Chapter 13 - Working out the Whispers
Their shared chamber was small, the cots barely comfortable.
Still better than the mines.
The cold was kept at bay by the geothermal heaters in a way Daniel hadn't seen before, but the technologies employed by Meslar Tving and his followers to survive deep under the ice weren't his concern at the moment.
The caution—and he used that word lightly—that the rest of the PPA members showed around him and Teal'c was understandable. To them, they were they intruders, a nuisance in their territory. Their presence was sufficient in arousing any sort of suspicions among a people whose way of life seemed to consist of subterfuge, sudden strikes and retreats.
It hadn't mattered that he and Teal'c were unarmed and outgunned.
In the past week, Tving and the PPA council had relayed the planet's environmental crisis, the roles they played as radical exiles who subscribed to an ideology grounded in extreme concern for their ailing planet.
Neithana, as he and Teal'c had learned, was merely a remnant of much larger continent that had sunk deep below subglacial landforms when a large-scale scientific experiment involving a volatile element about two centuries ago had somehow altered the angle of the entire planet's axial tilt. The unfortunate coincidence of an extraordinary amount of solar radiation from the planet's twin suns at the time of the disastrous experiment had not only helped usher in a planetary ice-age that raged on with no signs of change but also kept an amount of toxic particles permanently in the atmosphere.
Tragedy didn't even come close to describing it. Even if much had been said and done about the city's widespread failure of policing experimental scientific ventures, Tving and the council had still been adamant that the lesson they'd learnt was all too easily forgotten. The renewed interest in Korros, as they'd said, had been a prime example.
The Council, led by a shrewd Administrator, had been captivated by the idea of an enduring source of energy posited by a brilliant scientist named Thera Arann whose cautious but innovative ways had apparently been sufficient assurance for them to sanction the project's continuation.
The second Korros project, as they'd claimed, was far from necessary. Neithana ran on sufficient geothermal power for at least the next five hundred years and with the stringent curb on births that placed a strain on the city's recourses, all its inhabitants would have been long dead by then.
Or perhaps the salient point of the PPA's manifesto was that Korros was Calder's leverage in a ballot vote that lay not too far in the future.
As far as Daniel understood, they aimed to destroy every single last bit of the Korros project to expose the great lie that Calder was propagating through guerrilla warfare.
He sighed to himself.
The politics of disaster management. Where expediency leveraged new spaces—social, economic and political—and in the process of reconstruction, brought the worst out of even those who might have started out with noblest of intentions.
It looked as though he and Teal'c had just found themselves in the middle of an escalating tension that would reach boiling point sooner or later. To be accidentally caught in a crossfire was the worst place in which they could have found themselves.
But they needed the PPA, or at least its widespread intelligence network. Which meant they had little to no bargaining power, save for the limited information they could give about life in the mines. Daniel had tried anyway, finally learning after several rounds of trying to reduce the odds that were already stacked against them, that the Stargate lay deep within the city in the administrative centre, housed in a building with security so tight that their approach would be sniffed out a mile away.
He'd argued, cajoled and bartered.
In return for that sort of information, Tving had wanted an exhaustive layout of the mines, the range of equipment and the average amount of Korros produced every solar cycle. He'd told Tving all he needed to know to the best of their abilities, yet he sensed that there would come a time when even that wasn't going to be enough anymore.
The doubt that had begun deep in his stomach returned.
They had merely been shown a side of Neithana's convoluted history and Tving had certainly been persuasive enough in fashioning himself and his people as revolutionaries with a mission, operating single-mindedly with the sole aim of sabotaging the Korros shipments because they believed that mistakes as monumental as the first project's meltdown shouldn't happen again, in spite of the safeguards that Thera Arann had already put in place.
"You look troubled, Daniel Jackson."
The calm, voice of the meditating Jaffa behind him stopped him in his strides. Sheepishly, Daniel stopped pacing, realising that he'd thoughtlessly been interrupting Teal'c's Kel'no'reem cycle.
"Oh, right. Sorry, Teal'c," he said, "I don't suppose you get back into Kel'no'reem easily?"
"I am well acquainted with disturbances. They are unavoidable in these small living spaces."
He forced himself to stop pacing and took a seat at the edge of his cot. "It's still more than what we used to have for the last few months."
"I concur, Daniel Jackson."
A stream of hushed voices floated through the thick surfaces of their quarters. In his attempt to trace the source of the sound, he looked upwards and caught sight of the small ventilation vents that lay unobtrusively in the corner of the ceiling.
The walls fell silent, then seemed to reverberate with a deeper sound again.
A masculine voice. Countering a feminine one.
A conversation? An argument? A tactical planning session?
Daniel stood and tried to balance a foot on the cot. Awkwardly, he positioned himself with an ear tilted towards that hole that recycled and ejected air every few seconds.
"…the security…that….Calder…Thera Arann's scaled model…."
"…taking…the next chance that we get…"
Truncated phrases were all that he found audible. In frustration, he craned his neck closer towards the vent until he nearly pulled a muscle…only to be pushed away by a firm hand.
"Your hearing range is inadequate, Daniel Jackson."
He tried not to feel peeved at the Jaffa's matter-of-fact observation. "Uh, okay."
Teal'c took his place directly below the vent, concentrating on a conversation that was short and curt. Finally, there was only silence.
"It would seem that Meslar Tving and his council have made preparations for a revolt in a place that is under the planet's surface. The details are unfortunately lost to me." Puzzlement laced the Jaffa's voice, accompanied by a frown.
Daniel blinked, absorbing the unusually long sentence and felt the tendrils of alarm spread in his gut. "Revolt?"
"So it would seem."
"Why? When?"
"I am unsure," Teal'c said calmly. "The details are lost to me."
Daniel moved to stand next to him, taking another glance at the now-silent vent. "Why do I feel like I need to be more worried about this than I should?"
"Indeed."
Teal'c's soft acquiescence made him look up sharply. "Oh boy. So I'm not the only one feeling too anxious about something that may not even be relevant to us?"
"It is best to exercise utmost caution in a situation in which we are distinctly disadvantaged."
So Teal'c trusted them as much as he did. Or perhaps even less than he did. But he took things in his stride as they came, no matter how dire or trivial they were—a precious lesson, Daniel concluded, that he had to learn well and quickly as Apophis's First Prime.
Never really did work, though.
"Right," he murmured in reply, the sudden gleam that lit his eyes visible enough for Teal'c to raise a brow. "It wouldn't hurt to do some digging of our own."