Stargate SG1 - Roswell (38 page)

Sensing his hesitation, she felt a wave of panic.
Oh no you don't! You 're not going to bail on us now.
Grasping his arm and pulling him close, she said, “Promise me, Howard. You'll wait until we're through before you go.”

“But if Lord Carnarvon is really dying...”

“Then you're not likely to be able to save him,” she pointed out a little more heartlessly than she meant to. She smiled, and added in a low voice, “You
must
replace the capstone exactly as we found it, and rebury the 'gate face down the moment we've gone. If you don't, Ra
will
return and this planet will endure a horror far greater than anything you could possibly Imagine.” She glanced over her shoulder at Cam, but couldn't read his expression in the torchlight. “This is more important than one man dying, Howard. This is your chance to save the whole human race.”

One of the many theories that she and Cam had discussed was that upon reaching Brown University and rectifying their mistake, they would cease to exist because the timeline would have been restored. So her warning to Howard that he must rebury the 'gate might be rather pointless, except...

Based on his knowledge of SG-l's files, and several conversations with Samantha Carter, Cam was concerned that this newly budded timeline might continue to exist as a parallel world. In all good conscience they couldn't risk leaving the front door wide open for Ra.

Once they returned to 1908 and discreetly rectified the ovent that changed everything, they couldn't afford to stay in 1908, of course, otherwise they would alter history again. And they could not go forward to 2006 because, as had happened when SG-1 team members from parallel worlds had inadvertently been directed to Earth, their dual existence in that world would eventually lead to all manner of nasty problems for her and
Cam. The solution appeared quite simple. She and Cam would travel forward in time several hundred years.

Sadly, all of that meant that she would never see Daniel Jackson again. But then she and Cam had accepted that fate long
ago, and things had worked themselves out between them in
a way that had surprised them both. And in truth, she was rather looking forward to getting back out there in the big, wide universe. Fourteen years in one place had been excruciatingly trying.

Blinking in the light from the torch fires, his message delivered, Lord Carnarvon's new secretary—his previous secrotary had died within days of opening of Tutankhamen's tomb—looked around the dig suspiciously.

“Isn't this area under Dr. Langford's concession?”

Cam stepped up beside the secretary and clapped him on the shoulder. “You should head back to Cairo, son. If Carnarvon's dying, he'll need your help.” The faint shimmer of light silhouetting the pyramids was the only clue to their proximity to the city.

“But... I don't understand any of this. What are you doing here? You don't have a permit to be digging this area.”

“We have a special permit.”

“What special permit?” the young man demanded.

“The green kind,” Cam explained. He pulled a wad of notes from his pocket, mostly American dollars, and shoved them in the breast pocket of the secretary's crumpled linen suit. He might as well be rid of them, Vala thought. They weren't going be worth anything where they were headed.

“There. That should cover any inconvenience.” Cam let go of the secretary and stepped up to the rim of the pit where the Stargate had been buried, to join Vala and Howard Carter who were watching the workers check the rack of pulley blocks. The familiar ring, currently attached to the blocks by dozens of ropes, lifted reluctantly away from its capstone.

Oblivious to the profound nature of the event he was about to witness, the secretary glared up at Cam, highly offended. “Do you actually think you can bribe me into ignoring what's going on here?” he called after him.

Cam glanced back over his shoulder as he came to stand beside Vala and Carter. “Sure I do.”

“Some people aren't so easily bought, you know!”

“Then more fool you. After tonight, every one of these diggers, the guards and drivers will be able to retire.” Turning to Howard, he added, “So should you, by the way.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand, either,” Carter said with a puzzled expression.

“We left an envelope for you back at the hotel, with information that's also in the hands of our lawyers,” Vala told him. “I hate to break it to you, my dear, but apparently Lord Carnarvon didn't bequeath you much. All goes to the family estate, you know.”

“What did you say?” The secretary must have heard that last part. He scrambled up the earthworks behind them, a horrified expression on his face. “How could you possibly know any-thing of Lord Carnarvon's affairs?”

“Cam, dear, do we really have time for this?”

“Not really.”

She smiled brightly. “We could push him in front of the event horizon when the wormhole opens.”

“Don't tempt me.” Cam grinned back at her. He was trying to
be cool about it, but all these years stranded in this timeline had been driving him crazy. The thought that they were only minutes away from gating out of here and putting things to rights had him bursting with anticipation.

Having discussed the logistics of this at great length, they had opted to raise the Stargate from the capstone, and then case it backward onto the ground rather than waste time trying
to keep it supported upright. For one thing, it would have taken days to stabilize the 'gate so that it didn't tip over during the dialing sequence. Just as importantly, if by chance some Goa'uld took it into its scaly hermaphroditic head to check the Tau'ri 'gate before she and Cam managed to leave, it'd be in for a nasty surprise. Nothing quite as squishy as the fate of the Jaffa they'd seen embedded in the capstone, of course, but travel through the wormhole was a one-way proposition, and falling back into the event horizon would prove equally deadly.

The only downside to that was the hand DHD wouldn't operate while the 'gate was in a horizontal position—a safety feature, no doubt—however the bezel could be rotated manually.

For a brief moment, the Stargate stood fully upright. Through the silent gray ring you could see the stars. Of all the people here tonight, perhaps only Cam and herself, Vala realized, understood that through this ring you could travel to them, too.

On Cam's signal, the Stargate was eased backward. After a few anxious moments, it fell to the ground the last foot or so, hitting the sand with a resounding
thud
that reverberated through their feet. Ignoring the argument between Carnarvon's pompous little secretary and Carter, Vala watched Cam connect the power to the 'gate, then order the men to rotate the ring. The first chevron locked into place—which promptly sent most of the diggers scurrying backward.
“Bish-mil-la
!” several cursed. “In the name of God!”

Howard and the weedy, rat-faced secretary also stumbled backward and gasped.

“Mafi mushkillah”
Vala called reassuringly to the diggers. “It's not a problem. We told you this would happen, remember?” But in fact, this could indeed be a problem. If this was their reaction to a little amber glow, the unstable vortex would give them a collective heart attack. They
must
rebury the 'gate.

“Sora-sora
!” Cam called to the diggers. “Hurry! We don't have much time. I'll double the pay of every man here, all right?”

The lure of wealth beyond their wildest dreams was a potent motivator. She and Cam had argued about how much of their wealth Cam had given away to get them here this night, although, in the end, provided it was currency they couldn't use off-world, she didn't see the harm in it. It just irked her in principal, that's all. Having gone to all the trouble of becoming fabulously wealthy, it didn't seem right to just leave it behind.

Cam viewed their wealth far differently to Vala. To him it was, and always had been, simply a means to an end. At least he'd had the common sense to let her bring some portable assets—gold and jewels, and the like—with them. While she had no compunction in stealing a 'gate-capable death glider, bribing the locals on the planet where they were headed should be a considerably faster and much less complicated way of accessing the ship, for all concerned.

Not that she would never actually admit it to anyone, of course, but there was a remote possibility that fourteen years on
this miserable little planet may have
slightly
impacted her reaction time—from lack of practice, of course. Certainly it had absolutely nothing to do with age.

The second chevron locked into place, and Howard, curiosity outweighing fear, inched forward again. “Those stories you told me about the Egyptian gods. I thought...I thought—”

“That I had an over-active imagination? Or that I was perhaps a tad, you know, loony-tunes?” Vala still didn't fully understand the cultural significance of 'loony-tunes' but like so
many other such references that Cam had used over the years, she'd added it to her lexicon.

Apparently Howard didn't understand the cultural reference, either, because he looked at her rather oddly. Anything he
might have said was forgotten when she produced from beneath the ugly folds of her 1922 designer dress, the gold cuff that had once belonged to Whipple Van Buren, Howard Lovecraft's grandfather.

Howard Lovecraft, of course, had gone on to become a professor of chemistry and rocketry or some such, and it had recently been announced that he would be the recipient of a Nobel Prize. Her only regret was that there'd been no time to visit him in Rhode Island before they'd left for Egypt. Still, she and Cam had bequeathed their mansion to him in their will, with
a one-line note explaining that they were finally going home.

That thought made Vala smile. He'd definitely get a kick out of that.

The third chevron revolved into position with a loud
chunk,
and Cam warned everyone yet again that before the final chevron was dialed, they must all step outside the 'well' because a great geyser would erupt from the center.

The looks on most of the workers' faces suggested that they had no idea what a geyser was, but the tone of Cam's voice was backed up by the promise that he would cut by half the pay of anyone who did not move away swiftly.

Which would be the least of the men's problems if they didn't scoot back, but Vala wasn't going to volunteer that bit of information or else she and Cam would be dialing the final coordinate themselves. Nor was she going to mention that Cam did not have any way of enforcing exactly who was paid what, because the lawyers, bless their larcenous little hearts, were all at home right now in their beds.

The portable DHD device shone brightly in the glow from the fires. Howard Carter stared open mouthed as she slipped the cuff over her hand. Detecting the naquadah in her blood, the device came alive, its center crystal glowing. The subtle neural connection in her mind was awakened. What felt like an instinctual knowledge was in fact knowledge acquired from the Goa'uld, but Vala's understanding of how to use the DHD had been well honed by years of practice with the healing hand device.

A vague spark of guilt enveloped her. She could easily have healed Carnarvon's infected mosquito bite, but to do so, Cam had reminded her, would profoundly alter history. Given how many other things had gone wrong, she didn't see that it made much difference, but Cam was adamant and fourteen years of being “Mrs. Mitchell” had taught her what that meant.

Old Lord Carnarvon was due to die this night, in exactly... She glanced at the diamond and pearl wristwatch that Louis Cartier had personally made for her. Two minutes—plus or minus. While her watch was synchronized with the timepiece at Greenwich, she couldn't say the same for the clock in the Cairo hospital that had been used to record the time of Carnarvon's death. And how Cam remembered
that
particular detail when he'd forgotten the actual year of Carnarvon's death was not as much of a complete mystery to her as she'd led Cam to think.