Retaliation (12 page)

and “The Prodigal’s Return.” Suddenly, Daniel was glad that Faizah had con-vinced the driver to drop her at the base camp first. Daniel had serious business at hand, and it wouldn’t help if people thought he’d been off junketing with his pretty protegee. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out of the vehicle.

Kasuf stepped forward. “Husband of my daugh-ter,” he greeted Daniel. “Son. We were so worried when we heard your caravan had been attacked-“ Daniel cut off the rest of the speech. “We’ve got bigger worries than that.” He spoke in Abydan, letting his anger take command. “The attack on me was just a symptom. We need to deal with the whole disease.” He looked from Kasuf’s shocked face to the other surprised councilors, all standing around in their fancy robes of office.

“We freed a world, but now that world needs gov-erning. What does your council stand for, other than your own interests? It barely governs Nagada. You haggle over deals with the farm clans, deciding who will be important where. But nothing is getting done! Every day a little bit more of Nagada falls to pieces, while out in the desert our people rend one another like wild animals.” Kasuf was pale with anger. “It is a fine thing to talk about governing, but I don’t have the omnipotent power of a Ra. I can’t stretch out my hand and cleanse the desert of thieves, nor can I make food where there is none. The farm clans are the ones with the food, and they play their own games. We all know how well a man can eat if he sells a rifle or a grenade-yes, or even a blast-lance! The nearer enclaves fear us; those farther away accuse us of cheating them. I respect you, Daniel, but this is a knot that will not untie easily.” Daniel pointed at himself.

“It took a bullet flying past my ear to open my eyes. It was a narrow escape, but I don’t care for myself.

If we keep on going as we have, hoping for a slow resolution, the animals out there will end up killing all of us!”

He’d never been so brutally hard on Kasuf. Even when he had showed the Abydan that the gods he worshiped were merely men in masks, it hadn’t been a personal attack. And it hadn’t been an assault in front of his fellow Elders. For a second as Daniel stormed off, he was ashamed of himself. Then he hardened his heart. Things had to change on this planet. From now on, there could be no business as usual.

Daniel busied himself for a while with the affairs of his academy, but in the end he knew he’d have to go home.

Here comes round two, he thought.

Sha’uri had a good-size fire going, but even as she stood beside it, she had her arms wrapped around her body as if to ward off a chill. “Welcome, Professor Jackson,” she said bitterly. “Have you been working on another interesting lecture?”

“I said something that needed saying,” Daniel responded. Her hands came down and clenched into fists.

“You spoke to my father as I’ve never seen you speak to your stupidest pupil! And what was his crime?

We were all worried about you! He was being thankful for your narrow escape.” “That’s the problem!”

Daniel burst out. “We have feasts to welcome people to the city, little ceremonies to greet them after returning. And we’re not getting any work done.”

“Those things you sneer at are very important work.” Sha’uri glared at him. “They’re the traditions that hold this place together while we try to move for-ward. Not that you helped that cause today! Father didn’t mention it in front of all those people, but there are enough factions here in Nagada setting up their private armies and arsenals. They’re just as ready to kill those who oppose them as those ‘animals’ you met in the desert. And you ought to know that!”

“So why does Kasuf shy away from mentioning them?” Daniel demanded.

“Because some of his most dangerous enemies were standing in the crowd today!” Sha’uri responded.

“You’ve never much paid attention to how the Elders worked in council. So perhaps it may be news for you that some of the people buying up the food in this town-and running the marketplace for guns-are re-spected Elders.” “Then Kasuf should expose them,” Daniel said.

“You forget where this all comes from,” Sha’uri said in frustration. “The council was a mutual-aid society in the slave days. Council members aren’t supposed to rat on one another. If a member seems to threaten the others, he ends up isolated.”

“Great! The closest thing you have to a government operates like a gang of thieves!”

She stepped face-to-face with him. “Someone with an interest in language could probably make a won-derful lecture on how you switch from ‘we’ to ‘you’ in this discussion. Yes, ‘we’ don’t have elections the way ‘you’ do on ‘your’ planet-for the last two hundred years, if I remember rightly. Since time out of mind, ‘we’ were slaves. ‘Our’ government was in the hands of a mighty but cruel god-and we could do little for ourselves. Abydos has a lot to learn-but maybe you have a lot to decide, Earthman.”

Daniel could feel a hot flush creeping onto his face. “I made my decision when I decided to stay here. I want all of us to have a future. And I finally realized today that Abydos won’t have a future if we stick with the Elders.” “So who chooses this future? The militia? There are enough people there who want to run things. Or the new merchants who only want to amass your Earth coins and use them to buy a tee-vee? The beggars in the streets? They’d like a tee-vee, too, but they don’t want to work for it. What about the ones who think that those silver coins are Set’s own invention-they ruined our nice, simple lives? There are a lot of them about, you know. It was so much easier having some-one to tell them what to do-even if it was a Horus guard. They’re still slaves-and there are plenty of would-be masters.”

“So what’s your problem?” Daniel demanded, stung. “Your family doesn’t like the competition?”

Sha’uri’s lips twisted as if she’d just tasted some-thing bitter. “I’m sick to death with those little pin-pricks of yours about the ‘soft life’ we had. If it was so good, why do you think we rose against Ra?

We were slaves, and had to work just as hard as any of the other slaves on Abydos! If my father sat at the head of the welcome feasts, that merely meant he was the first target for any of Ra’s people who came here.”

She leaned into him, her finger digging into his chest. “Do you remember your first night here? Our first night? We saw you as a strange figure, a golden man wearing the Eye of Ra. When Father noticed your interest in me, he ... asked me to give myself to you.” Sha’uri’s voice quivered a little. “And I went, be-because I thought you were kind.”

Her tone hardened. “But any of Ra’s people, any who wore the golden masks, could have demanded me.”

Daniel gaped. “Your father pimped you-?”

His whole head rocked from the force of her open-handed blow. “You still don’t understand!” she cried. “My father- all of us!-walked the edge of a knife serving Ra. And when Ra’s anger fell on Nagada, it fell on my father first and most heavily.”

Sha’uri was shouting now. “That was our ‘easy life’-being a target while trying to protect the people.

And if you ask me, what my father did was much harder than tearing everything down, like that gang behind Faizah wants to do.” “This has nothing to do with Faizah!” Daniel shouted back. “Oh, no. You disrupt your classes and our transla-tion schedule to go off with that bimbo-“ “You’ve been talking too much with Barbara Shore again,” Daniel tried to interrupt.

Sha’uri paid no attention. “Just because she decided you should see a farm. She almost got you killed-“

“She saved my life!” Daniel protested.

“She’s not the first one!” Sha’uri yelled louder. “Jack O’Neil has saved your life! Skaara has saved your life! Kawalsky has probably saved your life! And dammit, I’ve saved your life, Daniel!” she shouted into his face. “But now a bullet has passed your ear, and none of that counts anymore.” “I’m fighting the same battle we fought then,” Daniel said, storming off. “It’s too bad you have other battles in mind.” He turned back at the door. “I can be reached at my office.” Then he left.

Sha’uri stood looking into the fire for a long while. Then she packed up a few items and headed for the market square. The Marines usually had a medical unit stationed there-part of its outreach program. She should be able to get a lift to the base on their Humvee.

I just hope Barbara Shore doesn’t mind an unexpected guest, she thought as she left.

Untended, the fire quickly burned out and died.

Sitting in his office in yesterday’s travel-stained robes, Daniel Jackson sipped a cup of herb tea and stared unseeing at the messages on his desk. One, typewritten on crisp paper, was the weekly request from Barbara Shore to help translate the mountain of mystery files her people were getting out of the starship’s computers.

The translation project-where Sha’uri and Faizah were working.

Fat chance of him turning up over there very soon.

The other notes were scrawled on scraps of paper or on chalkboards, some in Abydan hieroglyphics.

They mainly had to do with running the school. Some-how, he couldn’t summon up much interest in them right now. Daniel rested his face in his hands. Bad move. It re-minded him he needed a shave.

He could probably get a quick wash at one of the halls of bathing. They’d even shave him there. The question was, where could he get hold of a tooth-brush? Most of the Marines he had been halfway friendly with were gone. He’d annoyed most of the rest, thanks to his never-ending quest for condoms-Well, he wouldn’t need those anymore, it seemed.

If only Kawalsky were still around! The big guy was pretty decent, when he wasn’t so busy being The Lieu-tenant. What did the enlisted men call him? Ell-tee?

One thing was certain. There was no way on Abydos he could talk to Jack O’Neil. “Jackson”-he seemed to hear the colonel’s voice- “do you just intend to make a career out of being a dork?”

“You can call me anything you want, Colonel, as long as you get me a toothbrush.” Abruptly, Daniel realized this wasn’t an imagined conversation. O’Neil’s voice had come from the door, and he’d answered out loud.

A little shamefaced, Daniel turned to the door.

Colonel Jack O’Neil hadn’t spiffed up for this per-sonal call. He was wearing what Daniel considered the colonel’s standard undress uniform-a tight black T-shirt over a baggy pair of chocolate-chip fatigue pants. O’Neil’s trademark black beret was rolled up and neatly stowed in a pocket. He was still shaking his head over Daniel’s brilliant response. “As usual, out in the Twilight Zone,” the Marine commander said. “I probably should be glad you didn’t answer me in ancient Assyrian or something.” His eyes narrowed. “If you’re really serious about that toothbrush, you can go home and get your own. Your wife moved in with Barbara Shore last night. That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about.” He paused.

“Personally and unofficially, of course.”

“How else?” Daniel asked with an ironic smile.

“I found out about your wife this morning, when Dr. Shore informed me she’d be staying.” O’Neil’s jaw muscles tightened for a moment. “She thought it would be a simple matter of moving in a better cot and fixing up an extra helping in the mess tent. It’s not as easy as all that, unfortunately. I’ll have to explain why I’ve got a foreign national camping out in the middle of a high-security establishment. When Dr.

Shore told me what had happened, we both agreed that you had to be a dork to the nth power.”

“That sounds like a physicist,” Daniel agreed.

“She called you a lot of other things, too,” O’Neil assured him. “For myself, I was reminded of a current bit of military slang. You ever hear the phrase ‘Foxtrot Bravo?’ “ Daniel shrugged. “Can’t say that I have.”

“It’s from the phonetic alphabet. We use it for clear identification of letters in radio transmissions,”

O’Neil explained with commendable patience. “A is Alpha, B is Bravo, C is Charlie, and so on. In Vietnam, Victor Charlie was the VC, Vietcong.”

“And Foxtrot Bravo?” Daniel asked.

“It stands for fucking bastard-which is what you’re being,” O’Neil told him baldly. “You had quite an eventful time yesterday. First, one of my long-range patrols picks you up out playing the sheik with, and I quote the unofficial report, ‘a prime piece of ass.’ “ O’Neil’s eyes seemed to be focused above his head.

So why did Daniel feel like something the colonel wanted to scrape off his boot soles? “I was going to admonish the officer in question until I discovered that Sha’uri had been engaged yesterday in her translating duties aboard the ship Ra’s Eye. So the woman in question could have been a piece of ass-I wouldn’t know. Although from the description, she sounds like the new addition to the translating staff, who seems to have some interesting political connections.” O’Neil made a brushing gesture with his hand.

“Be that as it may. You returned to Nagada, where no sooner did you enter the city than you began publicly to berate and embarrass Kasuf, your father-in-law and, as far as I can figure out, the one decent political figure on this planet.”

Now O’Neil’s eyes met Daniel’s. “By the way, your wife didn’t tell me about that. My staff comes com-pants with an intelligence section-and it would have been hard for them to miss your performance.

Thanks to you, it’s estimated that Kasuf’s position vis-a-vis the Council of Elders has been seriously damaged. But that wasn’t enough. You still managed an argument with your wife that succeeded in driving you both out of your own house.”

O’Neil gave him a drill sergeant’s stare. “I’m sur-prised you didn’t manage to cap it all off with a drunken brawl somewhere,” he said gently. Daniel tried to meet O’Neil’s scrutiny with a cool, disinterested stare, but his face felt tight and hot. Still, he tried to brazen it out. “Well, when you’re on a roll. ..”

The colonel shook his head in wonder. “We’ll have to invent a new term for you.

Delta Foxtrot Bravo. Dumb fucking bastard.”

His tone showed that any amusement he’d taken from this exchange was now gone. “My intel people say you’re getting more into politics, Doctor-maybe over your head. I can’t say, ‘Don’t do that.’ You’re a free agent. But I hope you’re going in with your eyes open. The situation in Nagada-all over Abydos-is far more volatile than any college-campus ‘isms’ you may have experienced. Think about it. Your actions have already gotten people hurt. You may do worse.” “Why is everyone getting on my case?” Daniel ex-ploded. “I finally had my nose rubbed in how wrong things have gotten around here. I’m trying to save the world.”