"So what you're telling me," Jack said slowly, "is that we now have a treaty...with some trees."
Daniel gave him an eyeroll for his trouble. "They're sentient beings, Jack. The fact that they look, at first glance, like trees is not really relevant to the fact that we want to mine their land and they want to let us."
"Under some fairly inconvenient conditions, I think you'll agree," Jack groused.
"Jack, it's their planet. They may not be human, but they have the same rights that a human population would over how we go about digging up their land for naquadah."
"Why should a bunch of trees care what we do with the side of a mountain? It's nowhere near the forest...or whatever," he added, as Daniel opened his mouth to correct his terminology.
"They're practically trees, Jack; you don't think mining a mountain would affect them at all?"
"I thought they were people, not trees."
"They're both," Daniel replied easily. "They're organic organisms that live off the soil and sunlight in pretty much the same way trees do, but they're self-aware and they can communicate with each other and with us. You can't just put them in the same category as normal trees." Then, as if this somehow made everything completely clear, "They have they own language."
"Yeah, see, I'm still not sure I buy the whole tree-language thing." Jack eyed the edge of the forest (or whatever) with suspicion. "How can you be sure it's a language if it's just a bunch of sounds that trees make, anyway?"
"Because I just brokered a deal for the use of the naquadah mine in tree sounds, and I'm pretty sure random tree sounds couldn't have been responsible for the very distinct patterns they--"
Jack raised a finger and an eyebrow. "And how do we know this isn't like that time with the mushroom spores, where you said you'd discovered how to speak Conifer, and wanted to go home and climb the Mountain to see what the vowel shift was like between that and Aspen?"
Daniel gave him only the smallest of resigned sighs in response to that low blow. "Because Sam's picked up on the patterns in the...tree people's language, now. She's trying to get one of the really tall ones to tell her what base number their mathematics uses. And Teal'c likes them. He says they remind him of The Lord of the Rings."
Jack shrugged. "Okay. So I have to go talk to the big one in the middle to seal the deal?" Daniel nodded. Jack sighed, and began walking with Daniel toward the tree-line. Tree-person-line. God, his life was weird. He eyed Daniel narrowly and said, "If this is a plot by the three of you to make me look like an idiot who talks to trees, you will regret it." The threat felt impotent even as it was leaving his mouth, and he wasn't at all surprised that Daniel sounded supremely unconcerned when he replied.
"Oh, come on, Jack, the worst that could happen is that you talk to a tree for a few minutes. If it's a sentient being, it lets us mine the land. If it's just a tree, we still get to mine the land."
"And a tape of me looking like an idiot who talks to trees becomes the highlight of the SGC Christmas party."
Daniel shrugged, bland face not quite hiding his amusement. "I guess that's just the risk you take."
Jack shook his head, and then, because it just bore saying again, exclaimed, "Tree people!"
"Yeah," Daniel laughed a little at that. "I know."