"Morning," Daniel said with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. The breakfast hall was all cobblestone floors and mud brick walls, cold and rather drafty. At one end there was a giant fireplace, stoked high with some local fragrant wood that smelled a lot like tamarack but burned black like it was wet. Unfortunately for him, the fireplace was at one end of the hall and he was seated at the other. He watched with some amusement as Mitchell slowly lowered himself into the chair next to his and tried not to look at the banquet of foodstuffs running down the center of the table. "Headache?"

Mitchell nodded once and swallowed deeply.

"Don't go puking on me."

"Nothing left. I want the number of the bus that hit me last night."

"Ah, that would be the Dahalas wine. What part of pace yourself didn't you get?"

"You told me I had to go one for one with the guy! Equal amounts... or something like that."

Daniel smiled and reached for a pitcher of water. "I did say that, didn't I?" he said as he poured a tankard and pushed it towards Mitchell. "And if you'd bothered to pay attention, you would have heard me say that it was up to the guest to set the pace. I doubt there's anything in the first aid kit that'll help."

"Vala already gave me Tylenol."

"Working?"

"No."

"Told you. On the plus side, though... if there is one… Leader Taphir was so impressed with your performance last night-"

"Please tell me I didn't puke in front of the guy?"

"You saved that bit for later. Thankfully. No, he's allowing myself and Vala access to a small island off the coast where the Touchstone used to be housed."

"He knows?"

"I showed him the footage I took of the wall. He's sending the city historian and the local equivalent of an archaeological team to finish the work we started on the building. Which, by the way, isn't a temple after all. It used to be a type of museum, possibly an archive. Apparently it, and several suburbs of the old city, were destroyed in an earthquake about four hundred years ago. About the same time they lost their Touchstone."

"I thought this Touchstone was supposed to control the weather?"

"Weather, yes, but I doubt that included geological disturbances. Besides, the earthquake was caused by a 'ball of fire that fell from the sky'."

"Meteor?"

"Sounds like it. Taphir says there are documented accounts of the event in the city archives, which we should be able to access once the treaty has been ratified."

"Whoa, wait up. They let you play about in some of their old buildings and go visit this island of theirs, but you can't take a peek in their library?"

"Yeah," Daniel shrugged and reached for a piece of toast, offering it to Mitchell... who stared blankly at it before turning away. "I wondered about that as well, but then maybe they figured there was nothing of value at either site for us to find."

"Proved them wrong."

"What I don't understand is why Taphir and those that came before him made no effort to retrieve the Touchstone. On one hand, and assuming this planet was used as a seat of power, a homeworld of sorts, it's possible Mot stopped them from conducting any type of activity that amounted to these people becoming educated, much like Ra tried to do with the Abydonians. Which means, if they did know about the Touchstone when Mot first arrived, then its existence may have been deliberately hidden or taken out of the history books for the sake of it not being found. Especially if it was regarded as a religious item or held some cultural significance."

"And on the other hand?"

"I don't know," Daniel said slowly. "I'd say it held a place in their society as an item of religious importance only. One thing is for sure, the Mekrit either never learned to calibrate the Touchstone, or if they did they lost the ability when the quake struck and they presumed the object gone for good."

"Which it probably is." Mitchell pushed the tankard away and reached for a piece of toast. "Am I going to regret this?" he asked.

"What? The toast? No, it's fine."

"No. I was thinking more about you and Princess alone on some island by yourselves."

"With a local guide."

"Like I said... alone."

"Well, it's either I take her with me or she goes with you, Sam and Teal'c for a tour of a nearby waste management system."

"You're kidding me!"

"Oh, no. And you might want to consider a shower and deodorant, maybe polish your boots."

"Why?"

"You're the special guest at an aqueduct opening ceremony."

~oOo~

"This ceremony is a waste of time," Teal'c grumbled under his breath, his gaze flicking from Cameron, sitting high above on a podium full of dignitaries and religious representatives, to the crowd standing in front of them. "Should we not be seeking to expedite the sealing of the trade agreement?"

"The art of diplomacy lost on you, Teal'c?"

"Diplomacy is irrelevant unless you are a diplomat. I believe Daniel Jackson to be correct when he complains about time he cannot recover. This may well be one of those moments."

Behind the podium, and running a course that snaked from the outer edge of the Mekrit city to a nearby mountain range, was the aqueduct Cameron was here to ceremoniously declare operational. The structure was impressive, given the technological level at which these people lived. And on the other side of the city, well away from the shanty living areas, there was another much smaller aqueduct that diverted sewerage waste to a collection pond containing an algae that processed the waste and turned it into harmless biomaterial. It was this algae, along with several mineral requests, that was at the top of the SGC wish list when it came to trading with the Mekrit.

"Smile and nod, Teal'c," Sam said. "That's all you need to do until the ink is dry and we can all go home. Besides, if this algae works even half as well as we think it does, it'll go a long way to solving our own waste disposal problems back on Earth. We need what they have."

"In return for mining technologies, and educational and medical support."

"The Pentagon believes it's a fair trade, given the naquadah levels in the soil. We detected enough high grade naquadah in one geo scan alone to put out the next generation of X-304's ahead of schedule."

"If this ceremony does not conclude soon, that schedule may well be put back several generations."

"Teal'c... was that an attempt at humor?"

Teal'c looked back up at Mitchell and cocked on eyebrow. "I do not believe Colonel Mitchell is enjoying this day any more than I am."

Sam sighed. "Probably not. I think he's a little dehydrated from last ni—" The ground moved, shifted ever so slightly underfoot, and so barely discernible that Sam thought for a split second she must have simply lost her balance. "Did you...?"

"I did." Teal'c looked sharply up at the podium at the very time the ground moved again, only this time the shift was acute enough to bring most of the crowd to its knees. Screams filled the air as people fell into each other, struggling to hold on to anything they could. "Up there," he called out, and Sam stumbled forward and to her knees just as the giant podium started to shake violently and list to one side. She could just make out Cam as he fell to the left and landed on the hard railing.

"Go," she called out to Teal'c, who was already up on his feet and trying to surge forward through the crowd. A cold silence filled the air. The small tremors that rippled their way under the ground were just a taste of what was coming as the sonic boom of a massive earthquake rolled across from the direction of the ocean, bringing down the podium and almost every building around them. The massive aqueduct structure seemed to rise in the air and hang there for a moment as the wave sped beneath it, only to crash back on its base and fracture. Sam tried to climb to her knees but the ground continued to yaw and sway until eventually she heard the sickening sound of the earth splitting open somewhere behind her.

TBC