Their mounted escort and the front guard remained outside the city gates. With only the driver and Chako, they wended their way through cobbled streets filled with what appeared to be a happy citizenry. Most weren't dressed as magnificently as the wardrobe provided Sam and Daniel but they looked well-fed and greeted the world with a smile. Children were obviously loved and pedestrians looked on indulgently as they ran after each other, laughing and playing their games. Sam and Daniel were not a matter of great curiosity as they sat behind the driver although their party was definitely noticed. After awhile, Sam realized it was Chako who was really drawing the attention.

The wagon stopped before a magnificent iron gate that opened into a long passageway back into a large building. They alighted and Chako led them to an impressive carved wooden door, inlaid with mosaics, at the end of the passage. A small wood panel opened beside them and someone peered out briefly. Immediately they heard great excitement and clamor from within the house. The door was quickly flung open. A lovely tall woman with a corona of grey braids threw arms covered with a multitude of bracelets around Chako and hugged him fiercely. Several young children flung themselves at him and they pulled him into a large interior courtyard filled with trees and flowers around a splashing fountain. Sam and Daniel trailed behind, bemused.

Chako disengaged himself eventually and taking them arm in arm led them to the older woman. "Mother, may I present, Dr. Daniel Jackson and his wife, the lady Samantha." Samantha noted the slant to the introduction and sighed. These people were less benighted than the Ghei but she was still in a man's world. "This is my lady mother, Lady Elena, wife of the Lord Choko of Kloteru." Sam looked, not really surprised she realized, at Chako and wondered if they had rated the heir apparent or a younger son. Given his sunny confidence, she was thinking heir.

Sam was the mission commander but there was no help for it but for Daniel to take the lead here. "We are greatly honored to meet you, my lady. Your son has been a great help and friend to us. We look forward to meeting with your husband and talking with him of our world, of how our peoples can assist each other."

The Lady Elena returned the pleasantries graciously but made no commitment about their interview with her husband. Instead she asked Chako to show them to their rooms so that they could rest and refresh themselves. He conducted them to a lovely little suite in a wing of the sprawling villa. He explained with his usual glibness, "We must ask that you stay in hour rooms until sent for. The Ghei have sympathizers in the city and you may not be safe."

Sam thought A golden cage is still a cage.

They explored their accommodations and found that the wing had two floors that encircled their own interior courtyard with a lovely pool in the middle. The rooms on the top floor all opened on a balcony that looked down on the courtyard and all the rooms on the first floor also opened to the courtyard. Sliding doors with translucent panes (Daniel pointed out a Japanese reference), separated rooms and were available if needed to close rooms from the outside but now everything stood wide open. On the top floor, there was a sleeping room with a very large carved bed loaded with cushions and soft comforters. There was a beautifully appointed bathroom next to the bedroom and a dressing room on the other side. They decided that it was intended for a lady given the many combs and brushes laid out and the selection of stoppered vials. On the other side of the bedroom was a much more Spartan dressing room. The bedroom had a curtained alcove with an infant bed. Beyond Sam's was another bedroom with a small bed for an older child. The first floor was all rooms with low tables and cushions, places perhaps to meet with others, eat, and study.

The sun started to go down and they heard Chako call out, politely requesting admission. He entered with three young woman, two carrying clothes and the other a large inlaid box. He introduced them as Kona, Marti, and Lucia and explained that they would see to Sam and Daniel's needs while they were visiting in his father's house. He proffered an invitation to dine with his mother, himself and other guests as if Sam and Daniel were not, to some extent, prisoners. When they accepted, he requested that they allow the servants to dress them appropriately for the meal.

Daniel was a little afraid that the women intended to actually dress him and relieved to find out they only wanted to indicate appropriate selections from the wardrobe they had brought. Sam got the majority of the attention. The women were so politely insistent that it was impossible to be left to her own devices without creating a major scene. The bathhouse makeover paled before what this diligent troupe achieved. Daniel really didn't want to go anywhere with Sam except their new bedroom when he saw the results. She would have preferred it. However, they dutifully left with Chako when he returned and found themselves at a long table in a second floor gallery overlooking the sea on one side and the main courtyard on the other. In addition to Lady Elena, Chako, and his sister Kafven, the oldest of his siblings, there were five well-dressed middle aged couples seated around the table. All the men were introduced as scholars attached to the Kloterian version of a university. Local notions of politeness clearly warred with their eagerness to ask questions of Sam and Daniel. At the end of the evening one of the men requested, "With your permission, my colleagues and I would very much like to visit you tomorrow and talk with you further." They had no choice but to extend the sought after invitation.

So went the agenda for weeks. Eight days out of nine, one or more of the scholars appeared at their door, sometimes with colleagues in tow. The servants brought refreshments without being asked and the guests stayed for hours. Daniel and Sam practically never ate the mid-day meal alone. At first, the scholars were clearly uncomfortable with having an intellectual discourse on this level with a woman. They tended to ask all questions through Daniel and tried to get him to facilitate all answers. Daniel completely refused to cooperate and forced them to treat directly with Sam. After awhile they treated her as if she had always been their equal and Sam was even more in love with the husband who was so careful of her feelings.

It was a difficult situation. The men wanted to drain every bit of scientific knowledge in every field of science in which Sam and Daniel knew anything at all. Sam and Daniel, on the other hand, were reluctant to indirectly put weapons in the hands of a people who seemed pleasant enough but about whom they knew nothing. Sam decided they should start with mathematics, insisting to the scholars that this was the language in which all their science was written. The Kloterians didn't even have the concept of the zero. They could go very slowly and it would be a long time before they were telling them anything directly usable for aggressive purposes.

Every few nights they dined with the Lady Elena. She continued to adroitly avoid any discussions about when they would meet her husband or return to Earth but she was a delightful hostess with a ken wit and a very acute mind. It was too easy to spend an entire leisurely meal really enjoying her company and that of the other guests and have the evening practically at an end before some chance comment reminded them that this wasn't really where they belonged. Daniel said they were coming down with the Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with those who were in some sense their wardens.

Sam felt she had put Colonel Samantha Carter in a box in her mind and as long as she was playing Daniel's Sama, the Lady Samantha Jackson, she was moving in a dream and that made it all okay. One day flowed into the next, they were safe, living in luxury in many ways, waited on by dear serving girls she had become quite fond of, and free to love each other. Someday it would have to end but as long as it wasn't her fault that it hadn't, she could drift and be happy in many ways she had never known happiness before.

Chako joined them in their quarters for the evening meal rather frequently. He also was evasive when it came to his father or how long they would remain house guests but it was impossible not to like the irrepressible young man who always had a joke or an outrageous story to tell. With the possibility of no help getting home from the Kloterians, they began to look very seriously for a means to take matters into their own hands. The problem was that while they could probably get out of the house and the city easily, they were hundreds of miles away from a stargate that was somewhere on a huge upland plateau, exact coordinates unknown, surrounded by rabid tribesman who had to be looking forward to getting their hands on the two of them for fun and torture. They needed an ally and had begun to hope that they could persuade Chako that it was in everyone's interest for him to help them.

One evening, the serving girls had just left Sam sitting on a low bench in her dressing room after divesting her of her jewelry, her formal attire, and unpinning her braids. Daniel had leaned against the doorway watching them. His interest must have been unusual for a Kloterian man for they seemed faintly scandalized but also thrilled by the naughtiness of it all. They were smothering giggles as they left. Daniel waited until he heard their footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs – there were limits as to how far one should shock the help – before he knelt behind her and began to unbraid her hair. There should have been nothing particularly erotic about this but the local fetish about women's hair had somehow affected him. He loved pulling the blonde waves apart, running his fingers through tresses that, by now, were down her back and massaging her scalp.

Sam was leaning back against him, really enjoying the sensation, her eyes idly running over the dozen or so bottles of scent, lotion, and oil on her dressing table. "You know," she said, "I bet McGyver could make something out of all this to use as weapon and get us out of here." When Daniel didn't laugh, she captured a hand and looked back at him over her shoulder, "You know like on the 80's or maybe 90's TV show?"

Daniel didn't answer but kissed her gently. Framing her face with his hands, he said "Sama, I don't think we can get to the gate right now."

"Danny what are you talking about?" He looked so, so serious.

"You're putting on weight and your breasts are getting heavier."

"We can't try to get home because I need to go on a diet?" Sometimes his sense of humor could be a little hard to follow but this just seemed odd.

"Sam, you threw up this morning. I asked Chako. We've been doing our own version of the rhythm method thinking that your cycle would start up at any point once the effects of the Ghei drug wore off. But…" He paused.

"But?"

"But that stuff that the Ghei used is actually intended as a fertility drug. Women take it for awhile because as soon as they come off it, they get pregnant."

Suddenly it all fell into place. "You think I'm, I'm," her voice rose, "pregnant?"

"Yes I do."

She jumped up and started pacing. She wheeled around on him. "That's just crazy. It's my body. Wouldn't I know?"

He looked more than a little sad. "Sometimes I think the only way you think you can be with me is to be in an acute state of denial. It's as if you are afraid someone will wake you up and I'll go away. It will all just have to vanish for you to keep your, I don't know, your self-respect. So you can be Colonel Samantha Carter." He paused. "Look if you are pregnant, we still don't whether gate travel has any affect on a fetus. We have hundreds of miles to travel to even reach the gate and I would guess you are already three or four months along. It could get difficult. And what about when we get back?"

"What about it?" she said with a dangerous tone in her voice.
"You said once we'd have to keep our marriage a secret. That you weren't ready to give up your command or face the consequences of what we've come to be to each other." He stood and tried to take her in his arms. "There'd be a baby."

She pushed him away. "Daniel Jackson," she said furiously. It was the first time she had called him Daniel since they had become lovers, "are you ever going to get over that stupid conversation? Haven't I shown how much I love you over and over again? Do you really think I would deny that you were the father of my child?"

"No, Sama, I just think that it would be hard for you to give up the whole Colonel Samantha Carter thing. I just think that," and suddenly he was interrupted by her shoving him against the wall and running out of the room.

He slid down the wall and sat with his head in his hands. He was over the tree tops that she was going to have his child but he had handled this really badly. He was so miserable he didn't hear her return quietly several minutes later. He didn't notice her sit down next to him until she lifted his head to look at her and gently caressed his cheek. To his amazement, she was smiling through tears. "Danny I love you. Despite our circumstances, the thought of your child, our child, growing inside of me makes me very happy. I hope you are right. Let's have the baby and then take it from there."

He pulled her across his lap and she realized he was crying into her hair. "It will work out Danny. I don't know how. I just know it will."