Forged Steel
Part Three
Sam was doing some calculations on planetary alignments. Some of the other SG-teams had complained about bumpy rides through the Stargate and she suspected the program which adjusted the computer co-ordinates for planetary drift was off by a few decimal places. It wouldn't be enough to negate the connection from Stargate to Stargate, but it would be enough to make the ride a little rough.
The old man was of less interest to her than he was to Daniel. She agreed with the Colonel about the suspicious nature of the Goa'uld appearance on P7U-992 – Teal'c's estimate of the last time a mothership had been on P7U-992 was several hundred years. It was too coincidental that within hours of SG-1 arriving on the planet, they found themselves under attack by the Goa'uld. However, she wasn't so sure the old man had been party to the attack. Bait, yes; suspect, no.
There was a beep as someone outside swiped their card and the door rolled back. Sam glanced up as Daniel entered, the old man stumping along behind him. The dark eyes fixed her with lively curiosity and the man jabbered something to Daniel which made one corner of Daniel's mouth pull up in a smile.
Deciding against inquiring what the comment had been, Sam raised her eyebrows. "Daniel?" Last she knew, her team-mate was perfectly happy to talk with the old man. What had changed?
"Uh...here, he's yours."
Astonishment replaced curiosity. "Daniel, what am I supposed to..." He'd already turned and begun speaking to the old man in Abydonian.
The old man nodded, apparently not minding being handed over to her in the manner of an unwanted parcel. His gaze passed over the computer banks on the opposite wall, across the benches with her present set of naquadah experiments and came to rest on her.
"Daniel, what am I supposed to do with him?"
Daniel had the cagey look of someone who'd just dropped a live grenade into someone's lap and was about to hightail it out of there before it blew up.
"Er...I don't know. Gotta run. Jack and I are going to Abydos to talk with Kasuf - see if they're willing to take him in." That bewildered Sam: if they were going to Abydos, why not take him with them? Why dump their guest on her? "I'm going to be late. Just...keep an eye on him." He gave her a brief smile, "Hopefully we'll have Kasuf when we get back..."
"Daniel!" The yell came from just down the corridor: Colonel O'Neill impatient to get going. "Carter, don't hold him up, we gotta wormhole to catch..."
Daniel flashed her a brief, brilliant smile as he patted her on the arm. "Sorry, Sam. Look, I'm sure you guys will get alone fine... I've got to run..."
"Daniel!" The Colonel sounded distinctly agitated, but Sam held Daniel's gaze with hypnotic intensity.
She wasn't about to let Daniel go without some considerably more detailed explanations. Why her? Teal'c understood Abydonian and he wasn't working on planetary alignment calculations, why not him?
A beep distracted her from Daniel. The old man was standing at her second computer, poking the keyboard. Mild exasperation flooded her as she turned her head to look at her 'guest'. "Excuse me..." Out of the corner of her eye, Sam caught the flash of movement as her team-mate adroitly fled the coop.
Great.
Another beep made her turn back to the old man. Emboldened by the lack of response to his action, the old man had continued to press the buttons on the keyboard, watching as the characters appeared on the screen.
"Please don't do that," she asked him, knowing he didn't understand her. Getting up, she gently removed his hands from the keyboard. "No." She shook her head, silently cursing Daniel for leaving her to look after the old man. Glancing around her office, she looked for something she could use to occupy him and her eye lighted upon an item she had recently requisitioned back from Area 51.
Even after four years of study by the best linguists the SGC could lay their hands on, the language of Machello's little handheld computer was still a mystery. Everything on it had long since been copied into data files, both hardcopy and softcopy and the device had been examined, x-rayed and electron-bombarded to a fare-thee-well. However, all attempts to work out exactly how it did what it did were unsuccessful. It had taken Machello a lifetime to develop the technology with his peculiar brand of genius and it would probably take the scientists of Earth a lifetime to decipher exactly how he'd created such incredible technologies.
The handheld computer had been recalled to the SGC after SG-12 had encountered a similar device in another culture. Lieutenant Vaillant of SG-12 was coming down from the labs on level 6 later today to examine the similarities and differences between the two devices under Sam's guidance.
Sam felt no compunction in handing over such an intricate piece of technology to the Returned One. So far, the little handheld computer had remained impervious to anything they brought to bear against it – short of smashing it with a sledgehammer. How much damage could one old man inflict?
Taking the device, she put it in the old man's hands and showed him how to display the screens one by one. He regarded it with interest and practically yanked it from her grip, his calloused fingers moving nimbly over the controls and exclaiming with delight as he flipped from 'page' to 'page'.
With an inaudible sigh, Sam returned to her work, only glancing up occasionally to find the old man still fiddling with the device. At least one of them was having fun. She'd been through the calculations and couldn't find anything that indicated the program was wrong – but something had to be causing the bumpy ride...
A long nose peered over her shoulder – and it wasn't the Colonel's. Sam drew back in surprise as the old man poked a finger at the screen, then jabbed a finger at the keyboard.
"Hey, stop that! Those calculations..." It struck Sam that she was talking to someone who couldn't understand her. Turning around so he was forced to move out of her personal space, she looked across at Machello's device, sitting quietly on the table with the screen blinking.
Blinking? It never used to blink...
Keeping a wary eye on the old man, who had now put his hands ostentatiously behind his back, Sam picked up the device and frowned. The screen was one she'd seen before – but it was flashing on and off, as if the power source was low. Turning the device off, she almost dropped it on the table as the old man began tapping random keys on the keyboard, humming to himself.
The calculations! She was about to snap at him when she realised he'd opened another file and was typing into that instead. Gibberish – or so it seemed to her. She shook her head and pulled his hands from the keyboard.
"No!" If her voice was louder than usual and her tones more emphatic, then that was just to get her point across. The stuff here in her office was not to be played with – as she kept trying to remind the Colonel. At least Colonel O'Neill knew better than to touch anything on her computer. "Look, if you want to type, you can use the other computer, okay?"
He regarded her with amusement, the wrinkles on his face creasing deeply. Sam sighed and gently prodded him over to the second computer where she opened up a file and pointed to the screen. "You can type here." The dark eyes stared at her for a long moment, before she sighed again and put her hands to the keyboard, tapping her fingers across the keys and then pointing at the letters. "See? Type."
She sat him down on a stool and he watched her return to her desk before he began to type in long strings of characters. Sam shook her head ruefully. She was mellowing. Seven or eight years ago, she would have had about as much patience with someone like this as the Colonel usually had with scientists and people who 'techno-babbled' him – which was to say, none at all.
Beginning on the calculations again, Sam had just worked her way through four sets of variables in the calculations when there was a beep from the other computer again.
Not content with typing into a text file, the old man had begun opening other programs and was playing around with them – changing the data in them. Valuable data that she needed for her experiments and reports. She had backups of course, so the data wasn't lost, but the old man's antics were beginning to irritate her.
Sensing her observation, the wrinkled face looked to her and grinned broadly while she ground her teeth in frustration.
Daniel was a dead man when he got back from Abydos.
----
Teal'c observed the Returned One.
Major Carter had come to him with the elderly man nearly an hour ago and explained the problem with keeping the old man in her office. Understanding her agitation and for the mental comfort of his team-mate, Teal'c sat the old man down in his room and let him play with the candles used for meditation. There was no conceivable danger in allowing San y'kel the run of this room. While Major Carter's office was filled with delicate and intricate objects that were certainly not to be meddled with, Teal'c's room contained only the most basic of furnishings – a Spartan simplicity.
So the Returned One of Abydos was dribbling wax onto a saucer and poking his finger about in the half-melted wax and chattering to himself. The syllables were random and meaningless to Teal'c – although he understood Abydonian, the old man was not speaking in that language. Perhaps Daniel Jackson might have known, but he was presently involved in finding his father-in-law on Abydos and informing him of the presence of the Returned One.
As the elderly man dabbled about, Teal'c considered him.
Legend not only among the Abydonians, the old man was known on other planets of Goa'uld occupancy. He had sowed seeds of disbelief in many different cultures under Apophis' rule and Teal'c had been called upon to put down such minor rebellions against the gods. Such actions had brought him no joy, only shame and regret as he did the will of his god, unable to bend Apophis' decree far enough to spare those whom he was required to destroy.
Glancing up from the puddle of wax he was dripping from one candle to another, the Returned One regarded Teal'c solemnly. "You once served the gods."
"I did."
"You were an important man."
"I was the First Prime of Apophis." 'Important' was not something Teal'c had ever cared for. His position had been something he could use to protect his family and mitigate Apophis' evil. "I served him."
"You did not believe, though."
"No." As a young man, Teal'c had discovered the deception of the Goa'uld. The 'spark of doubt' Bratac had seen and nurtured in his protégé had grown from a tiny flame to a raging fire. Teal'c grew to be a warrior of renowned skill and ferocity, but none of his peers guessed that the ferocity was for a dream whose time had not yet come. It had taken a room full of prisoners and one man's plea for help to start Teal'c down the path he had trodden for the last six years. A path which had been hard and long and scorned by many Jaffa, but which had led to the freedom of others who saw that it was only through the Jaffa that the Goa'uld survived and thrived.
"Your 'god' is dead." Teal'c did not question how the old man knew. One who had lived so long in hiding from the Goa'uld would have his ways of gaining the information he needed.
"Indeed. But my people still live in slavery to the Goa'uld."
San y'kel was growing a wax stalagmite on the table. "You regard it as your work to free them?"
"Yes."
"Should it not be their own work to free themselves?"
"There are already some who have taken that first step," Teal'c stated, thinking of Rak'nor and the other Jaffa warriors under Teal'c's command. "In the history of the Tau'ri, there are those who have known no other life but slavery and they must be led gently towards freedom."
"Freedom is a great thing to strive for, but birds kept in captivity cannot always fly when released." The dark eyes blinked solemnly. "You should remember that."
Teal'c considered the old man's words. Part of him rebelled at the thought of any of his people remaining under the control of the Goa'uld, subject to their every whim and command. Yet another part knew the old man's words to be true. Not everyone would adapt to the rule of their own life – even among the Tau'ri of Earth, there were many for whom the excess of choice available brought them little but trouble.
Distantly, a siren began to blare. The old man's head swivelled to look at the door, his little tower of wax forgotten. "What is that?"
It was the signal to indicate that the Stargate had been opened from off-world. Down on level 28, the rostered Special Forces personnel would be filing into the gateroom to take up their position around the edges of the room. General Hammond would emerge from his office to come down to the control room and see what was happening and whatever technician was on-duty in the control room would wait patiently for the IDC to come through to inform him who was demanding entry from the other side of the wormhole. Running through a list of possibilities, Teal'c hoped it was O'Neill and Daniel Jackson returning from Abydos rather than some SG-team fleeing for their life.
However, no change of expression showed on his face, "It is nothing to be concerned about," Teal'c told him.
"Yet a great noise is made for it." A slight smile touched the lips of the elderly man. "That is no small thing, I think." He returned to his contemplation of the candle. "These people are not your people, yet you think much of them."
"They are companions I am proud to fight alongside." Friends with honesty, courage, honour and strength.
"And if they betrayed you?"
"They would not."
"You seem certain."
The doubt of the old man sparked anger in Teal'c. "I am certain. My own people call me traitor, name me shol'va with no compunction. My friends have never betrayed me – even when I betrayed them." The memory of his brief return in allegiance to Apophis still shamed him. As a warrior who had known freedom from slavery, he should have fought harder against the mental hooks the Goa'uld fixed within him.
"We are always certain of those we trust – until they prove themselves untrustworthy." There was a sadness in the old man's voice which spoke of experience.
Was there anything Teal'c could say to that? No. He continued to watch the old man, saddened. While a legend in his own right, San y'kel had spent his life running from the Goa'uld. His wife had borne him one son before Ra took her for his concubine. In anger, the young man had followed the Goa'uld through the Stargate pressing what he thought were the keys Ra's Jaffa had pressed. It was probably that miscalculation which saved him: he found himself on another planet, being hailed as a god by the people who greeted him. Over the next years and months he went from planet to planet, following the Goa'uld, learning their secrets, subverting their people.
When he returned to Abydos, he was no longer recognised as one of them. He had seen too much, done too much to be accepted back among the people from whom he had come. So San y'kel had sowed the seeds of doubt in the people, hugged his grandchildren and left Abydos behind.
And SG-1 would return him to Abydos – to the people who now believed openly what they had hoped silently when last he was there. Perhaps by now the grandchildren of the Returned one would have had children and he would live out his days surrounded by the family he had never before possessed.
A knock at the door interrupted Teal'c's thoughts.
"Hey, Teal'c!"
"O'Neill, please enter."
O'Neill poked his head in the door. "We're back."
"I am aware of that, O'Neill." Seeing his friend roll his eyes, Teal'c reflected on how enjoyable it was to occasionally tug O'Neill's leash by returning Teal'c's own version of O'Neill's humour to him.
"Kasuf's up with Daniel in the infirmary. We're briefing in half an hour – apparently Kasuf was about to send for us anyway – the boys found another chamber with writing on the walls and wanted Daniel to come and look it over." O'Neill grumbled, "I practically had to drag him through the wormhole backwards – he wanted to stay on Abydos while I brought Kasuf back..." Shaking his head, the officer leaned against the doorframe and indicated the old man and the candles. "What've you guys been up to? Hey, didn't Daniel leave him with Carter?"
"Major Carter found herself...distracted..."
One corner of O'Neill's mouth tugged upwards. "Damn. Wish I'd been there to see the fireworks then!"
The Returned One had been listening to them talk, still dribbling the wax over the table surface. "That one is full of words. What does he say?"
Teal'c didn't allow his amusement to show on his face. "We are called to discuss what shall be done with you."
"I shall be returned to my people, then?" San y'kel glanced up and saw the truth in Teal'c's eyes. "It is well. I have been gone too long from my grandchildren. The little one will be nearly a woman grown by now."
"What's he saying?"
The old man's head swung to regard O'Neill, before turning back to Teal'c, "He talks much, yet in talking, hides his true nature."
"It is his way," Teal'c responded and the old man grinned.
O'Neill was standing at the door with both his eyebrows raised in query at their conversation, incomprehensible to him. "That reminds me, Teal'c," he asked. "What is a yagesh with no temma?"
"In what context was it used?"
"The old guy said I was like one – whatever it is."
Teal'c forced his face to impassivity in spite of the urge to smile. San y'kel had indeed chosen an apt description for O'Neill. "It does not translate."
----
As the Stargate dialled Abydos up for the second time that day, Major General George Hammond tried to ignore the twinges of foreboding he was having regarding this trip.
There was no reason for his uneasiness at all. Abydos was a known world, Kasuf was perfectly safe and the old man SG-1 had brought back with them from P9U-772 had done nothing even vaguely suspicious during his time on the base. He was, as Colonel O'Neill said forthrightly, nothing more than a crazy old guy.
Yet George Hammond was on edge. Something was wrong, he knew that as surely as he knew this command. He simply couldn't pinpoint it.
Down in the gateroom, the six travellers waited and even as the General watched, Jack turned around and looked up at the control room window. The expression on the Colonel's face clearly said that the other man felt the same apprehension, but, similarly, had nothing concrete upon which to act.
"Chevron six encoded," called the technician, his dark fingers moving smoothly across the keyboard as he pulled up the diagnostics for the Stargate.
"All normal, Sergeant?"
"Yes, sir." The affirmative eased a little of George's discomfort – but not enough to reassure him. "Chevron seven...locked."
Particles billowed out and settled to the shimmering surface of the event horizon. George leaned forward to speak into the PA system, "SG-1, you have a go for Abydos."
They had a go for Abydos, but in the gateroom, the old man had placed his hands either side of Colonel O'Neill's face and was saying something which brought an open grin to Dr. Jackson's face and caused Teal'c's eyebrow to rise and his mouth to twitch ever so slightly.
"SG-1, is there a problem?"
His voice over the system caused the Colonel to step back from the old man hastily, as if only just realising their positions. "No, sir. No problem."
Jack gestured Kasuf and the old man up the ramp to the Stargate and with a slight smile on his face, Kasuf prompted the Returned One up the ramp and through the wormhole. One by one the members of SG-1 followed them. Last of them all was the Colonel, who turned at the top of the ramp to give his CO a jaunty little salute before stepping through the event horizon to Abydos.
"Tracking to destination..." The Sergeant called. It wasn't SOP to track travellers through the wormhole to the destination, but Hammond always found it comforting to know his people had reached their destination safely. "Uh-oh..."
That kind of reaction was never good in the SGC.
"Sergeant?"
"The wormhole hasn't gone to Abydos, sir..."
Hammond watched as the wormhole disconnected from the Stargate and the last flashes of energy dissipated into nothingness.
"What?" The General looked from the computer to the idle Stargate. "Where has it gone? How did it...?"
"I don't know, sir." The technician called up a different screen and began typing commands into the system. "Sir, the last address dialled is coming up as Abydos," he glanced up at the wormhole tracker. "But that's not Abydos."
On the starmap indicating the galaxy, the double-circle indicating the final destination of the travellers who'd gone through the wormhole rested a long way from the nearby point which was known as Abydos.
"So where are they?" Hammond asked softly.
End of Part Three