Heart's Desire (33 page)

“So we pack up,” Jack said.

“I should have known,” Reba said. “You were lying to me from the start, weren't you?” Her tone of voice made Jack raise his zat to cover her.

“I made a mistake,” Daniel said.

“A very convenient one for you!”

“Well, yes, since you were planning to sell us to Asherah
—”

“Hello,” said Jack.

“She was planning to sell us to Asherah. Well, mainly Teal'c, but also me. Which means that even if I had known what was here
—
which I didn't
—
I wouldn't have had a lot of motivation to tell the truth, would I?”

“We had a deal,” Reba said. “I swear to you, you're going to regret treating me this way. One of these days
—”

“Yes, you will absolutely come through the Stargate and wreak terrible revenge,” Daniel said. He sounded like he'd been fighting to keep his temper in check for a long time, and was finally losing it. “The thing is, at this point you're going to have to get in line.”

“We have many more powerful enemies than yourself,” Teal'c said, sounding like he was perversely proud of that.

Sam heard a faint noise. It might have been nothing, only one of the rocks they had disturbed when they came down settling, but it occurred to her that according to Teal'c, two more of Reba's people were down here in this maze of corridors, and that while they were arguing, no one was keeping watch.

She turned in time to see Keret framed in the doorway.

“So you did find your treasure,” he said, his eyes on Reba.

“There's no treasure,” Daniel said. “There's nothing down here worth a fight.”

“I thought you said you couldn't land your ship,” Sam said.

“I lied,” Keret said impatiently. “Hand it over.”

“He's right,” Reba said. “There's nothing to hand over.”

“You expect me to believe that? After the way you betrayed me? You ran off with two very valuable captives after I did all the work to set up their capture.”

“I'm very sorry it worked out that way for you, I really am, but there's no treasure,” Daniel said, pointing to the stone heart. “There's just this thing, which
—”

“Shut up,” Keret said.

Reba spread her hands in what might have been self-mockery. “What are you going to do, Keret? Fight me for a treasure that was never really there?”

“You think you've made a fool of me again,” Keret said. “Not ever again, Reba.” He twisted his right wrist, and Sam remembered the knife. If he threw it—

It wasn't a knife blade flashing in his hand, but a zat. She had all the weapons she'd taken from Keret's crew, but there could have been a hundred hiding places aboard the ship, and Keret had been on every deck alone at some point during the long night.

She was still arming her own zat when Keret fired.

D
aniel watched Reba fall, thrown back by the zat's blast, sprawled across the floor with her long hair trailing. Like Sha're. Sha're had fallen like that, and he had crawled to her, touched her face and watched her die.

He felt strangely unreal, like he was watching the scene unfold in slow motion, from somewhere outside himself. Jack was turning to cover Keret, but there was something wrong with the motion, a stagger off balance that even Daniel could see was going to make his shot go wide. He could hear Sam's zat arming, but Keret was aiming again with a wolf's smile of satisfaction, his hand already tightening around the zat for the second shot.

He couldn't reach Reba in time, but there had to be something he could do, some way to buy a few seconds. He could feel the warmth under the stone, inches from his fingers, and he thought, all we need is a distraction.

He pressed his palm to the stone, fingers spread to touch all four chambers of the heart as the inscription directed, and felt the stone shift under his hand, bathing the room in pulsing waves of scarlet light.

Well, that ought to be a distraction
, he had time to think, and then everything changed.

Daniel was rifling through stacks of papers, pulling out the articles he wanted to read over the weekend, when there was a tentative knock on the half-open door of his office. A young man with a backpack slung over his shoulder leaned in hopefully.

“Dr. Jackson? I was hoping I could talk to you about my paper.”

“Absolutely, but not right now,” Daniel said. “I'm on my way to lunch, and I have classes all afternoon. How about signing up for an appointment during my office hours next week?”

The kid shrugged philosophically and retreated out into the hallway to find the sign-up sheet. Daniel stacked another photocopied article on top of the teetering stack and glanced at his watch.

“Oops,” he said, and grabbed for his coat. He dashed out the door, narrowly avoiding a collision with his student, who was scratching his name onto the sign-up sheet with its dangling pen.

He tried to remember what paper this was. The kid was researching Mayan pyramids
—
was that it? Or had he been proposing possible explanations for that strange find Daniel had read about, a perfectly preserved sarcophagus in a Mayan ruin?

The thought made Daniel uneasy for some reason as he shouldered his way out the front door of the Archaeology building and headed for the parking lot. He shook the feeling off. It was an amazing find, and one that certainly supported his own theories about connections between various cultures in pre-modern times.

He'd have to see if he could make time to see it. Between his classes and the lecture series he'd committed to, it was a busy spring, but since he wasn't going on a dig that summer, he could probably make a day trip. He'd have to find that article again, see where they had sent the sarcophagus after its excavation…

He tossed his briefcase into the car and peeled out of the lot, braking abruptly a couple of times as students wandered across the road. He'd been teaching long enough to learn that students as a species had no sense of self-preservation, and it was probably better to be late to lunch than it was to mow down undergraduates.

 
It was nearly 12:30 when he scrambled into the little Thai restaurant, hanging up his coat and waving at Mrs. Suprija, who was taking another customer's order and gave him a scolding look as he went by.

“I am sorry,” he said, sliding into a seat at his usual table. “I was trying to find some stuff to take home this weekend, and then Peter Utkin showed up wanting to talk about the thing he's writing about the Mayans…”

Sha're shook her head at him in tolerant amusement. “Someday I will teach you to be on time, my Daniel.” She had a cup of tea at her elbow, still steaming
—
Mrs. Suprija had probably been solicitously refilling it
—
and the remains of a rice-paper wrapped spring roll on a plate in front of her. “You must excuse me for starting without you,” she said, smiling and cupping her hand protectively over her belly. “Your son was hungry.”

 
“Well, let's order him some curry,” Daniel said. “Although I really think milk is more traditional.”

“Plenty of time for that,” Sha're said. “And while we are speaking of it, my father called this morning to tell the flights he will be taking from Egypt. You can pick him up at the airport?”

“Assuming you're not in labor at the time,” Daniel said. He felt that undercurrent of uneasiness again, and frowned as Mrs. Suprija put a cup of tea in front of him, although he murmured thanks to her. It was probably just nerves. Everyone said that was normal for a first-time father. “I'll have the red curry.”

“He is not coming until nearly a month after the baby is due,” Sha're said. “Surely even your son will not be as late as that.”

“I hope not,” Daniel said. “The suspense is killing me.”

“All is well,” Sha're said. “You are more nervous than I am, I think.”

“I'm not nervous,” Daniel said. “It's just the idea of actually having an actual baby…”

Sha're shook her head, smiling at him. “That is the point of the process.”

“I know.”

“And your parents will be here as well.”

“I hope they don't drive you crazy.”

“They will not,” Sha're said. Her smile was teasing. “And I will know that in a few days they will go home, and then I can put my house back in order as I like it.”

“I know my mom has a bad habit of rearranging cabinets,” Daniel said. “It's some kind of organizational archaeologist gene.”

“Perhaps it will inspire your son to keep his toys in order.”

“I don't remember that it ever did that when I was a child.”

“Daniel,” Sha're said. “You worry too much.”

“It's just that I'm happy,” Daniel said. “I'm happy and I don't want anything to screw that up.”

“I am happy, too,” Sha're said. “Although I am ready for this baby to be born. And if it would make you more content to be less happy, wait until this summer when you are fetching things for a yelling baby, instead of in Egypt up to your elbows in sand.”

“We'll go next summer,” Daniel said. “My parents took me on digs when I was a year old. We'll just have to make sure that he doesn't fall in a hole or try to chew on anything pre-dynastic.”

 
“My father is used to keeping children from harm at the dig sites,” she said. “Although I think I gave him much gray hair.”

She had told him the story many times, of slipping away from her father to wander among the half-excavated pyramids as she had been strictly forbidden to do, descending the stairs with a makeshift torch until she found a chamber richly inscribed with hieroglyphs that had fascinated her for years afterwards.

“If you hadn't, we would never have found the Abydos wall paintings,” Daniel said. She had led him to them soon after they met, and the moment he had seen them, he'd known this was what he was looking for, a perfectly preserved account of the coming of the pyramid builders to the city of Abydos in Upper Egypt, and their eventual and hard-won defeat at the hands of the native Egyptians.

It had raised more questions than it answered, of course, as every significant discovery did. The identity of the invaders was still in question, and some of the theories were off the wall enough that even Daniel couldn't believe them. The extent of contact between societies in the ancient world had been far greater than anyone had previously believed, but to suggest as his grandfather was now doing that the pyramid builders had been aliens…

But if his greatest annoyance was the very public argument that he'd been having with Nick for years in archaeological journals, that wasn't much for him to complain about. It wouldn't stop Nick from turning up when the baby was born with a bottle of advocaat. Probably he'd start trying to persuade the baby that his own theories were correct while it was still in the cradle.

“Daniel?”

“Sorry,” Daniel said. “Just thinking about how we met.”

Sha're smiled. “You were so reluctant,” she said. “I cannot believe how you made me chase you. It was very unseemly.”

“Well, your father was throwing you at me, and I wasn't sure…”

“That I knew my own mind?” She shook her head at him as one of Mrs. Suprija's sons put plates down in front of them. “Believe me, Daniel,” Sha're said. “It is not so easy for anyone to make me do anything I do not want.”

“I've figured that out,” Daniel said, but he felt the same unexplained shiver down his spine. He told himself firmly to cut it out. It was a beautiful day, he still had more than an hour before his next class, and although he could probably find something to worry about if he tried, he couldn't really complain about very much at all.

“Eat your food before it is cold,” Sha're said. “And before you are late again and leave your students waiting in their classroom like so many lost little sheep.”