When their guests began to calm down and once more relax back into party mode, Inanna, Teal’c, and Gibil quietly disappeared. A call to the base told them that no vessels other than the Heaven’s Bow were nearby. If a vessel was cloaked, they wouldn’t know, anyway.
When Martin and Joy Applegate arrived, Daniel was excused from the pow-wow. He greeted their sons, Stewart and Dennis, introduced Stacy, and the boys went to find the other boys. Daniel took Martin and Joy into the house for a little initial private time. The two were actually disappointed that they just missed the ghoul of Christmas Past. They were tickled to meet T’Keet, however, and were amused when she fell into a nap across Daniel’s shoulders which he assured them was typical behavior. He had a feeling she was about to hit a growth spurt, hence her napping more than she was awake. A few people had been subject to the cub falling into a nap while she was being loved.
Nate was once more entertaining cubs and small children. He had gathered the littles into a group for games and nursery songs. After the first song, Jack found himself the center of attention as SGC personnel looked speculatively at him.
“Don’t even think it!” he ordered them.
The children were becoming cranky, so Nate and Sam took them all into the library, spread sheets out on the floor, and helped parents settle the children in for a nap.
Sam had discovered that Nate exhibited more of Jack’s playful, gentle side than Jack did. She admitted to liking the young man and could see the positive effect he had on Cassie.
Jack stuck a carrot in his mouth like a cigar while he was looking for another case of soda he was sure he had bought when,
“Jonathan Charles!”
Everyone within hearing range winced and made to escape. Maggie reached out and grabbed an ear.
“Ow!”
“Not you,” she ordered.
“Mom?” Jack questioned. He wondered what Nate did to piss off Mom.
His parents stood in the kitchen doorway, his mother glaring at him and his father resigned.
“Jonathan, is there something you haven’t told me?” Maggie demanded. Jack waved a carrot in confusion. “I gave birth to you, Jonathan, don’t think for one minute I don’t remember what you looked like, and SOUNDED like, at nineteen.” She grabbed Nate’s hair and tilted his face up. Jack put the carrot down and gently removed her hand from Nate’s locks.
“Mom, I told you, he’s my son,” Jack said carefully. “I love you and that’s all I’m telling you. Please accept him as presented and don’t ask questions.” He kissed her cheek. “Because this is the only answer you will get. Dad?”
His father came forward and took Maggie by the elbow. “Come on, dear, why don’t we take a cue from the children, and go for a nap? I’m a little tired, myself.”
There was silence for a moment after they left the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Nate said.
“She was bound to notice at some point,” Jack said, one eyebrow lifted as he shook his head. “I’m surprised it wasn’t sooner. Let her sleep it off, she’ll be calmer in a while. I think Dad already guessed something was up, but he knows enough not to say anything.”
“They’re getting on, Jack,” Nate warned.
“I know.”
Daniel stuck his head into the room. “Is everything alright?” he asked, looking around.
“Yeah,” Jack said.
Martin and Joy were behind Daniel, looking worried.
“Mom knows something’s up with Nate,” Jack murmured in Goa’uld. He pretends well, but Daniel knows Jack understands more than he lets on. As a Special Ops agent, Jack needed to speak at least simple sentences in various languages, for whichever country he happened to be working in. Daniel had heard him speak a little Spanish, Italian, and French. His German was horrendous, so Daniel begged him not to even try. Jack couldn’t break the languages down, but he could memorize a few words and phrases. “Dad took her for a nap. I told her she isn’t getting any information other than what I’ve already told her.”
Jack introduced Nate to Daniel’s family.
“Mom sometimes has a hard time separating the general from her son,” Jack explained. They smiled in understanding.
Martin said, “I was in the Gulf, and my folks had a hard time when I couldn’t talk about certain things.”
“You were in the Gulf?” Jack perked up. “Me, too, whereabouts?” Jack wasn’t going to tell Martin exactly what he had been doing or where he ended up, and Martin sensed evasions and knew better than to ask, but they bonded over shared war stories as Daniel took Joy outside and introduced her around.
“I take it you weren’t in any wars?” Joy asked him in amusement.
Daniel shook his head. “Only if you want to call the recent stuff war,” he said. “I was a teenager during the Gulf. Jack doesn’t like to hear how old I was then; it gives him a headache to be reminded of our age difference.”
She looked at him with a raised brow.
“Seventeen years,” he told her in a stage whisper. She laughed.
“Uncle Danny!” David ran up to him. “Can I have the cake?” He pointed toward the table laden treats.
“Not that one,” Daniel told him. “You can have those cookies and pastries,” he said, pointing toward trays that were labeled Davy-safe. David picked a black and white frosted kosher cookie that was almost as big as his face, and happily sank his teeth into it. Daniel gave Joy a quick explanation of David’s allergies. He could have the little bit of wheat and almonds that were in the cookies and pastries, made special just for Davy at a kosher bakery, but the cake would send him to the hospital.
“I’ve heard you called Danny a couple of times,” Joy mentioned. “Which do you prefer?”
“Daniel,” he said with a smile. He gave her a rundown of who gets to call him Danny, basically his partners and the kids. He did appreciate her asking, though, instead of assuming, and he shuddered at being called Dan.
Inanna, Teal’c, and Gibil appeared in a stream of light. Daniel pointed toward the house and they marched in. He directed Joy’s attention elsewhere. She took the sudden appearance rather well, considering she had never seen anyone beam in before.
Jack excused himself from Martin and locked himself in his study with the three.
“Camulus isn’t sure what Baal is after,” Inanna told him. “He seemed honestly surprised, Jack; I believe him.”
“He is currently video taping a report of his activities from the time he left the SGC to the time we picked him up,” Gibil reported. “If he is lying, his report should show the discrepancies.”
Jack frowned. “T, you agree?”
“I do,” Teal’c inclined his head. “He did not believe some of us no longer carried a symbiote; I showed him my empty pouch, long since dried up. He showed fear and swore he was telling the truth. I have not seen such emotion on a Goa’uld, not since Apophis died. Camulus said he would put in his report all he knew about the dwindling Jaffa slave numbers, and which of the System Lords he knew to be still alive.”
“Alright,” Jack conceded. “Make sure he says everything he discussed with Baal, word for word, and everything he may have overheard, including rumors. I suppose it’s possible he’s unaware of whatever knowledge Baal seems to think he has.”
Inanna gave a nod to Gibil and he beamed himself back to the ship.
“Inanna, what kind of relationship do Enlil and Baal have?” Jack asked. “Or did have.”
“Not much of one,” she said, thinking. “We were in Kalam much longer than the Goa’uld were on the planet, but they were, for the most part, in and around the Red Sea area. Kalam was what your people called Sumer.
“Egypt and Sumer were quite distant from each other. If Enlil had knowledge of Baal, we didn’t know about it. We started hearing reports of strange gods from the slaves that were coming into our city from the west, so my father sent Enlil to investigate. Enlil returned a changed person. He had always been arrogant but now he was impossible, demanding that we worship him and be his slaves. Us. His peers. We refused and Enlil began a war. Father was one of the first killed, and then my brother and our mother.”
“Wait,” Jack stopped her with a raised hand, his mind racing. “Enlil just tried to take Iraq. Was he looking for something other than new slaves?”
Inanna looked at him, blank. “Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “I can ask my sister and Enki, but if anything was left behind, I cannot think of what it could be.”
Jack picked at his lower lip as he slowly paced. He nodded.
“Alright,” he said. “We need to talk with Daniel, too, have him go over the myths and see if he can spot anything. We’re in no rush, so how about we enjoy the rest of the day and we’ll pick this up on Monday?”
They exited the house and Jack gave a subtle All Clear hand sign. The military relaxed. Jack motioned to Davis.
“Clear my appointments for Monday,” he told Paul. “I don’t want to disrupt Gen. Landry’s day, so we will be meeting here. I want you, Daniel, Inanna and whomever she wishes to join us. Make sure we have plenty of coffee ready for a brainstorming session.”
“Yes, sir. Daniel has a class on Monday, 0900 until 1100.”
“Fine, he’s excused until noon, I’ll let him know what I need from him and we’ll work around him until he gets back. Oh, you should probably check with Gen. Landry and make sure he can spare Daniel.” Jack kept forgetting he was no longer in charge of Daniel’s schedule. Davis acknowledged and was excused.
“Sir?” Davis turned back to him. “Would my presence be too close for comfort if I bought your old house?”
Jack looked at him. “I’ve lived a few places, Major, specify.”
“Down the street, sir. I was considering an apartment, but if you don’t mind my saying so, it really is a nice house.”
“Oh. No, I don’t mind,” Jack shrugged. “But the closer you are, the more convenient it will be to toss you an order,” he warned.
“And the more convenient it will be to get it done faster. Sir.”
Jack chuckled and waved at him. “Go for it, Major. It is a nice house. No fish in the pond, though.”
By early evening, things began to wind down. Most of the party-goers had gone home and the few left sat around talking. Jack, Landry, and Hammond talked with Reynolds about possible SG-1 personnel,
David was asleep on Jack’s lap, and Daniel and Sam were in a circle with Bosco and a few other Kid Tree parents finding out about kid play-dates, once a month get-togethers, and their own parent support group. They knew Daniel was a new parent, so they were all open about offering him an ear and advice, if he needed it.
Daniel was amazed; an entire world had just opened up, a world he had no idea had existed the entire time he was at Cheyenne. He was still eccentric Dr. Jackson, but now he had something in common with a few others --he was a parent. Daniel was becoming more and more wide-eyed as he listened to the others talk about their pre-teen and teenagers, and the needs of such, especially the girls.
Sam patted Daniel’s hand and told him she’d deal with the girl issues, if he wanted her to. Daniel immediately took her up on the offer. Bosco told him that Becky Sorenson, wife of Lieutenant Ken Sorenson, an SF, was the keeper of the calendar, so she would add their house to the mailing list.
Bugs began chirping and the rest of the stragglers bid them good night. Jack carried Davy toward the house and noticed Michael standing at the edge of the yard, looking at the darkening sky.
“Mikey? You alright?” Jack asked, walking over to him. He shifted the boy to his shoulder. Davy instinctively wrapped his legs and arms around him, and settled into Jack's shoulder.
“Fine, Jack,” Michael acknowledged. He lifted his face to the sky, breathing deeply. “Do you know that young man, Sgt. Gaafar? Khalid?”
“Yeah, one of Daniel’s,” Jack told him. “What about him?”
“I spent time talking with him today,” Michael said. “He’s a practicing Muslim, did you know that? I rambled on and on, and then he put me to shame with just a few words. He quoted Rumi. Not the Koran, but Rumi. Have you ever read Rumi? He said:
Solomon was busy judging others,
when it was his personal thoughts
that were disrupting the community.
His crown slid crooked on his head,
he put it straight, but the crown went
awry again. Eight times this happened.
Finally he began to talk to his headpiece.
“Why do you keep tilting over my eyes?”
“I have to. When your power loses compassion
, I have to show what such a condition looks like.”
Immediately Solomon recognized the truth.
He knelt and asked forgiveness.
The crown centered itself on his crown.
When something goes wrong, accuse yourself first.
Even the wisdom of Plato or Solomon
can wobble and go blind.
Listen when your crown reminds you
of what makes you cold toward others,
as you pamper the greedy energy inside.
Michael turned to Jack. He gave a light caress to Davy’s back, and stroked his grandson’s hair.
“My crown covered my eyes, Jack. Will you forgive me?”
“Sure, Mike, just don’t kneel, okay?” Jack wasn't being flippant; he was touched by his brother's surprising admission. He never knew what to do with a heartfelt apology, so he just accepted it and moved on.
Michael took Megan and the kids and folks to church in the morning, the home-owners politely declined the invitation and went out for brunch with Martin and Joy, and Mark and Susan. And kids. The O’Neills rejoined them later and they all took over Josh and John’s Ice Cream Parlor where the kids couldn’t decide which wonderful flavor to choose.
Jack’s family had to leave first, needing to catch a plane, Sam and Daniel’s family left a little later, both having driven from their homes.
When the house was quiet and only one kid running around, the adults found a corner to collapse for a nap.
All in all, it had been a productive weekend. Families had been taken care of, in-law bonding had occurred, kidlings given attention to, and SG units were well on their way to new growth. Jack felt as though his kids were all ready to leave the nest.
Sam came into the bedroom and poked Daniel in the shoulder as she lay down.
“You didn’t initialize the parental controls on her computer,” Sam muttered.
“Don’t believe in them,” Daniel croaked from behind his eyelids. “Shouldn’t shield kids from life; it makes them unprepared for life.”
“Yeah, well, YOUR kid surfed her way into Human Sexuality 101 and discovered exactly how men have sex. With each other.”
It took Daniel a moment but he groaned and covered his face with his pillow. Jack chuckled and turned over.
“Ahhh…. as though one Jackson in the house wasn’t enough,” he snickered.
“She’s ten, how did she know what subject to Google?” Daniel whined.
“She’s almost eleven, there are several stations on the satellite that are gay-oriented, and have you taken a good look at the books she reads?” Sam asked. “She’s at least two years ahead of the average 5th grade reading level. Danny, and she’s been reading through Jack’s National Geographic collection. You should get her IQ tested; it will at least tell us what directions we can push and where she needs more help.”
“If she has your brains, it would explain why she doesn’t like school,” Jack murmured, his eyes closed. “She’s bored.”
“Alright, I’ll get with her councilor,” Daniel said. “Am I supposed to go and talk to her about sex?”
“If you want to, but it isn’t necessary,” Sam chuckled. “If she’s at least surfing the correct information, let her think about it for a while, and then bring up the subject in a few days. She should have questions by then and you can explain the difference between love and sex and which sites are not good to look at and which ones are.”
“Sam?”
“Uh huh, chicken little,” Sam snickered. “I’ve already told her about menstrual cycles, you can take care of this.”
Daniel lifted his head. “Isn’t she a little young for Period information?”
“No,” Sam said. “Some girls start as young as nine. I started at eleven, Cass at thirteen.”
Daniel groaned and buried his head again. “Why couldn’t it have been a boy?” came the muffled question. He eventually got up and went to check on her, getting a thrill out of tucking her in and kissing her good night.
“Daddy?”
He turned back toward her.
“Who was that man at the picnic?” she asked.
“Which one, sweetie?”
“The one who just appeared and talked with Jack and Inanna.”
“Ah. That was Baal,” he told her, going back and sitting on the edge of her bed. “He’s a Goa’uld System Lord. We go back a long ways. He’s a very bad person.”
“Can’t Jack arrest him or something?”
Daniel held back the laugh. “I wish he could, but it doesn’t work like that. Baal wasn’t really here, that was a holograph of him. You know on Star Wars how they can appear on the little tables and talk to each other? Like that.”
“I know what a hologram is, Dad. Is he going to come back?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “He might, but he only comes to talk to Jack, and not very often. In fact, I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“He was creepy.”
“Yes, he was; you don’t need to worry about him, though, because he doesn’t live around here.”
She was satisfied and he leaned down to kiss her cheek again. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him hard.
“I love you,” he told her. “Go to sleep.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
Daniel went back into his bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed, looking from Jack to Sam. “Jack, our daughter wants you to arrest Baal.”
“Oh, if it were only that easy,” Jack commented.
Sam laughed softly as Daniel grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward him. “You’re a bully in bed, do you know that?” she asked him. He ignored her as he pulled her top off and flung it across the room.
In the morning Daniel dropped Stacy off at school and stopped in to see her councilor. When Daniel told her what Stacy’s reading materials were and what his own IQ was, she gulped and immediately agreed to have Stacy tested.
Jack spent the morning with Inanna and Ninurta, reading the translation of Camulus’ report and had to admit he couldn’t spot any discrepancies. Living with Baal was hell, though, from what Jack was reading. Davis didn’t comment when he saw the new reading glasses.
When Daniel came home, he had a pile of books all tagged. He helped himself to pizza, something the Anunnaki had discovered, along with chocolate, and paused before opening one of the books.
“I spent my class time looking through the myths,” he said. “Hi, guys. My students tagged everything they felt was questionable, and since they know nothing about Middle Eastern mythology, a lot was questionable. I like one question, in particular, though.” He paced before them as he read from the book, lecturing to his class as he waved pizza around like a pointer.
From the trunk of the tree he carved a throne for his holy sister.
From the trunk of the tree Gilgamesh carved a bed for Inanna.
From the roots of the tree she fashioned a pukku for her brother.
From the crown of the tree Inanna fashioned a mikku for Gilgamesh,
the hero of Uruk.
Daniel, Jack, and Davis looked at Inanna and Ninurta.
“Actually, the translation is slightly off,” she commented. “B not G. Bilbamesh. The beginning G-translation is Babylonian; he was Sumerian.”
“We know that, but the G translation has stuck. We’ve never been able to figure out what pukku and mikku were,” Daniel told her. “The current guess is that they are a ceremonial drum and drumstick.” They were unsure of what he was translating so he wrote out the cuneiform of the words in question. His pronunciation was a little off.
“They were weapons,” Inanna told him. “A pukku was almost like a Jaffa staff, only smaller, about arm’s length, and a mikku was an orbital satellite. Both were destroyed during the war with Enlil. And your scribes did a little of their own editorializing because it wasn’t Bilbamesh who received these, it was my brother, Utu.”
Daniel considered that as he finished the pizza and sipped long at Jack’s soda. The sun god was her brother… “And he is where?”
“He died in the war, along with our parents,” she told him. Daniel murmured his condolences.
“It does make more sense for the god of the sun to be in control of an orbital satellite…..” Daniel muttered to himself as he paced. “What if the scribes were almost correct but were a little mixed up on the time line?” he thought out loud. “What if the weapons were not originally destroyed, they were found by Gilgamesh and HE then lost them? According to the myths, he lost them to the underworld. They fell in after what sounds to me like a strong earthquake that tore a hole in the Earth's crust, Enkidu tried to rescue them, and Enkidu was also lost.”
Inanna looked at Ninurta and they both shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose,” she conceded. “Bilbamesh was incredibly power-hungry, and Enkidu was smitten enough with his king that he would have done anything for him,.” Daniel frowned, thinking. Something sounded off, but he wasn’t placing it.
Jack leaned forward. “Are these weapons powerful enough that Baal would come after them?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ninurta acknowledged. “If they still existed. The mikku was able to identify cloaked vessels and the pukku…..” He turned to look at Inanna who also sat up straighter.
“What?” Jack and Daniel said. Davis paused in his note taking.
“No,” Inanna murmured to Ninurta. “It couldn’t still be there….”
“What!” Jack was on the edge of his seat.
“The pukku was able to kill symbiotes without damaging the host,” Ninurta said. “It worked on a harmonic frequency. But that isn’t what we’re thinking of.”
“The chair,” Daniel guessed, snapping the book shut. “It isn’t just any chair.”
“No,” Inanna said. “It’s a control chair. And the bed was a sarcophagus, which I never used.”
“Wait a minute,” Jack held up a hand as he followed the thinking in the room. Or tried to. Mythological images were never something he could figure out. “There’s a control chair and sarcophagus unaccounted for on this planet?”
“It is possible,” Inanna told him with a nod.
“No,” Jack shook his head. “Are they made with naquadah? We’ve scanned the planet for naquadah.”
“No, sir, I’m sorry, but we haven’t,” Davis spoke up. “The only areas we’ve scanned were those you and General Hammond asked us to. A planetary scan has never been done. There was too much danger that unfriendly governments would notice and start asking questions.”
Inanna hit her comm. “I want a planet wide sweep for naquadah done immediately,” she ordered. “Start with the Kalam area.”
“What did the chair control do?” Jack asked.
“It was part of the planetary defense system,” Inanna told him. “The solar system could be watched from it and the mikku deployed, if needed. The mikku allowed cloaked ships to become visible to scans and also kept beaming technology from working unless the person’s individual code was programmed in. Like your hand and retinal scanners.”
“Does it also stop ring transporters?” Jack asked feeling flushed from excitement. Davis gave up on taking notes by hand and turned on his laptop, typing faster than he could take short-hand. The conversation was being recorded, but he kept track of his own notes and thoughts, also.
“It does,” Ninurta said with a nod. “But, Jack, you need to understand –these things came to us toward the end. We didn’t actually get to use them.”
“And we didn’t know about this before because….?” Jack growled.
“It never occurred to us that they still existed,” Inanna told him. She seemed surprised at the thought of the ancient tools possibly still on the planet somewhere. “We didn’t build them; the pukku, mikku, and chair were tools given to us by the Ancients. The Goa’uld came up with the sarcophagus, we think, adapting it from a status chamber that another ancient race had used for healing. We’re a little confused on that. We couldn’t have helped you build more because we don’t know how they were built.”
“And that’s what Enlil is after,” Daniel assumed.
“What the hell does Camulus have to do with all this?” Jack asked. He picked up the printed stack of Camulus’ report.
“He is able to do something most other Goa’uld cannot,” Ninurta told him. “He thinks for himself. He is making great progress with updating our ship, did you know that? Most Goa’uld are able to fix things, but Camulus is able to go a step further; he is able to invent. He conceptualizes. Baal cannot, and neither can Enlil. If Baal has Camulus and the weapons, it is possible that Camulus would be able to duplicate them.”
“And he can use them,” Jack finished. “And if we keep Camulus, and he duplicates them, we can set the shields up on other planets, protecting them from Goa’uld air attacks.”
“If Camulus duplicates a pukku…” Inanna started.
“Bye-bye snakes,” Jack breathed, his brain going into warp speed. “What about the weapon on Dakkara?”
“Col. Carter has been working on the permutations of it, but she has not been able to find the frequency for the symbiotes,” Davis reported. “She’s managed to wipe out all living organisms in the universe, but not one in particular.” Jack looked at him. “Uh, in simulation, Sir.”
“My wife, with the power of God at her motorcycle-greased fingertips,” Jack muttered. “Major, remind me to get her flowers and chocolate.”
“Uh huh. Yeah, I have a question,” Daniel said, raising a hand. “I thought only someone with that special gene could use those chairs.”
Jack squinted at Inanna and pointed at her. “Right. So how could you use the chair? Daniel, she’s been hiding information from us. You’re not an Ancient, are you?”
“I’m ancient, I’m not AN ancient,” she said dryly. “The Ancients aren’t the only ones with that gene, Jack; people who have been touched by the Ancients have it. As you are well aware.”
“But Baal can’t use the chair and neither can Camulus, so why would he want it?” Davis asked.
“Enlil can use it,” Daniel guessed. “Because he’s of your race, whatever that is, and your race has the gene.”
“And Baal has no plans on turning Enlil over to us,” Jack concluded. That one was a foregone conclusion: Baal played by no one’s code of honor or rules except his own.
“Correct,” Inanna said. “But one only needs the gene to use the chair and the pukku, not the others. One needs naquadah in their body for the others.”
Jack was confused. “Then how…..?”
A voice came from Inanna’s necklace, speaking in Sumerian.
“They found something,” Daniel leaned toward Jack to translate.
“Let General Landry know we’re out of range, we’re in Iraq with Inanna,” Jack told Davis. “Update him on the conversation, call the Yard and have them on standby, just in case.” Inanna and Ninurta beamed out, taking Jack and Daniel with them. They were in Iraq a moment later, in the middle of the night.
“I could get used to that,” Jack muttered. Daniel hopped up a small dune and looked around.
“That’s the Euphrates, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing at the river beyond the tangle of reeds.
“Yes,” Ninurta said. “The water table has gone down considerably since we lived here.” It saddened him; they had fun playing in the rivers when the water table was much higher. The water had been cool, runoff from ancient glaciers further north, and was a welcome respite during the hot summers.
Inanna was listening to the voice on her comm. She looked around, following the directions. They were standing over the spot that had naquadah buried beneath it, and there was nothing except sand and marsh in the area.
“Take us up,” she ordered. They were back on the ship a moment later. Jack and Daniel followed her and found themselves on the bridge. As they entered, the front screen changed and showed a map.
“This is a fault line,” Ninurta said, trailing the line with a finger. A spot far below it was blinking. “Naquadah,” he said. “We were standing on it, but it’s too far down to dig with hand tools. There used to be a wharf there, where barges brought merchant goods.”
“Can’t you beam the stuff up?” Jack asked. An entire settlement was beamed up on the Sua home world.
“No,” Inanna shook her head. “The transporter has a range, and that depth is out of range. We can get to it, but it will take a while and we will need the cooperation of the locals.”
“Can you bring Sam up so she can see this?” Jack asked. Inanna nodded and called Sam first to make sure it was convenient. Inanna learned her lesson when she beamed Jack up without first checking in with him. He had been in the middle of peeing. He wished Thor would get the same message. Sam was on the bridge a few minutes later, looking at the map.
“That’s about three miles down,” she commented. “Deep fault line. So we need to get three miles of sand out of the way before we can bring whatever it is up. I take it an oil drill won’t work?”
“No, the hole would be too small for our systems to focus on,” Ninurta said.
“What about scooping it out?”
They all turned. Camulus had been sitting quietly at a far console.
“Some of the crew were telling me about the Sua home world,” he said. Jack almost agreed with him, but didn’t want to set a precedent. “How something had scooped out a large crater from the ground and then it refilled when you were brought out of phase.”
“We haven’t figured out what that was,” Sam said, thinking. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
“No,” he shrugged. “But I haven’t seen all the data on the situation.”
It took some convincing, but Jack finally agreed to allow Camulus planet-side. He was to remain at the Yard, under heavy security and tagged to the transporter, while he assisted Sam in attempting to figure out how the Heaven’s Bow got themselves into their original predicament and what had scooped out the round valley on Sua. Enki would be in and out of the Yard, helping them with ship’s specifications.
Jack and Daniel were put back home and they swung by the HomeSec site, found construction proceeding fairly well, and went home for the evening. Stacy decided that she needed new jeans; for some reason, hers weren’t fitting right. She held the waist out. They were a little loose on her. Daniel told her they’d go shopping the next day after school.
The adults of the house didn’t comment, but without the junk food in the house, and having only kiddie-sized treats when out of the house, and all the running around they did, Stacy was bound to lose the extra weight she had been carrying.
She was toning up nicely, and her face was also clearing up, thanks to a more healthy diet. She had been only about twenty pounds over, something that would have straightened out as she grew taller, but on a child who was around other children all day, it had been enough to cause the other children to torture her over it. Children could be meaner than a System Lord.
The following day, Jack had to leave for DC, proclaiming the joys of international conferences. HomeWorld Security was still going round and round the table on whether or not the Middle East was currently capable of playing nice in the sandbox. The latest crap on the Gaza Strip told him no.
Daniel told Jack he’d go if Jack wanted him to, but he didn’t need to. They dressed Enki in a suit and tie and sent him in Daniel’s place, declaring Enki Jack’s personal adviser on all things Middle Eastern. Davis even had official ID made for the old man. Enki had to remind Jack that, technically, he was the father of all those ill-tempered children, and he was the one who could rap wrists and box ears, if need be. When Israel tore through another Palestinian camp, Jack was almost tempted to tell him to go box a few ears.
“I don’t even know why they are fighting over that piece of sand,” Enki said in confusion. “It isn’t the Hebrew children’s homeland.”
Jack wasn’t the only one to stop and stare at him. The president, several generals, and a couple of heads of state, the only people in the private meeting room for an SGC meeting before the international conference began, also looked up from their notes.
“What do you mean, sir?” Hayes asked. He had a hard time believing that this old man was the progenitor of the human race. Stranger things have come about from the SGC, though, such as Atlantis being a spaceship in another galaxy, so he’d be polite to the gentleman.
Enki shrugged. “Look at the map,” he said. “Not one of those old names in the Israeli-Palestine area matches the place names in your Old Testament. Even Moses crossing the Jordan doesn’t match the place. That river hasn’t been deep enough to be a problem since the last ice age. People were walking across it during his time, as well as now. The Jordan that Moses crossed was the escarpment, not the river. And if you look further south, you will find the old place names; they are in what is now Saudi Arabia.”
“Wait,” Jack said, holding up a hand. “You weren’t even here at that time. How do you know?”
“I can read, Jack,” Enki said. Actually, sitting under a down-loader and having Earth’s history downloaded into one’s brain was a lot faster than reading. “Open the Old Testament, find a place name, and try to find it on a map of Israel and Palestine. Very few of the old names have changed over there. You are all so conditioned to being told what to believe, that you don’t question obvious discrepancies.
“The entire Middle East was once polytheistic, remember? And they do have a common root language, which means they were once one tribe. Then an old man from Ur has this inspiration and declares there is only one god, a radical concept in a polytheistic world.
“He starts to talk about this new concept, monotheism, the ball gets rolling. There is in-fighting over more new concepts. The tribe splits. Eventually the Hebrews reject the divinity of Jesus and go one way, new Christians go another. Land is fought over, the polytheistic Babylonians win, the Hebrews lose on both ends and are kicked out of the Middle East.
“Meanwhile, the still polytheistic Persian Babylonians get insight when Mohammad appears some time later, and they decide that Mohammad has a better grasp of things than the older tribal elders who have become despots. Lots of Persian and Egyptian beliefs about duality have since gotten into the mix, so the tribes are no longer so eager to grasp the hands of the gods.
“They also know their own history and how the land was originally divided, whereas the Christians and the Hebrews have only legends to go by. The Sumerians and Babylonians were notorious note-takers. The original scribes of history. Why else would the Arabs defend that peninsula so desperately if not for the knowledge that the Jews were originally from there, also? Can you imagine what would have happened if the UN and England had tried to push the Saudis out of Mecca to install the modern Jews? World War III would have happened. It was much easier to kick out the Palestinians, and let the Jews have their Red Sea and the Gaza. Fair? No. Easier? Yes. And very political.”
General Tolleson, from England, was scowling. Unfortunately, he was one of the few who took an instant disliking to the alien. No matter which way it was painted, Tolleson had a bias about Arabs; he had a brother who had been killed in a bombing in the Gulf war. It didn’t matter that Enki wasn’t really of Arabian descent; all that mattered was his dusky skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.
“Now see here, sir! You cannot presume to judge a world you do not know! You are not a Christian, you are an alien to this world, and you have no right to diminish the most holy book in the world! Those people were homeless! It was a Diaspora! We put them back into their home, as was the right of any civilized country to do!”
“The Roma are homeless,” Jack murmured as he doodled on a note pad. “Who will be kicked out for them?” While Enki’s historical summary was very interesting, he had also heard the old man get wound up before. There was usually a reason behind it. He’d wait it out.
“You do not have the right to displace people who have worked a land for a thousand years,” Enki snapped at Tolleson. “They earned that land. A couple of tribes want to fight over a piece of property, let them, but you gave one side the weapons to defeat the other, they didn’t make the weapons themselves, nor had they organized themselves into a militia to take the land by their own hands. So you are responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths, the terror that the homeless feel when they have been invaded, and you did it on the wrong land! Your so-called civilized countries seem to have a habit of invading weaker countries and taking what they want.”
Tolleson jumped to his feet, his face red with anger.
“Alright, alright,” Hayes said, holding up both hands in a calming gesture. “This isn’t the proper forum to debate history, gentleman, one side or the other. General Tolleson, please remember that Mr Enki and his people have also been without a home for quite some time, so he may have a different point of view. How about we get back to the subject of Yards and getting personnel trained, shall we? But first, a break? I think we need a little fresh air and maybe a bite to eat.”
People gratefully stood, stretched, and silently made their way out the door. Tolleson pushed his way through, ahead of the others. Once in the hall, the murmuring began.
Hayes leaned his forearms on the table, hands clasped as he looked at Enki. Jack made a correction on the schematics of the dock he was drawing out on paper. “What was that about?” he asked the old man.
Enki slowly stroked his dark beard. “Let’s just say you need to find a way to dig deeper into backgrounds before bringing people on board,” he said. Jack looked up in surprise.
“He was vetted down to the day of his birth,” Jack told him in defense.
“Go deeper.”
The president was frowning. “Mr Enki, if you have something to say, please say it. You haven’t hesitated yet.” He looked at Jack who shrugged his denial of knowledge.
Fingers were tapped on the table as the old man thought. “Have an independent, surprise audit done of the London site,” he finally advised. “Specifically the naquadah supply.”
Jack swore.
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