FIC: Lunch at Stravaigin
She stood and asked the marine at the door where she could find Colonel Carter. The marine gave her directions to a lab. TJ knocked at the open door and the pretty, short-haired blond looked up.
“PFC Smith, what can I do for you?” Carter asked.
TJ looked down at the name on the uniform.
“Oh, uh, it’s Lt Johansen, ma’am,” she said. “I’m using the communication stones.”
“From Destiny,” said Carter, sitting back in her chair. “How are things there?”
“Okay at the moment, ma’am,” TJ said. “Um, I was hoping to ask you a couple of questions about something.”
“Sure, pull up a seat,” Carter said. She indicated another chair.
“In confidence,” TJ said hesitantly.
Carter seemed too nice to be an amazingly intelligent physicist; maybe TJ was just used to crabby scientists. As Carter’s eyes narrowed, TJ got that there was more to her than the calm exterior she exuded. Carter got up and shut the door.
“What’s up, Tamara,” Carter said.
She knew TJ’s first name.
“I wanted to ask about Dr Rush,” TJ said.
Carter’s eyes narrowed even further as she examined TJ’s face. TJ knew she was taking a risk here. Rush hadn’t been popular on Icarus and things hadn’t changed on Destiny. There had been noises at Icarus about there being other projects in the works, projects that would take the funding earmarked for Icarus. She’d heard that a lot of requests that Rush had made for staffing and equipment had been refused; people who had been needed had been shifted out of Icarus as time went on. TJ hadn’t taken much notice because she’d had little to do with the science team but now she wondered if Rush’s supposed craziness and insistence on working alone was more frustration at not having people who knew what they were doing. Isolation by force. She tried to look as innocent as possible in the face of Carter’s silence.
Finally Carter said, “I don’t know him, Lieutenant; we’ve met a couple of times. That’s all.”
TJ said, “Sorry to bother you then, ma’am.”
She stood and Carter said, “Sit down, Lieutenant. What’s wrong?”
Nothing was ‘wrong’ as such; TJ said so.
“Yet here you are, Lieutenant,” said Carter, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, ma’am,” said TJ. “But honestly, there’s nothing wrong; I was just curious about something.”
“About Dr Rush,” said Carter.
“Yes,” said TJ. Carter lifted an interrogative eyebrow. TJ decided to take a chance even though it might backfire. “He’s not the easiest person …”
She left the sentence hang and was surprised at Carter’s response.
“In confidence, Lieutenant, Dr Rush doesn’t have a good report card,” Carter said frankly.
“From?” asked TJ, well aware of who hadn’t given Rush a good report.
“Colonel Young, for one,” said Carter. “And Ms Wray.”
TJ couldn’t help herself and snorted.
“You don’t agree with that assessment, Lieutenant?” Carter asked, her eyebrows lifting quizzically. TJ bit her lip. “Again, in confidence, Lieutenant.” TJ nodded as Carter leaned forward. “Aside from his initial communication, Dr Rush hasn’t been back to Earth at all. Some reports are …” Carter hesitated and seemed to pick her words carefully … “Some reports may contain personal opinions and unintended bias.” Carter sat back and said, “I’m sure General O’Neill would be interested in a more independent view.”
“Why do you think I’m independent? TJ asked.
“I don’t know that you are, Lieutenant,” said Carter mildly. “But you’re here asking about Dr Rush and that I believe is the first time anyone’s asked about him instead of complaining.”
“Oh, I have complaints, ma’am,” TJ said drily. “I’m here asking because I have complaints.”
“Such as?” Carter asked.
TJ shut her mouth firmly and shook her head. Carter’s reply was very careful.
“Lieutenant, in the very strictest confidence,” Carter stressed, “it has got to the point where if Dr Rush comes back via the communication stones, it’s possible he will stay here unless something happens in his favor.”
TJ said bluntly, without thinking, “If that happens, we’ll all die.”
They wouldn’t, would they?
Carter’s eyes gleamed. “My understanding that Dr Rush has put you all in danger again and again. He dialed the ninth chevron when you should have evacuated to Earth. People have died; a United States Senator died.”
TJ said, “Senator Armstrong had internal bleeding from his injuries at Icarus; he wasn’t killed, he went into a shuttle that was open to space to shut the door so that we could continue to breath. Dr Rush wasn’t even there.”
“And being on Destiny?” Carter asked testing her.
“You’re a scientist, Colonel,” said TJ. “You were there on the Hammond. Can I ask: were you aware of the power build-up from the planet?”
“Yes,” said Carter. “I’m not saying Dr Rush was wrong in not dialing Earth but he could have dialed somewhere else in the Milky Way.”
“Were you told how we arrived on Destiny?” TJ asked. “We were flung through the gate. The kawoosh after we dialed the ninth chevron took up the length of the gateroom.”
Eli had described it in detail.
“It’s entirely possible that the build-up of power could have destroyed any planet that was dialed in the Milky Way,” Carter said. “Without any numbers, it’s difficult to say.”
TJ noted the lack of benefit of the doubt being afforded to Rush even though he’d basically said the same thing to her.
“We all lived when we went through to Destiny,” TJ said. “No one was killed going through the gate; people were injured but no one died. What would have happened to us if we had gone through with that amount of power feeding into the gate, even if it didn’t blow up the planet at the other end.”
Carter became overtly approving.
“The gate doesn’t work like that,” she said. “The power is needed for dialing; the wormhole remains stable.”
“Then why were we tossed out of the gate on Destiny?” TJ demanded. She muted her tone immediately. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“It’s a good question,” Carter said mildly. “I don’t have an answer for you, Lieutenant. In the absence of any data, there isn’t an answer, only speculation. I can’t say whether Dr Rush did the right or wrong thing without evidence either way. I don’t know him and I’m going on what other people have said, which is why I’m interested in your opinion. And why I’m interested in why you’ve asked about him. You would have to know him better than I do.”
This wasn’t the time to say that Rush had a tattoo that he got when he was fourteen and drunk; it wasn’t the time to say that she thought his body was beautiful and that every time she looked into his eyes she felt like she was falling into them; it certainly wasn’t the time to say that above anyone else on the ship, she relied on him to be open and honest with her; and she most definitely didn’t want to say that he was the only person on Destiny she could really trust.
“Do you know about the fire?” TJ asked finally.
Carter shook her head.
“What fire?” she asked.
Young hadn’t told them about the fire? TJ explained what happened, that Rush had sealed the door until he found the sprinklers. No one died; everyone was saved.
“Did you ask him what he would have done if he hadn’t found the sprinklers?” asked Carter. “Would he have opened the door?”
“No,” TJ said. “I mean, I haven’t asked.”
“Why not?” Carter asked, putting her head to one side in query. “Do you think he would have opened the door?”
TJ felt completely miserable.
“No,” she admitted. “He wouldn’t have opened it. I knew that. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want him to say so. When it happened, everyone was yelling at him and he said that opening the door would mean losing all our oxygen or allowing the fire to spread to the rest of the ship. He told me to pick one. Like he was saying, pick how you want to die.”
Carter nodded. “And he’d have been right.”
“Would you have opened the door, Colonel?” TJ asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what you’d do until you’re in that situation, faced with that choice. I do know what I would have done outside of that.”
“What?” asked TJ.
Carter smiled. “I’d have looked for the sprinklers.”
TJ smiled back.
Carter said, “I have to rejoin the Hammond in a couple of days, Lieutenant, and I don’t get a lot of free time but I’ll run some numbers.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” TJ said, although Carter hadn’t really promised anything at all and TJ didn’t know what she meant by running numbers.
“But still, there’s your opinion of Dr Rush,” Carter said. “I think you like him?” TJ’s smile vanished. “At least, you don’t hate him then. If you listen to Ms Wray, he’s trying to take over the ship.”
“Hence my snort earlier, ma’am,” TJ said honestly. As long as they didn’t get onto Colonel Young’s opinion. “Rush is only interested in the science. He worked all through Christmas; he works when he’s half dead.”
“Sounds like he needs a caretaker,” Carter suggested.
Little did she know …
“I don’t think there’d be a long line of volunteers,” TJ said, making an attempt at dryness. “He’s not exactly popular, ma’am.”
“Which brings us back to where we came in,” said Carter. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything,” said TJ. “I’m the ship’s medic, ma’am. My priority is everyone’s health, including their mental health. If Rush is crazy …”-she sent up a silent apology to him-“If something happens …”
“An insight,” said Carter. “Bearing in mind that I don’t know much about him personally, I read some of his papers. Have you looked at his work?”
“I tried,” TJ said.
“Yes,” said Carter. “It’s brilliant, of course. He’s an exceptionally clever man. I don’t think I’ll look at Kripke modal frames in the same way after reading his work there. And, I have to admit, his last doctoral thesis was pretty out there. A really difficult work.”
“Really?” asked TJ dumbfounded.
Carter was supposed to have one of the world’s greatest minds and if she thought it was difficult ... Wait, last doctoral thesis? How many doctorates did the man have?
“Well, bearing in mind that language isn’t my area,” Carter said. “Math as language; language as math. I mean, that’s not new, but the applications use it projected was just amazing. Way before its time. I got Rodney-Dr Rodney McKay from Atlantis-to take a look and he just raved about it and then admitted after a while he thought it was pretty out there, too. Of course, to Rodney, that means that it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.”
“It was nonsense then?” asked TJ.
“Oh no,” said Carter immediately enthusiastic. “I gave a copy to Daniel-Dr Jackson-and he and Dr Lee are attempting to apply it to some non-language translation computer modeling. It would be useful if Dr Rush could look over what’s been done so far.”
Well, that was unlikely, thought TJ, given what Carter had said earlier. Carter went on.
“You see, not every alien race speaks a language,” she said. “When we first discovered the Ancients, it was at a meeting place of the four great alien races: the Nox, the Furlings, the Ancients and the Asgard. We found the periodic table there; math is the universal language. That’s just the basics in Dr Rush’s thesis. That’s also not new but how he put it certainly was. Just imagine being able to communicate with a race that has no language? A truly alien mind.”
Carter shook her head, lost in thought for a moment. She smiled. “I got from his CV that he tends to do a subject to death and move on. When Daniel brought up the thesis, he seemed to kind of dismiss it.” She looked rueful. “When I met him, I couldn’t work him out.”
“Floundering,” TJ said gloomily.
“He’s very attractive,” Carter said.
TJ looked up but Carter didn’t have that gleam; she seemed pensive.
Carter said, “Very expressive face.”
TJ still didn’t say anything.
“He was polite,” Carter said. “But completely uninformative.”
That was true.
“I get the feeling you want me to respond to all of that, Colonel,” said TJ. Then she lied again. “I just want a more peaceful existence.” She rubbed her face-PFC Smith’s face. “He’s prickly, hard to get along with, vitriolic, and often just downright bad-tempered and rude. He and Colonel Young shouldn’t be in the same universe let alone stuck on a ship together.” Oh shit, she didn’t mean to say anything about Young; Carter’s eyes narrowed again. She finished lamely, “They clash, ma’am.”
Carter nodded slowly. “And people follow Colonel Young’s lead?” She held up a hand. “Don’t answer that, Lieutenant.” She pointed at TJ. “It would be helpful if we could speak to Dr Rush about what’s been said about him.”
“I don’t know he’d respond, ma’am,” said TJ.
“Why not?” Carter asked. “Is he in fear of his life?”
Her question was serious.
“No, ma’am,” TJ said. “He’s not afraid, he just wouldn’t think it was important. He said to me once to think of the greater good.”
“He also has a doctorate in philosophy,” Carter said. “I read that thesis, too. The greatest happiness for the greatest number.”
TJ repeated what she’d said to him. “Even if that means he gets vilified in the process?”
“Even if he gets killed in the process?” Carter responded with her own question.
“Yes,” TJ said.
“Lieutenant,” Carter said softly. “I don’t think you need to ask any questions about Dr Rush.”
After a moment, TJ said, “That’s not helpful, Colonel.”
“Think about it, Lieutenant,” Carter advised. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Ma’am,” TJ said warily.
“Would you speak to General O’Neill?” Carter asked. “You don’t have to answer that right now either but again, think about it.”
TJ bit her lip. Neither Carter nor O’Neill had to live on Destiny.
There was a knock at the door. A marine stuck his head inside the room. “Sorry, Colonel. Five minutes, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” said TJ, standing.
“I don’t know if I’ll be here next time you use the stones, Lieutenant,” said Carter. “But ask for me, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” TJ said. She didn’t know if she would.
As TJ reached the door, Carter said, “Lieutenant, please be careful.”
“Ma’am,” said TJ.
As she shut the door, she heard Carter say, “General O’Neill, please. It’s Colonel Carter.”
Damn. Too late now, nothing she could do about it. She went back to the infirmary and dashed off a quick email to her family. She was fine, everything was fine; she wasn’t taking up the scholarship; she decided to stay in for a couple of years. It was brisk, breezy and cheerful. No, she couldn’t call right at the moment; no, she wasn’t in any danger. TJ pressed send and made her way back to Destiny. Greer was waiting for her.
Part Three