Diplomacy (22/27)
Title: Diplomacy ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen.
Chapter1a-- 1b Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5a-- 5b Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10 Chapter11a-- 11b Chapter12 Chapter13a-- 13b Chapter14a-- 14b Chapter15a-- 15b Chapter16 Chapter17a-- 17b Chapter18 Chapter19 Chapter20 Chapter21 Chapter22 Chapter23 Chapter24 Chapter25 Chapter26 Epilogue
XXXXX
Cultural Interlude
XXXXX
17 February 1999; SGC, Earth; 1700 hrs
Daniel sighed in relief at the artificial heat inside the SGC when he and Teal'c went back in. He rubbed his hands together for further warmth and waited impatiently at to pass the screenings and the security checkpoints before boarding the bus into the Mountain. He sat just a little closer to Teal'c, who didn't seem to have been bothered by the cold at all. He blinked, suddenly tired and only now realizing how much time he'd spent staring at books and not reading them the night before, or wandering the halls because he couldn't manage to sleep and couldn't reach kelno'reem or even the closest that a human could get to kelno'reem.
Teal'c prodded him awake when they arrived and descended in the elevator together, both heading wordlessly to the locker room. "I will return to my quarters," Teal'c told him as they each grabbed their things. "You are welcome to join me if you wish."
"Actually, I think I'm just going to change and go to sleep," Daniel admitted.
By the time he emerged from his shower and was beginning to dress in his normal BDUs again, Teal'c was already gone. Jack was just coming back into the locker room from the gym and paused when he saw Daniel there. "Hello," he said mildly. "How d'you like the Mountain from the outside?"
Daniel hid his eyes in the shirt he was pulling over his head. "It was...nice, actually," he said, surprised to realize it was true, despite the cold and everything else. "I like seeing the trees in winter around here."
"Really? No leaves."
"There's no pollen, either," he pointed out. "And you know they'll grow back."
"You okay?" Jack said abruptly, and Daniel was suddenly ashamed for telling him to go away last night because he hadn't known what else to do, but he was starting to realize that sometimes, Jack didn't know what to do, either. He wondered whether Jack had gone home last night, after all, and suspected with a pang of guilt that he hadn't.
"Where, uh... Is Sam...?"
"Went home to get some rest hours ago," Jack said. "You?"
Sitting down on a bench, Daniel looked up at Jack through his still-wet hair and admitted, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..."
"Aht! Don't. It sucked, okay? Everything about yesterday...sucked. But I need to know if you're okay."
Daniel bent down to finger the laces of his shoes but didn't put them on. "I was upset."
"It's becoming a habit," Jack said, his voice annoyed, though the expression that he wore told a different story. It had been over a year since he'd left his village, and Daniel was still discovering that the language of a people's bodies was more important than the language they spoke. Or maybe it was just these people, with their odd mix of normal Tau'ri culture and military etiquette and habits they'd picked up from off-world travel. Jack was easier, because Daniel knew what Jack was like, but harder, too, because Jack spoke at least as much with his body as he did with his words even when he didn't realize it, and it was sometimes difficult to figure out which one was telling the truth.
"I just," Daniel said, looking at his feet, because it was easier. "I didn't mean to... Talking to Teal'c helped."
"Often does," Jack agreed, neutral again.
"It just never seems to go the way we want," Daniel said. "I keep thinking something will go right, and then--"
Jack's snort cut him off. "If you're going to keep count of good and bad, you have to count everything you translate right and every piece of shiny, new tech we bring back, too."
Daniel thought back over the past few months and tried to count the number of good missions and projects. But when he tried to compare that to the missions that had gone badly, it felt dishonorable, because translating something correctly and hearing about someone missing somewhere, dead or lost forever...they weren't comparable.
"My point was," Jack clarified, "don't try to keep a tally."
"Yes," Daniel agreed.
"I've also found that it's good to take breaks, especially when you're not used to how intense this work can get."
"Is that a hint, Jack?"
"More like an order, actually," Jack said, watching him closely.
Daniel narrowed his eyes defensively. "I know I've... but I haven't done anything--"
"I didn't say you did anything wrong," Jack interrupted. "And it's not my order. Rothman says you were planning to take your GEDs in about a month and that you haven't spent as much time as you should have studying, so you should cram. And I say you need time off from...from crap."
"I have been studying, Jack, he knows that. I could pass now if I had to." Well, not with perfect scores, and he might have to study some biology a little more diligently, but he could be ready by the time he was to take it, and he'd pass, which was good enough, wasn't it, when it was just some number Robert wanted to see before he could be allowed to work without so much restriction at the SGC.
"So it shouldn't be much of a change," Jack pointed out. "You'll study during the time you'd usually be on duty. And if Rothman says so, you can study things related to SGC work, too. His words, not mine. You just won't be asked to go off-world anywhere until then, so you can have a normal sleeping schedule for once, at least."
"'For once?' I didn't go off-world anywhere for months--"
"--before Kheb," Jack finished. "When Shifu was here. You gonna try to tell me you had a normal sleeping schedule then?"
Daniel didn't try to tell Jack anything like that. Shifu had been hungry every few hours, and feeding him had been the easy part.
"That's what I thought. So, listen to Rothman, your training schedule at the gym and with me can stay the same if you want, and if the base is under attack you can help out."
"Is this what the general said?" Daniel asked.
"The general would rather you didn't burn out," Jack said bluntly. "Or..." He gestured vaguely but didn't finish. "And I told you months ago that Dr. Rothman and I would have final say over your schedule. He has said, and now I have said. So take it easy for a few weeks."
The protest was automatic, but half-hearted. "But--"
"You're supposed to be working part-time and studying the rest. The last few weeks--months--haven't helped that, so this is just making up that time. Not even making up. And once you're done with the GEDs, Rothman won't argue if you want to concentrate more on SGC stuff."
Daniel chewed his lip. "He really said that?"
"Yeah," Jack said. "He left already--"
"He wasn't even supposed to be here today," Daniel remembered. "He had the day off." So did SG-1 and everyone who was involved yesterday.
"I think he's a little freaked," Jack said. "Yesterday was pretty...freaky."
"Yes," Daniel agreed.
"And...I think maybe you're a little freaked, too."
He glanced up at Jack's carefully blank face. "Maybe."
"The thing is," Jack said, "the way things are, you're probably gonna end up facing more ugly things at some point. And I'm not saying that's good, but...you gotta take it easy sometimes. Don't forget about the good stuff, or you won't make it through."
Daniel grimaced at his feet, wondering if it was possible to see so many people be killed that it was no longer a shock. If he even wanted that to happen. "I can't just ignore it. What makes us different from the enemy if we don't--"
Jack poked him in the chest with a finger to cut him off. "I'm not saying you ignore anything. I'm saying to take it easy and get yourself out of the line of fire for a few weeks. I'll let you help save the world after."
Daniel ignored the joke, chewing at his lip, and nodded again. "Okay."
Jack blinked. He opened his mouth and closed it and blinked again. "Okay?"
"Okay," Daniel repeated, and he left his backpack and books on base that night when Jack drove him home.
XXXXX
27 February 1999; O'Neill/Jackson Residence, Earth; 1400 hrs
"So there aren't only two political factions--parties--in this nation," Daniel said, watching Jack flop onto the couch.
"There are many," Jack said, "but it's basically a given that one of the two main ones will win the presidential election."
"But not necessarily the other elections," Daniel clarified.
"Not always, yeah. But it's still usually one of the two biggest parties that wins."
"Then why do people...run in the other parties, even for the President's election?"
"Presidential," Jack corrected, then explained, "People can vote for any of the parties. Anyone could win, but most people stick with the Democratic or Republican candidate, 'cause they figure the other ones don't have a chance of winning, so why waste their vote?"
"Huh," Daniel said.
Robert had assured him that, for a test in which a limited number of possible correct answers was presented to him, basic understanding and the ability to analyze were more important than a list of facts. Daniel had said he should probably study more anyway, since he couldn't walk around forever hoping that people would give him multiple answers from which to choose or that people would only talk about things with which he was familiar. Robert had seemed pleased at that answer, and Sam had reminded him that he should be studying to learn, not just to pass a test.
"You have a lot of laws in this country," Daniel said, because he'd discovered that Jack didn't know theoretical astrophysics or morphological theory, but he knew about this nation and how the rules of daily life and society worked around here. "And they're all written down somewhere and formally codified."
"True," Jack agreed. "And states have their own laws, too."
"But the national laws supersede state laws?"
"Federal laws apply to everyone, no matter what state you're in, but state laws only apply to people living in that state."
"Does everyone know all of them?"
"Well...no, probably not," came the careful answer, "but you really should know the major ones, because if you break one, not knowing won't be an excuse."
"But if you accidentally walk into something and there's a misunderstanding..."
"Not knowing the situation is excusable, sometimes. Not knowing the law is not."
"That's reasonable, I suppose," Daniel said, thinking about a few mission reports he'd read of teams that had stumbled into trouble because of ignorance of the local laws. It was a risk they took just by stepping through the Stargate, really, since the Stargate seemed to play a central role in so many cultures and many of the local peoples were suspicious, or in awe, or just awfully suspicious, about aliens who trespassed through the 'gate. Added to the fact that linguistic barriers often took time to overcome, while being arrested or attacked only took a few seconds or minutes, there was a reason why first-contact teams were considered to be in as much danger as combat-specialized teams.
"But it's not that bad; a lot of the laws are things that make common sense," Jack said.
"Really?" Daniel said doubtfully. "Because the pillows upstairs have pieces of cloth attached that say it's against the law to remove them."
"Only if you remove them and then sell the pillows to someone else," Jack explained. "And it's legal in this state."
Daniel sighed. "Your world is strange."
Jack shrugged as he picked up a newspaper and a pen. "You betcha," he replied.
"Are you doing a...puzzle?" Daniel asked, trying but failing to remember what kind of puzzle it was called. He knew this... Cross-sections. Something that had to do with the way the words intersected. Cruci...something. Crucigram? That sounded almost familiar, but not quite right.
"Yeah. Wanna help?"
"Sure," Daniel said, uncurling from his spot on an armchair while Jack shifted to one side to make space for him. "Oh, crossword."
Jack looked at him. Daniel flushed.
"I told Carter I could finish this one without her help," Jack told him.
"Without help, or without her help?" Daniel asked.
"The second one."
Daniel pointed out a few that he knew, but Jack didn't really need that much help, or not help that Daniel could give, anyway; most of the answers had to do with bits of local culture that he didn't know.
Jack wrinkled his brow when they only had one clue left. "Why would someone want a synonym for a gallstone? Starts with C, contains an L."
"What's a gallstone?" Daniel asked, peering at the blocks and trying to remember where he'd seen that word before.
"It's a stone in your gall," Jack said. Daniel waited patiently until he clarified, "Something to do with mineral buildup in your--"
"Oh, I remember now. Calculus." At Jack's surprised expression, he explained, "I looked it up, when I was looking up the math term once, so I saw that definition. It's the same root, from a word meaning a kind of stone, but it was used for calculations, see, and..."
"Okay," Jack said, clearly uninterested in the history of calculi. "Ha--take that, Captain."
XXXXX
1 March 1999; SGC, Earth; 1100 hrs
Prophase, Daniel recited to himself, staring at a corner of the ceiling of Sam's lab where paint was chipping off, metaphase, anaphase, telophase.
Pro--that was obvious, for what came first or before. Meta- for the change in position, ana- for...up? Apart. Chromosomes moving apart? Daniel frowned; he'd have to find one of the dictionaries later and see exactly what the etymology was. Well, telos was for the end, anyway, which meant that, whatever the historical reasons for the etymology, anaphase was the other part, when the chromosomes moved apart.
Daniel looked up when Dr. Lee's voice rose at the far end of the lab, speeding up and taking on that earnest note that meant he was getting excited about something. Sergeant Siler didn't look like he was listening at all, still bent over something with an enormous wrench in his hand that Daniel sometimes suspected he carried around just to intimidate people, but a moment later, Siler spoke up in answer, his own voice calmer and unruffled as he tightened something on the device.
"The Hulk?" Dr. Lee answered, then looked thoughtful. After a minute, he turned back to one of the sensors he was holding over the device Siler was working on. "Well, it's just that...well, it's been done. And I'm not certain it would be fair to..."
Sam groaned softly, looking up from her laptop computer screen to smile ruefully at Daniel. "And they're off."
"What are they talking about?" Daniel asked, not sorry to put mitosis aside for a moment.
"Oh, just different superheroes. People in here are always having discussions about them."
"Superheroes?" Daniel repeated, putting his elbows on the lab bench and leaning forward curiously at the unfamiliar term. "As opposed to...what, moderately competent heroes?"
She laughed, leaning back in her chair to stretch. "It refers to...usually fictional characters who...uh...have a superhuman power of some kind. And fight for justice."
"No, no, Captain Carter," Dr. Lee protested, apparently having heard. "They don't all have superpowers. For example, Batman was completely human."
Daniel tried to picture what a bat-man would look like and decide how that could possibly be completely human. "Okay," he said dubiously.
"See," Dr. Lee started trying to explain, and then a spark leapt from where Siler was working, and both of them hastily returned to the task at hand.
"I don't get it," Daniel confessed to Sam.
"This isn't something you need to get," she assured him, though this time her voice was low enough not to catch the other two men's attention. "Some people here are far too deeply engrossed in the whole comic book culture--there are hundreds of books about different superheroes, and it gets a little frightening."
Daniel rolled that around his mind, and then asked, "So you never read them?"
"Not really. You can't avoid knowing who characters like...like Superman and Batman are if you live in America for long enough, but I never got into it like they apparently did." She jerked a surreptitious thumb toward the other two. "The things that pass for science in some of those stories, honestly..."
"Huh," Daniel said, resolving to ask someone later who Superman and Batman were. "That's interesting."
"Oh, not you, too," she said, only half teasing.
"Well, it's not that much different from any other iconic figure: someone--with or without superhuman powers--who fights evil. All cultures have figures like that in their legends."
"Still--"
"You let me borrow your Tolkien," he pointed out. "That's not really any different, is it? People with magical abilities or...or who have special talents, who fight for morality or justice."
"But..." she said, looking appalled at the comparison of Gandalf the Grey to a humanoid bat, or whatever it was Dr. Lee had said. "But Tolkien doesn't pretend he can explain Ents and hobbits with vats of green, radioactive substances."
Daniel frowned, sure he was missing part of the reference. "That's true," he conceded. "But my point is, you see it in classic stories everywhere. I think it's a natural part of society for people to want a hero, and those books with, uh, superheroes"--he glanced toward Dr. Lee and Sergeant Siler, who were now somehow plugging the device into a laptop; how did they always manage to do that?--"are just another medium for exploring those ideas."
"Maybe," Sam said. "Personally, I like heroes who didn't choose to become heroes because they were bitten by an arachnid."
Daniel blinked, thinking of what kind of effect arachnids could possibly have and could think of nothing but illness and possible mortality from venom. "Okay, that...does sound bizarre."
"See?" she said primly. When he was still thinking about it a minute later, she asked him why mitosis resulted in diploid cells and meiosis in haploid cells, and he took the hint and opened his biology review book again.
Later, when Sam was focused intently on some model on her computer, he asked Sergeant Siler discreetly, who told him that it was a radioactive spider whose bite changed the main character's genes. Daniel wasn't completely certain that that made any more sense, but the sergeant assured him that it made much more sense if he didn't think too hard about the science. Daniel decided to take his word for it.
XXXXX
5 March 1999; SGC, Earth; 1900 hrs
Daniel knocked on Teal'c's door. When it opened, he said, "Are you busy? Can I read in here? Jack's testing some of the new officers at the Academy, and almost everyone else has left or is busy, so..."
Teal'c opened the door wider.
"Did you know that there are books written about Star Wars?" he said, as he edged in and sat on the floor against the side of Teal'c's bed. "One of the people in our department was talking about science fiction, and he told me about that, and I thought you might be interested."
Teal'c inclined his head and took a seat on his mattress, which he really only used as a place to sit, anyway, since he didn't sleep and usually performed kelno'reem on the floor. Daniel didn't think that was fair--there was so much time they could all save if all of them could just kelno'reem occasionally when they were tired.
"I do not understand the Tau'ri insistence on using the term 'science fiction,'" Teal'c said.
"Yeah, neither do I, sometimes," Daniel said, looking up at Teal'c's face from the floor. "Maybe I just don't know what's scientifically sound, but I bet Sam could build a light saber if she wanted."
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed solemnly.
When Daniel looked around Teal'c's room, he found that there were already two books on his table with the words Star Wars on them, hiding among Tau'ri poetry, which Teal'c enjoyed more than Daniel could understand. "Oh, so you already know about that."
"Captain Carter also believed I would enjoy them," Teal'c said. "Perhaps she enjoys science fiction as well."
"I think she just likes picking out the parts that are scientifically improbable," Daniel said.
"It makes the experience less enjoyable," Teal'c said.
"Sometimes there really are glaring errors, though," Daniel pointed out. "It's like that, too, whenever there's something about some extinct civilization, because they just assume no one will know, just as they assume no one will understand complicated physics. Sometimes, it ends up being very condescending or outright ridiculous."
Teal'c gave him a stony expression that said he'd better not disrupt enjoyable experiences any more than Sam did.
"Okay," Daniel said and opened his book--on creation myths, because he'd studied chemistry all day--while Teal'c reached over and picked out a book for himself.
Later, Teal'c put in a movie that Jack had given him about an archaeologist who seemed to have been named after one of the United States. Daniel wrapped himself in one of Teal'c's blankets and watched from the foot of the bed. He wondered why Jack had movies about archaeologists but quickly discovered that archaeology wasn't the main point of the film.
Sam wandered in a few minutes later and tugged at the blanket until Daniel shared it with her. When Daniel asked a question, she answered and then complained about feminine stereotypes. He asked her about her job, then, because didn't she say women weren't completely equal in the military, and when she began to answer, Teal'c glared at them until they both shut up and watched the movie.
Jack didn't get back from tormenting recruits until the movie was over. "What is this, a slumber party?" he asked.
"We are not slumbering," Teal'c told him.
"Have you ever built a light saber?" Daniel asked Sam, remembering the discussion from hours ago.
She frowned at him. "Don't even get me started on the...the improbability of a sword-like weapon of definite length using a high-intensity laser powered by a source that--I mean, even if we substitute 'laser' with something more plausible, there are still all sorts of problems, and any society that could overcome them could undoubtedly engineer a steel blade to--"
"Okay," Jack said loudly, waving a hand. "When you say not to get you started...don't get started."
"Right," Sam said, huffing.
"No science right now," Jack declared. "You too, Daniel." He sauntered in and said, "The most important question of this slumber party is... Have you people ever seen The Wizard of Oz?" Sam rolled her eyes, but out of Jack's sight.
Daniel didn't think The Wizard of Oz was the slumbering type of entertainment--it was weird, though it did explain some expressions he'd never understood before--but it was late and everyone was tired by the time they reached the end, so they each ended up slumbering in a different corner of Teal'c's room. Daniel stayed awake long enough to see Teal'c put himself into kelno'reem until morning, and then closed his eyes, too.
Jack and Sam were both gone when he woke the next morning, but Teal'c poked him with a bashaak training staff until he got up and kept poking him all the way to the gym.
XXXXX
10 March 1999; SGC, Earth; 1400 hrs
Sam raised her eyebrows. "Well?"
Daniel cleared his throat. Scratched his head. "You just said, 'show me your ape.'"
"Ape?" she repeated. "Like the primate?"
"A female one," he added.
"I thought you said that was 'stone deposit,'" she said, frustrated. "Hatet."
"That's 'ape,'" he explained again. " 'Mine,' or 'stone deposit,' is ħatet. It's the initial consonant. Listen: hatet, ħatet. Hear the difference?"
Sam bit her lip. "Not...well, kinda," she said, but a little dubiously. "Barely. But I don't get what you're doing differently."
"It's..." Daniel said, then said both words again, to himself, looking for the difference so he could put it into words. "It's just in a different part of your throat."
"See, that makes no sense," she said. "I'm pretty sure the airflow goes all the way through my throat without skipping any part. And they sound practically the same--you're telling me that's the difference between primates and mines?"
"They sound similar to you just because those sounds don't mean different things in English, that's all. But it's an important distinction in Abydonian."
"The colonel doesn't have trouble with this," she said, frowning.
"Jack speaks some languages from the same family as Ancient Egyptian, or at least with similar phonemic differences," he said. "And he doesn't pay attention to the grammar, so he messes that up a lot more than you do, Sam."
"It doesn't matter whether or not I understand the grammar if I keep talking about apes when I'm looking for naquadah mines."
Daniel bit his lip and tried not to laugh at the uncharacteristically dispirited look on her face. Sam wasn't used to finding things she wasn't good at learning. "Okay, just...think about where you're making the sounds. Where they're coming out of. Like...uh...okay. There's air, right?"
"Well," she said. "I should hope so."
"Just listen, Sam. There's air moving through your throat, and it makes a sound when it passes part of it. You can kind of...feel it going through." He rubbed one palm across the other. "Like friction, against the side of your throat. Fricative. Friction."
She tilted her head. "Wait. You're talking about laminar airflow that becomes turbulent in a section of the oral tract. Because the cross-sectional area decreases."
"Whuh," Daniel said, thinking he should have tried reading through one of those phonetics books in the linguistics office, the ones that were about the physics of making sounds. He'd never bothered before, because he'd grown up knowing by feel the subtle ways that phonemes differed from each other, and it was instinctive for him, for the most part; he'd never had to think about the physical mechanisms before. "I have no idea, but it's like the throat gets smaller at one point and the air...has a harder time getting through. So it ends up scraping against the sides of...Sam!"
Sam was biting her lip, and Daniel had the feeling she was trying not to laugh at him, now.
"That's how I imagine it," he said sheepishly.
"Sorry," she said, schooling her expression. "All right. That makes sense."
Dubious, he said, "Really?"
"Yeah. So I just have to figure out where to make my throat smaller."
"Or your mouth, or wherever you make the sound," he agreed. "And then if you practice enough, after a while you don't have to think about...tongue placement or anything anymore."
"You ever consider putting together a reference for Ancient Egyptian?" she asked. "Those Goa'uld ones have been useful."
"We have. We've been talking about a lot different language resources to make available to everyone in the program, but we're still trying to figure out the best way to handle dialectal differences in Egyptian," he answered. "Are you avoiding practicing now, Captain-Doctor?"
Sam did laugh then. "Of course not, Mr. Jackson," she said, and then, slowly, with the vowels a little off but comprehensible, "Na nay."
"Nafi," he replied, turning back to the consonants that English speakers seemed to have so much trouble differentiating.
By the time they stopped, Daniel was trying to explain why ejective consonants sounded sharper than others, and that in some dialects it was a voicing difference more than a laryngeal movement, and that yes, Sam, it's really, really important, because that was the only difference between the word for a container of grain and the word for an invasion.
They practiced the fricatives again, the ones that all sounded like 'h' to Sam, before she left to go back to her own work. Robert walked in, then, and asked why they were talking about apes.
"Don't ask," Daniel said.
"We'll just let Teal'c talk off-world," Sam sighed.
XXXXX
15 March 1999; SGC, Earth; 1300 hrs
"So," Sam said during lunch, "it turns out that it controls the weather."
"Really," Daniel said, only half-listening. "Hm..."
"Okay, easy," she said, leaning over his hands. "Easy...take your time..."
"Sam, you're blocking the...I can't see," Daniel protested.
"You don't need to see," she pointed out, holding the padlock steady for him as he painstakingly maneuvered a pin inside it, though she did move her head out of the way. "There's not much to see. You've got to feel your way around."
Daniel sighed. "It didn't take you this long. Am I doing this right?"
"It's not like I can see inside there, either," she reminded him. "Just take your time."
"Carter?" Jack's voice said.
"Colonel!"
"Sa-am!" Daniel complained as she dropped the lock. "Ay."
"Sorry," she apologized.
"Carter," Jack said again, this time in greeting, as he dropped a lunch tray on the table and took a seat. "Daniel. What's up?"
"Sam's teaching me how to pick locks," Daniel explained.
"Why?" he asked.
"It can be a useful skill," Sam said.
"For burglars?" Jack said.
"I've used it a few times in the past," she said. When Jack's eyebrows rose, she added hastily, "On my own house, sir! When I've locked myself out. And locksmiths learn to pick locks for the same reason."
Jack's eyes shifted toward Daniel, who admitted, "I was just bored."
"You're picking locks for fun?" Jack asked.
"Maybe it's a geek thing," she said.
"Geeks," Jack told them.
"Hey," Daniel said indignantly.
Jack raised his eyebrows. "She just called you a geek. And Rothman does it, too."
"It's different, sir," Sam explained patiently. "The connotations are different, geek-to-geek."
Daniel gave up on the lock and started peeling his orange to avoid laughing at Jack's expression. Fruits on Abydos weren't nearly the same as those on Earth, and he'd rarely had access to so many fruits in such abundance without having to dry or preserve them. Sam thought the commissary should stock more, fresher fruits. Daniel thought there were plenty already, but he supposed it was relative.
"Anyway," Sam said, picking up a spoon to start on her cup of Jell-o as she continued telling him about their last mission, "like I was saying, it was a weather controller of some sort. They've already started setting up an off-world research station there to try to figure out how it works."
"What do they call the device?" Daniel asked, ripping through the peel slowly to savor the smell.
Jack caught onto their conversation and said, "The Touching-stone. Or something like that, according to the Madronan interpreter. Because, see"--Jack held out his hand to demonstrate, like he was clutching something in the palm--"it's like a kind of stone. And this guy touches it to make it work."
"I got that," Daniel told him.
"Can you imagine how amazing that kind of technology would be if we could reverse-engineer it?" Sam said. "Coasts would never have to worry about a tsunami again."
"Desert communities would have plentiful rain," Daniel said.
"Ski resorts could always be in season," Jack added.
"It's too bad we don't have a clue how it works," Sam said unhappily. "It looks even more ancient in origin than Goa'uld technology, and we're completely in the dark. In fact, it's like only one person there is able to use it. I'm starting to think it must be something about him--something genetic, maybe, that allows him to use it."
Daniel raised his eyebrows. "He's not human?"
"He is, as far as I can tell," she said. "It's more likely some relatively minor mutation or a rare allele, possibly something that's been lost from their gene pool over time. But they've refused to let us collect biological samples, so we can't even test that."
"You can't bring the Touching-stone back to study?" Daniel asked. "Is it too big or something?"
"I wish we could," she said wistfully, "but it's linked closely to their planet and their weather. They probably wouldn't survive the storm if we took it away from them."
"Sucks," Jack said.
"Yeah," Daniel agreed, then reached for Sam's lock and her picking tools.
"Aht!" Jack snatched them away and pocketed them.
"Jack!"
"Sir," Sam protested, her fingers twitching like she wanted to grab them back. Jack rolled his eyes and gave her the pick and torque wrench, but kept the lock.
"Not at the table, kids," Jack said. "I'll give it back when you're done with your food. And, Carter, tell me you're eating something for lunch besides sweetened cow parts."
Daniel frowned. "She's eating Jell-o, Jack."
"What d'you think that's made of, Daniel?"
He looked at the cube of brightly colored dessert balanced on Sam's spoon. "Really?" he asked her.
"It's not...really..." she said. "Well, it's...collagen. That's a common protein. And Jell-o collagen mostly comes from sources like cow hooves or bones. You find it in all animals. It's not all that different from other bovine food products. It's just hydrolyzed protein, in the form of a gel."
"But...it's blue," he said, bemused.
"That's artificial coloring," she explained.
Jack raised a sage eyebrow. Daniel was glad he'd never particularly liked Jell-o to begin with and finished peeling his orange.
Later, Teal'c joined them with a heavily loaded tray. "Did you know that's from a cow?" Daniel asked him, pointing a wedge of orange at one of the three cups of Jell-o.
"I did not," Teal'c said, and dug happily into his colored cow protein.
XXXXX
22 March 1999; SGC, Earth; 0730 hrs
The shadow looming over Daniel made him freeze where he was crouched.
"Did you lose the key?" Robert asked, blinking down at him.
"Uh," Daniel said, then turned the wrench in the keyhole and pushed the door open. "Yes! I mean, 'no' about the key," he amended, then ducked to avoid being kicked in the head as Robert stepped over him and into the office. "You're early."
"You're hanging around the engineers too much," Robert retorted, then sat down at his desk. "I forgot something here and didn't think of it until I woke up this morning, so, I figured I should come in and...Crap. Where is it? No, not you, Daniel, I'm talking to myself."
Daniel brushed dust from his trouser leg and sat in front of his own desk as he waited for Robert to find whatever he had misplaced this time. When he became bored watching, he pulled out a notepad and a textbook and idly copied Newton's laws into IPA, first in his own accent, and then in Robert's.
He looked up when Robert stalked out irritably, only to return several minutes later, looking much more satisfied and holding a folder in his hand.
"I made a mistake on a translation," Robert explained. "Wanted to fix it before someone else got hands on it. You know, if people had told me in college what I'd be doing for a living..."
"...you would've told them they were crazy," Daniel filled in, because everyone around here said that. He was probably the only person here who had half-expected and half-hoped to be doing something like this all his life. That wasn't actually as impressive as it seemed the first time Jack had pointed it out to him, since some people here had been out of college for longer than his life.
"Did you finish those practice tests this weekend?"
"Yes," he said, and then watched Robert look at the clock, see it was still early, and then take the tests from him and start checking over them. "You know," he said, joking but probing as well to see if he was right, "sometimes I think people are making me take these GED tests to delay my being fully a part of the SGC."
Without raising his head, Robert answered, "Yeah, I think so, too."
Taken aback, and not a little angry, Daniel said, "What--are you serious? After everything that's...?"
"Hey, I didn't say I was one of those people, just that it may have been part of certain people's reasoning. I wouldn't be surprised, is all."
"But--"
"It's for your own sake, Daniel. Keeps you out of danger longer until you're better trained and more experienced. More ready for it. Personally, I just want you to go to college," Robert said.
"What if I don't stay here? To go to college or anything?"
"Then you don't. Whatever. But you can if you want. That's the whole point."
Daniel wanted to say that he wasn't leaving the SGC to get a degree while Skaara and Sha'uri were out there somewhere, and that he had no idea what he would do once they were found, because there would be a home to return to, but there would always be someone else out there, too, and worlds to find and explore, and people to help and who could help them, and the Goa'uld and maybe others to fight. Wasn't that why everyone was here?
Robert looked up. "Look, if you'd been born here, you'd probably be way ahead of everyone and in a few years, you'd be some famous up-and-comer in linguistics, or whatever field you picked."
"This is about the alternate me again, isn't it," Daniel said, barely biting back irritation. "Robert, I wasn't born here, and no matter what, I'm still--"
"This isn't about him, Daniel; it's about your potential. I'm a...an assistant to an assistant to a professor who got this job because the SGC really needed someone and I happened to be there when they went to see my boss. So--"
"You're good at this," Daniel said, frowning. "They wouldn't have recruited you without good reason."
Robert nodded. "Yeah, but I can't teach you everything, even about archaeology, and it's not fair if I pretend I can. And you're already past me in language."
"No, I'm not, not in theoretical linguistics."
"But in practice. How long's it been since you needed my help to decipher a new language, at least one with roots you know?"
Daniel watched him grade for another minute before saying, "But..."
"What?"
"I want to go back to Abydos eventually," Daniel said. "It's still...eventually, I mean, not soon, probably, and I don't know about...long-term anything, but it's still my home. And I'm not an exile there, like Teal'c is from his home; I can go back when the war's over."
"Doesn't mean you can't get a good education first," Robert said easily. "It's a few years, not a lifelong commitment. People go overseas to go to college all the time, and I promise you, the trip through the Stargate is a lot shorter."
"But more expensive, I hear."
"Not when you open the wormhole from Abydos. Just think about it."
They were both silent until Robert finished, when he gathered the papers together and said, "Did you time yourself?"
"Yes," Daniel replied.
"I marked a couple you got wrong." He handed them back, but before letting go, he added, "Look, it's an option. You decide not to, no one's going to make you. Just think about it, okay?"
"Okay," Daniel said, still dubious, but promising to himself that he'd think about it, sometime. "Maybe. Not now, though."
"No, it's too late in the year to even think about applying anywhere," Robert agreed, even though that wasn't why, then shrugged. "Sometime, maybe. Whenever--you've got time. Granted, any recommendation you got would only be able to say that all you've ever done is top secret..."
Daniel grinned. "And it'd be from a former assistant to an assistant to a professor--"
"You should meet him," Robert interrupted.
"Meet whom?"
"My graduate advisor. There's a conference I was going to attend in the fall to catch up on recent research, maybe scope out a couple of people to recruit, you know? It's at the Oriental Institute. Maybe you can come, too. I'll introduce you to Professor Jordan, Steven, Sarah, and whatever other poor schmucks they've found to do grunt work around the lab...what do you think?"
"A conference," Daniel repeated.
Robert nodded. "About Ancient Egypt."
"Completely about...?"
"Yep. Days of it."
"Really?" Daniel asked skeptically. "At every conference I've seen on Earth, most people stop paying attention after a few minutes of talk about Ancient Egypt."
"That's because all you've ever seen on Earth is a military base," Robert said, which was a lie, but essentially true in this context. "Really. We'll go to one of the symposia this year. See what it's like to be in a room full of people who care about Egyptology. Sit in on one of the professor's classes, even, just to see what it's like."
XXXXX
31 March 1999; SGC, Earth; 0630 hrs
"I don't see why I can't just finish it all in one day," Daniel grumbled, drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, because it was early.
"Because it's five tests, and your skinny little butt would start to hurt from sitting there so long," Jack said.
Daniel wanted to retort something, but he couldn't figure out which part was supposed to be the insult, and by the time he had a response, the moment had passed. And it was early, naturu. Sometimes, he liked it better when he was constantly 'gate-lagged, because being fixed on a sleep cycle for several weeks made it harder to break the pattern.
"Someone'll pick you up and drive you back to base when you're done," Jack said. "We might not be back from PJ2-whatever by then, so it might be Rothman if he's free or..."
"It's fine," Daniel assured him, yawning and thinking that he should really remember which of the GED tests he was supposed to take today, because that would probably be a good first step in trying to pass them.
"You ready?"
"I'm ready."
"If it's not one of us picking you up, don't get into the car unless--"
"Jack," Daniel complained. "I know. Go have fun on the planet."
"Good luck," Jack answered, his hands in his pockets and that tiny smile on his lips that meant he might be thinking something sarcastic, or possibly something smug, or maybe just meant 'good luck.' It was about the body language, really, and it was hard to tell with Jack, but these days, Daniel was pretty sure he got it.
From the next chapter: " Medical Considerations"
"Oh, no," Carter said, making an abortive movement to check on the other fallen alien. "I don't even know how to find out what's wrong. Their physiology... For all we know, we could be making them sick. Sir, this could be completely our fault."
Foreign microbes. Fraiser had said something about it after the fiasco with the Touched virus, and now... "You're right. Teal'c, you and I are going back to the Stargate--get a medical team over here. Carter, Rothman...keep...trying to communicate. Ask about the UAV, provide first aid if you can."