Chapter 4
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Colorado Springs
9 September 1995
She swore that she had stopped breathing. Then her body's natural reactions took over; she gulped lungfuls of recycled air, knowing that the sheer thrill of discovery had her momentarily dizzy and breathing hard.
Three weeks ago, she had been fruitlessly struggling trying to make sense of the stars – a combination of astrophysics and astronomy – that had left her feeling as though she had repeatedly hit an intellectual brick wall. Now Sam realised, it had all been a short lull in the action.
Catherine had to be the first to know, the first one with whom she wanted to share that triumph.
And then she halfway to the officers' quarters before she belatedly realised that the civilian leader was probably asleep, taking her very much-needed rest after pulling that same all-nighter as she did. Torn between wanting to share her discovery with Catherine and reporting her finding to the General, she decided that Catherine could wait for a while.
Sam headed back to her lab, pulling several stacks of reports and a marker and turned in the direction of the General's office.
The control room was relatively empty of personnel, running on a skeleton crew that did not do much more than maintain the integrity of the systems.
"Morning, Walter," she asked cheerfully. "Is the General around?"
Walter Harriman, like her, seemed to be always around, having built a reputation for being a small but unwavering pillar of administrative support to any General he served under. He eyed her with a measure of trepidation; a glowing, jubilant Captain Carter was often equated with a scientific breakthrough, which also meant, a long, scientific briefing to the technical crew that lasted way into the night.
"No, Ma'am," he said just to see her face fall in disappointment. "In fact, I think General West has left for Washington for a few days only a while ago. Colonel Reynolds is second-in-command of the base at the moment. Would you like to see him instead?"
Talk about bad timing. She sighed and ran her hand through her tousled hair.
"That's…probably not necessary. I'll just wait till he returns. Thanks, Walter," she said, looking like the wind had been taken out of her sails, turning to return to her quarters.
A few more days.
On hindsight, it was a better idea.
It would give her more time to search for the actual seventh symbol now that she was certain it existed. Satisfied with the way things were progressing – albeit a tad too slowly for her –, she finally thought of returning home for a day or two, thinking that her plants needed some attention and her house needed airing. Her fridge was empty and a trip to the nearby supermarket was in order.
Maybe she would take that enforced break after all.
She took slightly longer than usual to leave the base after showering, signing out at 1000hrs after checking that Catherine was still asleep, squinting in the bright sunlight as she headed out of the mountain. Her laptop lay on the seat next to her, with a couple of astrophysics journals perched on top of it. She would call Catherine from home later.
The supermarket was predictably crowded at the end of the weekend as families rushed to get their week's supplies over and done with. She looked at the interminably long queues and walked straight back to her car, where a takeout was sounding like a better and better idea.
Schrödinger was waiting by the front porch when she next stepped out of her vintage vehicle. She gave him a few gentle strokes down his back, petted his head and he wound his way around her heels for a bit, entering the house with her.
The silence was palpable, but common for a single woman living alone, and the air too musty for her liking. She threw all the windows open, and tried calling the base for Catherine. After going through several security barriers, Walter came on the line and told her in no uncertain terms that Catherine had just left the base for her own home. Suddenly tired of the unintended game of hide-and-seek, and with the adrenaline of her earlier discovery wearing off, she slumped into the soft cushions lining the couch and was sound asleep within a minute.
Samantha Carter's residence
Colorado Springs
9 September 1995
The shrill ring of her telephone startled Sam into awareness. Sleepily she realised that she was at home, and had fallen asleep on the couch as the last fading rays of the sun peeked through the gaps in her curtains.
"Carter."
"Miss Samantha Carter? This is Memorial Hospital Central calling. You've been listed as the next of kin of a Dr. Catherine Langford. She is now in surgery and has asked for you to be here. "
She sat up in shock, blinking the remnants of sleep out of her eyes. "I'll be right there."
In the tense drive to the hospital, she could only think of the worst – that Catherine was…
She was running down the corridors of the A&E department in under twenty minutes, skidding to a stop at the reception desk.
"I'm looking for Catherine Langford….my name's Samantha Carter. She's been in an accident. Can I see her please?"
But the nurse was already moving, ushering her into the doctor's office.
"Miss Carter, please."
She walked in to see a petite brunette standing in the tiny office, studying several X-rays that were pinned against a lit screen.
Her shoulders stiffened, bracing for a blow that would come from the doctor's lips any second.
"Miss Carter? I'm Dr. Janet Fraiser, Catherine's surgeon and doctor."
"Actually, it's Captain. I'm military." She studied the other shorter woman before her, strangely reassured by the doctor's calm manner. It had been shortly after her mother's death that she'd discovered hospitals and funeral homes made her nervous.
The doctor seemed surprised by that unnecessary revelation; she raised her brows but said nothing in response.
"So, what happened?"
"Catherine Langford fell down the steep stairs that led to her house as she was going home. A stranger found her and brought her to the hospital," Frasier explained, not mincing her words. "I'm not going to lie to you. She's suffered a very, very hard fall. This has dislocated her spine after the high-impact collision and given her advanced age, I'm not sure what it'll take for her to regain any movement. She might have been fit for her age, but it's pretty much impossible for anyone to recover immediately after such a grievous injury."
Sam inhaled sharply. It was worse than she'd expected, but –
"Unfortunately, that's not all," the doctor cut in again and took a deep breath herself. "There's a serious head injury that we're also looking at, where her head hit the ground. Her left skull is fractured and there's some swelling in the brain. From what I can see in the X-rays however, the broken skull fragments have not penetrated or compressed brain tissue."
Cautious relief surfaced in her consciousness, a heavy load lifting off her chest.
"And that's…good news then?"
Frasier didn't give her a straightforward reply, launching instead, into an explanation that made her eyes widen in panic. "Because of the numerous injuries that Catherine has sustained, we are not able to take care of all her wounds at once. Earlier, we started to decompress, reduce and stabilise the spinal structure but she has slipped into a coma. In fact, we use the Glasgow coma scale to evaluate the conscious state of a person, based on his or hereye opening, verbal responses, and motor responses. These criteria are evaluated independently according to a rank order that indicates the level of consciousness and degree of dysfunction. Right now, she is scoring a one to two for each category."
Sam sank into a chair gratefully, avoiding the doctor's intense gaze.
Was it only twelve hours ago that she and Catherine were having a drink and a snack in the mess hall? And only a few hours since she'd discovered what might have been the pinnacle of Catherine's work?
"Catherine's been placed in intensive care and will be there for some time," the doctor interrupted her thoughts. "You can see her, of course, but visiting hours are limited, and I'm going to need you to suit up. Her immune system is incredibly weak and will not hold up under any infections," Frasier said gently. "I know this must be a shock to you, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
She nodded numbly, feeling as though all words had left her mouth.
"Are you her next-of-kin?"
"No. We're…we're colleagues actually, but we're close." She worked her dry mouth and paused, looking up at the doctor. "She hasn't any family around, and mine's too far away to be of any consequence."
Frasier nodded sombrely. "I'm glad Catherine has you then. She's going to need all the help and support she can get."
Colorado Springs
12 September 1995
There was no sign of improvement in Catherine's condition several days later, although the doctor had warned about the unpredictability of traumatic head and spinal cord injuries. Sam had gone to base in a blurry haze for the few days, leaving in the late afternoon to visit Catherine in the ICU.
General West had been shocked by Catherine's accident and immediately insisted on her taking more time-off. She didn't know who was more surprised when she had agreed without any argument, spontaneously issuing a request that she would like to work a nine to five shift until Catherine's condition stabilised, also delaying her decision to see him about the seventh symbol until she knew exactly what it correlated to.
As far as she was concerned, the project had suffered its greatest loss in the form of Catherine. Her quiet but firm leadership had steered it to where it was today and her resourcefulness in obtaining highly sought-after information had amazed even the unflappable West.
It took her a moment to realise that she was thinking of Catherine as though she were already gone.
And now she was making her way to Catherine's house with the intention of cleaning it out as a favour for a friend. It gave her something to do other than futilely pushing aside the constant worry that had been plaguing her for days, and she found that the fairly steep walk up was sufficiently tiring but refreshing for her frazzled nerves.
Catherine Langford lived alone in an exclusive, affluent suburb built into the hillside and her house was built far up the incline, connected to the main road by a series of winding steps and a one-lane street that permitted only a single car through at a time. Having decided a while ago that her eyesight was too poor for her to drive any more, she had arranged for a driver from the base to send her home most evenings, leaving her at the base of the steps for her daily climb and exercise up to her house.
Slightly breathless after the climb, Sam let herself in, casting an appreciative eye over Catherine's tastefully furnished abode. An African tribal mask hung next to a Persian wall rug; dozens of photos detailing archaeological digs around the world were placed on as many spare surfaces as possible. The organised mess that characterised Catherine in her research at the base was similarly present in her home, as books littered only a specific corner of the home.
She smiled fondly at Catherine's unwavering enthusiasm for her discipline as she gently fingered the pages of the Ancient Egyptian references books that still lay on the dining table.
A flash of yellow.
The yellow corner of a post-it note that looked incongruous in the white pages of the books. Half-buried under a book at the far end of the table.
She walked around the corner and pulled it out from under the weight of the books. Catherine's usual elegant handwriting was near-unrecognisable, scribbled either in extreme excitement or extreme haste.
Dr. Daniel Jackson
Uni. Chicago, post-doc fellow, Arch. dept
(773) 702-1222
Not anyone that Catherine had ever mentioned.
Was Dr. Jackson an acquaintance of hers? An ex-colleague? It didn't seem to make any sense; Catherine had given her entire life to furthering her father's discovery. Or had she?
There was quite a bit that she hadn't yet revealed, especially about several parts of her life in the 1940s to the 1960s. Like her, Catherine didn't always go around much; the last trip she'd taken was to a symposium on Ancient Egypt in New York a while ago, something that she had merely described as a complete bust.
Sam took a closer look at the chapters of several books that had been tagged. They were old, their pages yellowed and fragile, hardbound and heavy.
The Art of the IVth Dynasty
A Golden Age: The Old Kingdom
Plans of the Pyramid Complex
Sun-Temples and the Ascendency of the Egyptian god Ra
Mud and Brick: The Building Blocks of Ancient Egypt
Glyphs and Grammar of Ancient Egyptian
The Literary Language of the Old Kingdom
Lying somewhat askew of the pile of books was another crumpled piece of paper that looked as though it had been written in pencil and erased over many times. Peering closer, she could make out several words imprinted too hard to fully erase.
A thous- years? A Mille-years – crossed out and erased.
A million years into sky – crossed out and erased.
A million years into the sky. Ra ascends. The ascension of Ra. Ra in the sky – erased over a few times.
A million years into the sky is Ra.
There weren't any hieroglyphs that corresponded with the English translation, but it sounded too much like an echo of the cover stone deep down in Cheyenne Mountain.
In a flash, she understood. Catherine had been trying for a more precise translation of those glyphs.
Time million sky/ Ra Sun God
A million years into the sky is Ra.
More understandable, less awkward but still cryptic. Dismissing it briefly as a fanciful but poetic vision of the Ancient Egyptians, she tried to make out the rest of the words with increasing difficulty.
sealed and buried for all time
not coffin forever to eternity
And that was that. The last phrase, the 'door to heaven' was presumably a way into the Egyptian Afterlife, and a non-contested phrase because the writing stopped there, the paper torn exactly where the last, corresponding translation was supposed to be. Egyptian mythology was an area in which Sam would readily plead her ignorance, but it was clear that Catherine had been unsatisfied with Myers' translations of the hieroglyphics on the cover stone; neither was she convinced of the congruity of the ring device's placement among the Egyptian ruins.
Over the years, Catherine's research autonomy had been increasingly curtailed by military presence; her difficulty in procuring experts in Ancient Egyptian culture grew as the Air Force's non-disclosure agreement tightened the flow of knowledge and information that could have revolutionised the academic world and overturn existing theories. If she had turned to other sources that were beyond military jurisdiction, it wouldn't be entirely a surprise.
What role then, was Daniel Jackson to play – or had already played – in this?
Catherine hadn't said a word about it to her at all. Fighting the slight hurt, she thought back to that day when she'd discovered the need for a seventh symbol – the point of origin – and her excitement in needing Catherine to be the first in line to know.
Her original reason for visiting Catherine's house long forgotten, she stuffed the books into her bag, shoving the precious piece of paper and Daniel Jackson's contact details in her pocket then left.