CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Under the Mountain
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Sonnet 64 by William Shakespeare
It was almost six full weeks after General Hammond had asked SG-1 to try and access the Ancients' underground facility before Jonas finally felt confident enough to try.
His progress had not been without delay. There were other missions scheduled, of course, and some spontaneous as well; Doctor Fraiser had kept both Jonas and Sam abed for three days after an unexpected encounter with Niirti and a gene-splicing machine. And still Jonas had spent nearly every minute he could spare with Amelia and the Ancients' musical key, learning from her as often as they learned together.
"So, Jonas," said Colonel O'Neill with would-be casualness as Sam threaded her way through the obelisk's holographic menus with the proficiency of a well-worn habit, "do you have any idea exactly what will happen if we get this to work?"
"We'll have access to the facilities in the mountain."
"Yes, I know that part," the Colonel continued with exaggerated patience. "I'm talking about how." He pointed some several hundred feet beyond them, where the trees, rocks, and earth began to incline in earnest, marking the place where the brazen mountainside began. "Mountain's still quite a ways off for this to be the door, don't you think?"
Jonas shrugged. "Couldn't tell you, sir. I guess the folks who ran this place just took that part for granted."
"Oh, swell." The Colonel muttered. He tightened his grip on his gun and glared, almost accusing, at the ground, as if he expected it to swallow him up.
"That's it, Jonas," Sam announced, stepping back from the interface as the familiar stream of a pulsing, holographic rainbow blossomed into life before their eyes.
Nodding, Jonas took a deep breath and threaded his fingers into the instrument. He'd gotten a good deal of practice, thanks to Amelia's 'sheet music,' at reacting almost automatically to the fluctuations of the colors and pulses. Less certain was whether or not he'd interpreted the instructions for 'reading' the music correctly, and how to play along.
"Well," he said, "here goes nothing."
Though the individual sounds that emitted from the device were beautiful enough, together they formed a rather discordant whole. More discouraging, though, was that after a full thirty seconds of playing, there seemed to be no indication that anything was happening. And try as he might, Jonas just couldn't see how anyone who'd designed this system would want to stand around forever just to clock in every morning.
"Who wrote this?" Colonel O'Neill finally said, breaking the bated silence. His eyebrows were set in a kind of mildly pained expression, as if his shoes were too tight. "It really sucks."
"That's because this is just the harmony," Jonas advised knowingly, nodding at the colors still streaming before him. "I'm playing against what's written, but to really appreciate it, you'd have to hear them both—" he trailed off, eyes widening, for at last the music seemed to have borne reaction.
A musical reply was emanating from the obelisk, deeper than the crystal-light tones of Jonas's key, but the perfection of the two sounds together 'caused him to chill all over. "— together," he finished lamely, transfixed.
"Now, see, that's—" the Colonel began, but his appreciation was cut short by yet another sound, one that it took Jonas a full half second to recognize, because this was certainly the last place he'd expected to hear it.
By the time he turned around, the rings were already whisking back into the underground. "Teal'c!" he shouted, barely catching a glimpse of the jaffa within them. He stopped playing.
Colonel O'Neill, meanwhile, was still clutching a shocked-looking Sam, who it seemed he'd pulled out of the path of the rings just in the knick of time. "Now, see!" he shouted. "That's what I'm talking about! A nice warning sign: 'Rings here!' would have been very useful!"
Jonas was frantically working this unexpected development into a mental equation— which involved the conclusion that the rings must have been invented by the Ancients in addition to the stargates— and gave a slight start when the Colonel ordered him to try again. The obelisk had defaulted to its standard settings after the rings had activated, leaving Sam to navigate the menus again, while Colonel O'Neill tried to reach Teal'c on the radio. To the relief at all, he answered almost immediately.
"I am here, O'Neill. I am unharmed."
"Where are you?"
"I appear to be in a corridor of some kind, and I believe it must be of Ancient design."
"Well, hows-about you jostle back up here and we all figure this out together?" Jack advised.
"I am not certain how to activate the rings from my present position," Teal'c said. "There is another console here, like that of the obelisk. My guess is that the key is required to exit as well as enter."
Colonel O'Neill seemed hesitant. By now, Sam had once again pulled up the musical passcode screen, but Jonas was waiting for the Colonel's decision before proceeding. "I hate the idea of us being stuck down there without being able to get back up," the Colonel finally confessed.
"Teal'c's right, Colonel," said Jonas. "I don't see any reason why getting out shouldn't be the same as getting in. I say we go."
"And on the off chance it doesn't work," Sam added, "there may very well be more than one way out of there. Besides, if we're not back home in a few hours, General Hammond will call us through the Stargate, and the radio signal still seems to be coming strong from wherever Teal'c is." She gestured to her radio for emphasis. She gave a soldier's grin. "If we can't find out way out, we can always have the marines just make us one."
Colonel O'Neill shook his head and gave a heavy sigh. "Okay, fine," he said. As the three of them gathered together tightly where they now knew the rings to be, he muttered, "Children," under his breath with a sort of exasperated fondness. Jonas knew why he said it. Sam was of the same mind as Jonas in this matter. No bout of overcaution was going to compensate for their desire to follow Teal'c to the brink of further exploration.
"Heads up, Teal'c, we'll be with you shortly," Colonel O'Neill advised into his radio. Then he nodded at Jonas. "Hit it, maestro."
True to form, the Colonel made sure they could get back before he allowed them to go any further. Once Teal'c showed them the console he'd found, it didn't take Jonas and Sam long to determine that they could indeed get it to work. Only then did Colonel O'Neill allow them to proceed.
The tunnel itself was in fairly good repair for being hidden countless millennia. Dry, smooth, and gray, it was lined with blue running lights that lit up as the team approached and turned off again once they were far enough away. Also running the length of the tunnel's floor, beginning and the ring platform and heading in the direction of the mountain was what could only be some sort of rail.
"Subway tunnel," Colonel O'Neill observed with interest.
"I'd say so, sir," Sam agreed. "We must be a fair ways down. Major Lars's team did resonance scans for a good two hundred feet at least, and they didn't pick up anything like this."
"Power still seems to be working. So where's the train?"
"We must have missed it, sir. We'll have to wait for the next one."
"Funny, Carter." He gestured boldly down the tunnel. "Onward and upward, then! And let's hope this thing's not been running on automatic pilot for the past… Carter, how long you figure it's been since someone else was here?"
"We have no idea. Several thousand years at least."
"Yeah, well, I don't fancy being turned into SG-1, sunny side up. What are the odds the train's still running?"
"Not very high, Colonel. Besides, there seems to be allowance for pedestrians."
They walked for a good three miles, with little change. Only intermittent consoles broke the monotony, some like the one they'd first encountered, others different. None of them seemed to have a ring platform, though, so the team didn't spend much time investigating them.
At length they found Colonel O'Neill's train, which was, to the quiet relief of all, dormant and immobile. Sleek, and with many darkened windows, it reminded Jonas greatly of the famous Japanese bullet trains.
"Sweet," he commented. "I wonder if it still works."
"Maybe we can bum a ride back?" Colonel O'Neill quipped.
"Hey, that's a long walk."
"Yeah, and the gravity here's really starting to—"
"— sir, please don't say it," Sam cut him off as they began progressing beyond the rail car.
"Say what?"
"Don't say the gravity here is really weighing you down."
The silence that followed communicated clearly enough the Colonel's slight disappointment and annoyance, to which Jonas could only surmise that Sam had pegged him correctly. He exchanged slightly amused expressions with Teal'c before they returned to the task at hand.
Just past the sleeping train they finally encountered something more interesting than the monotonous tunnel. Though the track continued on in the darkness, disappearing around a wide curve, the team members focused their attention on getting through the wide double-doors to the right of the track. Around them, the platform became much wider, and the ceiling taller, so that it was easy to surmise this place had been an important thoroughfare.
Fortunately, they did not end up needing to use the musical key to open every door. This far into the facility, the doors seemed willing enough to open, either automatically as their presence was detected, or with a little bit of finagling with various kinds of security keypads, which Sam and Jonas were quick to decipher between them.
The complex was vast, and had obviously been a very busy and multi-functional. It wasn't until Sam found a holographic map, though, that they were able to make any real headway.
"It looks as though these rooms are part of a large ring of offices and labs that form a perimeter around the central manufacturing area, here," she said, pointing at a large, roughly dome-shaped area that was reddish-colored on the map. "The subway system, if you will, runs in a circle around it, to make it easier for someone to get from place to place." She turned to Colonel O'Neill. "Sir, we should keep heading inward and try and get into this main chamber. I have a feeling that's what we're really looking for with regards to the crystal technology."
"Okay, but before long we're going to have to report back to base," Colonel O'Neill advised.
"Sir, there's so much to see here and the Stargate is really far away. Isn't it possible I could stay here and—?"
"No way, Carter. We'll try and find your central chamber, but nobody knows how to operate that key except Jonas, and he can't be on both sides of the rings. We can tell Hammond that we're going to need more time and more people and come back tomorrow."
"Yes, sir."
Jonas and Sam studied the map carefully before they proceeded, trying to determine the quickest way to the center and hoping there wouldn't be any insurmountable security barriers before they got there.
"According to the map, this should be the last room," Sam announced after they'd been exploring for another good half hour. The lights came on automatically as they stepped inside the new chamber, but they'd become so used to this that nobody really paid attention. Jonas immediately decided it was some kind of important laboratory. It was long, with a tall ceiling, and was filled with many high counters and important-looking pieces of machinery. In fact, the only thing about the room that wasn't downright fascinating was that—
"Are you certain, Major Carter?" Teal'c finally asked.
Sam nodded. "The center chamber should be on the other side of that wall," she said, pointing to their left.
"They must be good at hiding doors," observed Colonel O'Neill.
Sam did not reply, but walked forward and began examining the wall intently, as if willing it to give up a secret. "I don't see anything that looks like a disguised door," she said. "But then again, nothing on the map said there'd be one. I guess this just wasn't the right way. We'll have to try something else tomorrow."
Jonas, Teal'c, and Colonel O'Neill, meanwhile, had followed her, fanning out among the aisles of the lab, peering curiously at all its strange devices. Jonas was examining something he suspected to be another kind of computer terminal, and wondering how to turn it on, when Colonel O'Neill called from the far end of the room.
"Hey, come here. This looks familiar." As the Colonel didn't seem to be speaking to anyone in particular, Sam, Jonas, and Teal'c all joined him, filling in beside him to examine what it was that held his rapt attention.
"Oh, wow," Sam breathed, setting aside another Ancient gadget she'd been examining and leaning closer. "It looks like a DHD, doesn't it?"
"That would be my guess," said Colonel O'Neill.
"Indeed," added Teal'c. Jonas agreed as well, but it was certainly the strangest DHD he'd ever seen. The console was translucent, and the arrangement of the blocky chevron symbols was more square than the traditional DHD. But there was no mistaking the symbols they were looking at.
Now it was Colonel O'Neill's turn to look around at the walls with suspicion. "So… where's the stargate?" he asked.
Sam shook her head. "From everything I know about gate technology, sir," she said, "having a second gate underground would be pointless with the other one so close. Unless the Ancients had some means of switching between gates to make one dominant and then another."
"But then why would they go through all the trouble of the security at the obelisk, the rings, and the tunnel system for transportation?" Teal'c pointed out.
"I'm sold," Colonel O'Neill said.
"So what else could it be?" Jonas finally asked.
Sam seemed hesitant. "It could be possible," she said, "that this is some kind of remote gate dialing device. I know we've never seen it before, but there's really no reason to believe a stargate can't be controlled by more than one DHD."
"So, they liked to get the stargate nice and warm before they had to go outside in the winter?" Colonel O'Neill asked.
Sam smiled. "Something like that, sir."
"Should we try it?"
"I'd rather try it tomorrow, with another team at the gate for confirmation."
"Good thinking." Colonel O'Neill looked at his watch. "On that note, we should be heading back."
It wasn't until they were outside and halfway back to the gate that they heard a familiar sound that caused them all to stop in their tracks. Jonas and Sam exchanged nervous looks and Colonel O'Neill swore loudly.
"O'Neill, I believe that sounds like—"
"Yah. I know, Teal'c," the Colonel interjected. He gave a huge, disgusted sigh. "Looks like this party's over."
Another familiar whine thundered over their heads, and as one they craned their necks upwards to see the ominous wingspan of a death glider whiz by.
The Goa'uld had come to PX3-651 at last.
For whatever reason, Amelia couldn't help but think of Jonas and his teammates more than she usually did on this mission. Perhaps it was because of all the help she'd given them in transcribing the Ancient music. There was part of her that badly wanted to be with them, but she'd been wise enough to know that asking such a thing would have been out of question. To make matters worse, with Jonas gone, there were very few people on the base who she could really talk to, and those friends she had made—such as Doctor Fraiser—were usually too busy with their jobs to really have time for her.
On the other hand, it wasn't as though her professional time with the doctor was in any short supply. Several hours after SG-1's departure, Amelia turned up in the infirmary for her daily Tretonin treatment. Doctor Fraiser seemed busy and focused, not saying much beyond polite courtesies, and at last Amelia could keep silent no longer. "I don't know if I'm allowed to ask you this," she began uncertainly as Doctor Fraiser put a cotton ball and a bandage over her arm with practiced ease, "but has there been any news of SG-1?"
The doctor stared at her for half a moment, seemingly caught off guard. Then, coming to herself, she smiled a little. "No, sorry" she said. "They've not due to report back just yet."
"I see."
Doctor Fraiser tried to give her an encouraging smile. "Don't worry. You get used to the waiting."
Amelia nodded and exhaled. "I know. It's just that Jonas and I have worked so hard on this, that it's frustrating not to be a part of it."
"I can imagine," Fraiser said, nodding. "So," she added as she finished putting away her supplies. She snuck a sidelong smile towards Amelia, her eyes sparkling. "You and Jonas have been spending a lot of time together on this project."
The comment was so nonchalant and unexpected that all the embarrassment Amelia thought she'd conquered came rearing up once more. She felt the entire upper half of her body flush hotly. Her next reaction was panic, and she turned with wide, alarmed eyes to the doctor, wondering suddenly if the question was of a professional nature, and not just mere curiosity. "You don't think—" she began, stuttering. "I mean, if you're asking if we've—" Now her flush was brightening. "Because we haven't," she finished weakly.
To Amelia's relief, Jonas had never seemed to expect anything of her that she wasn't willing to give, and intimacy was something she wasn't willing to give to anyone but a husband. They had never discussed the matter, yet he had never seemed to expect they should, leaving her to wonder if he had his own inner set of mores with which he complied.
"Well, that's not what I was asking," Doctor Fraiser said, obviously amused. "But since you brought it up, I must say I'm glad to know you're being careful."
"Doctor—"
"Please, call me Janet."
"Okay. Um, Janet, do you know if Jonas has—" She paused. Dating didn't seem exactly the right word to describe her relationship with Jonas "—has been interested in any other Earth girls since he's been here?" she concluded.
Janet looked thoughtful. "Not that I know of, but of course he doesn't tell me everything. As I'm sure you know, Jonas is very rarely permitted to leave the base, so anything of that sort is obviously going to be difficult."
"He's still uncomfortable here, sometimes," Amelia said knowingly, fiddling with a piece of lint on the blanket beside her.
"How do you mean, exactly?" Janet asked, peering at her curiously.
Amelia considered her words. "Well, I'm just guessing, really," she confessed. "And when I say uncomfortable, I don't mean unwelcome," she continued, slowly, thinking hard. "It's just… his uncertainty about the long term, you know? Surely no one expects him to live on this base forever."
The other woman sighed. "I don't pretend to understand it. It's a complex issue, one that we've had to deal with on a case by case basis with the handful of people we've had from other worlds. My daughter, for example—" she paused and looked at Amelia curiously "—did you know she's from another planet?"
"You're kidding!" Amelia exclaimed, shocked. "How did that happen?"
"Five years ago now," Janet said. "One of the Goa'uld System Lords tried to use her against us. It's—" she paused, looking pained. "Honestly, you don't want to know all the details, but Cassie—my daughter—was the only survivor of her planet. As a minor and an uncontested refugee, it wasn't difficult to find her a place on Earth, even under the current American law."
"You mean there's no subsidiary code dealing with stargate issues?" Amelia asked with a wry smile.
Janet laughed. "Ah, no," she said. "Jonas, on the other hand…" She pursed her lips. "With him, it's trickier. His case is more about asylum than refuge. The circumstances are different. In some ways he's fallen into a legal crack—there are no laws to cover parts of it."
"I guess I never really stopped to think about it."
"As I said. Complicated."
"Yeah, no kidding."
They chatted a while longer before Amelia departed to let the doctor get some work done.
It wasn't until a little while later, after she'd eaten and had returned to her quarters, that the gate activated without warning. Standing halfway in her doorway, Amelia turned towards the sound of the alarms, instinct somehow telling her that this meant trouble for SG-1.
A/N: Dum-da-DUM! Now the action begins in earnest. Pretty exciting stuff, though I say it myself. :-)
Cheers!
Saché
