Retaliation (7 page)

“This will be a somewhat more responsible posi-tion,” O’Neil assured her dryly. “Fine-but I don’t screw over as easily as the old StarGate team leader,” Barbara said. “She was asking what, if anything, I’d heard about the project.” O’Neil’s eyes were suddenly tracking her like a pair of radar-operated guns.

“You spoke with Catherine Langford?”

Barbara shrugged. “Just a little hi-how-ya-doing?- enough to know that she hadn’t been contacted by West. In my book, that stinks, Colonel. The woman spent her life trying to figure out the riddle of the Star-Gate. She hasn’t got much time left-and you intend to keep her in the dark.”

Barbara glanced over to see how Sha’uri was taking all this. She could see the Abydan girl didn’t under-stand everything that was being said, but from the looks of things, she had a healthy suspicion of General West. That was a good sign. Hmmm. She was actually rather pretty, in a delicate way-like a fine-hewn Egyptian statue.

O’Neil actually seemed jolted. He took a moment be-fore he answered her. “Formidable as Ms.

Langford’s organizational qualities are, they’re not what’s needed on this project,” he finally said.

“She couldn’t come out and play anyway,” Barbara said. “She’s broken a hip and is afraid she’s going to get stuck in a rest home. But she did something odd, Colonel. She sent me a present for Daniel Jackson-as though she expected me to see him.”

Barbara reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and produced a gold chain and bronze pendant. The heavy medallion had been incised thousands of years ago with a symbol that fused a bird’s body with a gi-gantic eye-the Eye of Ra. Dumping it on the desk, she said, “Now that I’ve delivered it, can you give me one reason to stay?”

“You saw that pyramid built over this world’s StarGate.” O’Neil was obviously choosing his words carefully.

“Yeah,” she replied. “A bit more gaudy than sheath-ing the place in limestone, like they did back home.

Reminded me of Vegas.”

O’Neil continued, refusing to respond to her jibes. “You no doubt noticed that this ‘sheathing,’ as you call it, is quite thick.”

“I’ve seen streets that didn’t extend as far,” Barbara admitted. “The artifact was not there when my initial recon-naissance team came to Abydos,” O’Neil continued.

“Wait a second,” Barbara interrupted, her voice sharpening. “You’re not telling me that whole pyramid-“

“Oh, the pyramid was there,” O’Neil said. “But not this so-called sheathing. The stone construction is ac-tually a docking station. But the rest-the section made of quartz material-is a starship. It’s not opera-tional now, unfortunately. Your job-“ the edges of his lips almost rose in a smile-“should you choose to accept it, is to examine the systems on board. See how they work. We’ve found several functional sub-microcomputers on the ship. You’ll be able to get information from them. Sha’uri and her assistants will translate for you. Of special interest are the power plant and engines.”

O’Neil leaned back in his chair, studying Barbara in-tently. “The StarGate is a fascinating artifact, but if we disassembled it to see how it worked, we might end up destroying it. This spaceship offers a complete but nonfunctional stardrive. If you could determine the operating principles-“ “NASA will be going a lot farther than Mars in the next few years.” Barbara gripped the edges of her chair to stop the room from spinning. “An honest-to-Pete starship. Why did-what-?”

“In this case, Doctor, the only relevant question is, ‘How does it work?’ “ The colonel glanced at his watch. “The rest of your team should be arriving within the hour. You’ve already met my aide, Lieutenant Charlton. He’ll serve as your liaison.” For a second O’Neil looked almost human. “I understand you’ve been handed a lot to assimilate. Lieutenant Charlton will show you to your quarters, and Sha’uri will brief you on the local conditions. Good luck, Doctor. I’m expecting you to hit the ground running.”

His eyes turned remote again. “And now, if you’ll excuse me-“ Barbara found herself back in the charge of the young lieutenant. He conducted her and Sha’uri to an-other tent, this one in the shadow of the glassy-golden pyramid-the starship, Barbara corrected herself.

“I’m still arranging accommodations for the rest of your team, Doctor,” Charlton said. “Would you prefer to be briefed-?”

“Actually, I think I’d rather prefer to get de-briefed,” Barbara said, tugging at her sticky jumpsuit. She glanced apologetically at the young man. “Look, Lieutenant. You’ve got things to do, and when the others arrive, we’ll both have people to see. What do you say you come and collect me about five minutes before the troops come through?”

“Yes, ma’am.” At least the young snot didn’t salute. Barbara stepped through the tent flap, beckoning Sha’uri inside. Her bags were parked neatly on the tent’s single cot. “The first thing I want to do is get out of this suit and into something more suitable for the weather. I’m sweating like a pig.”

She unzipped the front of her suit and shrugged it off before she noticed Sha’uri’s expression. “I’m not embarrassing you, am I, darlin’?” “N-no,” Sha’uri said, looking embarrassed. “It’s just that you’re so-“ “

‘Direct’ is the word I think you’re looking for,” Barbara said, rummaging in her luggage. “Would it break any local taboos if I wore these?” she asked, holding out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

“Just that?” Sha’uri said, looking very young.

“I can see that you tend to wear a bit more,” Barbara said, examining the homespun dress and shawl.

“But I’m damned if I’m going to roast if I don’t have to. Are you ashamed of your bodies around here?”

“Ashamed? No.” Sha’uri gestured upward with her hand. “It’s just that the suns-“ “Oh, right,” Barbara said. “Desert people don’t really go in for sunbathing.” “Bathing? In the sun?” Sha’uri’s face showed bafflement.

“I guess that’s a bit of English Daniel didn’t teach you,” Barbara said.

“An idiom,” Sha’uri enunciated carefully.

Barbara grinned. “Yeah, I’m just full of idioms. We don’t actually bathe in the sun. We lie out in the sun’s rays-to get a tan. But I guess under those two babies up there, you could get a hell of a burn-or heat stroke. That’s why you keep that pretty skin of yours wrapped up. Still having trouble following me?”

“Your words-they sound different-“

“That’s because I come from a different part of the country than Daniel. I’ve got a Texas accent, darlin’.”

“ ‘Darlin’, ‘ “ Sha’uri echoed. “Not ‘darling’?”

“Where I come from, they drop some of the final Gs” Barbara said. “And darlin’ probably doesn’t mean as much as when Daniel says it to you.” Sha’uri’s expression was unreadable, but she blushed. “So how did you manage to hook that old boy? He always seemed like such a shy one.”

“If you had tried to ‘hook’ him, you’d probably have scared him to death,” Sha’uri said with a smile.

Barbara laughed out loud. She was beginning to like Sha’uri. “How did you two get together?”

“I first saw him at the mines outside our city of Na-gada,” Sha’uri said. As she continued with her story of gods, wars, and rescues, Barbara’s eyebrows rose. “I see there’s a lot the good colonel didn’t bother to tell me,” she said. “So Ra kept your people illiterate?

Daniel wound up teaching you hieroglyphics as well as English?”

“That’s right,” Sha’uri answered.

“So why isn’t Daniel running the show on the translations?” Before Sha’uri could answer, Barbara went on. “No offense, Sha’uri, but even star pupils aren’t as good as the teacher. We’ll need an expert in ancient Egypt-ian-especially if we’re going to decipher hieroglyph-ics that describe high-tech processes.”

Barbara recalled how Daniel had blasted through the translation of the proto-hieroglyphics on the stone that had covered the StarGate. “I wish your husband was working with us.” Sha’uri gave her an unhappy smile. “So do I, Barbara. So do I.” The young Abydan woman was explaining the tense division of property between Earthlings and Abydans after the seizure of the starship when Charlton returned. “West would have promised us the stars above to let you poke around inside Ra’s Eye,” Sha’uri was say-ing when they heard a male cough outside the tent. “I hope he means-ah, hello, Lieutenant.”

“Ladies,” the young officer greeted them. He turned to Barbara, a spark of interest in his eyes as he took in her tight shorts and T-shirt. “The rest of the technical team should be exiting the StarGate shortly.”

“Fine, Loot,” Barbara said as she headed for the tent flap. Charlton had to hustle to act like a gentleman and twitch it aside for her. “Before we go back into the pyramid, I want to make a stop at the medical tent,” Barbara said as she slipped on a pair of sunglasses. Charlton looked alarmed. “You’re not feeling ill, are you, Doctor?” She shook her head. “I want to see if I can steal one of their lab coats,” she said.

“They’re loose and white, so they’ll help with this intense desert sunshine. And,” she added, grinning as she brushed a hand along her bare thigh, “they’ll help me look a little more profes-sional when I have to greet the troops.”

The smallest lab coat available swirled volumi-nously around Barbara’s shapely figure-apparently in government issue, “small” translated as “medium large.” But Barbara simply buttoned a few buttons and rolled up the sleeves, and had a reasonable facsimile of a caftan as she, Sha’uri, and Charlton set off for the pyramid.

“Make a note-we’re going to need coats like this for everybody,” she told the lieutenant. “And hats. I don’t want anybody suffering sunstroke because they didn’t have a hat.”

“Fifteen hats,” Charlton muttered, jotting down a note.

“So we have fifteen people on the team?” Barbara said. “Does that include me?” “Yes, Doctor, including yourself,” the lieutenant replied. “But not including the Abydan interpreters.”

Sha’uri had raised the shawl she was wearing over her head to avoid the beating suns.

“Quite right.” Barbara smiled at the young woman. “They know how to take care of themselves. Oh, and sunglasses,” she suddenly said. “We have to make sure my people have sunglasses.”

Her own eyewear had to come off when she entered the crippled starship. The relentless glare outside made the directionless light aboard Ra’s Eye seem par-ticularly dim.

“It was worse when we first fought our way aboard,” Sha’uri said. “The lights were hardly work-ing at all, then they went totally dead. Since then we’ve wound up with this dim sort of glow. From what we’ve gotten out of the computer slates, this is emergency lighting.”

Barbara glanced at the young woman, impressed. “So you were able, with Daniel’s help, to make some repairs?”

Sha’uri shook her head. “Our best guess is that some of the circuits repaired themselves. There are references in some of the files we’ve accessed-“ Barbara walked on, frowning in thought. Circuits that repaired themselves? Stardrive could be the least of the things they uncovered aboard this tub. They moved out of the ship and into the ori-ginal pyramid. The metal temporary lights tacked onto stone walls and pillars seemed harsh, an ugly intrusion-lacking the seamlessness of the ship’s high tech, or the clean lines of the low-tech stonework.

A deep throbbing tone seemed to reverberate through the passages. “That’s the StarGate warming up,”

Charlton said. “We’d better hurry, ladies.” Barbara was not about to miss that show. They reached the hall of the StarGate just as the energy backwash billowed out of the energized torus, an au-roral vortex of light seemingly turned liquid.

The field stabilized into a rippling lens of light like a pool of water somehow standing perpendicular to the pull of gravity. Then the surface of the pool became disturbed, as if somebody were diving in. A silhouette appeared in the shimmering field, turning into a hu-man form in silvery bas-relief, then finally becoming a person as the star traveler stepped all the way through to Abydos. “Well, that was intense,”

said the bearded young man staggering drunkenly as he tried to overcome the vertigo of his trip. With a beret cocked at a jaunty angle on his head, he looked like a road-company Che Guevara. “Storey!”

Barbara burst out, running to hug him. She had spent several months cooped up with Special Operator Technician Mitch Storey, and appreciated him both for his sense of humor and his expertise in electronics and controls. He grinned at her. “If I’d known I would get this kind of a welcome, I’d have volunteered to go first all over again.”

A new figure formed in the shimmering StarGate lens, resolving into a face and body that Barbara didn’t know. The man managed a shaky smile as he saw Barbara’s arms around Storey. “Isn’t there anyone to catch me?” “Dr. Barbara Shore, meet Pete Auchinloss. Or should I say Professor Peter-“ “I know who Professor Auchinloss is,” Barbara said. “One of the hottest shots in the world of mainframe computing.”

More men and women came through, a baker’s dozen of experts from technicians to designers of ex-otic weaponry.

“Wait a second,” Barbara said, counting. “Haven’t we got one more?”

“Your translation expert,” Charlton said.

“Yeah, he was a little nervous at committing himself to the StarGate,” Storey said with a grin. “Hold on, here he comes.”

A bulky figure appeared in silhouette against the ra-diance of the StarGate. It resolved itself into a tall, stocky man with heavy features and an Oliver North haircut. Barbara instantly recognized pompous Dr.

Gary Meyers, on loan from Harvard to the original StarGate project. Barbara always figured Harvard had given Meyers to the government to get rid of a pain in the ass around campus. But for once the professor’s face wasn’t set in its usual expression of complacent condescension. Meyers gulped, took a couple of shambling steps, then vomited all over the floor.

“Thanks, Gary,” Barbara said as she jumped aside. “Nice to see you, too.”

The room was dark and stuffy as Gerekh sat on a low stool behind an empty counter. Most merchants of Nagada conducted business beneath awnings in the marketplaces. The bargains Gerekh made, however, could not be carried on in the open.

Gerekh was mildly surprised as his bulky door-keeper brought three customers in. They stood blink-ing in the difference between burning sunlight and the shadows inside. Almost unbidden, the merchant’s hand slid to the butt of the handgun he kept under the counter.