"Looks like a rockslide's come through here. For real. Over there's what must have been windows. The dirt pushed right through them. Other than that it seems... intact. The doorway's clear, but I take it you know that already." He sucked in a deep breath. "I thought you said Atlantis had been destroyed?"
"What we knew as Atlantis, yes. It was more than walls and ceilings and technology, was it not?"
"Yes. Yes, it was." For a moment his voice sounded ragged with emotion, then he caught himself, cleared his throat. "Where are we?"
"At the top of the control tower," Teyla replied and winced. "The transporter no longer operates."
"Of course it doesn't."
It was a long, quiet trek, harder on Major Sheppard than on her. Climbing back up the stairs would be a different matter. Then again, there would be no reason to go back once she'd brought him where he needed to be, would there? If he didn't succeed, she doubted she'd have the strength to carry on, hoping for another miracle in the years she had left. And if he did succeed, there'd be nobody to go back for. Jinto, Pima, Halling, her newborn namesake, the whole village-
"Teyla?" He sounded worried, must have seen her tremble.
"It is nothing." A brisk wave of her hand dismissed it, and she hoped it would be enough to fool him. Not easily fooled, this one. But at least he couldn't see her face.
Finally the stairs wound to an end. She stopped briefly to orient herself, then groped her way into a corridor on her right. The rockslide that damaged the tower had never reached here. This place lay too deep, too safe in the embrace of the earth that had risen while Charybdis threw suns and moons from their path and kneaded the planet's crust like so much dough. There might be other signs of ruin, but, for her, the only indicator of desolation was the silky cushion of dust and cobwebs that caressed her fingertips.
She could see it in her mind as she walked. The wide, diffusely lit hallway, leading to the control center, bustling with people on errands, leaving their shift or starting it. There were smiles and nods, a joke, or a junior officer's wary berth around Rodney McKay. More people, all with familiar faces, in the control center itself, and-
"Teyla! Stop!"
The shout rang of warning, exploded the reminiscence, froze her in place. "What?" she hissed.
"You almost... tripped." Something seemed to constrict his throat, flatten his voice.
Of course. She had tripped. Fallen even, the first time she'd come down here. Then she'd gathered herself, shaken her head, patted around, until she found the obstruction. Under threadbare garments it had had desiccated, leathery skin, arms, legs, a face she'd been unable to recognize by touch alone. Like all the others. Their very facelessness had made it easier to forget, and forgetting had been a necessity. Remembering and wondering how they'd died and how long it had taken them would have turned every waking moment into a nightmare. In time she'd learned to navigate the macabre obstacle course in the control center without so much as touching any of them.
Teyla heard the crutches rattle to the ground, a thud, a soft grunt as Major Sheppard maneuvered himself to the floor. He would want to find out. He could. It wasn't his nightmare. Not yet.
"Who is it?" she asked softly and against her better judgment. "Can you still recognize them?"
"No." The word was bitten off and spat out, too rash and too quick.
"Don't lie to me, Major Sheppard." She said it gently, so as to take the sting out of the words.
"You don't need to-"
"I do."
"Would you believe me if I said I don't know him?" There was a trace of relief in his tone, and she understood perfectly.
"It is a man?"
"Yes. Tall, powerful, by the looks of what's left, long dark hair-dreadlocks-dark skin. No uniform. Lots of leather... I've never seen him before."
"Ronon," she whispered, surprised by a fierce spike of grief and remorse, still fresh and corrosive, even after all these years.
Ronon had been with the team, with her, when they'd activated Charybdis on Mykena Quattuor. If she had been taken to this place, this time, he might have been, too. But there were countless versions of all of them, so who was to say whether this was the original Ronon? Who was to say whether she really was Teyla Emmagan or merely a mirror for all of Teyla's con- ciousnesses? Not that it mattered.
She was the prophet, ancient and blind, as it befitted the oracle. "His name was Ronon Dex. The Wraith destroyed his world."
"I liked him." Not even a question, a simple statement of fact. "I mean, I will like him... when I-"
"You understood each other. Trusted each other. He was on our team."
"Oh. I did like him." He tugged her arm. "Help me up "
She hauled him to his feet, and a few minutes later they reached the gallery in the control center. There'd been more bodies along the way, she knew, just as there were dead men and women sitting at the workstations here, but John Sheppard had carefully and without comment steered her around them. Now she heard a faint hitch in his breath, instantly knew what he'd seen.
"When I first discovered this place, I guessed what it was, but I couldn't be sure. Not until I found the Stargate." She wished she could see it, too, just one last time. "This is your way out of here."
"It still works?"
"I don't know." She vaguely gestured in the direction of where the dialing console had to be. "The glyphs aren't raised, so I couldn't-"
"Of course." He moved to the console. A couple of swishes-he was dusting it off. Then soft tapping noises as he touched the glyphs. "First planet we ever dialed," he murmured, and she could hear a smile in his voice. "Kinda fitting, don't you think?"
Athos had been her home world, a lifetime ago. Or many. "Are you trying to flatter me?"
"No. It's the only gate-address- that came to mind."
Her chuckle broke off when the clang of the first engaging chevron echoed through the vast room. The second, the third, one after the other, until the seventh chevron locked and the vortex of the establishing wormhole roared into the control center and collapsed into a hush, punctuated only by the watery lapping of the event horizon.
"Obviously it works," he said. "Now would you care to show me what happened?"
Charybdis ±0
Mykena Quattuor was a pathetic little dust ball, Mars without the canals or the romance, sullenly veering ever closer toward its primary, as if it knew that going out in a blaze of glory would be the one act that might imbue its existence with a modicum of interest. Well, either that, or it'd go down in the annals of the Pegasus galaxy as the site of salvation.
According to Boy Wonder it was going to be the latter.
John Sheppard stole a glance over his shoulder at the computer console that sat, securely tied down, in the aft compartment of Jumper One. Ikaros, going walkies at last. The kid-kid?-had begged, wheedled and thrown tantrums, but the decision to keep him on Atlantis unless his presence on Mykena Quattuor was absolutely necessary had been unanimous. That had been four weeks ago. Since then, Zelenka and McKay had turned the Charybdis device upside down and inside out-and made no headway whatsoever. Okay, they'd agreed that it probably wasn't a bomb and that the lights came on when you flicked a switch, but that was just about the extent of it. Enter Ikaros, who'd said the obvious: I told you so.
Must be nice to have superior intelligence.
Rodney probably could relate, but John would just as happily settle for flying a jumper. On the horizon beyond the view port, almost exactly on the dividing line between day and night, the light of the giant sun hit a glittering protrusion and refracted in a symphony of reds. Prompted by his thought command, the jumper opened a channel to the surface.
"Hey, Charybdis? From up here you guys actually look pretty. Like someone's dropped a mammoth garnet in the desert."
"If that's supposed to be poetic, don't give up the day job" The radio belched static, which suited Rodney's mood. In the past week he'd cycled from fractious-even-by-McKay-standards to completely insufferable.
"Otherwise I'd be grateful if you could postpone any further outbursts of lyricism until we're finished here, Colonel."
"And a glorious good morning to you, too, Rodney. Ikaros and I should be with you in ten. Sheppard out."
He made it in nine thirty-seven. When he emerged from the airlock into the inner structure of the enormous assembly of man-grown crystals that formed the shell of Charybdis, a foursome of technicians pushed past to unload his cargo from the jumper.
In their wake McKay leaped out at him like a kiss-a-gram from the birthday cake. "Colonel!"
Fully expecting Rodney to burst into song at the slightest provocation, John pretended not to have seen him and headed for the control chamber. McKay being McKay-in other words, lacking the take-a-hint gene-the dodge didn't work terribly well.
"Colonel! I... uh... I'd like to apologize for being a little crabby lately."
Not on your life. For Rodney to apologize, events of a certain order of magnitude had to occur first. Such as the annihilation of the better part of a solar system. John kept walking.
"Colonel... John!"
Okay, the first name treatment was cause for worry. McKay didn't really do first names, not with him, anyway. In fact, John harbored a sneaking suspicion that Rodney secretly enjoyed using his rank-something about rubbing in how he was mere military, helpless without the guidance of a scientist. Or something. Only, right now the roles seemed to be reversed, which had John putting on the brakes. Despite a distinct sense of deja vu all over again.
"Rodney."
The dam burst. "Look, I fully realize that I have no right to be asking you this, especially after-"
"Then don't ask, Rodney." Hiding a wince, he turned away. Definitely deja vu all over again. He'd kept his voice even, pleasant, but only a fool could have missed the edge in it.
Though Rodney was a great many things, fool wasn't one of them. He sounded tired. "We have no full understanding of how Charybdis works, and it's not for want of trying. You're making a mistake."
Oh, for Pete's sake! They had no full understanding of how half the Ancient technology worked, and there they were, using it on a daily basis. John supposed he should be grateful that the whole Arcturus mess had made Rodney approach things a little more gingerly, but enough was enough. "Rodney, we've discussed it. We've discussed it with Earth. We've got our orders, and you're in a minority of one. It's out of my hands."
"Since when are you the type to just follow orders?"
"Since I became convinced that, where it comes to Charybdis, the benefits outweigh the risk." And John was convinced. If that conviction ever wavered, all he had to do was close his eyes. He'd see the face of Colonel Marshall Sumner, growing more ravaged by the second as the Wraith standing over him sucked life itself out of the man. He'd see Sumner's silent plea for that loose cannon Sheppard to shoot him. And if he'd sensed anything about Ikaros, it was that the kid despised the Wraith as much as he did.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Somehow and disconcertingly, Rodney seemed to have read his thoughts. "Just because Ikaros looks like you doesn't mean it is you. But I don't suppose that's ever occurred to anybody."
"Very philosophical." A rumble from the airlock announced that the technicians had retrieved Ikaros and came hoisting the computer console down the short corridor. John stepped aside to let them pass and, with a quick glance at their retreating backs, hissed, "Can we get a move on, Rodney? Like I said, we've got our orders. Tests to run, make the Wraith un-happen, save the galaxy, and all that jazz."
Determined to let any further comments and suggestions slide off his back, he followed the technicians into the inner chamber. It was as close as you could get to stepping inside a geode. Diffuse illumination reached up from floor panels and bounced off a myriad crystals to flood the interior of the dome with a dazzling rainbow lightshow. He'd seen it half a dozen times before, but it never lost its impact. Still, a nagging little voice at the back of John's mind inquired if he might be naively thinking that nothing so beautiful could possibly cause any harm.
A querying look from Teyla shooed the thought away. Her gaze wandered on, over John's shoulder and to Rodney, who'd entered behind him, and she tilted her head a little, cocked an eyebrow-a what's up? gesture. John pretended to miss it, and casually drifted over to her. She and Ronon had parked themselves at the periphery of the room, together with Elizabeth Weir. John frowned. He wished she'd stayed in Atlantis, but the lure of Charybdis had proven strong enough to overcome even her sense of caution.
Meanwhile technicians bustled like ants around the object at the center of the room. If he didn't know any better he'd say this was a gallery and the object an installation: Hedgehog Revisited. Unless it was the local version of a disco, with the mother of all glitter balls.
Zelenka clucked over it like momma hen over the chicks, connecting a small naquada generator to Ikaros's computer console. Seconds later the A.I. materialized, prompting gasps and furtive glances from everybody who hadn't seen the kid before -about seventy percent of the people in the room.
"Sir?" one brave soul yelped.
"Yes, yes, yes." Rodney seemed to have regained his stride. "Move along now. There's nothing to see here, apart from an unfortunate family resemblance"
"Actually, they should leave now," said Zelenka. "We're just about ready here, and well... with a view to Arcturus we've agreed on essential personnel only."
"Yeah. With a view to that." Rodney glared at him, then turned to the technicians. "Scram." While they filed out the door, he moved up to the seemingly unstructured pile of crystals that formed the core of the Charybdis device and trained a baleful stare on Ikaros. "Now what?"
Ikaros was quiet-a rare event. He gazed around, his shape translucent and shot through with the brilliant prismatic sparks thrown back by the inside of the dome. It made him look like the integral part of Charybdis he professed himself to be. Ronon took a sudden step back, and John had a fair idea of what had startled the Satedan. He was seeing his own mirror image, dehumanized, ghostlike at best-or something entirely more sinister. And not. The kid smiled, radiating a sense of bonedeep satisfaction, of homecoming.
What was the illusion? Humanity or its absence?
John was at a loss for an answer, though one thing he knew for certain: the notion of emotional software spooked the hell out of him. And maybe Rodney was right. He slid a sidelong glance at McKay who was too busy nursing his impatience to notice.
"Now what?" he repeated, breaking the spell.
"Oh," said Ikaros to the room at large. "My apologies. I... I have been looking forward to this for a long time. Ten thousand of your years." Still smiling serenely, he turned to McKay. "Now? Now you shall have to overcome your reluctance to giving me access to technology you don't understand and link me to Charybdis."
Too stunned to even splutter, Rodney gasped, "What?"
"You need to link me to Charybdis," Ikaros said again, contriving to sound like a kindergarten teacher. "The simplest way of doing it is to attach one of those funny little connectors of yours"-he nodded at a spare Rodney had clipped to his jack- et-"to one of the crystals. How about the green one there?" he suggested brightly.
"Why?" snapped Rodney, bristling with anger and misgivings.
"Because I like green."
Before John could tell them to get on with it, Zelenka took matters into his own hands. "At a guess I'd say it's because Ikaros can do what eluded us in four weeks of testing that thing." He snapped the connector from Rodney's jacket.
"Have any of you gung-ho types got sufficient education in the classics to comprehend what the original Charybdis was?" McKay asked miserably. "Massive maelstrom in the Aegean, sucking everything into-"
"It's a story, Rodney," Zelenka soothed. "Besides, there's no open water on Mykena Quattuor."
"I realize that. We're not sitting in a boat, either, and nobody's tied Colonel Sheppard to the mast. We'll probably pay for that oversight "
"Sounds interest
ing." Ronon looked as if he was mentally practicing knots.
"Don't get too excited," growled John. "As Zelenka pointed out, it's a story."
Rodney snatched back the connector lead from his colleague. "Just as long as nobody says I didn't warn you."
"That'll be the last thing anybody says."
"You're wasting my time!" Ikaros seemed ready to jump out of his virtual skin.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. How dare we?" McKay snarled. He jammed the connector into a port at the back of Ikaros's console and attached the other end to the nearest crystal. A pink one. Presumably he meant to make a point. "At the risk of repeating myself: now what?"
That serene smile was back on the kid's face. "Now I merge."
"You-"
"John!" Head cocked, Weir had placed a hand to her headset, listening intently. "Jumper Two. They're relaying a message from Atlantis."
Jumper Two, piloted by Stackhouse, was in geostationary orbit near the Stargate to maintain contact with Atlantis. It was a safety measure in case of an emergency. John felt the fine hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.
"What is it?" he asked.
A second later Elizabeth looked up. "One of the historians. He thinks the material in the archives may have been sanitized. The medical records he dug up indicate that Ikaros suffered a... psychotic break after his parents and sisters were lost in a Wraith culling."
The kid was still smiling, seemingly oblivious to what Elizabeth was saying.
She continued. "It was Janus himself who stopped Charybdis, John. He felt Ikaros was rushing things because he wanted to avenge his parents and younger sisters. I want you to hold off testing Charybdis till further-"
Deceptively gentle, the lkaros-ghost cut her off. "My motivation for doing this is irrelevant, Dr. Weir, and it doesn't affect the functioning of Charybdis. You can't prevent the inevitable, but I assure you, nobody will be harmed-except the Wraith."
"John?" Her voice sounded shrill and muted at the same time, echoing madly and dragging like treacle.
Mirror, Mirror Page 7