Sabine Bauer - Mirror, mirror

Empty slots yawned from the overhead compartment that housed the drive pod systems. Which crystal went where, or whether any of the crystals he'd salvaged belonged there in the first place, was anybody's guess. Thing about control crystals, they all looked the same to him. Rodney might have made sense of them, but John Sheppard wasn't Rodney McKay. Under normal circumstances he'd have considered it a blessing, but right now it put him at a distinct disadvantage. The one thing he had in abundance, however, was time. He'd just keep going until he got it right. Maybe. John experimentally inserted a crystal into the top left slot. It didn't fit. Well, that was good. If it boiled down to square pegs in round holes, at least it gave him something to go on.

"Don't do that." Elizabeth had been watching from outside the jumper. Now she reluctantly headed up the ramp, muttering to herself. "You're not supposed to fix it. I don't want you to."

Tough. The fifth crystal didn't fit either, but he still had thirty-two to go.

"If you fix it, you'll leave. I don't like that." She was hovering behind his right shoulder, getting agitated, distractedly fingering tools, pieces of equipment.

"Don't touch anything." Schooling his face into an expression intended to telegraph something between calm and serenity, he turned around. "I have to fix it, Elizabeth. And I will have to leave, so I can try to make things right again."

"I don't like that. Things are right."

"No. No they're not," he said gently, turning back to the compartment again.

If he'd continued to focus on her, he might have stood a chance. As it was, he only saw blurred motion from the corner of his eye. Whatever it was she'd grabbed from among the clutter-foot-long and shiny metallic-struck his temple. His skull slammed against the bulkhead for a sensational explosion of pain, then things went black. As he tumbled deeper into that velvety, anodyne zone, he thought he heard Elizabeth's voice.

"I'm sorry, John."

He lay on his back on a considerably less than comfortable straw pallet and strained to listen into the pitch darkness of the bunkhouse, which accommodated eighteen serfs. Opposite his luxury cot was a tiny casement-unglazed, because these good folks had either lost the wherewithal to provide such minor creature comforts or never had possessed it to begin with. Either way, the communal bedroom was draughty. He'd pointed out the above-average likelihood of this causing some serious health issues, but nobody had seemed interested. He'd promptly caught a persistent head cold.

By now he could identify individual snores. The resonant, metronomic saw and whistle for instance was Sahar, the foreman. The rattle, apnea, and snap belonged to Sahar's wife, Rilla, who was in charge of the pig swill (the one the serfs ate) and lately had been stretching the periods when she didn't breathe to alarming lengths. Probably because the snap came out much louder when you were at the brink of anoxia. For variety's sake, the ancient farmhand, Bordan, didn't snore but cough, whereas the maid communicated in delicate honks, like a very small goose-an apt enough description of her character and intellect. These were the highlights, but he also was intimately familiar with everybody else's nightly noises, which attested to the amount of sleep he'd been getting.

The sky past the casement was beginning to gray, and he scrunched his eyes shut and began counting. At seven-five seconds early, actually-the shrill ring of the dawn bell scattered the snores, hoots, honks, and wheezes. They were replaced by moans and grunts as people reluctantly rolled out of bed. He stretched, absently catalogued the daily array of aches-his back and the mattress were incompatible-slipped on his clogs and shuffled for the door.

The morning was overhung by leaden clouds, shedding a misty veil of drizzle fine enough to creep into your pores. He couldn't recall when he'd last seen the sun or felt dry, for that matter. Prayer was held on a muddy rectangle formed by the main farmhouse, a barn, and the bunkhouse. Most serfs had already assembled, and he squeezed in at the back, behind the broad shoulders of a couple of butcher's apprentices that would keep him well out of sight from the front. He preferred it that way, because it saved him the trouble of feigning enthusiasm over the drawn-out incantations in honor of the Ancestors.

"…and protect us from the evils of Ikaros and let us rejoice in practicing simplicity and moderation," Sahar intoned.

"May the Ancestors grant us simplicity," the crowd bleated back.

He joined in mechanically, knowing that someone was bound to notice if he remained silent. As far as he was concerned any more simplicity would set these good folks firmly on the road to wooden clubs and flint arrowheads. That aside, it might be much more conducive to morale if the working population were fed breakfast instead of platitudes. His morale definitely would improve.

Around him, the assembly was breaking up, and with a baleful glance at the monochrome sky, he trudged off in the direction of the sties and the restless squealing of the hogs. Ravenous and eager to be let out, they were snapping and jostling each other in the pen, interrupting their shove-fest only to glare at him malevolently. Making sure his feet were well out of harm's way, he climbed up a couple of the rough-hewn planks of the fence and undid the latch. More jostling, as they all vied to be first through the gate.

It wouldn't be so bad if, at least occasionally, he got to enjoy the fruit of his labors, but luxuries such as scrambled eggs and bacon were reserved strictly for the nobility in the city below.

Suddenly he could taste the salty, savory flavor of a rasher of bacon on his tongue, knew without a doubt that that's what it was. His stomach growled in response, dispelling this odd sensory memory of something he couldn't recall ever hav ing eaten in his life. Trying to ignore both his hunger and the vague unsettled feeling the bacon episode had left, he grabbed a sturdy stick that was leaning against the fence-state-of-theart agricultural technology-and plodded after the hogs uphill and toward the forest.

The soil on the path, saturated from months of rainfalls and churned up by a thousand trotters, stuck to his clogs in heavy clumps, layering itself under the soles, until he felt as if he were walking on platform shoes. The animals had no such problems and briskly trotted toward the shelter of the trees. By the time he caught up with them, they'd reached a small clearing and looked like they were going to settle in for the day. Sadly for them, he had no intention of sitting here till dusk and soaking through and catching his death. Okay, he'd soak through anyway, but he could at least make a bid at staying warm.

He singled out the lead animal and brought the stick down on its bulging hindquarters. At the third wallop the hog got the message, hissed in outrage, and began moving deeper into the forest, drawing the other animals after it. Repeated taps with the stick steered it uphill on a barely visible trail. Driven by something he couldn't or wouldn't clearly define, he kept going, higher and deeper into the forest than he'd ever taken the hogs before.

The trail was all but overgrown, but the footing had improved. There were flagstones, meticulously laid once, though frost and tree roots had cracked them long ago and allowed weeds to sprout through the gaps. Still, the workmanship was beyond anything they'd be capable of now. His curiosity piqued, he walked faster, no longer caring whether or not the hogs kept up.

At last the trail opened out into a glade. Except, no glade he'd ever met came complete with stairs. Broad and sweeping they arced down toward an arena of sorts. Maybe an amphitheater. He'd heard about places like that, but he'd never visited one; the theaters, much like scrambled eggs and bacon, were reserved for the nobility. Either side of the stairway stretched tiers, half swallowed by the forest. Where he imagined the spectators to have sat or stood, centuries-old trees had breached the tiers and branches protruded through what must have been a railing once. At the far end of the arena below, upstage center as it were, rose a large stone ring, wreathed around by creepers and bearded with moss.