Light. So much light. It surrounded her. More than that, she could feel it inside her, which made no sense. She very clearly remembered dying and dead people did not feel. It penetrated every cell in her body. Her mitochondria remembered what they were supposed to do. They took the light and made it into energy. Her heart remembered to beat. Her blood remembered to flow. And when her lungs craved the air, she remembered to breathe.
With that first gasped breath, her eyes flew open and nerves long abandoned screamed in agony even as instinct made her sit up. She looked around her, the blackness clearing from her eyes, but saw nothing that was in any way familiar. Her breath came faster and her heart pounded as she began to panic.
Strong arms gathered her up and lifted her from the box in which she had lain. They set her down again a short time later and she melted into a bed so full of pillows, she was afraid they would cover her and she would lose again the memory to breathe. She wanted to resist, but her muscles were slow to respond and she could do nothing in her own defense. She could do nothing at all but breathe and try to remember who she was and why she was here.
“Be at peace, woman,” said a voice from above that did not inspire any confidence whatsoever. “Your death is over now. By the power of your god, you have risen again.”
“My – my – my god?” she gasped, remembering how to speak and somehow knowing that this was very, very wrong.
“Yes, woman, your god,” said the voice. “By his power you live again and all he will ask in return is that you serve him.”
Confusion and questions and a thousand memories flooded her mind and when the blackness began to cloud her vision again, she gave in and let the darkness carry her away.
------
Daniel had long since given up his methodical internet search and was simply clicking around at random, hoping to get lucky and find some trace of Leon Sjaack’s academic career. Everyone had their own web-pages nowadays. Daniel knew of at least three wildly inaccurate pages exclusively about himself but somehow Leon Sjaack was a cyber non-entity.
He stared into his empty coffee cup and decided that a walk to the commissary would clear things up nicely. Before he had quite finished standing up, Sam bounced into his office, looking triumphant.
“What?” It came out a bit more waspishly than he’d intended, but she brushed it off.
“I found him,” she announced. “I think.”
“Let’s hear it then. I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere.”
“I had Barrett run through the personnel list of the NID to see if there was anyone left alive qualified to do those translations,” Sam began. “Our best candidate is named Jason Owens. He’s hiding in Canada teaching at a university. He wasn’t important enough for them to go to the trouble of extraditing him. In fact, until recently they weren’t sure why he would hide at all.”
“The Trust.”
“Barrett doesn’t think he’s hiding from The Trust,” Sam disagreed. “He thinks Owens is hiding from what The Trust became after they split off from the NID.”
“So this is a coded cry for help?”
“It appears so. He made all the right mistakes and told us exactly how to find him.” Sam sat down in one of Daniel’s extra chairs. “The general wants you to think of a way to contact him covertly.”
Daniel turned back to the computer and typed the correct name. He got the expected deluge of useless hits, but quickly found a good one.
“Dr. Owens is overseas at the moment,” he announced after quickly skimming the page. “He’s on a dig in Jordan.”
“Damn it,” said Sam. “When does he get home?”
“That’s the beautiful thing about digging, Sam; you can just show up at most sites, isolated in the middle of nowhere, and ask for a tour.” Daniel told her. “Owens must have known when his article would be published. He wants us to meet him in Jordan.”
“Well,” said Sam, “I haven’t been to that area of the world in a while. We’ll have to run it past the general, but I’d say we could probably start packing.”
Daniel grinned.
------
“Remind me again why four highly trained Air Force personnel are traveling in steerage on a civilian aircraft, Carter.” Jack’s request had been much funnier the first few times he’d made it, but Sam rolled her eyes and answered anyway.
“A brigadier general can’t just waltz into the Middle East, sir.”
“I was planning to sashay.”
Daniel made a very suspicious noise, reached for his headphones and retreated into the in-flight movie.
“Also sir, I think they stopped calling it ‘steerage’ shortly after the Titanic sank.”
“Watch the movie, Carter.”
“It’s about time travel, sir. It will only make me worse.”
Jack rolled his eyes and put his headphones on. The remainder of the flight passed mostly in silence as Jack, Daniel and Teal’c watched the movies and Sam devoured a guide book. They got through arrivals and customs at the Amman Airport without hassle and with all of their baggage which, Daniel assured them was nothing short of a miracle.
Once they hit the pavement outside, Daniel took charge. Although three of the four members of SG-1 had extensive experience in the Middle East, only Daniel was used to dealing with the local population on a daily basis. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning, local time, and Sam was worried that they would be stuck at the airport. Despite the hour, however, the road outside the airport was jam-packed with travelers, taxis and ornately decorated trucks. Daniel flagged down a cab and surprised the driver by haggling the price of the trip in fluent Arabic. In short order, they were on their way.
As they passed the last security check on the road out of the airport, Daniel craned his neck around towards the back seat.
“Can I tell you about where we’re going now?”
Jack looked hard into the rearview mirror. The driver did not appear to be using it, instead changing lanes blindly, and Jack decided that this was about as isolated as they were going to get.
“Fine. In 25 words or less, tell us about Madaba.”
“Very funny, Jack.” Daniel said, giving the General a hard look. “Madaba was a town before the Romans arrived in the Middle East, but it flourished under Christian rule because it produced high-status mosaics. It’s still the Christian Capital of Jordan and it’s fairly progressive.” He looked at Sam apologetically, “You’re going to attract a lot of attention, but if you’re with one of us, no one should say anything too offensive.”
“Peachy.”
“The site Owens is digging,” Daniel continued, “is much older. As far as I can tell, it’s Moabite, and it dates to approximately 800BCE.”
”What events transpired in this place at that point in your history?” Teal’c asked.
“The Israelites were conquering anyone they could get their hands on. The world in general was in a bit of a decline, though no one really knows why, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Except in Cyprus, where – ”
“And how is this relevant to us?” Jack asked.
“I have no idea,” Daniel admitted.
The desert slid past in the darkness. The taxi pulled off the main road and drove through a small town that was completely deserted save for a few dozen plastic bags dancing in the wind.
“Sam,” Daniel said in a completely different tone of voice than the one he used for lecturing, “How many rooms did you book?”
“Two. The guide book said they have two single beds in each room.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing! It’s just that – well – some hotels won’t let an unmarried woman stay in the same hotel room as a man.”
“That’s…ridiculous.”
“No, the buses are ridiculous. The English Court has more unspoken protocols. This is just the culture, Sam. You’ve dealt with it off-world.”
“I guess I just thought…”
“I know.”
“What do we do then, Daniel?” Jack asked, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
“Um…well, when Sarah and I traveled abroad, we pretended to be married.” Daniel couldn’t bring himself to look at Sam when he said it.
“Well, then,” said Jack, not bothering to conceal his amusement. “Shall we flip a coin, Colonel, or would you like to choose?”
“Next time we travel with the Air Force,” Sam said through grated teeth.
“Anything you say, dear.”
A town appeared on the horizon. It was lit up by a myriad of white lights and dotted with the occasional green one. Daniel quietly explained that the green ones were mosques, because green was the colour of luck and good fortune. The highest point of the town seemed to be a church; its white-lit cross a sharp contrast to the green-lit minarets. The streets were empty except for the odd dog and the windows of the shops were dark. A few minutes later, the taxi stopped in front of a hotel.
“Mariam Hotel,” The driver announced in accented English.
“Shucron,” said Daniel as he handed over the agreed fare.
“Welcome to Jordan!” said the driver as the last of the bags were deposited on the tiled sidewalk.
They were so preoccupied with picked up their bags and determining how best to wake the night watchmen and get into the hotel that none of them noticed the taxi driver pulling out his cell phone as he drove away, nor did they see the small flash of light in the unused rearview mirror.
------
“Is it safe to eat cheese that doesn’t need to be refrigerated?” Jack asked, poking the foil-wrapped morsel on his plate as though it might contain nitroglycerin.
“I’m sure we’ve survived worse, Jack,” Daniel said dryly. “Half the planets we go to haven’t discovered refrigerators yet.”
“That’s true,” Jack commented thoughtfully and then passed the cheese to Teal’c who was calmly eating everything in site. “Did you get the taxi?”
“Yes. The hotel has a regular driver. He’ll take us out, wait for us and then bring us back into town.”
It was just shy of 6:30 in the morning when SG-1 left the hotel. The hotel’s manager had been surprised to see them at breakfast so early, having let them in only a few hours before, but SG-1 was used to functioning on little sleep. They had gotten almost four hours, in spite of an unexpected wake-up call at about three-thirty when the minaret next door had issued the pre-dawn call to prayer.
The streets of Madaba were bustling now, and the town was hardly recognizable from their drive through it the night before. People were everywhere. Sam couldn’t help but stare at the long lines of men waiting to catch the bus to work and the groups of veiled women carrying trays of flatbread on their heads. At the edge of town, the taxi was stalled by a veritable ocean of goats and sheep which, through Daniel’s translation, the driver explained were there to be bought and sold at a weekly market.
Once into the country side, the taxi drove home haphazardly around pot holes and speed bumps that reached only half-way across the road. The houses which dotted the landscape were all squarish and white and the ground was bare and desolate except for the occasional olive grove. Daniel pointed out ancient sites which dotted the landscape, often near a modern village or farm.
The left the main road and began weaving their way through a series of short hills. Bedouin tents were set up in clusters every few kilometres, and the children all rushed outside to wave as the taxi drove past. Daniel was giving directions to the driver and, after a few more hairpin curves at ridiculous speeds, the car turned left on to another road.
“Daniel,” said Sam, whose pidgin Arabic had been steadily improving all morning, “did you just tell him to turn left at the camel?”
Jack snorted and even Teal’c raised an eyebrow.
“Well it’s not like there are a lot of landmarks,” Daniel defended himself. He looked out the window and pointed. “Look, there it is.”
The hill he indicated was shorter than those around it. It was some distance away yet, but Teal’c could see small, brightly-coloured dots moving about on it and several large cuts and trenches marred the even topography.
The taxi turned right on to an unpaved road and dust cloud immediately obscured the view. Jack looked down and noted with some alarm that the road was more or less exactly the width of the taxi and that the ground sloped almost vertically five metres down to a dry wadi bed. The dust cleared a little and a small village came into view. Beyond it was another dry wadi bed, a few fields where melons grew thanks to a jury-rigged irrigation system and the Tel known locally as Khirbat al-Mudayna.
The driver said something to Daniel, who looked ruefully across the landscape and nodded before turning back to the rest of his team.
“We’re going to have to walk from here,” he said. “The taxi can’t make it down through the wadi bed.”
“All right, campers!” Jack announced. “Off we go.”
They got their packs and water bottles out of the trunk of the car and began their trek down into the wadi bed. There was no water in it at all, but the banks were lined with pink oleanders. They passed a small group of excavators who looked up curiously but said nothing. As they began their ascent, a man climbed down to meet them half-way.
“Hi!” said Daniel when they were close. He reached out to shake the man’s hand. “My name is Dr. Daniel Jackson and these are my colleagues Sam, Jack and…Murray.”
“Robert Bishop,” came the reply. “What brings you to Mudayna?”
We were passing through Madaba and I found out an old friend of mine was digging here from one of the managers at the hotel,” Daniel said smoothly. “Dr. Jason Owens.”
“Ah, Jason,” said Dr. Bishop. “He’s out on survey today, but he’ll be back soon for second breakfast. Would you like a tour in the meantime?”
“That would be wonderful,” Daniel said with complete sincerity. He had a gleam in his eyes that Sam recognized; no matter what amazing things Daniel did with his life, part of him would belong forever to the desert and to digging things up in it.
Dr. Bishop led them through a large stone structure which had once been the gate to the town. There were several students out front, digging on a slope nearly 45 degrees from flat. Bishop explained that they were looking for the road, having hunted for it unsuccessfully for nearly ten years. They continued walking south, over a massive threshold stone and passed three rooms on each side and then through an empty courtyard and what Dr. Bishop described as the temple before they reached another area bustling with activity.
“This is Field B,” explained Dr. Bishop. “They keep finding things here that we can’t explain.”
A woman with an authoritative bearing walked towards them. She looked questioningly at Dr. Bishop.
“Michele,” he said, “these are friends of Jason. Dr. Jackson, this is our director, Dr. Wilfrid.”
There was another round of handshakes and Dr. Bishop excused himself to get back to the gate. Dr. Wilfrid took them around Field B, explaining with great certainty what SG-1 had just been informed was mostly speculation. Jack, who was thoroughly bored and equally uninterested in a two and a half thousand year old textile production factory, meandered off to have a closer look at the eastern edge of the Tel. He passed a red-headed girl who was struggling to attach a piece of graph paper to a clip board without losing the sheets already attached in the gale-force wind that whipped down the edge of the Tel. A dark-haired young man climbed out of the square to help her, and using four hands, the job was completed. Jack peered down two metres or so into the square and observed the size of the rocks they were trying to move.
“I hope you get paid well for this,” he said.
“Oh, we don’t get paid,” said the red head, who was now attaching a pencil and several pens to the clip board. “Actually, this trip cost me $3500. And I got a discount.”
Jack regarded her as though she were insane, but the girl was clearly used to it and only smiled before climbing back down into her square.
Teal’c had attracted the attention of several of the local workmen. They stared at him openly and he stared back. Finally, after several minutes, Dr. Wilfrid reminded them sharply that they had work to do.
“We’re short a workman today,” she explained to Sam. “They say he is sick and went to Madaba in a taxi last night to see a doctor.”
Sam nodded as Jack walked back towards the main group.
“What’s down there?” he asked, pointing to the south.
“Field E,” Dr. Wilfrid replied. “It’s been mostly empty, so we closed it down early.”
“That makes sense,” Jack said in his very best-behaved sarcastic tone. It flew, as intended, right over Dr. Wilfrid’s head. “When did you say Dr. Owens would be back?”
“Second breakfast,” came the prompt reply. “You can see him now.”
Sure enough, two figures were climbing down a hill about 500 metres east of the Tel. One was carrying a long pole. The other one was larger and carried a box of some kind that Daniel explained carried a total station.
The students on the Tel all seemed to realize what time it was simultaneously and with a few shouts of “second breakfast!” to those who were too far down to notice what was going on above them, they hoisted full baskets of dirt up to ground level and climbed up an assortment of ladders. All carrying the biggest water bottles Sam had ever seen, they headed down a staircase that was constructed of sandbags and gathered around the supply tent, where sandwiches and juice were distributed.
“After you, please.” Dr. Wilfrid gestured to the stairs.
As SG-1 climbed down, Dr. Owens and his assistant began their ascent. They reached the tent at approximately the same time.
“Dr. Owens! Jason!” Daniel said warmly, stretching out his hand. “I found out you were here and I had to come see what you were up to.”
“Daniel, it is so good to see you.” Owens had clearly had some practice at this. “And you even brought some friends to meet me! I have so much to tell you.”
------
It was the smell that attracted the dogs, the barking that attracted the children and the screams that attracted the adults. By the time the Madaba police arrived, quite a crowd had gathered.
No one knew him. His license revealed that he was from Amman and a registered taxi driver, which was even odder as the taxis generally left their fares at hotels and this taxi was near a poorly-maintained public hospital.
When the body arrived back in Amman and the coroner looked at it, it was in terrible condition. The sun and car windshield had done their work and the sun was setting. The family was anxious to bury their relative before the day was done.
As the coroner drove himself home, he knew that this death would never be explained and no perpetrator would be caught. No one would ever read the coroner’s note: death due to complete CNS failure. Unusually clean cut to the back of the neck and severe trauma to the throat.
------
TBC...
AN: Yes…I know it is much harder than that to get an article published. It’s not like this show has ever followed anything like realistic academic timelines.