremely comfortable and well-used chair that smelled even decades later of old tobacco smoke. Yellowing papers were spread out on a side-table, held in place by the expedient pin of a jeweled and extremely sharp-looking Malay kris that stabbed down through them. Books were on shelves set into the wood-paneled walls, prominence given to several with the same name appearing on the spine; the name probably related to that which was under a portrait of a powerfully-built older man with mutton-chop whiskers that hung in the place of honor over the white marble fireplace; "Colonel Lord "Hennie" Croft, 9th Earl of Abbingdon."
Teal'c did not go inside. The room was preserved, like a shrine, as the person in the portrait would have known it. He could just read from the door the title on two books that shared the end-table; "My Youth in China; a Personal Account of the Siege of the Legations," and "Five Treasures of Snow; the First International Attempt to Summit Kangchenjunga." It was clear that Lady Croft's ancestors shared her love of world travel and adventure.
Teal'c turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with a striking painting in vivid, primitive colors of a fierce beast, striped body rearing and red mouth framed with large white teeth. Through another opening the terminus for various doorways and passages was decorated enough to almost make a small gallery on its own. Another of the delicate-looking chairs with the curving legs and fabric-covered oval backs. Another end table, holding a vase in white porcelain painted with a delicate spray of cherry blossoms. A framed page from a book of poetry, hand-lettered and illustrated, and on a sturdy display plinth, a chunk of stone carved with the bas-relief of marching warriors with wicker shields and cloth caps. "Persepolis," a tiny bronze plate attached to the plinth read.
Teal's stopped to read the poem. "Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
Teal'c had no idea. He turned to leave, but then on impulse turned at the door. He was almost edge-on to the stone carving, and from this angle he could see how each soldier stood so far out in their bas-relief from the surface it was if they were lining up in formation before him. One eye of each looked fearlessly back at his.
The big man pondered. Then he returned to the stone. It was real stone, and heavy, but it pivoted so smoothly it was obviously on a hidden pin. Carefully, he swiveled it until the alignment of the ancient warriors had them giving the eye to the jungle beast in the other room.
With a soft click the entire painting rose up into the air on a set of hidden tracks, uncovering the dark shape of a hidden doorway. "Aha!" Teal'c said. Around him, the music from the hidden speakers changed to a new key.
"So we're going to have to make this short tonight," Carter said.
"Are you going out?" Zip was disappointed. Actually, if he wanted to be honest with himself, he was feeling a little twinge of jealousy.
"Going to the opera," Carter said. "Fledermaus."
"Oh?"
"Sorry, private joke. Actually, it is a more modern work, by Janáček. The Makropulos Affair. Set in Prague, which is kinda cool."
"Well, the guys are basically stalling out. At least Teal'c seems to be enjoying himself. He asked me all serious like if I knew there were secrets in this house. I told him, a lot of old English homes have a Priest Hole. This one, you could hide the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."
Carter chuckled shortly. "I would have enjoyed watching you try to explain all that to him."
"So they did come up with some more dirt on Hathor. Not that any was needed, from what I gather." Zip succinctly recapped the discussion of her possible dalliance with genocide.
"Well, I may have some news over here," Carter said. "I'll tell everyone about it soon — I think this is going to excite Daniel. No time to get into detail, but I've been keeping in touch with the Remote Sensing Group and one of Felgar's castles in the sky actually panned out. In the sky. I mean, they managed to put a naquada…sorry, my ride's here!"
And she logged out.
This morning Alister had a real antique with him. Winston watched approvingly as he cleared the weapon, inspected it, donned the ear muffs and shooter's glasses, and waited for Zip to be similarly ready in his lane.
Zip was coming along well. He was a natural shot, with a wiry strength that helped him control even the heavier guns. Alister, on the other hand, had grown in a different direction.
"Okay," Zip burst out. "What the hell is that?" He squinted. "Some kind of old Luger?"
"Right time period, wrong nation," Alister said smugly. "Nambu Type 14. Japanese 8mm, developed between the wars. This one's an early manufacture, as you can tell by the grooved cocking handle. The stamps are worn but it's probably out of Koishikawa. The late war builds were basically crap, and the Type 94 was even worse — especially the suicide sear."
"Oh, no," Zip said in dawning horror. Alister proceeded to fire the thing with evident enjoyment. His pattern was far from tight, but that was obviously less important to him. He'd leveraged all that skill in listing and classifying obscure archaeological artifacts. He was turning into a…a gun collector.
"So what about Cyrus the Great? He was a heck of a do-gooder. Nice role for someone trying to kiss up to the Asgard."
"Or Ashoka the Great," Daniel answered. "Except he got off to a really, really bad start. Actually, pretty much every historic ruler that gets 'The Great' attached to them was basically a mass murderer."
"A gentleman in Oregon I've corresponded with calls them 'Historical Arsonists.'" Alister agreed. "He particularly disagreed with the lionization of Alexander."
"Not Horus' style, anyhow," Daniel said. "Goa'uld arrogance and ambition aside, the fact that he was pushing his 'Tears of Horus' is one more indication that he preferred to be the power behind the throne. A manipulator, not a ruler himself."
"Rasputin would be a good one, if he wasn't so late in history," Alister said. "Talk about supernatural healing powers!"
"At that point you might as well be arguing for the Comte de Saint Germain," Daniel snorted.
"So Imhotep looks pretty good. Advisor to the throne, advances in architecture, medicine — he was a true polymath. Even the way he 'let' himself be worshipped as a god later on. But is there a reason we're sticking to the Fertile Crescent? What about, say, Mesoamerica?"
"Oh, please tell me you aren't going to bring up Viracocha. You might as well go the whole Atlantis route then."
"No, of course not. I know the 'bearded white god' thing was cooked up by Pizarro and his apologizers. But I'm surprised," Alister took another sip of tea, replaced the cup, "you dismiss Atlantis so completely."
"Look, I know it's the tradition if you buy into one conspiracy theory, you buy into all of them. Just because I had some ideas about pre-dynastic Egypt that don't agree with the mainstream didn't mean I signed on for every pseudo-historical crackpot idea out there. Alister, even though I know, now, that there were aliens masquerading as gods in ancient Egypt, I still think the Nazca lines are sacred geoglyphs, the moai were carved and set up by the Rapa Nui people and King Pakal is depicted on the World Tree framed by the jaws of a funerary serpent. Oh, yeah, and Hamlet was written by some guy named William Shakespeare."
Alister laughed. "You do a good rant, Daniel." He put aside the tea, settled back, steepled his hands. "I'm still surprised. You yourself said there's often a germ of truth in every myth. What about the idea some people have put forward that the Atlantis story is rooted in the Thera volcanic eruption in the Aegean, towards the end of the Minoan civilization?"
"What idea?" Daniel was still short. "It isn't in the Atlantic, didn't rule the world, and isn't called Atlantis. It's like those modern theories of King Arthur that link him to someone who wasn't King, wasn't in England, and wasn't named Arthur. So what's the point? Why even call it Atlantis if you are going to throw away everything else Plato says about it?"
"Well, at least in the Minoan case you can more-or-less argue that Athenians whipped their butts. Although they were far from the Perfect Republic Plato was talking about. And there's the whole problem of Solon getting the story from some Egyptian priests nobody has ever heard of."
"That, and his Atlantis was a wee bit larger than North America," Daniel said. "Not a tiny island near Crete." He stopped and shook his head. "And it is so clear that Plato is telling a just-so story as part of a thought experiment. We're no more meant to believe it than we are meant to believe Lemuel Gulliver actually set foot on a flying island. The social commentary — or moral instruction — is what is important."
Alister grinned for a moment. "One thing that always amuses me is how all the modern version of the Atlantis myth get that one thing wrong. In Plato, they aren't the good guys. They're the Evil Empire."
Daniel sighed in agreement. "Sure, you've got your odd Reptillians and your Shaver Mysteries, but yeah, most of the modern versions of these myths the space aliens are coming to bring humanity into a new utopia of peace and harmony and chemical-free living."
"Would make it rather convenient for a Goa'uld stopping by today for a fresh set of slaves."
"That's an…interesting thought, Alister. I'm going to pass that one along." Daniel looked across the book-strewn table at him. "You've got a nicely paranoid and suspicious mind."
"Thank you," Alister said, flustered. "I have to be. I'm working for Lara Croft, and I'd like to stay alive long enough to actually finish my dissertation!"
Teal'c strolled past, coming from the rear of the library. "Daniel Jackson," he nodded in greeting. "Mister Alister." He continued out the door without stopping. He seemed to be humming a quiet tune under his breath.
"Was he back there the whole time?" Daniel asked.
"I don't think so," Alister said. "Say, I hope he doesn't try that 'Mister' stuff on Zip. He hates being called 'Mister Zip.' Says it makes him feel like a Sidney Poitier character."
"Anyhow," said Daniel, "Atlantis, which sort of spawns Mu, which gets associated with Lemuria, which all get folded into the general Ancient Astronaut/Hollow Earth/Bermuda Triangle/Ley Line mish-mash. Oh, Lemuria at least has an honorable excuse; like Frisland, it started through poor science, but at least, someone was trying to do science."
"I think I remember. Early work in biogeography. They found lemurs on two continents, couldn't figure out how they got there, so invented a land bridge the size of the Indian Ocean. They were so close, but this was before Wegener and plate tectonics and the general acceptance of continental drift. But you sound like you really don't like Mu."
Daniel sighed. "I doubled in Egyptology and in Linguistics. Ancient languages as a focus. So I guess I'm sensitive. The whole Mu story basically starts with Diego de Landa, the Bishop of Yucatán."
"The butcher of Yucatán, more like it," Alister grimaced. "The Spanish didn't need anyone spreading the Black Legend against them; he pretty much did all of it. Torture and murder and destruction all in the name of conversion of the Maya to Catholicism."
"And that's the horribly ironic thing about it," Daniel said. "He also provides some of the greatest early studies of Maya culture and the best clue to later deciphering of the Maya glyphs. He was like a pioneer anthropologist. He'd go out alone to small villages and live among the Maya, learning their ways — in order to learn the best way to wipe them out."
He stopped himself and had some tea. His hand was actually shaking with anger. "Back to Mu," he said. "Before he burnt the Mayan Codices, he got the help of a couple of priests to work out their alphabet. First mistake. Maya glyphs are a logogram, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, not an alphabet." Daniel had more tea. "Second mistake was that from accounts he conducted this exercise in Spanish, meaning poor transliteration of anything that was allophonic in that language."
"Sounds like a bit of work to get that all straight, then."
"Yes, apparently it was. We can read the Maya glyphs now, at least. But go back to the 19th century. Next person of importance in the story is Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg and he really should have known better. The man actually published a study on the grammar of the Maya language of Guatemala, several histories of Central America, and a translation of the Popol Vuh. He was also an Atlantis nut, so maybe that explains why, when he applied the ridiculous 'de Landa Alphabet' to the Troano Codex (one of the few that escaped the bonfires of de Landa's auto-da-fé), he didn't immediately realize his translation was spitting out sheer nonsense. Stuff like, '...master of the upheaved calabash...' if I remember any of it correctly."
"So he invents Mu."
"A little bit of it. It took Augustus Le Plongeon, a writer and photographer who recorded many Pre-Columbian ruins which otherwise have not survived to the present day, to flesh out the bones. Which he did from a background of Maya-ism — the belief that Atlantis was the source culture of the Maya and ancient Egypt — his own travels in the Yucatán, and for all I know his connections with Freemasonary to come up with a long and complicated history of Mu, complete with princesses and doomed romances and all that. Apparently he'd read some of these accounts to friends at house parties, with his wife accompanying on guitar."
"And now we have the Hitler — sorry, 'History' Channel for entertainment. plus ça change, plus c'est la même."
"And finally 'Colonel' Churchward — if there's anything these pseudo-historians love, it's titles — wrote the whole mess up and padded it out into a dozen-odd books."
"Churchward I know," Alister said. He forbade to mention his own lifelong fascination with Atlantis. "He claimed to have done the research himself, working from a set of clay tablets an old soldier gave to him. Probably from the same cave that Joseph Smith got his golden plates. One interesting bit is that Churchward associated the King of Mu — which back several versions ago was supposed to also be the figure behind the Mayan Chacmool — with the Egyptian god Ra."
Daniel laughed shortly. "Which puts us back full circle, doesn't it?"
"This calls for beer," Alister said, working his way up from the deep slump he'd been seated in. "I'm going to see if Zip is still up, too. Oh, he's going to love the obscure handgun I picked out for tomorrow's get-together. You should join us at the range, Daniel."
"I see enough shooting in my day job," Daniel complained. "See if you can find Teal'c, too. He's good company once you get to know him. Deep, too. You would not believe how deep he is."
Teal'c could hear the blood roaring behind his ears. His symbiote helped, but the underwater passage between rooms was rather long. He swam a little more vigorously. "Vaster than empires, but more slow," had led him to the emerald key, but getting to it required getting inside a gated section of the greenhouse. At least it beat solving the ruby key, which had started from a fragment of a very strange book by someone named Baum and required stacking far too many gold disks of different diameters on a trio of pylons.
He pulled himself dripping from the water at last, touched the key and was rewarded with the soft chime of its activation. He'd already solved the clue embedded in "Hear, how yon reed in sadly pleasing tales," and the sapphire key would take but another hour to complete.
And that's when he heard a noise.
Alister was ten paces from the nearer of the several kitchens when a burly man clad head to toe in black slammed him to the ground.
He caught the glitter of metal, weapons and other things. An attack, part of his mind processed while the rest was still trying to catch up. Armed men were in the mansion. It wouldn't be the first time.
"I, uh, I…" he mumbled, trying to get his breath.
"Shut up," the man said. He pulled a laminated image from a pocket on the front of his battledress. "The stone," the man snarled. "Show me where this stone is and maybe you will live out the night."
Alister recognized the image instantly, and his next word sounded like a curse. "Amanda!"