Stargate SG1 - Roswell (35 page)

Vala shot him a poisonous look. “Berkshire in winter. Thank you ever so much for that thought.”

“Well, you could always raid Glastonbury Tor while you're in the area. It's not as if anyone will notice any missing treasure.”

She flopped into the cane chair beside him, and reached for the iced tea. “If you'd been sensible enough to have studied your people's history instead of baseball scores, we might have found Tutankhamen's tomb by now.”

Cam pulled a cigar from his pocket and took his time lighting it. He'd never much liked the things, but the lazy blue coils of smoke proved an effective deterrent to the ever-present whining insects currently trying to feast on his neck.

A shrill crooning drew his eyes upward. He suppressed a momentary spasm of envy for the falcons' freedom to soar across the cloudless Egyptian sky. The temptation to abandon their search for the second half of the remote DHD, climb into a flimsy cockpit and engage in slow motion dogfights over the bloody battlefields of France and Belgium, just for the chance to fly again, was short lived. His duty lay elsewhere, and Cam knew, as evidenced by her outburst, that Vala was entirely with him in this.

Watching the falcon in hot pursuit of a smaller bird, he said, “Think of it as a chance to hunt through that pile of treasure they've got stashed away. You said yourself you sensed traces of naquadah last time we were there, and Lady Carnarvon did invite you back for Christmas.”

Vala spooned out the mint leaves and tossed them into the palms, before downing an entire glass of tea. For a moment the only sound was that of the overhead fan in the bedroom behind, beating futilely at the relentless heat.

“How long did you say this war is going to last?” she said, refilling her glass.

“I guess that depends on who else died in the fire, doesn't it?”

He felt her hand on his arm before he'd finished speaking. “I've had considerably more experience than you in living with regret, Cam. You really need let it go, you know.”

Sure. Let it go.

Every morning for the first six months after he and Vala had landed in 1908, he'd convinced himself that was the day that Sam would beam them into the puddle jumper. She was just being cautious, he'd assured himself. Couldn't have the jumper bumping into itself coming and going through time. And it wasn't as if he and Vala were the first members of an SG team to be stuck someplace while every member of Stargate Command worked day and night to get them back home. Hell, General O'Neill had put his career—and a whole lot more—on the line to rescue Major Boyd's team, and no way would Sam Carter risk messing up history by leaving anyone in the past for a moment longer than she had to.

Then one fine day in the Fall of 1908, Cam had learned that there would be no rescue. And there'd been no ifs, buts or maybes about it.

Howard had by then convinced his mother that they needed to take in borders to pay the bills, and old Mrs. Lovecraft, not exactly firing on all cylinders, had accepted Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell without question. Despite Vala's pleading to have Cam use his knowledge of history to rake in a fortune, he'd cautiously restricted his betting on ball games so that it barely covered the cost of their upkeep. Good thing, as it had turned out, because on October 10, Howard had come home without the expected winnings from the Chicago versus Detroit baseball game. The Cubs had lost to Detroit by four points.

They should have won ten to six.

The wrenching sensation Cam had felt at that moment had been infinitely worse than the day the doctors had told him he'd never walk again. A busted back and legs were a small price to pay for the knowledge that his actions had helped defend Earth from Anubis.

Learning that he had single-handedly altered Earth's history was a whole different ballgame—no pun intended.

A sports editorial in the newspaper had lamented the fact that if Cubs ace, Mordecai 'Three Finger' Brown, had still been alive, he would have won the game for the Cubs. Sadly, 'Three Finger' had died in the Brown University fire while rescuing a valuable racehorse named Wintergreen from the burning coach house.

For four days, Cam had held out a vague hope that his memory was somehow flawed, but on October 14, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series.'

That one moment of distraction, when he hadn't taken the right precautions before entering the tack room, had changed everything. It took very little imagination to guess the consequences. SG-1 —and right at that moment, Cam no longer considered himself a member of SG-1 —had not come back for him and Vala because he'd altered the future. With SG-1 missing in time, or worse, dead, Earth was as good as lost, if not to Ra or some other Goa'uld, then to the Ori.

Which—as Vala had pointed out almost immediately—left them with no option but to go back to that day in 1908 and sort out the mess.

Sure. Simple. No problem...well, actually, several dozen problems, beginning with the fact that the remote DHD device Vala had plucked from the tea chest months earlier had been missing a few vital components, specifically, the functioning part of the cuff that wrapped around the palm and wrist.

SG-1 had faced slimmer odds in the past, and Cam at least had an idea in what country the rest of the device might be found. History had already been altered, which meant all bets were off when it came to using every resource available to locate the thing.

Naturally, Vala had almost fallen over herself agreeing to his plan. While Cam's knowledge of the early twentieth century was limited to generalities, he'd known enough to restore the Lovecraft estate to its former opulence by investing in the fledgling Persian oil fields and technologically innovative industries.

Every six months or so, Cam stumbled across events that didn't quite ring true, and inevitably it could be traced back to that fateful night in Rhode Island and the death of Three Finger. But for the most part, history repeated itself with sufficient predictability so that by the time WWI had broken out, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell had become embarrassingly wealthy.

More importantly, Vala had spent those years and a good portion of that wealth tracking down and scouring old documents and papyri in search of the missing component to the hand device, while Cam invested his spare time in becoming something of an expert in Egyptology.

Their eureka moment had come in the summer of 1913. While Cam hadn't been able to recall every detail of Daniel Jackson's reports (despite what he'd told Vala), combined with his research, he remembered enough to make a point of befriending the Carnarvons, something relatively easy to achieve when you were a filthy rich Rhode Island industrial magnate with a penchant for Egyptology.

He and Vala had accepted an invitation to spend a month at Highclere Castle, where the Carnarvons retreated during the height of the Egyptian summer. Lord Carnarvon had by then amassed the single finest personal collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world, and he was not exactly backward in showing it all off to his house guests. Part of the collection included an excellent copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, in this instance, a papyrus that he and Carter had recovered from the tomb of Amenhotep I.

The papyrus featured several illustrations of old Amenhotep. In each instance where his hand had been visible, he'd been wearing something that Vala immediately recognized as the second half of the remote DHD. Further research revealed that it also appeared on the hand of Amenhotep
II
and III. A carefully inscribed notation elsewhere in the document mentioned that it had been gifted to the third Amenhotep's favored grandson, who had taken to playing with it as a child.

And that's when Cam began to think they might have a serious chance of locating it. Although no one except him knew it at that time, the tomb of Amenhotep Ill's grandson—Tutankhamen—had never fallen prey to grave robbers. If the cuff really had been important to the boy king, it would have been interred with him.

All they had to do was locate Tutankhamen's tomb.

“Y'know, it might be better this way,” he said to Vala. “As long as we stay in the Carnarvon's good books, chances are that when they find the tomb, if we're around they'll invite us in to take a look, just like they have with all the tombs they've unearthed so far. And with your skills—”

“It is only small. Besides, if needs be, I've still got my trusty hand device to knock out a few memories.” Vala sighed theatrically and poured herself another glass of tea. “I just wish that you could remember what date Tut's tomb was found, that's all. I mean, I don't mind waiting another year or so I suppose, but at this rate, I'll be too old to bear any of Daniel's children when we do get back.”

It had become a running joke between them, but Cam decided that it was best not to mention the Great War would last for at least four years, after which they'd have to contend with a global pandemic called Swine 'flu. He just hoped in this altered timeline, Carter and Carnarvon managed to survive both.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Teal'c had spent the last minutes carefully making his way across the wreckage in which the jumper was buried. It was imperative he remain unseen, which was becoming increasingly difficult as the spotlights now sweeping the perimeter of the base regularly illuminated his position. In contrast, all the lights in the buildings had now been extinguished. Based on WWII era movies that he had watched, this blackout was an attempt to hinder the targeting capabilities of their perceived enemy.

The misconception they were under attack was doubtless reinforced by O'Neill's inadvertent destruction of the control tower. The flames that now engulfed the tower were spreading rapidly to nearby buildings. The urgent sound of air raid sirens joined those of fire trucks.

The fortunate outcome of this was that all of the soldiers previously on guard at Bomb Pit #1 and the nearby tent housing the bodies of the Asgard clones, had been called from their posts. Consequently, Daniel Jackson and An's emergence from . the cloaked Asgard escape pod remained undetected despite the abrupt nature of its landing sending up a considerable quantity of dust.

Upon seeing Teal'c, An's countenance shifted dramatically. “Then it is true,” he said, pausing at the base of the escape pod's hatch. “The Goa'uld have been defeated and the Jaffa are free.”

“As, too, are the Asgard freed from the scourge of the Replicators,” Teal'c replied bowing his head respectfully. “How can I now be of assistance?”

“Here,” O'Neill called from within the void. A pair of disembodied hands appeared carrying what Teal'c recognized as a section from an Asgard transport.

It took twenty minutes to dismantle the entire transporter and load it into the jumper. The task would have been completed sooner, however they'd had to exercise considerable caution in dodging the relentless sweep of searchlights. Three times they also paused to allow the departure of aircraft, the loss of the control tower failing to hamper flight operations.

They had almost completed the task when a fourth aircraft, a C-54, taxied to Bomb Pit # 1. Eight armed soldiers emerged from the plane, and proceeded to load the crates from the pit, while a truck carrying four additional soldiers arrived at the tent to retrieve the Asgard bodies.

It was evident to Teal'c while they waited in the wreckage of the gully, that both of his teammates were in some pain, the result, no doubt, of prior injuries aggravated by aerial maneuvers. Daniel Jackson had taken further medication to prevent infection and O'Neill had accepted Teal'c's offer to re-strap his ribs—once they had recovered Colonel Carter.

“This is the final component,” An announced when he stepped into the jumper with a small metallic box in hand. “However, the power supply unit is no longer functional.”

“Can you repair it?” Daniel Jackson asked.