Mirror, Mirror

by Sabine C. Bauer

  "More like my great-great-grandfather."

  "Uncle, actually." Ikaros grinned, then turned surprisingly serious. "Much as I'd love to discuss the family tree, I'm afraid we don't have the time for it. And it doesn't really matter, does it?"

  "No, it doesn't." She smiled at him, then turned to Zelenka. "Radek, my apologies for being so... intransigent."

  "You always were, you know... a little." Zelenka's voice sounded rough, compressed by a wealth of emotions he was trying to choke back. "I'll miss you."

  She gently touched a hand to his cheek. "Me too. And you'll have a lot more time to do it in than I. I don't envy you."

  "Why don't you come with-"

  "You know I can't. It would upset everything you're trying to restore." She glanced over at John. "You must leave now. Quickly."

  The technician who had tried to defend her was the first to realize what she was talking about, and his face went rigid with fear and outrage. "Selena! What are you doing? You said-"

  "I know what I said. I was wrong. And I will not rob our people of their future "

  The man clenched his fists. "You are robbing us of our future! We are your people! Those children-children! -in the camp up there are our people!"

  "I know!" Her face was wet with tears, and John felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. Maybe these people, these children, weren't supposed to exist, but they were here, right now, weren't they? As far as collateral damage went, it was carnage, pure and simple. Selena shook her head. "You and I, the children, we're unimportant. This is so much bigger than any of us. Believe me, I've seen it. I've-"

  The ground bucked, bucked again, and started to roll, sluggish like a large animal waking. Tent poles swayed drunkenly, and the EEC monitor crashed from its stand, scaring the doctor off his stool and knocking over other equipment.

  "Go!" yelled Ikaros. "We have to go! Now!"

  He was right. They had a minimal window while the folks behind Selena were still disoriented, but once they got over their fright it could get ugly. Exchanging a look with Ronon, who clearly had the same idea, John lurched over to the cot, ripped away blankets and IV lines, and slung Rodney's limp body over his shoulders in a fireman's lift. As he rose, the exertion left stars blossoming on his retinas and his head felt as if it were about to explode, thundering in time with the shocks of the earthquake. Chronic Charybdisitis?

  Across the tent, Radek ushered Elizabeth toward the exit, bellowing at the people who obstructed it, ordering them to move. A few of them actually obeyed, but the majority was waking from their initial shock and started to think straight, which meant they weren't about to let the Atlantis team leave without at least a hefty argument-for which they had no time. Another tremor jolted the ground and this one at least working their favor. Top-heavy with Rodney's weight on his shoulders, John barely could keep to his feet. But at the entrance people toppled like bowling pins, arms flailing and legs kicking.

  "Colonel! Run!" Sword drawn and Teyla tucked in safely behind him, Ronon was ready to discourage anyone who harbored any notions of getting up prematurely or otherwise preventing their departure.

  Climbing over sprawled bodies and twitching limbs, John staggered from the tent and out under a hideous bruise of a sky. In the evacuee camp up the slope a multitude of conflagrations had broken out, cooking fires, kicked over either by the tremors or panicked people, spilled flames on everything in their way. A sweating wind carried screams toward him. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to ignore it all, to focus exclusively on the jumper just a few steps ahead.

  The hatch gaped, Radek and Elizabeth already aboard and waiting atop the ramp, helping hands outstretched, waiting to relieve him of his burden. As they eased Rodney off his shoulders and onto one of the benches, Ronon and Teyla came sprinting up the ramp at full tilt.

  "Go!" hollered Ronon, slapping the pad to close the hatch.

  Past him, John could see the men by the tent regaining their feet. Selena stood in the entrance, talking, cajoling, her words falling on deaf ears as everyone began to run for the jumper. Under the guidance of one of the technicians a few enterprising souls peeled off from the mob and made for the Stargate. Which could be a problem...

  "Been there, done that, hated it the first time," John murmured unhappily and headed for the cockpit.

  "Where is Ikaros?" Elizabeth asked as he pushed past her.

  "Riding shotgun," announced a voice from the front. The kid had materialized in the co-pilot's seat. Clearly ascension had its perks. It saved you a hell of a lot of footwork.

  A new tremor struck, shoving John sideways into the chair. He initiated the dialing sequence before his butt even hit the seat, then eased the jumper off the ground and out over the widening rift toward the Stargate. Through the viewport he saw the first of the wrecking crew arrive at the gate. They immediately set about unfastening the ropes that stabilized the frame. For now the quake would keep them from climbing up and deactivating the gravity clamps, but it wouldn't last forever.

  On the Stargate the fifth chevron lit up.

  "Come on, come on, come on," he whispered.

  "Didn't you say you needed a `key' for the gate to work?" Zelenka had joined them in the cockpit, apparently with the express purpose of asking pertinent questions.

  And he had a point, damn the man!

  Pretending that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach didn't exist, John slid a glance to his right. "Ikaros?"

  The kid kicked up an eyebrow and gave another one of those insolent teenage grins. "You've got a `key'," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You've got me."

  "Well, here's hoping you fit"

  Outside, the seventh chevron locked. Then two things happened.

  The red and black nastiness that masqueraded as the event horizon soared toward them and retracted into something singularly uninviting.

  And Radek shouted, "Do prdele."

  John couldn't have agreed more. Either the quake or the wrecking crew had succeeded; the gate had worked loose from its moorings. For a second it teetered on a forward lean as if contemplating what to do next, then gravity won. John's reaction was pure reflex and never wasted a thought on the potential consequences, manifold and ugly. He dipped the jumper into a sharp dive, angled straight into the trajectory of the gate, and watched, heart hammering madly, as that red and black vision of hell rushed toward them and filled the screen.

  If nothing else he'd found a whole new way of-

  CHAPTER 26

  Charybdis ±0

  here was one thing to be said for the ride, Elizabeth thought once she could think again. It was over as quickly as it had started, though the exact duration was anybody's guess. She must have blacked out at some point, because she had no recollection of being thrown from her crouch beside Rodney and slamming into the bulkhead where she was lying now, butt over eyeballs. Squirming to get her feet where they rightfully belonged-in other words, below her head-she shoved herself up to a sitting position, took stock.

  The jumper's aft compartment was illuminated by emergency lights, their dull reddish glow suggesting that whatever was affecting the wormhole had taken up residence in their ship. Which probably wasn't the best notion to harbor right now._..

  The engines sounded odd-there was an expert technical description-and from the cockpit came a string of profanity, punctuated by Come on! and Hurry up, Radek.!, which in turn suggested that the emergency lights were on for a legitimate reason rather than some kind of entropic infestation.

  Rodney had been strapped down at the last moment before they hit the event horizon-or rather, the event horizon hit them-and was still safely on the bench, still unconscious, but still breathing. Just. Ronon was kneeling by his side, watching over him like a hawk.

  Back at the hatch, Teyla was struggling upright, her face eerily blank in the red light that shone pink in opaque irises. Elizabeth swallowed a curse. Like everybody else she'd secretly hoped that the return to their own timeline
would restore Teyla's sight. Obviously she'd been wrong and, appallingly, this was the lesser of two evils. The alternative-that this wasn't their timeline-didn't bear thinking about.

  She climbed to her feet and groped her way into the cockpit, doing a double-take when she saw Radek. He, at least, had reverted to how he was supposed to look, if slightly more disheveled than normal, even by his standards. His attention, like John's, was focused on the system status display projected on the HUD, and he acknowledged her only with a brief look.

  "Charybdis created a temporal distortion within the wormhole," he offered unhappily. "Its tidal forces as good as drained our fuel cells."

  The explanation probably was as close to plain English as he could make it, but Elizabeth still only got the gist; they had a problem. So what else was new? "Where are we?" she asked. "Other than in space, that is."

  They'd come through an orbital gate, that much was obvious-and a great deal more promising than yet another permutation of the ruins of Atlantis.

  By ways of an answer John coaxed the jumper into a gentle turn. Past the display, the Stargate and the pin-prick brilliance of countless stars swung out of sight and were replaced by a small orange planet veiled in a dust-laden atmosphere.

  She sucked in a sharp breath. "Is that-"

  "Mykena Quattuor," John said. "Welcome back."

  Directly ahead were two other jumpers, one in a geostationary orbit and the second one streaking toward the surface of the small planet.

  "I'm guessing that's Stackhouse. And... me. With Ikaros," he murmured with a sidelong glance at the boy who was still sitting in the co-pilot's seat. "That's why it worked, isn't it? Why the gate brought us back? Your original is here."

  Ikaros nodded. "Part of it anyway, but my program imprint in the quantum computer obviously was enough. And before you ask, no, I didn't know that, but there was no point in telling you. We had no choice, and hearing the probability of success just would have made you despondent and depressed."

  Elizabeth resisted an urge to groan. It was too late anyhow. As Jumper One dipped into a pursuit course, hurtling after its double, she braced herself against the backrest of John's chair. He'd opened a com channel and tried to hail... himself. If you thought about it long enough, it gave you a migraine.

  "YOU... he can't hear you. He's your future self," Ikaros said simply. "The timelines are still out of synch. They won't converge until Charybdis is neutralized."

  "Great," snarled John. "And how do we do that?"

  "With Rodney's help of course "

  It was evident that no further information would be forthcoming, and John wisely directed his attention on the task of managing reentry in a damaged jumper. "Hold on," he warned. "This is going to be bumpy."

  Bumpy was the least of it. As they entered the atmosphere, buffeted by rock-hard air, the interior of the ship turned into a sauna. And then some. Hot air seared her lungs with every breath Elizabeth took, parched her throat, while her clothes stuck to her skin, gluey with sweat. Dawn blended into dusk, day into night. Clouds streamed past, tore into tatters or obscured the view for seconds on end. Each time they cleared, the surface had leaped closer. Mountains rose at an alarming rate, valleys deepened. They shot out over an immense desert plain, and the temperature inside the cockpit began to drop at last. The ground seemed close enough to touch all of a sudden, racing below the ship in a blur, and then the glittering crystal dome of Charybdis's outer shell popped over the horizon, growing so rapidly that Elizabeth felt sure they'd collide with it.

  They didn't.

  Instead they struck the ground with a bone-rattling jolt, leaped into the air again for a new bump that segued into a succession of gradually slowing hops. Finally the ship ground to a standstill. In front of them the Charybdis dome gleamed serenely like a jewel.

  There was a long moment of absolute silence, shattered by Ronon's roar. "Were you trying to kill us?"

  Hands shaking, John let go of the controls. He turned around, pale as death, and attempted a grin. "Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Kangaroo and his crew hope you had a pleasant flight. Please make sure to take all your belongings with you when you disembark."

  Radek gave a funny little noise that could have been any thing from a pained chuckle to a stifled sob. "Don't tell me. That's why you christened it `jumper'," he said faintly.

  "Hey, you know what they say-any landing you can walk away from is a good one."

  "Except I'm not sure I can walk!"

  "We have to go!" Absolute urgency in his voice, Ikaros pushed himself from the seat. "There's very little time left."

  "Yes," said John, sounding like getting up was the last thing he wanted to do. "Radek's only joking."

  "That's what you think," the Czech grumbled.

  Ikaros either hadn't heard or was ignoring him. Groping along the walls to steady himself, he stumbled into the aft compartment, where Ronon was still clucking over Rodney who hadn't moved. In a corner of her mind that seemed inured to everything that was going on, Elizabeth drew a small spark of amusement from the thought of how embarrassed the Satedan would be when Rodney found out.

  "I shall have to borrow him again," Ikaros said. "Only for a little while."

  "What? Borrow whom?"

  By ways of an answer, Ikaros dissolved into that luminous cloud once more, slowly spun above Rodney for a moment, then wrapped him into a golden glow before vanishing as though he'd seeped through McKay's pores.

  Moments later Rodney groaned, stirred, blinked and finally opened his eyes. "What did I miss?"

  "Don't ask," growled Ronon.

  "Oh good." He blew out a sigh, careful and shallow; an indication that his chest still wasn't much better. Then he pushed himself up, which in itself was a sign that things were off somehow. Rodney McKay had several strengths; heroism in the face of discomfort wasn't one of them. "We have to go."

  Evidently John begged to differ. "Don't be an idiot, McKay! You're not going anywhere."

  "Colonel, I'd love to argue with you till we're both blue in the face, but right now Ikaros and I have to get to Charybdis "

  "Ikaros and you?"

  "Like he said, he borrowed me." Rodney actually managed to stand up, wobbled, and almost knocked into Ronon before steadying himself. "Their timeline-the one we're chasing, the one where Charybdis is about to be activated-is showing signs of entropy already. It's getting erratic. Which means that, unless we cut the debate and act now, we'll... both overtake them and be too late, at which point Charybdis will probably gain permanency, because the only people who could conceivably fix this-in other words, us-have managed to miss the fulcrum event. All of which roughly translates as No time for blah-blah. Run. Run. Run."

  John had barely set foot outside the jumper and felt the and wind sweep sand in his eyes, when he realized the implications of it all. Mykena Quattuor turned into the temporal equivalent of a cakewalk. One second he and Ronon were dragging Rodney and his passenger across the dunes and toward the Charybdis dome, the next everything around them seemed to liquefy and then congeal again.

  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!"

  Someone was yelling in his ear, driving spikes of pain through his head. But he hadn't had a headache then, had he? "I'm sorry, Rodney," he rasped. "You were right. You-"

  "Colonel Sheppard!"

  For
a moment the quicksand that was time in this place let go of him, spat him out just outside the airlock, dizzy and disoriented and staring at the haggard face of Rodney McKay who, coincidentally, looked like death warmed over.

  "Don't buy into it!" The voices of four McKays dopplered all around him. "It's past! It doesn't matter!"

  Yeah. Right. Easy for the Rodneys to say... Through the tilting world and whirling images around him, John tried to focus on something, anything that looked like it might be stable or linear or in any way reassuring. He found nothing, nothing at-

  A hand closed around his, small, strong, calloused, providing a focal point. "Trust me," Teyla said. "It can't distract me."

  He thought he must have nodded, shouted, "Hold on to each other!"

  Never knowing whether anyone had heard him, he saw himself age beyond comprehension or reckoning and float, a heartbeat later, thumb-sucking and barely formed in an amniotic sac-2001, it's a movie, Teyla-and through it all followed the tenuous tug of Teyla's hand, until at last past and future splintered apart and left him standing inside the crystal-studded central chamber of Charybdis.

  John had an odd sense of overlapping with another, fainter version of himself, not quite matching, edges a little blurred and fuzzy but growing more defined with every breath he took, and he realized that they must have made it just in time-the second they completely coalesced with their alternate selves here in the chamber would be the defining moment. Not a moment even, but that imaginary, infinitely brief space between moments, just before they all made their mistakes and history would quite literally repeat itself.

  It was repeating itself.

  The merging imminent, that shimmering holographic vision of Ikaros hung above the crystal assembly of Charybdis's core, smiling down at Elizabeth. "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."