Above and beyond the rustic fantasy fashions that matched the color scheme of the streamers in the glade, you really couldn't make out all that much. They all ran with shoulders hunched and arms wrapped over some pretty impressive hairstyles to protect their heads. Where faces weren't hidden by jutting elbows, they were obscured by beards as impressive as the coiffs. John had counted seventeen people when, suddenly, Elizabeth slipped from his grasp and shot forward.
He thought he heard her say, "They need me!" — yes, at least as much as they needed a hole in the head- and then she was out in the clearing, grabbing the arm of a woman who promptly stumbled in shock and attempting to haul her off to the grotto. Predictably, the woman started screaming, audible even over the roar of the storm. It drew a threesome of men who tried to pry their companion from Elizabeth. Oblivious to hail and lightning, she hung on like a limpet.
While John swallowed a blue streak, Junior slid him a Now what? look.
John shrugged. You had to be as nuts as Elizabeth to expect her to keep their presence to herself for any length of time; she'd try and arrange a dinner party at the earliest opportunity. The best they could do was retrieve her before she hurt somebody, accidentally or otherwise. Patting Junior's shoulder, he pushed himself up-the head-rush was getting worse, he noted-and stepped from cover and out into the clearing. The next thing he heard was a shout, then Junior slammed into him in a ferocious tackle, tearing him to the ground. The lightning struck inches from his head.
"Now we're even," Junior grunted into his ear and proceeded to pull him to his feet. "I suggest we stay under the trees."
"Just what I'd been thinking."
"You okay?" Junior frowned.
"Little dizzy. Thanks."
One of the men who'd been busy peeling Elizabeth off the woman had broken from the group in the clearing and came running toward them, one arm folded over his head, the other waving furiously. "Back!" he shouted. "Go back! Go away! You're upsetting the balance!"
They were what?
Pointlessly trying to dodge the hail, the man shambled closer, shoved through the undergrowth, and finally sought shelter under the same tree as they. Not overly tall and a little on the scrawny side, he stood there, panting hard, squinting through fogged-up spectacles barely held together by copious amounts of twine. Thinning hair hung to his shoulders, dripping wet, and his beard was similarly soaked and scraggly.
"Hair meets the Exodus," muttered Junior.
Their one-man welcoming committee either hadn't heard him or ignored the remark. "You must leave. You're upsetting the balance, can't you see?" The neo-biblical look might have been misleading, the accent wasn't.
"Radek."
"Zelenka."
They'd spoken in unison, and Zelenka blinked in surprise. "How do you-?" He ripped off his glasses and smeared the condensation around with a dirty sleeve. Then he put them back on and blinked some more before gasping, "Colonel Sheppard!"
"That'd be him." Junior cocked a thumb at John. "I'm Major Sheppard."
"Hovno!" Under that beard Zelenka, or whatever version of the above this was, turned white as a sheet.
"That sounded rude," observed Junior.
"It was." In his timeline, John had received some instruction in basic Czech swearwords.
"You shouldn't be here," Zelenka hissed. "You-"
"For God's sake, Radek, don't-"
"I no longer go by that name. After the disaster you caused, we-the survivors-radically changed our lifestyles. And ourselves. I now am Brother Moon."
"Alright. Brother Moon." John resisted an overwhelming urge to roll his eyes, less from diplomatic considerations than because it would aggravate his headache. As chirpily as anyone could in a thundering hailstorm when confronted with Brother Throwback-To-The-Sixties, he asked, "You wouldn't happen to know where Dr. Weir is?"
"That's none of your business. Leave. Haven't you done enough damage?"
"We'll leave as soon as we've spoken to Elizabeth."
"Sister Rainbow doesn't want to speak to you."
"How about we ask Sister Rainbow"-John managed it with only a tiny beat — "ourselves?"
"She doesn't want to-"
Three more men scurried across the clearing now and closed ranks behind Zelenka who drew himself up to his full height and announced, "These people have to leave, Brothers. They don't belong here. If they don't go voluntarily, we shall have to… persuade them."
"Persuade us?" Junior arched an eyebrow. "So this pacifism thing isn't part-of the playbook, is it?"
John shot him a warning glance. Antagonizing the ashram, for want of a better word, wouldn't get them anywhere. Then again, any further antagonizing seemed impossible. By the looks of it, they were well and truly there already. Unfazed by such petty considerations as chain of command, the Brothers moved in-in a decidedly non-pacifist kind of way. On a good day, he'd have had no problem taking on each of them individually, but all three of them was a bit much. Not to mention the fact that this wasn't a good day by any stretch of the imagination. Junior seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion, looking meekly cooperative all of a sudden.
Clearly uncomfortable with the situation, the tallest of them murmured, "I really regret this, but-" His gaze snapped to somewhere behind John's shoulder, and his eyes went wide. As a matter of fact, his whole demeanor gave an impression of huge relief.
Moments later John realized why. A group of stragglers came stumbling down a narrow forest trail behind them, lugging along a basket heaped with those pink and purple blossoms they'd rescued from the hail. A gust whipped a handful of flowers from the top, plastered one of them across his nose and mouth, half drowning him in that same siren fragrance he'd noticed stepping off the jumper. Maybe that explained why these folks were rescuing flowers rather than food crops. Soaking wet and windblown, they were herded on by Dr. Elizabeth Weir. Peeling the blossom off his face, he wondered whether she was the original version, prayed that, if so, she was compos mentis-though she herself obviously doubted it right now. She'd frozen in her tracks and stood staring from John to Junior and back. Finally she forced herself to take a few steps forward and very carefully touched his arm, then Junior's.
"You're real," she rasped. "You're both… real. And alive… How…" Suddenly she broke into a huge smile. "God, it's good to see you! You must-"
"They must leave!" Zelenka cut in. "I doubt either one of them is who he seems to be, and they're putting us all at risk. It's the doing of Charybdis. We can't trust them, Sister Rainbow."
Sister Rainbow begged to differ. "They're injured, Radek. This isn't how we treat people in need of our help. We'll take them with us, listen to what they've got to say, and take it from there."
There it was again! A crackle in the undergrowth, as if a foot had accidentally landed on a dry twig-though the notion of anything dry in this place struck him as ridiculous.
Little hairs on his neck stood on end, and Rodney stopped, held his breath, waited.
Nothing. Like the last time and the time before.
Like the last time and the time before, he counted the hogs to make sure that none of them had separated from the herd and was trailing them somewhere in the bushes, which could have accounted for the noise.
A dozen ugly brutes, all present and correct.
And maybe he was just paranoid. In the five weeks since his discovery, he'd returned to the ruins whenever he thought it was safe-in other words, irregularly and only after taking detours so erratic that, more than once, he had gotten himself lost and never even reached the site. Chances were that the sound had simply been a larger than usual splotch of water hurtling from a branch.