Hammond snorted. “You think I haven’t heard that one before, Colonel?” He paused, thinking, weighing alternatives, while the team and the chief medical officer watched him eagerly.
It was Hammond’s responsibility, ultimately, and while he abhorred the picture Jack and Daniel had painted, he still wasn’t entirely convinced. The proposed solution seemed almost as outlandish as the problem. If it had been anyone other than Janet Frasier suggesting it, he would have dismissed the whole thing out of hand and sent the originator of the idea to the chief medical officer for a mental examination. But Frasier couldn’t very well perform a mental examination on herself, and she seemed certain that there was something to this nonsense.
Still, it was nonsense. “I know you like to fly by the seat of your pants on these missions, Colonel, and given that you have no idea what to expect out there, I normally have no objection. But for this one I’d like to see something more like a plan—always assuming it works to begin with.
“For one thing, exactly how do you propose to accomplish this little feat of altruism? We’re not talking about time travel here. The damage has been done, as you’ve already pointed out. We’ve been trying to put that cat back into the bag for half a century and can’t do it. What makes you think you can dream up a solution for the Kayeechi?”
The pun was deliberate and delivered mostly for the pleasure of seeing the look on O’Neill’s face. The colonel seemed to think he had a lock on smart remarks, and it didn’t hurt to remind him he could be outranked in that category too.
But meanwhile, the general had moved beyond a flat no. Carter, always willing to argue, was more than happy to seize the opportunity.
“Sir, if you’ll recall, Daniel was able to enter their dream realities when he was awake and we were asleep. He actually interacted—well, almost—with them. The aliens did interact with all of us, in all our dreams. That supports what Janet’s saying.
“So why can’t we do the same? What if we let Colonel O’Neill dream a second nuclear test, one that absolutely fails, one where the explosion doesn’t happen or something else goes badly wrong? That should be enough to keep the Kayeechi from trying to use the weapon.
“They don’t actually know enough about the mechanics to fix a bomb, sir. All they’d be left with is something that doesn’t work. They won’t even know why, so they can’t experiment with it. The three of us can help him out, be there to support him, even wake him up if things go bad. Dr. Frasier can get her samples and new data. It’s an acceptable risk, sir.” At the look on Hammond’s face, she added quietly, “It’s worth a try, considering the alternatives.”
Hammond looked from one member of the team to the next, measuring the commitment in their eyes. “What guarantees do you have that you won’t all be affected the same way you were the first time?” he asked at last. “How do you know you wouldn’t just be dreaming you were doing all this?”
That stopped them for the moment. They traded glances around the long table. Then O’Neill said slowly, “Well, that might happen. But if all of us experience the same thing and it turns out to only be a dream, well, at least we’ll have done our best as far as we could. That’s another reason why we’d need all of us, sir: to provide perspective.”
“I can give them filters, General,” Janet said.
“We’ve got the experimental ones that they’re working on to replace gas masks—small enough to fit inside the nostrils so they won’t be noticed. If it’s really the incense triggering the dream sequences, that should keep them from being affected.” The medical officer was nodding, certain of herself. “I can run some tests to see if there are any residual effects in their blood. I got a sample from the Colonel, of course, but I can test the others too. Maybe it’s just a matter of the right antihistamine.”
“Again,” muttered Jackson sourly. He’d had enough of histamine effects on a previous mission. His chronic allergies, mild though they were, usually kept him protected from alien pollens, but the results when he didn’t take them had proved to be problematic, to say the least. “What if we need the incense in order to make the dreams real though? Maybe that’s important to the whole Kayeechi process. It wouldn’t do any good for Jack to bollix up the bomb if his bomb is only a dream and their bomb is the real thing.”
“We just answered that one, Daniel.”
Daniel removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You did?” He thought over the last few minutes’ conversation. “Oh. I guess you did. Well, then, all Jack needs to do is sabotage the test one way or the other. Simple. Right?”
Meanwhile, O’Neill was thinking through the details of the problem, trying out mental scenarios. Now that saving the Kayeechi from their own potential looked like a possibility, Hammond’s question was to the point, and Daniel had put his finger on one of the problems. “Daniel, what makes you think I know enough about the mechanics of a bomb to keep one from triggering?” O’Neill said.
Jackson gave him a wry look. “You don’t have to either confirm or deny it. Although I’m betting you know at least as much as I do, and anyone in freshman physics knows what a critical mass is.
“But all you have to do is show that it doesn’t work. To keep it from working, that is. That should be enough to stop them. And you probably can think of a few dozen snafus that have stopped tests.” When O’Neill opened his mouth, Jackson raised his hand. “I don’t know and I don’t care and it’s probably classified beyond belief anyway. It doesn’t matter. All you have to do is dream a test that doesn’t work. Simple.”
“Simple, he says.” O’Neill was still waxing ironic. “And if I don’t? Suppose I try to do something like that, and instead of failing, the bomb goes off in my dream. Will it go off in real life too? And if it does, what happens to us? Being ground zero is not my goal in life, Daniel.”
“Blowing up an innocent culture isn’t your goal in life either, is it?” Jackson wasn’t playing the game.
A chilly silence fell across the conference table.
“That’s nasty, Daniel,” the colonel said evenly.
“I learned from the best,” the younger man said, just as evenly.
Frasier and Carter exchanged a private rolling-eyed glance. Teal’C frowned. Hammond gave a little sigh.
“And what if General Hammond is right and they’ve already used the bomb?”
“We’ll send a probe through first. Once they see us, they’ll probably concentrate on trying to pick our brains some more. We won’t tell them we know what they’re up to.”
“How would you explain your return?” Hammond asked, moving toward capitulation without committing himself.
“We could say…” Daniel floundered. “Uh, well…”
“We could say we left my eyeliner behind and we’ve got to get it,” Carter said. At the incredulous looks from the rest of them, she went on. “Well why not? It’s not like they’re going to know the difference. It could be a ritual religious object, for all they know.”
“All right,” Hammond said at last, breaking the silence as they contemplated the idea. “If you really think this has a chance to work, Doctor, and they have a chance to get what you need—”
“I’ll have to go with them,” Frasier said gently.
“Absolutely not,” Hammond and O’Neill said at the same time. The colonel glanced at the general and decided to let him issue the orders.
“You may not go,” Hammond said. “You haven’t had the experience, and you’re too valuable here.”
“Without me it won’t work,” she responded. “Lucid dreaming requires that the brain remain in a beta state for extended periods. If you haven’t practiced, it won’t happen. I can induce that state artificially with a cerebral stimulator—I think.” The last two words had a tinge of doubt, but then she lifted her chin. “If I don’t go, sir, they might as well stay home, and millions of Kayeechi, not to mention those other aliens, the octopus ones, will die.”
“Well, maybe not millions,” Jackso
n said sotto voce. “Thousands maybe. Depending on population densities.”
She ignored him. “Besides, my being on the scene will ensure that Colonel O’Neill will avoid any negative effects from combining the alien drugs with the recent shock to his system from the zat gun.”
Hammond let go an explosive, exasperated breath and drummed his fingers on the conference table. “I am not happy about this, people,” he warned them. “On the other hand, it’s not our purpose to spread death and destruction throughout the galaxy.”
“I agree,” Teal’C said unexpectedly. “That is the purpose of the Goa’uld.”
Hammond, who hadn’t finished his thought, glared at the Jaffa. “Nor is it our purpose to risk our personnel unnecessarily. Therefore,” he said pointedly, “I will allow you to attempt this… real-life thought experiment under two conditions. One: Before any return to Kayeechi to try it, Col. O’Neill and Dr. Frasier will demonstrate in the laboratory that this ‘lucid dreaming’ concept actually works. And two: if you do establish that it works, you may make one attempt on the planet with the understanding that this will be the only such attempt.
“Furthermore,” he continued grimly, “if Dr. Frasier is going to go, I want Teal’C and Dr. Jackson to remain here.” At the incipient eruption of protest, he raised one hand. “I heard what you said about needing all of you to provide perspective. I think that the three of you, particularly Dr. Frasier, can meet that goal. So only the three of you. And I am giving each one of you a direct order, Colonel, ladies. If you do go, come back in one piece. And when you do, we are going to shut the door to P4V-837 permanently.”
Dumbfounded, the other five people at the table stared at their commanding officer. Then, carefully choosing his words, O’Neill inquired, “Sir, permission to ask a question.”
Hammond’s lips tightened. “Permission granted.”
“Why split the team?”
“Because if this dream technique works, Colonel, but you don’t come back from this mission of mercy and manage to cost me two more good officers in the process, I want someone here who has had the experience with this world to help us recognize the next one like it we run across. I’m not going to debate this, Colonel. You have your orders.”
Daniel opened his mouth to protest. Under Hammond’s glare, he shut it again. A moment later, Hammond stood, signaling that the briefing was over, and everyone else at the table rose as well, keeping silent until he had left the conference room.
“This isn’t fair,” Jackson said to the closed door.
“This is the military, Daniel,” O’Neill informed him gently. “It isn’t supposed to be fair.”
“But this is crazy! We’re a team!”
“And he’s a general. We might not like it, but we’ve got our orders.” O’Neill gathered together the briefing packet scattered on the table before him and tapped them into a neat stack. “So let’s get started.”
“What are we supposed to do while they’re out there?” a still rebellious Jackson demanded of Teal’C.
Teal’C looked back at him impassively. “Wait. It is what armies do.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As they made their way back to the infirmary a few minutes later, a slightly stunned Frasier dropped back to ask Carter, “Aren’t you always supposed to come back in one piece?”
“It’s nice, but it’s not the top priority,” O’Neill answered, overhearing her. “How long will it take you to get packed up and ready to go, Doctor?”
She laughed despite herself. “Don’t we have orders to try the technique out first, Colonel? You never know. A little practice might do us both some good.”
“Oh, well if you think we need to practice,” he said.
“I want to take some time to review the materials on lucid dreaming,” she said. “And there are some things I want to get together.”
O’Neill paused, causing a small traffic jam in the hallway as the rest of the team crowded around and blocked the passage of several Gate technicians going off shift. “I gather that this waking-while-you’re-sleeping technique isn’t exactly restful.”
“Not necessarily,” Frasier acknowledged.
“All right, we can use the extra time to get our own game plan together. Teal’C—”
“We shall prepare a probe to gather more data at P4V-837,” Teal’C said seriously. Carter nodded.
“Make sure to put some roc repellant on it,” O’Neill said. Frasier, confused, just shook her head. Some things medical personnel were not meant to understand.
“I’ll go look at tapes and try to put some guesses together about what the Kayeechi culture is really like,” Daniel said.
“You’ll excuse me,” O’Neill continued. “I think I’m going to go take a nice, clean, dream-free afternoon nap. If you’re right, Doctor, I’m going to need my beauty sleep.”
“I don’t know how you can stand to,” Jackson muttered.
“Gotta face it sometime.”
While the rest of the team scattered, O’Neill continued with Frasier back to the infirmary. He seemed more than willing to lie back down on the hospital bed, though, Frasier noticed, though he eyed her bustling around the room rather suspiciously. “Whafs that stuff?” He was, whether he wanted to admit it or not, still feeling the effects of that near miss. It worried her.
“Just a few basics,” she said with a professional soothe in her voice. “Go ahead and get some rest, Colonel. I’ve got some reading to do, and you’re not fully recovered yet anyway. Just take the boots off, will you? Those are clean sheets.”
“Women. Never happy,” he muttered with a small grin. He sat on the edge of the bed to unlace and remove the heavy black combat boots. Once they were off, he swung his legs back up and wiggled his toes inside his socks, sighing with contentment.
“Nose filters, right. Thanks for the reminder, Colonel.” Frasier smiled back at him and ducked out of the ward for her office, where she promptly turned on the camera monitor to watch her sole patient.
He didn’t seem apprehensive about falling asleep at least. No traumatic insomnia. It remained to be seen whether he would wake up with the cold sweats.
One hand behind his head and the other flung across his chest, he stared up at the ceiling tiles for a few minutes and sighed again. As she watched, his eyes gradually closed, his head fell to one side, and the arm across his chest slipped down to rest on the sheet beside him. His breathing slowed and deepened. A good soldier could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, the body grabbing whatever rest was available in order to be prepared to meet the next onslaught. O’Neill had that technique, at least, down pat. And his face, laugh lines smoothed away in rest, showed no signs of distress.
“Good,” she whispered and sat down to do some fast cramming on the subject of lucid dreaming. She clicked on the computer keyboard, making the shifting-lines Screensaver disappear, and entered her password to access the Net. Besides the plethora of ordinary Web sites on lucid dreaming, she was fairly sure that she could find solid information in military studies normally unavailable to the average physician. The military was always interested in the human mind. If they had a project to develop telepathy or “distant viewing,” she was morally certain there would be something in the records about dreaming, lucid, induction of the state thereof.
She was glad this one wasn’t going to be turned over to the research teams. It wasn’t often she got to do her own datamining, and she delighted in the opportunity. While the wardroom monitor flickered over her head, she focused on her computer screen, ignoring the still figure on the bed.
Meanwhile, in the sterile quiet of the ward room, Jack O’Neill was slipping through layers and levels of sleep, sliding deeper, until beneath his eyelids his eyes flickered, watching the images formed in his brain as once again he began to dream.
But his eyes remained closed; so there was no one to see when a small figure appeared next to him, a small figure with an odd pattern of red hair growing in neat symmetrical lines across its ski
n and only three fingers on each hand. Vair was dressed in a coarse undyed tunic that came to his knees, and on the rope belt around his waist he carried a badly forged metal knife, its handle wrapped in a thin cord woven of plant fibers.
The little alien looked around the room with fascination, awed at the rough wool fabric of the blanket and the smooth, impervious hardness of the desk built into the wall. He tried poking gingerly at the shiny pole of the IV tree and biting it experimentally. When the metal remained unmanned, he looked at the man on the bed.
“See, Etra’ain,” he murmured. “You are not the only one who can walk and Shape in the minds of others.”
Jack stirred uneasily in his sleep. Vair jumped, startled, and then addressed him directly. “Listen to me, Tall One. We need you with us. We need you to show us how to cause the great lightning. You have to come back with me, come back to Kayeechi. You have to help me show Etra’ain that I have as much power as she does. Unless—Do you have more weapons here that can save us, that I can take?”
But Jack O’Neill was sleeping and made no answer.
Instead, the small red-furred humanoid stepped out the door and out of the range of the security camera that monitored the sickbed, venturing into the very heart of the Stargate Complex.
Security rests upon three legs: detect the intruder, delay his access to the target, and intercept him.
Like any tripod, this is inherently unstable. Rather than depend on mere human perceptions, technology has developed highly sensitive methods for identifying intruders and delights in creating ever more imaginative ways to make it difficult to reach what it seeks to protect.
In the long run, however, interception always involves a mere human.
But how can technology detect a dream? And how can it delay access when the intruder is within the target to begin with?
Vair was finding the Stargate Complex utterly fascinating. While the Security Communications staff charged with monitoring the monitors blinked and shook their collective heads, certain they must have dozed off for a moment—that little red fuzzy thing wasn’t on the tape, so it must have been too much chili for lunch—the little alien was roaming through, first, the infirmary, and then into the rest of the complex.
04 - The Morpheus Factor Page 14