Humor, Week 3: Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Insanity (1/2)
Title: Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Insanity
Author: blade_girl
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up through “Travelers”
Prompt: Paperwork and Documentation
Genre: Humor or Team.
Characters: Rodney, Team
Summary: The reason for McKay's disappearance is beyond crazy, but the situation that precipitated it manages to surpass it. Another day, another set of Pegasus absurdities.
Word count: 19,433
Sam Carter stared into the event horizon; that shimmering, placid facade from which often issued the direst threats and the most wondrous of discoveries. Or sometimes, oddly confusing statements. “Say again, Colonel?”
Even over the radio, Sheppard's impatience was clear. “I said, I need a dozen men and another life signs detector.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I've said that,” she muttered quietly, tossing smile at Chuck. He tossed back a slightly scandalized look. Boy, you take over running a flying city in another galaxy and suddenly you're not allowed a sense of humor.
“Before that, Colonel,” Sam clarified. “What did you say about McKay?”
“I said, we've lost him. We can't find McKay!”
Sam shook her head, hoping it would make more sense to her after that. It didn't. You lose a contact lens, you lose a sock in the laundry, you lose your keys. Rodney hadn't exactly been dangling from a key chain, right next to the big brass “#1 Gate Team” ornament, and if he were lost, a dozen people walking a grid with flashlights aimed into the grass was not an effective rescue plan.
“Colonel, you've been gone less than ten minutes! Are you saying that you managed to lose a team member almost as soon as the wormhole closed behind you?”
There was a brief pause during which Sam thought she might have heard Sheppard utter something sotto voce and consonant-heavy. “Yes, we did, and every minute we waste repeating what I already said is a minute we could be looking for him! So if you could send us some help and another life signs detector, we-”
“I'm not... wait. Why do you need another life signs detector?”
Teyla answered this time, quickly, as though anxious to be the first to respond. “The life detector was with Dr. McKay when he disappeared, Colonel.”
“Ah.”
“If we're all clear on the distribution of equipment now,” interjected Sheppard's voice, “I'd like you to send Lorne's team and some-”
“Colonel Sheppard,” she interrupted, beginning to lose patience herself, “I'm not sending another man until I have a clearer picture of exactly what happened to the one we're missing.”
There was an explosive sigh from the other end; Sam had a vivid mental image of Sheppard biting the mike off his radio earpiece, spitting it onto the ground, and severing the gate connection. He'd never actually been insubordinate to her since she'd assumed command of Atlantis, but she now sensed the side of him that had littered Sheppard's Air Force career with official reprimands and, more discreetly, more than one CO's medically compelled mental health leave.
She made a decision. “You and your remaining team members come on back, Colonel. I'll post a small team of Marines at the gate to watch for Dr. McKay.”
* * * * * *
The briefing lacked that feeling of casual laziness Sheppard usually tended to project.
“We were exploring the area.” The colonel recounted the events with the haste of a boy explaining to his parents the plot of a movie while his friends wait at the door to the theater where the sequel is seconds from starting. “Rodney noticed some energy readings that didn't seem to fit, so we'd spread out a little. Something tripped me up and I hit the ground. When we got back up, Rodney wasn't there.”
Sam frowned. “You tripped, and everyone fell?” Sheppard's team was legendary for their bond, but this seemed extreme.
Teyla leaped in before Sheppard's open mouth could spew something that would only complicate this meeting. “Whatever tripped Colonel Sheppard apparently tripped me, as well. One moment I was walking forward, the next I was face down in the grass.”
Sam nodded and looked to Ronon, reclining dangerously in the office chair for which he looked so ill-suited. For a few seconds he simply returned her stare, until he realized she was seeking his confirmation of the experience. He didn't quite roll his eyes. “We all fell.”
“When we got up,” Teyla continued, “Rodney's P-90 and sidearm were on the ground, but there was no sign of him.”
“Did any of you notice - when you all hit the ground, did he fall, too?”
“When we find him, we'll be sure to ask.” Sheppard leaned forward, glaring. “Speaking of which, can we get started searching for him soon? We're losing daylight.”
Blinking, Sam asked, “You know M48J19's rotational schedule?”
“Do we have reason to believe the planet doesn't have night? No? Then it's safe to assume we're losing daylight!”
Sam took a deep, measured breath. All three of them were watching her with urgent intensity; uncomfortably, she thought of happy domestic dogs who'd escaped from their respective backyards and begun to rediscover their feral roots. “Okay, take Lorne's team and some more Marines. Establish a perimeter and organize a search of the area. Everyone stays in pairs and keeps in radio contact with the rest of the group. You'll report back here by radio every thirty minutes.”
Sheppard was on his feet and out the door before she'd finished issuing her instructions. Ronon smirked slightly as he uncoiled himself and followed. Watching their retreating backs with apparent discomfort, Teyla hovered briefly. “John believes that he missed something on that planet, Colonel. He feels responsible for Rodney's disappearance.”
“I know. I'd feel the same in his position.”
“I'm sure he doesn't mean to be insubordinate.”
Sam quirked her mouth. “You're sure?”
With a carefully neutral expression, Teyla insisted, “It is entirely possible.”
Sam nodded and waved her away. “Good luck. Hope you have a successful trip.” At Teyla's raised eyebrow over the word “trip,” Sam winced. “Sorry.”
* * * * * *
Spinning. Everything was spinning around him. Or maybe Rodney was spinning. Or maybe he was spinning within an environment that was also spinning. Oh, please, did it really matter which one it was? Did it? No! No, it didn't.
All that did matter was that a) he was hating it, and b) he needed it to stop. He couldn't function in such a state, and whomever had captured him would probably want him functional. He knew that he'd been captured because he occasionally heard voices and had felt hands on his arm, shoulder, or back, guiding him as they caused him to float through the air. (Floating! Him! He was floating! Obviously his captors had access to technology that could, in the right hands - ie., his - do a great deal of good.) He hadn't been harmed, so he was clearly considered to be of some value, and as such, he intended to let the relevant parties know how he felt about all this floating and spinning. The human nervous system just wasn't made for this kind of thing.
He was unable to focus his eyes, so he didn't know where to direct a piercing glare. He would have to let his voice carry the weight of authority by itself.
“I don't know who you are or what you've done to me, but I need this to stop,” he intoned forcefully.
That it actually came out as, “I... I don't... wh-who... n-need... ssstahhhhhp...” was almost certainly a trick of this bizarre environment. Who knew what the acoustic effects were of a constantly spinning room/ship/planet/universe?
“What? What are you trying to say?”
The voice was impatient and sounded irritated. Indignantly, Rodney thrust his shoulders back and folded his arms.
“Oh, stop flailing. You look ridiculous,” commanded the voice. Huh. He'd really thought he'd been crossing his arms. He tried again. “I said, stop fl... oh.”
With the suddenness of air rushing in to fill a vacuum, a room - a perfectly stationary one - materialized around Rodney, who was also perfectly stationary. His feet were planted firmly on a hard floor made of rough-hewn, uneven boards under his upright form. Okay, that was an embellishment; he was actually bent at the waist and hunched like a patient with advanced osteoporosis, and his arms were extended from his body and flailing. The familiarity of this posture puzzled him until the memory popped into his head of that awful afternoon when Sheppard had taken the team out for a surfing lesson.
“Better now?” The voice was coming from behind him and to his right, and he craned his neck awkwardly to look at the woman in the room with him. “Sorry about that; I forgot I still had the... Okay, could you drop that pose? You look silly. It's very distracting.”
Rodney, exhaling in rapid bursts as he tried to process what had just happened, straightened himself, turned around carefully, and tried to look suitably unimpressed, unintimidated, and force-to-be-reckoned-with-ish. He folded his arms, pretended they weren't shaking, and raised his chin defiantly. “All right, who are you?”
The young woman before him apparently hailed from Planet Biker Chick, or at least, that's what her appearance suggested to him. Her hair was shaved on the back and sides, with a dark brown ponytail gushing from the crown. The hair surrounding the ponytail on the top of her head was cut very short, about a quarter-inch in length, and was arranged in a series of small spikes reminiscent of the silver studs one might expect to find on a black leather bracelet, gauntlet, or - more terrifyingly - collar. On top of all of this, the spiked portion of her hair had been somehow colored to appear silver. Not gray or white, mind you, but literally metallic silver.
She was fiddling with a hand-held gray box, crudely constructed to the eyes of a man who'd been working with the godlike technology of Atlantis for over four years. The woman seemed almost to have forgotten him as she frowned at the device, turning dials with great concentration.
He was about to repeat his demand for identification when he was overcome by a wave of nausea. He flopped forward into hurling position, but the sensation was gone as suddenly as it had come. Straightening again, he shouted, “Hey!” rather weakly.
The woman looked up, frowned at him as though he were not reacting as planned, and fiddled with the dial some more. “Huh. I thought that would turn it off...”
The floor tilted abruptly and Rodney found himself staggering.
“Oops,” the woman said, and suddenly the floor was still and level again. Well, it was still; whoever had constructed this place had done so without the aid of a level.
“All right, just what the-” But a powerful tickling sensation in his nose provoked a round of intense serial sneezing, rendering further speech impossible.
“Wow, that's new,” commented the woman.
The sneezing ceased, leaving Rodney breathless and desperate for a Puff's tissue, though not the kind with lotion, because that always made him break out. (Why couldn't whoever filled the supply orders at the SGC understand that?) He gazed at his tormentor with dread, wondering how she would abuse him next.
She looked at him appraisingly, still holding the device. “Okay, I think I got it. You feel okay now? Normal?”
He did, in fact, and was therefore inclined to be irate. “What the hell did you do to me? What is that thing? And, and... and who the hell are you?”
She bristled, amazingly enough, in righteous defensiveness. “Hey, sorry, okay? I didn't mean to do all that stuff. It's not like this thing came with detailed instructions!”
He really didn't know where to start with reacting to that, so he focused on the device still in her hands. “You used that on me without understanding what it does? Boy, were you born too late. You could've been Mengele's lab assistant. Now, what is that thing?”
“It... doesn't have a name. Yet.”
“Well, where did you get it?”
The woman grinned. “I made it.”
Rodney's outrage had merely been budding before. Now he felt it blossom like a rose opening up in time-lapse footage.
“And you need instructions for it? What, did you assemble it blindfolded? Do you have problems with short-term memory? Are you -”
“I said I made it, not that I invented all the technology. I knew roughly what it would do, just not all the specifics. I thought it would only affect balance, but your sneezing suggests that it also-”
Contorting his face in horror, Rodney yelped, “You used me as a guinea pig? It... could have done anything! It, it might've... My head could've exploded!”
“Oh, relax. I tried it out on some other people first.”
Rodney's mouth worked silently a little before producing more words. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” The fact that it actually did make him feel better probably said something about him as a person, but this was no time for soul-searching.
The mention of other people made him think of his team, and a cold knot formed in his stomach. “I was with three other people. Where are they?”
Shrugging casually, she answered, “I dunno.”
“What?”
She looked confused. “How should I know where they are?”
Rodney took a step toward her but stopped when she raised the device threateningly. “What did you do to my team?” he demanded. He sounded rather dangerous; it made him wish Sheppard could hear him right now. Ronon too, for that matter.
Sudden understanding flooded her face, and she actually laughed. “Oh! Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing worse than I did to you. They're fine, wherever they are. I assume they went back to wherever you came from once the effects wore off.”
At his look of confusion, she waved a hand and smiled as though they were meeting under pleasant circumstances. “Look, why don't we sit down and I'll explain everything.”
He followed her gesture and noticed a small, simple wooden table and three chairs a few feet away. For the first time, he took a look around; they seemed to be in a one-room cabin, one not terribly well-built. A cool breeze sneaked in through a crack in one wall, and he stumbled slightly on an uneven floorboard as he moved to take a seat across from this puzzling woman.
She had the device on the table and was eager to explain how it worked. “It seems to have a variety of effects on the subject, allowing me to cause vertigo, induce nausea, mess with their spatial orientation. Until just now, I thought it just affected the inner ear, but since I managed to create an urge to sneeze, I'm wondering if it also has the ability to screw with the sinus cavity and nasal passages, or oh! Maybe it works directly on the brain. It's so hard to tell, because-”
“Oh god...”
“Oh, stop it! I told you no one else I tested it on suffered any permanent effects.”
He stared at her. “No, you didn't tell me that!”
“Well, I implied it. It's how I rendered you and your friends helpless. I made you all fall down, then I grabbed you while you were all disoriented and hustled you back through the gate.” Seeing his face at the mention of his team, she tapped his hand in a brusque gesture of comfort. “But you really don't need to worry about them, okay, because I released them from the effect just before we went through the Ancestral ring.”
“Fine,” he said, no longer concerned about Sheppard and the others and not really too worried about his own safety anymore, but pretty damned pissed off by the whole situation. “Just who the hell are you, and what do you want?”
“I told you already.”
“No! No, you haven't!”
“Well, I would have, if you hadn't kept interrupting.”
All set to bark a harsh response, Rodney found he was, amazingly, too angry to properly articulate his feelings, so he sat back in the chair and rubbed his forehead instead. “Just tell me. Why. You brought me. Here.”
“Oh, that.” She rifled through a leather pouch. “I was answering your request.”
He sighed. He was actually losing the ability to feel surprise. Something to do with being in shock, perhaps. “What request?”
She stopped rummaging long enough to flash a look his way, the kind of look that teenagers have been giving parents for decades - the “I guess senility is setting in” look.
A spark of indignation was generated, but all he could manage was, “Sorry, I just don't remember asking you for anything, which is probably because until today, I didn't know you existed.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know you weren't asking me specifically. I'm talking about this.” She slapped a piece of paper - 8 1/2” by 11” - onto the tabletop and looked at him questioningly. “This was open to anyone, right?”
Staring at the paper, upon which was printed a picture of Rodney and some text, Rodney felt his anger shift and sort of crystallize. “Oh. My. God.” He turned his face toward the ceiling, which he noticed would be leaking if it were raining right now, and bellowed, “Sheppard! You ass!”
Huh. Guess he wasn't too angry to articulate it.
* * * * * *
John stood in the doorway of Carter's office. “You wanted to see me?” He figured if he stayed in the doorway, he could subtly communicate his need to be elsewhere, looking for and following up on leads to McKay's whereabouts.
She glanced up briefly. “Sit down, Colonel.”
Damn. Subtle was never gonna be his forte.
Once he was seated, Carter set a piece of paper on the desktop and pushed it toward him. “Can you explain this to me?”
A minor “oh, shit” reaction occurred in the pit of his stomach, but years of practice allowed John to divert it long before it reached his face. “Depends. I don't know too much about paper, but I hear they start with wood pulp and-”
“Are you responsible for this, Colonel?”
“No,” he said decisively, “no, I am not.” After a beat, he added, “Well, not really.” Another beat. “It depends on what you mean by 'responsible'...”
She surprised him by slapping the desktop in a rare physical display of annoyance. “Are you the one who wrote this ad? That's what I mean by 'responsible!'”
“No! I mean, I wrote something that this was based on, yes, but it's been sorta... refined... since then.”
“Refined by whom?”
“I'm really not sure who all had a hand in it.” As Carter looked to be nearing the slapping point again, he raised a hand and quickly said, “Seriously, I don't know exactly who made this. Let me tell you what I do know.”
It had all started soon after John's initial run-in with Larrin. Rodney had complained about the fact that he never got taken prisoner by hot female aliens, and in response, John had written a mock-personal ad:
“Single supergenius seeks hot alien babe to kidnap him for nefarious purposes. Interests include astrophysics, engineering, blue Jello, whales, video games, and losing at chess. Respondents should be brilliant, beautiful, and have a thick skin. Interested parties may reply with best attempt at abduction.”
John had emailed it to Rodney the following day, whose reply was along the lines of, “Oh, haha. One time you checkmated me, when my concentration was off. You are so on for a rematch, if you dare.”
Carter was staring him down. “And?”
“And... we played another game a few days later.” He smiled at the memory. “I beat him again. Boy, was he pissed.”
“I'm talking about the ad! What happened to it after that?”
John shrugged. “I'm not sure. Someone must have seen the email on Rodney's screen or hacked into one of our accounts or something.” At her look of shock, he just said, “It's the lack of an internet - I think they miss the challenge. Anyway, the next time I saw something like it, it was totally rewritten and had a picture of Rodney bawling out Miko. You know, with his mouth open a mile wide and his hands in the air and that wild look in his eyes.”
Rodney had nailed him just as John was leaving his quarters, shoving the printout in his face. “You! This is your doing!”
Taking a step back, John had irritably yanked the paper from Rodney's hand and smirked, “Nice pic. It really captures your essence, I think.”
“This is outrageous! It's one thing to have some harmless email fun between friends, Colonel, but when I walk into my lab and find copies of this little gem taped to the walls, I have to draw the-”
“Wait a sec, just calm the hell down. I didn't have anything to do with this version.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
John sighed impatiently and read through the text of the ad. “Do you honestly think I would have used the word 'vainglorious?'”
Frowning, Rodney yanked the paper back and re-read. “Hmm. It's spelled correctly, too. You're right, you had nothing to do with this.”
“Which was kinda unfair,” John told Carter now, “because I did win the school spelling bee in sixth grade.”
“Colonel Sheppard,” she said, and John figured it wasn't good that she was using both title and name, “can you tell me how copies of this ad managed to find themselves off-world?”
“No. First I knew of it was when a marine reported seeing it on a couple different planets. Lorne and I never managed to root out who started posting them during missions, but we made sure everyone understood that regardless who was responsible for it, nobody on a gate team would be receiving shipments from the Daedalus until every damn copy of that ad had been retrieved. Took a few days, but we managed to get 'em all.”
Carter thought about that for a moment, her eyes eventually widening. “Wait a minute. When was this? Was this the reason for that flurry of 'round-the-clock gate missions a few months ago?”
“Um...”
“The ones you told me were search parties looking for Dr. Parrish?”
John shifted into a defensive posture. “Okay, yeah, but it wasn't really a lie. Lorne instructed Parrish to go off-world and... hide.” At her blank look, he sheepishly added, “You know, to make the search parties... not be a lie.”
“And this seemed like a better course than just telling me the truth?”
“Well, you hadn't been here very long. We didn't want you to think we were a bunch of wackos.”
Carter held up her hands, palms up. “What could possibly make me think that?”
Clearing his throat, John moved on. “So anyway, that's the story behind the personal ad. I'm sorry it happened, and looking back, we maybe coulda handled the whole thing better, but right now, shouldn't we be concentrating on finding out what happened to McKay?”
“I think this-” Carter tapped the ad with an index finger “- offers a pretty good clue to what happened to him.”
“What? How? I told you, I threatened those teams with their supply runs. Lorne personally supervised the operation. We got every copy of that ad back within a few days of it being leaked.”
“Colonel.” She picked up the paper and jiggled it, causing it to rustle. “One of the teams searching for McKay just brought this back from off-world.”
John's face betrayed his shock as he slumped in his chair. “Oh.” He ran a hand over his face, then smirked wanly. “Gotta give props to viral marketing, huh?”
* * * * * *
“No, no, no!” Rodney yelled. It was just his luck to be kidnapped by the least desirable personal ad respondent in the known universe.
“Stop yelling!” the biker chick yelled back. “My hearing is perfect - or it was until you came along!”
“Came along? Came alo- I didn't just stroll into your life, remember? You kidnapped me! You were lying in wait! I was just minding my own business, doing my job, when you swept in out of nowhere and took me against my will!”
“But you asked for it!”
“Hello, logical impossibility! If I wanted to be taken against my will, it wouldn't be 'against my will,' now would it?”
She frowned and even sort of pouted, rendering her unexpectedly cute, even if she was still a loony with a dangerous brain-twisting device and a hairstyle that looked like something you'd use to clean mud from your shoe treads. “Then why did you publish this request? I've seen it on at least three different worlds.”
“That's what I've been trying to tell you! I didn't publish this ad. I didn't even write it! It was never anything but a joke - a stupid, juvenile, planned-with-the-brainpower-of-lobotomized-monkeys kind of joke.”
She stared at him, looked at the ad, then back at him again. “But... how can it be a joke? It's not even funny.”
“Bingo!” cried Rodney, pounding the table with his fist. “At last, something we agree on.”
Groaning, the woman fell forward dramatically, burying her face against her arms on the table. Rodney blinked and startled a little as the ponytail whipped forward and lightly stung his hand. The back of her head was covered with brown stubble; it had apparently been some time since it was shaved. It looked sort of velvety and he had a powerful urge to touch it and find out if it really felt that soft.
Luckily, this particular trip to Crazytown was postponed when she abruptly raised herself to a sitting position and briskly announced, “Well, it doesn't matter. We can still do it.”
Blushing slightly with the knowledge of how close he'd come to feeling up her scalp, Rodney was flummoxed. “We can? We can what? What can we still do?”
“The kidnapping. I admit, I preferred it when I thought it was a mutual thing, but I see no reason why it still can't work out.”
Rodney, of course, could see any number of reasons why it wouldn't work out, but articulating them was a problem when he was dealing with someone who wasn't accepting outside input.
“After all,” she continued, stuffing the ad back into her pouch, “you'll still be very useful to me, because it's not like my needs disappeared when I found out this was all just a joke, right? And since I really did handle it like a real kidnapping, I have the means-” she tapped the device- “to compel your cooperation, which I now realize won't be given willingly. So it all works out all right, if not exactly the way I had planned.”
She'd shouldered the pouch and stood as she finished this little speech, aiming the device at Rodney. “So, now that we finally have reached an understanding, I will ask you to come with me and not give me any trouble, or else I'll have to, you know.” She mimed turning one of the dials and then swayed side-to-side, rolling her eyes and waving her free hand.
Feeling cheated wasn't something Rodney tended to respond to well. He remained seated and fixed her with an obstinate glare. “Wait a minute. What understanding did we reach, exactly? You found out your assumption was mistaken, and I found out you're a... Wait, I didn't find out anything about you!”
“Why would you need to know anything about me?”
“Why did you answer this ad?”
“Because I-” She caught herself and glared. “It doesn't matter. I'm the one with weapon. I'm in charge here.”
“Oh, I'm not so sure about that,” Rodney gloated, leaning forward in his seat. “I mean, yes, you have the portable Vertigo Maker, but you barely understand how to use it. And whatever you want me for, by your own admission, requires my cooperation. Now, I hate being dizzy as much as the next guy, but as instruments of coercion go, the Stumble-a-tron there leaves something to be desired.”
“Oh, really?”
She twisted a dial viciously. Rodney cringed and braced himself.
Nothing happened.
Straightening, he smiled triumphantly and folded his arms. His captor's eyes widened as they looked to the device. She slapped it a couple of times, prompting him to snort, “Problem?”
She was clearly panicked and distracted. If he was ever gonna pull of any of that action-hero stuff Sheppard and Ronon seemed able to do in their sleep, now was the time... when he was up against an inept kidnapper he outweighed substantially whose attention was on something else.
He lunged forward, intending to cross the tabletop and snatch the device from her hands. However, the instant he began to move, he was overcome by nausea. His forward motion was diluted as his legs wobbled underneath him, and instead of crossing the table, his ribs crashed into the side of it, sending it toward his charming hostess. Holding his ribs, he hit the un-level floor on his knees as the table collided with the kidnapper.
Crouching beside the table, he saw her legs scrambling to keep her body balanced and upright. Glancing upward just as she lost that battle and fell onto the table, he took advantage of no longer feeling sick and arose, grabbing for the device. The upward movement renewed the nausea and a voice in his head said, Motion sickness! That's what this setting does!
He planted his feet and tried to keep his head and torso as still as possible while wresting the device from her grip. She'd recovered enough to realize what he was after and had managed to retain her grasp even though she was now on her back on the tabletop. Rodney groaned, understanding that it was going to be necessary to move in order to take full possession of the instrument. He tightened his fingers around the metal box and yanked as hard as he could, stepping backward as he did so.
His stomach set sail on stormy seas as he pulled the device off the table. Unfortunately, the kidnapper still had a hold on it and as her body left the table, gravity cried, “Mine!” and pulled her to the floor. Rodney was obliged to follow or surrender the box.
“Ow! My back!” he barked, now too angry to allow the nausea to get in his way. He rolled onto his stomach and tugged harder on the device. Their faces were inches apart, and when she realized her grip was giving out, she shocked the hell out of him with a head-butt. Rodney cried out - god, that had hurt! - but he wouldn't release the box. Inspired by her primitive attack, he pushed the metal box sharply upward, striking her in the chin. Presto! The device was free.
Who said violence never solved anything?
She was apparently stunned, which gave him a small window of opportunity. From a pocket of his tac vest, Rodney drew a small precision screwdriver and scratched a short line into the base of the box directly over the top of each dial. Then he scratched corresponding lines on the dials themselves to meet the ones on the box. Beneath those, he scrawled “MS” for “motion sickness.”
He was absorbed in this work and forgot he was supposed to be watching for signs of reanimation in his opponent (really, guarding prisoners was so not his thing); it was just his good luck that she issued a cry of rage as she lunged toward him. More proof of her stupidity; stealth was clearly indicated in a situation like this.
Not being stupid, he responded quickly, aiming the device at her. The reaction was immediate: she sank to her knees. “Blood of a wraith!” she gasped. “What are you doing to me?”
“According to you, 'nothing,'” Rodney said smugly. “Although where I come from, it's generally known as 'payback.'”
Curious about the purpose of the second dial, he gave it a clockwise twist as well. It didn't seem to have any effect on the kidnapper, but when he turned his head, it swam enough to suggest that the dial controlled the range of whatever field it generated. He hastily dialed it back to the previous position. The last thing he needed was to make himself sick.
He'd expected her to succumb, at least long enough for him to start figuring out his next move toward getting the hell back to Atlantis, but her will was strong. Fighting through the motion sickness, she started toward him on her hands and knees. Frowning, he twisted the top dial a quarter turn clockwise.
Immediately she stopped moving, blinked frantically as she stared without focus, and waved one hand in front of her face. “Blind!” she screamed. Rodney actually heard the window behind him rattle with the sound. “You beast! You've made me blind!” She collapsed to the floor in despair, churning out hysterical sobs.
Part of him received this news with a certain satisfaction, but her distress was so intense that it unnerved him. Nothing the device had done to him had been quite as disturbing as blindness. Not wishing to be cruel, he decided to change the setting. He marked the dial first; it would be handy to know how to avoid (or repeat) that affliction.
She was so consumed with grief over her lost sight that she didn't seem to notice it had returned. Shouting over her wails, Rodney snapped his fingers impatiently. “Hey! Hey, Metallica - open your eyes!”
Gulping and gasping as she realized her sight had been restored, she slowly sat up. With both hands, she wiped copious tears from her cheeks and eyes, sniffling and huffing shuddery little sighs as she gradually calmed down. She looked up at him with doubt and fear in her eyes, which made him unexpectedly uncomfortable.
Offering a smile meant to convey good will, Rodney said, “See? All better. Sorry about the blindness; I didn't know that would happen, obviously. But now, maybe we can talk a little, okay? I'm more than willing to hear all about why you needed me enough to resort to kidnapping, and maybe I'll even be able to help you out, as long as you tell me certain things, such as what planet we're on right now. Okay? Now, let's start with your name.”
She stared at him in silence long enough for him to wonder if he'd now made her deaf. “It's Tarru,” she said finally.
“Tarru. Um, great, good. Lovely name. Mine's Rodney - Doctor Rodney McKay. See how well we get along when we agree to be civil?”
Sniffing again, Tarru merely nodded, smiling shyly. He returned the smile until he saw her gaze move to the window behind him and her expression turn to horror. He spun around to see what new threat had arrived to make this experience just that much suckier, only to feel Tarru's body slam into his legs in a tackle that would probably have made any football coach in North America proud.
* * * * * *
“All we wanna know,” Sheppard was saying, “is whether anyone showed any special interest in that paper while it was hanging on your wall.” He gave a smile that he probably thought looked non-threatening, even friendly.
Teyla rolled her eyes. Why could he never learn that no one believed his smiling face while his arms cradled a huge weapon against his chest?
Barn, proprietor of the local gathering place, licked his lips as his eyes obsessively darted between their copy of Rodney's personal ad and Sheppard's P-90. There would be no useful information from him as long as he felt so threatened.
“Perhaps you and Ronon,” she said with a smile, “could go and question some of the people of this village.” She gave a meaningful glance at the door. John looked puzzled, turned to glance at the door, and then frowned back at her. Suppressing a sigh, Teyla smiled with the warmth of a bonfire. “I will stay and talk some more with Barn.”
Judging from the way he beamed, Barn found this suggestion more than a little appealing. Teyla wondered which component was more attractive: her company or the absence of John and his gun.
Finally getting the message, John looked a little hurt, as though she'd told him he should leave because his hair was frightening the children. Ronon shot her a knowing smirk and told John, “Saw some villagers on the way here. Some of 'em looked kinda suspicious.”
Not fooled, John nevertheless turned to go. “We'll be outside,” he let her know, as though Barn might attack her with his stained apron or ale-soaked washcloth.
Barn's relief and residual nervousness were so palpable that she felt obliged to reassure him, “Colonel Sheppard is a good man. We are simply worried about our friend.”
She touched the paper, her fingers brushing a photograph printed there, and lured Barn's mind back to the topic. “We believe that someone acted upon this joking request for an abduction. So far, we have had no success in finding this person. We're asking people in all the places we know this paper was present if they recall anyone who took more than a casual interest in it.”
Barn glanced at the paper again and shrugged, looking truly apologetic. “I'm sorry. This was hanging by the skelts board for weeks. There were always people gathered over there, adding up the scores and taking down the skelts for the next round.”
Hiding her frustration behind another smile, Teyla answered, “I understand. But perhaps you saw someone looking at the paper who was not playing skelts?”
Barn began wiping a nearby table. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.
“Or someone who kept returning to look at the paper again and again?”
The table now clean, Barn moved back behind the counter, again shaking his head. “I don't recall anything like that.” Seeing her obvious disappointment, he put a hand on her arm. “I wish I could help you.” His eyes traveled back to the paper in her hand. “Your friend looks...” He seemed at a loss. “He... must have some special qualities.”
Teyla looked at the paper. Numerous versions of the personal ad had been distributed. Some had the picture of McKay shouting at Miko. Others sported one taken immediately after someone told him the meal he'd just eaten contained citrus. (It hadn't.)
This version used a collage of these and other photos, the centerpiece being one of Rodney sound asleep at his laptop, the side of his face smashed against the keyboard. His mouth was open.
“He is a very special man,” she insisted, feeling, to her shame, a little embarrassed. “These pictures do not accurately convey his value.”
“I expect not,” Barn said, leaning against the counter and laughing. “From those images, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to kidnap such a person in the first place, much less going to great lengths to rescue him.”
“Dr. McKay is a talented scientist,” Teyla said defensively. “Many have employed dishonorable means to acquire him for his knowledge and expertise.”
Laughing again, Barn shook his head and reached under the counter to retrieve a large jug. “If you say so.” Pouring a beverage into an earthenware cup, he held up a second with a questioning look, which she answered with a shake of her head. “Never know he's anything but a buffoon from those pictures,” he proclaimed, taking a sizable drink.
Teyla pushed her shoulders back to convey her disapproval of his attitude. “A clownish appearance does not always indicate one is a fool.” Playing back the words in her mind, she wasn't certain this was an effective defense of her teammate.
Swallowing, Barn started to laugh again. “You sound like that girl last moon. She...” He frowned suddenly, pursing his lips in thought. “You know, she seemed awfully interested in that poster, now that I think of it.”
Suddenly alert, Teyla pressed. “Who was she? Do you know where she is?”
He shook his head. “Haven't seen her since last moon. She was from some other world, here to trade. I only remember her because she annoyed some of the skelts players, standing in the way of the board to look at the paper. They insulted her hairstyle, trying to get her to leave, and she told them that to us, she might look silly, but where she came from, she was a traditional beauty.”
“Please,” Teyla said urgently, “tell me more about this girl.”
* * * * * * *
Teyla was in such a hurry for them to get to the gate that she was running. It made no difference to Ronon - as Rodney often said, running was his “thing” - but it was entertaining to watch Sheppard trying to get his questions answered while juggling his P-90, keeping an eye out for any potential threats, and trying to keep up with the two of them.
Sometimes Ronon felt sorry for John. Usually he just felt amused.
“So you're saying that guy...” John said breathlessly, “that guy Borne...”
“Barn,” Teyla corrected him, not breaking stride.
“Yeah, him. He told you who kidnapped Rodney.”
“No. He told me about a woman who showed great interest in the ad.”
“Oh.” John waited a few steps before continuing; Ronon could hear him breathing harder. “So this woman - what's her name?”
“He did not know.”
For a short time, there was only the sound of their combined footfalls.
“So, we don't know her name, and we don't know if she took Rodney.”
“That is true,” Teyla answered. Ronon admired her running form and noted with satisfaction that her voice did not sound winded.
John, however, was certainly huffing. “Wait. Why are we-”
“She showed a pronounced interest in Rodney's ad,” Teyla interrupted, anticipating his questions. “On no other world we've investigated have we found such a lead. It is very likely she played some role in Rodney's disappearance.”
“'Kay,” John said. Ronon grinned at the way his footfalls were getting noisier as his fatigue and frustration mounted. “But... we don't have a name. How are we-”
“Barn described the woman to me. She wears her hair in very unusual manner. I recognized the style.”
More time passed without words. From the sound of his breathing, Sheppard might not be able to do much more than gasp.
“You... You're telling me... you know... this woman?”
“I do not think so. I simply recognized the hairstyle Barn described. It is the traditional hairstyle of a people known as the Surrosans.”
Ronon's interest was suddenly kindled. “What'd this hairstyle look like?”
“Barn said she wore it shaved on the back and sides, quite long at the crown, with short silvery spikes on the very top of the head.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ronon hadn't planned to say more, but Sheppard said, “Why'd ya ask?.... Thinking of... changing your look?”
“Just curious. Used to know the Surrosans.”
Wrong thing to say. Teyla slowed slightly and turned to face him, still running. “You have been to Surrosa?”
“Yeah. Few years before I met you guys.”
Delighted, Teyla smiled brightly. “They are a fascinating people. Very interested in the sciences, engineering, architecture. They were building a grand observatory the last time I was there.”
Ronon grunted.
“They must have finished it by now. Did you see it when you visited their world?”
“I didn't stay long.”
Turning around to face forward again, Teyla said, “I had feared they were culled. It has been a long time since my people have heard from them.”
“They keep to themselves these days,” Ronon said. A few strides passed, moments filled with the sounds of Sheppard's lungs. “He was sure about the hair? Barn?”
“Very sure. Why? Do you know of another people who wear their hair that way?”
“No. But last time I saw a Surrosan, they weren't wearin' their hair like that anymore.”
“Well,” Sheppard gasped, “y'know how it is... times change... fashions... come 'n go...”
“I am surprised,” Teyla said, sounding troubled. “They seemed so committed to their traditions.”
“Things change,” Ronon said.
They were nearing the gate. Sheppard slowed as they approached the DHD, resting his hands on his knees. “Teyla, do you know the-”
“I remember the gate address,” she told him, already beginning to dial.
John began to cough. Ronon slapped him on the back. It wasn't helpful, just fun.
The wormhole engaged. This would probably be interesting.
* * * * * *
“If you could take all of the stargates in this galaxy...” Rodney said.
“I would melt them all down,” Tarru interrupted, “to ensure that I would never actually meet you.”
“... and you straightened them out so they were lines instead of circles...”
“That would work, too. No chance of traveling through a ring that's not a ring anymore, is there?”
“... and then you lined them up end to end and measured the quite considerable distance...”
“Distance! I never fully appreciated the concept until now.”
“... you would still fall breathtakingly short of comprehending the truly staggering depth of my loathing for you.”
“Yeah? Ditto.”
“Oh please, don't strain yourself searching for just the right comeback,” Rodney panted. “Okay, stop. We're stopping here to rest a while.”
“Anything that means we can stop touching each other,” she snarled, “is something I'll happily applaud.”
She pushed off, letting go of his waist as he gratefully removed his arm from around her shoulders, and each of them dropped to the ground.
Rodney put a hand to the small of his back and grimaced. “I'll be lucky to avoid disc surgery after this little escapade. How much further is this place?”
“We're close. We'll travel faster, though, if we do it in silence.”
“Why? Are there patrols to avoid? Guards?”
“No,” she spat. “It's the sound of your voice. It fills me with rage and I waste a lot of energy trying not to act on violent impulses.”
Rodney waved a hand airily. “Please! I could write a book on living with controlled rage, and you'd only be a small section in one chapter. And may I remind you that this entire situation? Is your own fault!”
“I didn't intend for you to break the machine!”
“Me! I'm not the one who tackled the person holding the damn thing!”
“Well, how did I know you'd be clumsy enough to land on it and snap the dials off? Do you have any idea how hard I worked to put that thing together?”
Rodney held up the battered device with a look of incredulous contempt. “This piece of crap? I did better work when I was in preschool. And I told you before, it's more than just the dials being snapped off. I could easily fix that. It's the fact that this flimsy casing collapsed enough to crush the bargain-basement components inside. Whoever taught you engineering should be shot.”
She glared at him before turning her back on him completely. He wondered if insulting someone's teacher was some sort of unthinkable faux pas on this planet. At least she was giving him some space in which to think in blessed silence.
They'd been lucky, really. The broken device might have left them both blind or deathly motion-sick. Instead, the impact had apparently selected a setting that affected their equilibrium - when Rodney tried to walk, he found himself bearing to the right to such an extent that he could only walk in circles. Fortunately, Tarru was afflicted with the mirror image of this, bearing to the left. If they stood side-by-side and held on to each other, they could manage to walk a more or less straight path.
He cleared his throat. She didn't turn around. “We should...” He gestured even though she wasn't looking. “We should probably get moving again.”
Without a word, she stood. She didn't look at him as his arm encircled her shoulders and hers threaded around his waist again. She raised a hand to point out their direction, and the pair resumed their odd sack-race gait.
Normally, Rodney was a great fan of other people shutting up. However, it would seem he had managed to hurt Tarru rather deeply, and while he still thought she was stupid and incompetent on multiple levels - not to mention a common criminal - he wasn't above feeling a little guilty. The silence grew heavier with each awkward step, until he started searching for ways to break the ice.
“So, this place we're going to. It's some kind of lab?”
She still didn't look at him. “It's my lab.”
“Ah.” Visions of a spare bedroom strewn with Legos, a Lite-Brite and an beginner's electronics set from Radio Shack flashed in his mind. “You have the equipment to repair this thing, then?”
“Yes. I think so.”
He tried not to ask, he really really tried. “Okay, sorry, but... Is there anyone else there? Scientists or technicians or a mechanic or-”
She stopped moving so suddenly he nearly fell. “There's no one else, okay? It's just me. It's just me!”
Suddenly, Tarru was sobbing brokenheartedly. Far more disturbingly, her face was buried against his chest and her arms locked around him.
The horrors just kept piling up today.
“Um...” Shit, wasn't it bad enough that he was cooperating with his kidnapper? Was he seriously expected to console her, too? Rolling his eyes, he patted her shoulder matter-of-factly. “It's okay. There, there. Get it all out. That's right.”
He glanced at his watch and sighed as surreptitiously as possible. “Um... okay, look, maybe you should just tell me about it, huh? Then you'll feel a lot better and I'll... know what the hell is going on, hopefully.”
Sniffling, she pulled away and wiped her face with her hands. “Fine. Here's the story: I'm the last of the scientists on my world.”
He blinked. “You're really a scientist?”
She glared at him as she fished through her pouch. Finding what she was looking for - a handkerchief - she blew her nose before answering. “Well, you wouldn't be a very skillful engineer either if you'd never had anyone to teach you.”
“Actually, from a very young age, I...” He rethought that line of conversation immediately. “No one to teach you? Did all the scientists die or something?”
“No,” she said sullenly. “Once, my people were consumed by the sciences. It was the driving force of our culture. We were even building a huge observatory to further our studies of the sky. I was going to be an astronomer. I was looking forward to spending my life cataloging the heavens.”
“Oh! Well, that explains a few things, at least. Sorry, sorry. Go on.”
“Well... then something happened. I'm not sure exactly why, but almost overnight, our leaders became convinced that the Ancestors frowned on technical and scientific achievements and rewarded only physical prowess. Suddenly, the observatory we were building became a gymnasium, and I went from studying the heavens to learning to scale walls.”
Rodney pondered this. “Wow. That's a really weird shift in priorities.”
“Tell me about it. Have you ever tried to climb a stone wall six times your height with your bare hands?”
“God, no.” For the first time, he felt a wave of empathy for her. If the authorities in his life had forced him out of science and into rock-climbing, he probably would have wept, too. Then found a way to blow them up, of course.
“Anyway,” Tarru continued, “I rebelled. I refused to keep studying something that I was neither good at nor interested in, and so I openly defied our leaders and resumed my pursuit of the sciences.”
“Well, that was certainly courageous.”
“That's just what I said! Unfortunately, they felt my actions were evidence of mental instability.”
With considerable effort, Rodney said nothing. It was certainly easy to see both sides here.
“So right before they were about to put me into a mental health detention unit, I went underground.”
Eying her hair, Rodney said, “You sure didn't choose an ideal look for blending in, did you?”
She put a hand self-consciously to her head, looking affronted. “This is the traditional hairstyle of my people,” she said defensively. “This is how we all used to look, until our society gave way to madness.”
“Oh.” Rodney tried to imagine a society in which such a hairstyle was considered normal. On Earth, even among scientists - admittedly not the most gifted in terms of fashion sense - the whole metallic spikes thing would be considered fairly radical. “How do they wear their hair these days?”
She shuddered. “Oh, it's too hideous to describe. It's just... well, you've never seen anything like it, believe me.”
If he'd learned nothing else in his life, Rodney had learned that arguing about aesthetics was as hazardous as it was ultimately unproductive. Time to turn the conversation toward a more useful topic. “Tarru, why exactly did you kidnap me? What did you think I could do for you?”
She looked toward the ground and blushed, embarrassed. “I can't make a lot of our old technology work. I need help identifying it and understanding how to use it.”
Rodney blinked. That... actually, that didn't sound too difficult or unreasonable.
“Then, once we have it all working again, we will use it to crush this culture of athleticism and forcibly restore the dominance of science in our society.”
Okay, yeah, that? Would be where lines were crossed. “Now, let's get something straight here. I can take a look at your technology and I can maybe help you get some of it working. But I can't help you overthrow any governments or take over societies or anything like that.”
Her face contorted into a mask of outrage and shock. “But you have to! It's the whole reason I answered your request!”
“We've been over that! It was all a joke! That ad was never a sincere request.”
“That doesn't matter! I thought it was real when I planned all of this!”
“Yes, and I'm very sorry you went to the trouble of planning and committing this major felony on the basis of a very bad joke, but the fact remains that I can't help you take over your world!”
“You have to help me!” Tarru wailed. “The fate of my people depends on finding our way back to our true destiny. We have to return to our pursuit of the sciences.”
“Look, this is really hard for me to say, but what if the sciences aren't your people's destiny after all?” Thinking of how utterly inept Tarru was with anything remotely technical, it wasn't hard to suppose that science was maybe not her people's forte. “Maybe for your people, athletics really are more important than science.”
They stood staring at one another for a long moment before Rodney suddenly cracked up. “Okay, yeah, that's even more absurd out loud than it was in my head. Still, it doesn't change things. I can't help you force your people to give up their current... What are you doing now?”
Tarru had begun rummaging through her pouch again, finally bringing out a sleek-looking piece of technology and aiming it at Rodney. “I'd almost forgotten about this. I'm sorry to have to do this, but if you won't willingly help me, I have no choice. Now, say you'll help me, or I'll be forced to... do whatever this thing does.”
“It detects life signs,” Rodney said flatly, stepping forward and yanking the device from her hands. “I forgot I was holding this when you attacked me.” Glancing at her pouch, he grabbed it as well, fighting her off long enough to get a good look at the contents. “Sorry, but I thought I ought to check to see of my sidearm was in there.”
“I thought that was the sidearm,” she said sullenly. “I left those other things on the planet thinking they were locater devices and scientific instruments.”
“You've really got great instincts, haven't you?” Rodney said. “This isn't a weapon, it's a life signs detector, and...” He blinked as he noted a number of dots approaching their location. “Huh. You wouldn't happen to be expecting company, would you?”
“What? Of course not. Why would... wait! Are you saying there are people coming?”
“Yes, that's what I'm saying.”
“Then we have to hurry!” Tarru began to tug his arm frantically. “I'm a fugitive! If they catch me now, there's no chance of ever getting back to my lab, and I'll never be able to start the scientific revolution!”
A revolution of one person - particularly if that one person was Tarru - seemed like a doomed enterprise already. Rodney paused; if he delayed long enough for them to be caught, he would almost certainly be able to negotiate with her government for the right to return to Atlantis or at least contact them for help. Tarru was a fugitive, after all, and had kidnapped him.
“Don't even think what you're thinking!” she hissed, apparently not bothered by the illogic of that command. “If they capture me, they won't let us go back to my lab, and you'll be stuck with this equilibrium problem forever.”
Realistically, the chances of curing this problem with his ample intellect and Atlantian medical technology were excellent. Still, solving the problem now rather than having to go back to Atlantis unable to walk a straight line was highly attractive, especially when he projected the amount of razzing he'd be subjected to by Sheppard.
“Fine,” he hissed back, putting his arm once again around her waist, which he couldn't help noticing was narrow and rather cute. “But the only reason I'm going to your lab is to fix this stupid toy of yours, understand?”
Tarru smiled grimly, which didn't exactly comfort him but hey, he couldn't exactly lay down the law about how she could smile, right? The two of them loped awkwardly away at last.
* * * * * *
Continue to Part Two
Author: blade_girl
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up through “Travelers”
Prompt: Paperwork and Documentation
Genre: Humor or Team.
Characters: Rodney, Team
Summary: The reason for McKay's disappearance is beyond crazy, but the situation that precipitated it manages to surpass it. Another day, another set of Pegasus absurdities.
Word count: 19,433
Sam Carter stared into the event horizon; that shimmering, placid facade from which often issued the direst threats and the most wondrous of discoveries. Or sometimes, oddly confusing statements. “Say again, Colonel?”
Even over the radio, Sheppard's impatience was clear. “I said, I need a dozen men and another life signs detector.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I've said that,” she muttered quietly, tossing smile at Chuck. He tossed back a slightly scandalized look. Boy, you take over running a flying city in another galaxy and suddenly you're not allowed a sense of humor.
“Before that, Colonel,” Sam clarified. “What did you say about McKay?”
“I said, we've lost him. We can't find McKay!”
Sam shook her head, hoping it would make more sense to her after that. It didn't. You lose a contact lens, you lose a sock in the laundry, you lose your keys. Rodney hadn't exactly been dangling from a key chain, right next to the big brass “#1 Gate Team” ornament, and if he were lost, a dozen people walking a grid with flashlights aimed into the grass was not an effective rescue plan.
“Colonel, you've been gone less than ten minutes! Are you saying that you managed to lose a team member almost as soon as the wormhole closed behind you?”
There was a brief pause during which Sam thought she might have heard Sheppard utter something sotto voce and consonant-heavy. “Yes, we did, and every minute we waste repeating what I already said is a minute we could be looking for him! So if you could send us some help and another life signs detector, we-”
“I'm not... wait. Why do you need another life signs detector?”
Teyla answered this time, quickly, as though anxious to be the first to respond. “The life detector was with Dr. McKay when he disappeared, Colonel.”
“Ah.”
“If we're all clear on the distribution of equipment now,” interjected Sheppard's voice, “I'd like you to send Lorne's team and some-”
“Colonel Sheppard,” she interrupted, beginning to lose patience herself, “I'm not sending another man until I have a clearer picture of exactly what happened to the one we're missing.”
There was an explosive sigh from the other end; Sam had a vivid mental image of Sheppard biting the mike off his radio earpiece, spitting it onto the ground, and severing the gate connection. He'd never actually been insubordinate to her since she'd assumed command of Atlantis, but she now sensed the side of him that had littered Sheppard's Air Force career with official reprimands and, more discreetly, more than one CO's medically compelled mental health leave.
She made a decision. “You and your remaining team members come on back, Colonel. I'll post a small team of Marines at the gate to watch for Dr. McKay.”
* * * * * *
The briefing lacked that feeling of casual laziness Sheppard usually tended to project.
“We were exploring the area.” The colonel recounted the events with the haste of a boy explaining to his parents the plot of a movie while his friends wait at the door to the theater where the sequel is seconds from starting. “Rodney noticed some energy readings that didn't seem to fit, so we'd spread out a little. Something tripped me up and I hit the ground. When we got back up, Rodney wasn't there.”
Sam frowned. “You tripped, and everyone fell?” Sheppard's team was legendary for their bond, but this seemed extreme.
Teyla leaped in before Sheppard's open mouth could spew something that would only complicate this meeting. “Whatever tripped Colonel Sheppard apparently tripped me, as well. One moment I was walking forward, the next I was face down in the grass.”
Sam nodded and looked to Ronon, reclining dangerously in the office chair for which he looked so ill-suited. For a few seconds he simply returned her stare, until he realized she was seeking his confirmation of the experience. He didn't quite roll his eyes. “We all fell.”
“When we got up,” Teyla continued, “Rodney's P-90 and sidearm were on the ground, but there was no sign of him.”
“Did any of you notice - when you all hit the ground, did he fall, too?”
“When we find him, we'll be sure to ask.” Sheppard leaned forward, glaring. “Speaking of which, can we get started searching for him soon? We're losing daylight.”
Blinking, Sam asked, “You know M48J19's rotational schedule?”
“Do we have reason to believe the planet doesn't have night? No? Then it's safe to assume we're losing daylight!”
Sam took a deep, measured breath. All three of them were watching her with urgent intensity; uncomfortably, she thought of happy domestic dogs who'd escaped from their respective backyards and begun to rediscover their feral roots. “Okay, take Lorne's team and some more Marines. Establish a perimeter and organize a search of the area. Everyone stays in pairs and keeps in radio contact with the rest of the group. You'll report back here by radio every thirty minutes.”
Sheppard was on his feet and out the door before she'd finished issuing her instructions. Ronon smirked slightly as he uncoiled himself and followed. Watching their retreating backs with apparent discomfort, Teyla hovered briefly. “John believes that he missed something on that planet, Colonel. He feels responsible for Rodney's disappearance.”
“I know. I'd feel the same in his position.”
“I'm sure he doesn't mean to be insubordinate.”
Sam quirked her mouth. “You're sure?”
With a carefully neutral expression, Teyla insisted, “It is entirely possible.”
Sam nodded and waved her away. “Good luck. Hope you have a successful trip.” At Teyla's raised eyebrow over the word “trip,” Sam winced. “Sorry.”
* * * * * *
Spinning. Everything was spinning around him. Or maybe Rodney was spinning. Or maybe he was spinning within an environment that was also spinning. Oh, please, did it really matter which one it was? Did it? No! No, it didn't.
All that did matter was that a) he was hating it, and b) he needed it to stop. He couldn't function in such a state, and whomever had captured him would probably want him functional. He knew that he'd been captured because he occasionally heard voices and had felt hands on his arm, shoulder, or back, guiding him as they caused him to float through the air. (Floating! Him! He was floating! Obviously his captors had access to technology that could, in the right hands - ie., his - do a great deal of good.) He hadn't been harmed, so he was clearly considered to be of some value, and as such, he intended to let the relevant parties know how he felt about all this floating and spinning. The human nervous system just wasn't made for this kind of thing.
He was unable to focus his eyes, so he didn't know where to direct a piercing glare. He would have to let his voice carry the weight of authority by itself.
“I don't know who you are or what you've done to me, but I need this to stop,” he intoned forcefully.
That it actually came out as, “I... I don't... wh-who... n-need... ssstahhhhhp...” was almost certainly a trick of this bizarre environment. Who knew what the acoustic effects were of a constantly spinning room/ship/planet/universe?
“What? What are you trying to say?”
The voice was impatient and sounded irritated. Indignantly, Rodney thrust his shoulders back and folded his arms.
“Oh, stop flailing. You look ridiculous,” commanded the voice. Huh. He'd really thought he'd been crossing his arms. He tried again. “I said, stop fl... oh.”
With the suddenness of air rushing in to fill a vacuum, a room - a perfectly stationary one - materialized around Rodney, who was also perfectly stationary. His feet were planted firmly on a hard floor made of rough-hewn, uneven boards under his upright form. Okay, that was an embellishment; he was actually bent at the waist and hunched like a patient with advanced osteoporosis, and his arms were extended from his body and flailing. The familiarity of this posture puzzled him until the memory popped into his head of that awful afternoon when Sheppard had taken the team out for a surfing lesson.
“Better now?” The voice was coming from behind him and to his right, and he craned his neck awkwardly to look at the woman in the room with him. “Sorry about that; I forgot I still had the... Okay, could you drop that pose? You look silly. It's very distracting.”
Rodney, exhaling in rapid bursts as he tried to process what had just happened, straightened himself, turned around carefully, and tried to look suitably unimpressed, unintimidated, and force-to-be-reckoned-with-ish. He folded his arms, pretended they weren't shaking, and raised his chin defiantly. “All right, who are you?”
The young woman before him apparently hailed from Planet Biker Chick, or at least, that's what her appearance suggested to him. Her hair was shaved on the back and sides, with a dark brown ponytail gushing from the crown. The hair surrounding the ponytail on the top of her head was cut very short, about a quarter-inch in length, and was arranged in a series of small spikes reminiscent of the silver studs one might expect to find on a black leather bracelet, gauntlet, or - more terrifyingly - collar. On top of all of this, the spiked portion of her hair had been somehow colored to appear silver. Not gray or white, mind you, but literally metallic silver.
She was fiddling with a hand-held gray box, crudely constructed to the eyes of a man who'd been working with the godlike technology of Atlantis for over four years. The woman seemed almost to have forgotten him as she frowned at the device, turning dials with great concentration.
He was about to repeat his demand for identification when he was overcome by a wave of nausea. He flopped forward into hurling position, but the sensation was gone as suddenly as it had come. Straightening again, he shouted, “Hey!” rather weakly.
The woman looked up, frowned at him as though he were not reacting as planned, and fiddled with the dial some more. “Huh. I thought that would turn it off...”
The floor tilted abruptly and Rodney found himself staggering.
“Oops,” the woman said, and suddenly the floor was still and level again. Well, it was still; whoever had constructed this place had done so without the aid of a level.
“All right, just what the-” But a powerful tickling sensation in his nose provoked a round of intense serial sneezing, rendering further speech impossible.
“Wow, that's new,” commented the woman.
The sneezing ceased, leaving Rodney breathless and desperate for a Puff's tissue, though not the kind with lotion, because that always made him break out. (Why couldn't whoever filled the supply orders at the SGC understand that?) He gazed at his tormentor with dread, wondering how she would abuse him next.
She looked at him appraisingly, still holding the device. “Okay, I think I got it. You feel okay now? Normal?”
He did, in fact, and was therefore inclined to be irate. “What the hell did you do to me? What is that thing? And, and... and who the hell are you?”
She bristled, amazingly enough, in righteous defensiveness. “Hey, sorry, okay? I didn't mean to do all that stuff. It's not like this thing came with detailed instructions!”
He really didn't know where to start with reacting to that, so he focused on the device still in her hands. “You used that on me without understanding what it does? Boy, were you born too late. You could've been Mengele's lab assistant. Now, what is that thing?”
“It... doesn't have a name. Yet.”
“Well, where did you get it?”
The woman grinned. “I made it.”
Rodney's outrage had merely been budding before. Now he felt it blossom like a rose opening up in time-lapse footage.
“And you need instructions for it? What, did you assemble it blindfolded? Do you have problems with short-term memory? Are you -”
“I said I made it, not that I invented all the technology. I knew roughly what it would do, just not all the specifics. I thought it would only affect balance, but your sneezing suggests that it also-”
Contorting his face in horror, Rodney yelped, “You used me as a guinea pig? It... could have done anything! It, it might've... My head could've exploded!”
“Oh, relax. I tried it out on some other people first.”
Rodney's mouth worked silently a little before producing more words. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” The fact that it actually did make him feel better probably said something about him as a person, but this was no time for soul-searching.
The mention of other people made him think of his team, and a cold knot formed in his stomach. “I was with three other people. Where are they?”
Shrugging casually, she answered, “I dunno.”
“What?”
She looked confused. “How should I know where they are?”
Rodney took a step toward her but stopped when she raised the device threateningly. “What did you do to my team?” he demanded. He sounded rather dangerous; it made him wish Sheppard could hear him right now. Ronon too, for that matter.
Sudden understanding flooded her face, and she actually laughed. “Oh! Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing worse than I did to you. They're fine, wherever they are. I assume they went back to wherever you came from once the effects wore off.”
At his look of confusion, she waved a hand and smiled as though they were meeting under pleasant circumstances. “Look, why don't we sit down and I'll explain everything.”
He followed her gesture and noticed a small, simple wooden table and three chairs a few feet away. For the first time, he took a look around; they seemed to be in a one-room cabin, one not terribly well-built. A cool breeze sneaked in through a crack in one wall, and he stumbled slightly on an uneven floorboard as he moved to take a seat across from this puzzling woman.
She had the device on the table and was eager to explain how it worked. “It seems to have a variety of effects on the subject, allowing me to cause vertigo, induce nausea, mess with their spatial orientation. Until just now, I thought it just affected the inner ear, but since I managed to create an urge to sneeze, I'm wondering if it also has the ability to screw with the sinus cavity and nasal passages, or oh! Maybe it works directly on the brain. It's so hard to tell, because-”
“Oh god...”
“Oh, stop it! I told you no one else I tested it on suffered any permanent effects.”
He stared at her. “No, you didn't tell me that!”
“Well, I implied it. It's how I rendered you and your friends helpless. I made you all fall down, then I grabbed you while you were all disoriented and hustled you back through the gate.” Seeing his face at the mention of his team, she tapped his hand in a brusque gesture of comfort. “But you really don't need to worry about them, okay, because I released them from the effect just before we went through the Ancestral ring.”
“Fine,” he said, no longer concerned about Sheppard and the others and not really too worried about his own safety anymore, but pretty damned pissed off by the whole situation. “Just who the hell are you, and what do you want?”
“I told you already.”
“No! No, you haven't!”
“Well, I would have, if you hadn't kept interrupting.”
All set to bark a harsh response, Rodney found he was, amazingly, too angry to properly articulate his feelings, so he sat back in the chair and rubbed his forehead instead. “Just tell me. Why. You brought me. Here.”
“Oh, that.” She rifled through a leather pouch. “I was answering your request.”
He sighed. He was actually losing the ability to feel surprise. Something to do with being in shock, perhaps. “What request?”
She stopped rummaging long enough to flash a look his way, the kind of look that teenagers have been giving parents for decades - the “I guess senility is setting in” look.
A spark of indignation was generated, but all he could manage was, “Sorry, I just don't remember asking you for anything, which is probably because until today, I didn't know you existed.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know you weren't asking me specifically. I'm talking about this.” She slapped a piece of paper - 8 1/2” by 11” - onto the tabletop and looked at him questioningly. “This was open to anyone, right?”
Staring at the paper, upon which was printed a picture of Rodney and some text, Rodney felt his anger shift and sort of crystallize. “Oh. My. God.” He turned his face toward the ceiling, which he noticed would be leaking if it were raining right now, and bellowed, “Sheppard! You ass!”
Huh. Guess he wasn't too angry to articulate it.
* * * * * *
John stood in the doorway of Carter's office. “You wanted to see me?” He figured if he stayed in the doorway, he could subtly communicate his need to be elsewhere, looking for and following up on leads to McKay's whereabouts.
She glanced up briefly. “Sit down, Colonel.”
Damn. Subtle was never gonna be his forte.
Once he was seated, Carter set a piece of paper on the desktop and pushed it toward him. “Can you explain this to me?”
A minor “oh, shit” reaction occurred in the pit of his stomach, but years of practice allowed John to divert it long before it reached his face. “Depends. I don't know too much about paper, but I hear they start with wood pulp and-”
“Are you responsible for this, Colonel?”
“No,” he said decisively, “no, I am not.” After a beat, he added, “Well, not really.” Another beat. “It depends on what you mean by 'responsible'...”
She surprised him by slapping the desktop in a rare physical display of annoyance. “Are you the one who wrote this ad? That's what I mean by 'responsible!'”
“No! I mean, I wrote something that this was based on, yes, but it's been sorta... refined... since then.”
“Refined by whom?”
“I'm really not sure who all had a hand in it.” As Carter looked to be nearing the slapping point again, he raised a hand and quickly said, “Seriously, I don't know exactly who made this. Let me tell you what I do know.”
It had all started soon after John's initial run-in with Larrin. Rodney had complained about the fact that he never got taken prisoner by hot female aliens, and in response, John had written a mock-personal ad:
“Single supergenius seeks hot alien babe to kidnap him for nefarious purposes. Interests include astrophysics, engineering, blue Jello, whales, video games, and losing at chess. Respondents should be brilliant, beautiful, and have a thick skin. Interested parties may reply with best attempt at abduction.”
John had emailed it to Rodney the following day, whose reply was along the lines of, “Oh, haha. One time you checkmated me, when my concentration was off. You are so on for a rematch, if you dare.”
Carter was staring him down. “And?”
“And... we played another game a few days later.” He smiled at the memory. “I beat him again. Boy, was he pissed.”
“I'm talking about the ad! What happened to it after that?”
John shrugged. “I'm not sure. Someone must have seen the email on Rodney's screen or hacked into one of our accounts or something.” At her look of shock, he just said, “It's the lack of an internet - I think they miss the challenge. Anyway, the next time I saw something like it, it was totally rewritten and had a picture of Rodney bawling out Miko. You know, with his mouth open a mile wide and his hands in the air and that wild look in his eyes.”
Rodney had nailed him just as John was leaving his quarters, shoving the printout in his face. “You! This is your doing!”
Taking a step back, John had irritably yanked the paper from Rodney's hand and smirked, “Nice pic. It really captures your essence, I think.”
“This is outrageous! It's one thing to have some harmless email fun between friends, Colonel, but when I walk into my lab and find copies of this little gem taped to the walls, I have to draw the-”
“Wait a sec, just calm the hell down. I didn't have anything to do with this version.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
John sighed impatiently and read through the text of the ad. “Do you honestly think I would have used the word 'vainglorious?'”
Frowning, Rodney yanked the paper back and re-read. “Hmm. It's spelled correctly, too. You're right, you had nothing to do with this.”
“Which was kinda unfair,” John told Carter now, “because I did win the school spelling bee in sixth grade.”
“Colonel Sheppard,” she said, and John figured it wasn't good that she was using both title and name, “can you tell me how copies of this ad managed to find themselves off-world?”
“No. First I knew of it was when a marine reported seeing it on a couple different planets. Lorne and I never managed to root out who started posting them during missions, but we made sure everyone understood that regardless who was responsible for it, nobody on a gate team would be receiving shipments from the Daedalus until every damn copy of that ad had been retrieved. Took a few days, but we managed to get 'em all.”
Carter thought about that for a moment, her eyes eventually widening. “Wait a minute. When was this? Was this the reason for that flurry of 'round-the-clock gate missions a few months ago?”
“Um...”
“The ones you told me were search parties looking for Dr. Parrish?”
John shifted into a defensive posture. “Okay, yeah, but it wasn't really a lie. Lorne instructed Parrish to go off-world and... hide.” At her blank look, he sheepishly added, “You know, to make the search parties... not be a lie.”
“And this seemed like a better course than just telling me the truth?”
“Well, you hadn't been here very long. We didn't want you to think we were a bunch of wackos.”
Carter held up her hands, palms up. “What could possibly make me think that?”
Clearing his throat, John moved on. “So anyway, that's the story behind the personal ad. I'm sorry it happened, and looking back, we maybe coulda handled the whole thing better, but right now, shouldn't we be concentrating on finding out what happened to McKay?”
“I think this-” Carter tapped the ad with an index finger “- offers a pretty good clue to what happened to him.”
“What? How? I told you, I threatened those teams with their supply runs. Lorne personally supervised the operation. We got every copy of that ad back within a few days of it being leaked.”
“Colonel.” She picked up the paper and jiggled it, causing it to rustle. “One of the teams searching for McKay just brought this back from off-world.”
John's face betrayed his shock as he slumped in his chair. “Oh.” He ran a hand over his face, then smirked wanly. “Gotta give props to viral marketing, huh?”
* * * * * *
“No, no, no!” Rodney yelled. It was just his luck to be kidnapped by the least desirable personal ad respondent in the known universe.
“Stop yelling!” the biker chick yelled back. “My hearing is perfect - or it was until you came along!”
“Came along? Came alo- I didn't just stroll into your life, remember? You kidnapped me! You were lying in wait! I was just minding my own business, doing my job, when you swept in out of nowhere and took me against my will!”
“But you asked for it!”
“Hello, logical impossibility! If I wanted to be taken against my will, it wouldn't be 'against my will,' now would it?”
She frowned and even sort of pouted, rendering her unexpectedly cute, even if she was still a loony with a dangerous brain-twisting device and a hairstyle that looked like something you'd use to clean mud from your shoe treads. “Then why did you publish this request? I've seen it on at least three different worlds.”
“That's what I've been trying to tell you! I didn't publish this ad. I didn't even write it! It was never anything but a joke - a stupid, juvenile, planned-with-the-brainpower-of-lobotomized-monkeys kind of joke.”
She stared at him, looked at the ad, then back at him again. “But... how can it be a joke? It's not even funny.”
“Bingo!” cried Rodney, pounding the table with his fist. “At last, something we agree on.”
Groaning, the woman fell forward dramatically, burying her face against her arms on the table. Rodney blinked and startled a little as the ponytail whipped forward and lightly stung his hand. The back of her head was covered with brown stubble; it had apparently been some time since it was shaved. It looked sort of velvety and he had a powerful urge to touch it and find out if it really felt that soft.
Luckily, this particular trip to Crazytown was postponed when she abruptly raised herself to a sitting position and briskly announced, “Well, it doesn't matter. We can still do it.”
Blushing slightly with the knowledge of how close he'd come to feeling up her scalp, Rodney was flummoxed. “We can? We can what? What can we still do?”
“The kidnapping. I admit, I preferred it when I thought it was a mutual thing, but I see no reason why it still can't work out.”
Rodney, of course, could see any number of reasons why it wouldn't work out, but articulating them was a problem when he was dealing with someone who wasn't accepting outside input.
“After all,” she continued, stuffing the ad back into her pouch, “you'll still be very useful to me, because it's not like my needs disappeared when I found out this was all just a joke, right? And since I really did handle it like a real kidnapping, I have the means-” she tapped the device- “to compel your cooperation, which I now realize won't be given willingly. So it all works out all right, if not exactly the way I had planned.”
She'd shouldered the pouch and stood as she finished this little speech, aiming the device at Rodney. “So, now that we finally have reached an understanding, I will ask you to come with me and not give me any trouble, or else I'll have to, you know.” She mimed turning one of the dials and then swayed side-to-side, rolling her eyes and waving her free hand.
Feeling cheated wasn't something Rodney tended to respond to well. He remained seated and fixed her with an obstinate glare. “Wait a minute. What understanding did we reach, exactly? You found out your assumption was mistaken, and I found out you're a... Wait, I didn't find out anything about you!”
“Why would you need to know anything about me?”
“Why did you answer this ad?”
“Because I-” She caught herself and glared. “It doesn't matter. I'm the one with weapon. I'm in charge here.”
“Oh, I'm not so sure about that,” Rodney gloated, leaning forward in his seat. “I mean, yes, you have the portable Vertigo Maker, but you barely understand how to use it. And whatever you want me for, by your own admission, requires my cooperation. Now, I hate being dizzy as much as the next guy, but as instruments of coercion go, the Stumble-a-tron there leaves something to be desired.”
“Oh, really?”
She twisted a dial viciously. Rodney cringed and braced himself.
Nothing happened.
Straightening, he smiled triumphantly and folded his arms. His captor's eyes widened as they looked to the device. She slapped it a couple of times, prompting him to snort, “Problem?”
She was clearly panicked and distracted. If he was ever gonna pull of any of that action-hero stuff Sheppard and Ronon seemed able to do in their sleep, now was the time... when he was up against an inept kidnapper he outweighed substantially whose attention was on something else.
He lunged forward, intending to cross the tabletop and snatch the device from her hands. However, the instant he began to move, he was overcome by nausea. His forward motion was diluted as his legs wobbled underneath him, and instead of crossing the table, his ribs crashed into the side of it, sending it toward his charming hostess. Holding his ribs, he hit the un-level floor on his knees as the table collided with the kidnapper.
Crouching beside the table, he saw her legs scrambling to keep her body balanced and upright. Glancing upward just as she lost that battle and fell onto the table, he took advantage of no longer feeling sick and arose, grabbing for the device. The upward movement renewed the nausea and a voice in his head said, Motion sickness! That's what this setting does!
He planted his feet and tried to keep his head and torso as still as possible while wresting the device from her grip. She'd recovered enough to realize what he was after and had managed to retain her grasp even though she was now on her back on the tabletop. Rodney groaned, understanding that it was going to be necessary to move in order to take full possession of the instrument. He tightened his fingers around the metal box and yanked as hard as he could, stepping backward as he did so.
His stomach set sail on stormy seas as he pulled the device off the table. Unfortunately, the kidnapper still had a hold on it and as her body left the table, gravity cried, “Mine!” and pulled her to the floor. Rodney was obliged to follow or surrender the box.
“Ow! My back!” he barked, now too angry to allow the nausea to get in his way. He rolled onto his stomach and tugged harder on the device. Their faces were inches apart, and when she realized her grip was giving out, she shocked the hell out of him with a head-butt. Rodney cried out - god, that had hurt! - but he wouldn't release the box. Inspired by her primitive attack, he pushed the metal box sharply upward, striking her in the chin. Presto! The device was free.
Who said violence never solved anything?
She was apparently stunned, which gave him a small window of opportunity. From a pocket of his tac vest, Rodney drew a small precision screwdriver and scratched a short line into the base of the box directly over the top of each dial. Then he scratched corresponding lines on the dials themselves to meet the ones on the box. Beneath those, he scrawled “MS” for “motion sickness.”
He was absorbed in this work and forgot he was supposed to be watching for signs of reanimation in his opponent (really, guarding prisoners was so not his thing); it was just his good luck that she issued a cry of rage as she lunged toward him. More proof of her stupidity; stealth was clearly indicated in a situation like this.
Not being stupid, he responded quickly, aiming the device at her. The reaction was immediate: she sank to her knees. “Blood of a wraith!” she gasped. “What are you doing to me?”
“According to you, 'nothing,'” Rodney said smugly. “Although where I come from, it's generally known as 'payback.'”
Curious about the purpose of the second dial, he gave it a clockwise twist as well. It didn't seem to have any effect on the kidnapper, but when he turned his head, it swam enough to suggest that the dial controlled the range of whatever field it generated. He hastily dialed it back to the previous position. The last thing he needed was to make himself sick.
He'd expected her to succumb, at least long enough for him to start figuring out his next move toward getting the hell back to Atlantis, but her will was strong. Fighting through the motion sickness, she started toward him on her hands and knees. Frowning, he twisted the top dial a quarter turn clockwise.
Immediately she stopped moving, blinked frantically as she stared without focus, and waved one hand in front of her face. “Blind!” she screamed. Rodney actually heard the window behind him rattle with the sound. “You beast! You've made me blind!” She collapsed to the floor in despair, churning out hysterical sobs.
Part of him received this news with a certain satisfaction, but her distress was so intense that it unnerved him. Nothing the device had done to him had been quite as disturbing as blindness. Not wishing to be cruel, he decided to change the setting. He marked the dial first; it would be handy to know how to avoid (or repeat) that affliction.
She was so consumed with grief over her lost sight that she didn't seem to notice it had returned. Shouting over her wails, Rodney snapped his fingers impatiently. “Hey! Hey, Metallica - open your eyes!”
Gulping and gasping as she realized her sight had been restored, she slowly sat up. With both hands, she wiped copious tears from her cheeks and eyes, sniffling and huffing shuddery little sighs as she gradually calmed down. She looked up at him with doubt and fear in her eyes, which made him unexpectedly uncomfortable.
Offering a smile meant to convey good will, Rodney said, “See? All better. Sorry about the blindness; I didn't know that would happen, obviously. But now, maybe we can talk a little, okay? I'm more than willing to hear all about why you needed me enough to resort to kidnapping, and maybe I'll even be able to help you out, as long as you tell me certain things, such as what planet we're on right now. Okay? Now, let's start with your name.”
She stared at him in silence long enough for him to wonder if he'd now made her deaf. “It's Tarru,” she said finally.
“Tarru. Um, great, good. Lovely name. Mine's Rodney - Doctor Rodney McKay. See how well we get along when we agree to be civil?”
Sniffing again, Tarru merely nodded, smiling shyly. He returned the smile until he saw her gaze move to the window behind him and her expression turn to horror. He spun around to see what new threat had arrived to make this experience just that much suckier, only to feel Tarru's body slam into his legs in a tackle that would probably have made any football coach in North America proud.
* * * * * *
“All we wanna know,” Sheppard was saying, “is whether anyone showed any special interest in that paper while it was hanging on your wall.” He gave a smile that he probably thought looked non-threatening, even friendly.
Teyla rolled her eyes. Why could he never learn that no one believed his smiling face while his arms cradled a huge weapon against his chest?
Barn, proprietor of the local gathering place, licked his lips as his eyes obsessively darted between their copy of Rodney's personal ad and Sheppard's P-90. There would be no useful information from him as long as he felt so threatened.
“Perhaps you and Ronon,” she said with a smile, “could go and question some of the people of this village.” She gave a meaningful glance at the door. John looked puzzled, turned to glance at the door, and then frowned back at her. Suppressing a sigh, Teyla smiled with the warmth of a bonfire. “I will stay and talk some more with Barn.”
Judging from the way he beamed, Barn found this suggestion more than a little appealing. Teyla wondered which component was more attractive: her company or the absence of John and his gun.
Finally getting the message, John looked a little hurt, as though she'd told him he should leave because his hair was frightening the children. Ronon shot her a knowing smirk and told John, “Saw some villagers on the way here. Some of 'em looked kinda suspicious.”
Not fooled, John nevertheless turned to go. “We'll be outside,” he let her know, as though Barn might attack her with his stained apron or ale-soaked washcloth.
Barn's relief and residual nervousness were so palpable that she felt obliged to reassure him, “Colonel Sheppard is a good man. We are simply worried about our friend.”
She touched the paper, her fingers brushing a photograph printed there, and lured Barn's mind back to the topic. “We believe that someone acted upon this joking request for an abduction. So far, we have had no success in finding this person. We're asking people in all the places we know this paper was present if they recall anyone who took more than a casual interest in it.”
Barn glanced at the paper again and shrugged, looking truly apologetic. “I'm sorry. This was hanging by the skelts board for weeks. There were always people gathered over there, adding up the scores and taking down the skelts for the next round.”
Hiding her frustration behind another smile, Teyla answered, “I understand. But perhaps you saw someone looking at the paper who was not playing skelts?”
Barn began wiping a nearby table. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.
“Or someone who kept returning to look at the paper again and again?”
The table now clean, Barn moved back behind the counter, again shaking his head. “I don't recall anything like that.” Seeing her obvious disappointment, he put a hand on her arm. “I wish I could help you.” His eyes traveled back to the paper in her hand. “Your friend looks...” He seemed at a loss. “He... must have some special qualities.”
Teyla looked at the paper. Numerous versions of the personal ad had been distributed. Some had the picture of McKay shouting at Miko. Others sported one taken immediately after someone told him the meal he'd just eaten contained citrus. (It hadn't.)
This version used a collage of these and other photos, the centerpiece being one of Rodney sound asleep at his laptop, the side of his face smashed against the keyboard. His mouth was open.
“He is a very special man,” she insisted, feeling, to her shame, a little embarrassed. “These pictures do not accurately convey his value.”
“I expect not,” Barn said, leaning against the counter and laughing. “From those images, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to kidnap such a person in the first place, much less going to great lengths to rescue him.”
“Dr. McKay is a talented scientist,” Teyla said defensively. “Many have employed dishonorable means to acquire him for his knowledge and expertise.”
Laughing again, Barn shook his head and reached under the counter to retrieve a large jug. “If you say so.” Pouring a beverage into an earthenware cup, he held up a second with a questioning look, which she answered with a shake of her head. “Never know he's anything but a buffoon from those pictures,” he proclaimed, taking a sizable drink.
Teyla pushed her shoulders back to convey her disapproval of his attitude. “A clownish appearance does not always indicate one is a fool.” Playing back the words in her mind, she wasn't certain this was an effective defense of her teammate.
Swallowing, Barn started to laugh again. “You sound like that girl last moon. She...” He frowned suddenly, pursing his lips in thought. “You know, she seemed awfully interested in that poster, now that I think of it.”
Suddenly alert, Teyla pressed. “Who was she? Do you know where she is?”
He shook his head. “Haven't seen her since last moon. She was from some other world, here to trade. I only remember her because she annoyed some of the skelts players, standing in the way of the board to look at the paper. They insulted her hairstyle, trying to get her to leave, and she told them that to us, she might look silly, but where she came from, she was a traditional beauty.”
“Please,” Teyla said urgently, “tell me more about this girl.”
* * * * * * *
Teyla was in such a hurry for them to get to the gate that she was running. It made no difference to Ronon - as Rodney often said, running was his “thing” - but it was entertaining to watch Sheppard trying to get his questions answered while juggling his P-90, keeping an eye out for any potential threats, and trying to keep up with the two of them.
Sometimes Ronon felt sorry for John. Usually he just felt amused.
“So you're saying that guy...” John said breathlessly, “that guy Borne...”
“Barn,” Teyla corrected him, not breaking stride.
“Yeah, him. He told you who kidnapped Rodney.”
“No. He told me about a woman who showed great interest in the ad.”
“Oh.” John waited a few steps before continuing; Ronon could hear him breathing harder. “So this woman - what's her name?”
“He did not know.”
For a short time, there was only the sound of their combined footfalls.
“So, we don't know her name, and we don't know if she took Rodney.”
“That is true,” Teyla answered. Ronon admired her running form and noted with satisfaction that her voice did not sound winded.
John, however, was certainly huffing. “Wait. Why are we-”
“She showed a pronounced interest in Rodney's ad,” Teyla interrupted, anticipating his questions. “On no other world we've investigated have we found such a lead. It is very likely she played some role in Rodney's disappearance.”
“'Kay,” John said. Ronon grinned at the way his footfalls were getting noisier as his fatigue and frustration mounted. “But... we don't have a name. How are we-”
“Barn described the woman to me. She wears her hair in very unusual manner. I recognized the style.”
More time passed without words. From the sound of his breathing, Sheppard might not be able to do much more than gasp.
“You... You're telling me... you know... this woman?”
“I do not think so. I simply recognized the hairstyle Barn described. It is the traditional hairstyle of a people known as the Surrosans.”
Ronon's interest was suddenly kindled. “What'd this hairstyle look like?”
“Barn said she wore it shaved on the back and sides, quite long at the crown, with short silvery spikes on the very top of the head.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ronon hadn't planned to say more, but Sheppard said, “Why'd ya ask?.... Thinking of... changing your look?”
“Just curious. Used to know the Surrosans.”
Wrong thing to say. Teyla slowed slightly and turned to face him, still running. “You have been to Surrosa?”
“Yeah. Few years before I met you guys.”
Delighted, Teyla smiled brightly. “They are a fascinating people. Very interested in the sciences, engineering, architecture. They were building a grand observatory the last time I was there.”
Ronon grunted.
“They must have finished it by now. Did you see it when you visited their world?”
“I didn't stay long.”
Turning around to face forward again, Teyla said, “I had feared they were culled. It has been a long time since my people have heard from them.”
“They keep to themselves these days,” Ronon said. A few strides passed, moments filled with the sounds of Sheppard's lungs. “He was sure about the hair? Barn?”
“Very sure. Why? Do you know of another people who wear their hair that way?”
“No. But last time I saw a Surrosan, they weren't wearin' their hair like that anymore.”
“Well,” Sheppard gasped, “y'know how it is... times change... fashions... come 'n go...”
“I am surprised,” Teyla said, sounding troubled. “They seemed so committed to their traditions.”
“Things change,” Ronon said.
They were nearing the gate. Sheppard slowed as they approached the DHD, resting his hands on his knees. “Teyla, do you know the-”
“I remember the gate address,” she told him, already beginning to dial.
John began to cough. Ronon slapped him on the back. It wasn't helpful, just fun.
The wormhole engaged. This would probably be interesting.
* * * * * *
“If you could take all of the stargates in this galaxy...” Rodney said.
“I would melt them all down,” Tarru interrupted, “to ensure that I would never actually meet you.”
“... and you straightened them out so they were lines instead of circles...”
“That would work, too. No chance of traveling through a ring that's not a ring anymore, is there?”
“... and then you lined them up end to end and measured the quite considerable distance...”
“Distance! I never fully appreciated the concept until now.”
“... you would still fall breathtakingly short of comprehending the truly staggering depth of my loathing for you.”
“Yeah? Ditto.”
“Oh please, don't strain yourself searching for just the right comeback,” Rodney panted. “Okay, stop. We're stopping here to rest a while.”
“Anything that means we can stop touching each other,” she snarled, “is something I'll happily applaud.”
She pushed off, letting go of his waist as he gratefully removed his arm from around her shoulders, and each of them dropped to the ground.
Rodney put a hand to the small of his back and grimaced. “I'll be lucky to avoid disc surgery after this little escapade. How much further is this place?”
“We're close. We'll travel faster, though, if we do it in silence.”
“Why? Are there patrols to avoid? Guards?”
“No,” she spat. “It's the sound of your voice. It fills me with rage and I waste a lot of energy trying not to act on violent impulses.”
Rodney waved a hand airily. “Please! I could write a book on living with controlled rage, and you'd only be a small section in one chapter. And may I remind you that this entire situation? Is your own fault!”
“I didn't intend for you to break the machine!”
“Me! I'm not the one who tackled the person holding the damn thing!”
“Well, how did I know you'd be clumsy enough to land on it and snap the dials off? Do you have any idea how hard I worked to put that thing together?”
Rodney held up the battered device with a look of incredulous contempt. “This piece of crap? I did better work when I was in preschool. And I told you before, it's more than just the dials being snapped off. I could easily fix that. It's the fact that this flimsy casing collapsed enough to crush the bargain-basement components inside. Whoever taught you engineering should be shot.”
She glared at him before turning her back on him completely. He wondered if insulting someone's teacher was some sort of unthinkable faux pas on this planet. At least she was giving him some space in which to think in blessed silence.
They'd been lucky, really. The broken device might have left them both blind or deathly motion-sick. Instead, the impact had apparently selected a setting that affected their equilibrium - when Rodney tried to walk, he found himself bearing to the right to such an extent that he could only walk in circles. Fortunately, Tarru was afflicted with the mirror image of this, bearing to the left. If they stood side-by-side and held on to each other, they could manage to walk a more or less straight path.
He cleared his throat. She didn't turn around. “We should...” He gestured even though she wasn't looking. “We should probably get moving again.”
Without a word, she stood. She didn't look at him as his arm encircled her shoulders and hers threaded around his waist again. She raised a hand to point out their direction, and the pair resumed their odd sack-race gait.
Normally, Rodney was a great fan of other people shutting up. However, it would seem he had managed to hurt Tarru rather deeply, and while he still thought she was stupid and incompetent on multiple levels - not to mention a common criminal - he wasn't above feeling a little guilty. The silence grew heavier with each awkward step, until he started searching for ways to break the ice.
“So, this place we're going to. It's some kind of lab?”
She still didn't look at him. “It's my lab.”
“Ah.” Visions of a spare bedroom strewn with Legos, a Lite-Brite and an beginner's electronics set from Radio Shack flashed in his mind. “You have the equipment to repair this thing, then?”
“Yes. I think so.”
He tried not to ask, he really really tried. “Okay, sorry, but... Is there anyone else there? Scientists or technicians or a mechanic or-”
She stopped moving so suddenly he nearly fell. “There's no one else, okay? It's just me. It's just me!”
Suddenly, Tarru was sobbing brokenheartedly. Far more disturbingly, her face was buried against his chest and her arms locked around him.
The horrors just kept piling up today.
“Um...” Shit, wasn't it bad enough that he was cooperating with his kidnapper? Was he seriously expected to console her, too? Rolling his eyes, he patted her shoulder matter-of-factly. “It's okay. There, there. Get it all out. That's right.”
He glanced at his watch and sighed as surreptitiously as possible. “Um... okay, look, maybe you should just tell me about it, huh? Then you'll feel a lot better and I'll... know what the hell is going on, hopefully.”
Sniffling, she pulled away and wiped her face with her hands. “Fine. Here's the story: I'm the last of the scientists on my world.”
He blinked. “You're really a scientist?”
She glared at him as she fished through her pouch. Finding what she was looking for - a handkerchief - she blew her nose before answering. “Well, you wouldn't be a very skillful engineer either if you'd never had anyone to teach you.”
“Actually, from a very young age, I...” He rethought that line of conversation immediately. “No one to teach you? Did all the scientists die or something?”
“No,” she said sullenly. “Once, my people were consumed by the sciences. It was the driving force of our culture. We were even building a huge observatory to further our studies of the sky. I was going to be an astronomer. I was looking forward to spending my life cataloging the heavens.”
“Oh! Well, that explains a few things, at least. Sorry, sorry. Go on.”
“Well... then something happened. I'm not sure exactly why, but almost overnight, our leaders became convinced that the Ancestors frowned on technical and scientific achievements and rewarded only physical prowess. Suddenly, the observatory we were building became a gymnasium, and I went from studying the heavens to learning to scale walls.”
Rodney pondered this. “Wow. That's a really weird shift in priorities.”
“Tell me about it. Have you ever tried to climb a stone wall six times your height with your bare hands?”
“God, no.” For the first time, he felt a wave of empathy for her. If the authorities in his life had forced him out of science and into rock-climbing, he probably would have wept, too. Then found a way to blow them up, of course.
“Anyway,” Tarru continued, “I rebelled. I refused to keep studying something that I was neither good at nor interested in, and so I openly defied our leaders and resumed my pursuit of the sciences.”
“Well, that was certainly courageous.”
“That's just what I said! Unfortunately, they felt my actions were evidence of mental instability.”
With considerable effort, Rodney said nothing. It was certainly easy to see both sides here.
“So right before they were about to put me into a mental health detention unit, I went underground.”
Eying her hair, Rodney said, “You sure didn't choose an ideal look for blending in, did you?”
She put a hand self-consciously to her head, looking affronted. “This is the traditional hairstyle of my people,” she said defensively. “This is how we all used to look, until our society gave way to madness.”
“Oh.” Rodney tried to imagine a society in which such a hairstyle was considered normal. On Earth, even among scientists - admittedly not the most gifted in terms of fashion sense - the whole metallic spikes thing would be considered fairly radical. “How do they wear their hair these days?”
She shuddered. “Oh, it's too hideous to describe. It's just... well, you've never seen anything like it, believe me.”
If he'd learned nothing else in his life, Rodney had learned that arguing about aesthetics was as hazardous as it was ultimately unproductive. Time to turn the conversation toward a more useful topic. “Tarru, why exactly did you kidnap me? What did you think I could do for you?”
She looked toward the ground and blushed, embarrassed. “I can't make a lot of our old technology work. I need help identifying it and understanding how to use it.”
Rodney blinked. That... actually, that didn't sound too difficult or unreasonable.
“Then, once we have it all working again, we will use it to crush this culture of athleticism and forcibly restore the dominance of science in our society.”
Okay, yeah, that? Would be where lines were crossed. “Now, let's get something straight here. I can take a look at your technology and I can maybe help you get some of it working. But I can't help you overthrow any governments or take over societies or anything like that.”
Her face contorted into a mask of outrage and shock. “But you have to! It's the whole reason I answered your request!”
“We've been over that! It was all a joke! That ad was never a sincere request.”
“That doesn't matter! I thought it was real when I planned all of this!”
“Yes, and I'm very sorry you went to the trouble of planning and committing this major felony on the basis of a very bad joke, but the fact remains that I can't help you take over your world!”
“You have to help me!” Tarru wailed. “The fate of my people depends on finding our way back to our true destiny. We have to return to our pursuit of the sciences.”
“Look, this is really hard for me to say, but what if the sciences aren't your people's destiny after all?” Thinking of how utterly inept Tarru was with anything remotely technical, it wasn't hard to suppose that science was maybe not her people's forte. “Maybe for your people, athletics really are more important than science.”
They stood staring at one another for a long moment before Rodney suddenly cracked up. “Okay, yeah, that's even more absurd out loud than it was in my head. Still, it doesn't change things. I can't help you force your people to give up their current... What are you doing now?”
Tarru had begun rummaging through her pouch again, finally bringing out a sleek-looking piece of technology and aiming it at Rodney. “I'd almost forgotten about this. I'm sorry to have to do this, but if you won't willingly help me, I have no choice. Now, say you'll help me, or I'll be forced to... do whatever this thing does.”
“It detects life signs,” Rodney said flatly, stepping forward and yanking the device from her hands. “I forgot I was holding this when you attacked me.” Glancing at her pouch, he grabbed it as well, fighting her off long enough to get a good look at the contents. “Sorry, but I thought I ought to check to see of my sidearm was in there.”
“I thought that was the sidearm,” she said sullenly. “I left those other things on the planet thinking they were locater devices and scientific instruments.”
“You've really got great instincts, haven't you?” Rodney said. “This isn't a weapon, it's a life signs detector, and...” He blinked as he noted a number of dots approaching their location. “Huh. You wouldn't happen to be expecting company, would you?”
“What? Of course not. Why would... wait! Are you saying there are people coming?”
“Yes, that's what I'm saying.”
“Then we have to hurry!” Tarru began to tug his arm frantically. “I'm a fugitive! If they catch me now, there's no chance of ever getting back to my lab, and I'll never be able to start the scientific revolution!”
A revolution of one person - particularly if that one person was Tarru - seemed like a doomed enterprise already. Rodney paused; if he delayed long enough for them to be caught, he would almost certainly be able to negotiate with her government for the right to return to Atlantis or at least contact them for help. Tarru was a fugitive, after all, and had kidnapped him.
“Don't even think what you're thinking!” she hissed, apparently not bothered by the illogic of that command. “If they capture me, they won't let us go back to my lab, and you'll be stuck with this equilibrium problem forever.”
Realistically, the chances of curing this problem with his ample intellect and Atlantian medical technology were excellent. Still, solving the problem now rather than having to go back to Atlantis unable to walk a straight line was highly attractive, especially when he projected the amount of razzing he'd be subjected to by Sheppard.
“Fine,” he hissed back, putting his arm once again around her waist, which he couldn't help noticing was narrow and rather cute. “But the only reason I'm going to your lab is to fix this stupid toy of yours, understand?”
Tarru smiled grimly, which didn't exactly comfort him but hey, he couldn't exactly lay down the law about how she could smile, right? The two of them loped awkwardly away at last.
* * * * * *
Continue to Part Two