04 - The Morpheus Factor Read online

  THE MORPHEUS FACTOR

  Stargate SG-1 - 04

  Ashley McConnell

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  CHAPTER ONE

  “If it’s Tuesday, it must be P4V-837,” Jack O’Neill announced as SG-1 stepped through the gate. He sniffed at the air and then took a deep, appreciative breath. “Temperature balmy, flowers in bloom, skies blue, gravity norm—Hey!”

  Across a lovely meadow, a massive cotton-wood tree heaved itself free of the earth and shook the dirt loose from ropy gray roots.

  It wasn’t really a Cottonwood, of course. Aside from the fact that Terran cottonwoods were a little less animate, the “tree” was zebra striped. Nonetheless, the trunk’s base color was gray, and the mass of heavy, twisted branches supported silvery-green leaves. As Daniel had once remarked in passing, the human mind sought to put all new experiences into a known context, at least initially. And it looked like a cotton wood. A walking cottonwood.

  “What the—”

  The four members of SG-1 stood at the foot of the little hill that marked the Stargate on this world and stared as the tree’s branches rattled against each other, the leaves making a swishing sound.

  A shadow passed between the team and the sun, chilling them to the bone, and Daniel Jackson looked up.

  “Uh, Jack. That’s a roc, Jack. That’s a really, really, really big roc.”

  “That’s a bird.” Samantha Carter gripped her automatic rifle tensely, watching as the shadow flapped its wings with the sound of thunder. It wheeled above them and swooped down to snatch up the Cottonwood in one impossibly huge claw. The sixty-foot tree was the size of a twig in the creature’s foot. The roots and branches beat futilely at the massive legs.

  “No, it’s definitely a roc,” Daniel assured her.

  “I thought that was something out of mythology,” O’Neill said nervously, looking around for the DHD while at the same time keeping an eye on the tree thrashing frantically in the clutches of a bird the size of a small mountain. The bird had a massive, curved beak and brilliant green feathers that could be used to roof houses. It also had very impressive claws that wrapped around the gnarled trunk of the tree in a very efficient manner.

  “It is,” Daniel agreed. “Arabian mythology. Second voyage of Sinbad. Enemy of giant snakes.”

  “Then what is it doing here?” Teal’C asked as the bird launched itself back into the sky. “And how can it fly? The wingspan cannot support it.”

  The team had fallen back to the DHD, just in case the giant bird looked their way. Fortunately, it seemed to be fully occupied by its prey, if a tall vegetable could be called prey. Three or four more giant birds appeared, standing by if the first should happen to drop the thing.

  “Ask a bumblebee,” Jack said. Behind them, the Gate closed.

  The next tree over began to shrug back and forth, tugging its roots free from the bank of earth by the stream. It wasn’t clear whether the second tree was planning on going to the aid of the first or not. Meanwhile, the roc was gaining altitude, and its friends continued to hover. One or two were attracted by the new movement and swooped at the new target.

  “Was there anything in the M.A.L.P. data that mentioned this?” Carter asked plaintively.

  “Uh, not that I saw,” Daniel responded.

  “It was not in my copy of the briefing report.”

  “Mine either,” Carter said, “and I’d really like to know why!”

  “Is it just me,” O’Neill said, eyeing the overly active landscape, “or is that tree trying to chase us?”

  “I don’t know about the tree, Colonel, but those spiders are definitely heading our way.”

  “Spiders! What spiders!” Jackson yelped.

  A wave of small, extremely aggressive brown arachnids swarmed out of the ground at their feet.

  “I don’t think those are technically spiders—” Carter offered, stepping hard on a dozen or so.

  “I don’t care! Get them off me!” Jackson said.

  “Normally,” O’Neill said, batting frantically at the waves of multilegged organisms tickling their way up his pants legs, “I’d say we have a duty to explore this planet, fulfill our mission, and report back. Under the circumstances—” he ducked away from an aggressive swipe by a branch six inches in diameter—“I suggest we let the machines gather more data…”

  “Signal to open the iris already sent,” Jackson reported, kicking at a tree root trying to get between him and the DHD. “Entering—”

  And the tree root was gone.

  The writhing wood Jackson had just bruised his foot on vanished. He wiggled his toes—yes, they still hurt like hell.

  The bugs were gone too. O’Neill kept brushing at his clothing, as if not convinced, but they’d vanished.

  The circling rocs overhead, the thrashing trees, the waves of almost spiders were all gone.

  The four of them stood alone in a lovely meadow beside the DHD, not far from the Star-gate. They spun in place, trying to see all around themselves and up in the sky at the same time.

  A meadow. Tall, respectably stationary zebra-striped “cottonwoods” waving gently in the breeze. Soft spongy grayish-green grass underfoot dotted with little starlike purple-and-yellow flowers. Puffy white clouds high in the sky. The brooding stone circle of the Stargate, and the dome of the DHD with its panel of symbols.

  Waves splashing on a beach that hadn’t been there moments before.

  The four of them. And that was all.

  “Uh. Did anyone else see… could we have all hallucinated… ?”

  “I do not believe it was a hallucination, Daniel Jackson.” Teal’C was frowning at a welt on the back of one hand.

  “Well, my toes don’t think so either, but I guess I could have kicked the Dial-Home Device.”

  O’Neill shook his head, as if to get the remaining spiders out of his military-trimmed hair. “I don’t remember seeing a large body of water reported,” he stated, glaring ominously at a tangle of black-and-yellow kelp washing ashore. “And it wasn’t here when we stepped through.” He sniffed deeply. “It didn’t smell like this a little while ago either.” A gull—or at least something that looked remarkably like a gull—swooped by. It was a distinctly ordinary-size bird. O’Neill strode over to the kelp, splashing the shallow shifting water hard with his combat boots. It was real, as real as soaked socks could get. “Okay, folks, this is officially too weird. I think we’ll just skip this one.”

  Daniel, still flexing his toes and feeling grateful for combat boots, objected. “Oh, come on, Jack. It’s an alien world. It’s supposed to be weird. We can’t go running home to Hammond every time something unusual happens.”

  O’Neill paused in the middle of shifting his pack and stared at the other man. Daniel Jackson, a civilian, stared right back. The other two members of Stargate SG-1 glanced at each other uneasily, and Carter stepped back out of range of the glares.

  As she did so, she nearly tripped. The action was enough to break the rising tension, to the relief of both participants.

  “Hey,” Carter muttered. “This looks manufactured.” She reached down and picked up a small round pot and promptly dropped it again. “Ouch! That’s hot!”

  The team crowded around, and Jackson, the team anthropologist, went to one knee and picked up the artifact to examine it. He too put it back down and then wrapped a handkerchief around his hand to protect it. “Handmade,” he said. He sniffed at it and promptly sneezed, waving away a tendril of smoke coming from a charred lump stuck to the bottom of the pot. “Whew. There’re your flowers, Jack.” He looked up at the others. “And that’s why we should stick around. There are people on this world. And that’s our missio
n, isn’t it? ‘To perform reconnaissance, determine threats, and if possible make peaceful contact.’ We can’t do that if we turn tail just because the landscape’s a little bizarre.”

  O’Neill bit back an angry reply. Jackson was right, of course. But so was he. They had no business on a world where they couldn’t trust their own senses.

  However, just because he was morally certain a threat existed didn’t mean he’d “determined” it yet. And he sure hadn’t scoped out its potential either for or against the interests of Earth. Daniel was right: They needed to find out more before they retreated.

  And he wasn’t going to let the scientist get away with implying anything either. He looked down at the top of Daniel’s head as the kneeling man inhaled the remaining scent of whatever had burned in the little pot. Maybe it was just a reflex on his part, O’Neill thought. Maybe it was just paranoia. But he still wanted to haul out of here.

  Which was not the same thing at all as “turning tail.”

  “All right,” he said at last. “We’ll look around a little more. See if we can find out what’s going on.” But I still don’t like it, he thought.

  Perhaps they can help us.

  They may help the others too.

  Not if we seek them first.

  Beyond aught else, they will have new dreams. Different dreams. Approach them. Make them welcome. We need their help, whether they will it or not.

  Very well.

  Elsewhere, four small, furry humanoids crouched in the middle of a circle of smudge pots, staring down at a miniature image of SG-1 that took up the small space in the center of the circle. One of the humanoids looked up. Let us go to meet them then. We need them badly.

  Another sighed in acquiescence. Go. I will remain and shape as I can.

  * * *

  “I didn’t think cottonwoods would grow around saltwater,” Carter said doubtfully, eyeing the now benign trees.

  “Well, they’re probably not real cotton-woods.”

  “They might be, Jack, if the Goa’uld planted a human colony here and they brought cotton-wood seeds with them.”

  O’Neill glared at Jackson. “No, really? The possibility never occurred to me.”

  “Perhaps these persons can explain,” Teal’C suggested, stepping between what promised to grow into a real squabble.

  The other three members of SG-1 turned hastily away from the lapping water to face what Teal’C had already seen.

  The inhabitants of P4V-837—who also did not appear in the M.A.L.P. data—weren’t quite human, though they did walk on two legs and have two arms and heads on top. Bilaterally symmetrical in all respects, they were clothed in something that shimmered and blurred in the sunlight, as if it couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. As they watched, the material, if it was material, shifted and flowed over the aliens’ bodies until it was a reasonable facsimile of the team’s fatigues.

  “Ooooh-kay,” O’Neill muttered. “Teal’C, where did they come from?”

  “I am not certain,” the Jaffa said. “Possibly the same place as the roc. They appeared… suddenly.”

  “Then maybe they’re not real either.”

  The aliens approached to within a few feet of the team and stopped.

  All three of the newcomers had large brown eyes, but their faces were covered with patterns of hair in different colors, growing in weblike lines and curlicues of red, brown, and silver fur, respectively. It was difficult to read expressions since five or six eyebrows seemed to radiate from the corners of their lips.

  “Hello?” Daniel said tentatively.

  The three aliens looked at each other and then back at the team.

  “Hello,” they responded, in chorus.

  Despite the repetition, the word was clearly more than an echo: It carried meaning to the speakers as well as those spoken to. The members of SG-1 all let go unconsciously held breaths. Once again, the aliens spoke English. It was such a convenience when it worked out that way. Or maybe there was something about the transition through the wormhole that—usually—enabled the team to understand and speak the language of the destination planet. They’d never managed to figure it out, but it was nice when it happened.

  “Uh, hi. We come in peace?” Daniel, having elected himself spokesman, pressed his position. O’Neill stood back, content to let the scientist do his thing while he himself tried to figure out what had happened to the spiders, not to mention the rocs.

  The patterns of hair rippled across the three faces. O’Neill was pretty sure that meant the aliens were laughing at them. “You carry weapons,” Silver pointed out.

  “You never know when a tree is going to try to eat you,” O’Neill muttered.

  More writhing hair. One of the three turned away to look at the cottonwoods, and they could see that the hair patterns extended over the back of the skull as well. The patches of bare skin were clearly visible—the hair was at most three-quarters of an inch long on Red, who had, comparatively speaking, the most luxurious mane of the three. Brown was the tallest, and the top of his furry Mohawk barely came to Carter’s shoulder.

  “We carry weapons to protect ourselves, not to attack peaceful people,” Daniel continued gamely. “We’d like to be friends.”

  “We’d like to understand what just happened here,” O’Neill added rather waspishly.

  “What happened?” The three faced each other again, and O’Neill caught a low mutter among them. Lip reading would be impossible with these guys, he thought, and then brought himself up short. There was no reason to assume they were male, he reminded himself. They might all be Samantha Carters.

  In which case it was probably a good thing they weren’t all as well armed as Major Carter, who was keeping a solid grip on her rifle, ready to bring it to bear in an instant. Teal’C was somewhat more comfortable with the situation, the butt end of his energy staff firmly grounded on the soft grass.

  Brown broke out of the huddle and faced them, his mouth stretching wide as if he were parodying a smile. “We wish you welcome,” he—or she—said. “Wise ones are ready to protect themselves whenever necessary, but we are no threat to you. We too wish to be friends. We wish to learn from you. Please come and eat with us. We can sit and talk and learn from one another.”

  The three aliens turned and took a few steps away, then looked back expectantly.

  The team looked to its leader.

  Its leader thought about it and shrugged. While he’d rather the M.A.L.P. had a chance to get more information about this weird place, the machine couldn’t ask questions. Why not find out from the inhabitants? They certainly didn’t look threatening, and they carried nothing that looked like weapons. But that didn’t mean a thing really. O’Neill glanced at his team, gathering their opinions.

  The original probe sent through the Stargate to this planet had sent back to Earth visual data showing a meadow—sans beach—and trees that looked enough like their counterparts on Earth to lead the science team to suspect the flora might have had its origin there. If that was the case, this world was a very hospitable place for Earth species—definitely a keeper. And the possibility that there might have been previous contact with Earth practically demanded investigation. On the other hand, there hadn’t been any sign of intelligent life on this world, especially not transplanted human beings.

  Of course, that was before the current landlords, if that was what they were, showed up. They weren’t human, but they were certainly intelligent.

  Of course, there hadn’t been any video of walking trees and giant parrots either. So the machine had overlooked quite a few things.

  Daniel was already moving forward. Carter, more suspicious, followed, eyeing the aliens warily. Teal’C exchanged a glance with O’Neill.

  Unanimous then.

  SG-1 followed.

  The aliens led them across the meadow and through the trees, skipping nimbly over the exposed roots. The team went more warily, expecting those roots to start wriggling, but they remained still and fir
mly embedded in the earth.

  O’Neill took the opportunity to glance back to the Gate and as a result actually saw the ocean vanish, as a mirage approached too closely will vanish. It was replaced with more meadow, more grass, and more trees. O’Neill sniffed deeply, but couldn’t detect a lingering aroma of salt and fish and kelp. The beach was gone as if it had never been. Only the Stargate and its Dial-Home Device still remained, unchanged and unchanging.

  But the laces on O’Neill’s boots were still wet. His fingers closed more tightly on the butt of his pistol. He tried to remember if there had been an odder world among the many he’d trod upon since the Stargate was reactivated. God knew there had been a lot of strange ones: being alien was part and parcel of being alien, after all. It wasn’t in and of itself a reason to cancel a mission. But it did make his teeth itch.

  It was a pleasant walk, or it would have been if his feet were drier. He hung back to watch Daniel, who was eagerly conversing with the three aliens, gesticulating, nodding, pushing his glasses back up on his nose when they slipped down. Carter and Teal’C had fanned out on either side of O’Neill, neatly flanking their hosts. They were as prepared for hostile action as they could be, considering that there were only four of them and one of the four was oblivious to the possibility that the friendly little aliens might turn into human-eating monsters without any warning at all.

  Although, O’Neill had to admit, they didn’t give any indication of being monstrous. And he didn’t have the particular hair-rising-on-the-back-of-his-neck reaction that he usually got when they were walking into a trap.

  Nonetheless, his teeth itched.

  The open areas between the trees got smaller and smaller as they went on, until they were mostly in the shade. The trees were no longer cottonwoods either; there were a few aspens, familiar to O’Neill from innumerable ski weekends in Colorado, and more “other” trees—ones he couldn’t identify. He wasn’t a botanist, and he didn’t expect to be able to reel off the names of every plant he encountered, but more and more of the trees looked like they came from a world that featured people with odd patterns of hair on their heads. The branches, for instance, marched up the trunks in perfectly symmetrical rows, and the bark was bright yellow. It just didn’t look like home anymore.