Consequences, 3/5
May. 14th, 2006 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beatrice_otterPart 1/5
Part 2/5
Consequences, 3/5
"He was so different from last time," Sam said into the phone cradled in her shoulder. "I just couldn't believe it." She really needed more furniture; the recliner was comfy, but she just wanted to stretch out on a nice big couch right now.
"I wonder why he was so different," Janet mused. "Is something bothering him?"
"How should I know? I'm only carrying his baby. Why should he talk to me?" Sam grimaced and shifted the phone to the other side. "I'm sorry, didn't mean to take that out on you. It was just so frustrating. It's like he expects me to be a mind reader and pick up what he wants by osmosis. Okay, I've figured out that abortion's really unthinkable to him. I get that. I'm not going to have one. I told him that. I apologized for suggesting it; he's still giving me the cold shoulder. At least, I assume that's why he wasn't talking tonight. I mean, sometimes he was almost fine. But then he'd go right back into silent mode! When Daniel said he doesn't talk, I thought he was exaggerating. Jack O'Neill has a smart remark for everything, right? No, Daniel was right on target. Jack O'Neill doesn't talk about anything important. And I'm getting sick of it!" Her voice had risen to a shrill high that even Sam barely recognized. Oh, God, were the dreaded pregnancy hormone swings she'd heard about starting to kick in?
"Honey, I don't know what his problem is, but there is no man on God's green earth who is worth getting that worked up over," came Janet's voice over the phone. "If he's going to be a moody bastard, well, you can't change that. But you do have to take care of yourself and the baby."
"I know," Sam admitted, feeling drained and fighting for composure. She was a scientist! A military officer! She'd always prided herself on being as tough as any man she'd come up against, and not a weepy woman. You had to be, to make it in the military. And here she was, turning into the thing she'd always scorned. It was a sad comeuppance.
"You know, maybe he'll get better again," Janet continued. "Maybe he'll turn into a devoted partner and father. Maybe not. But whatever he does, you can't let him get you down. You're a strong woman, Sam, and a smart one. You can handle this. I'll be here for you, and so will Doctor Jackson, no matter what happens."
"Thanks, Janet," Sam admitted. "That means a lot to me." She glanced at the VCR. Was it that late already? On cue, she fought back a yawn. "And speaking of taking care of myself, it's time to get myself and baby off to bed."
"See you tomorrow."
Jack and Teal'c wandered into the cafeteria the next morning to find, as had become usual, Sam and Daniel already there, talking earnestly. Jack wondered what the big guy at his back thought of all this; Teal'c had said little, so far, but Jack knew he observed everything that went on around him. They grabbed their breakfast, and Jack raised an eyebrow at the sheer amount of food on T's tray. Besides large portions of waffles, scrambled eggs, and sausage, he had a mound of fruit and several biscuits. How he ate like that and kept from turning into a blimp had been a question Jack had wondered about since the first time he'd seen the guy eat.
They sat down at the table with their fellow teammates and the three humans watched with a bit of disbelief as Teal'c began attacking his mound of food with a single-minded determination unmatched by most teenage boys.
After a brief silence, Daniel spoke up. "So, how are you doing, Jack?"
"Fine," Jack said, taking a bite of his waffles. "Hammond's given me a stack of personnel folders as thick as I am tall to look over-they're really trying to find people they can bring in."
"I know," Sam said. "They've got a stack of dossiers like that of civilian scientists for me, too. They were waiting for me in my lab, when I got in this morning. Wonder why they all came at once like that?"
"Oh, I gave up pondering the mysteries of the military bureaucracy years ago, Captain."
"Y'know, we do need some more anthropologists and linguistics specialists, too," Daniel pointed out. "That is, if they really are serious about doing cultural studies of the worlds we encounter. Even just to translate the stuff the teams are starting to find to see if it's worth further study, we need more people."
"Don't feel left out, Danny boy," Jack said. It came out a little snider than he'd intended. "I'm sure that as the biggest and best language geek on base, you'll get your very own pile of personnel folders soon enough, whenever they figure out they really do need more geeks. Good luck." He could feel Teal'c's eyes on him, and studiously did not look at the man to his left. He couldn't miss Sam's glare, however, as she was seated across from him.
"Do you have anybody in mind that you'd specifically like to have?" Sam asked him. "If so, you can tell General Hammond, and he can start the recruiting process in motion."
Daniel hesitated. "Well, I burned most of my bridges pretty thoroughly before Catherine Langford recruited me for this project. A lot of the top people I'd like to have wouldn't listen to any offer from me even if they got security clearance. Robert Rothman might be interested, though; he was one of my grad students, and while he didn't buy my theories, he didn't really mind them, either."
Teal'c was great at Ping-Pong. Better than Jack was, usually. He approached the game with the same absolute dedication he gave to everything; Jack was therefore surprised than usual when Teal'c spoke in the middle of a set.
"You should not take your frustrations with Captain Carter out on Daniel Jackson."
"What?" The alien had spoken up at just the right moment, too, Jack grumbled to himself as he retrieved the ball. If he'd said anything about it, though, T would probably give him some inscrutable reply that a mere observation shouldn't have been enough to break his focus on the game. He retrieved the ball from the corner it had bounced to-that was the one thing about uniform gray concrete walls and floor; they made the ping-pong ball stand out.
"Whatever unhappiness or anger you feel about the way Captain Carter is handling the situation you both have found yourselves in, and whatever problems you have with yourself, you should not make Daniel Jackson bear the brunt of them," Teal'c explained patiently, waiting for him to serve again. "You undermine the unity of our team when you do so."
"I'm not taking it out on Daniel!" Jack frowned as Teal'c just watched him impassively. "Okay, so, maybe a little. It's just ... he's annoying me all on his own, besides Sam." He served the ball.
They continued with the game in silence for a few minutes, but Jack could feel Teal'c waiting for him to say more. It was a very effective interrogation tactic, he realized. But, what the hell. Even he needed to talk to someone sometime, and with Kawalsky dead and Lou Ferreti busy with his first command, Teal'c was the only friend he had with clearance that he could talk to about this.
"It's just, almost every time I see either one on base, they're together, chattering away like there's no one else in the world," Jack admitted.
"They are both quite voluble about many subjects," Teal'c said.
"Yeah. And they both keep trying to pester me about how I feel about everything."
There was silence as Teal'c considered this. Just when Jack thought the conversation was over, he spoke up again. "As the mother of your child, Captain Carter deserves your confidences, and requires them. As one of your closest friends, Daniel Jackson sincerely wishes to help you in this difficult time. And if you were to confide in them as they need and deserve, perhaps they would not then need to support each other, and you would have less cause to be jealous."
"I'm not jealous!" Jack missed the ball and threw his racket down on the table. Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow at him in silence.
"So, how has he been today so far?"
Sam looked up from the stack of reports she was diligently working through with a grin. "Hey, Janet." The petite doctor had a stack of files cradled in her arm that looked suspiciously familiar. "They have you doing personnel evaluations, too, huh? Jack and I both have them, but Daniel doesn't and he was jealous."
"Well, if he wants mine he can have them," Janet said, hefting them onto a clear space on the worktable. "I thought we might as well keep each other company as we work through these."
"Good idea." Sam adjusted her piles somewhat so Janet would have more room. "Or are you just jealous that my table is bigger than your desk?"
"Well, you know, Sam, sometimes size does matter." Janet managed to say it with a straight face, only to snicker when Sam began giggling.
"Is that a subtle way to ask about Jack?" Sam asked after a few seconds.
"No, I don't need to ask. Remember all those lovely full-body examinations my nurses and I get to do before and after each mission? I know what all your teammates are packin', dear."
"And?"
Janet raised an eyebrow. "Doctor/Patient confidentiality, Captain," she said loftily, which sent them into giggles again.
Sam hadn't had this much girl-talk in, well, since she could remember. She'd been a geek in high school and a bit of a late bloomer, and she'd fast learned that the only way to get ahead in the military was to be one of the guys. She'd never missed it, but now that she knew how fun gossiping and giggling with another woman was, she'd never give it up.
"But seriously, Sam, how was the colonel today?"
Sam sighed and turned the page on the file she'd been reading before answering. "He was fine, to me. Kind of neutral. He was a bit rude to Daniel, though."
"Really?" Janet followed her lead and opened the top folder in her stack. "I hear he's been spending less time in Doctor Jackson's office and more time in the rec rooms with Mr. Teal'c."
"Yeah, he has. Daniel's a bit bewildered by it. He's trying to be a friend, and Jack is freezing him out."
"Too bad," Janet said. "I'd gotten the impression they were really close."
Jack strolled into Daniel's office, hands in his pockets, to find the archaeologist buried beneath a familiar stack of file folders, larger than the one Jack had been given. "I told you they'd get around to you, Daniel. Complaining was tempting fate. What, did you get twice the number of folders to make up for it?"
Daniel looked up and blinked owlishly. "Oh, hi, Jack." He glanced around. "No, uh, actually not. Someone apparently did a lot of planning last year back when we first got the gate running, about what kind of operations they'd be running through it. They'd already made a short list of military people they wanted here. Same with scientists. So you and Sam have fewer dossiers to go through, and since there are other officers and scientists already in the project the files you do have can be split up with other officers. But since no one really considered that archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists might be useful to the SGC, they don't have a short list-I'm having to slog through everything. And there really isn't anyone to share the burden. This is on top of the fact that as the only person trained in linguistics and anthropology, I've got to work through everything any of the teams find until I can actually wade through this stuff, find good candidates, get them hired, and get them trained. It's actually ... a bit overwhelming. I had no idea the military had this much paperwork." He looked rather forlorn as he surveyed the sea of manila.
Jack smirked. "Anybody tells you the Air Force flies on jet fuel is lying to you, Danny. Paperwork. Pure paperwork." He seated himself on a stool and glanced around. Last time Daniel had had some doodad or other on the table he could play with, but everything was buried at the moment. "Wait, train people? I thought you were looking at people who were ... already trained." Teal'c was right, he had been giving Daniel the cold shoulder and it wasn't fair to him; Jack wanted to make it up to the guy, but he couldn't bring himself to actually open up. At least not right away.
Daniel pushed his glasses up. "Well, yes, trained in linguistics and such. But I don't think they teach Goa'uld at any colleges or universities that I know of, at least not on Earth. The people I pick will have the right background, but there are some specifics about what we're dealing with that they'll have to learn before they're of much use to me. I'm sure Sam's going to run into the same thing; there's got to be a lot they've learned about physics and astrophysics that hasn't gotten into any scientific journal yet." He frowned. "Which reminds me. The people we want will be a lot easier to get if they're allowed to publish at least some of what we find. I'll have to ask Hammond if there's any way around the security issue."
"Daniel," Jack said with a wince, "I don't think that'll be possible. The paranoid security types would probably restrict so much of the information that whatever you want to print will come out gibberish."
"Oh." Daniel's face fell slightly. "I figured. They really are paranoid, aren't they?"
Jack glanced furtively around. "Shhh," he whispered theatrically, "they might be listening."
Daniel laughed. "Right. I guess it's endemic to top-secret military bases, right?"
"Yup, pretty much." Damnit, there wasn't even a pencil lying around anywhere. What the hell was he supposed to do with his hands?
"So, how's Sam doing?"
Jack's head shot up. "Fine. Why do you ask?" It came out a touch too defensively, and he cursed himself for it.
"No reason," Daniel said carefully. "Do you know she's fine because you've talked to her, or are you just assuming because she hasn't told you something's wrong?"
Busted. He fidgeted a little. Now Daniel sounded like Sara did when she was trying to get him to admit he was wrong.
Daniel apparently drew the right conclusion about his silence. "You do need to talk to her, Jack."
"I know." And Sam wasn't the only 'her' he needed to talk to.
"And not just about the Simpsons and fishing, either. She's under a lot of stress right now, and a lot of that is because she doesn't know much about you or about how you're going to handle this thing."
"I told her I'd be there for her, whatever she needed," Jack said defensively.
"You haven't been, so far," Daniel pointed out.
It took the wind out of his sails. Metaphorically speaking, that was. And why was he using naval metaphors? The closest he ever got to the water was the lake at his cabin in Minnesota, and there were no boats involved.
"I don't want to pressure you or anything," Daniel said, coming around to his side of the table. "And if you need any advice on how to talk to her, I've gotten to know her over the past couple of weeks while you've been ignoring her. And I'm ... married," he said with a glance at the picture of Sha're that had pride of place in his work area. He glanced down and bit his lip before continuing, "so I have some relationship experience-"
"I used to be married, too, y'know," Jack said in some annoyance.
Daniel nodded. "That's true," he said mildly, staring at Jack.
Okay, so the fact that he was divorced probably didn't qualify him for husband of the year.
"I know you can handle this," Daniel continued after a pause, "but if you'd like any help talking with her, I'd be glad to do whatever I can."
The slender man pushed his glasses up and watched Jack some more. What was it, the next Olympic event? Teal'c would take the gold, but Daniel was working himself up to a strong contender for the silver.
"Jack is something else bothering you?" he asked at last.
Jack debated telling him. After that wonderful spill-your-guts moment when he'd first found out, he'd been a little leery of talking about it. Well, more so than usual, anyway. Sam had been right to be mad, and his only excuse was that he'd been in a state of shock at the time and had no defenses against the persistence of his teammates, especially the geek. And it wasn't even a one-time-only event. Daniel'd managed to get practically his life's story out of Jack in the caves on Abydos.
Hell, he was probably going to find out anyway. If nothing else, he'd simply wear him down over the next few weeks; Jack couldn't remember what Daniel's middle name was from the personnel file he'd glanced at the year before, but he'd lay money on 'Persistence.' "I haven't told Sara, yet," he admitted. "I don't think she'll take it well, not this soon after ... Charlie. But I owe it to her to tell her personally, not just let her find out through the grapevine."
"Do you want me or Teal'c to come along when you tell her, for moral support? Or Sam?"
Jack's eyes widened in horror. "Hell, no. It'll be bad enough by myself. I just ... have to get off my butt and go talk to her."
"Then do it," Daniel said. "It won't get any easier."
Sam glanced up at a tentative tap at the door to find Jack standing there, fidgeting. "Come on in, Jack," she said.
"Hey." Jack glanced around the lab, and made a beeline for a magnifying glass she'd left out on a counter.
Sam watched in bemusement as he turned it over in his hands and squinted through it in a manner more reminiscent of a four year old than a forty-something year old. The way he was studiously not looking at her square on completed the illusion of a naughty child in the Principal's office. "So, how are the files going?" she asked, as it became apparent that (once again), Jack wasn't going to talk on his own.
"Well, not as fast as General Hammond might like," he said, wincing. "I can't decide if we need veterans who know how to handle themselves on Earth but have no clue how to handle aliens and scientists, or young kids we can train specifically to handle the wacky things that we're finding out there. And the eggheads, too."
Sam raised an eyebrow in amusement. "As an 'egghead,' Jack, can I say thank you for lumping us in with megalomaniac body-snatching aliens and caveman viruses? You really don't like scientists." She took pity on his distress as he realized what he'd said and waved it away. "Maybe we need some of each."
"Yeah. I thought of that," Jack said, still fiddling with the magnifying glass. "I'm giving Hammond a wide selection to choose from." He fell silent again.
Sam, figuring that since he was interrupting her work it was his job to keep the conversation going, opened the next folder. The sooner she got this done the sooner she could go back to work that was actually interesting.
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Jack played with the magnifying glass, entertaining her when she happened to glance up from the paperwork.
"Sam?" Jack said at last.
"Yeah?" she asked, not looking up.
"About Sara."
Sam froze, every muscle tensing. "As in, your ex-wife?"
"Yeah."
From Jack's voice, this wasn't any easier for him than it was for her. Sam carefully marked her place in the file she'd been reading and set it aside so she could give Jack her full attention. "What about her?"
"I have to tell her about this," Jack said, waving at her stomach and its as-yet imperceptible resident. "I have to tell her myself, in person. It wouldn't be fair to her to have her find out about this through the grapevine."
Sam nodded. She'd tried to avoid thinking about this. "Yeah."
"I'd rather do this sooner than later," Jack went on. "Would you mind if I told her about this over the weekend?"
"No, that sounds fine," Sam said, looking down. "Do you want me to come along?"
"No, thanks," Jack said. "I think I need to do this by myself."
Jack pulled up to a stop in front of the two-story suburban house and stared straight ahead. This was not going to be pretty. He just hoped Sara's dad wasn't there; the older man had never thought he was good enough for his little girl. Well, Jack couldn't really argue that point, but having him hang around sure as hell wasn't going to make this any easier.
He sighed and got out of the car, and made his way over the treacherous snow to her front door. Shoveling the snow had been his job, when he was home during winter; Sara hated the cold. The only thing that had reconciled her to the Springs was that his posting to Peterson-that had been before the SGC, of course-meant he was no longer in covert ops and had been supposed to last a long time, long enough to buy a house and settle down. The only thing that could have kept her in the area, now that his career was no longer a consideration for her, was Charlie's grave.
He knocked on what had once been his front door, and steeled himself to the task ahead of him. After a few minutes, he heard feet behind the door and a lock being turned. Sara opened the door and stood there before him, just as beautiful as he remembered her.
When she saw who it was, she frowned in suspicion and looked him up and down. "You're not some weird clone thing that is going to start shooting off electricity, are you?" she asked suspiciously.
"No." The carefully planned speech froze in his throat. They stood there staring at each other while he tried to figure out what to do next. "Your walk needs shoveling," he said at last.
Sara frowned, a pinched look covering her face. "We are not getting back together, Jack," she said.
"I know," he replied quietly.
She studied him some more. "You know where the shovel is." She disappeared back into the house. Jack went around to the side of the house, grabbed the shovel, and got to work.
When he was finished he knocked on the door again. Sara had been expecting him, for she opened the door quickly and handed him a mug of hot coffee as she gestured silently for him to come in. When they were seated in the living room he glanced around, stalling for time. She'd repainted, he saw, and though the furniture was mostly the same it had all been rearranged ...
"Okay, Jack," Sara said, interrupting his thoughts. "Thanks for shoveling the snow. What's this visit about?"
Jack looked down at his cocoa. "I'm seeing someone," he said quietly. As the silence stretched out, he played with the mug she'd given him. He didn't recognize it.
"I kind of figured," Sara said. He looked up to find her staring out the window blinking rapidly. "What's she like?"
He considered what to tell her. "She's in the Air Force. A captain. She's an astrophysicist; works in Cheyenne doing Deep Space Radar Telemetry."
"A captain?" Sara asked in some surprise. "So she's younger than ...." She trailed off, and Jack winced internally. Yeah, she was younger than Sara was, and women were sensitive about that; he shouldn't have mentioned Sam's rank. "An astrophysicist, you say? Well, you always did love astronomy and such things. I suppose you two have some fun with that telescope of yours."
Jack studied his coffee some more. If he didn't say anything, he couldn't say the wrong thing again.
"So, she's smart," Sara said, evidently deciding that she needed more detail. "What else is she like? Does she have a good sense of humor? Is she nice? Does she have any family? What's her name? What does she look like? What's her favorite color, for God's sake!"
Jack sighed. "She can be funny, and she can also be very enthusiastic. Blonde, blue-eyed,"
"Tall and leggy?" Sara interrupted.
"Yeah." Jack gave a short nod.
Sara gave a mirthless laugh. "Why am I not surprised. Go on."
"Her dad's Air Force. She likes blue jell, but she won't eat the red kind." Jack paused. There really wasn't any good way to say this. "And she's pregnant."
"Pregnant?" Sara stopped abruptly and bit her lip, staring at him. "God, you really didn't waste any time replacing me and Charlie, did you?"
"What?" Jack yelped, so angry and ashamed it felt like a physical pain in his chest. "No, wait, Sara, it wasn't anything like that. God, we were married for over a decade! No one could take your place, and sure as hell no one could take Charlie's. Do you really think that little of me?"
"Well, that's sure what it looks like from this angle!" Sara shot back. "The divorce was finalized what, four months ago? And you've already replaced me with the newer, smarter model and not only that, you've knocked her up already. Well, I'm sorry to interrupt your game of happy families, Jack, but the wounds are still a little too raw for me to smile and say 'congratulations.'"
"It's not like that," Jack repeated. "We didn't plan this, it just sort of happened. I didn't approach her; she came to me." From what little he remembered through the haze the virus had left, that was true. "And it wasn't supposed to develop into anything serious." He clamped his mouth shut. That was all more than Sara needed to know. They weren't married any more. He was not cheating on her. He did not have to justify his actions to her.
"So what was it, a one night stand?"
Jack tried to keep his face still but after years of marriage Sara knew him too well. "It was, wasn't it?" she said in wonder. "I never figured you for that type." She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window.
The silence stretched out and Jack began to fidget. He wasn't about to break it; there were too many things he could say wrong. He didn't want to hurt her, but it seemed like that was all he'd done to her for the past two years. It was why he hadn't contested the separation and divorce. He'd wanted to stop hurting her more than anything else, and giving her the divorce she'd asked for had been the only way he could see to do that, even though it had felt like it tore his newly rediscovered heart out. "I'm sorry, Sara," he said at last. "I never meant to hurt you."
"I know," she said, still looking out the window, blinking back tears. "I'm sorry, too. About a lot of things. Including what I said just now. It was cruel and uncalled for. Thank you for telling me, and I hope you will both be very happy. I'd like to be left alone, now."
Jack put his mug down, knowing that Sara would not accept any comfort he could give her; not now. It wasn't his right, any more. God, he wished it was. But all he could do was leave her to her grief in peace. "I'm sorry, Sara," he said again.
He let himself out the door. Once back in his truck, he rested his forehead on the ice-cold steering wheel for a while before starting up the car and driving away.
Sam stood in the briefing room overlooking the gateroom and watched her former team go through the Gate without her. She rubbed her stomach. "Well, guess it's just you and me, kid," she murmured, trying to suppress the green-eyed monster. As the wormhole shut down, she sighed and turned towards the stairs.
The nice thing about Stargate travel was that even when the weather in Colorado Springs was nasty, you could step through the gate to P-whatever and find yourself in a paradise like this. It said something about his life that he was more relaxed on an unknown alien planet than he was back on Earth. He wasn't sure what it said, but it said something. Jack soaked in the sun while Daniel and Teal'c discussed something about Greece, and health, and the natives. Well, actually, Daniel did most of the talking and T said stuff like "indeed" a lot. Still, the Jaffa was talking more than he had when Sam had been on the team.
A pretty young brunette was giving him the eye. He gave her a brief grimace that might have passed for a smile if one were charitable, and dragged his attention back to the mission. "Um ...do things feel a little ... 'off' here?"
Daniel frowned at him. "Are you crazy? It's a paradise."
"Yeah, sure, have an apple. What could happen?" Jack glanced around at the happy, healthy villagers. Yep, this was definitely too good to be true. The brunette had given up watching him and started over towards him with a dish of some kind.
"Uh, Jack, aren't you being a little negative, here?" Daniel asked.
Jack shot him a glance. "No." He turned his attention to the brunette, who was now standing before him.
"I am Kynthia," she said with a smile directed only at him. "Welcome to our village."
Jack glanced at his teammates. He supposed there was no need to be rude. "Thank you. Jack O'Neill," he introduced himself. "That's Daniel Jackson with the hair, and Teal'c without it." He gestured at them in the hopes she would transfer some of her attention to them; he had enough trouble dealing with women lately, he didn't want more.
Kynthia smiled at them both briefly, but returned her focus to Jack. She uncovered the dish she held, revealing some bread-like ... stuff. She offered it to him.
"No thanks," he said, which seemed to disappoint her.
"Jack, we don't want to refuse their hospitality," Daniel put in.
Jack shot him a glance, but shrugged and took a piece. Daniel was the cultural expert, after all. Jack took a bite and flashed a smile at the girl.
"It is pleasing?" Kynthia asked hopefully.
"Very," Jack replied. Again, she was singling him out. "You should have some," he said to Daniel.
Kynthia moved the tray before Daniel could take any. "It is only for you," she told Jack, giving him the dish. She walked back to the group of women she'd been standing with and a lot of giggling began. That was never a good sign, when grown women started giggling like teens.
"'Only for you'?" Daniel repeated. "Jack, it sounds like she's taken quite a liking to you. Uh ..."
"I know, Daniel," Jack said. "Don't worry. Given the situation back home I'm not going to pull a Captain Kirk, here."
"Who is this 'Captain Kirk' you speak of?" Teal'c asked.
"A character on an old TV show," Jack explained. "He liked to fool around with the native girls." This cake was really good. Really, really good. He ate more, dimly aware that Daniel was nattering away about television off to his right. It seemed to be coming from a long ways away. And he knew he should probably be a bit worried about the way his vision was becoming blurred around the edges, but just couldn't work up the effort. Carefully, he put the dish down next to him. He eyed the piece left over, but decided not to eat it. Maybe not such a good idea.
He glanced up at nearby movement, and saw some local beauties crowding round. "Hello, girls," he said as they moved him to another bench. Nice view. Lots of pretty girls. Oh, look, there was the one who offered him the cake. Dancing. Sweet.
Sam knew there was no real need for her presence in the control room for every incoming wormhole. However as the foremost expert in Gate technology, and one of the most experienced officers in offworld travel currently on the planet (not that that necessarily meant much given that the SGC had only been in operation a few months), she figured it was justified. Not that SG-1 were expected back any time soon (they'd only been gone a few hours out of a two-day recon), but she hated when they were offworld without her. So when the offworld activation sirens went off, she headed for the Gate room immediately.
She made it just in time to see Daniel walk through the Stargate, alone.
"Doctor Jackson, where are your teammates?" General Hammond asked through the microphone.
"They're okay," Daniel said, but Sam knew him well enough to know that wasn't the whole truth even from a story above him. "Teal'c and Jack are ... building ties with the natives. We just wanted to get this analyzed." He held up a standard sample container.
"Analyzed for what, Doctor?"
Daniel shrugged. "I'm not really sure, General. Some kind of drug or narcotic, probably."
"Very well. Take it to Doctor Frasier and get it and yourself checked out."
"Me?" Daniel frowned. "I'm fine, sir."
"You're probably right," General Hammond replied. "But as a new policy, no goes through the Stargate-either way-without a thorough examination. We don't want to take any chances."
Daniel was avoiding her. He'd managed to use his post-mission exam as an excuse to dodge her questions about the mission, then slipped into the locker room where Sam couldn't follow. The more uncomfortable he got and the more evasions he made, the more worried and suspicious she got. Sam was still trying to figure out how to make him talk when General Hammond showed up. Daniel was soon back in the infirmary to answer his questions, and Sam figured that was as good a way as any to find out what was going on.
"Doctor Jackson, would you mind telling me why Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c were the ones to stay and make friends with the natives while the SGC's best language and cultural expert was sent back with samples?"
Sam couldn't quite see General Hammond's face from where she stood, behind and to his left. She could, however, see Daniel's face, and he would never make it as a poker player. Something was wrong, and from the way he kept glancing at her it was something he didn't want to tell her. If Jack or Teal'c were injured or in physical danger he would have said something, already. Which left ... what?
"Jack was ... getting to know one of the Argosians better," Daniel said hesitantly. "We didn't want to ... interrupt that. Teal'c and I were just sort of standing around watching things. And if something does ... go wrong, somehow, Teal'c would be better able to ..."
It was odd to watch the normally articulate Daniel flounder so much. "You think the Argosians might be hostile?" Sam asked. Combat was the only situation she could think of where Teal'c would be of more use than Daniel.
"No, no." Daniel shook his head. "The Argosians are peaceful; I doubt they'd have any idea how to fight even if they wanted to."
"You think a Goa'uld might come?" General Hammond asked.
"I doubt it. None of them can remember the last time Pelops came. Pelops was their Goa'uld. We don't think there's any danger, we just wanted to be on the safe side."
We. In all that fumbling, Daniel hadn't mentioned Jack giving an order. She'd only been on a few missions with Jack O'Neill, but he never made decisions by committee. The click of heels announced Janet's presence in the room. Her frown was ... not reassuring.
"We have the preliminary analysis of that pastry you asked for, Doctor Jackson," she said.
"And?" Daniel asked.
"There were indeed narcotic substances in it." Janet opened the file and flipped through it. "Some we can't identify, but one was a close analogue to ketamine hydrochloride. Without further testing, we can't tell exactly what they would all do to a human, precisely, but the Ketamine-analogue would probably act much the same."
"Ketamine, that sounds familiar," Sam said, trying to place it.
"It's an anaesthetic that can be used for humans but is more commonly used for animals," Janet said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Veterinary offices are frequently robbed for it, though, because it is one of the three major date-rape drugs. That's probably why you've heard of it."
Sam could feel the blood drain from her face, putting the pieces together. No wonder Daniel couldn't look her in the eye.
"What are the symptoms?" Daniel asked. He looked slightly pale. Damn right, he should be, Sam told herself. To let someone drug Jack, then take him off somewhere and ... She couldn't finish the thought.
Janet shrugged. "Again, without further testing, there's no way of knowing just how similarly this thing affects humans. But Ketamine can cause hallucinations, memory problems, distorted perceptions, sense, time, and identity; impaired motor control, problems breathing, lack of self-control, slurred speech, aggressive behavior, etc." She turned to Daniel. "Doctor Jackson, is there any particular reason you wanted me to analyze this?"
Daniel looked miserable. "One of the Argosian women gave that cake to Jack. She said it was only for him. A little later she took him inside one of their buildings. Teal'c and I thought he might be acting kind of odd, but it wasn't anything too obvious."
Sam listened to all this, feeling sick to her stomach. Oh, God. Since the meeting with the Shavadai, she'd had to think long and hard about the risks she took, as a woman, going through the Gate. Risks that (she thought) her male co-workers didn't share. Now ... that wasn't a safe assumption to make. And Jack ... she cringed to think of what he must be going through.
Even from the back, Sam could tell that General Hammond was about to blow a fuse. "Do you mean to tell me that you allowed those people to drug and kidnap one of my men? And after that, you don't think they're hostile?"
"General, it wasn't exactly like that," Daniel protested. "It wasn't obvious at all that Jack had been drugged. In fact, if it weren't for a comment he made just prior to being given the cake, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. He was talking and walking just fine. Second, the Argosians have no contact with anyone outside their own culture, and they all seemed to know what was going on. They spend a great deal of time partying, from what we could see, and we were trying to be courteous."
Sam listened to Daniel trying to justify himself, temper rising. She looked away, concentrating on reigning herself in. Jumping all over Daniel wouldn't help anything, he was obviously worried himself, and Hammond (as a General) had first crack at yelling at him anyway.
"It may not have occurred to them that none of us would know what was in that pastry," Daniel continued, shaking his head. "I have to get back to Teal'c, tell him what's happened."
"That's right," General Hammond snapped. "And you're taking SG-3 with you."
The archaeologist blinked. "I don't know if the Marines are really necessary, General; from what we saw, these people don't do much besides party. They didn't even seem to work. Even if they do become hostile, I doubt we'd have trouble dealing with them."
"Hostile, Doctor Jackson? I'd say they're already hostile. And if, as you say, they don't think anything's wrong with their behavior, then maybe they need to be told otherwise. And I think the Marines will give the message a certain point, even if they don't have to do anything."
"Daniel, it can't hurt and it might be a very good thing," Sam said, heading him off. "Better safe than sorry when someone's safety is at stake." That came out a little harsher than she intended, but under the circumstances she thought she was entitled to it. Sam would take anger over fear any day; experience had taught her it was less likely to paralyze you. And Daniel saw the world through rose-colored glasses, sometimes ignoring harsh realities. If he weren't so idealistic, so convinced that everyone was good until proven otherwise, maybe Jack wouldn't have been hurt. She breathed a quick prayer that this would all turn out to be a misunderstanding, and that Jack would be just fine.
"Well, whoever's going, I want Colonel O'Neill brought back to base as soon as possible," Janet said. "I'm not familiar with the effects the Ketamine-analogue would have, much less any of the other unidentified substances. If they're consumed regularly by these people they probably aren't too toxic, but it never hurts to be sure."
Hammond nodded. "Of course, Doctor."
Daniel shrugged and nodded. "Okay, but I want to leave as soon as possible. How long to get them briefed and geared up?"
"Not long," Hammond said grimly. "Is there anything else I need to know about the situation on P3X-8596?"
Daniel thought for a second, then shook his head. General Hammond nodded to her and Janet and strode over to the phone mounted on the wall. A few minutes later, Harriman's voice came over the loudspeakers, calling SG-3 to gear up for a mission.
Sam watched Daniel gather his gear. "So, you were avoiding me to spare my feelings," she said. "Jack was with another woman, and you were covering for him."
He looked up at her and blinked, as if he'd forgotten her there. "Yeah ... yeah I guess so," he said, putting on his vest.
"Next time, don't," Sam said. She paused, biting her lip. It wasn't really Daniel's fault, or at least it probably wasn't. He had come back with the cake the minute he thought something was wrong; she shouldn't be too harsh on him. "It was obvious you were trying to hide something," she said in a more even voice, "and that worried me. And I'd rather know what's going on than wonder. And be afraid."
"Right." Daniel shifted uneasily and glanced at the door. "I'd better get to the briefing room so we can leave as soon as possible."
Sam nodded. "I know."
Daniel started for the door.
"And Daniel?"
He paused, looking back at her.
"Take care of him."
About twenty minutes after SG-3 and Daniel left for Argos, they dialed back. Sam had been studying some of the raw, unprocessed read-outs from the Gate interface. They were still pretty much guessing when it came to interpreting a lot of the signals the Gate sent to the dialing computer they'd cobbled together, and Sam wasn't sure if they'd ever figure it all out. Still, every little bit helped-and it kept her in the control room while waiting for SG-1.
The iris was open, but no one stepped through. The radio crackled to life. "This is Colonel Makepeace. I need to talk with the General and Doctor Frasier."
A hundred worst-case scenarios danced through Sam's head. She bit her lip.
General Hammond waved at someone to get Janet. "Someone's getting the doctor, Colonel," he said into the mike. "What do you need?"
"Colonel O'Neill is unconscious, as are all the Argosians," Makepeace replied. "We can't wake anyone. According to Teal'c, they all went to sleep at sunset, a little over thirty minutes ago. It could be some kind of drug, or it could be some kind of virus. After our last encounter with an alien bug, I didn't want to take any chances without asking you and consulting the doc first."
Sam let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Unconscious wasn't good, but things could be a lot worse. A lot worse.
"Good thinking, Colonel," Hammond replied. He glanced aside. "Doctor Frasier's here. Could you tell her what you told me?"
Sam was startled; she'd been so intent on the radio conversation that she hadn't noticed Janet's entrance.
"When we arrived on Argos, we found everyone but Teal'c asleep," Makepeace said. "According to him, everyone lay down simultaneously either inside or outside as the sun set. We can't wake anybody by noise, shaking them, or even dumping cold water on them. We can't even get them to stir. Is it safe to bring Colonel O'Neill back, or could this be something contagious?"
"It could be," Janet replied, leaning into the mike. "Chances are it's not, however. Ketamine is a strong sedative, and if these people ate it or something like it, it's not surprising you're having trouble waking them. Doctor Jackson's blood-work when he came back through didn't show any anomalies, either. And ... you said they all lay down at the same time, Teal'c?"
"That is correct, Doctor Frasier." Teal'c's bass rumble came over the speakers.
Janet shook her head. "I've never seen or heard of a virus striking with that amount of simultaneity. Or a drug, for that matter. I'd say it's probably safe enough to bring the Colonel back through the Gate. To be on the safe side I want everybody-especially Colonel O'Neill-to wear a breath mask, and I'll want you all to take a disinfectant shower immediately and put Colonel O'Neill in an isolation room." She looked over at Hammond and raised an eyebrow.
He nodded. "Agreed."
"General, I think Daniel and Teal'c should stay there and see if there's anything on the planet that could cause this, if Janet doesn't think it's strictly medical," Sam said. "There could be some kind of device or something that would explain why they all fell unconscious at the same time. It's possible the drug makes you more susceptible."
"I suppose anything's possible," Janet said dubiously. "If nothing else, I might want samples of their food and drink and other contaminants. If that turns out to be the case, it would save time and effort to have them readily available."
"That sounds reasonable," Hammond said. He leaned back over to the microphone. "SG-3 will bring Colonel O'Neill through with breath masks and full decontamination procedures. Doctor Jackson and Teal'c, I'd like you to stay behind and look for anything else that might be related to this problem. Doctor Frasier would like samples for analysis, and Captain Carter believes there might be a device hidden somewhere that could account for the concurrent collapses."
"Yes, sir."
"Well," Janet said, "sounds like I need to go prepare."
Sam had finished the set of readouts she'd been working on and gone back to the various projects in her lab. Not that she expected to get all that much done, distracted as she was, but she needed something to occupy her mind while waiting for Janet to finish her first round of tests. The doctor had promised to call her as soon as she had anything, no matter how insignificant. They were keeping Jack in the isolation lab they'd had Kawalsky's surgery in, with the large windows from the observation area, and Sam wished she dared go there to watch over him. But she was on duty and she knew what kind of gossip that would cause, especially as they were no longer teammates, and she couldn't stand that, not as emotionally fragile as she felt.
Her phone rang, and she knocked over her stool in her haste. "Carter."
"Sam?" It was Janet. "I've found something in Colonel O'Neill's blood that I'm not quite sure how to identify."
"I'll be right there."
Sam entered the Infirmary and looked around for Janet, who'd evidently been waiting for her.
"Hey, Sam," she said with a tight smile. "I have something to show you."
Janet led her through the main infirmary to a smaller lab room and sat down at a computer.
"What is it?" Sam asked, joining her.
Janet sighed. "I'm not sure. First I ran a routine check for antibodies...nothing. So then I thought, all right, maybe this alien bug found a way to hide from the immune system, so I ran a protein analysis." She gestured at the screen. "Take a look at what I found."
Sam frowned at it. Most of it was, as far as she could tell anyway, fairly normal for a blood sample. Due to the dyes, it was orange-yellow instead of red. What caught her attention were a number of small, identical objects. Janet hit a key to magnify it, and Sam blinked in surprise to see that all of them were perfectly regular triangles. In her admittedly limited biology experience, she'd never seen anything like it. "Wow. What is it?"
"Something we don't have a word for ... yet." Janet shook her head. "I'm going to need blood samples from the Argosians for comparison. Frankly, I have no idea what I'm dealing with yet, how it works or even what it does."
Fourteen hours later, Sam sat in the briefing room and waited impatiently for Daniel and Teal'c to be medically cleared for the briefing. They'd sent the blood samples back as requested, but had stayed on Argos to look around some more. They'd apparently found something of interest. After what seemed like hours (but was less than fifteen minutes), the pair showed up with Janet in tow. Sam gave each a brief smile but was too distracted for more.
General Hammond was out of his office before they'd taken their seats. "All right, Doctor Jackson, what have you found?"
Daniel took a sip of his coffee; he and Teal'c had been up all night. "First, the Argosians have woken up, and they all woke up simultaneously. We found some interesting things when we talked to them."
"But, Jack is still unconscious," Sam protested. "Why is he different?"
"They don't know," Daniel said. "They all act as if what happened last night was normal. They party until sundown. Then they fall asleep and they wake when the sun rises. They've never had someone not wake up who wasn't dead, not in living memory. Which ... brings us to the most interesting part of all. Their 'living memory' isn't exactly as long as we might expect. They have no concept of 'years,' which puzzled me until Thetyes brought Dan-el to see me."
"Dan-el?" Sam asked.
"When we arrived yesterday Thetyes, an Argosian woman who appears to be about twenty years old, was in labor in the temple the Stargate sits inside. They didn't have a midwife there, so I helped deliver the baby, and they named him after me. Except ... he's not a baby anymore. If I had to judge how old he was just by looking at him, I'd say he was at least a year old, possibly two. He looks and acts like a normal toddler, but he's only a day old. Thetys says that she's twenty days old, not twenty years. Kynthia, the woman who gave Jack that cake, is thirty-one days old. By the way, that cake is the traditional wedding cake of the Argosians; by accepting it, according to their law, he married Kynthia. She'd assumed that he understood what it was she was offering, and is upset that he didn't."
Sam tried to keep her hurt off her face. After all, Jack hadn't known what the cake meant when he took it, and even if he had, she'd turned him down when he'd asked to marry her. Sure, they'd met for dinner a few times but that was to get to know each other for the baby's sake. There was no commitment made on either side. She did have an urge to hit this Kynthia woman, though. Hard. Thirty-one days old or not, if she didn't know how to act responsibly in a relationship she shouldn't go around propositioning people.
"Doctor Jackson, that's impossible," Janet said, and Sam forced her attention back to the briefing. "No one can grow to maturity in only twenty days. The human body simply is not capable of such rapid development."
Daniel shrugged. "In this case, there are extenuating circumstances. The Argosians have no written language of their own, but there is an inscription on the base of the statue of their 'god' Pelops in the temple that Teal'c calls an obscure dialect of Goa'uld but is actually a variant on the linear-A script of ancient Greece and Crete, which is exciting because we've never been able to translate it-"
"Doctor Jackson, I'm sure that's fascinating," General Hammond interrupted, "but what does it have to do with the problem at hand?"
Daniel blinked at the interruption. "It was a kind of a combination lock which," he gestured at the alien sitting beside him, "Teal'c was able to open. Inside we found this device." He set an inscribed tablet and a stone on the briefing room table. "It's apparently some kind of Goa'uld book. You 'turn the page' by moving this stone over the surface." He demonstrated it, and sure enough the inscriptions changed. Sam leaned forward, fascinated by the technology and itching to take it apart.
"What does it say?" General Hammond asked.
"The Argosians believe that they were so favored by Pelops that he brought them across the stars to the garden they now inhabit. They call themselves the 'Chosen.' Well, Pelops did choose them, but not just for a life of luxury. I think Pelops brought humans there to be lab rats. From what we've been able to translate so far he wanted to know how humans evolve, so he shortened the life span to about 1/250th of normal."
"So," Sam said, "instead of having to wait a hundred thousand years to see how human physiology evolves, he could do it in a hundred?" She sat back in disbelief.
"That is correct," Teal'c said. Sam turned to him in surprise; she'd almost forgotten he was in the room. "Pelops wanted to determine what the human host body would become in the future, and perhaps accelerate the process."
"How did he do it?" Janet asked incredulously. "Was it some form of genetic alteration?"
"We do not know. It is an archaic dialect." With that, Teal'c sat back in his chair, having made his contribution to the meeting.
Sam noticed that Daniel was very carefully not looking at her. "Daniel?"
He sighed. "Okay ... I didn't want to say this till I was absolutely sure but ... I think he may have created some kind of virus ... and viruses are often spread through bodily contact."
"Some are, and some are passed by other means," Janet said. "But I've already run every test I know on the Colonel, and he doesn't have a virus in him. I'm not sure what the substance in his blood is, it's not a virus."
"But whatever it is, he got it through bodily contact," Daniel pointed out. "Teal'c and I spent a lot longer there than he did, and we're both fine. SG-3 didn't pick it up when they were on Argos, either."
"What I find most disturbing about this whole thing," Janet said, "is the fact that he has far more of that stuff in his blood than is in any of the Argosian samples."
"If they age twenty years in twenty days, what happens when they reach fifty days?" Sam asked, appalled. "Or a hundred?"
Daniel winced and wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Oh, my God," Sam said, sinking back in her chair. It wasn't an exclamation. And they though the stuff that was in Jack was the same stuff that made the Argosians age so rapidly? That meant her child would grow up without a father. Jack would be dead of old age before she'd even reached the third trimester, much less given birth. She blinked back tears and studied the ceiling, trying desperately to keep from breaking down in the middle of a briefing.
Part 4/5
Part 5/5
Part 2/5
"He was so different from last time," Sam said into the phone cradled in her shoulder. "I just couldn't believe it." She really needed more furniture; the recliner was comfy, but she just wanted to stretch out on a nice big couch right now.
"I wonder why he was so different," Janet mused. "Is something bothering him?"
"How should I know? I'm only carrying his baby. Why should he talk to me?" Sam grimaced and shifted the phone to the other side. "I'm sorry, didn't mean to take that out on you. It was just so frustrating. It's like he expects me to be a mind reader and pick up what he wants by osmosis. Okay, I've figured out that abortion's really unthinkable to him. I get that. I'm not going to have one. I told him that. I apologized for suggesting it; he's still giving me the cold shoulder. At least, I assume that's why he wasn't talking tonight. I mean, sometimes he was almost fine. But then he'd go right back into silent mode! When Daniel said he doesn't talk, I thought he was exaggerating. Jack O'Neill has a smart remark for everything, right? No, Daniel was right on target. Jack O'Neill doesn't talk about anything important. And I'm getting sick of it!" Her voice had risen to a shrill high that even Sam barely recognized. Oh, God, were the dreaded pregnancy hormone swings she'd heard about starting to kick in?
"Honey, I don't know what his problem is, but there is no man on God's green earth who is worth getting that worked up over," came Janet's voice over the phone. "If he's going to be a moody bastard, well, you can't change that. But you do have to take care of yourself and the baby."
"I know," Sam admitted, feeling drained and fighting for composure. She was a scientist! A military officer! She'd always prided herself on being as tough as any man she'd come up against, and not a weepy woman. You had to be, to make it in the military. And here she was, turning into the thing she'd always scorned. It was a sad comeuppance.
"You know, maybe he'll get better again," Janet continued. "Maybe he'll turn into a devoted partner and father. Maybe not. But whatever he does, you can't let him get you down. You're a strong woman, Sam, and a smart one. You can handle this. I'll be here for you, and so will Doctor Jackson, no matter what happens."
"Thanks, Janet," Sam admitted. "That means a lot to me." She glanced at the VCR. Was it that late already? On cue, she fought back a yawn. "And speaking of taking care of myself, it's time to get myself and baby off to bed."
"See you tomorrow."
Jack and Teal'c wandered into the cafeteria the next morning to find, as had become usual, Sam and Daniel already there, talking earnestly. Jack wondered what the big guy at his back thought of all this; Teal'c had said little, so far, but Jack knew he observed everything that went on around him. They grabbed their breakfast, and Jack raised an eyebrow at the sheer amount of food on T's tray. Besides large portions of waffles, scrambled eggs, and sausage, he had a mound of fruit and several biscuits. How he ate like that and kept from turning into a blimp had been a question Jack had wondered about since the first time he'd seen the guy eat.
They sat down at the table with their fellow teammates and the three humans watched with a bit of disbelief as Teal'c began attacking his mound of food with a single-minded determination unmatched by most teenage boys.
After a brief silence, Daniel spoke up. "So, how are you doing, Jack?"
"Fine," Jack said, taking a bite of his waffles. "Hammond's given me a stack of personnel folders as thick as I am tall to look over-they're really trying to find people they can bring in."
"I know," Sam said. "They've got a stack of dossiers like that of civilian scientists for me, too. They were waiting for me in my lab, when I got in this morning. Wonder why they all came at once like that?"
"Oh, I gave up pondering the mysteries of the military bureaucracy years ago, Captain."
"Y'know, we do need some more anthropologists and linguistics specialists, too," Daniel pointed out. "That is, if they really are serious about doing cultural studies of the worlds we encounter. Even just to translate the stuff the teams are starting to find to see if it's worth further study, we need more people."
"Don't feel left out, Danny boy," Jack said. It came out a little snider than he'd intended. "I'm sure that as the biggest and best language geek on base, you'll get your very own pile of personnel folders soon enough, whenever they figure out they really do need more geeks. Good luck." He could feel Teal'c's eyes on him, and studiously did not look at the man to his left. He couldn't miss Sam's glare, however, as she was seated across from him.
"Do you have anybody in mind that you'd specifically like to have?" Sam asked him. "If so, you can tell General Hammond, and he can start the recruiting process in motion."
Daniel hesitated. "Well, I burned most of my bridges pretty thoroughly before Catherine Langford recruited me for this project. A lot of the top people I'd like to have wouldn't listen to any offer from me even if they got security clearance. Robert Rothman might be interested, though; he was one of my grad students, and while he didn't buy my theories, he didn't really mind them, either."
Teal'c was great at Ping-Pong. Better than Jack was, usually. He approached the game with the same absolute dedication he gave to everything; Jack was therefore surprised than usual when Teal'c spoke in the middle of a set.
"You should not take your frustrations with Captain Carter out on Daniel Jackson."
"What?" The alien had spoken up at just the right moment, too, Jack grumbled to himself as he retrieved the ball. If he'd said anything about it, though, T would probably give him some inscrutable reply that a mere observation shouldn't have been enough to break his focus on the game. He retrieved the ball from the corner it had bounced to-that was the one thing about uniform gray concrete walls and floor; they made the ping-pong ball stand out.
"Whatever unhappiness or anger you feel about the way Captain Carter is handling the situation you both have found yourselves in, and whatever problems you have with yourself, you should not make Daniel Jackson bear the brunt of them," Teal'c explained patiently, waiting for him to serve again. "You undermine the unity of our team when you do so."
"I'm not taking it out on Daniel!" Jack frowned as Teal'c just watched him impassively. "Okay, so, maybe a little. It's just ... he's annoying me all on his own, besides Sam." He served the ball.
They continued with the game in silence for a few minutes, but Jack could feel Teal'c waiting for him to say more. It was a very effective interrogation tactic, he realized. But, what the hell. Even he needed to talk to someone sometime, and with Kawalsky dead and Lou Ferreti busy with his first command, Teal'c was the only friend he had with clearance that he could talk to about this.
"It's just, almost every time I see either one on base, they're together, chattering away like there's no one else in the world," Jack admitted.
"They are both quite voluble about many subjects," Teal'c said.
"Yeah. And they both keep trying to pester me about how I feel about everything."
There was silence as Teal'c considered this. Just when Jack thought the conversation was over, he spoke up again. "As the mother of your child, Captain Carter deserves your confidences, and requires them. As one of your closest friends, Daniel Jackson sincerely wishes to help you in this difficult time. And if you were to confide in them as they need and deserve, perhaps they would not then need to support each other, and you would have less cause to be jealous."
"I'm not jealous!" Jack missed the ball and threw his racket down on the table. Teal'c merely raised an eyebrow at him in silence.
"So, how has he been today so far?"
Sam looked up from the stack of reports she was diligently working through with a grin. "Hey, Janet." The petite doctor had a stack of files cradled in her arm that looked suspiciously familiar. "They have you doing personnel evaluations, too, huh? Jack and I both have them, but Daniel doesn't and he was jealous."
"Well, if he wants mine he can have them," Janet said, hefting them onto a clear space on the worktable. "I thought we might as well keep each other company as we work through these."
"Good idea." Sam adjusted her piles somewhat so Janet would have more room. "Or are you just jealous that my table is bigger than your desk?"
"Well, you know, Sam, sometimes size does matter." Janet managed to say it with a straight face, only to snicker when Sam began giggling.
"Is that a subtle way to ask about Jack?" Sam asked after a few seconds.
"No, I don't need to ask. Remember all those lovely full-body examinations my nurses and I get to do before and after each mission? I know what all your teammates are packin', dear."
"And?"
Janet raised an eyebrow. "Doctor/Patient confidentiality, Captain," she said loftily, which sent them into giggles again.
Sam hadn't had this much girl-talk in, well, since she could remember. She'd been a geek in high school and a bit of a late bloomer, and she'd fast learned that the only way to get ahead in the military was to be one of the guys. She'd never missed it, but now that she knew how fun gossiping and giggling with another woman was, she'd never give it up.
"But seriously, Sam, how was the colonel today?"
Sam sighed and turned the page on the file she'd been reading before answering. "He was fine, to me. Kind of neutral. He was a bit rude to Daniel, though."
"Really?" Janet followed her lead and opened the top folder in her stack. "I hear he's been spending less time in Doctor Jackson's office and more time in the rec rooms with Mr. Teal'c."
"Yeah, he has. Daniel's a bit bewildered by it. He's trying to be a friend, and Jack is freezing him out."
"Too bad," Janet said. "I'd gotten the impression they were really close."
Jack strolled into Daniel's office, hands in his pockets, to find the archaeologist buried beneath a familiar stack of file folders, larger than the one Jack had been given. "I told you they'd get around to you, Daniel. Complaining was tempting fate. What, did you get twice the number of folders to make up for it?"
Daniel looked up and blinked owlishly. "Oh, hi, Jack." He glanced around. "No, uh, actually not. Someone apparently did a lot of planning last year back when we first got the gate running, about what kind of operations they'd be running through it. They'd already made a short list of military people they wanted here. Same with scientists. So you and Sam have fewer dossiers to go through, and since there are other officers and scientists already in the project the files you do have can be split up with other officers. But since no one really considered that archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists might be useful to the SGC, they don't have a short list-I'm having to slog through everything. And there really isn't anyone to share the burden. This is on top of the fact that as the only person trained in linguistics and anthropology, I've got to work through everything any of the teams find until I can actually wade through this stuff, find good candidates, get them hired, and get them trained. It's actually ... a bit overwhelming. I had no idea the military had this much paperwork." He looked rather forlorn as he surveyed the sea of manila.
Jack smirked. "Anybody tells you the Air Force flies on jet fuel is lying to you, Danny. Paperwork. Pure paperwork." He seated himself on a stool and glanced around. Last time Daniel had had some doodad or other on the table he could play with, but everything was buried at the moment. "Wait, train people? I thought you were looking at people who were ... already trained." Teal'c was right, he had been giving Daniel the cold shoulder and it wasn't fair to him; Jack wanted to make it up to the guy, but he couldn't bring himself to actually open up. At least not right away.
Daniel pushed his glasses up. "Well, yes, trained in linguistics and such. But I don't think they teach Goa'uld at any colleges or universities that I know of, at least not on Earth. The people I pick will have the right background, but there are some specifics about what we're dealing with that they'll have to learn before they're of much use to me. I'm sure Sam's going to run into the same thing; there's got to be a lot they've learned about physics and astrophysics that hasn't gotten into any scientific journal yet." He frowned. "Which reminds me. The people we want will be a lot easier to get if they're allowed to publish at least some of what we find. I'll have to ask Hammond if there's any way around the security issue."
"Daniel," Jack said with a wince, "I don't think that'll be possible. The paranoid security types would probably restrict so much of the information that whatever you want to print will come out gibberish."
"Oh." Daniel's face fell slightly. "I figured. They really are paranoid, aren't they?"
Jack glanced furtively around. "Shhh," he whispered theatrically, "they might be listening."
Daniel laughed. "Right. I guess it's endemic to top-secret military bases, right?"
"Yup, pretty much." Damnit, there wasn't even a pencil lying around anywhere. What the hell was he supposed to do with his hands?
"So, how's Sam doing?"
Jack's head shot up. "Fine. Why do you ask?" It came out a touch too defensively, and he cursed himself for it.
"No reason," Daniel said carefully. "Do you know she's fine because you've talked to her, or are you just assuming because she hasn't told you something's wrong?"
Busted. He fidgeted a little. Now Daniel sounded like Sara did when she was trying to get him to admit he was wrong.
Daniel apparently drew the right conclusion about his silence. "You do need to talk to her, Jack."
"I know." And Sam wasn't the only 'her' he needed to talk to.
"And not just about the Simpsons and fishing, either. She's under a lot of stress right now, and a lot of that is because she doesn't know much about you or about how you're going to handle this thing."
"I told her I'd be there for her, whatever she needed," Jack said defensively.
"You haven't been, so far," Daniel pointed out.
It took the wind out of his sails. Metaphorically speaking, that was. And why was he using naval metaphors? The closest he ever got to the water was the lake at his cabin in Minnesota, and there were no boats involved.
"I don't want to pressure you or anything," Daniel said, coming around to his side of the table. "And if you need any advice on how to talk to her, I've gotten to know her over the past couple of weeks while you've been ignoring her. And I'm ... married," he said with a glance at the picture of Sha're that had pride of place in his work area. He glanced down and bit his lip before continuing, "so I have some relationship experience-"
"I used to be married, too, y'know," Jack said in some annoyance.
Daniel nodded. "That's true," he said mildly, staring at Jack.
Okay, so the fact that he was divorced probably didn't qualify him for husband of the year.
"I know you can handle this," Daniel continued after a pause, "but if you'd like any help talking with her, I'd be glad to do whatever I can."
The slender man pushed his glasses up and watched Jack some more. What was it, the next Olympic event? Teal'c would take the gold, but Daniel was working himself up to a strong contender for the silver.
"Jack is something else bothering you?" he asked at last.
Jack debated telling him. After that wonderful spill-your-guts moment when he'd first found out, he'd been a little leery of talking about it. Well, more so than usual, anyway. Sam had been right to be mad, and his only excuse was that he'd been in a state of shock at the time and had no defenses against the persistence of his teammates, especially the geek. And it wasn't even a one-time-only event. Daniel'd managed to get practically his life's story out of Jack in the caves on Abydos.
Hell, he was probably going to find out anyway. If nothing else, he'd simply wear him down over the next few weeks; Jack couldn't remember what Daniel's middle name was from the personnel file he'd glanced at the year before, but he'd lay money on 'Persistence.' "I haven't told Sara, yet," he admitted. "I don't think she'll take it well, not this soon after ... Charlie. But I owe it to her to tell her personally, not just let her find out through the grapevine."
"Do you want me or Teal'c to come along when you tell her, for moral support? Or Sam?"
Jack's eyes widened in horror. "Hell, no. It'll be bad enough by myself. I just ... have to get off my butt and go talk to her."
"Then do it," Daniel said. "It won't get any easier."
Sam glanced up at a tentative tap at the door to find Jack standing there, fidgeting. "Come on in, Jack," she said.
"Hey." Jack glanced around the lab, and made a beeline for a magnifying glass she'd left out on a counter.
Sam watched in bemusement as he turned it over in his hands and squinted through it in a manner more reminiscent of a four year old than a forty-something year old. The way he was studiously not looking at her square on completed the illusion of a naughty child in the Principal's office. "So, how are the files going?" she asked, as it became apparent that (once again), Jack wasn't going to talk on his own.
"Well, not as fast as General Hammond might like," he said, wincing. "I can't decide if we need veterans who know how to handle themselves on Earth but have no clue how to handle aliens and scientists, or young kids we can train specifically to handle the wacky things that we're finding out there. And the eggheads, too."
Sam raised an eyebrow in amusement. "As an 'egghead,' Jack, can I say thank you for lumping us in with megalomaniac body-snatching aliens and caveman viruses? You really don't like scientists." She took pity on his distress as he realized what he'd said and waved it away. "Maybe we need some of each."
"Yeah. I thought of that," Jack said, still fiddling with the magnifying glass. "I'm giving Hammond a wide selection to choose from." He fell silent again.
Sam, figuring that since he was interrupting her work it was his job to keep the conversation going, opened the next folder. The sooner she got this done the sooner she could go back to work that was actually interesting.
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Jack played with the magnifying glass, entertaining her when she happened to glance up from the paperwork.
"Sam?" Jack said at last.
"Yeah?" she asked, not looking up.
"About Sara."
Sam froze, every muscle tensing. "As in, your ex-wife?"
"Yeah."
From Jack's voice, this wasn't any easier for him than it was for her. Sam carefully marked her place in the file she'd been reading and set it aside so she could give Jack her full attention. "What about her?"
"I have to tell her about this," Jack said, waving at her stomach and its as-yet imperceptible resident. "I have to tell her myself, in person. It wouldn't be fair to her to have her find out about this through the grapevine."
Sam nodded. She'd tried to avoid thinking about this. "Yeah."
"I'd rather do this sooner than later," Jack went on. "Would you mind if I told her about this over the weekend?"
"No, that sounds fine," Sam said, looking down. "Do you want me to come along?"
"No, thanks," Jack said. "I think I need to do this by myself."
Jack pulled up to a stop in front of the two-story suburban house and stared straight ahead. This was not going to be pretty. He just hoped Sara's dad wasn't there; the older man had never thought he was good enough for his little girl. Well, Jack couldn't really argue that point, but having him hang around sure as hell wasn't going to make this any easier.
He sighed and got out of the car, and made his way over the treacherous snow to her front door. Shoveling the snow had been his job, when he was home during winter; Sara hated the cold. The only thing that had reconciled her to the Springs was that his posting to Peterson-that had been before the SGC, of course-meant he was no longer in covert ops and had been supposed to last a long time, long enough to buy a house and settle down. The only thing that could have kept her in the area, now that his career was no longer a consideration for her, was Charlie's grave.
He knocked on what had once been his front door, and steeled himself to the task ahead of him. After a few minutes, he heard feet behind the door and a lock being turned. Sara opened the door and stood there before him, just as beautiful as he remembered her.
When she saw who it was, she frowned in suspicion and looked him up and down. "You're not some weird clone thing that is going to start shooting off electricity, are you?" she asked suspiciously.
"No." The carefully planned speech froze in his throat. They stood there staring at each other while he tried to figure out what to do next. "Your walk needs shoveling," he said at last.
Sara frowned, a pinched look covering her face. "We are not getting back together, Jack," she said.
"I know," he replied quietly.
She studied him some more. "You know where the shovel is." She disappeared back into the house. Jack went around to the side of the house, grabbed the shovel, and got to work.
When he was finished he knocked on the door again. Sara had been expecting him, for she opened the door quickly and handed him a mug of hot coffee as she gestured silently for him to come in. When they were seated in the living room he glanced around, stalling for time. She'd repainted, he saw, and though the furniture was mostly the same it had all been rearranged ...
"Okay, Jack," Sara said, interrupting his thoughts. "Thanks for shoveling the snow. What's this visit about?"
Jack looked down at his cocoa. "I'm seeing someone," he said quietly. As the silence stretched out, he played with the mug she'd given him. He didn't recognize it.
"I kind of figured," Sara said. He looked up to find her staring out the window blinking rapidly. "What's she like?"
He considered what to tell her. "She's in the Air Force. A captain. She's an astrophysicist; works in Cheyenne doing Deep Space Radar Telemetry."
"A captain?" Sara asked in some surprise. "So she's younger than ...." She trailed off, and Jack winced internally. Yeah, she was younger than Sara was, and women were sensitive about that; he shouldn't have mentioned Sam's rank. "An astrophysicist, you say? Well, you always did love astronomy and such things. I suppose you two have some fun with that telescope of yours."
Jack studied his coffee some more. If he didn't say anything, he couldn't say the wrong thing again.
"So, she's smart," Sara said, evidently deciding that she needed more detail. "What else is she like? Does she have a good sense of humor? Is she nice? Does she have any family? What's her name? What does she look like? What's her favorite color, for God's sake!"
Jack sighed. "She can be funny, and she can also be very enthusiastic. Blonde, blue-eyed,"
"Tall and leggy?" Sara interrupted.
"Yeah." Jack gave a short nod.
Sara gave a mirthless laugh. "Why am I not surprised. Go on."
"Her dad's Air Force. She likes blue jell, but she won't eat the red kind." Jack paused. There really wasn't any good way to say this. "And she's pregnant."
"Pregnant?" Sara stopped abruptly and bit her lip, staring at him. "God, you really didn't waste any time replacing me and Charlie, did you?"
"What?" Jack yelped, so angry and ashamed it felt like a physical pain in his chest. "No, wait, Sara, it wasn't anything like that. God, we were married for over a decade! No one could take your place, and sure as hell no one could take Charlie's. Do you really think that little of me?"
"Well, that's sure what it looks like from this angle!" Sara shot back. "The divorce was finalized what, four months ago? And you've already replaced me with the newer, smarter model and not only that, you've knocked her up already. Well, I'm sorry to interrupt your game of happy families, Jack, but the wounds are still a little too raw for me to smile and say 'congratulations.'"
"It's not like that," Jack repeated. "We didn't plan this, it just sort of happened. I didn't approach her; she came to me." From what little he remembered through the haze the virus had left, that was true. "And it wasn't supposed to develop into anything serious." He clamped his mouth shut. That was all more than Sara needed to know. They weren't married any more. He was not cheating on her. He did not have to justify his actions to her.
"So what was it, a one night stand?"
Jack tried to keep his face still but after years of marriage Sara knew him too well. "It was, wasn't it?" she said in wonder. "I never figured you for that type." She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window.
The silence stretched out and Jack began to fidget. He wasn't about to break it; there were too many things he could say wrong. He didn't want to hurt her, but it seemed like that was all he'd done to her for the past two years. It was why he hadn't contested the separation and divorce. He'd wanted to stop hurting her more than anything else, and giving her the divorce she'd asked for had been the only way he could see to do that, even though it had felt like it tore his newly rediscovered heart out. "I'm sorry, Sara," he said at last. "I never meant to hurt you."
"I know," she said, still looking out the window, blinking back tears. "I'm sorry, too. About a lot of things. Including what I said just now. It was cruel and uncalled for. Thank you for telling me, and I hope you will both be very happy. I'd like to be left alone, now."
Jack put his mug down, knowing that Sara would not accept any comfort he could give her; not now. It wasn't his right, any more. God, he wished it was. But all he could do was leave her to her grief in peace. "I'm sorry, Sara," he said again.
He let himself out the door. Once back in his truck, he rested his forehead on the ice-cold steering wheel for a while before starting up the car and driving away.
Sam stood in the briefing room overlooking the gateroom and watched her former team go through the Gate without her. She rubbed her stomach. "Well, guess it's just you and me, kid," she murmured, trying to suppress the green-eyed monster. As the wormhole shut down, she sighed and turned towards the stairs.
The nice thing about Stargate travel was that even when the weather in Colorado Springs was nasty, you could step through the gate to P-whatever and find yourself in a paradise like this. It said something about his life that he was more relaxed on an unknown alien planet than he was back on Earth. He wasn't sure what it said, but it said something. Jack soaked in the sun while Daniel and Teal'c discussed something about Greece, and health, and the natives. Well, actually, Daniel did most of the talking and T said stuff like "indeed" a lot. Still, the Jaffa was talking more than he had when Sam had been on the team.
A pretty young brunette was giving him the eye. He gave her a brief grimace that might have passed for a smile if one were charitable, and dragged his attention back to the mission. "Um ...do things feel a little ... 'off' here?"
Daniel frowned at him. "Are you crazy? It's a paradise."
"Yeah, sure, have an apple. What could happen?" Jack glanced around at the happy, healthy villagers. Yep, this was definitely too good to be true. The brunette had given up watching him and started over towards him with a dish of some kind.
"Uh, Jack, aren't you being a little negative, here?" Daniel asked.
Jack shot him a glance. "No." He turned his attention to the brunette, who was now standing before him.
"I am Kynthia," she said with a smile directed only at him. "Welcome to our village."
Jack glanced at his teammates. He supposed there was no need to be rude. "Thank you. Jack O'Neill," he introduced himself. "That's Daniel Jackson with the hair, and Teal'c without it." He gestured at them in the hopes she would transfer some of her attention to them; he had enough trouble dealing with women lately, he didn't want more.
Kynthia smiled at them both briefly, but returned her focus to Jack. She uncovered the dish she held, revealing some bread-like ... stuff. She offered it to him.
"No thanks," he said, which seemed to disappoint her.
"Jack, we don't want to refuse their hospitality," Daniel put in.
Jack shot him a glance, but shrugged and took a piece. Daniel was the cultural expert, after all. Jack took a bite and flashed a smile at the girl.
"It is pleasing?" Kynthia asked hopefully.
"Very," Jack replied. Again, she was singling him out. "You should have some," he said to Daniel.
Kynthia moved the tray before Daniel could take any. "It is only for you," she told Jack, giving him the dish. She walked back to the group of women she'd been standing with and a lot of giggling began. That was never a good sign, when grown women started giggling like teens.
"'Only for you'?" Daniel repeated. "Jack, it sounds like she's taken quite a liking to you. Uh ..."
"I know, Daniel," Jack said. "Don't worry. Given the situation back home I'm not going to pull a Captain Kirk, here."
"Who is this 'Captain Kirk' you speak of?" Teal'c asked.
"A character on an old TV show," Jack explained. "He liked to fool around with the native girls." This cake was really good. Really, really good. He ate more, dimly aware that Daniel was nattering away about television off to his right. It seemed to be coming from a long ways away. And he knew he should probably be a bit worried about the way his vision was becoming blurred around the edges, but just couldn't work up the effort. Carefully, he put the dish down next to him. He eyed the piece left over, but decided not to eat it. Maybe not such a good idea.
He glanced up at nearby movement, and saw some local beauties crowding round. "Hello, girls," he said as they moved him to another bench. Nice view. Lots of pretty girls. Oh, look, there was the one who offered him the cake. Dancing. Sweet.
Sam knew there was no real need for her presence in the control room for every incoming wormhole. However as the foremost expert in Gate technology, and one of the most experienced officers in offworld travel currently on the planet (not that that necessarily meant much given that the SGC had only been in operation a few months), she figured it was justified. Not that SG-1 were expected back any time soon (they'd only been gone a few hours out of a two-day recon), but she hated when they were offworld without her. So when the offworld activation sirens went off, she headed for the Gate room immediately.
She made it just in time to see Daniel walk through the Stargate, alone.
"Doctor Jackson, where are your teammates?" General Hammond asked through the microphone.
"They're okay," Daniel said, but Sam knew him well enough to know that wasn't the whole truth even from a story above him. "Teal'c and Jack are ... building ties with the natives. We just wanted to get this analyzed." He held up a standard sample container.
"Analyzed for what, Doctor?"
Daniel shrugged. "I'm not really sure, General. Some kind of drug or narcotic, probably."
"Very well. Take it to Doctor Frasier and get it and yourself checked out."
"Me?" Daniel frowned. "I'm fine, sir."
"You're probably right," General Hammond replied. "But as a new policy, no goes through the Stargate-either way-without a thorough examination. We don't want to take any chances."
Daniel was avoiding her. He'd managed to use his post-mission exam as an excuse to dodge her questions about the mission, then slipped into the locker room where Sam couldn't follow. The more uncomfortable he got and the more evasions he made, the more worried and suspicious she got. Sam was still trying to figure out how to make him talk when General Hammond showed up. Daniel was soon back in the infirmary to answer his questions, and Sam figured that was as good a way as any to find out what was going on.
"Doctor Jackson, would you mind telling me why Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c were the ones to stay and make friends with the natives while the SGC's best language and cultural expert was sent back with samples?"
Sam couldn't quite see General Hammond's face from where she stood, behind and to his left. She could, however, see Daniel's face, and he would never make it as a poker player. Something was wrong, and from the way he kept glancing at her it was something he didn't want to tell her. If Jack or Teal'c were injured or in physical danger he would have said something, already. Which left ... what?
"Jack was ... getting to know one of the Argosians better," Daniel said hesitantly. "We didn't want to ... interrupt that. Teal'c and I were just sort of standing around watching things. And if something does ... go wrong, somehow, Teal'c would be better able to ..."
It was odd to watch the normally articulate Daniel flounder so much. "You think the Argosians might be hostile?" Sam asked. Combat was the only situation she could think of where Teal'c would be of more use than Daniel.
"No, no." Daniel shook his head. "The Argosians are peaceful; I doubt they'd have any idea how to fight even if they wanted to."
"You think a Goa'uld might come?" General Hammond asked.
"I doubt it. None of them can remember the last time Pelops came. Pelops was their Goa'uld. We don't think there's any danger, we just wanted to be on the safe side."
We. In all that fumbling, Daniel hadn't mentioned Jack giving an order. She'd only been on a few missions with Jack O'Neill, but he never made decisions by committee. The click of heels announced Janet's presence in the room. Her frown was ... not reassuring.
"We have the preliminary analysis of that pastry you asked for, Doctor Jackson," she said.
"And?" Daniel asked.
"There were indeed narcotic substances in it." Janet opened the file and flipped through it. "Some we can't identify, but one was a close analogue to ketamine hydrochloride. Without further testing, we can't tell exactly what they would all do to a human, precisely, but the Ketamine-analogue would probably act much the same."
"Ketamine, that sounds familiar," Sam said, trying to place it.
"It's an anaesthetic that can be used for humans but is more commonly used for animals," Janet said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Veterinary offices are frequently robbed for it, though, because it is one of the three major date-rape drugs. That's probably why you've heard of it."
Sam could feel the blood drain from her face, putting the pieces together. No wonder Daniel couldn't look her in the eye.
"What are the symptoms?" Daniel asked. He looked slightly pale. Damn right, he should be, Sam told herself. To let someone drug Jack, then take him off somewhere and ... She couldn't finish the thought.
Janet shrugged. "Again, without further testing, there's no way of knowing just how similarly this thing affects humans. But Ketamine can cause hallucinations, memory problems, distorted perceptions, sense, time, and identity; impaired motor control, problems breathing, lack of self-control, slurred speech, aggressive behavior, etc." She turned to Daniel. "Doctor Jackson, is there any particular reason you wanted me to analyze this?"
Daniel looked miserable. "One of the Argosian women gave that cake to Jack. She said it was only for him. A little later she took him inside one of their buildings. Teal'c and I thought he might be acting kind of odd, but it wasn't anything too obvious."
Sam listened to all this, feeling sick to her stomach. Oh, God. Since the meeting with the Shavadai, she'd had to think long and hard about the risks she took, as a woman, going through the Gate. Risks that (she thought) her male co-workers didn't share. Now ... that wasn't a safe assumption to make. And Jack ... she cringed to think of what he must be going through.
Even from the back, Sam could tell that General Hammond was about to blow a fuse. "Do you mean to tell me that you allowed those people to drug and kidnap one of my men? And after that, you don't think they're hostile?"
"General, it wasn't exactly like that," Daniel protested. "It wasn't obvious at all that Jack had been drugged. In fact, if it weren't for a comment he made just prior to being given the cake, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. He was talking and walking just fine. Second, the Argosians have no contact with anyone outside their own culture, and they all seemed to know what was going on. They spend a great deal of time partying, from what we could see, and we were trying to be courteous."
Sam listened to Daniel trying to justify himself, temper rising. She looked away, concentrating on reigning herself in. Jumping all over Daniel wouldn't help anything, he was obviously worried himself, and Hammond (as a General) had first crack at yelling at him anyway.
"It may not have occurred to them that none of us would know what was in that pastry," Daniel continued, shaking his head. "I have to get back to Teal'c, tell him what's happened."
"That's right," General Hammond snapped. "And you're taking SG-3 with you."
The archaeologist blinked. "I don't know if the Marines are really necessary, General; from what we saw, these people don't do much besides party. They didn't even seem to work. Even if they do become hostile, I doubt we'd have trouble dealing with them."
"Hostile, Doctor Jackson? I'd say they're already hostile. And if, as you say, they don't think anything's wrong with their behavior, then maybe they need to be told otherwise. And I think the Marines will give the message a certain point, even if they don't have to do anything."
"Daniel, it can't hurt and it might be a very good thing," Sam said, heading him off. "Better safe than sorry when someone's safety is at stake." That came out a little harsher than she intended, but under the circumstances she thought she was entitled to it. Sam would take anger over fear any day; experience had taught her it was less likely to paralyze you. And Daniel saw the world through rose-colored glasses, sometimes ignoring harsh realities. If he weren't so idealistic, so convinced that everyone was good until proven otherwise, maybe Jack wouldn't have been hurt. She breathed a quick prayer that this would all turn out to be a misunderstanding, and that Jack would be just fine.
"Well, whoever's going, I want Colonel O'Neill brought back to base as soon as possible," Janet said. "I'm not familiar with the effects the Ketamine-analogue would have, much less any of the other unidentified substances. If they're consumed regularly by these people they probably aren't too toxic, but it never hurts to be sure."
Hammond nodded. "Of course, Doctor."
Daniel shrugged and nodded. "Okay, but I want to leave as soon as possible. How long to get them briefed and geared up?"
"Not long," Hammond said grimly. "Is there anything else I need to know about the situation on P3X-8596?"
Daniel thought for a second, then shook his head. General Hammond nodded to her and Janet and strode over to the phone mounted on the wall. A few minutes later, Harriman's voice came over the loudspeakers, calling SG-3 to gear up for a mission.
Sam watched Daniel gather his gear. "So, you were avoiding me to spare my feelings," she said. "Jack was with another woman, and you were covering for him."
He looked up at her and blinked, as if he'd forgotten her there. "Yeah ... yeah I guess so," he said, putting on his vest.
"Next time, don't," Sam said. She paused, biting her lip. It wasn't really Daniel's fault, or at least it probably wasn't. He had come back with the cake the minute he thought something was wrong; she shouldn't be too harsh on him. "It was obvious you were trying to hide something," she said in a more even voice, "and that worried me. And I'd rather know what's going on than wonder. And be afraid."
"Right." Daniel shifted uneasily and glanced at the door. "I'd better get to the briefing room so we can leave as soon as possible."
Sam nodded. "I know."
Daniel started for the door.
"And Daniel?"
He paused, looking back at her.
"Take care of him."
About twenty minutes after SG-3 and Daniel left for Argos, they dialed back. Sam had been studying some of the raw, unprocessed read-outs from the Gate interface. They were still pretty much guessing when it came to interpreting a lot of the signals the Gate sent to the dialing computer they'd cobbled together, and Sam wasn't sure if they'd ever figure it all out. Still, every little bit helped-and it kept her in the control room while waiting for SG-1.
The iris was open, but no one stepped through. The radio crackled to life. "This is Colonel Makepeace. I need to talk with the General and Doctor Frasier."
A hundred worst-case scenarios danced through Sam's head. She bit her lip.
General Hammond waved at someone to get Janet. "Someone's getting the doctor, Colonel," he said into the mike. "What do you need?"
"Colonel O'Neill is unconscious, as are all the Argosians," Makepeace replied. "We can't wake anyone. According to Teal'c, they all went to sleep at sunset, a little over thirty minutes ago. It could be some kind of drug, or it could be some kind of virus. After our last encounter with an alien bug, I didn't want to take any chances without asking you and consulting the doc first."
Sam let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Unconscious wasn't good, but things could be a lot worse. A lot worse.
"Good thinking, Colonel," Hammond replied. He glanced aside. "Doctor Frasier's here. Could you tell her what you told me?"
Sam was startled; she'd been so intent on the radio conversation that she hadn't noticed Janet's entrance.
"When we arrived on Argos, we found everyone but Teal'c asleep," Makepeace said. "According to him, everyone lay down simultaneously either inside or outside as the sun set. We can't wake anybody by noise, shaking them, or even dumping cold water on them. We can't even get them to stir. Is it safe to bring Colonel O'Neill back, or could this be something contagious?"
"It could be," Janet replied, leaning into the mike. "Chances are it's not, however. Ketamine is a strong sedative, and if these people ate it or something like it, it's not surprising you're having trouble waking them. Doctor Jackson's blood-work when he came back through didn't show any anomalies, either. And ... you said they all lay down at the same time, Teal'c?"
"That is correct, Doctor Frasier." Teal'c's bass rumble came over the speakers.
Janet shook her head. "I've never seen or heard of a virus striking with that amount of simultaneity. Or a drug, for that matter. I'd say it's probably safe enough to bring the Colonel back through the Gate. To be on the safe side I want everybody-especially Colonel O'Neill-to wear a breath mask, and I'll want you all to take a disinfectant shower immediately and put Colonel O'Neill in an isolation room." She looked over at Hammond and raised an eyebrow.
He nodded. "Agreed."
"General, I think Daniel and Teal'c should stay there and see if there's anything on the planet that could cause this, if Janet doesn't think it's strictly medical," Sam said. "There could be some kind of device or something that would explain why they all fell unconscious at the same time. It's possible the drug makes you more susceptible."
"I suppose anything's possible," Janet said dubiously. "If nothing else, I might want samples of their food and drink and other contaminants. If that turns out to be the case, it would save time and effort to have them readily available."
"That sounds reasonable," Hammond said. He leaned back over to the microphone. "SG-3 will bring Colonel O'Neill through with breath masks and full decontamination procedures. Doctor Jackson and Teal'c, I'd like you to stay behind and look for anything else that might be related to this problem. Doctor Frasier would like samples for analysis, and Captain Carter believes there might be a device hidden somewhere that could account for the concurrent collapses."
"Yes, sir."
"Well," Janet said, "sounds like I need to go prepare."
Sam had finished the set of readouts she'd been working on and gone back to the various projects in her lab. Not that she expected to get all that much done, distracted as she was, but she needed something to occupy her mind while waiting for Janet to finish her first round of tests. The doctor had promised to call her as soon as she had anything, no matter how insignificant. They were keeping Jack in the isolation lab they'd had Kawalsky's surgery in, with the large windows from the observation area, and Sam wished she dared go there to watch over him. But she was on duty and she knew what kind of gossip that would cause, especially as they were no longer teammates, and she couldn't stand that, not as emotionally fragile as she felt.
Her phone rang, and she knocked over her stool in her haste. "Carter."
"Sam?" It was Janet. "I've found something in Colonel O'Neill's blood that I'm not quite sure how to identify."
"I'll be right there."
Sam entered the Infirmary and looked around for Janet, who'd evidently been waiting for her.
"Hey, Sam," she said with a tight smile. "I have something to show you."
Janet led her through the main infirmary to a smaller lab room and sat down at a computer.
"What is it?" Sam asked, joining her.
Janet sighed. "I'm not sure. First I ran a routine check for antibodies...nothing. So then I thought, all right, maybe this alien bug found a way to hide from the immune system, so I ran a protein analysis." She gestured at the screen. "Take a look at what I found."
Sam frowned at it. Most of it was, as far as she could tell anyway, fairly normal for a blood sample. Due to the dyes, it was orange-yellow instead of red. What caught her attention were a number of small, identical objects. Janet hit a key to magnify it, and Sam blinked in surprise to see that all of them were perfectly regular triangles. In her admittedly limited biology experience, she'd never seen anything like it. "Wow. What is it?"
"Something we don't have a word for ... yet." Janet shook her head. "I'm going to need blood samples from the Argosians for comparison. Frankly, I have no idea what I'm dealing with yet, how it works or even what it does."
Fourteen hours later, Sam sat in the briefing room and waited impatiently for Daniel and Teal'c to be medically cleared for the briefing. They'd sent the blood samples back as requested, but had stayed on Argos to look around some more. They'd apparently found something of interest. After what seemed like hours (but was less than fifteen minutes), the pair showed up with Janet in tow. Sam gave each a brief smile but was too distracted for more.
General Hammond was out of his office before they'd taken their seats. "All right, Doctor Jackson, what have you found?"
Daniel took a sip of his coffee; he and Teal'c had been up all night. "First, the Argosians have woken up, and they all woke up simultaneously. We found some interesting things when we talked to them."
"But, Jack is still unconscious," Sam protested. "Why is he different?"
"They don't know," Daniel said. "They all act as if what happened last night was normal. They party until sundown. Then they fall asleep and they wake when the sun rises. They've never had someone not wake up who wasn't dead, not in living memory. Which ... brings us to the most interesting part of all. Their 'living memory' isn't exactly as long as we might expect. They have no concept of 'years,' which puzzled me until Thetyes brought Dan-el to see me."
"Dan-el?" Sam asked.
"When we arrived yesterday Thetyes, an Argosian woman who appears to be about twenty years old, was in labor in the temple the Stargate sits inside. They didn't have a midwife there, so I helped deliver the baby, and they named him after me. Except ... he's not a baby anymore. If I had to judge how old he was just by looking at him, I'd say he was at least a year old, possibly two. He looks and acts like a normal toddler, but he's only a day old. Thetys says that she's twenty days old, not twenty years. Kynthia, the woman who gave Jack that cake, is thirty-one days old. By the way, that cake is the traditional wedding cake of the Argosians; by accepting it, according to their law, he married Kynthia. She'd assumed that he understood what it was she was offering, and is upset that he didn't."
Sam tried to keep her hurt off her face. After all, Jack hadn't known what the cake meant when he took it, and even if he had, she'd turned him down when he'd asked to marry her. Sure, they'd met for dinner a few times but that was to get to know each other for the baby's sake. There was no commitment made on either side. She did have an urge to hit this Kynthia woman, though. Hard. Thirty-one days old or not, if she didn't know how to act responsibly in a relationship she shouldn't go around propositioning people.
"Doctor Jackson, that's impossible," Janet said, and Sam forced her attention back to the briefing. "No one can grow to maturity in only twenty days. The human body simply is not capable of such rapid development."
Daniel shrugged. "In this case, there are extenuating circumstances. The Argosians have no written language of their own, but there is an inscription on the base of the statue of their 'god' Pelops in the temple that Teal'c calls an obscure dialect of Goa'uld but is actually a variant on the linear-A script of ancient Greece and Crete, which is exciting because we've never been able to translate it-"
"Doctor Jackson, I'm sure that's fascinating," General Hammond interrupted, "but what does it have to do with the problem at hand?"
Daniel blinked at the interruption. "It was a kind of a combination lock which," he gestured at the alien sitting beside him, "Teal'c was able to open. Inside we found this device." He set an inscribed tablet and a stone on the briefing room table. "It's apparently some kind of Goa'uld book. You 'turn the page' by moving this stone over the surface." He demonstrated it, and sure enough the inscriptions changed. Sam leaned forward, fascinated by the technology and itching to take it apart.
"What does it say?" General Hammond asked.
"The Argosians believe that they were so favored by Pelops that he brought them across the stars to the garden they now inhabit. They call themselves the 'Chosen.' Well, Pelops did choose them, but not just for a life of luxury. I think Pelops brought humans there to be lab rats. From what we've been able to translate so far he wanted to know how humans evolve, so he shortened the life span to about 1/250th of normal."
"So," Sam said, "instead of having to wait a hundred thousand years to see how human physiology evolves, he could do it in a hundred?" She sat back in disbelief.
"That is correct," Teal'c said. Sam turned to him in surprise; she'd almost forgotten he was in the room. "Pelops wanted to determine what the human host body would become in the future, and perhaps accelerate the process."
"How did he do it?" Janet asked incredulously. "Was it some form of genetic alteration?"
"We do not know. It is an archaic dialect." With that, Teal'c sat back in his chair, having made his contribution to the meeting.
Sam noticed that Daniel was very carefully not looking at her. "Daniel?"
He sighed. "Okay ... I didn't want to say this till I was absolutely sure but ... I think he may have created some kind of virus ... and viruses are often spread through bodily contact."
"Some are, and some are passed by other means," Janet said. "But I've already run every test I know on the Colonel, and he doesn't have a virus in him. I'm not sure what the substance in his blood is, it's not a virus."
"But whatever it is, he got it through bodily contact," Daniel pointed out. "Teal'c and I spent a lot longer there than he did, and we're both fine. SG-3 didn't pick it up when they were on Argos, either."
"What I find most disturbing about this whole thing," Janet said, "is the fact that he has far more of that stuff in his blood than is in any of the Argosian samples."
"If they age twenty years in twenty days, what happens when they reach fifty days?" Sam asked, appalled. "Or a hundred?"
Daniel winced and wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Oh, my God," Sam said, sinking back in her chair. It wasn't an exclamation. And they though the stuff that was in Jack was the same stuff that made the Argosians age so rapidly? That meant her child would grow up without a father. Jack would be dead of old age before she'd even reached the third trimester, much less given birth. She blinked back tears and studied the ceiling, trying desperately to keep from breaking down in the middle of a briefing.
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