CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

Teal’c had heard the Stargate activate, but by the time he had succeeded in scaling the cliff, the arrivals were long gone. Or perhaps, he mused, they had not been arrivals. Perhaps Dr. Fraiser, favored by the luck of children and madmen, had found the DHD and had indeed gone home.

The area beneath the Stargate was sunlit and deserted, unremarkable, and the gray walls of the ruins breathed a semblance of coolness. Even the jungle noises had returned, dispelling the silence, and he strode out into the clearing, confident that he would be safe for the time being. In a patch of mud, not far from the place where he himself had landed four days ago, he found two slim lengths of white plastic. Teal’c recognized the strips—flex-cuffs—and squatted to examine them more closely.

They were torn, their ends frayed and showing teeth marks. It indicated several things; two prisoners had been brought here—No, they had been sent here. Had they been escorted, their escape would have been foiled. And whoever had sent them, surely wished for them to die. Cuffed, and therefore most likely unarmed, they would not have stood the slightest chance against the beasts.

Except… He slowly swiveled on the balls of his feet, surveying the clearing once more. This time the beasts had not attacked. The prisoners’ boot prints told their own tale. Once they had freed themselves, the two men—the size of their boots made them men—had risen and walked off in different directions, though well within sight of each other. Teal’c recognized the pattern. He himself had followed it a hundred times and more; they had been exploring. Which suggested they were new to the territory. If they—

A ponderous rumble rolled across the glade, familiar and startling at the same time.

“Hasshak,” Teal’c muttered under his breath. Foolishly, he had allowed himself to neglect that particular source of danger.

He rose, loped back toward the cliff, and climbed the nearest tree to a nest of broad branches, some ten meters above ground. By the time he had settled into this aerie, the fourth chevron was locked. He sat virtually at eyelevel with the face in the wall and, for the first time, found occasion to study it. Almond-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes, that stared at him with the peculiar blank look of carved stone; a strong, straight nose; sensuously curved lips that gaped to reveal a row of sharp teeth; a long, pointed tongue, lolling like a ramp from the cavern of the mouth out onto the clearing. For reasons he could not clearly define, Teal’c found the sight profoundly disturbing.

The Chappa’ai was set in the idol’s forehead, a massive spinning jewel, its outer ring now dotted with five amber lights. Six. The seventh light all but paled under the mighty rush of the wormhole exploding across half the glade. Then the event horizon retracted and stilled. In these few moments of deceptive peace, Teal’c sensed rather than saw movement.

Scanning the huge face, his gaze finally caught on the dark recess of the mouth. There. Behind the points of the teeth flitted shadows, nervous yet eager, as if they wished to emerge but did not quite dare yet. Curious… His attention was distracted by four figures tumbling from the Stargate, flailing and screaming and all too reminiscent of Teal’c’s own arrival on the planet. Fleetingly he recalled the excruciating wrongness of that journey and asked himself if it was the same for these men, or if they had too little basis for comparison.

They were young and fit and clean-shaven, in smart uniforms, and all had been part of the unit that had journeyed to M3D 335 on the same day as Major Carter, Dr. Fraiser, and Teal’c; the unit that had been goaded into a pointless race by Colonel Norris. They struck the ground in an ungainly jumble of limbs and equipment and spent several minutes shaking off the shock and the effects of the impact. Eventually, one of them struggled to his feet.

“This ain’t like they told us,” he observed and added, “Can’t see that PhD thingy either.”

“The what thingy?” asked another.

“That phone-home-device or whatever it’s called.”

“DHD! Dial-home-device, you ass!”

“Who cares?”

“Shut up!” The speaker was the young corporal who had assisted Major Carter at the Marine camp. “You hear that?”

“Hear what? It’s dead silent.”

It was true. Like a tape recording that had stopped abruptly, the jungle noises had ceased again, almost as if the forest were holding its breath in anticipation. The quiet chafed at Teal’c’s awareness like a rough shirt on tender skin.

Into the silence one of the men said, “Oh boy.”

Pouring out from the mouth and coiling down the tongue came the beasts, two dozen of them, jostling and pushing and flooding the glade. What had restrained them until now? At the back of Teal’c’s mind a vague recollection began to congeal into realization, but before it could take shape the events unfolding below demanded his full attention. The Marines had formed a protective circle, their backs to each other, firing at the heaving mass of black bristles and fangs and making the same discovery Major Carter had made, namely that projectile weapons were ineffectual against these brutes’ armor. The Marines would not prevail. He knew it for a fact, and they would find out soon enough.

Teal’c felt torn. Although he had every reason to suspect their intentions, to stand by and watch these men being ripped apart was impossible. With sudden resolve he slung the staff weapon from his back where he had strapped it for the climb up the cliff, aimed, and loosed a series of rapid blasts at the beasts, killing one and wounding several others. The rest paused, shuffling uncertainly, then retreated a few meters, giving the prey a fraction of breathing space. The Marines saw their chance and took it.

“Now!” bellowed Major Carter’s corporal. “Go, go, go!”

His comrades lowered their weapons and sprinted across the glade toward the edge of the forest. In a reckless act of bravery, the corporal himself held his position, determined to cover his friends. A swift glance over his shoulder assured him that the men had almost reached the presumed safety of the tree line. He fired a last burst at the creatures, wheeled around, and ran. As though they had been waiting for that moment, the brutes attacked, flanking him on both sides. He hooked and feinted like a hare, but they inexorably drove him off course and cut off his escape route. Instead of joining his comrades, he came racing directly toward Teal’c’s tree and the dead end behind.

A mere twenty meters further were the cliff and nothing but thin air.

Without even thinking about it, Teal’c set aside his staff weapon, tore free a vine and lowered it. “Jump, Corporal Wilkins!”

The man’s head snapped up. He tripped, staggered, regained his balance, and bounded for the vine. Teal’c no sooner felt the corporal’s weight yank against his grip than he began to haul in the makeshift rope, ignoring the pain in his barely healed shoulder to pull even faster. For all he knew the brutes were capable of leaping and might still bring down their victim. And leap they did, snapping and snarling, but to no avail. Seconds later, Teal’c dragged Corporal Wilkins onto the branch beside him. The corporal’s eyes went wide when he recognized his rescuer, but he did not comment. Instead he glanced past Teal’c and back down to the ground. Below, the beasts had abandoned their futile hunt, swarmed into a turn, and set off after the Marines who had fled into the forest.

Fingers still cramped around the vine, Corporal Wilkins fought to bring his breathing under control. “Uh, thanks. Nice shooting. That’s one hell of a gun you’ve got there, Mr. Murray,” he gasped. “Sorry, sir, I don’t even know your rank. What are you, sir?”

“I was First Prime to the false god Apophis. I have renounced my service.”

“Ah,” said Corporal Wilkins, obviously deciding not to pursue the subject. Suddenly his expression darkened. “I gotta get down, go after the guys. They might need—”

“That is inadvisable.”

“Well, that’s just too bad, sir.” The young man began to ease himself off the branch. “I don’t know how you First What’s-Its do stuff, but in the Corps we don’t leave our guys in the lurch.”

Teal’c grabbed a fistful of uniform and hauled the struggling, swearing man back to his side. “We do not leave behind our people either, Corporal Wilkins. However, all you would accomplish by searching for them now is your own demise. Your weapons are useless against these beasts. If your comrades are lucky and smart, they will not fight but outrun the creatures. You have risked your own life to give them an opportunity for escape. You have done enough.”

The corporal’s face plainly stated that he begged to differ, but in the end he acquiesced as there were indeed no shots being fired in the jungle. “Sounds like you’re right, sir. They’re running.”

Too fast to even look back and ascertain your whereabouts, Teal’c did not reply. Life had taught him that idealism was a precious commodity, and he had no desire to quash it where he found it.

For a while they sat quietly, watching the glade below. At length, his voice still a little unsteady, Corporal Wilkins declared, “I suppose I should go back and report to Sergeant van Leyden, tell him what happened, bring reinforcements.” He scanned the clearing. “Except… You know where that DHD thing is, sir?”

“I do not.”

“But they told us it’s always by the gate.”

“Mostly, but not always,” Teal’c answered. “It may have been hidden on purpose. Or it may not exist at all.”

“Not exist?” The young man parroted, his face draining of blood. “So what are we—”

In the foliage above a bird began to screech, and at the same time Teal’c felt a diminishing of the vague sense of discomfort the unnatural silence of the forest had caused. Again realization hovered just beneath the threshold of conscious thought, again events dispelled it. A second bird answered the screech, then other animals chimed in, until the normal cacophony of the jungle was restored. Little later a bulky black shape appeared across the glade, not far from where the three Marines had vanished. The beast moved sluggishly, uncertainly, as though it had woken from drugged sleep in a location it had not expected to find itself in. Behind it and at its side, others broke from the forest, all in a similar state, until the whole pack was staggering up the stone tongue and back into their lair under the walls of the ruins.

“I’ll be damned,” muttered Corporal Wilkins. “They suddenly feel like a nap or something?”

“I do not know, Corporal Wilkins,” Teal’c answered truthfully. “However, it appears that now would be a good time to leave.”

Within minutes they were back on solid ground. His sidearm drawn and raised, Corporal Wilkins cautiously approached the beast Teal’c had slain. Even in death it seemed gigantic, its body covered in spikes a quarter of an inch thick, its stubby trotters ending in claws. Its snout was pointed and from under slack flews protruded a set of razor fangs stained with old blood.

“That is one danged ugly critter,” the corporal declared. Then he holstered his weapon and glanced toward the edge of the jungle. “No good going after the guys, I suppose. Might end up walking in circles for days.”

“Indeed,” confirmed Teal’c, only too aware of his own experiences.

“So what do you suggest we do, Mr., uh, First Prime, sir?”

“I shall continue to follow the trail of Dr. Fraiser. She is… unwell, and it is imperative that I—”

“Dr. Fraiser’s here? And Major Carter, sir?” At Teal’c’s nod, Corporal Wilkins swallowed. “Sir, are you trying to tell me you’ve never been back to Earth?”

“We have not. The Stargate malfunctioned.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why do you say that, Corporal Wilkins?”

“Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Jackson came looking for you, sir. They…” The young man blushed, clearly uncomfortable. “I think—I know—Colonel Norris lied to them. I spoke to them briefly. Then they disappeared. We were told they’d gone back to Earth. Like you, sir.”

Driven by a sudden, sickening certainty about who the two prisoners had been, Teal’c’s gaze arrested on the spot where the flex-cuffs had lain. They were gone now, trampled under by hundreds of claws.

 

The cab they’d taken from Sea-Tac International stuttered to a halt at a street corner in one of the least savory areas of suburban Seattle.

“That’s forty-five bucks,” said the driver.

George Hammond stared at his travel companion who smiled innocently and turned up empty palms so as to indicate penury.

“You gonna pay me today or what?” the cabby snarled.

Clearly the US Air Force was going cover the cab fare as well. Hammond pulled a fifty dollar note from his wallet and handed it to the driver. “Keep the change.”

“Ain’t takin’ nothin’ bigger than twenty dollar notes.”

Snapping forward in the seat, Maybourne poked his head through the open partition. “Take it,” he hissed. “And we want the change back. All twenty bucks of it.”

The tone was steel-edged, suggesting that refusal would be a bad mistake, and the driver knew better than disputing the math. Without another word he gave Maybourne two tens, then growled, “Out!”

Hammond slipped from the cab and watched as it drove off, tires smoking. Obviously the cabby wanted to get the hell out of here, and who could blame him? The street was lined with shops that had gone bust, windows boarded over and signs faded or dangling. The only establishments still in business were a drinking hole, a heavily barred liquor store, and a hot dog stand at the corner of the next block. A wino had occupied a stretch of curb and was ranting at a hydrant. In an alley opposite, two shadowy figures abruptly ducked behind a dumpster when they noted Hammond’s interest. A trio of teens, in low-slung jeans wide enough to accommodate a small country, swaggered out of the liquor store, clutching paper bags and giving him the hard man stare.

He turned, expecting to find Maybourne right behind him. Instead, the ex-colonel had made a beeline for the hot dog stand. He’d also pocketed the change from the cab fare. Beginning to appreciate Jack O’Neill’s recurring itch to shoot the man, Hammond headed after him. Given time of year and latitude, the night was surprisingly muggy, and he wanted to unzip the windbreaker. Fingers already on the tab, he reconsidered. Presumably the idea was to remain inconspicuous. The Aloha shirt had parrots on it.

At the hot dog stand, Maybourne was squirting relish on a dog that, by Texan standards, was a Chihuahua. A runt at that. The less than sanitary individual manning the stand demanded an extortionate six bucks for the feast, and Maybourne forked over one of the ten dollar bills and grinned at Hammond.

“Want one, George? My treat.”

“You could have eaten on the plane,” groused Hammond, deciding not to point out the obvious.

“And poison myself with the junk they serve?” Maybourne demanded around a mouthful of hot dog. A glob of relish escaped and left a green trail down his front. Two bites later the dog had disappeared. He scrunched the napkin into a ball and lobbed it into the gutter. “Let’s go.”

He briskly strode across the street and into the alley, deserted now, apart from a few rats. At its end, Maybourne took a left, crossed another street, found another alley, until they emerged on an avenue that looked somewhat more reputable than the area where they’d started out. Directly opposite rose a tall, institutional gray facade. George Hammond recognized it without ever having been here.

“St. Christina’s Hospital. That’s where Conrad held Major—”

“No names.” Grinning faintly, Maybourne checked up and down the street. “Doesn’t look like we’ve got company yet, but you can bet your two-star derriere that the NID will pick up our trail. We don’t have much time.”

“Time for what?”

“Getting inside.”

Next to the former hospital stood a tenement building. Maybourne headed for the entrance, bounded up the stairs, nudged the front door. It clicked open. “Lucky the landlord’s too stingy to fix it. Fire escape would have been a bit too public for my liking. After you, Huggy.”

“Don’t push it!” Hammond ducked into the building.

The stairwell was dark, smelled of damp newspapers and floor polish, and served six floors. They climbed every single one of them, plus an additional set of steps onto the roof. Sodium streetlight poured over the cars parked below, a few lit windows adding brightness; somewhere nearby wailed an ambulance, its horn drowning out a mix of TV shows and the rattle of cheap air conditioning units. Up the block, a black SUV pulled into the street, crawled past the hospital, and disappeared again.

“Company,” muttered Maybourne. “Won’t take long till someone decides to see if we’re home already. We’ve got maybe ten minutes, fifteen at the most.”

Hammond felt himself shoved along the parapet and out onto a metal catwalk that connected the tenement to the hospital. The hand-painted sign Warning! Condemned! wasn’t half as forbidding as the notion of jumping the gap between the buildings, so he didn’t argue.

Over on the other side Maybourne pushed past him, flung open a hatch and plunged down a dark flight of stairs. “Move it, General! ORs and offices are on the third floor. You don’t want to meet the boys from the SUV, I guarantee you.”

Guided only by the meager light filtering in from the street, they clattered down the staircase, one floor, two, three, their footfalls echoing through empty corridors and ricocheting from tiled walls. Maybourne shot from the stairwell, barreled down a hallway, scanning room numbers as he went, and stopped outside a closed door. A few seconds later Hammond caught up with him, panting and wishing he were thirty years younger, thirty pounds lighter. By the time he could breathe again, Maybourne had forced the lock.

“It was a real sweet deal. Instead of dismantling the facility, the NID said a silent prayer of thanks and took it over the way Conrad’s people had left it.” He hit the light switch, illuminating what looked like a cross between a lab and a control room.

The banks of surveillance monitors, the computers, a couple of electron microscopes were easily identifiable, but most of the scientific equipment was Greek to Hammond. Either side of the monitor banks, a large window opened onto an operating theatre. Along one wall stood several empty glass containers. Fish tanks? Hardly. The opposite wall housed nine large steel drawers. Morgue drawers. His gaze drifted back to the OR below, the gurneys there, the operating table.

“This isn’t where they held Carter,” said Maybourne, as though he’d read Hammond’s mind. “She was a couple doors down. If there’s time, I’ll show you.”

“Thanks. I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself. So, let’s see what we’ve got.” Maybourne walked over to the wall with the drawers, pulled the nearest one, and grimaced at the body inside. “Oh boy!”

George Hammond felt grateful that the corpse was frozen. If he’d had to contend with the smell, too, he might have thrown up. The pale torso looked like something had eaten its stomach from the inside out. “What in God’s name is this?” he croaked. “Some Level IV virus? Hemorrhagic fever?”

“No. Even the NID aren’t crazy enough for that. Besides, this isn’t a containment lab.” For once the slick facade had crumpled, and Harry Maybourne actually looked troubled. “Whatever they’re doing, it’s definitely not healthy.”

“Obviously not, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with the Marine base on ’335”

“Check his dog tags.”

He was right. The dead man was a Marine. “What the hell?” whispered Hammond.

“Yeah. Two months ago nine Marines dropped off the planet. Nobody knows what happened to them. Looks like we just got a pointer.” Maybourne closed the drawer, flung himself into a chair, and switched on a computer. When the machine started to boot, he hit F8, switched into DOS mode, and entered some kind of code, fingers flying over the keyboard. “It’s a backdoor I made for myself when I was still a member of the club. Bypasses the security program.”

Moments later a list of folders popped up. Lots of folders. He dipped in and out of them, randomly opening files, skimming over information, moving on to the next.

“What are you looking for?” Hammond asked.

“I’ll know when I find it.”

“How about this one?”

The folder was called Series 3.7. Shrugging, Maybourne opened it. Nine subfolders. Nine names, one of them identical to the name on the dead man’s dog tag. They’d found the vanished Marines alright. “Good guess. You play the lottery? You should, you know.”

Somewhere on the lower floors a door slammed, putting paid to any further search for information. Maybourne slipped a DVD from his pocket, placed it into the RW drive, and began downloading the files. The burn seemed to take forever. As soon as drive stopped whirring, he snatched the disc, put it back into its jewel case, and shut down the computer. “Let’s hope the stuff copied alright. We don’t have time to check.”

Out in the corridor they could hear voices, hurried footfalls—three men at least, probably more. As quietly as they could, they raced along the hall, back the way they’d come. It wasn’t quietly enough.

“Third floor!” somebody shouted.

Seconds later a tall, bulky figure emerged from the stairwell, cutting off their escape route. Skidding to a halt, George Hammond longed for his sidearm, securely stowed in a Washington hotel safe. Nostalgia was nipped in the bud when he recognized the man. Wrong time for wishful thinking.

“Drat!” He turned on his heel, retracing his steps, Harry Maybourne right beside him.

At their six, Adrian Conrad was gaining, and there was no staircase at the upper end of the corridor. Maybourne hung a right, hared into a nurses’ station and through a door opposite into an equipment store. Dead end, and Conrad had reached the station. For want of any other bright ideas Hammond slammed the storeroom door, wedged the backrest of a chair under the knob. It’d last five minutes, if that.

Inside the storeroom were three rows of metal shelves, holding linen, the world’s most comprehensive collection of bedpans, and nothing even remotely resembling a weapon. Outside, Conrad was working on turning the door into matchsticks.

“Now what?” gasped Hammond.

By ways of a reply, Maybourne took three steps to the rear wall and yanked open a flap. “Laundry chute.”

“You gotta be kidding!”

“Wanna wait for him instead?”

As if on cue a door panel cracked under Conrad’s onslaught. Hammond dived into the chute head first, hurtling down three floors and landing on a pile of dirty linen in a laundry cart, without time to reflect on the synchronicity of his and Jack O’Neill’s luck. A rumble above announced that somebody was on his way. He scrambled from the cart, clearing the landing zone. Seconds later Maybourne arrived, followed by a roar of fury.

The ex-colonel disembarked and pushed the cart out from under the chute. “That should slow him down,” he stated. “Talk about anger management issues.”

“Oh, he has. And I’m sure he’ll make his feelings known when I hand you over to him, gentlemen.”

The disembodied voice came from a swirl of steam that obscured the ill-lit maintenance tunnel, but Hammond didn’t need visuals to recognize the owner of that lazy drawl. “Playing with the rats, Colonel?”

“Given the company you keep, General, I suppose I should be the one asking that question.” Simmons materialized from the steam cloud, aiming a Glock 17 at them. “Now, if you’d please raise your hands and step out from behind that cart. You, too, Maybourne.”

“About to graduate to murder, Simmons?”

“What murder, General? SG-1 has tragically disappeared, and you’ve been abducted, probably killed, in DC. So who’s to—”

The report of the shot hammered from walls and pipes and seemed to compress the steam. A gun tumbled through the air, and Hammond, half deafened, saw rather than heard Simmons’ shout. Clutching his right arm, the colonel broke to his knees.

“Jack sends his regards,” said Maybourne, holding a Beretta whose existence he’d previously neglected to mention. “Shame your back wasn’t turned.” Still keeping his bead on Simmons, he picked up the Glock, tossed it at his companion. “You may want this, General.”

Hammond caught the gun, shook his head. “So help me, Harry, you’re starting to grow on me.”

“Don’t panic. It won’t last.” Grinning, Maybourne pointed down the tunnel. “Exit’s that way.”

 

It happened so fast, the skin seemed to slough while it lost its glow and turned dull and yellow. Angry black moles appeared where cells broke down, always in the same places; in the middle of the left cheek and on the chin, growing voraciously. Unless treated in time, he—the real one—would die from skin cancer. Lines and wrinkles crawled like cobwebs, scoring deeper and deeper, until the face looked like an ancient, leathery apple, dry and waxy to the touch—if she could touch it. She wanted to, wanted a way to beg forgiveness, offer comfort, warmth, make it easier for him. And him. And him…

She’d lost count, couldn’t remember how many.

I can tell you, healer. I even can show you, if I choose to do so. I can show you all of them again. Every single one of them.

“No!” Janet’s teeth were rattling so hard, she could barely talk. “Please… It isn’t necessary.”

Why bother talking? There is no need. I know. I always know.

“I’m human. Talk is what we do.”

But, human, you keep telling yourself how inhuman your actions are. Why pretend?

Janet couldn’t remember, was too cold and too tired-to remember anything, and Nirrti’s laughter hammered through her skull and seemed to crush the breath in her lungs. At last the pressure eased, though never enough to feel free or forget the presence in her mind.

Inside the tube muscles atrophied, joints thickened with gout and arthritis, the spine curved and vertebrae fused as discs shrank and were reabsorbed. His eyes were staring at her—they always did. First with the innocent curiosity of a young animal, then, though there was no rational thought and never would be now, with a visceral awareness and terror of what was happening to his body.

She reached out, touched the glassy surface of the tube; a gesture as ineffectual as anything else she could have done. She still couldn’t help it, because she knew what was coming.

The eyes, blue and staring, turned milky with glaucoma, and like a child alone in the dark he began to sob, toothless gums bared, gnarled and shriveled hands groping the inside of the tube. It lasted a minute, two, three—too long, however long. Then the movements stilled, slowly, almost gently, and the ancient body died cell by cell. The amniotic fluid—Janet had no idea what else to call it—inside the tube darkened to purple as its molecular structure and properties changed and it began to break down dead flesh and bone into their component proteins.

It will feed those worthy of survival.

It made sense.

The thought had come unbidden, and Janet tried to push it away, knowing it wasn’t hers, couldn’t be hers. But the others had to survive. Survival was important. Survival meant lives saved. She was a doctor. She saved lives. She was saving lives.

Very good. You are beginning to understand. I am proud of you.

She could feel it. It felt warm, soothing, soft like a down blanket, and it somehow eased the terrible coldness of the lab. The need to hang on to the feeling became overwhelming. That and saving lives. No time to lose. She moved on to the next tube, found the crystal that would trigger the aging process, pushed it deep into its socket.

The clone inside the tube began to alter, decaying before her eyes, silently and rapidly. All of a sudden she was trapped in a flutter of a memory. She’d seen this before. The face in front of her was overlaid by another, familiar somehow. The process then had been slower, not as efficient, and it had enabled her to win that race against time.

She’d found out how this worked. Or something very much like it. Nanites?

Somewhere inside her mind Nirrti gave a chuckle of surprise, and the sensation was pleasant. She also sensed something else, swirling red and violent and entirely unashamed of its greed. Nirrti wanted him. The other one. The one familiar, the one who hadn’t died.

It seems I am indebted to you. It would have been such a waste, and I have plans for him.

“It was none of my merit. The process was flawed.” There was something else, Janet recalled. Someone else. Someone who’d helped. But she didn’t mention it. If she did, the glow of pleasure surrounding her might diminish and she couldn’t bear that. It was too cold to risk that little bit of warmth.

Luckily, Nirrti didn’t seem to have noticed, still preoccupied with the revelation. A wave of scorn trawled through Janet’s awareness.

The process was flawed indeed. Pelops was a fool who accepted boundaries without testing them. His method took a hundred days to induce death of old age, and he was happy with it. I can gestate life in hours, destroy it in minutes.

“You are a goddess, Lady Nirrti.” Janet hadn’t meant to say it, but in retrospect there didn’t seem to be a reason why she shouldn’t. It was true, after all, wasn’t it?

Laughter flooded her mind, not the mocking onslaught she had learned to dread but a more intense burst of the delight she’d sensed earlier. Then it gradually ebbed and flattened, until Janet was alone again. Alone but not unobserved. She knew that now. The goddess was all-seeing.

Another tube, another crystal activated, another clone shriveled and died. Gestate life in hours, destroy it in minutes. Janet smiled. She was aiding the goddess.

From far down the endless row of tubes came the dry scrape of a door sliding open. She ignored it, not permitting herself to be distracted. Footsteps approached, halting and diffident, and finally slowed to a stop behind her. When she turned at last, she found herself facing the… What was he? Father, brother, alter ego—all of the above—to the things she was ordered to obliterate?

It appeared to perturb him. Pale as death, he watched himself wizen until he was ancient beyond recognition and incapable of sustaining life. In a flash she understood that this was the fate that awaited those who displeased Lady Nirrti; they died a hundred deaths.

The freezing air in the lab became more tangible again and seeped into Janet’s bones. Shivering, she crossed her arms, hugged herself. “What do you want?” she asked, if only so as not to think the unthinkable any longer.

“Lady Nirrti wishes to see you,” he hissed, his voice harsh with a hatred that begged for punishment.

“Will you take me to her? I don’t know where she is.”

“The Jaffa”—the word dripped boundless rancor—“waiting by the door will take you.” His gaze rose at last, edged to the nearest tube and its contents, arrested there. “According to her I’m the one who has made them deficient, so I’ve been ordered to finish this task.”

The giggle broke free without her volition, but she made no attempt to stifle it. The irony of the punishment was sublime, biblical even. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. The offender commanded to eradicate himself.

She giggled again, turned, and quickly walked along now empty tubes and toward the door. The instant it slid open, she was wrapped in deliciously warm, moist air. As promised, two Jaffa were waiting for her, the same clones she had found so abhorrent earlier. She couldn’t remember why now. They were quite beautiful, tall and broad-shouldered and dark-haired, with deep green eyes. Lady Nirrti was right. You couldn’t have too many of a good thing. Janet burst out laughing.

Tentatively at first, then more boldly, she stroked the chest of one of the men and suddenly realized that she had been too wrapped up in work and caring for her daughter to—

She had no daughter. She’d never had a daughter. She’d stolen an alien child, the rightful property of Lady Nirrti, and had withheld that child and—A sequence of images flashed through her mind, one more vile than the other, until her whole body tingled with shame. The cold seemed to creep back, and she grasped that it had nothing to do with the temperatures in the lab. It was inside of her, a legacy of her transgression.

Trying to control a shudder, she nodded at the Jaffa. “Let’s go. Lady Nirrti is waiting.”

They led her down into the vault. From there, the ring transporter took her to the roof of the building; a terrace high above the jungle. Below stretched an endless sea of green, bleeding into a scarlet sky. A huge sun was setting, cupping half the horizon, and now and again brilliantly colored birds burst from the canopy as if to take one last look before dusk fell.

“Pretty, is it not?”

Janet spun around, again aware of the icy lump of guilt within her. She dropped to her knees. “Lady Nirrti, I—”

“Quiet.” Under a red and gold sunshade fluttering gently in the breeze stood the goddess, looking at her sternly but not unkindly. Willing to forgive? “You wish for my forgiveness, yes? You wish to prove yourself to me?”

“Yes, Lady Nirrti. I beg you.” Janet was shaking with cold, felt tears streaming down her face. “Please,” she whispered.

The goddess moved toward her, touched her shoulder. Under the heat of Lady Nirrti’s touch, the ice began to melt at last. Radiant warmth spread from her hands, burning and soothing at once. “Rise, child. What is your name?”

“I have no name, mistress. You haven’t seen fit to bestow one on me yet.” The answer pleased the goddess; she could tell from the warmth leaking into her, and she rose toward its source like a flower toward the sun.

A delicate hand, framed by a ribbon device, cupped her face. “I shall name you.” Lady Nirrti smiled. “You shall be called Mrityu, my daughter.”

She rolled the sounds through her mouth and mind and decided they tasted good. Strong. “Thank you, mistress,” whispered Mrityu. “But I still wish to prove myself to you.”

“You shall. Oh, you shall.” Lady Nirrti’s laughter danced on the evening air like sparks of light and sunshine. “Come with me. I will show you your task.” The goddess led the way under the sunshade, casually flicking a hand at the mounds of silk-covered cushions strewn across the stone floor. “Sit.”

Despite the invitation, it struck Mrityu as disrespectful to seek her own comfort before the goddess was seated. So she waited until Lady Nirrti had settled on a pillow and only then sat down herself. “Please show me, mistress.”

A recess in the floor released a dull gray orb, which slowly ascended until it hovered at Mrityu’s eyelevel. She recognized the device; a communication globe. The grayness under its surface began to boil and swirled apart on the image of two people, a man and a woman. The woman was injured, and the man was attending to her.

“Do you remember them?” asked the goddess.

Somewhere beneath the warm mists that filled Mrityu’s mind a memory stirred, faint and shapeless. “I do… I think.”

“Good. You are to bring them to me.”