O'Neill made himself at home in the pilot's chair while Carter stood watching over his shoulder. Curious to see exactly how this all worked, Vala positioned herself behind the starboard passenger seat, balanced her elbows on the backrest and cupped her chin in her hands.
“Now remember, Jack,” Carter said, “just like the last time.”
The padded seat swiveled around and O'Neill shot her a speculative look. “Last time? There's only been a first time.”
“Plus two trips to ancient Egypt, one via Chulak, which, as far as we've been able to ascertain, successfully restored the original timeline.”
“More or less,” Lee muttered behind them. Vala turned in time to see Lee rocking his hand back and forth.
O'Neill peered up at Carter, looking confused. “Two trips? The footage from the video camera says we only made one.”
Catching the ghost of a smile on Carter's face, Vala shrugged. “Makes perfect sense to me.”
Lee turned to her, an unmistakable glint of respect in his eyes. “Exactly! I've never understood why anyone finds this difficult to follow. After all, the only reason why we still have this jumper is because the second Egypt trip was successful.”
The scientist's momentary burst of enthusiasm was quashed by O'Neill's sour look.
Carter seemed to be trying not to smile. She cleared her throat, pointing to the controls. “Okay, Jack, the neural interface between you and the Ancient computer is subtle, but with a little practice, you'll be able to sense whether the ship is functioning within accepted parameters.”
When the General placed his hands on the control panel, a cyan glow and a low hum signaled more than the ship coming to life. O'Neill's features softened and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Nice.”
This, Vala knew for certain, was where O'Neill belonged, not in some stuffy old office. The jumper lifted several feet—Vala had gotten the local measurement thing down quite nicely, she thought—off the floor of the hangar and rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, gently rocking to and fro and pivoting back and forth as it turned. The only sense of motion came from the visual cues through the windscreen, which meant the inertial dampeners were functioning quite nicely. She understood the General's wistful smile. While it wasn't the largest of ships, the jumper really was a nice ride. Pity it required a pesky little gene to operate, otherwise it would be worth a small fortune on the open market. If she could just figure out how to acquire the gene therapy she'd been hearing so much about...
Such a train of thought had become second nature to her. Like running. But she had found a home with these people and she wasn't about to spoil it by returning to her larcenous ways, no matter how tempting.
“Now the HUD.” Carter looked up at the windscreen, and nodded in satisfaction when a detailed heads-up display appeared.
“I've added map databases to the computer,” Lee explained. “And installed into the collision avoidance system the current data from the Space Control Center. Currently they're tracking over eight thousand objects including payloads, rocket bodies and debris, but of course there's more space than debris so it'll be easy enough to avoid.”
“Excellent!” O'Neill's smile broadened as multiple options appeared on the HUD.
Turning to look over Lee's shoulder to his laptop, Carter said, “Try the cloak.”
From her vantage, Vala couldn't see the leading edge of the jumper, but by the reactions of the assorted military types and men in white coats standing around outside, the ship's cloak also was fully operational.
The jumper settled back on the ground, and O'Neill looked around the cabin expectantly.
“What is it, General?” asked Dr. Lee.
“I'm thinking of cake.”
Given some of the technology that she'd encountered throughout the galaxy, Vala thought it worth a shot.
“Jack, how about you focus on the time machine?” Carter moved to the rear and peered at the datapad balanced on top of the device. “Just be very careful not to think about actually going anywhere yet.”
The word, “spoilsport” followed Carter but either she failed to notice or it was like water off a penguin's back. Then the glow from the pedestal and oval face of the time machine caught her attention.
“It's working,” Lee announced with considerable enthusiasm. Examining his own datapad, he added, “Power consumption is...well, it's almost insignificant.”
Carter nodded in satisfaction. “Relative to a Stargate generated wormhole, the wormhole created by the time machine is so brief that you probably won't even notice the transition.” She disconnected the datapad and closed the panel on the machine.
“Now remember,” Lee warned, shutting the remainder of the panels around the jumper, “in order to minimize your impact in that time, you shouldn't stay any longer than necessary.”
“I don't know what all the fuss is about interference.” Vala swiveled the chair around so that she could perch on the arm. “I've always understood from the various...how shall I say... dealers... in such technology, that time traveling is perfectly safe. If you do happen to change something, a new timeline goes wandering off in another direction while the timeline you came from continues merrily on its own way.”
“Which explains why the SG-1 from our timeline didn't actually go back to ancient Egypt and why we still have this jumper,” Lee added brightly.
Despite O'Neill's pained look, Carter said, “Multiverses are an understood aspect of quantum physics, however, splitting the timelines of a single universe can fragment it to the point that time begins looping.”
Lee's eyes lit up and he slid into the passenger chair behind the General. “That could be one explanation for what happened with that Ancient time machine on P4X-639 with... what was that guy's name? Malikai? Earth was locked in a time loop for three months.”
“Put me off my favorite cereal for year.” O'Neill tugged a pair of dark glasses from his pocket.
“Actually, about that,” Carter said. “The technology only works in time jumps longer than a couple of hundred years. Since SG-1 haven't gone back that far, you'll need to focus on, say, 1600AD before traveling forward again to the correct date.”
“It's Ancient,” O'Neill replied, frowning. “How's it gonna know AD from ATM?”
“The Ancient computer extrapolates from your concept of time, just as it takes what else it needs from your mind. Trust me on this, Jack, it's going to take you exactly when you need to be.”
Vala studied the General curiously for a moment. She'd been around the universe long enough to know a scam when she heard one, and, while this Carter may be an older version of the Sam Carter she had come to know and respect over the past few months, her scam detector was pinging overtime.
“I have two tiny little questions.” O'Neill's look of exasperation didn't deter Vala in the slightest. “If we don't notice a transition, how will we know if we've gone back to the right time? Oh, and you still haven't explained that whole rippy thing in the cosmic sponge.”
“That's quantum foam—”
“Knew it was bath related.”
Although Lee chuckled, Carter was clearly starting to lose patience. Flashing a repentant smile at General O'Neill, Vala added, “Sorry. Just trying to inject a little humor into the situation.”
O'Neill turned and studied Dr. Lee, who was looking very much at home in the passenger seat. “Where do you think you're going?”
“I just figured that since the entire mission is only going to last a few minutes...”
The General's stare turned frosty. Shoulders slumping in resignation, Lee reluctantly hoisted himself out of the chair.
“I'll bring you back a souvenir,” Vala offered after his departing back.
He responded with a disappointed smile and brief wave before tromping down the hatch.
“As you know, because of the Ori crisis,” Carter said, switching on the Asgard transport scanner, “several hundred key personnel on Earth have had locator beacons sub
cutaneously implanted in their arms. The moment you arrive in 1947, you should only detect SG-l's, and—” She paused, glanced at the rear of the jumper, presumably to make certain no one was within earshot, and, lowering her voice, redirected her next remark to O'Neill. “Thor says hello.”
“Thor!” O'Neill's face became positively animated. “How is the little guy?”
Carter hesitated, and then she shook her head. “Heimdall's research isn't going as well as they'd hoped.”
O'Neill winced. “The degraded cloning thing, huh?”
It was then that Vala suddenly understood that this mission really wasn't about saving SG-1 at all. Her finely turned scam-o-meter honed right in on Carter's unspoken worry. “That's what caused the tear in the space-time continuity.”
“Not so much a that, as a who.” Tapping the transport scanner, Carter turned to Vala and explained, “He's wearing a locator beacon. You can beam him aboard at the same time as SG-1.”
Incredulous, O'Neill yanked off his glasses. “Are you kidding me? You dumped SG-1 in the past so we'd have to go rescue some guy and bring him back here?”
“Not exactly a guy,” Carter explained, and then added with a whimsical smile, “His name is An and he is—well, at least he was—a sort of Asgard Einstein, although his area of expertise was genetics, not physics.”
Vala looked at Carter curiously. “He? Since when have the Asgard, you know, genderized?”
“They don't like being referred to as 'it', particularly because it draws attention to their...reproductive issues.” Carter pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket as she spoke. “Some time ago, the Asgard High Council sanctioned certain experiments using humans.”
“Knew it!” O'Neill snapped indignantly. “Didn't I mention that very—”
“Jack, it wasn't what you think. An wasn't kidnapping people and cloning them like Loki did to you. He was taking samples from those who had recently died. No one on Earth was aware of an Asgard presence until An vanished in a catastrophic accident and his assistant, Loki, started on his own line of research.”
The name Loki triggered a very odd expression on O'Neill's face. Teal'c's DVDs would have to wait, Vala decided. She had some reading to catch up on. Maybe Mitchell's obsessive memorizing of past SG-1 missions—and his spookily unnatural ability to recall them in detail—had a purpose, after all. Despite what Vala thought she knew about SG-1 and the Asgard, it seemed that there were some rather large holes in her knowledge base. And knowledge, as she had pointed out to Daniel on several occasions, was power.
And now that she was officially a part of the SGC, she wouldn't even have to steal the files.
“The Asgard High Council investigated the accident. Their ship's log confirmed Loki's version of events. Since an almost identical incident occurred forty years earlier involving a Goa'uld Ha'tak, and both events were associated with a localized weakening of the space-time continuum, Loki was held blameless.”
O'Neill seemed unimpressed but pre-empting any further disparaging comments on the subject, Carter added, “While Loki's research subsequent to his role as An's assistant was unethical, when it came to record keeping he was meticulous.”
“Meticulous? Hell, he couldn't even get the Xerox working properly.”
“What's a Xerox?”
Ignoring her perfectly reasonable question, Carter carried on as if Vala hadn't even spoken. “The Council punished him for that, Jack. But that's not the problem. Heimdall and Thor reviewed Loki's work, and they now believe that Loki did something much worse.”
“Ya think? It doesn't get much worse than having to go through puberty twice.”
O'Neill's experiences interested Vala far less than the idea that the overbearing and insufferably superior Asgard squabbled with one another. It opened a whole range of possibilities and perhaps a few hints as to why their technology was occasionally available on the open market.
“You remember that present you gave Thor?” Carter asked.
Vala couldn't decide if the look on O'Neill's face was uncertainty or guilt. Whatever it was, he followed it with a distinctly reluctant, “Yes?”
“It prompted Thor to cross-reference An's disappearance with historical events on Earth. He and Heimdall now believe Loki used what the Council ruled as an accident as an opportunity to supplant An.”
“And they took how many years to figure that out?”
“Between genetic degradation and rebuilding after the Replicator plague, they've been a little busy,” she said dryly. “Even under ideal circumstances the High Council can take decades to deliberate on important matters.”
While it was a very compelling story, Vala wasn't so easily convinced. “Yes, but since your being here means we obviously succeed in recovering SG-1, you know we also recover An. Why then didn't we...you...us...whatever...tell Thor and the High Council about Loki after we got back?” She ignored the baffled look that O'Neill leveled at her.
“It's a little complicated.” Carter's eyes dropped and she ran her fingers across the fold in the paper. “The High Council is reluctant to accept they might have erred in ruling Loki blameless for the loss of An. Additionally, they don't sanction time travel, which means it's imperative this mission remain a secret and that you do not inform the Asgard after you return to this time. Once we take An back to the future, it's a fait accompli. The High Council will hold SG-1 blameless because, of course, you didn't know about their laws on time travel.”
“So this Thor character wants us to do break their laws?” Vala said. “What's in it for us?”
Pointedly ignoring Vala's not so rhetorical query—again—Carter handed O'Neill the paper she'd been toy-ing with. “Jack, we can't afford for the Asgard to die out, and since you're going back to the same space-time to extract SG-1 anyway, it's just a matter of beaming an additional passenger aboard, whose absence from that time won't impact anything because as far as I've been able to determine, he died very soon after the...accident.”
He opened the sheet and stared at the writing. “You're kidding.”
Vala caught a glimpse of the time, date and spatial coordinates. It was meaningless to her, but then she wasn't terribly familiar with Earth history—something she certainly intended to rectify on their return.
Turning to leave, Carter said, “Makes sense, doesn't it?”
“What about this second set of coordinates? One hundred and thirty three miles, 60°55N 101°57E?”
“That's your safe arrival point twenty-four hours from now. The 'gate will be fully operational by then, so there'll be no delay in Herbert and I returning to our time with An. Good luck, Jack.”
Vala pushed herself off the chair and followed Carter to rear of the jumper. “Ah...General Carter, getting back to my first question, since we're not allowed to land anywhere and there's no little clock thingy on this—” She patted the time machine, which, she noted, was warm to the touch. “How is it that you know exactly when SG-1 are? Some sort of space-time loose thread detector? And since Dr. Lee has already programmed in the data from the Space Control Center mapping all that junk you have cluttering up your sky, why the co-ordinates on a teeny-weeny piece of paper?”
While that probably hadn't come out quite right, it was the thought that counted—and one General Carter appeared reluctant to answer because she was staring at something in the storage racks in the cargo bay. Vala followed the direction of her gaze to.. .the First Aid kit.
Before she could question Carter's interest in such a benign item, the General turned and walked down the ramp, speaking as she went. “The Ancient computer will respond to Jack's thoughts faster than information in a database. When Jack mentions the Cubsyou need to think about Cy Young's second no hitter beating the Highlanders.”
That little snippet of entirely irrelevant information raised a dozen more questions, but it was evident from the way the General strode across to the waiting team of technicians, that Vala would get no more answers. Returning an encouraging smile and brief wave
from Dr. Lee, she raised the hatch, checked to make certain it was sealed, and went forward, muttering, “Cy Young. Second no hitter. Highlanders. Got it.”
The copilot's chair—did these things even need a copilot? she wondered as she settled into the seat beside O'Neill—was far more comfy than the awkward and pretentious Ha'tak throne she'd once occupied. “So, what other goodies do you have stashed away in Areas One through Fifty?”
O'Neill's dark glasses, as far as Vala could tell, served little purpose other than to lend his already saturnine features an air of inscrutability. She decided to prod it and see what popped out. “You haven't a clue, have you?”
There was a moment of stony silence followed by, “There are no Areas One to Fifty.”
Judging by his tone he was telling the truth, and oddly, it made complete sense. The Goa'uld, Vala decided, had never stood a chance against such an unpredictable and altogether perverse people.
Stargate - SG-1 - 09 - Roswell Page 5