The Arguments of the Archaeologist
Part 11 of ?
Synopsis: Takes place during "Avalon, Part II". Vala's found the
perfect place, the perfect bait, and the perfect hook for fishing, but why can't
she catch one reluctant archaeologist? References to "Paradise Lost",
"Evolution", "Avatar", "Citizen Joe", and "Avalon".
The Arguments of the Archaeologist
"Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards."
— E. M. Forster
It was like the unveiling of a masterpiece of modern art. The lights went down, the cover came off, and the SGC's latest endeavor into converting alien shielding technology into a machine usable by the United States Air Force was revealed in all its ugly, misshapen splendor. It also came with its very own fireworks show—which apparently hadn't been on the program—nor had anyone predicted the sudden rain storm which brought a sizzling, billowing end to the pyrotechnics.
Coughing and fanning the smoke away from his face, Doctor William "Bill" Lee grabbed for the phone on the science lab's wall, its shrieks for attention nearly drowned out by the squawks of dismay from behind him. He sighed, just knowing this wasn't going to be an enjoyable conversation.
The rush of expletives which exploded from the receiver proved him right. "No, sir... Doctor Felger had assured me there wouldn't be a problem." There was your first mistake, Bill, he chided himself as soon as the hastily proffered excuse left his lips. Since when does any plan of Jay Felger's go without a hitch?
Listening to both the yelling in his left ear and the whining in his right, Bill winced as General Landry demanded an explanation for the explosion in the lab and the subsequent engagement of the base's fire suppression systems. "Doctor Paxton thinks it might be the capacitor... Doctor Reinholdt is guessing the power reg—"
He was interrupted by another explosion, though this time verbal in nature.
"N-nobody really knows yet, sir!" Bill stuttered in reply. "It'll take some time to clear the smoke and water out of the lab, but I promise I'll make it top priority." A reminder from the general had him amending, "Well, besides that. This'll be second pri—er, third priority... Well, we'll try to put this above all—" The sound of a slamming phone rattled his eardrums.
How did Colonel Carter do it? the beleaguered scientist asked himself for what very well could have been the one-hundredth time in as many hours. The common rumor around the SGC was that Doctor Lee and Colonel Carter didn't like one another, but Bill knew that to be completely—well, almost entirely—no, make that mostly baseless. Truthfully, he didn't like anyone military because none of them seemed to truly understand the value of research for the sake of research. Everything had to have a purpose, a goal, a "mission", and that just didn't sit will with Bill Lee, a scientist's scientist at heart.
Really, the colonel wasn't always such a military-minded person—in fact, he found himself nearly calling her Doctor Carter a time or two in the labs—but there still lay that almost-tangible aura of autocracy all the military-types seemed to exude. The higher the rank, the more unreasonable and inflexible the military mind-set became, he decided.
That's not to say there weren't times when he actually admired the focusing abilities of his former department head or any other of the soldier-scientists stationed at the SGC. In fact, the time he and Samantha Carter had disagreed the most strongly was when she wasn't thinking very militarily, absorbed as she was in the agony of having lost then-Colonel Jack O'Neill so recently after having lost Daniel Jackson.
Now there's a blend of science and soldier, he mused. Doctor Jackson defied any attempt to firmly place him in either category, instead holding to a unique designation all his own: Daniel. Never had the difference between the archaeologist and all the other members of the SGC been more profound than the first time he and Bill had ever worked closely: when they'd been sent to Honduras on what was to be an ill-fated mission to retrieve the Telchak device. The younger man had astounded him with his brilliance and intuition when they’d first discovered the chamber containing the legendary Fountain of Youth. Then, after they'd been captured by the rebels, Daniel's tenacity in the face of torture had left Bill feeling guilty for his own weaknesses, especially after the archaeologist broke them out of their prison, then took a bullet while leading their pursuers away from the exhausted and far-less-athletic Doctor Lee.
For all intents and purposes, Daniel had taken that bullet for him. On the plane ride back to Colorado, Jack O'Neill had told Bill knowingly, "Kinda makes the guy grow on ya, huh?"
"Doctor Lee! Are you okay?"
Bill snapped out of his reverie, spearing Doctor Jay Felger with his most authoritative glower. "Other than suffering from smoke inhalation? Fine."
Felger had the good graces to look somewhat abashed. "Chloe's got the ionizer running at top speed, sir... We're clearing it out as fast as we can!"
"I know that, Jay," Bill sighed, glancing down at the phone handset he still held in his left hand. Hastily, he spun and dropped the device back on its base before turning back to face the other three scientists. "Now, what did you want?"
"We think we've figured out what went wrong with the shield generator," Doctor Reinholdt answered.
"An electrical overload relay malfunctioned, resulting in catastrophic feedback," Doctor Payton finished.
Bill stared. "You mean you blew a fuse?"
The three men glanced at one another warily. "Don't tell General O'Neill," Felger begged, looking genuinely frightened at the thought.
But Bill was not to be deterred. "A forty-thousand dollar piece of technology and you blew a fuse? Not to mention five years of research, four weeks for Doctor Jackson to ultimately finalize the treaty to get us the template generator in the first place, seven months for Colonel Carter to re-design the—"
"Whoa! Am I interrupting something?"
Startled, the head of the SGC's science department turned to look at the newcomer to the room. Through the murky glow shed by the lab's emergency lighting, he first thought the tall, lean man standing in the doorway was Daniel... but then he realized Doctor Jackson didn't speak with a Southern drawl—well, not usually anyway. "Apparently, I blew a fuse," he managed, shooting his colleagues one last scathing glare. "How can I help you, Colonel Mitchell?"
"You blew a fuse? That's funny," Mitchell grinned, coughing lightly as he inadvertently inhaled a whiff of smoke. "Ah, Doctor Lee, can we take this some place with a little less atmosphere?"
"What? Oh, right. My office?"
"Down the hall and on the right?"
"Uh, yeah." Frankly, it surprised Bill that Mitchell even knew where the science labs were, let alone whose offices were where. After four years of Jack O'Neill, a colonel who doesn't pretend the Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the only person who can give out brains is a welcome change, he thought wryly.
"Great filing system," Mitchell remarked upon flipping the office's light switch.
"Do you wanna—would you like to sit?" Bill stammered, reaching to clear a stack of lab results from one of the room's chairs. Why did he always get caught in absent-minded professor mode? "Let me just put these—"
"No, it's okay," the colonel assured him. "I just wanted to get out of the smoke for a bit."
"Oh! Right. So, uh, Doctor Jackson find a way to get that bracelet off yet?"
"Nope. We did find an Ancient outpost hidden half a mile under a hill in England, though."
The scientist's jaw dropped. "An Ancient outpost? You mean like the one SG-1 found in Antarctica?" Oh, good going, Bill, remind the guy he doesn't have the real SG-1 team.
"Not quite," Mitchell answered, not acknowledging the inadvertent jab, if he'd even noticed it all. "This was more like that scene in National Treasure. You know, where they light the torch and there's all this gold piled every—never mind. The point is, the place was big on jewels and riches and shy on technology."
"Oh."
Mitchell turned toward the door as though about to leave, but then looked back over his shoulder with an impish grin. "Of course, there was this one thing with a blue crystal on top that Jackson says might be some sort of advanced Ancient device..."
Bill blinked. "Really?"
"Yeah!" The colonel gave a 'come on' gesture. "Let's go check it out!"
Grabbing his laptop and his 'kit' of sensors and wires, Bill Lee hurried down the corridor after the colonel, who was holding the elevator door open with an expression the older man thought may have been mischievous... but it was so difficult to tell with military-types. General O'Neill looked like he was up to something all the time, he mused as the door closed, but then realized that was likely because, ninety-percent of the time, he was.
Which certainly put an interesting spin on how Bill was beginning to view the new colonel!
Fortunately, the elevator doors opened without incident and Mitchell strode briskly to the nearest observation lab, Science Lab 1. There, placed on a table for all to see, was a dark-colored object shaped vaguely like a flattened toy top. Adorning the "handle" was a strange, crystalline structure which somewhat resembled an artist's interpretation of a frozen flame. The base had several egg-shaped depressions all around its circumference. At a glance, Bill had no idea what the object could be.
"There you go!" Mitchell grinned cheerily, making a show of checking his watch. "I've gotta go interview another SG-1-wanna-be. Have fun playing with the lovebirds." Shoving his hands in his pockets, the colonel turned heel and left.
Lovebirds? Shaking his head, Bill dismissed the last statement as inconsequential and began pulling out the tools of his trade. No sooner had he gotten the wires connected and the computer powered up, then the sound of voices echoed down the hall.
"Oh, please, Daniel, don't tell me you weren't even the least bit interested in all that gold and jewels."
"Okay, I won't say it."
Suddenly, Bill realized exactly what—or rather, who—Mitchell had meant: Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran.
"Well, even if you don't care about riches, I do. The least you could've done was argued for my fair share of it."
The linguist stepped into the lab, carrying a small box in one hand and a file folder in the other. "While I'm sure most of what we found in that chamber has a tremendous monetary value, the intrinsic cultural and historical value to the people of Earth is far greater than whatever you might have been able to pawn it off for at an off-world market." He placed the items on the table beside the alien device and crossed his arms.
The thief placed her hands on the table and leaned across. "Really? Somehow I doubt that."
"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that the persistently materialistic side of you doesn't acknowledge anything being worth something other than money."
That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say to her. "You know, Daniel, while your lofty ideals about the preservation of history for your little planet are commendably noble, the rest of the galaxy doesn't care. You do know what it's like to have to fight to survive because your own people have cast you out and—"
Daniel smirked. "Yes, I do."
"—you have nowhere to..." She straightened, briefly taken aback. "Oh. Well, maybe you have, but you still—"
They fight like an old married couple, he smiled to himself, the expression creeping across his face when he remembered the same description had also been used to describe the now-infamous verbal battles between Daniel and Jack O'Neill. Bill realized then that if he didn't put a stop to the bickering, the two stubborn individuals would likely keep going until the argument came to blows. "So what's this thing do?" he blurted.
Both heads whipped around, as though startled by his presence. "It's a communication device," Daniel answered after a moment.
"And what if it's a transporter?" Vala challenged.
"Not according to my translation, it's not."
"Your translation could be wrong."
"Not likely. I apparently learned to read this language when ascended."
"Oh, so you're never wrong," she scoffed. "A lot of good that did us back in the cavern."
"Excuse me?" Daniel shouted, rounding on her again. "Who was the one that couldn't keep her greedy hands off of the gold? We weren't in any kind of a hurry, so if you'd just let me finish the translation, we wouldn't have had to go through the exhilarating experience of nearly being crushed to death!"
They were nose to nose now, Vala having stepped around the end of the table. "How was I supposed to know the ceiling was going to come crashing down? There weren't any signs that said 'get this right or else', now were there?"
"You're telling me you've never heard of booby-trapped treasure before? And here I thought you were supposed to have been around the block a few times—"
"Where did it come from?" Bill shouted, halting the argument again. What was it with these two?
"From an Ancient treasure room under Glastonbury Tor in England," Daniel answered, straightening his glasses as he turned away from Vala and back toward the device. "It's likely that most of what was collected there was actually gathered by the Knights of the Round Table rather than the Ancients themselves, but there was also a book stored there. It was kind of like Genesis for the first part—so-and-so begat so-and-so—but then it really started getting interesting toward the middle."
"I liked the first part better," Vala interjected. "Some of those people led very interesting sex lives, judging by the way—"
Daniel's eyes rolled upward. "Do you mind?"
"Yes," she answered with an impudent grin.
Letting out a huff of air, the linguist continued, "Anyway, the second part was more of a history of the Ancients—called the Alterans, originally—and how they first came to Avalon... Earth. The script was Ancient, but the words were a lot closer to Medieval Latin, leading me to believe it was actually written based on second-hand knowledge or oral history long after the Ancients left Earth for the Pegasus Galaxy. I haven't gotten to finish the third part yet, but I think the book was sealed away in the cavern to prevent its destruction when Christianity came to Celtic England and all histories considered heretical or against Church doctrine were banned by the—"
"Boring," Vala commented.
"Maybe to some," he sniped back. "Or do we need to go over that again?"
"Yes, let's!" she agreed cheerfully.
Bill groaned, taking his glasses off and soothing the knots beginning to develop at his temples. "What makes you think this thing is a communication device?"
"Two things," Daniel answered, once again diverted from his almost single-minded pursuit of a shouting match with the equally argumentative thief. "First of all, there's actually a picture of the device in the book I found, and the description given of it refers to its use as a 'portal to the lands of the ancestors'."
"Transporter," Vala sing-songed.
This time, he ignored her. "The author of that particular page stated that anyone with an appropriate key need only insert it into the device and would be granted immediate 'communion' with the land of the ancestors."
"Transporter."
"The word 'communion'—and no, I highly doubt I mis-translated that word—typically means to 'share', such as thoughts or feelings. Communication device."
She looked smugly skeptical. "Right, because you're the linguist who speaks—"
"What was the second thing?" Bill asked quickly, forestalling what was sure to be another protracted argument.
Daniel picked up the flat box he'd carried into the room, and for the first time, Bill saw the label on the end clearly marking it as an item which had been thoroughly tested by the science labs and deemed significant enough to warrant storage at the SGC, rather than being shipped off to Area 51. "The text mentions a key. Where would you put a key on something like this, and what would it look like?"
Blinking, Bill stared down at the dark-colored device, seeking a crevice or keyhole within the smooth indentations shaped like— "Hey! Those Ancient devices General O'Neill and that barber had!"
The archaeologist whipped the lid off of the box, revealing the pair of communication stones. "Communication device," he insisted. "These stones grant the users the ability to see through one another's eyes telepathically, to share thoughts and feelings across hundreds of miles, maybe further." He set the box down and rapped on the surface of the new machine. "Combined with this, I believe the potential distance of travel is far greater than that, maybe even to another galaxy."
"You mean like Pegasus?"
"No, I'm hoping to the original home galaxy of the Alterans."
Bill gaped. "You mean they weren't from this one?"
"Nope," Daniel answered. "Turns out they came here a long time ago—"
"—From a galaxy far, far away," Vala finished at the same time Daniel did. The two men stared at her in disbelief. "What?"
"I'll just pretend that was a coincidence," the archaeologist began, eyes narrowing.
"I heard Mitchell say it," she replied defensively. "These bracelets don't cause telepathic communication, I can promise you that."
"Well, you certainly didn't know they'd make us both sick, now did you? And more to the point, why haven't you taken them off already? We found your treasure."
"Oh, that's right, you mean you found my treasure and aren't allowing me to keep any of it, are you?"
"We've been over this..."
Vala planted a hand on her hip. "Let's go over it again, then. I did not come all this way just to go home empty-handed. Now, one of three things is going to happen: one, I'm going to go home with my fair share of the treasure, which I'll sell to the highest bidder; two, I'm going to go home with an equally valuable piece of Ancient technology, which I'll sell to the highest bidder; or three, I'm going to drag you through the wormhole with me, and sell you to the highest bidder." She lifted her chin defiantly. "Take your pick, Daniel."
He closed the distance between them. "Option four: you get kicked back through the wormhole with no treasure, no technology, and without me. You go back to Malikai, apologize for stealing his tablet from him, then go home empty-handed."
"I won't even bother to ask how you knew where I got it," she muttered. "Oh, you're right, Daniel, there is an option four. Since you won't give me my treasure, you won't give me the A ncient technology, and you won't go with me, the only option left is for me to stay here with you for all eternity. It's up to you, but I personally don't mind any of those."
"I don't think so!"
A flicker of motion from the observation level drew Bill's gaze upward in time to see General Landry walk into the booth. Moments later, Colonel Mitchell walked through the still-open door of the science lab. He quickly smothered a smile when he found Daniel and Vala still bickering.
"Let me study this technology with you then, learn how it works. You say I don't understand the real value of things, but let me tell you, I know exactly what that's worth."
"Forget it!"
Her eyes narrowed. "I have been around the galaxy long enough to know that knowledge is power, and understanding the technology that was left behind by the Ancients is the most powerful knowledge around."
Daniel was ready to explode. "And if you think I'm gonna stay linked with you for the rest of my natural—"
"Focus!" Mitchell interrupted, seeming to think the quarrel had gone on long enough. "Maybe we should focus on the task at hand."
Quelling the almost-insatiable urge to sigh in relief, Bill cleared his throat. "Well... the device obviously has a power source and... uh, I don't think it's been depleted." Oh, great going Bill, way to sound on top of things. Of course, he would have had a better answer ready if he'd actually been able to study the device instead of constantly being distracted by the verbal melee taking place in front of him.
Daniel's re-focusing abilities were somewhat better, as he launched into a considerably more brief explanation of how he came to the conclusion that the stones were 'keys' to the Ancient device than the one he'd given Bill. Probably 'cause Mitchell's eyes would glaze over like General O'Neill's always did when you said any word bigger than two syllables.
"So... what happens when you attach the stones?" Mitchell asked.
Apparently he could follow the simplified explanation!
"Uh, these stones were originally set for General O'Neill and one 'Joe Spencer'," Bill managed.
"Barber from Indiana," Daniel clarified.
"Yeah, weird guy," the colonel commented, obviously understanding. "I read the file."
"Uh... well..." He reads? Are we sure he's a real colonel? "Anyway, after a lot of tedious—although I must say ultimately very brilliant—uh, work—if I do say so myself—" He was startled out of his enjoyable recollection of the many hours he'd spent de-programming the devices by a touch on his shoulder. "I was able to reset the stones," he finished.
Mitchell then proceeded to astonish him again and again by making logical connections and assumptions that usually would have caused General O'Neill to give Bill a blank stare before turning to Daniel and asking the linguist to translate into English for him.
"So... Any one of us can take the pony ride?" Mitchell concluded.
"Yeah, I figured that's gonna be me," Daniel answered with a self-satisfied smile. "I mean I did miss the Daedalus for this, so..."
"You gonna dine out on that for a while?" the colonel asked.
"Oh yeah, like you wouldn't believe."
"Well, no one's gonna make an argument against that—you are the world's foremost 'expert' on the Ancients—but we've got two stones."
Vala made her way around the table past Bill and Daniel to pick up the other device. "And this one's mind, thank you."
"Excuse me? How do you figure that?" Mitchell questioned, although he didn't seem terribly concerned.
"Well, Daniel and I are linked," she replied, draping herself across the archaeologist's shoulder.
"I'll just point out for the record: we don't have to be."
Her arm having been dislodged from its perch, Vala leaned toward Mitchell. "He's only guessing that this device is for communication. What if it's a transporter of some kind, and he gets whisked away and can't get back?"
Bill didn't think that was likely, given Daniel's translation, the function of the stones, and the rather ambiguous readings he was getting from the main device. "Actually, we have done a fair bit of research on this device, and I can say with absolute... relative... certainty..." Faced with the disbelieving expressions from Daniel and Vala, he gave up. "Oh, look, we have studied devices like this for years and at some point, ultimately, you just have to turn it on!"
"I'm gonna give it a try," Daniel announced.
"Where he goes I go," Vala added.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"So he thinks."
"It's a communication device," he reiterated, speaking through clenched teeth.
"I'm going to watch from the observation room," Bill decided, moving quickly to get out of the line of fire. Apparently, that particular argument wasn't over yet. He made it up the stairs in time to hear Daniel tell Vala there weren't any markings to tell them what to do, and had to stifle the sudden urge to grin. But aren't there always markings? he'd once asked the archaeologist and linguist.
Light flared from the crystal atop the device and the two people standing in the science lab dropped to the floor. Bill swallowed heavily as Mitchell called for a medical team. "No one goes in there 'til the doctors clear it for contagion or radiation!" he could hear Landry ordering, but the scientist's thoughts were on something else entirely.
"Don't tell General O'Neill," he begged.