Chapter Text
Night fell and the hours dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the Pallid Mask.
Robert W. Chambers: "The Yellow Sign" (1895)
The elevator opened onto a long corridor lined with numbered doors. The carpet was plush enough to muffle any footsteps, and the wallpaper writhed with dark geometric flowers. The ornate wall sconces were so dim they seemed to be trying to swallow back the light, but after a flicker of hesitation, Jack stepped off the elevator anyway.
He didn't know this place.
The soles of his shoes sank in the carpet, and glancing down, he saw it was decorated with woven flowers like the ones on the wallpaper. Lush, tropical shades of burgundy and green, yellow and brown, luxuriant as weeds. If flowers like that had ever come up in his yard, he would have torn 'em up by roots and composted the whole lot of them.
Music was playing behind one of the closed doors. As Jack passed by, he heard the brassy blat of saxophones, then Ethel Merman's voice sounding tinny and distant through the walls.
We're having a heat wave ... a tropical heat wave...
Big, silly production number from a movie no one remembered anymore. He couldn't imagine the sort of person who could sit in the darkness of this gloomy place and listen to Irving Berlin tunes.
Gee, her anatomy
Makes the mercury
Rise to ninety-three
Yes, sir!
Jack hurried down the dark hall, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. He found something heavy in his right pocket and drew out a skeleton key with the number 636 stamped at the top. He looked at the numbers on the doors and discovered he was very close to the one this key would open. Finding it, he raised his hand to knock, then decided it was probably his own room. Sure enough, when he slipped the key into the lock, the door opened smoothly.
The blazing afternoon sun limned the heavy curtains over the windows in gold, but the room itself was heavy with shadows. Jack paused in the doorway, feeling along the wall for a light switch. He could just make out the shapes of furniture, chairs and a table, an alcove with a bed.
He heard the soft hush of a door opening somewhere down the corridor, and rather hurriedly shut his own door and locked himself in. He still hadn't found the light. Then he heard a snuffling noise and realized he wasn't alone in the room. He froze, back against the door, as someone sat up in his bed.
"Jack?"
A click, and pallid light spilled from a lamp on the bedside table. Daniel sat blinking sleepily at him.
"Daniel," Jack said as all his fears bled away. He did know this place after all. This was one of his happy dreams. "Didn't mean to wake you up."
Daniel raised an eyebrow at him and settled back against the pillows. "You could try making a little more noise the next time you don't mean to wake somebody up," he complained in a voice still scratchy from sleep.
"Sorry."
Daniel smiled a small, secretive smile. As he turned and stretched up to switch off the lamp, the covers slipped down off his hip.
Jack dropped his jacket on the floor. The shirt followed, and then his shoes and socks, leaving a trail of clothing all the way to the bed. He pulled off his jeans and crawled into bed beside Daniel.
"Some of us are trying to sleep here," Daniel grumbled. He put his arms around Jack and kissed his mouth, and when Jack moaned, he began gently to rock against him until they were moving together in the darkness. Jack's dream self was a little vague on the mechanics, but it was sweet and warm, a delicious tension building between them as Daniel stuttered and sighed and Jack clung to him and whispered his name.
Suddenly Daniel went utterly still beneath him. "Daniel," Jack complained softly, wondering how he could possibly stop when everything felt so good, but Daniel hissed in impatience and put his hand over Jack's mouth.
"Hush," he whispered. "Do you hear that?"
Jack held his breath and listened. He did hear something, now that Daniel mentioned it. A voice. Dear God, was someone else in the room? And here he was naked in bed without so much as his M9 with him. Dammit, dammit, dammit, he'd had an bad feeling about this place right from the start. He should have --
Jack relaxed. He knew that voice.
She certainly can
Yes, sir!
She certainly can
She certainly can
She certainly can
Ethel Merman, still singing about the heat wave. The record was skipping. "Relax, Danny." Jack nuzzled his neck. "Just some guy down the hall wearing out his Irving Berlin Songbook."
"Then why is it getting closer?"
Jack rolled out of bed and landed silently on the balls of his feet. He edged towards the door, stopping to grab his jeans and hastily pull them on. The hallway light threw a dim yellow glow under the door. Though he couldn't be sure, he thought a shadow was blocking some of the light.
The shadow moved. He was right -- someone was standing outside. "Keep your head down," he whispered to Daniel. "Don't say anything. I'm going to --"
Instead of doing what he was told, Daniel turned on the lamp. Jack whirled back furiously, but his angry words died on his lips as he saw Daniel sitting naked and defenseless on the side of the bed. There was a book on the bedside table that Jack hadn't noticed before. He had no idea why he was noticing it now. The binding was pale yellow and looked very old.
"The king has opened his tattered mantle," Daniel said. "There's naught but Christ to cry to now."
"What?" Jack demanded, and then the door swung open and he awoke with a violent start.
Jack's heart was pounding so violently his chest ached. He was covered in sweat. For long moments he looked up at the ceiling, pale with the light of early dawn, and then he rolled over and slapped off the alarm clock with a shaking hand before the buzzer could go off. He was still breathing hard. OK, not one of his happy dreams after all. Jesus.
The new plan was working out great. Six in the morning was definitely the time to hit the supermarket. Even half an hour later was no good, since that's when the third shift people started showing up -- and Blair knew from personal experience that life was just too short to get between an RN just off a sixteen hour shift and the last ripe avocado in the produce display. Any later in the day, the-stay-at-home parents began clogging the aisles with their children, and early evening was beyond hopeless. Two in the morning was pretty dead, but as Jim had pointed out, Blair had to sleep sometime.
So this was great. Juggling their new schedules was exhausting both of them, but Blair was managing things, and as he reclaimed his ATM card and pushed his cart out, he checked his watch and saw he'd made it from door to door in only twenty minutes. He grinned. New personal best.
The parking lot made the sky look wide open. The sun had come up, but gray clouds were piling across the horizon. It would probably be raining before noon. A homeless man sat huddled on the other side of bicycle rack near the front entrance, and he wordlessly held out his hand as Blair passed him. His palm was pudgy and too soft, the fingers as short and fat and widely spaced as the limbs on a starfish. Blair shuddered in quick revulsion, and then, immediately ashamed of himself, said, "I don't have any cash, man, but if you're hungry --" He rummaged in his grocery sacks until he found a bag of apples. He fished out two and handed them down.
The man looked up, and the shabby parka hood that had been covering his head fell back.
Blair didn't scream. He staggered, distantly hearing two little thumps as his proffered apples hit the pavement. He stumbled away without looking back, his knuckles white on the handle of his grocery cart. Fuzzy-headed and stupid with shock, he threw his bags in the back seat of the Volvo. He very nearly did scream when he carelessly flooded the engine while trying to start the car.
Stupid, stupid. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel and struggled to control his breathing. He was being an idiot. Maybe Jim was right and he needed to schedule more time for sleep, since he was apparently starting to hallucinate. Wasn't that an early symptom of severe sleep deprivation?
The face Blair had seen under the ragged hood had been dimpled and gray, and as featureless as a raw oyster.
It was too ridiculous, a wild over-reaction to a trick of the light. Or maybe the poor guy really did suffer from some kind of congenital defect, a skin condition or untreated facial cancer that looked worse that it really was in the uncertain morning light. Blair should go back and see if he needed anything.
He couldn't make himself do it. He even had the appalling thought that the homeless man might be shuffling up to his car right now, and at any second that dimpled void of a face would be thrust up against his window.
The engine started on the second try and Blair drove home without looking back.
He was still on edge by the time he parked across from the loft and dragged the groceries out of the back seat of the Volvo, but mostly he was feeling embarrassed. Apparently, not even Wonder-Blair could handle the increased teaching hours as a lecturer and the longer hours as a consultant to the Cascade PD and manage to be at Jim's side every shift without something threatening to give. When he started seeing monsters panhandling outside the Safeway, that was a pretty safe bet it was time to rethink his appointment book.
He didn't think Jim would even tell him, "I told you so."
Blair smiled to himself, juggling the grocery bags to push open the ground floor door. In fact, Jim was a pretty mellow guy all around these days.
Nevertheless, Blair was still shivering a little as he let himself in and dropped his grocery bags on the dining room table. It'd be a miracle if nothing had been broken, the way he'd been slinging those bags around. Jim appeared in his bathrobe, still flushed and damp from his shower.
"Hey, man."
"Hey yourself." Jim looked at him ruefully. "I told you I could do the shopping myself if you could wait until Thursday."
"I know. Next time I'll take you up on that."
Jim put his arm around Blair's neck, gently reeling him in to nuzzle his chin against Blair's temple. Then he abruptly let him go, planting both hands on Blair's shoulders and hauling him around to look him in the face. His eyes had lost their early morning softness.
"What happened to you?"
Blair shook his head. His panic attack in the parking lot must stink to high heaven. "Nothing. It was nothing. You think it's possible I've been maybe, uh, over-extending myself these past few months?"
Jim's eyes crinkled in amusement. "Slacker like you? Doesn't seem very likely, does it? "
"Oh, OK." Blair smiled back because he just couldn't help it. "Just checking."
"She started a heat wave," Jack muttered to himself, not quite singing as he poured coffee. "By letting her seat wave ..."
"Excuse me, Colonel?"
Carter was standing next to him with her own coffee cup. Jack snorted. He hadn't even realized that damn song was still going through his head. This is exactly why he didn't let himself think about the happy dreams while he was awake. Never knew what might come out of your mouth at the wrong moment. Apparently he needed to be just as careful about the not-so-happy dreams.
"Don't you kids listen to the classics anymore?"
"Oh, I know the song, sir." She held out her cup and Jack filled it. "Just didn't realize you were such an Ethel Merman fan."
"I didn't know you were, Major." Jack was rather proud of his touchè, and Carter stopped trying to hide her smile.
"Not me, Dad. He loves those old musicals. Had all the records, everything. I wasn't sure who the Rolling Stones were when I started junior high, but I knew the entire libretto to South Pacific by heart."
"Some enchanted evening..." Jack sang, very badly. "I wonder if he's introduced the Tok'ra to MGM musicals yet?"
"What are MGM musicals?" Teal'c asked. He took a seat and folded his hands on the conference room table.
"Ask Daniel." Jack sat down across from him and blew on his coffee. "Tell him you need to spend a long weekend watching Ester Williams movies in order to understand Tau'ri culture. I'm sure he'll be glad to oblige."
Teal'c raised a skeptical eyebrow. Damn. It was almost impossible to pull anything over on that Jaffa any more.
"Speaking of Daniel," Jack said suddenly, "Where is our blue-eyed archeologist this morning? Somebody want to call his office and see if he's lost track of the time?"
"That won't be necessary, Colonel." General Hammond entered, followed by Janet Fraiser and -- aw, shit-- Dr. Mackenzie. "Dr. Jackson wasn't invited to this meeting."
"Is Daniel all right?" Carter asked immediately.
"He was just fine when I saw him yesterday," Jack said. "I'm sure he's just fine today. Of course, that's likely to change when he discovers people are having meetings about him behind his back." He glared at Mackenzie.
"Dr. Jackson is an intelligent, highly educated man--" Mackenzie started calmly.
"He's a freaking genius and you know it."
"--And so I'm sure he understands why the SGC has a legitimate interest in conducting periodic reviews of his work and overall health. Not just for his own good, but to ensure there is no repeat of last year's unfortunate events."
"It's been --" Jack had to count,"--four months since Daniel got back. He's fine. His work is excellent. I'm his commanding officer and I say there's no problem. Everybody happy? Good. Meeting adjourned."
He expected Hammond to slap him down like he deserved, but the general was sitting back and just watching this play out.
"Colonel," Janet said. "Daniel spent six months living out of his car while he researched medieval alchemy and occultism. It's not unreasonable for us to watch for any recurrence of irrational behaviors."
"Irrational?" Jack kept his voice level. "Do you have even one shred of evidence that Daniel's acting irrationally?"
Mackenzie picked up the large black book he'd brought into the conference room and leaned across the table to set it in front of Jack. "Do you recognize this, Colonel O'Neill?"
The book was sealed in a slick mylar sleeve for protection and was obviously very old. There was no title on the spine. Not, Jack suspected, that he would have been able to make much sense out of the title even if there had been one. "Any point in me taking this out of the wrapper and lookin' at the pages?"
"The text is in medieval Latin," Mackenzie said. "I had Dr. Singh translate a few pages for me and research the history of this volume."
"Any reason you didn't have Daniel do the translation?"
"For reasons that should be obvious to you, we needed a completely objective analysis."
"What's obvious to me is that you're undermining Daniel's authority by taking translation work directly to his subordinates. General, I can't believe you signed off on this."
"Please answer Dr. Mackenzie's question," Hammond said calmly. "Do you recognize or know anything about this book?"
Jack glanced at Carter for help, but it was clear she was as clueless as he was. "No," he said at last. "I don't recognize it. Any reason I should?"
"It's the Liber Ivonis," Mackenzie said with the air of a man who'd just won an argument. "Dr. Jackson invoked national security interests and had the Rainier University Library in Cascade Washington send it to him via special courier -- at considerable expense, I might add, given the volume's age and rarity."
"Danny's checking old books out of the library?" Jack asked, incredulous. "That's your evidence?"
"The Liber Ivonis is a special case. It purports to be a translation of the Book of Eibon."
"Oh, well, there you go. Book of Eibon. Why didn't you just say so in the first place?"
"The Book of Eibon supposedly was a grimoire transcribed by the fallen angels millennia before mankind."
"Uh. Huh."
"In other words," Mackenzie went on, finally showing some impatience, "The Book of Eibon never existed. The Liber Ivonis is a fake. Useless to anyone but a bibliophile or historian specializing in medieval beliefs about alchemy and magic."
"All right, stop. Can we just hold everything right here for a moment?" Jack crossed his hands vigorously, palms out. "I'm tired of playing twenty questions. Would someone just explain to me exactly what it is Daniel's done that's got everyone so upset? Have his library books put the Stargate program over budget? What?"
"As I've already indicated, the book came from the Rainer University Library. That name should be familiar to you, Colonel O'Neill."
"I'm not an idiot. I know that's where we found Daniel, but so what? He spent several weeks there. He knows the library. If that's where the books he needs are, why shouldn't he get them?"
"Do you know why Dr. Jackson wanted this particular volume?"
"If I asked what he was doing every time Daniel picked up a book, I'd never get anything else done."
"Colonel," Janet interrupted. "The fact of the matter is four months after Daniel was supposedly cured of all effects of the Light, he's still researching the same occult texts he was obsessed with while he was on the run from the SGC."
"And you're drawing this conclusion based on one book?"
"No," Janet said sadly.
Mackenzie turned the page in his little notebook. "Since Dr. Jackson was reinstated to the program in mid-January, he's also obtained Cultes des Goules, Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis, von Junzt's Unaussprechlicken Kulten and even John Dee's fragmentary translations from the Al Azif. The list goes on."
"And this is a list that's supposed to mean something to me?" Jack thought he did a pretty fair job of keeping his voice level, but his temples were pounding and he didn't know if he were angrier right now with Frasier and Mackenzie for backing him into this corner, or with Daniel for giving them the ammunition to do it.
"They're demonologies, Colonel," Mackenzie said. "Grimoires. Occult histories. Spellbooks. Magic. Incidentally, these are only the ones we know about because the books were so rare or fragile Dr. Jackson had to invoke special sanctions to obtain them in the first place. Our sources tell us that Dr. Jackson has been using his academic credentials to have several dozen more such volumes shipped through interlibrary loans to the University of Colorado's downtown campus."
Oh, Danny, Jack thought. What the hell are you playing at? "You've been spying on him," he said dully.
"So I'm afraid I have to agree with Dr. Mackenzie," Hammond said. "Dr. Jackson needs to provide a clear explanation of his newfound, er, field of interest. If he's unwilling or unable to do that, then I'm afraid it may be necessary to reevaluate his position with the program."
"With all due respect, sir," Carter interrupted, "But I think we could all be jumping the gun here. After all, knowledge of so called 'magical' practices have proven invaluable in the past." She looked at Jack for confirmation, and he nodded in agreement, hoping like heck she wasn't going to ask him for examples. "Daniel found Seth here on earth by tracing the history of occult groups associated with him."
"That's right, he did," Jack said, waving his finger at Mackenzie. "Took about twenty minutes online, didn't it?"
"Daniel Jackson's research into occult beliefs of ancient Egypt helped lead to the discovery of Kheb and the Harcesis child," Teal'c pointed out.
OK, not a one hundred percent positive example there, Jack thought, considering how things eventually turned out, but they were definitely on the right track.
"Look, the easiest thing is just to ask him, right? Sounds to me like Daniel realized the research he did while he was a little on the, um, obsessed side could also come in handy once he was back on the team. Just let me talk to him. I'm sure he'll have a reasonable explanation for everything."
"Thank you, Colonel," Hammond said gravely. "I sincerely hope you're right. So it's the considered opinion of you and the rest of SG-1 that Dr. Jackson's exposure to the Light and his subsequent decampment is no longer influencing his behavior in any way."
"Absolutely not, sir," Jack said. Carter and Teal's chimed in with their immediate agreement, God bless 'em.
"As I recall, Dr. Jackson recently strongly urged that SG-1 explore P3X-636," Mackenzie said. "You're equally certain that his insistence was in no way related to the Light or to the aliens who subsequently found him in Cascade?"
Jack schooled his face into absolute stone. God damn the man. What the hell had he heard about that planet? "I'm certain," Jack said flatly, knowing that Teal'c and Carter wouldn't have breathed a word about Daniel's nightmares their second night on that godforsaken dark planet on the other side of the galaxy, far less his febrile insistence that they continue their explorations, even after finding the temple with the open door --
"I'm absolutely certain," Jack repeated for emphasis. "May I be excused, sir?" He picked up the mylar covered book. "Apparently I've got some things to discuss with Daniel."
'Tis a thousand pitties, that we should permit our Eyes to be so Blood-shot with passions, as to loose the sight of many wonderful Things, wherein the Wisdom and Justice of God, would be Glorify'd ...
The Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather, (1693)
"Hello, Blair!" Professor Sveadas waved vigorously to him from across the quadrangle. Blair stopped and waited for her to catch up even though he was running late for his eight-thirty class. Angeline Sveadas was in the classics department, the one non-anthropologist on his dissertation committee, and she'd been unfailingly supportive over the past three years in her own inimitably vague way. "However are you doing?" she called, still a distance away. "How's your sentinel?"
Blair couldn't help his flinch. It had been three, almost four months now, but these offhand references still gave him a shiver like someone had just walked over his grave. "Jim's fine," he said when Professor Sveadas was close enough that he didn't have to raise his voice.
"I'm so glad." Professor Sveadas took his arm and patted it reassuringly. She was almost a foot taller than him, with gray hair that she wore in a long braid over one shoulder and bird-bright eyes that winked out of a deeply lined face. "I know it wasn't an easy thing for him."
"I almost think it was almost harder for me. The decision to go public, I mean. After that mess with the Feds and the Air Force over Christmas Jim simply made up his mind, and I don't think he's ever looked back."
"Hard to believe our own government is that ruthless!" she declared. "Almost like something out of one of Dr. Kelso's thrillers, wasn't it?"
"Ah ... Jack Kelso's books are non-fiction," Blair said carefully, and Professor Sveadas looked at him like he was a nice enough boy, but a little stupid. It was the same expression she'd worn during much of his dissertation defense, and Blair had been sure she was going to fail him.
"Well, good heavens, of course they are," she said. "And it hasn't caused any problems for Detective Ellison at work?"
"Nothing he hasn't been able to handle. We were pretty worried about the legal issues, but there's no precedent for limiting the Plain Sight Doctrine to people with twenty-twenty vision. In fact, a couple of the D.A.s were a little annoyed that we hadn't fessed up earlier. Might have saved them a lot of man hours rechecking fact issues that Jim already knew."
'Little annoyed' was an understatement. Beverly Sanchez had just about bitten their heads off.
"Well I'm glad to hear it," Professor Sveadas said. She looked over Blair's head like a stork perusing the lake for frogs. "Must be going. So glad you're well." She picked her way off in the opposite direction, seeming satisfied with the anticlimactic end of the story.
Everything about the revelation of Jim's abilities had been anti-climactic. Naomi was still disappointed about the press conference. After Jim and Blair had unanimously vetoed all her spin ideas -- real life superhero with the Cascade PD! -- and anything beginning, "in the jungles of Peru" or that mentioned fighting for justice -- the print reporters and the couple of cameramen from the local TV stations who'd shown up were left with a story about a graduate student claiming to have found proof of a Victorian anthropologist's theory that no one had ever heard of in the first place.
Oh yeah, and a police detective with "heightened senses." Not, as it turned out, a phrase that resonated with anyone outside the professional secrets business. Jim made the late night news on Channel 11, and rated a single-column story on the second page of the "Lifestyle" section in the Cascade Sunday paper.
That morning Jim had looked at the story without bothering to read it, then passed it across the coffee table to him. "For your scrapbook, Chief."
Blair, on the other hand, suddenly felt like he'd fallen off a cliff. He held out his hand for the paper and saw his own fingers were trembling. "Jim," he said, letting the paper drop. A grainy black and white picture of Jim in dress blues illustrated the story. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Me?" Jim looked at him, honestly puzzled. "For years now I've been imagining, I don't know what. That it would be like it was when I got back from Peru. Television lights in my face. Reporters calling my Dad. The whole world watching like I was some kind of a freak. And instead --" he gestured at the newspaper. "This is nothing." A grin broke over Jim's face that was pure sunshine. "It turns out nobody really gives a shit about me at all."
Blair should have been grinning back. He could never resist Jim's smiles. But instead his shakes were getting so bad he had to clamp his hands on his knees to keep himself from flying to pieces. "Well, there's still the academic press. The excerpts from my diss won't be published for another nine months or so, but --"
"Sandburg, I think I can handle a write-up in the Journal of Obscure Goobledygook."
"Yeah. I know you can. Of course." Blair had to look away.
"You disappointed that there's nobody knocking down our door to get the movie rights? No invitation to appear on Larry King -- nobody calling to say you won a MacArthur award?"
Blair stiffened, but there wasn't a trace of mockery in Jim's voice. God, was Jim was right? Was he really the kind of person who could be disappointed that Jim's private life had not, after all, been destroyed in a blaze of publicity?
"Nah," he said, trying hard to keep his tone as light as Jim's. "The MacArthurs don't get announced until October."
"So there's still time." Jim was still smiling, so relaxed and happy that Blair blurted out what he hadn't even known until he said the words out loud.
"You know what's making me crazy here? We told the world about you, and nobody cared. I can't even begin to get that, man. I mean, Jesus, you're so wonderful and so beautiful, this human miracle. How could people just not give a shit?" Blair swept the newspaper off the table. "God, if it was me I'd do anything just to see you, just to begin to understand --"
"Chief."
Blair suddenly realized he was crying. Dear God, he'd completely lost it. Jim must think he was nuts. He stumbled to his feet, trying to make his escape blind, but he stumbled smack into Jim instead, who put his arms around Blair and held him until he stopped trying to pull free, and then stroked his back until he'd stopped crying, too.
"Sorry," he muttered into Jim's shirt. "Sorry. I don't know what the hell's --"
"Wonderful?" Jim asked. "Beautiful?"
The first Angell or Spirit of Saturn is called Orifiel, to whom God committed the government of the World from the beginning of its Creation; who began his government the 15 day of the moneth of March, in the first year of the World, and it endured 354 years and 4 moneths. Attributed to the Spirit in regard of his action: under his dominion men were rude, and did cohabite together in desert and uncouth places, after the homely manner of Beasts.
De Septem Secundeis, Johannes Trithemius (1508)
He found Daniel in his office, poring over an old book
"Hey."
"Hello, Jack," Daniel said without looking up.
"Brought you a present." He laid his offering on the desk next to the book Daniel was reading, stealing a look at the page as he did. It wasn't in English. Jack didn't even recognize the letters.
"A donut," Daniel said suspiciously. "What's going on?"
"What, I can't bring you a chocolate donut out of the goodness of my heart?"
Daniel sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. "Now I'm really worried."
Jack dumped the Liber Ivonis on the desk. "Mackenzie's freaking out about your book of the month club. He thinks you're about to take off on another unannounced road trip."
Daniel tilted his chair forward and reached for the book. "Thanks for bringing this down. I was expecting it last week."
"Earth to Daniel." Jack scooted the book out of his reach. "Mackenzie thinks you're 'acting irrationally.' He's talking about pulling your credentials."
"Yes, and sometimes Mackenzie is a real ass."
"Not exactly disagreeing with you, but he's got Janet and Hammond listening to him. They're worried."
Daniel reached again for the Liber Ivonis, and when Jack continued to hold it out of reach, huffed in exasperation and said, "Do my ears look deformed to you?"
"Excuse me?"
Daniel turned his head and tugged on his right ear. "My ears. Would you call them deformed?"
"It's probably not the first word that would come to mind. Besides, your eyebrows are way stranger than your ears."
Said eyebrows went up. "Thanks, Jack. According to Dr. Mackenzie, my ears show the deformation typical of schizophrenia. It's in my medical records."
Jack shifted some papers to make room for himself to perch on the end of Daniel's desk, and made damned sure he didn't look or sound impatient. Obviously he was going to be here for a while. "Schizophrenics got deformed ears?"
"According to the DSM, schizophrenics as a group exhibit subtle malformations of the ear. Of course, the DSM also defines schizophrenia as psychotic and grossly disorganized behavior that persists for at least six months, but I guess Mackenzie overlooked that diagnostic criteria, given the incredibly compelling evidence of the shape of my earlobes. How long did he give me before writing me off? Was it even thirty-six hours?"
"I know," Jack said quietly. "I'm sorry."
Daniel looked up at him, his brows drawn together in a frown. "Jack. I don't -- It's been nearly two years. I'm not fishing around for an apology."
Jack shrugged. "Maybe you need to hear one anyway. I'm sorry I let them lock you up. I'm sorry I let them drug you."
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't know why I even brought this up. I don't blame you. I don't even blame Mackenzie." He opened his eyes, and the expression he must have seen on Jack's face twisted a brief smile from him. "OK, so I do blame Mackenzie, but I don't hate the man. I mean, he listened to me in the end. He'd already made up his mind and thrown away the key, but when I asked him, he did call you."
He looked at Jack so earnestly that Jack had no idea what to say, so he flipped a paperclip across the desk at him in a companionable sort of way, and Daniel blocked it and flipped it back, and when Jack returned it a little too enthusiastically, it went sailing off the end of the desk.
Daniel reached down and picked it up. "All I'm saying is, given Dr. Mackenzie's track record, it's kind of hard for me to take anything he says about my mental health very seriously."
"You and me both, but he's got Janet all in a tizzy and she's gone to Hammond and gotten him worried too, and frankly, I'd appreciate your help in nipping this whole thing in the bud."
"Right. OK. So what's Mackenzie's problem?"
"He doesn't like the books you're reading. They scare him."
Daniel blinked. "They scare him?"
Jack thumped on the Liber Ivonis. "He says this one was written by the angels who got kicked out heaven. Does he mean Satan? I probably need to remind him that we've already kicked Sokar's ass ourselves."
"Written by ... angels?" Daniel's brow furrowed. "Where in the world did he get an idea like that?"
"Uh, I think he asked someone," Jack hedged, hoping he wouldn't have to open that can of worms yet.
"Who? Dr. Singh? So that's why poor Nareej was so jumpy the other day. That man can translate circles around me when it comes to Dardic languages, but Renaissance esoterica isn't his field. Mackenzie should have just asked me if he wanted to know so badly."
"See, and that's exactly what I told him," Jack said triumphantly.
"Tradition has it that it was written by the great Hyperborean magician Eibon, but probably it's the work of an anonymous scribe writing sometime in the late Pliocene."
"Uh, I'm no geologist, but the late Pliocene? As in two-millions-years-ago Pliocene? I didn't realize we were doing a whole lot of bookkeeping as a species by that point. Weren't we still pretty much caught up in the whole walking upright scene?
"Well, the scribe wasn't human," Daniel said a little impatiently.
"Ah. Of course not. Goa'uld?" It gave Jack the creepy-crawlies, imagining the goa'uld mucking around in the childhood of mankind. "Were they using human hosts by then, or was it an Unas?"
Daniel reached for the Liber Ivonis again and this time Jack let him have it. "The goa'uld have used a lot of beings for hosts," he said, running his long fingers along the slick mylar sleeve. "Not all of them were as tractable as humans."
"Hosts who fought back? Great. I like the sound of that."
"I'm not so sure," Daniel said.
"C'mon, how can that possibly be a bad thing?"
Daniel sighed. "Well, think about it. The religious history of mankind has been inextricably tainted by contact with the goa'uld."
Not really something Jack enjoyed thinking about, thank you very much, but he nodded cautiously so Daniel would keep talking.
"So what are we supposed to make of texts like these? I guess I shouldn't be surprised they scare Mackenzie. They've frightened the religious establishment ever since Gilgamesh dedicated the House of An to Ishtar." Daniel peeled open the seal and the sharp scent of old paper and binding filled the room. "That makes a book like this a corruption of a corruption, doesn't it? "
"And the enemy of my enemy is my friend?" Jack said hopefully.
"I don't know," Daniel said. Jack looked at him, and wondered if Daniel was losing weight, or if it were only the sharp white light from the desk lamp that made his eyes look so shadowed. "So you'll tell Mackenzie that I'm just doing my job here? I'm trying to put together a history of the goa'uld as a species in the hopes of finding a weakness that will allow us to defeat them. Exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, right?"
"Yeah," Jack said slowly. "I'll tell him." He slid off Daniel's desk, thinking unhappily that for some reason he was more concerned about Daniel's research now than he'd been when he sauntered in here. He had gotten as far as the door when another uncomfortable thought struck him and he turned back. "Daniel?"
He glanced up. "Jack?"
"This doesn't have anything to do with all that weirdness on P3X-636, does it?"
Daniel looked away for a moment, and when he looked back Jack couldn't read the expression in his shadowed eyes.
From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.
"The Shunned House" H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
Only in L.A., Gunn thought as he stepped off the elevator. Or Tucson. Maybe Denver or Phoenix. Or one of those old mining towns up in the Rockies that had been there for a hundred years, or down in Death Valley even, but nowhere back east. Chicago, D.C., Atlanta, any place like that, you leave a building to rot, and it rots, man. Mildew eats up the wallpaper, the rain bleeds in and takes the rafters, the carpet molds and floorboards go spongy with decay, and it doesn't take too long before a place like this would have the decency to fall down in a heap and fucking die already.
Not the Hyperion Hotel, though. Eighty-some years it had been here. For all the signs of age it showed, it would stand for at least eighty more. Carpet was looking a little scuffed was all, and apparently no one had been up here with a vacuum cleaner in a couple of decades. He squatted and looked at the pattern. He'd thought it was flowers, but from up close he saw it was really green and gold diamonds. Ugly either way. He almost thought he would've preferred flowers -- geometric shapes shouldn't writhe across the floor like that.
Gunn straightened up. Creepy ass old place. He preferred warehouses himself. Factory space. Industrial areas. A lot fewer lives to take into account in places like that, because how could you say how many people had spent nights behind each of these closed doors? How many had left a little piece of themselves behind? Gunn wasn't a man for ghost stories, but he knew damn well that the dead were always close to you, one way or another. Hanging out in a place like this was just inviting them to nuzzle a little bit closer, wasn't it?
Plus, all right, he had to admit, the Hyperion reminded him of the hotel in that old horror movie, the one where Jack Nicholson went running round chopping his way through doors with a fire axe. The twin girl ghosts had scared the piss out of him as a kid. It gave him a pang to think that he'd ever been innocent enough to be frightened by special-effects monsters, but it didn't make him like Angel's hotel any better.
He sauntered down the hall, rapping with his knuckles on the doors of empty rooms, daring anything to answer him. As he turned the corner, he thought he heard a sudden burst of music. Tinny, like somebody had an old record player. Probably just monster speakers in a car driving down Hollywood Boulevard, or hell, maybe it was the ghosts themselves, but either way, he'd had enough of exploring.
He took the stairs back to the lobby rather than waiting for the elevator.
Angel still wasn't back, and Wesley was still helping Cordelia with her lines.
"I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign." Wesley read solemnly.
Cordy scowled at him. "Could you be any more boring?"
"That's not your line."
"I know that's not my line. I meant, could you try to put a little more feeling into it? How am I supposed to find my character's center when you're reading that off like it's a state of the union address?"
English just raised an eyebrow above his glasses and read in exactly the same tone of voice as before, "I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign."
Cordy rolled her eyes. "Fine. If that's the way you're going to be."
"That's not your line either. Do you need me to give it to you?"
"For that last time, I know what my line is." She glared fiercely for a moment. "What is it again?"
"The king has --"
"Wait, wait," she made frantic gestures with her hands. "I've got it, I've got it." She drew herself up, raising her chin, and said, "The king has opened his shaggy robes --"
"It's a 'tattered mantle,' actually."
"Oh, good grief." She sagged back onto the lobby sofa. It occurred to Gunn that Angel must have gotten new furniture from somewhere -- no way was this stuff forty years old.
"I'm never going to learn this," Cordy complained. "Tattered mantle. Tattered mantle. Tattered mantle. It's not like it's easy to say."
"Admittedly, the line doesn't scan very smoothly," Wesley said.
"Oh, God," Cordy exclaimed, putting both hands on her forehead and falling sideways across the sofa as if she were having a seizure. Or a vision. "Don't go all English professor on me. Isn't the point of graduating never having to think about this stuff anymore?"
"Hey, it's not so bad," Gunn couldn't help it. "You just got to find the beat. Like, 'for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabelle Lee.' Those are anapests. Da da dum, da da dum."
Cordy sat up and turned around. She and English were staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
"What? You all think I'm uneducated or something?"
Both of them blushed scarlet. Shootin' fish in a barrel, Gunn thought. He probably ought to be ashamed of himself. "Sorry. Go on with what you were doin'."
"Yes, of course," Wesley said, sitting up very straight. "The line is --"
"I've got it already. Feed me my cue."
"I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign."
"The king has opened his tattered mantle," Cordelia declaimed with all the feeling of your average department store mannequin. "There's naught but Christ to cry to now."
"That last part?" Gunn said. "Perfect iambs."
For some reason Jack's little visit this morning had shot Daniel's concentration all to hell. He took a sip of lukewarm coffee, grimaced, then bent over his book once more.
"When they had covered half the way, covered half the way, a sickness befell him there, mind sickness befell him," Daniel read for the third or fourth time. "He jerked like a snake dragged by its head with a reed; his mouth bit the dust, like a gazelle caught in a snare. Neither king nor contingents could help him."
Nothing.
He set aside his glasses and rubbed at his closed eyes with both palms. Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave had been a long shot, and frankly, if he started spending all his time reviewing Sumerian resurrection stories, he'd never get anything else done. On the other hand, he had to pore through these ancient scraps of human consciousness, because with every re-transcription and re-translation a little more of what Daniel was looking for had inevitably been lost. Egyptian, Phoenician, Moabite, Aramaic and Greek -- every scholar in every succeeding civilization would have had fewer and fewer words with which to describe the utterly inhuman. By the time he got to a text as late as the fourteenth century Liber Ivonis, nothing but ghosts and shadows remained.
He slid his glasses back onto his face with a sense of resignation. Not that it made much difference -- his friend there on the other side of the room was equally clear whether or not Daniel was wearing his glasses. He might almost have passed for an airman slouching in the corner enjoying a cigarette break, at least until you noticed the soft, fat fingers, shockingly white against raggedy, nondescript khaki.
His face was far worse.
Daniel took a few deep breaths and thought very hard about happy, ordinary things. Meditating with Teal'c as the scent of hot beeswax filled his head. (The man must be spending his entire salary buying those cathedral candles.) Sam excitedly telling him over lunch the other day all about her plans to bike to Monument Valley next winter -- complete with MapQwest printouts and motel guides that she kept getting jello on.
Jack bringing him a stale chocolate donut from the commissary this morning.
When Daniel dared to raise his eyes again, his friend was gone for the moment. He could usually make him disappear by concentrating, but frankly, it didn't really help. The memory was almost worse than his presence.
Daniel had never been a finicky eater, but he was quite, quite certain that he'd never be able to eat oysters on the half shell again.