Chapter 26

Daniel mused on how many variations of "Ew!" were possible as they made their way laboriously through the sewer system. But in a shorter time than he anticipated, and with everyone amazingly still in one piece, Viorel finally led them up a spiral staircase like the one they had descended, where they emerged onto a rural lane on the other side of the river. Gratefully Daniel breathed in the fresh air. The moons had moved across the vault of the sky and were heading toward their rest on the far horizon. Unfamiliar stars dotted the blackness above them. The lane was bounded by cottages whose windows were dark, but beyond the river the city was illuminated by the lights of search aircraft stabbing the streets.

"We must get off the roads," Teal'c said, and struck out into the deeper darkness of the countryside.

Daniel and Viorel helped the children as they stumbled through the unfamiliar landscape, their breaths making little clouds. It was cold, the night cold of the desert. Clouds drifted across the moons. The whimpering that Daniel heard told him more than words the toll that cold and weariness were taking on the children. He was worried too about Jack, Sam, and Jacob, and worried about his and Teal'c's chances for mounting a rescue, especially with the lives of fifty children in the balance. He exhaled in frustration.

To get his mind off the subject he asked Viorel what had made her decide to help them.

"I couldn't stop thinking about the things you told me," she said. "I thought for a long time about my mother. And I think I remembered my father, too." She paused, her brow furrowed. "I remember he had a beard. It scratched my cheek."

"My father has a beard, too," said Nevan, who had continued to remain close to Daniel in the absence of Jack.

She smiled at the boy, and they walked in silence for a ways. Then she said in a soft voice tinged with bitterness, "It has all been a lie."

"What's been a lie?" asked Daniel.

"My whole life."

Daniel tried to think of something to say that wasn't an empty platitude, but couldn't. But he could at least offer her something. "You're more than making up for it by helping these children return to their homes." She said nothing, but he could tell he had given her something to think about.

They tramped across flat country for a quarter of an hour, then Teal'c discovered an arroyo that would better conceal them. They descended into it with much slipping and sliding, occasional cries, and the clatter of stones dislodged by their feet. Garan eased Naytha down the slope slowly, catching her when her feet slid out from under her. She gasped, but found her footing again and kept going. Perspiration plastered her hair to her head despite the chill temperatures.

As Daniel helped the children down the rocky descent, he realized that Viorel had stopped on the lip of the arroyo above them. She was touching her earpiece, apparently listening to a communication. Daniel climbed back up the slope. He waited until she returned her attention to him. "What is it?" he said.

"That was D'nae," she said. Her eyes were wide and staring, as though at something impossible to believe.

"What's happened?"

"Provost Bok'n is gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

She shook her head. "That was all he said. Gone." She breathed the word in disbelief. "He has been provost of Kalam since the dawn of Unity. Over fifty hek'tons. He was appointed provost for all time. Now…" She looked past Daniel, unseeing.

Daniel had more pressing things on his mind than the future of Kalam's government. "Did D'nae say anything about our friends?" Maybe Jack had something to do with Bok'n being "gone."

She brought her gaze back to him with a lurch. "Your friends?" she said absently. "No, he didn't mention them."

"Could you call him back and ask him?"

But she was off in her fugue again, gazing at something in the middle distance. "He asked me to come back to Wydra. To help him. He cannot fight Oren and Tallin alone."

On her face Daniel could see the choices warring against one another. The fight that lay ahead on Kalam, if she chose to participate, would have no certain outcome. If she chose to come with them back to earth, her future was even more unknown. He said, "Viorel, I want you to know that our offer still holds. But…"

She looked at him. "But what?"

"Maybe this is your chance to erase the lie. To give your life meaning, give it truth. To help build a better world."

She was quiet. In the ravine below he could hear the murmurs of the tired children. Somewhere nearby a night animal made a chittering noise. Finally she met his gaze. "Your thoughts and mine are one, Dan'l, as I knew they would be." She smiled. "I must try to persuade my people to find another way to replace their population besides stealing other people's children. With Provost Bok'n gone, we finally have a chance to make a change." She looked off toward the city. "I will go back."

"You're sure?"

She nodded. But still she looked at him uncertainly. "Do you think…" she began. "I would like it if…" She chewed her lip. "Would you like to stay and help us, Dan'l? Help me?"

The look in her eyes was unmistakable. It was a serious case of infatuation. He sighed. "Thank you, Viorel. But I have to return home, too."

Her head dropped with disappointment. "Of course."

He took a step closer to her. "I think you've made the right choice. Thank you for helping us."

She smiled shyly. "It has been my pleasure to help you, Dan'l."

Those pretty green eyes looked up at him longingly, and he thought, well, why not? Stepping closer, he kissed her softly on the lips. He heard her intake of breath, then she returned the gentle pressure on his mouth. When they pulled apart, her cheeks were as red as her hair.

"Good-bye, Viorel, and I wish you luck," he said.

Her eyes were glistening. "Good-bye, Dan'l. I will never forget you." Impulsively she threw her arms around him, then just as suddenly she was gone, running back to her city. He stood there a moment, watching her.

Suddenly the quiet night was shattered by a cry.

"Daniel Jackson!" called Teal'c. "Come quickly!"

~o~

Jack watched impatiently as Carter consulted a grid posted on the wall, running her finger along the network of sewer lines. They had been walking along the catwalks, passing tunnels that led left and right, before reaching a major intersection of flowing passageways like this one.

"Which way?" he said.

"Judging by our point of entry, which I think was here, we traveled along this line and are now here. The city limits should be there." Her finger stabbed at a point on the spiderweb of different colored lines.

"Which way?" he repeated.

"Which way?" Jaira parroted from her perch on his back.

Carter looked at father and daughter with an inscrutable expression, then at the map, then down the various tunnels. She pulled out her compass and studied it.

While Carter did GPS in her head, Jack looked down at the sludge that trickled a dozen feet beneath them. "If those shots didn't kill you, Jacob, this smell will."

"It stinks!" Jaira cried, her voice echoing off the walls of the tunnel.

Jacob said, "It's not much worse than you after a couple of days on a mission, Jack."

"Oh, is that so? And what about the time…"

The two men continued to trade barbs, and for a short space of time Jack was reassured that Jacob's symbiote was healing him. But the older man's face was gray, and blood was still oozing between his fingers pressed to his side.

Carter pointed to the right. "That way. I think."

"You think?" Jack said.

"I'm pretty sure."

"Pretty sure?"

"Well, reasonably sure."

"Carter, your 'reasonably sure' is better than most people's 'definitely sure.' But," he added, flicking his eyes in Jacob's direction, "let's take five before we move out."

She nodded in understanding. "Good idea, sir." As she helped ease Jacob down against the wall she said, "How are you feeling, Dad?"

"I'm fine." His voice was a raspy croak. "Jack, we should get to the tel'tac."

"If D'nae diverted the search away from us, we should be okay for a few minutes. Anyway, my knees are killing me," he lied.

He sank down on the catwalk and Jaira settled on his lap. He pulled her against his chest, still shaken from how close she had come to death. That would have been an irony, he thought. Discover you have a kid, then learn she's been kidnapped, then find her, then lose her. His arms reflexively tightened around his daughter, and she tucked her head under his chin.

Jaira in turn seemed to want to stay close to him. Carter had offered to take a turn carrying the child, but Jaira had refused, and while Jack wouldn't admit it to the major, he had no desire to let go of his burden. Feeling her on his back, her breath tickling his ear, reminded him with every step that she was alive.

Carter had turned her attention to applying a field dressing to her father's wound. Jack eyed her own bloodstained pants. "How's the leg, Major?"

"Dull throb, sir." She gave him a quick grin. "Not a problem."

"Make sure it stays that way. Take care of it after you're done with Jacob."

She nodded, then looked at his arm. "What about you?"

"Later," he said, his thoughts turning to the rest of his team. It should be safe to contact them now. He thumbed his radio. "Daniel, Teal'c, come in."

"Jack! Are you OK?"

"We're all fine, Daniel." Switching to Spanish just in case, Jack assured him Sam and Jacob were all right. He apprised Daniel of their progress (although he didn't know the Spanish word for sewer and settled instead for "tunnels of excrement") and asked about their location. Daniel explained they were safely out of the city, but then babbled something Jack couldn't understand, his linguistic skills no match for the younger man's. He asked Daniel to repeat it slowly.

"Tenemos un problema," said Daniel.

Jack listened while Jackson explained the problem. "What?" he exclaimed in English. Jaira jerked up at his shout, and Carter looked at him questioningly. "Can you all make it to the ship?" he asked in Spanish.

"No lo creo," Daniel said. His words were almost drowned out by a loud cry.

The Carters watched him tensely, and Jaira's eyes widened in fear. Jack forced a small smile and patted her reassuringly. Drawing in a breath he thumbed his radio. "Somebody get the kids back to the ship," he said in English. He just didn't have the energy for another language. "We'll be there ASAP." He signed off, then roughly scrubbed a hand over his face. This day just keeps getting better and better, he thought.

"Sir, what's going on?" Carter said.

He started to push himself up. "Naytha's in labor," he said. "Let's move out."

~o~

The landscape presented an eerie scene of moon-brightened sands and inky shadows cast by the stunted and misshapen trees, a setting from which all color had been banished, leaving a simple palette of blacks and cold whites. It was beautiful in its starkness, but strange and forbidding at the same time. It reminded Sam of the people that dwelled in it, a culture from which all shades and hues seemed to have been drained by the elevation of sterility to a revered state.

She was glad they were leaving it.

When they had found their way out of the sewers, they had seen the searchlights of aircraft far on the opposite side of the city from their location. D'nae apparently had made good on his promise.

Jacob coughed lightly, and Sam peered at him in concern.

"How is he?" the colonel asked.

"He is fine, Jack," Jacob said. "And he is tired of you asking that."

Sam chuckled. Her father seemed to be walking with more strength, and she felt herself supporting less weight on the arm she held securely around his waist. He would probably be fine, but he had lost a lot of blood, and she wouldn't cease worrying about him until they could get him back home. Next to her concern for him, her own leg wound was no more than a skinned knee.

She looked away from her father to the man on her other side. The bandage wrapped around the colonel's arm was dark with blood. His daughter hung limply on his back, having fallen asleep a short while ago. In the light from the cloud-shadowed moons shining down on them, his lined face looked tired. And yet, somehow at peace.

Sam bit her lip and looked away. He had found his child, had retrieved her, had almost seen her killed and now had her back, safe in his arms, headed home. And where would his home be? Sam felt her eyes fill irrationally. If the colonel chose to leave SG-1 to be with his daughter, wasn't that a good thing? What right did she have to wish otherwise? God knows, if she could have done anything to keep her mother with her, she would have. Didn't this child deserve as much? Two parents to love and guide her? And didn't the colonel deserve as much, too? After what he'd lost, could anyone begrudge him the gift of this child?

But the tears came anyway. Whatever secret, foolish desires she had harbored, whatever fanciful future she had imagined, whatever possibilities she had considered - being reassigned to Area 51, or the colonel being promoted out of her line of command, or retiring, or even getting a medical discharge (his knees wouldn't be field-worthy forever) - she saw them now shimmer and dissolve like a mirage on the flat sands of Saudi Arabia. With her free hand she pretended to brush her hair out of her eyes while she surreptitiously wiped the tears from her cheeks. Neither her father nor her CO seemed to notice.

Her melancholy was broken by the sound of a woman's scream.

"I think we're close," O'Neill said dryly, and he picked up the pace a little.

"Daniel, Teal'c!" Sam called. "Where are you?"

"Sam! Down here!"

Sam shone her flashlight down into an arroyo, illuminating the small, huddled group below. She turned to her CO. "I'll take it from here, sir." They had agreed earlier that she should stay to assist while the colonel got his daughter and her father back to the ship.

"Look, Carter, if you want help…"

"Thanks, sir, but I'll be all right. Anyway," she added, looking at the sleeping child on his back, "I don't think she's up for it. Hopefully we'll be done soon." She didn't miss the relief on his face. She was fairly certain that delivering a baby was a task he would wish to avoid at all costs.

O'Neill nodded. "Good luck, and get these guys moving as soon as possible. I don't know how long D'nae will be able to hold them off."

"As quick as possible, sir." She hugged her father. "Take it easy, Dad."

"Don't worry about me, Sam. I'll be fine."

She watched them leave wistfully. Why do babies always decide to be born at the worst possible times? She remembered the news story about a woman giving birth in a car in the middle of a blizzard on Highway 24, halfway between Colorado Springs and Calhan on the plains.

She looked around at the desolate landscape. Except the cold ground of this arid planet was no heated car and there was no 9-1-1 to call and no hospital nearby to provide medical care if things went south.

"It's going to be okay, it's going to be okay," Sam chanted under her breath, and scrambled down the slope.