9th October 1999
13:13 MDT
"Well, no. I mean, we all can." I shrug in answer to Major Carter's question. "Genetic-." I frown. "You're aware of goa'uld genetic memory?"
She nods. "Goa'uld inherit their memories from their mothers."
We're taking a break in negotiations while General Hammond's staff frantically try to find out if there are any Akkadian-speaking welders on Earth, though I've pretty much accepted in my heart that we're going to end up using English as the Latin of Syrania: a language for the educated elite. The words we need for technology just don't exist in Akkadian, and the only other language we could use would be the main goa'uld language. And if I picked that then I'd need to bring in other goa'uld, and that's a hard no. Major Carter is on goa'uld-sitting duty with me in the canteen, and I'm sure that the presence of what's starting to feel like half the garrison is due to a fortuitous shift-change.
It's nice to be able to get familiar fruit again.
"The first hosts we took were primitive tribals-. The first hosts we remember were primitive tribals. I've long suspected that we probably used large animals before that, but their minds were too simple to encode anything. But we remember everything since then. I know how to start a fire with flint and kindling and how to build a starship and everything in between. Of course I know how to teach welding myself. Just about all goa'uld do. I'd have to practice with the actual tools your people use to get used to their precise specifications, but it wouldn't be all that hard."
She raises her eyebrows a little and snorts. "I guess I just find it a little hard to picture 'gods' in a workshop."
"Hephaestus, Vulcan, Igbo, Ogun, Qaynan, Kagu-tsuchi… Plenty of goa'uld have an interest in smithing or ship-building. I suspect the issue is that you've only fought the more… Snobby.. goa'uld. Those who style themselves as god-kings."
"And who've spent centuries using a sarcophagus."
"Probably doesn't help."
"So why don't you just use other goa'uld? Even if you don't have any jaffa yourself, Bastet does."
"Ah… That… Wouldn't work. Goa'uld aren't… Sociable. You.. humans are troupe apes, we're solitary symbiotes. You instinctively seek to surround yourselves with others like you, while we also instinctively try to surround ourselves with others like you. People less knowledgeable than us, less physically capable than us. People whom we can lord it over and lead. Put a newly spawned goa'uld in a teaching role and they'll act out because they haven't mastered their instincts yet."
"I hadn't thought of it like that." She frowns. "Actually, aren't there a lot more prim'ta in jaffa than you need to replace your numbers?"
I breathe in sharply. "Oooh, yes."
"So, what happens to them? If you can't work together, it seems that you should have a whole lot of adult goa'uld. And you don't, so where are they?"
"They get eaten."
She blinks. "Excuse me?"
"They get eaten. I sometimes wonder if that's why Ra didn't use jaffa; he recognised that while it was a convenient way to get physically superior soldiers it would just create problems in the longer term."
She's starting to look disturbed. "So… Do you just throw them in a lake or.. something?"
"No, no. Mature prim'ta with no host to move into get stuck in storage jars and then eaten by the dominant goa'uld in the area in what is probably a re-enactment of our instinctual pre-sophoncy culling practice."
She's actually going a little pale, staring at my face on the off-chance that I'm making a joke.
"Major… Goa'uld are a little like vampires. The ideal situation for a goa'uld is one where all the other goa'uld are extinct and no one really believes in goa'uld any more. And… Anyway, you've killed plenty of infant goa'uld; you kill one every time you kill a jaffa."
It.. looks like that hadn't occurred to her.
"We've.. never been sure exactly how old prim'ta are."
"Anything from a couple of hours to a couple of years. You can go up to about six years, but that's pushing it. Goa'uld have the knowledge of their forebears from birth, but it can take a while to get things straight in our head."
"Pushing it? What happens if the prim'ta doesn't get removed?"
"The pouch starts to feel unsafe. The prim'ta will become more physically active, which will be pretty painful for the jaffa. Ultimately… We can take jaffa as hosts, which is probably what would happen. That or the prim'ta would inflict serious internal injuries and then leave, though that would only happen if there was a body of water nearby and they were planning to escape there." I frown thoughtfully. "So you should probably get your shol'va in the habit of swapping his baby goa'uld out after every fire fight. You don't want to get stuck somewhere when it ages out. And don't forget to kill the discarded baby afterwards."
"How can-?" She takes a moment to think her question through. "You don't act like other goa'uld. I don't understand how you can say things like that."
I shrug. "We have a different reproductive strategy to you. We don't usually bond with our offspring like you do. Though the few exceptions-." I chuckle. "Have you heard of a group called 'Against Ra'?"
She clearly has. "No? Who are they?"
"Major, I would advise against taking up poker. Certainly, don't try playing it against people with hundreds of thousands of years of human facial expressions committed to memory." Her eyes dip for a moment. "Like that. 'Against Ra' are the last children of the goa'uld queen Egeria, Ra's queen before Hathor. Before she finally got killed, she created an entire generation of children.. twisted around so that they hate everything about themselves, to the point that they have a hissy fit if you even refer to them as 'goa'uld'. They were supposed to be a revenge weapon against Ra." I snort. "A shame she didn't give them any common sense."
"What makes you say that?"
"I need to come to you for teachers because I can't trust other goa'uld to do the job. If I was a queen, I could just breed a generation of goa'uld who really want to teach people things. Take them, fly to an isolated world off the stargate network with a few thousand humans and start teching up. Within five hundred years, there would be no more System Lords. But no: the Against Ra are BY DESIGN too overwhelmed by their hatred to act rationally."
I frown. "Actually, while I'm here… What exactly is your organisation's long term goal? What are you trying to achieve here?"
"I'm.. afraid that information is classified. I can't talk about it. If you want, you can ask General Hammond-."
"Are you familiar with the Hague Convention?"
She stops, looking at me. "Yes. Of course. I don't know how you are, but the laws of war are covered in our officer training."
"One of the requirements on all signatories is that belligerent parties state their war goals when declaring war or engaging in a policing action. Given Stargate Command's activities to date, I was assuming that you consider yourself to be at war with the System Lords as a polity. Since I'm part of that polity, I would sort of like some assurance that I'm not helping you genocide my entire species. There are a few of us I quite like."
"We're not trying to exterminate your entire species."
"See, you say that, but I'd like to know if that's actually written down somewhere. You're a soldier fighting in this conflict. What is your war goal?"
"I'll…" Colonel O'Neil walks into the canteen and heads towards our table, giving Major Carter a nod. "Have to get back to you. Excuse me."
She gets up, makes some sort of exasperated facial expression I can't see from here to the Colonel -who doesn't respond- and walks out of the canteen while the Colonel-.
Teal'c walks in behind him, face expressionless, and heads over to join-.
"So…" O'Neil regards me curiously as he sits down across from me, head tilted slightly to the side. "You know you're not a god, right?"