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nightspear) wrote2008-10-18 03:42 am
Diplomacy (11/27)
Title: Diplomacy (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
XXXXX
Cruvus, Part II
XXXXX
1 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 1800 hrs
Daniel sighed, tapping a finger on the desk. "'Nu' has to be 'we.'" Nos, nous, nosotros, noi...it fit well enough with other Latin-based languages.
"Or 'us,' " Robert pointed out.
"Right, okay. 'We' or 'us.'"
"Or 'our.' Don't make any assumptions about morphology."
"But...yes, fine. 'First person plural pronoun,' then."
"Or--"
"Probably," Daniel interrupted, exasperated, because they had to assume a little bit if they expected to get anywhere with figuring out this language. "We'll keep in mind the fact that it's an assumption. Now, 'anquietas'...what does that sound like? 'Inquietus?' "
"As in 'worried?' 'We...worried?' 'We are worried?'"
Meeting Robert's eyes over the text, Daniel winced. "Maybe it was a warning."
"A warning about the head-grabber," Robert suggested.
"That would make sense. Well, no, wait, actually," Daniel amended, frowning. "Think about it. The head-grabber is what...uh, downloaded the ability to speak this language into Jack's brain. It must have been made by the same people who wrote this, or at least the same race. And it was activated by stepping through the inscription."
"Which would be a pretty stupid thing for a warning label to do when they could have just put up a barricade or something instead. Unless, of course, it was a trap."
"Then why would they write anything at all?" Daniel reasoned. "Anyone who could read it would be warned off."
"Unless they were trying to warn off everyone except those who couldn't read it," Robert countered to advocate the devil. Or play at...advocating...some expression Daniel couldn't remember exactly about advocates and devils, but it was an important role they each had to play for the other every time they looked for a new theory on anything.
"Then why would the device give them the ability to read the language after they'd already been affected? That part still doesn't make sense unless the purpose was to impart knowledge somehow."
"But imparting knowledge also doesn't make sense, not if it destroys previously-existing knowledge."
"Okay, so we have no idea if the downloading was supposed to be a beneficial thing," Daniel admitted, "but that's not the point. The point is that 'anquietas' probably doesn't mean 'worried.'"
Robert paused. "Fine. Try a new word."
Daniel nodded, encouraged at the agreement. "What else fits, besides 'inquietus?' There could have been a lot of sound change in the language between this and Latin."
"Well, we have about three words of data to go on, but we know there was a metathesis rule of some sort during the period between Latin and this language, as well as certain sound deletions. There may have been vowel shifts..."
Rolling the word around his tongue, Daniel tried, "Anquietas...Um... Aniquetas... Anquteus... Antiquas..."
"Whoa, stop there. Anti..." Robert held up a hand, eyes flicking about like he was thinking. "What about 'antiquitus?'"
"So...that would make 'We ancient.' Or something like 'We are ancient.'"
"Makes them sound like they were either really senile or really arrogant, depending on what their culture thinks--or thought--about age."
"They wrote it; they're hardly going to call themselves senile and then carve it into the ground. It could be a substantive, too, so: 'we are the ancient ones,'" Daniel said. "Latin doesn't have definite articles."
"Neither did Proto-Indo-European, according to theory," Robert said, and while Daniel lagged far behind him in theoretical and historical linguistics as studied on Earth, he recognized Robert's tone as one of agreement. "Fine. Let's go with that for now. It could be an identification of who they are, not necessarily part of the main message itself. 'We are the ancient ones.' What about the next part?"
"Hic qua videum," Daniel read aloud from his notes.
They stared at the words for a few minutes before Robert took off his glasses to rub his eyes. "Doesn't make any sense at all. I'll guess a 'this' or 'here;' a 'which;' and 'videum,' something to do with being seen. That doesn't mean anything. Nothing meaningful, anyway."
Impatient, Daniel scowled. "That doesn't mean we won't get it."
"We're assuming a lot about how similar these languages are. We might not be able to figure this out at all."
That wasn't acceptable to Daniel. "'This...which must be seen?'" he tried. Maybe the last word was a participle. Periphrastic?
"I mean," Robert said. "Sure. It's possible. But we're still reaching--"
"Then we reach! Look, maybe we're being too word-for-word literal. If we assume 'qua' is a relative pronoun, 'hic' should be a noun, right, not an adverb, so it's either 'this' or a noun somehow related to 'here.' Or both. 'This place,' maybe."
Robert donned his glasses again with a sigh. "Okay, try that. So 'this place...where...it is seen.'"
"What is 'it?' " Daniel asked. "What's seen?" When Robert didn't answer, he added, "That wasn't rhetorical. What did you see there?"
"Oh. Uh, not much. A...a room, no exits, nothing fancy, besides the inscription on the floor. Then the head-grabbing device."
Daniel cocked his head, raising a finger to his lips in thought. "You know..."
"What?"
"Maybe that device was the entire purpose of that room. That entire world, maybe, since there was no way to get out of the room. The device put information into Jack's head that led--or is leading--to..." He flapped a hand, then stopped when he realized it make it look like he was pointing at the math, which wasn't exactly what he meant. "I don't know. Leading to...some kind of knowledge we didn't have before."
"Knowledge about this race's...culture or something," Robert said slowly, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling in thought. "And they're probably...well, either they've left or died off or backed away from whatever's going on, at least on that planet."
"What? Why do you think that?"
"Well, you don't call yourself an 'ancient one' while you're still around. Or, at least, you don't call your entire race that, unless you're trying to present yourself as gods to, you know, 'younger beings' or leave some sort of message or a...a legacy for someone to find." Robert squinted. "Oh, hey...hey, you think...?"
Sitting up fast, Daniel exclaimed, "Yes, that's it! That's what there is to see there. That's what the device was doing--showing their legacy. That's the 'it.' The planet is the place where their legacy is seen."
"Seen...or experienced. Or passed on." Robert stared into space a moment longer, running it through his brain. "Okay. So that planet we 'gated to was the place of their legacy, and they're trying to pass on all the knowledge left behind by their race to...Colonel O'Neill?"
He sounded dubious. As much as Daniel wanted to take offense on behalf of a friend, he admitted to himself that Jack was far from the first person he'd have chosen to pass on complicated cultural information about any race. "Well, not specifically to him, obviously, but to someone."
"That could be it, I guess."
"Yeah, you really think so?" Daniel said hopefully. "I mean, suddenly Jack has all this knowledge that he didn't have before, and apparently it all has to do with the...these ancient ones. It's certainly nothing any of us knew or could do before all this happened." Daniel was pretty certain Jack wouldn't have been able to write all those foreign-looking equations without outside influence.
"Yeah, yeah...that could work," Robert agreed. "'We are the ancient ones--the Ancients. This place where...our legacy is seen.' Other possibilities?"
Suppressing his impatience to see what Janet had to say about the situation, Daniel forced himself to try to be thorough. "Well...okay. We could be completely wrong. For one, we're making assumptions about the grammar. It could be something like: 'See...what is here.' "
Robert nodded, but said, "That doesn't change the semantics too much, though. It's still about showing us whatever the head-grabber was...you know, trying to show."
"And it still sounds relatively welcoming," Daniel added, looking at Robert to see whether that was just wishful thinking.
"Yeah, it does. But we're still guessing about the word 'anquietas,' and the rest is still speculation, too. Let's go through it again, see if anything else fits, and then we'll wait until after Colonel O'Neill's exam and then go tell everyone."
XXXXX
1 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 2100 hrs
"We believe it says, 'We are the Ancients,'" Daniel said as they stood in the briefing room with General Hammond, Sam, and Janet. "'This is the place of our legacy.'"
"Or something to that effect," Robert said. "We think some race of people called the Ancients left their knowledge behind in that device on P3R-272 in order to pass it on to whoever found it."
"Just like that?" the general asked. "To anyone?"
"Someone not Goa'uld or Jaffa, I think," Robert amended, "but since Colonel O'Neill's the only one to have used it, we can't know if there are other necessary biological or behavioral characteristics for activating and using the device. We're looking at a sample size of one."
"Is Jack okay?" Daniel asked, turning to Janet.
The doctor hesitated, then said, "Teal'c is watching over him, but I'm concerned. The colonel's brain is showing elevated electrical activity--as much as ten times more activity than normal."
"Consistent with having lots of extra information in his brain?" Robert asked.
"It's possible."
"So, the new language, the sudden math expertise..."
"That's not all he's done," Sam told them. "He took apart one of our staff weapons just before you two came down so he could get at the naquadah power cell."
Daniel raised his eyebrows. "Why did he want a naquadah power cell?"
"No one knows, even him. He doesn't seem to realize what he's doing half the time, and he doesn't seem to understand what comes out of it. I don't even understand the math he was doing earlier, and I'm fairly certain he didn't know before today how to dismantle Goa'uld weaponry safely. More importantly, before today, he would never have wanted to do any of those things."
The general pursed his lips. "You're saying that he's being controlled by it in some way?"
Daniel glanced at Sam, who looked even more uncertain than before. "It's possible, sir. He's clearly not in complete, conscious control of himself."
"And there's more," Janet said. "I compared today's scans to the ones we ran just after the mission, and I'm concerned about what this is doing to Colonel O'Neill's health. The foreign activity isn't subsiding; if anything, the problem seems to be advancing. I think whatever affected him might be taking over incrementally."
"Taking...over?" Daniel repeated, rapidly moving from alarmed to scared.
"Well, the 'downloading' analogy is pretty good. The colonel's...hard drive has been filled with information written in a language that his computer doesn't understand. If it continues to progress the way it has thus far, we're going to be seeing more and more of these changes."
"So it could eventually overwrite the current system," Sam said.
Janet nodded in acknowledgement. "Or, in the worst-case scenario, even shut it down. I advise that we focus our efforts on reversing the effects of this device."
"Reversing it?" Robert repeated. "This is a language spoken by a very advanced race whose technology excludes people carrying symbiotes. This could be the key to meeting an important potential ally, General; we can't let an opportunity like this--"
"I have a man whose life is in danger, Doctor," General Hammond said coldly. Robert broke off, looking surprised--Daniel suspected that thought hadn't even occurred to him. "Focus on fixing this."
"Ye--uh, yes, sir," Robert said quickly.
"Is he still in the infirmary?" Daniel asked. "Can I go and talk to him? Maybe it'll help to figure out more."
"I don't see why not," Janet said.
Robert dug into a pocket and pulled something out. "Wait, Daniel--here. Record as much as you can. Until this gets solved, we might as well collect as much data as possible. Here, you've seen me use this: play, record, stop. Okay?"
"Gentlemen..." the general started again, scowling.
"General, it's important!" Robert insisted.
Daniel took the tape recorder that Robert often used to take notes and nudged him a little to the side. The archaeologist didn't always pay sufficient attention to social cues, a luxury that an alien in Daniel's position couldn't afford. "Sir," he said, trying to translate between the two chains of command he obeyed, "the only thing we know about the device right now is what Jack says or does. Any information we can collect, even if it's recorded and might take some time to interpret it..."
The general nodded, placated. "All right, then. Go ahead."
When he arrived, Jack was not in the main part of the infirmary, but rather in the section where Shifu stayed, staring at the baby while Teal'c stood watch over him a few steps behind. There was a nurse watching, too, as there always was when Daniel wasn't with Shifu, but she was staying to one side while Jack and Teal'c were there.
Pushing through the doors, Daniel called, "Jack? Is everything okay?"
Without turning, Jack said, "Perennial."
"Pere--from perennis? 'Continuous' or, uh, 'unending?' " Daniel fumbled with the buttons on the tape recorder until he had pressed the right one.
"Haud," Jack said, shaking his head. "That's not it. It's...malum."
That one was easy, even as Daniel noted with concern the increasing use of alien words. "Malus. 'Bad, evil.' Oh. You're saying Shifu is...what, pernicies? 'Destruction. Disaster.'" He looked from Jack to Shifu. "He...he's not evil," he said, wishing he were certain that it was true. "Jack, that's ridiculous; he's a month and a half old. You've never said that about him before."
"I'm not...I don't know." Jack's hands tightened convulsively on the rail of the bed, though, and Daniel remembered with a shiver that their current hope was that the Ancients might be opponents of the Goa'uld, and that Shifu was the child of two Goa'uld whom even the Asgard refused to shelter. Was he to be the Goa'uld's destruction, or the Tau'ri's? Was that why Sha'uri had tried to warn them to keep him away from Abydos?
And what would the Ancients have wanted to do with a child who held enemy secrets?
"Um...Jack," Daniel said, approaching cautiously. "What, uh...what are you...maybe...we should go somewhere else."
"There's something I need to do," Jack said, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his forehead. Daniel took the opportunity to move closer to Shifu, one hand reaching over the railing so he'd get there faster if he had to. Jack opened his eyes and noticed. "Dammit, I'm not going to do anything to the perennial, Daniel."
Swallowing, Daniel nodded but didn't move, because he was relatively certain Jack hadn't meant to take apart a staff weapon either, and whether he understood it or not, he was still calling Shifu evil. "I know you wouldn't, Jack."
"But he's cruvus, you know."
Immediately defensive, Daniel asked sharply, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"His existence is forbidden," Teal'c answered instead, making Daniel remember that Teal'c was at least as strongly opposed to the Goa'uld as anyone else could be.
"Well...well, that's why we're taking him to Kheb," Daniel said. "There might be something there to help..." He shook his head. "Okay, wait, I'm not here to talk about Shifu or Kheb; I need to ask you some more questions about that device on P3R-272. Jack, do you--"
"Kheb. Illac lume."
Teal'c leaned forward a little. "O'Neill, you know of this Kheb?"
But Jack shook his head. Frozen in place, Daniel thought aloud, "Illac--illic. 'There.' And lume has to be 'light.' There is light at Kheb?"
"I don't... It's a locas axselo."
"A...a place..." Daniel squinted at nothing, trying to think and wishing he had some reference materials with him right now. Axselo? "I don't understand, but you know of it, then. Do you know where it is?"
Instead of answering, Jack slowly backed away from the bed, then abruptly turned and left the infirmary.
"O'Neill--"
"Jack--"
"I need to get to the control room."
"But why--"
"Daniel, I have no clue!"
Daniel exchanged a look with Teal'c. Teal'c hurried after Jack, and Daniel took an extra moment to make sure Shifu really was okay before following them.
By the time he caught up, Jack was sitting at one of the computers, one bewildered technician standing to the side and Teal'c hovering behind. "Jack?"
"Don't ask," Jack said tersely, his fingers flying over the keyboard faster than anyone Daniel had ever seen, and that was including Sam when she was excited. Daniel leaned in for a closer look, but this was outside anything he knew or understood, and the numbers scrolling up the monitor screen meant absolutely nothing to him. Teal'c caught his eye, and he nodded and turned up the stairs to the briefing room where, fortunately, the general was still talking with Sam, Robert, and Janet.
"The point is--" Sam was saying.
"General, sorry," Daniel interrupted. "Sam, Jack's in the control room, doing something on the computer, and no one knows what it is."
"What?" Sam said, starting down the stairs immediately, the general on her heels.
"Colonel," General Hammond said once they were there, "what are you doing?"
"I don't know sir," Jack said evenly, not pausing. "You know me and computers."
"Well, I'm ordering you to stop!"
"I'd love to, sir, but I can't."
"I'm locked out," Sam said, working on an adjacent computer, typing as if racing to reach some result before Jack could. "Main system's down."
The general turned to Teal'c, ordering, "Stop him."
Daniel watched with a mixture of shock and fascination as Teal'c forcibly pulled Jack out of his seat and away from the computer. "No," Jack protested now, his hands still reaching wildly for the keyboard, "No, I'm not farit!"
"Farit," Daniel repeated as Robert came down the stairs, turning to ask him for confirmation. "Farti...fartus? Full?"
"More like 'finished,' going by context," Robert observed with an detached interest Daniel wished he could feel. "A semantic shift from fartus, or maybe some phonological change starting from finis."
"Jack, what were you doing? What were you trying to finish?"
The computers shut off.
"Oh, boy," Sam muttered, reaching out and trying to turn everything back on.
"Captain?" the general asked warily.
"Sir, I can't restart the--oh." Suddenly, the monitors lit back up with the numbers that Daniel had seen before.
"What is that?"
Still caught in Teal'c's grasp, Jack stretched an arm out and managed hit a few more keys before being restrained again. He sighed.
Sam was scanning over the data appearing on the screen. "This is in machine code. Whatever he was entering must've been some sort of program. It could have rewritten massive amounts of our system." Looking torn between annoyance and apprehension, she turned to Jack, asking, "What did you do?"
"Uh, Captain Carter," Robert said as the display changed again.
Sam turned back, her brow furrowed. "This is the destination map. These are all the Stargates we've calculated and dialed."
"Yeah, then what are those?"
Red symbols--representations of the Stargate ring, Daniel guessed--were appearing all over the map. "Sam, are those new 'gates?"
"That's not possible," she said, shaking her head and frowning at the map and the data scrolling beside it too rapidly for Daniel to understand. "It takes days to recalculate an address, and--whoa. Wait a second. Sir," she said, turning to General Hammond, "these new Stargate coordinates did not come from the Abydos cartouche data we put in last year."
"But how can that--"
"Well, if the Ancients were opposed to the Goa'uld," Robert said, "they might've kept records of addresses that the Goa'uld don't know. This makes it look more likely that they're at least as advanced as the Goa'uld."
"Colonel?" General Hammond asked. "You know where these go?"
Jack winced, raising a hand to his head. "Haud."
"'No,'" Daniel translated Robert said together.
Sam was watching him with concern. "General, whatever's going on, maybe something on one of these planets can give us more information. If we could send probes through..."
"Do it," the general said. "Colonel O'Neill..." Jack squinted at him but stayed silent. Looking regretful, but resolute, the general told him firmly, "You are not under arrest. But you are also not to touch anything else on this base without permission. Do you understand?"
Sagging in Teal'c's grip, Jack stared at the Stargate addresses on the screen, then sighed. "Etium, sir."
Etiam, Daniel thought. 'Yes.' "Jack, can you come up with us to the office? Maybe we can figure out something more."
"At the least, we can document more of this language," Robert added.
The general nodded in agreement, and Jack finally acquiesced as well, pulling away from Teal'c and following the two of them to the elevator.
XXXXX
2 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 0200 hrs
Robert flapped a hand at Daniel and said something.
Fighting encroaching tiredness, Daniel tore his gaze away from Jack. "What?"
"Can you write down that last bit he said?" Robert repeated, refilling a mug of coffee.
"The last...? Oh." Daniel rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, sorry. Hold on."
"I think I've got the whole alphabet by now," Robert was saying "and I'm starting to match sounds to symbols including the stuff from the P3R-272 inscription, but I'm not certain about some of them, since it's so short. And it's in a circle, which makes it kind of hard to tell which is the first letter. It would help if we had a second piece of data, too."
Jack snatched the printout of the circular inscription from Robert's hand. "Nu," he said, circling part of the circle, then irritably tossed it back to the archaeologist.
"All right, then," Robert said. "Should've just asked."
Daniel pulled his notepad toward himself and picked up his pen again. "Jack, could you repeat that, please? Slower, this time?" When no answer came, he asked, cautiously, "Are...are you okay?"
Instead of blowing up like he had several times before, Jack plunged his hands into his pockets. "Ego nishio."
"Ego," Daniel started. "Ni--nesh...nescio. You don't know." A surge of panic tried to rise at that, and he exhaled slowly to force it away.
"You know, I've been thinking," Robert said. "The Goa'uld posed as gods, and so did the Asgard; why not the Ancients? A lot of civilizations believed in deities known as the Ancient Ones."
Connecting the language similarities, Daniel thought about it and then shook his head, saying, "I know Roman mythology. Their gods were named."
"Yeah--but in some records, they do refer to the entire pantheon as the Ancient Ones."
"Yes, but this was centuries after the Stargate closed behind Ra."
"Hey, people on Earth have seen the Asgard long after the Giza Stargate was buried."
"No, they haven't," Daniel said, frowning. "Have they?" Had he been right, then, in guessing that the Asgard had visited Earth and Hanka and other planets like Cimmeria, passing along language and religion in their wake?
Robert paused, then said, "Remind me to explain alien abductions to you later." Daniel frowned harder, wondering what there could possibly be about alien abduction that he didn't already know or hadn't already experienced first-hand. "The point is, we know Stargates aren't the only way to travel. There's no reason to think that very advanced aliens wouldn't have been on Earth recently, or even now."
"You don't think someone would have noticed a very advanced race of aliens?"
"If they're advanced enough and humanoid enough, they should be able to stay hidden--or maybe they left by ship or some other mode of transportation. It would certainly help to explain why a few planets' inhabitants speak something so close to English or other young languages." He tapped the inscription. "Maybe the Ancients were the Roman gods. They did develop a relatively advanced society in ancient times."
"Well...okay, fine, but many other ancient cultures flourished as well," Daniel countered. "That doesn't necessarily require alien intervention." If there was anything he had learned from the Stargate program, it was that humans could be both more obstinately irrational and also more inventively resourceful than most people gave them credit for.
"But alien intervention could've sped things along. Sophisticated political processes, centralized heating systems, an intricate systems of roads, and..."
Wait, Daniel thought as an idea struck. Roads.
"...maybe they learned about roads from the Etruscans, or maybe they figured it out themselves, or...maybe the Ancients gave them some of those technologies. In fact..."
"Wait, wait," Daniel interrupted. "A system of roads, you said. The Romans...they were known as road-builders, right? Road-builders, Robert, and Jack just entered a lot of addresses into the computer. You think, maybe...?"
"Roads," Robert repeated, hearing the implication and already shaking his head. "You mean Stargates."
But the idea had taken root, and, low as they might be on hard proof, it felt right. "We've thought for almost a year now that someone else built the Stargates, and these Ancients obviously have really advanced technology."
"Daniel... That's a...we don't have nearly enough evidence to support that claim."
"But it could be."
"And it could not, too. Look, either way, it's not going to help us here," Robert pointed out.
"Well, they must have had some purpose in mind for...for all this," Daniel said. "Jack, whatever the Ancient device did, can you think up a few possibilities for what it was trying to do?" Jack shrugged silently. "You were taking apart a staff weapon earlier, which is clearly not...you, exactly, and maybe if you, you know, dig into your thoughts, you might be able to figure out what's going on?"
Instead of answering, Jack gave him a blank, almost confused look, pushed off the desk he had been leaning against and paced restlessly, occasionally raising the heel of his hand to his head and grinding it into his temple.
"Is your head getting worse?" Daniel asked helplessly, and then, when no answer came, simply, "Your head hurts?"
"Etium," Jack mumbled. "Motabil."
As Robert opened his dictionary again, Daniel forgot about the translation for a moment as a suspicion began sneaking in. "Jack, you haven't spoken English for...a while."
As if he hadn't realized it before, Jack turned to him, asking, "Veriumas?"
Veritas. "Yes. That's the truth."
"Derentis tua." Striding to a desk, Jack grabbed a pencil and flipped over an old report, writing 'You're nuts' on it in regular, perfect English.
"O...kay," Daniel said. "You can still write in English, but you can't speak it. Not at all?"
"That's not impossible," Robert said. "Different parts of language are controlled by different centers in the brain. Lexicon and grammar, speech production and writing, that kind of thing."
"But how can he understand us but not talk to us?" Daniel asked as he watched Jack prowl uneasily through the office.
"Those functions are separate, too," Robert said, "but linked, of course. Most models of language deficiency show that neurological difficulty in producing speech is often associated with at least some mild limitations in comprehension, too. I'm amazed that we're seeing such a clear split in the colonel, although the effects may be progressive until he can't write or understand us anymore."
Jack didn't seem to be listening. Daniel wasn't so sure that the split between speaking and understanding was so clear, actually, because Jack was answering them less and less, especially in response to long sentences with convoluted syntax, and he suspected it was because Jack was understanding less and less.
Before anyone could answer, Sam appeared at the door. "We've started sending probes to the new coordinates. I thought you'd all want to know."
"I don't understand," Robert said. "How come you don't have to recalculate?"
She shrugged. "Whatever the colonel entered had already been adjusted properly. Apparently, the P3R-272 device understands planetary shift and is better at math than my supercomputers. Speaking of math..." She walked in to peruse the blackboard again. "Sir, I really wish you could explain this."
"He..." Daniel started. "Uh, I don't think he can speak in English anymore." Jack gave Sam a sideways glance and shrugged.
"Really?" She grimaced. "Wow."
"Sam, we have a theory about the Ancients. Okay, I maybe have a theory," he added when Robert looked like he might disagree. "They might have played some part in the mythology of Roman gods and taught them to build roads."
Sam mulled over that for a minute, then said, "Roads. Okay. That's...that was nice of them?"
"No, no, roads. Pathways to other places. A network of Stargates."
She looked from Robert to Daniel, and then to Jack. "You're saying that they built the Stargates?"
"It's speculation," Robert stressed. "But I'll admit it's possible. Maybe they were trying to pass on their obviously-extensive knowledge through that device on P3R-272."
Turning back to the blackboard, she asked, "Including how to do weird math?"
"Dichem ani otta," Jack said, looking blank when their questioning stares found him again.
"Dichem could be 'to say,'" Daniel said, but Jack sighed in exasperation, so he tried again. "Uh, or...ten? Oh," he realized now, since of course it would be a number now they were talking about the math. "Ani is the verb 'to be,' so it's like saying that 'ten equals...what, eight?' " The ridiculousness of that struck him as soon as he said it, so he shook his head. "That can't be it."
Sam didn't seem so sure, however. "Ten equals eight," she said quietly, then picked up a piece of chalk to write something on the board under what Jack had written before. "Ten...equals eight," she repeated, staring in disbelief. "Sir, this is base-eight math. How could you..." She trailed off, her head turning from the board to Jack as if unsure where to direct her incredulous stare.
Jack folded his arms on a desk and rested his head on it. "He doesn't know," Daniel translated unnecessarily.
She replaced the chalk, looking a little disappointed until she caught sight of her CO slumped over the desk. "Right. I should get back, but while I'm here, maybe I can grab one of you--Dr. Rothman? If there's anything from any of the MALP data that reminds you of what we saw on P3R-272, or seems to bear any sort of resemblance to this language, that's something we need to look for."
"Sure," Robert yawned, reminding Daniel, "Keep the recording going. There are blank tapes in my desk drawer if you run out--left side, second from the top."
Sam started out, then stopped at the door.
"Oh, man," she said, staring hard at the equations, then hurried back to the blackboard. "I think...I think this could be a formula to calculate planetary drift. Something in the colonel's mind must have recognized that we have that problem and knew instinctively how to rectify it when he was inputting the coordinates."
"Perhaps that's because the Ancients built the Stargates and therefore know everything about them?" Daniel said, a little irritably, because he'd just said that, and because it didn't really matter what the formula was, did it, as long as it meant they could dial those addresses and find help for Jack.
Sam stepped back from the chalkboard. "Yeah, maybe. Anyway, don't erase that. We'll come back and get you guys the minute we find anything interesting about the other planets."
XXXXX
"Ego indeo navo locas."
Daniel looked up blearily from his transcription. "What?"
"Ego indeo navo locas," Jack repeated.
Ego and locas were easy. As for the others... Daniel flipped to the page in the dictionary with 'ind-' and scanned down the list. "Indeo. 'Investigate?' " Jack shook his head. "Stop me if I say it. Indicate, introduce, need, wa--'need?' That's it?" Jack raised his eyebrows. "Fine. 'I need...something...location."
"Navo," Jack said again.
"Ship." Jack gave him a telling look. "Right, no. Navo...nova...new! 'I need a new location.' "
"Etium!" Jack agreed finally, clearly frustrated by the process. "Ego indeo navo locas."
"You need to go somewhere? Where?"
Impatient, Jack ripped the notepad from Daniel's hands and grabbed the pen Robert had been using, scribbling, 'I have to go through the Stargate!!'
"Jack, that still doesn't tell us..." Daniel snatched the pen back as Jack started to draw several more exclamation points. "You mean back to where this happened, P3R-272?" Jack huffed and sat down. That looked like a 'no.'
The phone on Robert's desk rang.
Daniel rose to his feet, reaching tiredly for the phone. "Jackson. Robert Rothman's off--"
"Daniel, it's me," Sam's voice said. "I'm just telling you we found a planet, designated P9Q-281. Dr. Rothman says the symbols that the MALP sent back are in that Ancient language, so he's going with us to check it out. If we find anything or anyone who could help, we'll call back."
"Thank you, Sam. I'll tell him. Good luck."
"You too."
Daniel dropped the phone back into the cradle and turned to Jack. "They might've found the place," he offered. "They'll keep us informed."
Jack glanced at him, then away again. Daniel cleared his throat awkwardly.
"So," he tried to continue, scanning down the bit he had written thus far, "you said something earlier about...asordo, right? Meaning 'help?' That device was supposed to help the Ancients, the people who wrote this?"
No answer. Not even a twitch of acknowledgement.
"Or they were trying to help someone else?" Daniel waited futilely for an answer, then suggested, "Asking for help?"
Jack paused at the blackboard to consider it, added '3.11 ani clavia' in one corner, then resumed pacing wordlessly.
"Jack. Jack, say something." Then, because English seemed to be getting less and less effective, he added, "Please. Comdo"--he flipped through his notes--"dic...uh, dic mie...gods, Jack! How am I supposed to learn this language if you won't talk to me, huh?"
Apparently hearing something in his voice that he hadn't been intending, Jack slowed, tilting his head in consideration, then cupped a hand around the back of Daniel's neck as he passed. "Daniel...ani ansius. Nol."
Daniel couldn't help a choked laugh from escaping. "So that's how you say 'worried,' I guess. We thought it was anquietas at first. So 'nol'...you're telling me not to worry. A negative imperative--okay, that's good, that's great, we've been getting stuck on the grammar--" Jack's hand squeezed gently to cut him off. "No, Jack, it...it's fine. I'm not worried."
"Nani veriumas."
"Not the truth," Daniel translated aloud while scribbling down a note about the contraction of the negative particle with the copula verb, because it was interesting, it was, really. "Yes, it is the truth, Jack. Veriumas ani."
"Ego ansius."
"Nol," Daniel ordered, leaning into the warmth behind him. "You shouldn't worry, either. We'll figure it out."
Jack sighed. "Na putas tua."
"Yes, I do believe that. Don't give up yet. Nol...uh, nol abiecieri. Don't give up." He turned and looked up into Jack's eyes. "Everyone's working on it--we all need you here. We'll solve this. I'm sure we will. I'll even leave base and go home, yeah? Show Shifu how messy your house is?" he tried to joke, even though he wasn't sure how much Jack was actually hearing.
A pained look came across the man's face. "Indes tua dormata."
"Ego indeo Jack!" Daniel burst out, then ripped his glasses off to scrub at his gritty, exhausted eyes and sighed, frustrated more than embarrassed. "Look, okay, stop worrying about me. I'll sleep, I promise, but first we have to figure out how to--"
But whatever control of himself he had temporarily regained, Jack suddenly turned away and practically ran out of the archaeology office without a backward glance. Daniel squeezed his eyes shut, put his glasses back on, picked up a dictionary, and followed him out.
...x...
2 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 0630 hrs
Coffee, Daniel decided, squinting into his polystyrene cup, tasted very different from how it smelled. It was unexpectedly bitter, but, after the first surprise, wasn't actually all that bad. More importantly, it was easy to find on base, no matter what the time of day or night, and drinking the strong liquid from the electrical engineers' coffeepot alongside Janet meant that he wasn't falling asleep on top of whatever it was that Jack was doing with the power source of a staff weapon.
"Do you know what he's doing?" Daniel asked her.
The doctor was watching closely, a clipboard filled with notes beside her. "Building something. I'm having trouble following beyond that."
"On vis indee," Jack explained, working furiously.
Daniel raked a hand through his hair as Janet turned to him and said, " 'It...needs...' Something. Uh, 'force' or 'strength,' maybe?" Then he remembered that they were dealing with something that centered on a naquadah power cell and amended, " 'Power.' 'It needs power,' Jack?"
Janet looked dubious. "This thing needs power? Sir, it would be really nice to know what that is before you start trying to plug it in."
An airman appeared at the entrance to the lab. "Mr. Jackson? General Hammond wants you in the control room."
"Maybe SG-1 found something," Daniel said hopefully to Jack, who continued to ignore him. "I'll...uh, I'll be back."
"I'll keep an eye on him," Janet said, still looking at the contraption being built. Jack ignored her, too, so Daniel put down his cup of coffee and left.
When he arrived in the control room, though, the expression the general wore was grim, and any ideas he had had about meeting friendly Ancients was erased. Without delay, the general said, "Mr. Jackson, SG-1 is trapped on the planet with Dr. Rothman."
Taken aback, Daniel asked, "Tr-trapped, sir? Why? Are the hostiles open to negotiation?" Please, let those not be the Ancients.
"Trapped by the DHD," the general corrected. "They haven't seen any local inhabitants. Something's wrong with the dialing mechanism, and they can't get back."
"Well..." Looking around the room, as if something would give him an answer, Daniel said confidently, "Sam will fix it. She knows more about Stargates than anyone on Earth, and Teal'c has probably seen something like this before. I mean, it's not the first time something has gone wrong with the dialing mechanism off-world." When the general didn't respond, he added, more uncertainly, "Right, sir?"
General Hammond shook his head. "I regret to say that the problem isn't anything Captain Carter or Teal'c have ever encountered. Dr. Rothman is hoping to find signs of life or communication around them in case there's a clue, but the heat will force him to stop soon."
"But...but, General, they'll figure it out eventually."
"We may not have that kind of time. There are two very hot suns beginning to rise on their planet, and she believes the temperature will soon be too high for them to survive."
Daniel took a step back and caught himself on the back of a chair before the heavy ball of dread in his stomach could weigh him down. "So...but...so that's it?"
"No," General Hammond said firmly. "We're not giving up on them. We have our best scientists here and Captain Carter there working to solve the problem. But in the meantime, they asked me to tell you that they don't think anything on that planet will help Colonel O'Neill's condition. As far as that's concerned, we're on our own. Any information you come across may be our best shot, so if you have a solution, don't hesitate, even if it seems improbable."
"Oh," he said faintly, trying not to imagine what it looked like when a person was burned to death by a sun--two suns--and thankful that he was too tired to fully digest the fact that it was Sam and Teal'c and Robert out there. He felt oddly like he should be there with them--they were his friends, after all, the three of them and Jack, and they were the closest he had to a team in this society. "I...sir, I still don't have any idea about..." He trailed off.
Sam knew more about DHDs and Stargate dialing mechanisms than anyone on Earth.
Except, maybe...
Ancient Ones. Road builders.
"I'm not trying to put pressure on you, son," the general was saying apologetically. "This may be beyond all of us, and you're not to blame if nothing comes up. I know this is hard, but I need you to focus now. Tell us if you can think of anything. We'll keep working on SG-1's problem, and I'll send for you if their situation takes a turn for the worse. You just stay on Colonel O'Neill's case and leave the rest to us."
"Wait...sir, what exactly did Sam say was wrong with the DHD?" Daniel said.
"Mr. Jackson..."
"Please, sir. I might have an idea of how to help them."
Looking skeptical, but clearly willing to listen to anything that could bring back the team, General Hammond said, "We recorded what she told us through the MALP."
"May I have a copy?"
Minutes later, he was hurrying back to the electrical engineering lab, video tape in hand. He entered just in time to see Jack flip a switch that made the contraption begin to glow.
"That's it, sir?" Janet said, sounding confused. There was relief in her voice, probably because it hadn't exploded, but also disappointment that it didn't really illuminate anything except itself. Jack shrugged again, apparently just as lost as they were.
"Um," Daniel said from the doorway, "Jack, there's something we need your help with." The man continued studying whatever it was he had just built. "Jack," he said, more sharply, gesturing out the door, "Sam and Teal'c are trapped off-world, and they need your help. Sam a Teal'c...uh...indente asordo."
That got his attention.
"You need to see this," Daniel told him quickly, inserting the tape. "Okay, Jack, right now, only I believe you have the knowledge of the original Stargate builders. So. Watch."
Sam's face appeared on the screen, and Jack tilted his head, listening intently to the problem. Then he lunged for the desk and pulled a sheet of paper and pens and rulers toward himself, and Daniel sighed in relief.
XXXXX
2 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 1000 hrs
It was a good thing Sam only needed about ten minutes to recover from being almost burned to death by a sun, because when the alarms started squealing, she was the first to make it to the control room. Out of habit, the rest of them followed, until Daniel turned and noticed Jack carrying his glowing naquadah-cell device into the area that housed all the power controls.
"Wait, Jack," Daniel protested as he watched the door start to swing closed. The power room was one place he usually never wandered, except a few times by accident when he had still been learning his way around. "Slow down! What are you doing with that?"
The door snapped shut, and, cursing, Daniel was forced to dig into his pocket for his ID card to swipe into the unfamiliar hallway. Footsteps came behind him, and he whirled to see Teal'c pounding down toward him. "Teal'c, he's..."
"Come," Teal'c said tersely, and Daniel obeyed, glad for once that there was someone to tell him what to do, because the gods knew he didn't have a clue for himself.
Jack was opening a panel that controlled...well, Daniel didn't know what it was for, but, to be fair, he was sure Jack wouldn't have known, either, if he'd been himself. Not for the first time, Daniel wished there were a few more Sam Carters around, so that one could figure out what was going haywire in the control room while another could come with them and see what going on in the power vault.
Teal'c made an uncertain movement as if to stop Jack from doing anything further, but stopped.
"What is this?" Daniel asked.
"Euge," Jack said, pausing to dig the heel of his hand into an eye before continuing whatever he was doing. "Vis indee."
"You're...doing something to the power systems? Something good?" When no answer came, Daniel tried again, rapidly losing hope, "Jack, you don't...you don't even understand me anymore, do you."
Jack inserted his contraption into the wall, pulling off what looked to Daniel like random cables and hooking them to the device. "Euge," he muttered feverishly. "Euge."
"O'Neill, we must know what you intend to do," Teal'c tried.
"Ego indeo navo locas," Jack repeated.
Daniel clenched his hands into fists. "I know, I know! Ego sc...shio. But where?"
"Vis. Ego indeo asordo. Indeo vis."
"For what, Jack? We want to help you, but I don't understand what you need!"
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said quietly. Daniel blew out an agitated breath and shrank back into the shadow of Teal'c's solid presence, watching Jack work and flinching each time something sparked.
"Farit," Jack whispered finally, panting a little, though it was hard to tell whether it was from physical effort or from trying to keep himself from going mad with all the information that was filling his head. Daniel wasn't sure he'd succeeded in that part, either.
Naturu.
"Indeo astriaporta." Jack brushed past both of them and jogged back the way they'd come.
"Teal'c, the Stargate. He's trying to get through, that must be what he's--"
"Then we must go with him," Teal'c said, rushing out of the power room.
Trying to keep up, Daniel was almost bowled over by someone going the other way as he ran out.
"What are you doing here, Jackson?"
"Sergeant Siler?"
"There was a power boost--"
"Yes, that must have been Jack. He just did something with the naquadah power cell...thing he built. No, no, don't! Just--" Daniel took a glance toward Teal'c's disappearing form and finished, "Sergeant, please, leave it there. It's important." Hopefully. He dashed down the hallway that led out of the power room, calling back, "Please!"
It might be the only chance to get Jack back, the way he had been before some alien had dumped a civilization's knowledge into his brain.
The 'gate was moving when Daniel made it back to the control room. "Where is it dialing?" he asked.
"No idea," Sam said, sitting in front of a computer but not even trying to do anything. "We've completely lost control. It's dialing somewhere automatically."
"Chevron four is encoded," Lieutenant Simmons announced from the console, glancing nervously at Sam.
"This must be part of the program the colonel put in earlier," Robert said. "I didn't think he'd finished writing it."
"Oh, he finished the program; we just hadn't figured out what it did," Sam said grimly. "If there was anything he didn't get a chance to finish, maybe it was the 'gate addresses."
"General Hammond," Teal'c reported, standing strategically to prevent Jack from being able to go anywhere, "Daniel Jackson believes that Colonel O'Neill constructed a power source using the staff weapon's naquadah cell."
"We just saw him connect it in the power vault," Daniel added.
"Chevron five is encoded," Simmons said.
"Well, that explains where the 'gate got all the extra power," Sam commented worriedly, her hands inching toward the keyboard, as if itching to try to do something.
The general looked sharply at Teal'c. "I would not have authorized that."
"Sir," Daniel said, "he's been talking for hours about going somewhere. He says he needs to go somewhere, through the Stargate."
"Chevron six is encoded."
General Hammond looked around at all of them, his gaze settling finally on Jack. "And I'm just supposed to let him go?"
No, no, no, Daniel thought. If they let him go, he might never come back, and they had no idea what was on the other side of the wormhole forming now. And maybe it was selfish, but he'd gotten to Earth in the first place because of Jack, and though he'd stayed for other reasons bigger than either of them, he wasn't sure what he'd do if Jack O'Neill walked off-world and never came back.
Jack didn't seem to notice anything or any of them; he had eyes only for the Stargate, still dialing through the control room window. It was as if Jack weren't there anymore. "Are you there?" Daniel whispered, just loud enough for Jack alone to hear if he was still there, but he wasn't--that much was obvious--and continued to stare like nothing mattered but the Stargate.
He was already gone.
They had to let him go, or he'd stay gone forever.
"Chevron seven...is encoded?" Simmons said, turning in question to Sam. "Captain?"
She leaned closer, looking from the monitor to the Stargate as if there were mistake, but the ring was still spinning. "It's not the point of origin. What's it doing?"
"Chevron eight," Simmons said in disbelief. "Locked. Wormhole is established. Tracking now...uh..."
"Sir," Sam said, watching the progress on the screen, "the computer indicates that the wormhole is leaving our known network of Stargates. It's leaving our galaxy. That must be why it needed the extra power source."
"That's why he built the extra power source," Daniel realized now. "All of this--it's all been leading up to this. And"--by the gods, he hoped he was right this time--"he's gone already, General, you can see that. We have to let him go if we're to have a chance of getting him back."
Jack looked at General Hammond, and for an instant, Daniel thought there was recognition in the expression. Then he turned stiffly and moved toward the embarkation room, and the moment was lost.
Daniel was down the stairs and in the Stargate room before anyone could stop him, Teal'c at his side. Footsteps sounded behind him, and the general warned, "Colonel O'Neill, without knowing where you're going and why, I can't give you a remote code device to open the iris. Do you understand?"
Jack was already partway up the ramp and didn't turn to acknowledge the words.
"Jack!" Daniel called, running to him and latching onto an arm. "Listen to me. If you do this...if you go, you might not be able to come back." When he received only a blank stare, he scoured his mind for bits of the Ancient language and started, "Hic locas... Dammit! Hic locas motabile..."
But a hand came up to cover his own for a minute. "Ego shio," Jack said, then peeled Daniel's hand away and disappeared through the event horizon.
Daniel glanced back down the ramp at Teal'c and the general. He didn't even realize he'd taken a step toward the wormhole until Teal'c's hand clamped on his shoulder. "If O'Neill is unable to return, you do him no good by becoming lost as well."
The wormhole disengaged. Daniel looked down and stared hard at the metallic ramp.
"He'll come back," he said.
"I believe that also," Teal'c said gently.
"Gentlemen," General Hammond called.
Nodding minutely, Daniel turned and followed them back up into the control room, where he turned to one of the monitors in the hope that it would tell him something useful that he could understand.
What he did understand was Simmons' announcement: "We've lost the traveler."
General Hammond stiffened. Daniel stared at the flashing 'TRACKING LOST,' then turned away.
Sam was back to typing. "That doesn't mean anything went wrong, necessarily," she said, her tone determined, as if she could make it true by saying it. "It's more likely that the wormhole simply went somewhere out of range, or that some difference caused by the extreme increase in the distance is confusing our sensors. I'm going to redial."
The general nodded, then started at the sound of a ringing phone. He reached across to answer. "Hammond."
For a moment, Sam's typing was the only sound in the room. Daniel folded his arms and waited, waited, waited, until, simultaneously, General Hammond hung up the phone and Sam announced, "The computer won't accept the eighth chevron."
"I'm not surprised, Captain," the general said. "Sergeant Siler says the device hooked to the power grid seems to be dead."
"Well, it doesn't really matter, does it?" Robert pointed out. "I mean, if we open another wormhole, we can send someone through, but it doesn't exactly help get anyone back."
"We could've sent a radio through, or a MALP," Sam countered half-heartedly. "A rescue team. All communications with that address are cut off, now."
"So what do we do?" Daniel asked.
"We wait," Teal'c said.
Sam glanced at them. "You know...we don't know if...I mean, we don't know how long it might take for Colonel O'Neill to finish whatever it is and come back."
Daniel shook his head in denial and repeated, "He'll come back. I'm staying unless someone orders me out." For a moment, he was afraid someone was going to do just that, but then, Hammond nodded and firmly planted himself in front of the console, clearly planning on watching and waiting as well.
Sam dipped her head a little in understanding and cleared her throat. "Uh, the power fluctuations have a lot of our systems on the fritz. I'm going to have to shut everything down and reboot."
The general's eyes flicked toward the inactive Stargate. "Can you close the iris, if need be?"
"Apparently not, sir," Sam said. "I'm working on getting back in at all. I'm still locked out."
Daniel knew that was a bad thing, but he couldn't help being a little grateful, too. Hurry up, Jack.
"Captain," General Hammond ordered, "I don't care what you have to do. I want control of this system back."
"Yes, sir, I'm trying."
Sinking down into a chair as well, Daniel tried not to think, which, he found out very quickly, was a futile exercise. Instead, he reached into his pocket for the voice recorder he had been using to record Jack's Ancient. "Robert--" he started, but was interrupted by a yawn. "Sorry. How do I...is this the rewind?"
"How do you what?" Robert asked, then saw what he was doing and said, "Oh. Rewind. Yeah, that's the one."
Sam gave him a surprised look that melted into understanding when he pulled his notepad from his pocket and positioned his pen to write. His own tinny voice came out, saying, '...indeo Jack!' He ignored her and continued to rewind the tape until Jack's voice said, 'I don't...it's a locas axselo.'
Robert, on the other hand, simply took an adjacent seat and asked, "Someone got extra paper? Pencil?"
Daniel had filled a few pages in his notebook with scribbled phonetic transcriptions and quick, approximate preliminary definitions before the familiar sound of locking chevrons overwhelmed the tape recorder.
"Uh oh," Sam said under her breath, then, louder, "Incoming wormhole, sir. Iris is still down."
The general leaned past her to bark into the microphone, "Security teams to the embarkation room. Off-world activation--iris is non-operational. Security teams to the embarkation room, all units!"
Daniel rose to his feet but didn't move, watching the event horizon as men dashed into the room, guns aimed up the ramp and toward the Stargate.
And then Jack walked out.
"Everything...seems to be back online again, sir," Sam reported. "Including the iris."
Now, if only they could be sure...
"Nice welcome wagon," Jack's voice called through the speakers
A sigh left Daniel's lungs in a relieved whoosh, and he darted out and made it to the bottom of the ramp even before Jack did.
"Jack," he breathed, almost mesmerized by the sight of a tiny quirk of a smile after a day of no expression other than frustration. "You're back."
"Do you still possess the knowledge of the Ancients?" Teal'c added.
"Nope," Jack said, and for once, Daniel decided to postpone his disappointment that so much knowledge had been lost to them. "Don't remember a thing."
"We were unable to track your location, O'Neill," Teal'c said.
"Yeah, you know. Long trip. Met some of Thor's Asgard buddies."
Daniel blinked. "Asgard?"
"Yeah. The little grey guys."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. They had a way to get all that stuff out of my head, so..." He shrugged. "Nice fellas. Had a little chat."
"A...chat?" Anything beyond repetition seemed beyond him at the moment.
Jack smiled faintly. "Apparently, we humans have potential. I think we're gonna be all right."
Still lost somewhere between 'Asgard' and 'out of my head' and 'all right,' gods, he was all right, Daniel stared at him without completely comprehending it was over until Jack took a step closer and pulled him away from the ramp with a hand on his back.
"You stayed," a quieter, more serious voice said into his ear from behind. "The whole time."
"Etium," Daniel answered dazedly, because of course he'd stayed; what else could he possibly have done?
A pause. "I have no idea what that means. But, ah...if that's what it feels like for people like you and Carter and Rothman to have so much crap floating around in your brains all the time, I'm so leaving all of that to you guys from now on."
A shaky grin broke over Daniel's face, and he let himself be steered out of the embarkation room and up to join the rest of the people waiting for Jack's return.
Next chapter ("Pawns")