Relativity

by Stargate

  The politician froze; Sam tried to follow the train of emotions behind the man’s eyes as irritation warred with pragmatic self-interest. Everyone in the room knew that Kinsey had forced his way into the treaty process, because he had expected to return home laden with a treasure trove of exotic alien technology scavenged by the Pack. Now they would all be going back to Earth empty-handed; but the colonel’s inspired end-run had backed the vice president into a corner. Now, if he brushed aside O’Neill’s suggestion, he would seem as callous as the Aschen. And if he accepted it, Kinsey could return with a moral, if not material, victory. It was no contest; self-interest won out. He schooled his face and stood up, glancing at General Hammond. “George,” he began airily, “these people need our help. Find them somewhere to live.”

  Carter followed Teal’c and O’Neill as the meeting broke up. “That… That was pretty slick, sir,” she told Jack. “With your permission, I’d like to break the news to Vix and the others.”

  He waved Sam away. “Go ahead. And tell them to hold out for one of the good planets,” he called after her. “If I know Kinsey, he’ll try to palm them off with somethin’ made of lava or swamps.”

  At his side, Teal’c eyed O’Neill suspiciously. “Peripatetic?”

  “Improve Your Word Power,” Jack said sagely. “Honestly, I don’t know how I ever got on without it.”

  A hand caught O’Neill’s shoulder and Jack turned to find Kinsey and his cadre of Secret Service minders hovering behind him. The neutral, plastic expression on the politician’s face had slipped and Jack was looking at the real Robert Kinsey, furious at being manipulated. “Well done, Colonel,” he grated, putting hard emphasis on the rank. “I bet you think you’re pretty damned smart, playing me like that. Forcing me to waste time and resources on those rag-assed refugees.” The other man kept his voice low, so it would not carry to anyone else’s ears. “I hope you enjoy your little victory, Jack, because you won’t be seeing any more of them. There might have been a time when you could cross swords with me but that time has passed.” He touched the Stars-and-Stripes pin on his jacket lapel. “I am the Vice President of the United States of America, and I’m so far over your pay grade that you’d get a nosebleed just looking up at me. No matter how smart you think you are, no matter how much leverage you think you have, I’m here to tell you now it counts for nothing!”

  Jack let the man’s tirade wash over him. “That’s quite a speech, Bob. I wonder what would happen if your buddies on the Hill found out you think that way?”

  Kinsey sneered. “And who’s going to tell them? Who’s going to step in my way, you?” He reached out and flicked at O’Neill’s rank tabs. “Just some bird colonel with a big ego?” He snorted. “What can you do, Jack? You just go away and keep playing with your rocketships, your ray guns and your space aliens.” He shot a look at Teal’c’s grim countenance. “Meanwhile, I’ll be back in DC with the other adults, the men whose ranks actually count, making policy.” He walked away, leaving his words hanging.

  The politician was at the door when Jack called out to him. “Hey, Bob? Listen, thanks.”

  “For what?” Kinsey didn’t bother to turn and face him.

  “For helping me make a decision.” Jack turned and wandered across to his commanding officer.

  “So, sir,” he began, thinking it through. “O-7… Brigadier General… What are the perks? You get a good parking space with that?”

  “A new world?” Suj said the words as if she couldn’t believe them. “You would do this for us?”

  “That’s the idea,” said Sam. “We’ve got surveys of thousands of planets in this galaxy, many of which are uninhabited. And it’s not like we haven’t helped people find a new home before.”

  Vix, his ever-grim expression more dour than before, said nothing, allowing Koe to answer for him. “But a planet? When the clans threw off the fetters of the System Lords and the other oppressors who shackled us, we foreswore that kind of life. The freedom of the stars, that is the way of the Pack.”

  And then the other man spoke. “No. Koe, my good and trusted friend, you are wrong. The way of the Pack is survival, no more, no less. When we first fled Calai in ships it was because there was no other way to do it. Now these Aschen have taken that from us… As Major Carter has explained to us, through Ryn’s duplicity they would have done it sooner or later… What else can we do?” He paused, and Sam felt a stab of sympathy for the alien leader. “Perhaps this is the path we were meant to follow.”

  Suj nodded. “The Wanderer was our cradle, our safe haven,” she added. “Now the universe asks us to step beyond it, to take a world and make that our own.”

  “Think of it, Koe,” said Vix, and she saw a glimmer of a smile on his lips. “A place of permanence, where we could start anew. Somewhere that we could build a memorial to those we have lost, and in its shadow make them proud.”

  “It will be difficult,” Koe warned. “Many will resist. It will challenge every one of us.”

  Vix nodded. “Yes, clansman, it will. And the Pack will emerge stronger for it…” He glanced at Sam. “With the help of our allies.”

  Carter felt a grin spread across her face. “So what do you like? Beachfront property, or something with a view of the mountains?”

  “This is nice,” said the old man, taking a sip from the longneck in his hand. “I’d almost forgotten how peaceful it could be out here.”

  “Yup,” agreed Jack. He gave the fishing rod on the back porch a nudge with the heel of his foot, just to put a little play in the lure where it dangled in the mirror-smooth waters of the lake.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” continued the soldier. “I saw all this gone, turned to ashes and dust. You won’t have to face that now… I hope.”

  “It’s why we fight so hard,” Jack replied, taking a draw from his own beer. “For this. To keep it.” He leaned closer to the other man. “And I know you won’t agree with me, despite my unique perspective on our mutual experiences, but you’re pretty lucky too.”

  The old man gave a cold-humored grunt. “You think?”

  Jack nodded at the cabin. “You’ve got something I haven’t. You got a daughter.”

  “You could have that too. There’s still time.” He chuckled again, and the laughter was genuine. “Listen to me, talkin’ about time. Heh.”

  Jack looked away, across the still waters. “I don’t think so. After Charlie…” He sighed. “It’s a deep well to fill, you know?”

  The two men were silent for while, both musing on a young life cut short too soon; then the elder spoke again. “I don’t want exoneration for what I did here, Jack. I made the only choice I thought I could. I don’t apologize for it.”

  O’Neill’s jaw tightened. There was part of him that could never excuse the callous intent that his older self had shown against his friends and his men, but at the same time, as loath as he was to admit it, Jack could touch the edges of understanding the reasons behind such a decision. The most damning truth of all was that he could not honestly tell himself that if he had lived through the same hell as the old man, he would not have made the same choices. Sam had told him something about parallel lines of history, of how the guy sitting beside him on his porch was only a reflection, a relative mirror-image of one potential Jack O’Neill; but he wasn’t so sure. Before the Stargate he had taken part in a decade of black operations, many of which had forced him to make choices that would haunt him to his grave. It wasn’t so hard to believe that a dark and unkind path might take Jack to the same place again; and in that moment he realized that the real test of his future would be to make sure that never happened.

  Daniel watched Jade run her finger over the framed photograph of Jack; it was a picture of him on a snowy mountainside, his cheeks red with cold and swaddled in a thick military parka, but with a grin on his face like he was in love with the world.

  “Norway,” she said, by way of explanation. “Dad trained with their special forces troops. He told
me once he’d never felt so alive as he did out there in the ice and cold.”

  Jackson smiled. “I get a chill just looking at the picture.”

  She returned the smile and reached out a hand to touch his wrist. Her fingers were cool from the bottle in her hand. “You’ve always made me laugh, Daniel. Thank you for being such a good friend.” Then her face darkened. “I’m sorry I had to deceive you.”

  “I understand what you did,” he said carefully. “I can’t imagine what pressures you must have been under… Where you came from.” Jackson followed her out of O’Neill’s small wood-paneled den and into the cabin’s living room. He heard the murmur of gentle conversation from the back porch, and saw Jack and Jade’s father talking. It was at once both the strangest and most natural sight he’d ever seen.

  “I never wanted to lie to you. Do you believe me?” she husked.

  Daniel found himself held by her dark eyes, the face framed by hair in ice-blue, copper and auburn shades. “I do. I forgive you.”

  Jade let out a slow breath. “What you think of me is very important, Daniel. I had to tell you how I feel before we leave.”

  “Leave?” Jackson was startled. “Where? You can’t go back.” The thought had never occurred to him. “Can you?”

  “What do you think will happen if we remain here?” She looked away. “I know you and General Hammond are on our side, but as long as there are men like Kinsey in power…” Jade frowned. “He won’t just allow the pods to be locked away in some vault in Nevada. The technology is too valuable, and my father and me? We know how to work it. Do you think they’ll just let us walk away and start a new life in 2003?”

  “They might,” Daniel said, but the words seemed weak. He stiffened and took the woman’s hand. “Jade, listen to me. I don’t understand time travel theory, but I know there’s a chance that if you try to leave, you’ll be… Deleted from history. And I would hate to think that would happen. I would hate not to have known you.” His brow furrowed. “Don’t leave. Not yet.”

  “How is Hannah?” she asked, deflecting the implied question. For the moment, Jackson decided not to press it.

  “Major Wells is fine. Doctor Warner flushed the remaining nanomachines from her blood thanks to your help. She’s a bit shaken, but she’ll be up and around soon. Apparently, she took it as a ‘test of fire’. General Hammond said that if she could handle something like that with good humor, then she’ll be a fine addition to the staff of the SGC.”

  “And the boy, Tyke?”

  “He didn’t take it so well, but I think you might have scared him straight. Colonel Dixon knows some guys in an Air Force mentoring program who can give him some alternative to a life in the gangs.”

  “That’s good.” She drew away slightly and handed him her bottle. “I’m thirsty,” she said, “buy a girl a drink, Doctor?”

  He forced a smile. “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ve been here hours and not a single bite.” The old man finished his beer and eyed him. “There’s not a single damn fish in this pond, is there?”

  “Nope,” replied Jack. “Not a one. It’s great, isn’t it?”

  “Great enough to retire to?”

  He took another sip. “Not just yet. I’d been considering it. Y’know, as an…”

  “An option?”

  “Yeah. An option. But after Kytos and everything, I’m thinking about staying in a little longer.” Jack glanced at his older self. “Truth is, you got me wondering. I mean, ‘commander-in-chief’ is pretty cool and ‘colonel’ is getting a little tight around the britches. Maybe I could do more good if….”

  “Like the saying goes, ‘rank hath its privileges’. Getting a star on your collar puts you in a whole different league.”

  “I think it might be worth it.”

  He got a nod in return. “I appreciate you doing this for us, persuading George to let us off the base. Just being able to see Earth, green and whole. It makes me feel like I’m sixty again.”

  Jack nodded back. He didn’t spoil the mood by telling the old man that there was a Blackhawk with a tactical team on standby no more then five miles from where they were sitting, just in case something went screwy. He imagined that the Commander knew full well that they were out there, too. O’Neill covered the thought with a look at his watch. Ten past the hour. Sam and Teal’c were running late.

  “Got the time, flyboy?” said the old man with a dry chuckle. He rolled up the cuff on his jacket and showed O’Neill the very same wristwatch, a USAF-issue Tactical with a dark blue face. His counterpart’s watch was discolored and scratched, but the hands were still moving smoothly. “Still tickin’.”

  Jack considered the sweep of the second hand for a moment. “Okay, so maybe this is a question I should ask Carter, but I don’t want another technobabble explosion.” He glanced at the other man. “We changed history, from your point of view, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if we did that, then the future you came from, with war and all, we made that un-happen. That future, your future, it doesn’t exist any more.”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” growled the old man. “After everything we paid to prevent it.”

  “So what happens if you use those time-pod gizmos? You don’t have that future any more, it’s been erased. There’s nothing for you to return to.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But like I told you before, I never listen to any of that time-warp, mind-bender, go-back-and-shoot-your-own-grandpa crap.”

  Jack took a breath. “My point is. You don’t have to go. You can stay here, now.” He opened his hands. “I’d make sure you and Jade were okay. I’d keep the government off your back.”

  The other man’s eyes clouded over. “I believe you, junior. I know you’d help us, even if it meant breaking the law to do it. But as much as I want to say yes, every time I look around, every face that passes me by, all I can see is all the things that I lost on the road to get here. Too many things, Jack, too many things to remind us of old hurts and losses. Seeing people who I watched die walking and talking again, friends and…” He trailed off, glancing back at the cabin, towards his daughter inside. “And other people.”

  A question pressed at him— the question— and Jack frowned, unsure if he should ask it.

  The old man nodded. “She’s just like her mother. I see so much of her in Jade, it cuts me like a knife sometimes.” He smiled. “I’ll tell you who, if you’re sure you want to know.”

  O’Neill was lost for the right words. “I don’t… I’m not sure…”

  His elder self sat up in the deck chair. “I tell you what. How about you take a walk to the fridge, get us a couple more beers and take the moment to make a choice?”

  Daniel opened the refrigerator and scanned the contents. O’Neill had an eclectic collection of brews, both foreign and domestic, inside the big cooler. He reached in and selected a pair at random.

  “Nah, not those,” said Jack, pushing past him. “Guests get the better stuff. Here.” He handed the other man two bottles of Samuel Adams. “Take these.”

  Daniel eyed the dark ale. “Actually, I like that Singaporean beer, Tiger?”

  Jack kicked the fridge door closed. “You drank all mine last time, remember?”

  “That was Teal’c.”

  “Yeah, sure it was.” O’Neill popped the caps with an opener. “And another thing. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been looking at Jade.”

  Jackson attempted to appear affronted. “What do you mean?”

  “I know that look. You think she’s cute.”

  “She is,” Daniel admitted. “Your point?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “From the future,” Jackson made quote marks in the air. “She may be your daughter, from one quantum standpoint.”

  Jack’s jaw hardened. “Don’t you go all Carter on me, pal.”

  “She’s his daughter, not yours,” Daniel replied, the humor of the moment
fading. “And he’s not you, Jack. I hope he never will be.”

  O’Neill took a draught of beer. “Don’t be too hard on him. He got that way because he thought he had nothin’ left.” Both men turned as the sound of a car drawing up outside caught their attention. Daniel looked and saw Sam and Teal’c stepping out.

  Beside him, Jack smiled. “Me? I reckon I’ve got plenty.”

  Her father looked up as Jade stepped out on to the porch. He gave her a wary nod and she returned it. “The equipment?” he asked. “The nano-fluid and the guns, the other kit?”

  “Destroyed,” she replied. Jade waved her hand. “I used the implant and the last of what I had to program a dissembler swarm. The nanites will seek out and turn anything we brought back with us into inert dust. There’ll be nothing left for them.”

  “And the pods?” He stood up, coming closer.

  She pulled them out of a pocket in the coat that Major Carter had loaned her. “Here. I managed to steal them from the SGC after we gated back. I used the combined charge from both to build up the power store. There’s enough for us to make a return trip.”

  “Where’s the third one?”

  “I programmed it for an overload cycle, set it for a narrow-beam transit to the planet where we found Janus’s other lab. If I did it right, it will disrupt the Stargate DHD there when it materializes and stop anyone from ever gating in. No one will stumble on the technology like we did.”

  He smiled. “You thought of everything.”

  She returned it. “I had a good teacher.”

  His aged, papery skin touched hers as their hands crossed over the devices. “Are you ready?” said her father. “If we do this, there’s no certainty as to where we’ll end up.”