76

If It Looks Like a Duck

Evree stood at the door for long minutes, her ear pressed against it, listening. After a time, her patience was rewarded. She heard voices, and they were so close that they could only be guards on the door. She gave a moment's thought to wonder if they were there to make sure that she was safe or that she wouldn't be able to do what she was about to do. Or at least, what she was about to attempt to do.

She opened the door a crack, and the voices stopped, and both men stood at rigid attention. "Was there anything we can do for you ma'am?" one of them asked.

That clarified one thing for Evree. The guards were there for her protection, true, but she also had a feeling that they wouldn't let her just wander off on her own, either. At the very least they would inform O'Neill, and that particular scenario did not fit into her plans just now.

Evree opened the door fully now, and made sure that her guards got a good look at her, small, fragile-looking, and adorned from neck to ankle in a flannel nightdress. What could possibly be more harmless? She opened her eyes wide and smiled at them.

The guards relaxed, a little bit. They were too professional to let their guard down completely, but there were miniscule signs that Evree read. She let the smile fade from her face, and swayed, as though weak and helpless.

As expected, one of the guards almost automatically reached out to catch her. The moment he laid hands on her, she twisted and in a lightning-swift move purloined his side-arm and pointed it at him.

The guards slowly and carefully put their hands in the air, and Evree relieved the second one of his weapon as well.

She looked at the one who had spoken to her. "You have a device upon your person with which to disable someone?"

He wasn't sure that he followed her mode of speech, but he gave it a stab. "You mean like handcuffs?" he ventured.

"Show me these handcuffs," ordered Evree, who hadn't the slightest notion of what they were, although from the nomenclature, they sounded promising.

The guard obliged, and Evree nodded. "You will please use them to lock your companion to that." That, was a bare support beam. Not about to argue with a gun pointed at him, the guard obeyed.

"Gag him as well." Evree had spent many hours in bed with nothing to do but think, and she had thought out things fairly thoroughly.

Once she had only one hostage, which made the situation manageable, at least, in her eyes, then the main portion of her plan could come into play. "Take me to the gate," she demanded.

&&&&&

Despite Evree's best laid plans, General Hammond and, she was distressed to see, Colonel O'Neill were waiting in the gate room.

"What do you think you're doing, Evree?" O'Neill sounded more annoyed than concerned.

"If you wish this man to live," Evree replied calmly. "You will hail Lord Anubis for me. Once I have made contact with him, I shall use your gate to join him."

"So you were working with Ahriman all along?" Hammond, on the other hand, was taking it all very seriously.

Evree turned up her nose. "I was sincere in my desire to rid myself of Ahriman," she allowed. "But if I am to be a bargaining chip with Anubis, then it is I that shall strike the bargain."

"What about your kids?" Jack demanded. He'd seen her with them, and he couldn't believe that she would just go all.., well, all Goa'uld and turn her back on them.

"I am a young queen," Evree answered. "I can have many, many more young." She flicked her eyes around the room, apparently scanning against the possibility of them flanking her. "I have had enough talk, with you. I wish to speak to Anubis immediately."

Hammond unhappily nodded to the communications tech. He wasn't sure what Evree was up to, whether she was friend or foe, not that he had ever known, but he did know that he wasn't about to take unnecessary chances with the life of someone under his command.

"Speak," the Goa'uld voice boomed over the communications system as soon as contact was made.

"Give me gate coordinates and I will join you," Evree replied. "That is, if Anubis still wants a queen." No one present could tell quite how Evree knew that whoever answered was not Anubis himself, but it seemed to work out that way.

"Lord Anubis welcomes you, Evree," the voice responded. "The coordinates will be sent to be received directly into the Tau'ri computer."

"No," Evree contradicted him. "You will speak them. Send nothing directly. I wish to see where I am going."

"Why are you doing this, Evree?" O'Neill asked. He felt more than a little sick. He'd actually been starting to like her. And maybe more than like. Now, here she was, acting like a typical Goa'uld.

"I have my reasons, O'Neill," Evree replied. She did the room scanning thing again, but Jack could have sworn that he saw an expression of regret in her large, brown eyes. He gave himself a mental shake. He was probably just seeing what he wanted to see.

The gate opened as it always did, with the whooshing sound and appearance of an ocean wave. Evree marched her prisoner up the ramp. Just as she reached the gate, she pushed him away from herself, dropped the guns, then turned and jumped into the portal, which immediately closed behind her.

"I should have known that she'd double-cross us," Jack muttered disgustedly. He was more put out with himself than with Evree. She was just behaving as a Goa'uld was expected to. What ticked him off was that he had begun to believe that she wasn't like all the rest. It could have been his last mistake. It certainly was a serious one.

"Did she?" Hammond wondered aloud. "We haven't kept it a secret from her that we were under a serious threat if we didn't turn her over. I'm going to reserve judgment a while longer."

"I'm not falling into that trap again," O'Neill demurred. "Just when I was starting to believe..," He broke off and walked away. Hammond's theory held a great deal of seduction right now. And seduction was another word that he really wished he hadn't thought of in even the remotest connection with Evree.

&&&&&

"Well met, my queen," Anubis greeted Evree as she was ushered into his presence. "But I see that you have arrived alone. Your offspring..?"

"Were defective," Evree replied with a careless shrug. "It is of no import. They were but the first of many."

"Indeed," Anubis agreed. "Ahriman said the Tau'ri held you hostage. True?"

Evree laughed scornfully. "I sought refuge from Ahriman there. Once I had leisure to think, knowing that he was crafting an alliance with you, it took no great wit to realize I was his bargaining chip."

"And now you deliver yourself to me without bargaining first," Anubis observed. "But I am feeling in a generous mood, little queen. Name a price so that we might haggle."

"I ask but two things," Evree answered. "I would request that you not destroy the Tau'ri, as doubtless you plan to do regardless of the fact they no longer withhold me from you. Even though I am their enemy, they have treated me well and kindly."

"And for the second?" Anubis asked, without actually agreeing to her first petition.

Eyes glowing like miniature supernovae, Evree practically growled, "I want Ahriman off of my planet."

&&&&&

"I don't get it." Daniel had been completely poleaxed by the news of Evree's betrayal. "Even if she didn't give a damn about us, I know she cares about her children. She'd never have left them behind, unless..,"

"I thought of that one too, Daniel," Jack said tiredly. "And for every act, every word she spoke, you can find more than one possible motive behind it. My advice is, give it up. We forgot the first rule."

"The first rule being?" Daniel prompted.

"If it looks like a Goa'uld and talks like a Goa'uld," O'Neill paraphrased. "Then it is one. We screwed up." He turned and walked away, not wanting to spend any more time talking about Evree.

"But what if it doesn't act like a Goa'uld?" Daniel murmured to himself.

&&&&

Sam, Jacob and Teal'c were all gathered around a communications console, eyes on the screen, which showed the face of General Hammond. They were being filled in on the current situation.

Teal'c took the news in stride. He had never been particularly optimistic that Evree would maintain her facade of humanity.

But Sam's reaction was nearly as strong as Daniel's had been. Jacob, for the most part, was silent and thoughtful. He waited until Hammond had finished speaking before making comment.

"And she actually harmed no one?" There was as little inflection in his voice as he could manage. Jacob didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, but it did seem to him to be atypical behavior for a Goa'uld.

"Handcuffed and gagged one guard and marched the other to the gate at gunpoint," Hammond reiterated.

"Was the guard hurt at all?" Jacob pressed.

"She didn't even knock him unconscious," the general admitted. He gave his friend a quizzical look. "Jacob, I can see where you're going with this, and I'd like nothing better than to have one Goa'uld in the universe that I can turn my back on in safety. But it doesn't explain why she went to Anubis willingly."

"If she had offered herself as a sacrificial lamb would you have let her go, sir?" Sam had seen the direction her father's questioning was taking as well. "Not only did we offer her asylum, we practically wrapped her in cotton wool."

"Well, until I have anything to contradict the facts as they stand," General Hammond replied slowly. "We're going to have to assume that Evree is hostile to us." He paused a moment. "One other thing, Major."

"Sir?"

"If the situation doesn't change before the quarantine is lifted," Hammond said. "Please don't mention it to Colonel O'Neill. He's taking it harder than he's willing to let on."

&&&&&

"I regret the necessity." An obvious lie, a total innocent, which Evree was certainly not, could spot that one. "But my need is such that I shall be forced to drug you, to keep you perpetually breeding."

"Not so fast," Evree said, raising a warning hand. "You have not yet agreed to my terms, Anubis. I will have an answer before I become your breeding machine." Evree almost despaired of the bitter edge that came into her voice. A true Goa'uld queen wouldn't mind that much, it was the purpose for which they were born.

"And if I do not agree to your terms?" Anubis' voice was the silk scarf, drifting down to reveal the keenness of the magician's blade.

"You well know that I, and I alone decide what traits my young shall have," Evree declared, drawing herself up to her full five foot nothing. "If you are to obtain what you desire, then first, you shall give me that which I desire."

"Well spoken," Anubis allowed grudgingly. "But you have left little room left to haggle."

"None at all, actually," Evree stated. "It is not like I am asking for all that much. Not in light of what you have to gain."

"If it weren't for the fact there was a malfunction in the mechanism," Anubis said slowly. "The Tau'ri would already be dying. Since there is now nothing to remedy, and I doubt that they would accept further communication from me, you have your first wish."

Evree nodded her head graciously. But she wasn't entirely willing to let things stand as they were. "And Ahriman?"

A slow smile spread across Anubis' face. Ahriman had been getting on his nerves from the moment that he had proposed the alliance. He would be doing himself as much of a favor as Evree. "Fast or slow?"

&&&&&&

Daniel was catching up on some of his backlog of notes when there was a knock at his door. He opened it to see O'Neill, dressed as though ready for something physically demanding.

"What's up, Jack?" he asked cautiously. O'Neill had been absolutely fanatical about calisthenics the past few days, and Daniel suspected that there was more behind it than a simple case of cabin fever.

O'Neill was practically jogging in place where he stood. "C'mon, Daniel," he invited. "Let's go work some of the kinks out."

"I'm already unkinked for the day," Daniel replied. "Besides, I have a ton of paperwork to catch up on, Jack. I think I'll have to give it a pass this time."

O'Neill's face fell. "You're sure?" he inquired. "I thought maybe we could do a little sparring or something, just to break up the monotony."

"Every time we spar, you end up kicking my ass," Jackson reminded him. "Instead of trying to drive yourself to exhaustion, Jack, why don't you try talking about it?"

"Haven't got the slightest idea what you're talking about," O'Neill lied.

"Fine," Daniel said with a trace of asperity. "But some of us do still have some work to do." He ostentatiously turned his back on O'Neill and began shuffling through a stack of papers and found something that he had not put there. "What in the hell?"

"What is it?" Hopefully something that would get Daniel out of his room and into the gym.

"It's a manuscript written in Goa'uld," Daniel muttered.

"And it's special.., why?" queried O'Neill. To the best of his knowledge, Daniel had truckloads of documents in about every language imaginable. And a few that weren't.

"It wasn't there last week," Daniel answered distractedly. "And I can tell it's not an old text, because it's written in magic marker."

"So where did it come from?" Jack would have kicked himself if he could have reached. Where else could a brand-spanking new document written in Goa'uld have come from?

"Yeah," the scholar agreed with the expression on O'Neill's face. "It's from Evree."