Warning: A bit of this chapter, involving the death of an animal, might be uncomfortable for some readers.

Previously: Anna's headed out to the mainland for a day of fun finding orange crystal rock things (chapter 68). Radek's been called upon to do the impossible, since Rodney's too missing to do it himself.


Chapter 75. Lost Boys.

"Is this spot good enough?" Anna asked, indicating the landing area on the map for Griffin to give his okay. "I mean, I guess it's fine…" The Puddle Jumper already told her the landing area was suitable, but Anna felt the need for a second opinion.

"Looks good," Griffin said. He waited for them to touch down in the field before turning to her as the back door opened. "Not bad, Anna."

"Thanks," Anna said. "What was bad about it, though?"

She looked up through the windshield toward the Athosian settlement while Griffin gave his answer. It looked like everyone was coming out to meet them, including Iskaan. She waved when she saw him, and he waved back. He looked a bit mystified.

"And," Griffin was finishing, "I guess you just need a bit more practice at the controls, keep it flying straight. Still, pretty damn good."

"John said I was holding them too stiffly." Anna looked down at her hands. Her wrists were tired from flying the Jumper, but her palms weren't quite as sweaty. That was an improvement. "I was hoping I'd relax more as I got more practice."

"That's true," Griffin agreed. "But, I think, sometimes you have to practice being relaxed."

Anna laughed, though that made sense. Teyla said she needed to practice being relaxed, too, but that was in reference to her martial arts training. Maybe the same thing held true of Puddle Jumper piloting.

"Thank you for letting me fly it," Anna said, rising from the pilot's chair.

"Anytime. Have fun." Griffin gave a small wave.

Anna dashed past Adams and out of the Jumper.

"Anna!" Iskaan was there to meet her, grasp her arms as soon as she was within reach. Anna's heart did a skip when he touched his forehead to hers for a few seconds before drawing back. She wondered if the Athosian greeting would ever be close to natural for her…

"Were you flying the ship?" he asked, glancing between her and the Puddle Jumper as he asked. He noticed her nod as answer, and smiled. "That's incredible! What is it like?"

"It's, um… hard to explain?" Anna wondered.

Iskaan looked a little disappointed, so she decided to try it again.

"It's like doing almost anything else, except the Puddle Jumper listens to your thoughts. You have to keep an eye on everything and think about what you need to do. It's a little hard, because even though you can do normal things and have a mistaking thought, you can't do that when you're piloting the Puddle Jumper."

"So it's hard?" Iskaan summed up with a grin.

"Hm…" Anna made a show of deliberating, like Sheppard did when she asked him the same question. "Flying a spaceship? Hard?"

Iskaan laughed and shook his head. "I'm glad you're here. Come, I have a few things I want to show you. Did you bring your violin?"

"Not this time…" Playing the violin just wasn't as much fun as it used to be. These days it was something she did while she was alone on Atlantis and there was nothing else to do. She wasn't bored at the Athosian settlement, so why should she play her violin?"

"Oh…" Iskaan considered that, and then paused. "That's alright. I think I'm the only one who was going to practice today, then. Panin was definitely not interested."

"After you show me your, um… whatever it is you're showing me, do you mind taking me where you got this?" Anna held up the necklace he'd given her, the crystals apparently grown by the gods that looked surprisingly like the ZPM crystals.

"Oh, yes, of course," Iskaan agreed. He looked off toward the woods. "It is a long walk."

"That's okay," Anna said. "I have all day. Griffin is going to be bird-watching."

"Bird-watching," Iskaan repeated. "Not hunting, not tracking. Does he tell the weather from them or something?" When Anna shook her head, he snorted in laughter. "Just watching?"

"You can tell the weather from birds?" Anna asked.

Iskaan shrugged. "Only a little. The birds don't know the weather, either, but they have a sense."

"Radek told me about how pigeons can detect changes in the magnetosphere caused by solar flares, so he'd have to check charts before races…" Anna offered. She wasn't sure if solar flares counted as weather.

"Bird-racing, now?"

Anna didn't realize how funny that sounded until Iskaan said it. She giggled.

"Your people are strange, Anna."

That was true, but Anna didn't say anything else about it. As soon as they reached the edge of the camp, Jinto ran up beside them, circled around behind them, and stepped up next to Iskaan.

"Hello, Anna," he said quickly, before charging on, as if he had no time for her. "Iskaan, my father wants me to go check the traps in the woods. Do you want to come?"

"Not really," Iskaan answered. "Anna and I were going to go to the mountains to the crystal field."

Jinto made a face. "Why? It's boring there."

"She wants to see them," Iskaan said. He didn't deny it was boring, though. Maybe Anna didn't want to go. On the other hand, she could have discovered a way to make ZPMs in the future. She wasn't about to back out of that. "Maybe Wex will go."

"You said you'd go," Jinto accused.

"I will, but not today. I'm busy today."

"Do we have to go through the woods to get to the fields?" Anna interrupted.

Both boys paused to look at her. "Yes…" Iskaan answered cautiously.

"We can all go together." Anna didn't see why not. Jinto was a little annoying, but most little kids were. It seemed like the most obvious solution in the world, and Jinto seemed to agree.

"But you don't want to check the traps," Iskaan finished finally.

Anna shrugged. "I don't mind."

"No, I mean, you don't want to check the traps," Iskaan said again. He finished with glaring at Jinto, who was looking pretty smug at Iskaan's proclamation. "It's nothing; you and I can just go to the fields, and Jinto can check the traps. By himself."

"Come on, Iskaan, she's probably not going to make it all the way to the fields, anyway," Jinto muttered.

Anna stared at Jinto. Did he really just say that? "Why, do you have to climb up a cliff face?" she asked sarcastically. When Jinto shook his head uncertainly, she snapped, "Then I think I'll be fine. Thanks. And," she added, looking directly at Iskaan, "I'm not afraid of traps." Whatever there was to be afraid of. Just a couple of dead animals, probably.

She'd never seen a dead animal before. Not up close.

Dead human, though. She'd seen that. She'd seen that a couple of times.

Iskaan sighed and shoved Jinto off toward the woods by his shoulder. "Fine. We'll go with you to check your traps. And then we'll go to the fields." Iskaan looked at Anna. "It's not hard to get there. There's just a bunch of hills and a pretty steep path up the mountain, but it just takes a long time. That's all."

"I'm fine with that," Anna said.

She hoped that she would be as steel-stomached as she felt right now when she saw the traps. She'd managed to keep her lunch down when she saw Collins in the corridor and the dead man on Daedalus. As far as she was concerned, it didn't matter how bloody and gory a dead animal was. Nothing was worse than Collins. Nothing.

Jinto ran ahead, positively giddy now that he'd gotten his way.

Anna fell in step next to Iskaan. "I've seen dead things before, you know. I'm not completely helpless."

"I didn't say you were," Iskaan said quietly. "It's just that you… your people, I guess, you're very different from ours. We don't pass your tests for intelligence, but you would need a lot of learning to survive with us."

That was probably true. "But I don't think any less of you just because you don't know anything about Puddle Jumpers or ZPMs. And I wouldn't think you couldn't handle yourself on Atlantis, either." Anna caught back her tone, feeling dangerously close to pouting.

She looked at Iskaan as they walked side by side into the underbrush. Summer was coming and the birds were singing. Griffin would probably have a great day of watching his birds.

"That's true," Iskaan agreed quietly. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Anna said. Now that she thought about it, though, surviving on Atlantis seemed more-or-less easy to do. As long as she didn't go where she wasn't supposed to, and didn't touch anything if she got lost, she was virtually guaranteed survival until she could find someplace she recognized…

But she was too afraid to explore even Atlantis alone. She lived there, every day, but she hadn't seen much more than the same hallways and labs she visited every day.

She couldn't handle herself on Atlantis, could she? She had to handle herself here. It didn't matter how disgusting it was. Jinto would never let her hear the end of it. She could never show her face at the Athosian settlement again if she became sick at the sight of a dead squirrel.

Eventually, they stopped walking.

It wasn't a squirrel.

It was a large, pig-like creature, its back half chomped in a stone-like trap that looked a bit like a bear-trap and a yard sprinkler. Anna wasn't sure how it worked. As far as Anna could tell, it was held up against a nearby tree, but it fell over when the boar stepped through and got caught. The poor thing was covered in blood, its hind legs completely mangled and broken, and part of its belly was torn open. Its sides heaved in fear as they approached. She stopped walking and stood back while Jinto ran up. Her eyes filled with tears of sympathy for the animal.

"Wow." Jinto whistled. "I didn't expect this trap to actually work. I might have to drag it back before going to check the others."

"Just kill it," Iskaan snapped. "No need to stand around talking while it's suffering like this." He drew his own knife, the one Anna had gotten for him on Delbradia.

Jinto rolled his eyes. "Alright, alright." He pulled out his knife and straddled the beast.

It squealed once, short, but it was dead just seconds later. Blood flowed from its neck and pooled out around its body and Jinto's feet.

"Happy now?" Jinto asked.

"What's wrong with you?" Iskaan slammed his knife back into its sheath and stomped over to Jinto. "You're acting like a child. Who do you think you're boasting for?"

"No one!" Jinto yelled back. "I'm not the one showing off. I'm not the one going on a trip to the middle of nowhere with some girl—look at her. She's crying over a stupid boar." Jinto threw a hand in Anna's direction.

Anna tried to wipe away her tears before Iskaan looked at her, but he never did.

"I'm about to cry, Jinto. Look at this mess. Your trap is wasteful." Iskaan kicked the trap open and pulled up one of the animal's broken legs, hanging on to the rest of the creature by its skin and a couple of ligaments. "I told you—look at this. I told you this is what would happen."

"I said I was going to catch a boar, and I did," Jinto said, his voice nearing a whimper.

"Good job!" Iskaan said sarcastically. "Half of the animal is completely useless."

"It's not useless," Jinto mumbled. He stumbled back a few feet away from Iskaan and looked at the boar.

Anna could tell that she probably wouldn't want to eat anything from the shanks of the animal, thanks to exposure to the elements for however long the boar had been here.

"The hide is torn to shreds, the legs are ruined, we can't even use these bones for anything," Iskaan said. "The animal has been lying in the dirt in the daylight; you took too long to check the trap, even if it were a good one." Iskaan finished by holding his hand out toward Jinto.

Jinto ran his arm over his nose and sniffed, looking confused and humiliated. "What?"

"Your rope. You're going to need it to drag this thing back."

Iskaan waited for Jinto to take the rope coiled over his arm and hand it to him. "Next time, we're going to use my traps. And if you want a boar, we'll do it my way. Understand?" Iskaan knelt at the boar's forefeet and tied them together.

Jinto pulled the rope around his waist.

"You got it?" Iskaan asked after he took a couple of steps. The boar didn't so much as budge even when Jinto put all his ten-year-old weight into it.

Still, Jinto nodded stubbornly and kept trying to tug the boar up behind him, even though the boar had to weigh at least what Jinto did. It was bound to weigh much less, eventually, thanks to all the liquid it was losing.

Iskaan sighed and put a hand on the rope. "I'll help you. Anna?"

Anna went to the other side of Jinto and didn't quite know how to help. It was pretty clear Iskaan didn't need either of them. He pulled the rope up over his shoulder and started walking like it was nothing at all.

"Go get your trap," Iskaan said.

Jinto left the rope in Iskaan's capable hands and went back for his bloody and messy trap. It was as tall as he was and almost as wide when it was hanging open. Iskaan pulled the boar behind him at a slow pace. Jinto wasn't bound to catch up, dragging the trap behind him, but he made slow progress toward the settlement.

"This isn't usually what traps are like," Iskaan offered. "We'll be going to check a couple of others. They'll probably be empty, but…"

"It's okay," Anna interrupted. "It… didn't bother me." She knew she was lying, and Iskaan knew that, too.

"It bothers me," he grumbled. "It's irresponsible." He sighed and looked over his shoulder at Jinto.

Anna looked, too. Jinto had wiped his eyes and was frowning at the ground in concentration as he pulled the trap behind him. "I don't think you should have embarrassed him like that," Anna offered.

Iskaan shook his head. "He was trying to embarrass you. Or me. I'm not sure which. He deserved it."

Anna shrugged. That might have been true, that Jinto didn't have the best intentions. He was annoying, and she certainly didn't like him all that much… But she didn't like to see him like this, either. Even though it did give her a bit of satisfaction. She didn't like to admit that, though, even to herself. It reminded her too much of what she thought Doctor McKay might feel when watching his fellow scientists shrink at his accusations of stupidity.

But Jinto felt so bad because he really wanted Iskaan to like him, didn't he? That may not have been true for the scientists on Atlantis… or maybe it was. Doctor McKay was in charge, after all. He was smarter than all of them. It wouldn't kill him to offer a compliment every now and again, would it?

Iskaan sighed. "I guess someday he'll understand."

"Understand? What?"

Iskaan looked at her with a grin. "I'd rather spend time with you."

#

"You can't do any better than this?" Elizabeth sighed, leaning over Radek's chair in the Control Room.

She didn't sound accusatory, but the words reminded him so much of Rodney's disinterested criticisms that Radek couldn't help but bristle.

"The residual imprint on the control crystals is practically non-existent." Radek pointed at the few impressions of data that he'd mined from the control crystals as if she would understand what he was pointing at. "I did the best I could with what I had. Which was practically nothing," he added.

"It's just that fifty planets… that's a lot of checking to do," Elizabeth said.

"Yes," Radek agreed. "Assuming that we get these fifty sets of symbols together and in the right order." Elizabeth didn't look enthused, as she shouldn't have. "Doctor Weir, these things are not designed to store 'gate addresses. It's going to be next to impossible to find Colonel Sheppard and his team based on what we can get from a DHD."

"What other option do we have?" Elizabeth asked.

And that, Radek wanted to say, was beyond his expertise. But he didn't have any alternative options to find Sheppard's team. Waiting around for them to contact Atlantis was not a viable option, obviously. So, Radek was going to sit here and try to untangle these barely legible imprints from control crystals that were only catching them in passing. It simply wasn't their function.

Sort of like going offworld wasn't his. But he was going to do it anyway.

These sorts of things always fell to him.

Radek finally just sighed. "I'm not saying we shouldn't try or that we have any better options. It's just that this option isn't a very good one."

Elizabeth nodded as if she understood. She didn't seem to, though. Not really. "Well, thank you for trying this. And keep working on it. Maybe you'll come up with something."

Yeah, and maybe I'll get a couple of clouds for you while I'm at it. He'd try it if she asked, though. And, so, he would try to do this, too. After all, he had to admit he was a little worried about where they were and what trouble they'd gotten into now.

He just nodded, though. "Yeah. Maybe."

He smiled a little at the ridiculousness, a joke that only he understood. To everyone else, this sort of thing was commonplace and didn't look like much. To people like himself, Rodney, Kusanagi, everyone that understood what was actually going on… this was magic. This was as exciting as running from a swarm of Wraith darts, only without the mortal danger.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Elizabeth asked idly.

Radek glanced up and smiled. He remembered the first time she'd come to see him specifically, she said something very similar. Called him by name and apparently remembered him enough to remind Rodney he existed. The first time he knew for sure she knew who he was, he'd skipped out on her briefing and then told her shut up. Not in those words. He probably said 'please.'

Elizabeth smiled and glanced over her shoulder, as if something might have been there to elicit that reaction from Radek. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing."

He shook his head, sighed, and picked up one of the control crystals he'd pulled from what seemed like a storage facility on the lower levels. He was hoping to learn something from it. Such as, how the imprinting worked and whether he could pull apart the layers of imprinting. But they weren't really layers, it was more like… flipping coins. Flipping a lot of coins. And then trying to figure out whether those coins were heads or tails before he started flipping them in the first place?

This was why he wasn't explaining to Elizabeth what he was doing. Because he didn't know what he was doing. And even if he did, that was a terrible explanation and he didn't even know what it meant.

"Alright. Well, you have authority to pull anyone you need off whatever they're doing to help you."

He appreciated the sentiment, so he nodded. All the eyes looking at this wasn't going to make it much easier. He had Kusanagi, anyway. "Thank you."

"Thank you," Elizabeth threw back as she walked away.

Radek looked at the tablet, and then at the control crystal. This was going to take forever. Colonel Sheppard and his team would probably capture a Wraith hive ship and fly it back here in the time it would take him to puzzle out how to untangle these corrupted 'gate addresses.

He didn't get the moment to arrange his thoughts before Major Lorne walked up.

"How's it going, Doc?" he asked.

"It's not going at all," Radek mumbled. What do people expect, he can think and figure out what they're talking about at the same time?

Major Lorne didn't seem to catch his meaning. "Well, thanks for trying, anyway. It was worth a try, right?"

"It was better than following you through the bushes and brambles in the woods, so, yeah. Probably." He turned his attention off Lorne and fed the information from the crystal into the 'gate's dialing systems.

Major Lorne grinned and pulled up a chair to Radek's station. He didn't touch anything. He never touched anything that looked like a relic, artifact, or Ancient device. Radek often thought he was somewhat like a well-trained dog in that respect.

And then he felt guilty about thinking these things.

Major Lorne just leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees, and studied Radek's screen like he knew what he was looking at.

"Can I help you?" Radek asked.

"No." Major Lorne glanced at him. "What, am I bothering you? Breathing too loud or something?"

Radek snapped his mouth shut. "Uh. No."

"Okay." Major Lorne went back to looking at the screen as it started putting out potential 'gate addresses. "This is a lot more than fifty addresses."

"Yes," Radek agreed. He didn't know how to explain it, so he didn't.

Lorne paled and watched the screen fill up with the dialing symbols.

Radek watched, too. The real problem was that each of the symbols had "holes" in them, where the code had been flipped from a metaphorical one to a zero. That meant that some of the symbols were just flat-out wrong. It was like writing over a deleted file on one of their computers… without actually saving the original file in the first place.

"We can toss out this one," Major Lorne said, pointing to a line on the screen. "Actually, this one, too."

"Why?"

"They're space 'gates, and we didn't see any indication that there'd been any Wraith in the area," Major Lorne said. "They didn't take a Jumper, and the only people we've ever met who use space 'gates are the Wraith."

Just as Radek was thinking he didn't know if that was a legitimate line of logic, Major Lorne put words to his hesitation.

"I know that just because we've never met anyone else who uses the space 'gates, doesn't mean there aren't any," Major Lorne said. "But we have to narrow down our options somehow, right? Those are our least-likely options."

Radek nodded, and moved the two addresses that Lorne indicated into a separate list. "This is a massive waste of time." Radek glanced at Lorne, who nodded sadly. "Even if we do find the address they went to, I don't think their kidnappers took them straight to their hideout, do you?"

"You didn't tell her that, though." Lorne's tone was low. Not accusing, just matter-of-a-fact. "Did you?"

"No…"

He didn't lie. Just omitted. And he had a sneaking suspicion that Elizabeth knew very well that if Colonel Sheppard's team made it home, it was because they made it themselves. All of them knew there was nothing to do about it, but here they were… trying anyway.

Lorne pointed at the screen. "That planet is covered in ice."

"The whole planet?" Radek wondered. He really should read a few more mission reports.

That was a lot of reading.

"The whole planet. Indications were that no one had been there in ages when we got there, so I doubt that's it." Lorne leaned back in his chair, apparently in this for the long haul. "Weather wasn't great for piloting the Puddle Jumper, either, but I think I'm the only person who's flown a Jumper in a snow storm."

"I doubt this planet was ever dialed from this DHD," Radek mumbled, selecting his own planet for the do-not-dial list. "Deep space sensors show a black hole too close to the planet."

"Wait, so some of these planets weren't even dialed?"

Radek sighed and motioned helplessly at the screen. "It's like writing on a notepad. You press down on the paper very hard, you make an impression on the next pages. Then you turn to the next page and write something different, again, pressing down very hard. You leave another impression on the next pages."

Lorne nodded knowingly.

"Okay, now do that fifty times." Finally, he was getting through. "We are looking at the fifty-first page."

Lorne frowned, looked from Radek, to the screen, and back again.

Radek couldn't help but smile at his baffled look. And Radek didn't even get to explain all the fun algorithms it took to get the symbols this far.

Lorne didn't say anything further about the addresses. He just nodded, and stood. "Well, Doc… I think we're going to need some coffee."


A/N: I know I'm the only one who noticed it, but last week the wordcount for the story was at 183,600. Not as awesome as it could have been (an even thousand!?) but it's unlikely something like that will happen again anytime soon. Certainly not before we reach 200k. ... ... I sure hope some of you people like reading. On the plus side, I feel like this story is well suited to long car rides and stuff.


Next time: Just do it!