by Jo Graham
“All unexplored by us,” Rodney said. “And according to the Ancient database… uninteresting. One planet with a small human population, limited by the fact that most of the planet is water.”
“Most of our planet is water,” Daniel said.
“Most of the planet as in 99% of it,” Rodney said. “There’s no major land mass, just a lot of small volcanic islands. It hasn’t been on our list because we figured the chances of anybody still being alive there were minimal, never mind the chances of their having anything we wanted.”
Daniel considered the display. “What about the others?”
“This one was briefly settled and then abandoned because the atmosphere was proving toxic to the crops people were trying to plant, and the native vegetation was toxic to humans. I’m not sure why this one even has a Stargate, since it’s covered so deep in ice that the only reason to go there is if you really like skiing.”
“What is skiing?” Ember asked, his head to one side.
“It’s a winter sport involving wearing curved sticks… ” Daniel began.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rodney interrupted impatiently. “My point is that there’s no reason to go there. And the other three don’t have Stargates at all.”
“Which gives us the best chance of finding unspoiled archaeological sites,” Daniel said.
“If you like doing archaeology in a spacesuit. There’s no guarantee there’s even breathable air there.”
“Two of these worlds have human populations,” Ember said. “Or did, long ago.”
“How do you know?” Rodney asked.
Ember looked at him as if the answer should have been obvious. “They were part of our hive’s feeding grounds. We culled both worlds.”
“What do you remember about them?”
“What do you expect me to remember?” Ember said, sounding a little frustrated. “It was thousands of years ago, and I never set foot on these worlds. Our clevermen are not part of culling missions. I only remember them at all because some of the blades who went down to the surface brought back interesting artifacts.”
“Interesting how?” Rodney asked.
Ember let out a slow breath. “My queen has instructed me not to provide you with information about any technology we possess that you might not.”
“And we’re not supposed to tell you what we’ve already found,” Daniel said. “Which makes this a lot harder.”
“It is understandable if our people do not trust each other,” Ember said. “But
—
a complication, yes.” He folded his hands together, considering. Daniel noticed to his interest that there was a chip in the surface of one claw, and that the nail underneath was a far duller color. He wondered if it was some kind of artificial polish, or
—
“One of our finds was a holographic projector,” Ember said abruptly. “Less sophisticated than the devices of the Lanteans, which surely you have had ample opportunity to study.”
“So it won’t do any harm to tell us about it,” Daniel agreed.
“It was a small thing that could be held in the hand. The image it produced was that of one of the creatures you call the Asgard.” Ember shrugged. “The device seemed to do nothing else. We assumed it was some kind of… ” He sketched with one claw uncertainly in the air, as if trying to find a word for some concept that didn’t fit neatly into Wraith. “Decoration,” he settled on finally.
And that was interesting, because the Ancient language that the spoken Wraith language had evolved from had certainly had words for “art” and “sculpture” and “portrait.” The Wraith had visual decoration
—
their clothes were heavily ornamented, and at close range showed details that were probably more perceptible to Wraith eyes than human ones. But not representative art. He wondered if that was a cultural taboo, and if so, where it had begun, and when the words had fallen out of their language.
And none of that got them any closer to finding out more about the Asgard. “If there are human populations on worlds the Ancients never settled, it’s very likely those are some of the sites where the Asgard were performing experiments on humans,” Daniel said.
“Or sites settled by the Travelers,” Rodney said.
“Maybe. I don’t know how long humans in the Pegasus galaxy have had access to spaceships of their own. The impression I got was that most of the Travelers’ technology was scavenged
—
stuff that the Ancients left behind, or maybe stuff they considered junk. I still think it’s our best bet, though.”
“Which means we’re checking out the worlds about which we know absolutely nothing,” Rodney said, frowning.
Daniel shrugged. “What are the odds of it being dinosaurs again?”
“Never say things like that,” Rodney said.
SGA-22 Unascended
INTERLUDE
“Is this seat taken?”
Elizabeth looked up from her PDA. Every other table in the airport coffee shop was full, and only a handful of seats remained. A man hovered next to the table, his overcoat over his arm which was burdened with a briefcase, a paper cup of coffee in his other hand.
“No, not at all.” Elizabeth rearranged her papers to share half the table, moving her own coffee cup closer, and then bent over her PDA again.
The man sat down and unfolded the Washington Post which he read while he stirred nondairy creamer into his coffee without looking at it. He was thirty-five maybe, good looking in a rugged, dark-haired way, wearing a well-cut conservative suit. Business traveler, she thought. The headline screamed “Will They Impeach?” He was turned at a slight angle, so it was hard to read the article where it dipped below the fold. Something about House sources on the likelihood of a party line vote…
“Here.” He handed her the page with a smile. “You can have the first section. I’m done with it.”
“Oh.” Elizabeth was faintly embarrassed. “I didn’t…”
“I’m done with the first page.” He picked up the second section. “You shared your table. I’ll share my paper.” He smiled and unfolded the second section, disappearing behind it.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. She bent over the first section, reading the article with half her mind. It was unusual to share. It broke the unwritten code. You don’t see other people, don’t talk to them. Everyone maintains the polite fiction that they aren’t in a crowd and that other people aren’t tripping over their rolling bags. You don’t make eye contact. You certainly don’t share your paper as if the person sitting across from you in a Dulles coffee shop was an actual human being. It’s impolite.
As if he’d heard her thought, he looked around the edge of the paper and smiled. “Thank you for sharing your table.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said.
He disappeared behind the local section again. It was the Virginia edition. He’d probably bought it at the airport.
“You live in NoVa?” she heard herself asking.
He folded the paper down. “Fairfax. You?”
“In the District.”
He nodded. Someone stumbled over Elizabeth’s roller bag, kicking it and going on without pausing. She pulled it closer under the table. The coffee shop was packed. Through the windows across the concourse she could see the rain-streaked runway. Travelers hurried by with overcoats, not glancing to the left or right. “Messy day,” he said.
“Yes.” She picked up the first section and disappeared behind it, feeling oddly flustered. The rest of the article about Gingrich, the latest from Ken Starr…
“Have a good trip.” He got up, leaving the paper on the table. “Enjoy the paper.” He tossed his paper cup in the trashcan and headed off down the concourse.
“Thank you,” she said.
Her plane was late boarding, no surprise. She had a window seat on the left side, one seat beside her on the aisle and then the three across of the center section and then the two on the other aisle. Elizabeth had brought the paper wit
h her and read the second section while the rest of the passengers boarded. There was a small commotion in the aisle, and she looked up.
A harried Spanish-speaking woman was remonstrating with the flight attendant. “But I am sure we had two seats together!” She had a little boy about three years old with her. “We have B and C!”
“B is here,” the flight attendant said. “C is across the aisle.”
“But…”
Elizabeth stood up. “I’ll be happy to trade with you,” she said in Spanish. “Why don’t you take A so that you can sit next to him, and I’ll take C?”
“That is so very kind of you!” The woman beamed. “Thank you so much.”
“It’s no trouble.” Elizabeth got up and moved out of her seat, letting the woman help the little boy in and get him settled. She sat down in C. Which didn’t have a window, but there probably wouldn’t be much to see anyhow.
“That was kind of you.” The passenger in D had come in from the other side and was in his seat. It was the man from the coffee shop. “Hello again.”
“Hello.” He seemed almost like an old friend. “So you’re going to Ecuador?”
He nodded. He’d taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. “Quito.” He’d opened his briefcase and taken out a medical journal.
“You’re a doctor?”
“A pediatric dentist,” he replied, hunting around for the end of his seat belt. “I’m with Project Toothfairy. Every year I take three weeks’ vacation from my practice and go down to volunteer with a free clinic in Ecuador.” He shrugged. “It’s what I can do.”
“It’s an excellent thing to do,” Elizabeth said. “Those clinics make so much difference on a person to person level, changing lives.”
He looked at her keenly. “State department?”
“Amnesty International.”
“Ah.” He offered his hand. “Simon Wallis.”
“Elizabeth Weir.”
Elizabeth shook her head, the reverie of memory shredding like clouds. Out the window of the Durant’s mess she could see the blue shifted stars of hyperspace.
Dekaas sat down opposite her. “Thinking?”
“Remembering,” Elizabeth said. It was bittersweet.
“Someone you loved?”
“Yes.”
Dekaas took a bite of his bowl of warm grains, that same deceptively unobtrusive tone in his voice. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t remember.” She had thought he was dead, but no. That was a false memory, implanted by… She shivered, her whole body shaking.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. And Simon wasn’t dead. That memory was false. Though why it being false was utterly terrifying…
Simon knew she was dead.
That thought came to her suddenly, and though she didn’t know why, tears sprang to her eyes. He would have been told. Someone
—
who? Someone would have told him. It would have been someone’s job to tell him. To tell him she wasn’t coming back.
An older man in a blue suit, colored ribbons on his chest, a man you could scream at in your grief and he would take it, take every hurled accusation and question, a man who knew what it was like to lose someone you loved… “O’Neill,” she said.
“That’s the name of the one you love?”
“No. O’Neill will have to tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“That I’m dead,” Elizabeth said. She looked at Dekaas. “I’m dead. I died nearly three years ago.”
Dekaas’ voice was calm and kind. “You don’t seem to be dead,” he said.
“Something happened.” Elizabeth put her hands to the opposite shoulders, trying to control her shivering. “My body died.” She looked at him, a sudden terror gripping her. “What if I’m not human? What if I’m not really alive?”
Dekaas put his head to the side. “How could that be?”
“What if I’m artificial? A robot? A Replicator?” Her voice shook.
“I can certainly find out if you are or not,” Dekaas said. He got to his feet and held out a hand to her deliberately. “Let’s go back to the infirmary and run some tests.”
“Will that tell you…”
“It will certainly tell me if you’re not a biological being. It will certainly tell me if you’re a Replicator.”
He was humoring her, she thought. Dekaas didn’t think for a moment that she was other than human, but he was being kind. Perhaps he was a psychologist as well as doctor, to lay to rest an irrational fear with hard facts. But he was wrong. She wasn’t human. It would be better not to know that. It would be better to lie. For her. Not for anyone else.
Elizabeth got to her feet. “Promise me,” she said, meeting his eyes firmly. “That if I am a Replicator you will kill me.”
Dekaas paused a long moment. Then he took a deep breath. “I promise,” he said.
SGA-22 Unascended
CHAPTER TEN
Lorne strolled out of the Stargate and looked around the barren plateau. “So, this is our potential alpha site. What are we looking at here?”
“Nothing. Nada,” Sgt. Anthony said. “The science team’s survey report checks out. You got your cactus, your little lizards—”
Lorne squinted at the bushes. “Poisonous lizards?”
“Sir, I have to ask, why does everybody assume they’re poisonous lizards? Why is it that when we report that we’ve seen foot-high cactus, everyone asks ‘but does it have poisonous spines that kill you if you touch them’?”
“Actually, those would be venomous lizards,” PFC Harper said, tugging at one corner of the tent that she and two of the other Marines were setting up. “Poisonous is when it kills you if you eat them. Venomous is when it kills you if it bites you.”
Anthony gave her a suspicious look. “How do you know that?”
“I listened to the briefing when we got here, Sergeant.”
“You also probably heard in the briefing when you got here that planets with Stargates that aren’t inhabited are usually uninhabited for a reason,” Lorne pointed out.
“We’re in the middle of a desert,” Sgt. Anthony said. “Plus the Stargate is on top of a big shelf of rock, and if you want to go anywhere else, you have to rappel down a cliff and then hike across several more klicks of desert before you get to – wait for it – more desert.”
“It can’t all be desert,” Harper said.
“Actually, it is,” Lorne said. “Up near the poles, it’s colder desert.”
“We took a jumper up and scanned for life signs. We didn’t find anything bigger than your shoe. The only sign anyone’s ever been here is some carvings in the rocks up here. We took pictures of them for the archaeologists, and we’re not going to set up the alpha site on top of them.”
“Show me the carvings,” Lorne said.
Anthony led him some distance across the rocky tableland to a spot where several large boulders might – or might not – have originally been dragged together into an intentional grouping. Several of them were chiseled with a series of crosses or X’s above with what was probably lettering. It wasn’t any Pegasus alphabet he recognized, and he’d seen a lot of them by now.
“Anything on the lettering?”
Anthony shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard. They’re going to run it through the computers in case it turns out to be just another phonetic alphabet for writing Ancient.”
“All right,” Lorne said. He turned around again, looking out at the distant horizon. The only sign of movement from this distance were some large black birds riding the thermals over the desert. “Those birds giving you any trouble?”
“They’re just big birds, sir.”
“Team Sheppard ran into big birds that set a grass fire and then chased them with nets,” Lorne said. “The Pegasus galaxy is like that.”
“Noted, sir,” Anthony said after a moment. “These birds appear to be… big birds, sir. I think they�
��re hunting some little mouse things. We’ve seen a couple of those. They were running away. In my professional opinion, not posing an immediate security threat, sir.”
“Don’t get smart,” Lorne said. “Whenever you’re sure there aren’t any potential security threats on an uninhabited world, it pays to think again.” He was beginning to feel like he’d given that same speech so many times he could recite it in his sleep. Each new crop of Marines and airmen thought they knew everything, and some of them would even survive long enough to learn better.
“Sorry, sir. But, seriously, I think this place is deserted because it’s too dry to grow crops here, there aren’t any animals big enough to be worth hunting, and if there are any valuable natural resources here, they’re nowhere within miles of the Stargate. I think this planet is just really boring.”
“That’s what we like to hear,” Lorne said. “All right. Start setting up an alpha site here. Any local water sources?”
“None near enough for us to use. We’ll have to bring in water.”
“All right, let’s get it done. Set up a portable AC unit, too. And keep an eye out for hostile wildlife. Or strange radiation. Or anything that glows. Or anything out of the ordinary at all. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” Anthony slowed down, stopping some distance away from where Harper and the other Marines now had the tent most of the way up. “I hear that Dr. McKay has been telling people that Elizabeth Weir is still alive.”
Lorne considered several possible answers to that question, including “None of your business, sergeant,” and decided that ducking the question wasn’t going to do anything about Atlantis’s thriving rumor mill. “That’s what I hear,” he said.
“So… is he cracking up, or what? I mean, after the Wraith thing… ”
“Dr. Beckett and Dr. Keller cleared him to return to duty,” Lorne said. “Lots of people around here have been through stuff. I wouldn’t go around saying you think one of the senior staff is crazy unless he’s talking to the walls or hallucinating Wraith under every rock.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Besides, maybe he’s right.”
Anthony looked at him sideways. “You think that’s possible?”