Chapter 9
As the team seated themselves on the creaky benches of the long wooden table, two members on each side, Lauria placed steaming bowls of lintel soup in front of them and Lunasa took her place at the head of the table.
"You say you came here from a place that we have never heard of," she began carefully, accepting a bowl of soup from Lauria, who then brought her own bowl to the table and took her place opposite her sister. "Why did you come here?"
"We're explorers," Daniel began, assuming his usual role as spokesperson in matters of cultural understanding, but he was cut off from further explanation.
"We're looking for the Stargate." Jack said, giving Daniel the look that said 'not now, this is no the time to socialize.'
"Yes, you mentioned that when you arrived…" Lunasa said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. Lauria watched the conversation with interest, and she too looked slightly uncomfortable.
"And?" Jack prompted.
"As I said, we haven't heard of such a thing."
"Perhaps you know it by a different name," Teal'c offered.
"Yes, good thinking," Jack said, jumping on the idea. "Have you heard of a Chaapa'ai? Circ Kakona? Circle of the gods, yadda yadda?"
Lunasa and Lauria merely shook their heads slowly, confused by the colonel's persistence.
"Are you sure?"
"Why did you stop us from asking about it outside?" Daniel asked, ignoring the look Jack shot at him for ending his interrogation of their hostesses.
"I didn't wish to alarm anyone," Lunasa replied apologetically. "If you could use this 'Stargate' to come here, the god could also use it to return, and this is what we are most worried about." Seemingly losing her appetite, her hands moved to her lap. The movement of her sleeves indicated her pace at which she was wringing them.
Sam could recognize the poor girls discomfort. They'd seen it so many times before in people intimidated by the Goa'uld's claims to godliness, but they needed answers, and if there was a possibility of unwanted company arriving, they needed to know it now. "You said the Goa'uld brought you here and then left," Sam said, thinking back. "How did they get you here?"
Instead of Lunasa's respectful tone, a much louder voice driven by anger answered. "They herded us like animals–"
"Lauria!" Lunasa shouted. "Watch your tongue!" She glared hard at her sibling, but this seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
"I don't care if the god can hear us! Let him!" Lauria shouted, standing up, defiance written all over her features, her hands clenched in tight fists.
"I am responsible for what happens to this family and what is left of our people!" Lunasa continued, also rising to her feet. "Until that has changed, you'll be careful of what you say!"
"I'll speak my mind! I have every right, as does everyone in Xanthus, to my freedom! I will not be silenced, not by you, or anyone else!"
Before Lunasa could say another word, Lauria quickly turned and raced up a flight of stairs to the upper floors. A loud 'crack' resounded a moment later. Evidently a door had been slammed shut.
"Please, excuse the interruption. My sister is foolish and headstrong," Lunasa said as she tried to regain her composure and her temper. Her cheeks were flushed and she struggled to take long steadying breaths. "She doesn't understand what is at stake, and she often can't hold her tongue."
"Sounds like we have a few things in common," Jack said gently, trying to lighten the suddenly heavy mood.
It worked as a smile tugged at the corners of the young woman's mouth, but then disappeared as she took her seat once again.
"You were about to tell us how the Goa'uld brought you here," Daniel offered gently.
Lunasa took a deep breath, as though praying for courage, and began. "It was not very long ago. A Goa'uld, as you call them, came to our home. His forces gathered about two hundred of our people and locked us in a large room of gold gilded walls, letting each person bring what they could carry."
"You said 'he'?" Jack interrupted suspiciously, eyes narrowed. After all, one but of good luck deserves a bit of bad.
"His name was Zipacna."
"Oh, nooo." Jack groaned. "Not Zippy again! I thought we'd grounded him when that Tollan ion cannon took out his mother ship!"
"Yeah, well the Tollans sent him home along with Klorel, remember?" Daniel asked, prodding Jack's faulty memory.
"No doubt he had another mother ship stationed elsewhere," Teal'c concluded.
"Please," Daniel prompted once again, his voice apologetic, "go on with your story."
Lunasa, who could just as well have been watching a tennis match during the previous exchange, seemed to decide she didn't want to know what they were talking about, and obliged. "They left us there in the rooms, crowded tightly for many days and giving us barely enough food and water to live on. Several of us tried to escape, myself and my parents included. We were caught and brought back, but we'd only try again. Our friends held my sister back at our parent's request, promising to free everyone if we succeeded. Finally the guards got tired of our attempts to escape, and…" Lunasa's voice broke, but she steadied herself and pressed on. "They killed our parents to convince us to give up... But it didn't work. We planned to escape again, but before we could try, they suddenly let us go. They left us here in this valley. This city was here when we came, but it was abandoned and we have lived here ever since."
"That's it?" Sam asked, voicing the disbelief that each member of the team was feeling. "You have no idea why Zipacna brought you here?"
"Actually, we do. It's the reason why we fear he will eventually come back." Lunasa said, sounding slightly nervous once again. "Before they let us leave, a great voice filled the room we were in. It ordered us to find something and discover how it works, or we would be punished."
"Uh oh," Daniel said, staring at Lunasa as she looked at him, confused. "This something wouldn't happen to be a circle of stones with a tall one in the middle, would it?"
Now it was Lunasa's turn to experience total disbelief. Her wide brown eyes stared at him as she leaned into the table, finally bringing her hands up from her lap to clasp each other tensely behind her bowl. "How do you know that?"
"Just a lucky guess," he groaned.
"We can't find the circle," Lunasa continued carefully, unsure of what to believe. "We searched the valley and some of the surrounding land outside by going through the passage that you came through, but all we found were more ruins of Xanthus. Some people had brought seeds with them. They had hoped to be able to buy their freedom with it. Of course, this didn't work, so the seeds were planted when we arrived, and cuttings were made of the first plants in hopes of increasing the crop. It didn't exactly work, so everyone has had to help ration our small harvest. When the snow came, we were trapped here because we didn't know that the passage just needed to be opened…"
"Um, sorry, but how long as the snow been here?" Sam asked politely. As far as she knew the snow had arrived only the day before.
"It came two moons ago."
"How many days have passed then?" Teal'c inquired, seeing the contradiction.
"Roughly eighty."
"Whoa! Ho! O.K., something really screwy is going on here!" Jack burst out loudly.
Lunasa looked at Jack curiously, not understanding what the heck he meant. When she didn't receive any reason why she shouldn't continue as before, she said, "We concerned ourselves with surviving the cold and prayed that the god would not return before the warm weather, and we would find the circle."
"Well, you don't need to worry about finding it anymore," Jack said, his voice normal though somewhat sarcastic. "That damn thing is why we came here."
"We came to your world to have a better look at the device ourselves," Sam explained. "Daniel touched it, and we all passed out…"
"I prefer 'were knocked out', if you don't mind, Carter."
"Right, sir…we were knocked unconscious. When we came to, everything was different. The Stargate, which we used to get here, and everything near it was replaced by a lake. There was no snow when we arrived, but there was after. Plus, as far as we could tell, this city was abandoned a very long time ago. We didn't expect to find you here."
"In fact, we came in hopes of finding writings that might explain what the device does, or rather did, so that we can use it to put things back to the way they were," Daniel finished.
"We found lots of writing in a cave at the edge of Xanthus," Lunasa said, "but we couldn't understand what it says. Some of it is similar to our own ancient symbols, but when we read them as we understand them, the writings make no sense."
"It sounds like Zipacna brought you here thinking that you knew how to read it. Hopefully we can help each other out there, though there were writings on the device and I couldn't translate those either," Daniel admitted ruefully.
"Can you take us there?" Jack asked impatiently.
"I'm sorry, but I can't today," Lunasa shook her head. "It's getting late and we have found it is dangerous to be out at night because of the large predators that live in the mountains and come out in the dark. I will take you in the morning, however."
"We appreciate it," Daniel said swiftly, preventing Jack from saying anything potentially rude.
"Lunasa," Sam said cautiously, "if you don't mind me asking…"
"You are wondering how one as young as I seems to have gained so much respect that I could bring you here without being questioned, yes?"
"Yeah, something like that." Sam answered, surprised at the young woman's perceptiveness.
Smiling sadly, Lunasa replied "I have often wondered that myself since we came here. My family was well respected before the Goa'uld came. When we made our attempts to escape, I was right there, helping to make the plans. When my parents were killed," she swallowed hard, "everyone seemed to look to me for the next plan, and even though we never tried it, it seems that everyone believes it would have worked. They've looked to me in every regard since then, and insisted that my sister and I take one of the largest buildings for our home."
Silence followed as the team looked at the young woman with understanding and new found respect. Leadership had been pressed upon her, and she had held up to the challenge thus far. That showed great courage and maturity beyond her years.
Finally Lunasa chose to break the silence as she rose from the table. "You are welcome to stay for as long as you need to here. We have rooms upstairs you can use. There isn't any furniture in them," her head bowed with embarrassment, "but it is the very least I can do."
With that she rose from her seat, took a candle and lit it from the fire place, and led the team upstairs to a large empty room on the second floor. There were small windows with moth-eaten curtains hanging over the locked shutters, but the wood floor was clean and there was a fireplace at the far end.
"I'm sorry that it isn't in better shape," Lunasa continued, still embarrassed by the meager hospitality she was able to give. She used her candle to light a fire in the fire place. Once the fire was crackling nicely she said, "My sister and I do not use this room as we are the only ones who live here and we don't need this much space. There is a well in back of the house if you wish to wash up. Now if you will please excuse me, I had better go talk to my sister. Good night."
"Thank you! Good night!" four voices answered as Lunasa left the room, closing the door behind her.
The team set up their sleeping gear, which they had luckily had on their persons instead of on the M.A.L.P. when it disappeared, and then gathered to discuss the day's events.
"Alright campers," Jack began calmly, keeping his voice down somewhat so as not to be overheard by anyone beyond the door, "opinions? Suggestions?"
"We could easily relocate these people, sir," Sam began. "It's obvious that at very least they need food supplies. If their home world has a 'gate, we might even be able to send them home, though Lunasa's lack of knowledge about the Stargate suggests that it's probably buried, if they ever had one."
"There's just one problem with that, Carter. We still need to get to the 'gate that's here," Jack pointed out.
"Without the proper lifting equipment to raise the Stargate out of the water, that is quite impossible O'Neill," Teal'c countered sagely.
"Yeah I know, and I'm having a problem with that too."
"Of course it's very strange that Zipacna didn't send these people through the 'gate," Daniel mused. "He brought them here in a ship instead."
"Maybe he wasn't sure that there was a 'gate here," Sam said, shrugging. "Or maybe he tried but couldn't get a lock. We've never come across a submerged 'gate. It's possible the water is just dense enough to prevent a wormhole from opening." A puzzled look crossed Sam's face as she turned to Teal'c. "Teal'c, shouldn't Zipacna have been able to scan the planet's surface for the device?"
"Goa'uld long range scanners can only detect life signs and energy readings. There was no energy being emitted from the device until DanielJackson stepped inside its circumference. Therefore, they could not detect it without first finding it," Teal'c concluded, a nearly imperceptible smile in his face. Technology isn't everything after all, and though it made the Goa'uld strong, it couldn't make them infallible.
"Well, there's a good chance that the writings Lunasa says they found will be able to explain what the device did." Daniel explained optimistically. "I mean, there have to be instructions somewhere, and if the thing is as complex as we think it is, there's bound to be a lot of it."
"I sense a 'but' coming up here," Jack grumbled, performing something between rolling his eyes and closing them for the night.
"It's going to take time for me to translate it…if I can. I'm hoping Lunasa will be able to help me, and hopefully it's a matter of figuring out what the elements that make the new symbols unreadable stand for…"
"That doesn't sound so bad."
Daniel just stared back at Jack.
"That bad?"
"Remember how no matter what I tried I couldn't translate any of the writings from Heliopolis until you started speaking Ancient two years ago?"
"Vaguely," Jack said, scratching his head.
"Yeah, well unless we find an audio record of how this language is supposed to sound, it's going to be just like that."
"Oh… damn."
Meanwhile, on the third floor of the house Lunasa opened the door to her sister's bedroom and found Lauria sitting on her bed with her back to the door. The room was extremely plain with one rather large exception.
Once, their mother had been a skilled quilter. She made many quilts and traded them among friends and neighbors, and sometimes people would come from great distances to buy a quilt from her. Of all that had been at home when they had been driven out, this one was the only one that they had been able to bring. The pattern was of brightly colored triangles of varying sizes scattered across the field, but the blue ones formed a perfect circle. Since it was the only thing they had of their mother's the girls had agreed to hang it over a wooden dowel from the wall.
Lunasa crossed the room and gently sat down next to her younger sibling. "I didn't mean to snap at you," she began quietly as her eyes were drawn to the beautiful quilt.
"I know," the quiet answer came. Lauria's eyes, too, stared at the quilt, her thoughts dwelled on her parents as she repeated the words her parents had said to her not long before they were killed. "You have a responsibly. You have to put the good of our people before our own needs."
"That's exactly right." Lunasa turned away from the quilt to look at her sister's face as she continued. "Lauria, you've always been bolder and more outspoken than me. It's one of your greatest strengths. Yet it's something that the god hates more than anything, and that's exactly why mother and father insisted that you stayed behind each time we tried to escape. They were afraid that if you had spoken defiantly before him you would have been killed outright."
Lauria still stared at the quilt. "I don't fear him. In fact, I don't believe he is truly a god. He had no right to take us as he did, and why demand knowledge from us when he is supposedly all-knowing?"
"I agree with you, sister. But god or not I do fear his power, and in the interest of protecting our people, and knowing that we don't have any other choice, I think it's best to try and please him. I know you're angry. I am too, but I must ask you to hide it like I do. Will you do this for me?"
A long silence was broken by a heavy sigh as Lauria finally turned from the quilt, their symbol of family, unity, and hope, to look her sister in the eye.
"I will try, sister."