Revised 10.10.04
CHAPTER SEVEN: HOME TO ROOST?
When Methos finally reached his new apartment, he was, to his relief, still in time. There was no sign of a truck waiting for him. As he walked into the hallway, he saw, though, that an elderly man was waiting propped up against his doorway, his legs straighter than nature could justify.
"Joe," Methos said, a surge of pleasure pushing aside his tension momentarily. "It's good to see you".
He grabbed him into a bear hug.
"That's Dad to you," the gray haired man replied tartly, although it didn't stop him leaning into the hug. "I've read your Air Force application form. It's a lovely story."
As they walked inside, Methos went to retrieve the one chair in the apartment.
"For crying out loud, Methos," Joe said as Methos carried it into the lounge room. "How could you rope me into your back story? I mean, I'm supposed to be your watcher, not your bloody father. You remember the lines - observe record but never interfere in the lives of immortals - ring any bells?" He paused for a quick breath. "Or did I miss the part in the Watcher Manual where it says provide cover stories for miscreant immortals?" Joe said, as Methos set down the chair so that Joe could take the weight off his artificial legs. Before he could move out of range, Joe grabbed his wrist, turned it over, matching its pristine state against the symbols etched in blue on his own arm. "Or did all caution about HQ disappear when you had your tattoo removed?"
'I knew that the non-interference clause of the watcher code would get me in trouble some day', Methos thought to himself. Still, it's more often worked for me than against me.
"Come on Joe," he replied, his voice falling into the familiar modulations of the polyglot accent he had used as Adam Pierson. "You ARE, HQ, these days, or at least you were when I set up the identify. Or did I hear wrong, O mightiest of the watchers, First Tribune Dawson?"
"Retired now," Joe replied.
"Only by a week," Methos replied.
"Still hacking into the Watcher database I see," Joe responded indignantly. "But it COULD have undermined my credibility. Remember the last time, when I got shot. I nearly died for doing a lot less than supporting your cover."
"Well anyway," Joe continued, his voice now gruff.
Remembering his near death at the hands of the Watcher's for the crime of befriending the immortal Duncan Macleod, Methos assumed.
A death Methos' doctoring had saved him from.
"Couldn't you have made me an uncle or something? One long lost and somewhat antagonistic daughter I can live with, but two illegitimate kids is starting to sound a bit careless. And as for your being an astrophysicist - what's with the military stuff anyway? Love what you've done with the hair by the way!"
As he paused a second for a breath, Methos jumped in.
"Hi Methos, good to see you Methos," he said. Before Joe could respond, he went on. "And what was that about being MY watcher? I thought you guys had given up on me when I ditched Amy two years ago?"
"Yes," replied Joe. "Your putative half-sister was pretty pissed at you." He grinned. "But someone has to maintain your chronicle, and record your history for the future since you stubbornly seem to insist on sticking around. So who better to keep tabs on you than your long lost Dad?"
Methos groaned as he realized he'd given Joe an opening to segue back to his rant. He rather thought that Joe had been secretly pleased at finding himself appointed as Lieutenant Adams' long lost father. He knew that Joe tended to think of him as a son, despite their real respective ages. And it suited him to play the role. He felt a momentary pang of guilt at what he had led Joe into. But he had no choice - he needed his help. And it was for the greater good.
"You won't divert me from this yet, you know, 'son'." Joe responded. "And I bet you cooked up a really great sob story to go with it as well - what is it, illegitimate son by a childhood sweetheart, no doubt conceived the night before I left for Vietnam from what I could gather? Covered up as these things were, when the sweetheart dies tragically in childbirth, the young father never knowing?"
"Pretty close," Methos admitted sheepishly.
"Well anyway," Joe went on, "the truth is we lost you as you so obviously planned. Your postcards got Amy a few interesting junkets, although I wouldn't be expecting any thanks from her. The words 'wild goose chase' featured prominently in her reports."
"It was only when a Lieutenant Adams 'inherited' the stuff in your storage facility that we picked up the trail. So I delegated myself to be your watcher pro tem. And here I am."
"Here you are indeed," Methos returned affectionately, resting his arm on Joe's shoulder for a moment. Before the reunion could continue, however, there was a knock on the door. It turned out to be the movers, and further debate had to be postponed as Methos turned to start directing the disposition of his goods and chattels.
A few hours later, the apartment looked almost hospitable. Perhaps too homely, Joe thought, as he contemplated the cartons of books strewn across the floor; the Viking sword, helmet and amulets on the couch; and a row of beer bottles adorning the kitchen bench. Joe had gone out to do some food shopping after the fridge had been installed, leaving Methos to direct the traffic. When he'd returned, the spare room bed had already been made up, and the movers had finally left.
He went to the kitchen to transfer some of the food he'd bought onto two plates. Dinner and interrogation he thought, oiled by a few beers. Well, he could live in hope of extracting at least some truth, he thought. After all, if one thing was for sure, it was that Methos had wanted to be found. Which meant he probably thought he needed help. To get it, Methos would have to tell him something. Truth or lies though, he wondered. Grinning to himself, he realized he didn't really mind: either would no doubt be entertaining.
He called out to his 'son' in eager anticipation. "Dinner's up, MICHAEL. Come and have a bite, and tell your old Dad what you've been up to."
"Well," Methos replied. He had switched from his Adam Pierson accent to a new, mid-Atlantic voice, Joe noted. "In fact you're just in time. There's an open day at the Mountain the day after tomorrow, so you can come and take the tour, and see what I do for yourself. If I'm still at liberty that is."
Joe shook his head at the voice, the evil glint in Methos' eyes. He doubted the timing was accidental at all, and wondered why Methos wanted him in the Mountain.
Jack flung himself down onto his bed, and stared at the ceiling. His body was telling him loudly and clearly that he had to rest. He decided to allow his body to get at least some of its way. He would lie down for a while, but would resist being dragged down to sleep just yet. He tried suppressing all thought, in the hope that this would prevent the nightmares, and stared, enveloping himself in the white relief of the ceiling.
The pain - mental and physical - kept bringing him back though.
Jack knew he really should get up and take one of Janet's little pink pills. It would take the edge off the pain at least, and he could hope that it also knocked him out, beyond the point of dreams. And beyond the point where any pesky visitors could disturb him.
More likely, though, the pills would add a little psychedelic touch to his nightmares. Actually, he was almost at the point of welcoming adding a little color and light to his subconscious meanderings. They couldn't be worse than the real world extremes of nature and man that kept creeping back into his memories. But he really couldn't be bothered getting up. In fact, he wasn't sure that he could, his arm and body ached so much.
Despite his efforts at staying awake, he felt his eyes hanging heavily, his mind draining away, dragging him down to sleep. I know, he thought; let's count replicators jumping over a fence; no better way of staying awake.
He pictured the metallic bugs - the arch-enemies of the Asgard, and almost Earth's nemesis as well. He imagined them flowing out of the wall, and jumping over an imaginary fence in front of him.
As they jumped towards him, he zatted them each three times, so they would be disintegrated. One for Loki, two for Freyr, he thought, three for Thor.
Abruptly, his vision swam, and the wall threatened to close in and suffocate him. He was catapulted in his imagination from Thor's huge, eerily empty spaceship, to the cramped claustrophobia of the Russian submarine the replicators had taken over when he had been forced to crash Thor's ship the Belisknor into Earth's atmosphere. SG-1 had succeeded in destroying the ship - but not all of the Replicators that had taken it over. One had survived, replicated itself, and killed the entire crew of a Russian submarine.
But they had eventually succeeded in destroying them, he reminded himself. And stopped the Replicators next attempts to destroy the Asgard - and Earth.
The memory-induced panic stimulated a flow of adrenaline, which surged through him, clearing his mind, and refreshing him. Not, he suspected an approach to staying awake that would be recommended by Dr Fraiser. He made the imaginary bugs vanish.
Deciding that bed was not a good idea after all, he rolled himself over to the edge of the bed, and gingerly pulled himself up. Well, if he couldn't sleep, he could at least get some work done.
Jack walked into his study, and hunted in the cabinet for the article he was looking for, along with the notes he had previously made on adapting the technique to the SGC's unique needs. Here it was, Adams, Edwards, and Watson, "A new approach to the detection of certain stella phenomena."
He grabbed a couple of the texts he knew he would need, and headed for the lounge, where he could spread the material he would need out around him. And where it might be seen and perhaps silence any unwanted visitors, he conceded to himself. He looked at his watch. Should be good for at least another hour he decided. Just enough time to make sure he hadn't stuffed up something basic.
He went into the kitchen, put on the jug to boil some water, and ground some of Daniel's left-behind beans for a pot of coffee. As he waited for the water to boil, he idly read the newspaper he'd picked up on the way home.
"Baby Found Deserted in Park," read the headline. "Police are searching for the mother of a newly born baby found abandoned in Palmer Park yesterday. Police are concerned for the health of the mother," Blah, blah, blah, he thought, as he stopped reading.
He wondered how anyone could abandon their child like that, even before they'd tried to raise it. It was such a terrible crime – leaving a precious child without any parents to turn to, leaving them at the mercy of the foster-care system. He quickly suppressed the memory of his own unhappy experiences in the system.
How could anyone not treat a child as the most precious thing in the universe, he thought, pained as ever when reminded of his own parentless childhood, and of his son, Charlie, who had died after shooting himself with Jack's own gun.
No, think instead of the pain of the Asgard, he thought – unable to have children for more than a millennia, and now not even able to produce viable clones to hold their consciousness.
He tossed the newspaper aside in disgust, and picked up the Adams article instead in an effort to divert himself.
As Jack reread the scientific paper, the simple power of the complex insights summarized so elegantly in a few lines of equations gripped him again. If this is what this kid can do with only the knowledge available to conventional earth scientists, think what he could do with what we know from our allies and explorations, he thought.
Maybe he could even help us make sense of some of the artifacts left behind by the Ancient's he thought. Make some use of the material they'd been able to retrieve from his own overwhelmed brain after an Ancient database had been downloaded into his brain. After all, the technique he'd developed fitted in so neatly with an idea sparked by his own encounter with the Ancients.
Jack contemplated for a moment the mysterious elder race. The Ancient's had been one of the four great races in the galaxy, allies of the Asgard, the original builders of the Gate system. Until they had decamped - 'ascended' to a higher plane of existence. But they had left behind the evidence of their existence. Including a database of their technologies, of which he had, temporarily at least, been the hapless recipient.
Anyway, he thought, pushing aside his memories. We really need this kid in the SGC. Time to check him out a bit.
He went back to his study, logged in to his computer, and did a quick search on MIT to try and track down Adams' thesis supervisor. The article was listed on the Physics Department's publication's page. But none of the names on the article came up in the Department of Physics' staff lists. He looked up the contact details, and rang the Department's number.
Ten minutes later, he was starting to get a very bad feeling. True, he had only spoken to a ditzy temporary secretary - everyone, it seemed was out at a seminar, lunch or on vacation, or something. All the same, the secretary claimed never to have heard of Adams. Or of his co-authors. Could he have made a mistake about which University they came from, she had inquired?
He re-checked the article. M J Adams, J P Edwards and P R Watson, MIT it said. It was published in Physics Letters - a reputable refereed journal. It was hard to see how a faked up article could have gotten through the screening process in this day and age. He looked up the journal on the net, and quickly dashed off an email to the journal's editor asking for contact details for the authors, and copying it to MIT's physics department.
He wondered whether he should contact NORAD now, and start a proper security check on Adams. But it was probably too early to panic - after all, he could just have struck out on the secretary. And having a security flag check raised on him would not exactly help the young man's career. He decided to check his personnel file first, and see what came back from his emails.
Jack drained his cup of coffee, and glanced at the computer's clock. He grimaced. Not much longer before Carter would make it here, he realized, despite her car being out of action. Fight or flight? He thought.
He could have it out with her now, and get it over with. But it would probably finish their friendship - and the team - forever. It had taken a long time to regain SG-1's trust after he had pretended to go rogue in order to stop the NID from stealing technology from around the galaxy, even with the appeal to the authority of Thor, who had insisted he kept his team in the dark.
How could he explain to them now, after so long, the reasons for his ongoing pretense at being less than intelligent? How could he account for those tell me what it means in words of one syllable demands, those leading questions, the deliberate mangling of technical terms, and his apparent inability to remember the identifiers for any planet they visited – without telling them a lot more than he was willing to. And right this moment, he doubted that Carter was in much of a mood to listen to explanations in any case.
If, on the other hand, he played to her instincts as a scientist, and let her work it out for herself, there was at least a chance that she'd forgive him, he thought. He surveyed the books and papers strewn across his coffee table.
Definitely flight, he decided. Draping a coat around his shoulders, he opened the door, and headed out for a walk in the park.
Joe almost jumped when his cell let out its squawk, breaking the peaceful silence. He grabbed it and pressed the button quickly to avoid disturbing Methos, who had gone to catch some sleep.
"Yes," he grunted into the phone, wondering why he was being disturbed.
He'd been quietly working on his laptop, catching up on his email, and enjoying the sense of domestic tranquility that had come from seeing his friend again, helping him settle into this new apartment.
Of course, he'd be more tranquil still if he'd managed to actually learn a bit more about what Methos was up to, but on that front, he hadn't had much luck so far. Still, tomorrow was another day.
When quizzed about why he had joined the military, Methos had spun him some flim-flam about needing to do something a bit different to his last incarnation in order to fend off the boredom. Space, he claimed really was the next frontier, and he wanted to be in it from the early stages - not the Model T phase of development, which, he argued, was just ending, but the point at which it became a viable means of investigating the unknown.
Methos had then proceeded to enlist him to do some research that sounded much more in keeping with Methos' Adam Pierson interests than his current persona as Lt Michael Adams, astrophysicist. Methos had asked him to trace archeological digs - and publications - associated with a Dr Daniel Jackson, an old friend that he wanted to catch up with, or so he had claimed.
But before he'd really had a chance to press him for explanations, Methos had slipped off to bed, claiming he needed to get some rest before his midnight shift started.
The voice on the other end of the phone started speaking, dragging Joe back into focus.
"Got another couple of possibles for your retirement project," the voice on the other end of the line said. "And one right where you are too. Did you see the article in the paper about the abandoned baby found in the park?"
As far as anyone had ever been able to establish, immortals were sterile. And immortals were invariably foundlings, with no traceable biological parents. Joe was trying to analyze the data to see if there was any pattern about where they appeared.
"Yeah, I saw the story," Joe said. "I'll look into it. You got anything more to go on?"
"Sure, I'll send you all the details I've got - just give me a call if you need some help on the follow ups. Have fun."
"Yeah, thanks," Joe replied distractedly.
Joe had a theory about the locations where baby immortals were found. And he had just obtained one more piece of data to support it. Yes Methos, Joe thought to himself, I'm pretty sure you're a babe magnet.