03 - The First Amendment (18 page)

Daniel Jackson sat with his arms on his updrawn knees, staring at nothing in
particular as he swigged water from his canteen. Kinsey sat beside him and
rubbed his legs, trying to ease the cramping from the unaccustomed exercise.

“I take it you’re not military,” Kinsey said, attempting to strike up a
friendly conversation about something, anything other than what they had just
seen.

Jackson gave him a considering look, not as suspicious as O’Neill’s but not
particularly forthcoming either. “No, I’m not.” A winged insect, or this world’s
equivalent, buzzed by, and Jackson took a halfhearted swipe at it, nearly
knocking his glasses off in the process. The insect went spinning, and Jackson winced as a bubble of bright-red blood squeezed from his thumb. “Ow.
That’s some set of claws on that sucker.”

“You’re an anthropologist, right?”

“Archaeologist, actually.” The bug came back,, and Jackson swatted at it
again. Kinsey wondered if the blond man welcomed the distraction. It landed
beside the scientist, and he studied it as if there were nothing more
fascinating in the whole world.

“So how did you get involved in this whole thing?” He could feel the eyes of
the other team members boring into him, but this was his job, after all.
Besides, he was genuinely curious.

“I help translate.” Clearly Jackson wasn’t interested in giving out his life
story, but even he could hear the abruptness in his response. In a more
conciliatory tone he went on, “My background’s in ancient Middle Eastern
cultures, and that turned out to be one of the hot spots of Goa’uld visitation.”

“So those things back there aren’t Goa’uld?” Kinsey made a genuine effort to
pronounce the word correctly. He was rewarded with a brief smile. The man must
have been devastating as a graduate assistant. He didn’t look much older than
graduate assistants Kinsey had seen; late twenties, very early thirties, tops,
and he wouldn’t look that old if it weren’t for the sense of wariness in
otherwise guileless blue eyes. He had the look of a man who’d been bitten by the
universe a few times, but hadn’t quite reached the stage of cynicism about it
that O’Neill had. A dreamer, Kinsey decided. A dreamer of the day, one of the
dangerous ones who had the capability and determination to make his dreams real.

“Oh no,” Jackson said. “We don’t have any idea what those are. Every time we
go through the Gate, we find something new. It’s a big universe.”

“So you’ve gone through the Gate a lot?” The question was a little too
disingenuous, and he decided to be blunt. “How long have you been using this Stargate of yours?”

Jackson was silent for a moment, thinking, maybe weighing alternative
answers. “Years,” he said at last. “Mostly the last couple of years. We didn’t
know how to get anywhere, how to use the Gate for a long time. Abydos was—” he
took a deep breath and let it out. “Abydos was an accident. The Gate was pre-set
for that location.”

“How many locations are there?”

Jackson shrugged. “Hundreds. Thousands. We don’t really know.”

“And do you find new alien races every time?” He couldn’t believe he was
asking these questions, seriously asking and getting serious answers back. And
for the life of him he couldn’t think of a lead for the story anymore. Usually
by this time he had the first half of his story, or at least the first story in
the series, mapped out. Not this time.

“No. The coordinates we have are for Goa’uld worlds, so mostly we find
humans. Sometimes Goa’uld. Sometimes Jaffa.”

“What are ‘Jaffa’?”

“My people,” Teal’C interjected. “Slaves to the Goa’uld. Hosts to their
larvae. Their warriors.”

Kinsey twisted around to face him. Teal’C’s customary expression looked very
much like one of those statues on Easter Island, he thought, only much rounder.
The deep frown was the same, though. “You’re a Jaffa?” the word was unfamiliar
in his mouth.

“Yes. I have renounced my allegiance to the Goa’uld.”

“Uh, don’t take this wrong, please but… does that mean you’re not human?
From Earth?”

Teal’C nodded sharply, apparently unconcerned. “That is correct.”

“Oh.” Once when he was a little kid, he’d dumped out a bowl full of goldfish onto the kitchen floor. For the first time he
felt he understood how the goldfish felt as their mouths opened and closed
uselessly. He couldn’t stop staring at the man. Except that, apparently, he
wasn’t, strictly speaking, a
man.

He
looked
human. Except of course for that symbol on his forehead,
which looked like a gilded scar. The guy had one head, two arms, two legs, hands
that strongly resembled George Foreman’s. In his set of regular jungle cammie
fatigues, he would blend in with any American military unit.

Alien? Couldn’t be. They had to be making fun of him, seeing just how
credulous the reporter would be in his search for a story.
Aliens looking
exactly like Earth humans are living among us!

He
still
didn’t really believe it, he realized. Part of him still
thought he was sitting in the briefing room at the Visitors Center for the
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, listening to Captain Weikman go on and on about
tracking Santa Claus from the North Pole on December 24, the primary role these
days of Air Force Space Defense Systems.

And the team members were watching him again, waiting to see how he would
react. He experienced a slow burn of resentment that they could sit there
chewing mystery meat and take all this for granted, that they could believe
this, live this every day. Didn’t they appreciate the wonder and the scope of
what they were doing?

For the first time he asked himself, quite seriously,
What the hell am I
doing here?
It wasn’t a question about what
he
was doing, so much as
it was why he was here with these people who didn’t respect him or his work,
were cooperating with obvious reluctance, and had no intention of ever letting
him use the information they provided him. He was being shown a banquet and told
he would never, ever be able to eat it. And these people could feast on it every day and considered it no more than another course of MREs.

“Okay, folks, let’s hit the road,” O’Neill said. “We’ve got places to go and
people to see.”

Maybe one’s sense of wonder got burned out when you went to new worlds every
week, Kinsey thought. Or maybe, he reminded himself sternly, the immediate
possibility of getting oneself killed tended to shut down the
oooooh-ahhhh
reflex. He took himself by the mental scruff of the neck and shook himself
sternly. Resentment? It was jealousy, pure and simple. These people—this unit,
anyway, given that they weren’t all quite
people
—got to do things he’d
only fantasized about. He’d always wanted to visit Barsoom, and now here he was,
with a bunch of people who were incredibly blasé about it all. It made him feel
like a tourist, like a kid at a science fiction convention instead of a
seasoned, experienced professional. Well, he could be just as matter-of-fact
about strange new worlds and alien sidekicks as the next guy. So
there.

He tucked the debris of his meal back into his pack and staggered to his feet
to join the rest of them. Okay, so not all outer space creatures were bug-eyed
monsters. At least
some
of them were. He could accept that. He hoped.

On the other hand—he chuckled suddenly. The image that had just popped into
his head was priceless.

“What’s funny?” Carter asked, keeping pace beside him. At least she was
human. If it turned out that she wasn’t, Kinsey decided he didn’t want to know.
Some things were just too horrible to contemplate.

“I’m just imagining what the look on my father’s face must have been when
he
first heard all this,” Kinsey sputtered. “I wish I’d been there to see
it. He must have had a fit.”

“Just about,” the blonde officer said cheerfully. “Has he always had this
denial problem?”

“Always.” With his determined change in mood, he allowed himself to realize
that the major was really very attractive. Or maybe it was just the automatic
rifle slung over her shoulder in such a businesslike fashion. He found himself
wondering if she was married. “How’d
you
get hauled into this?”

“Oh, I volunteered.” Once again that impish grin, and then she lengthened her
stride and passed him, easily catching up with the three other members of the
team ahead of him.

It seemed to take most of the afternoon to circle the battle plain and reach
the hills and the signs of construction at their base.

Wonder what’s gonna pop out at us this time,
he thought. He was almost
looking forward to it.

Jack O’Neill allowed part of his mind—the really irritated part—to keep track
of their unwanted guest, while the majority of his thoughts were focused on what
lay ahead. On their first visit to P7X-924, he’d been impressed by the warmth,
friendliness, and practical intelligence of the human population of the place.
The suggestion that the Goa’uld had found them again after centuries was deeply
disturbing. The evidence of battle behind them was even worse.

It was a big galaxy out there. Weren’t the Goa’uld bad enough? Were they
going to have to battle tube-necks too?

He made a mental note to ask the Nox about this if he ever had the chance. He
hadn’t had a chance to look at the tubenecks’ opponents close up, though he had
an impression of mothlike wings and very businesslike claws. As an older, wiser,
and infinitely more tolerant race than Earth had yet produced, the Nox were
sometimes willing to share information with their upstart neighbors. He wondered
what Kinsey would make of the Nox sky city. Not that he’d ever managed to visit it
himself, of course—the people of Earth were considered a bad influence on the
impressionable young—but still, it was pretty amazing even from a distance.

Then there was Morley. Nothing in Morley’s report had hinted at two new alien
races, apparently at war with each other. If O’Neill hadn’t verified the
coordinates himself he’d be wondering if they’d arrived at the right planet.
Oops, sorry, wrong address, we meant to deliver the nukes next door.
But
Morley had gone well and truly off the deep end. Could it have been the
tubenecks and the whatevers that did for him? Did he ascribe his casualties to
the Goa’uld because that was what he could cope with?

Did it really matter?

Of course it mattered. Three Stargate teams had come to this world, and two
of them had come back in tatters. He felt responsible. They’d come to this world
expecting no trouble at all, based on the word of one Jack O’Neill, Colonel,
USAF. They had a right to think this assignment would be interesting—problematic
maybe, but mostly safe. What had gone wrong?

“For crying out loud, Jack, are you in a race?”

He glanced over to see Daniel puffing beside him, stretching his legs to keep
up. Over his shoulder he spotted Kinsey, a good twenty yards back, gamely
struggling.

“Okay, okay.” He stopped and waited impatiently for everyone to catch up. It
wasn’t his fault he had long legs. Now that he was stopped, though, he could
feel his own lungs heaving the heavy air in and out, feel his own heart beating
hard. He needed to slow down and take it easy. Easier, anyway. No point in
wearing yourself out right before a firefight.

Was he expecting a firefight?

Yes, he was, and looking forward to it, too. He’d liked the Etaans. He wanted to find out who these new critters were and kick
their butts. Hard.

Kinsey tripped as he covered the last few yards, and O’Neill closed his eyes
in pain. Hammond must have been out of his mind to send this jerk along. This
wasn’t supposed to be a guided tour or a babysitting expedition. They had work
to do, dammit.

To his credit, Kinsey got up reasonably quickly and uttered no complaint. He
was grateful for the unscheduled stop, it was obvious; he leaned over and
clutched his knees, gulping air. But the others were breathing hard too, and
they were in fighting trim. O’Neil wondered what constituted “fighting trim” for
a journalist. Fully armed with sharpened pencils, maybe?

At the least the guy had the sense to laugh about his father. That was a
big
point in his favor.

“Okay, the city is just past this last line of trees,” he said as the team
gathered around. “According to Dave Morley, they were suckered in. So we’re
going to take it slow and easy and keep our eyes peeled, not just for Jaffa but
for our other unidentified friends as well.”

Because the inhabitants called the little town with the twin towers Etaa,
that worked for the name of the world too, SG-1 had decided. One of the
interesting problems SG-4 had set itself was to discover from just which area of
Earth the ancestors of the Etaans had been kidnapped. Some of the other worlds,
such as Simarka—designated P3X-593 in the arcane numbering system used by
SGC—had very clear roots in specific Earth cultures. Simarka’s inhabitants were
descended from Mongolian herders and horsemen. The Cimmerians came from northern
Europe. The Byrsa on P3X-1279 were an eclectic mix of Greek, Celtic, and
Germanic. Etaa had the same fascinating combination of many cultures, in this
case with hints of Syrian, early Byzantine, and more than just a touch of Masai. Their economy was based on trade and cattle, with some mining; they
had really elaborate gold jewelry, necklaces and earrings and bracelets that
would have been hot items on Earth. But SG-1 wasn’t in the business of setting
up trading partnerships, and that had almost undone them until they realized the
rules of this new culture.
Everything
on Etaa was a matter of trade.

The Etaans were very tall, very black, very dignified. O’Neill had had a
crick in his neck for a week after finishing the preliminary talks with
Shostoka’an, the principal leader. He still thought it wasn’t quite fair that
Shostoka’an’s badge of office was a towering plume of almost-ostrich feathers;
the woman was already nearly eight feet tall. He rubbed at his neck,
remembering. He had liked Shostoka’an a lot. He wondered what had happened to
her.