Ch 11
"Come on, double or nothing," Mitchell was begging.
"Come on, T, whatever he wants just agree so he'll stop scaring the fish away," Jack finally said.
They were all fishing while Mitchell and Teal'c waited their turns for the shower.
"Very well," Teal'c finally agreed.
"Awesome! Okay… what are we gonna bet this time…"
"How about a game of chess, Colonel Mitchell?"
"No!" Mitchell said quickly. "I'm… not a fan."
"That's surprising for someone with your military background," Jack observed.
Mitchell shrugged. "Too many video games, I guess."
"Hey, I like video games as much as the next guy… and significantly more than the next guy if I'm standing beside Daniel. But that doesn't mean chess isn't just as interesting."
Cameron shrugged rather than continue arguing with the General. "I believe I have the appropriate challenge," Teal'c said, setting his fishing pole down and heading back towards the house.
Alone with General O'Neill for what was probably the first time, Cameron glanced at him several times, trying to be discreet. "Something on your mind, Mitchell?"
"Nah… not really. No. It's nothing."
"Four negatives in one breath generally does not equal 'nothing.'" Mitchell gave him a strange look, to which Jack shrugged and responded, "Hey, you hang around with the math geeks long enough, some of it just sinks in."
"Uh-huh. Say… speaking of the geeks…" This time Jack shot him a look that was definitely on the sharp side - it was one thing for Jack to call them geeks, but nobody else, not even the new guy, had that privilege yet. "I mean, uh… speaking of Jackson and… Colonel Carter… I was just curious… have you ever heard of a file 30185?"
Jack let out a loud, fake cough and splutter, then shook his head. "Nope. Never heard of it. Why?"
"No reason."
Jack turned his attention back to fishing. After a few more moments, Cameron said casually, "So… I mean you're the Head of Homeworld Security."
"That's what it says at the top of all my memos. I think."
"So if you haven't heard of it, it doesn't exist, right?"
"If that's an existential question you should be talking to Daniel. Or Teal'c. If it's one of those theoretical quantum things, you should go find Carter."
"It was more of a classified SG-file thing."
"I only remember a handful of files by number, Mitchell. But it doesn't ring a bell. Let's drop it, okay? You're scaring the fish."
"Yeah, okay. Sorry, sir. Dumb question."
"No problem. When it comes to dumb questions you're looking at the king."
Teal'c joined them again with a book of Sudoku puzzles and a pencil. "I believe I defeated you in the car, Colonel Mitchell, and I promised you a rematch."
"Great. I haven't embarrassed myself in front of the General nearly enough this trip."
"There is still plenty of time left to accomplish that, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c said, passing the book of puzzles to the other man.
"Oh, it's on," Mitchell declared, snatching the pencil out of his hand. "Time me, General. Uh, please. Sir."
Jack glanced at his watch and said, "Go."
Cameron started working on the puzzle, while Teal'c went inside - he had conveniently forgotten to mention to Cameron that the shower was available now, thus ensuring that Mitchell was now occupied elsewhere, while Teal'c could go occupy the shower.
----------
Mitchell was growing frustrated with the puzzle. It didn't help matters when Sam, Vala, and Daniel all joined them outside once again, and several conversations started up at once as people got new beverages and set up where they wanted to fish and everything.
Vala leaned over him from behind, peering at the puzzle. "Three there, darling."
"Don't help me!"
"Don't help him," Jack said at the same time.
"What is that anyway?" Sam asked.
Everyone turned to stare at her. "Sam, come on, you're the resident math genius. This thing's everywhere," Daniel said.
"Even I've heard of it," Jack agreed. "People in Washington are obsessed with it."
"Maybe I don't get out in the real world very much anymore," Sam mused. She peered over Cameron's other shoulder, flicking Vala's hair out of the way so she could see. "Oh. They're just Latin squares."
"Uhh… sure?" Cameron offered.
"You're right Sam," Daniel put in. "The name it's going by these days is from the Japanese 'Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru,' meaning, 'The digits must occur only once,' but they originally became popular in the sixteenth century when…"
Vala began snoring loudly.
"Well… yeah, you're right, they're basically unfinished magic squares," Daniel trailed off, realizing that once again, nobody was particularly interested.
"Which is why we never asked you to play with us, Colonel Carter," Vala explained. "Today in the car you were napping, and we figured we wouldn't pose much of a challenge and nobody would have any fun."
"Hey, I beat her at a crossword puzzle. Once," Jack reminded.
"Yeah but you cheated," Sam said quickly.
"I most certainly did not. Ask Daniel."
"I didn't help him," Daniel insisted, for what had to be the millionth time.
"Yeah but you told him to google the last four clues," Sam accused.
"Oh. You knew about that?" he asked sheepishly.
"Yeah."
"This is different anyway, Sam," Daniel said. "There's no trivial element to it - no luck. Vala's right, you'd be way too good at it."
Sam shrugged and picked up a fishing pole.
When Teal'c joined them again, Cameron shoved the puzzle at him. "I call time out. It's too loud out here to think."
"Very well," Teal'c acquiesced, pocketing the puzzle.
"Daaaan-iel," Vala chanted, snatching the hat off of his head. "You promised."
"No I didn't! I only said maybe…"
"What are we fighting about now, campers?" Jack interrupted lightly.
"Daniel promised we'd go out on the lake in the rowboat and fish from there."
"Actually, what I said was that the boat was small enough that I'm sure you'd be perfectly capable of handling it all by yourself."
"Now Daniel, be reasonable, who wants to go sit on a boat by themselves?"
"I'm guessing not you," Cameron said.
"Bingo. Well, all right darling if you don't want to all you had to do was say so." She put Daniel's hat back on his head and pulled it down over his eyes in the process, then turned her attention to Cameron. "Colonel Mitchell… I went worm-hole-hunting with you, I do believe you owe me."
"Sorry, lady, I'm with Jackson."
"Are you now? You know, I always suspected there might be something there, but Walter assured me…"
"Very mature," Daniel said, rolling his eyes. Vala smirked at him. He returned the fake smile with an even faker one.
"I meant," Cameron said, clearing his throat, "That I share his lack of enthusiasm at the thought of stranding myself out there on that boat. There's something very… unsettling about the idea of being all alone in the middle of the water with you."
"Now, now, don't go wasting all of your charm on me at once," Vala countered.
"And it's not exactly the Pacific, Cam," Sam pointed out.
Cameron was still adamant. "I'm an Air Force man. Know what that means, Pigtails?" Vala shook her head. "No sea legs," he explained.
"The pond appears perfectly calm," Teal'c stated.
"I don't know, though, you never know when one of those big pond tidal waves might rise up," Jack contributed helpfully.
"All right, I'll shoot you for it, Jackson. Loser gets 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' duty with Sunshine over there," Mitchell said, holding out his hand to shoot Rock, Paper, Scissors.
"Fine," Daniel agreed, sitting up straight and holding out his own hands.
"Men. It's always a competition with you, isn't it?" Vala asked nobody in particular as they both did "Rock, Paper, Scissors."
Daniel picked Rock and lost to Mitchell's Paper. "Danny boy, we know how much you love rocks, but you might want to think about picking something different every once in a while," Jack advised as Daniel got to his feet with a resigned sigh.
"Wh… oh." Daniel shrugged sheepishly as Vala grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and started dragging him towards where the boat was 'parked.'
"Convenient how you never bothered to point that out to him when you were the one beating him at rock paper scissors two or three times a week," Sam remarked.
"Yeah, thanks a lot," Mitchell echoed. Jack gave him another stern look, just because it was fun to mess with him. "Sir," Cameron added with a gulp. He made a quick decision and grabbed his fishing pole and little container of worms, jogging off after Daniel and Vala. "Hey, guys, wait up!"
The rest of the group watched from afar as Daniel, Cameron, and Vala maneuvered the row boat into the water and climbed aboard. "So… let's go get dinner started," Jack suggested to Sam and Teal'c.
Everyone got up and headed inside, all planning to contribute to the meal preparations in their own way. As Jack held the door open for everyone to file inside, he asked casually, "Hey, did we ever get that leak fixed?"
----------
