Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.
Last time: Continuing the fun (begun in 117… and also 61 or 62), because that's all we need.
Chapter 129. Close Enough to the Limit.
"Who's that?"
She immediately wished she hadn't asked, though she wasn't sure why. The instant Radek looked up, his eyes landing on the mysterious blond man escorted by a couple of beefy military guys, he tensed. "I think that's Lieutenant, uh… Kenmore," he said, obviously trying to keep his tone light. Light-ish.
"Why does he have an escort?" Anna whispered.
"He was captured by the Wraith and we aren't sure if there's something… wrong with him," Radek said. "Don't talk to him unless you have to." He had stopped eating his salad as he watched, and he didn't go back to it. "In fact, we should probably leave," he said, quietly, even though it was in Czech.
"What do you think he's going to do?" Anna asked, not rising when Radek did.
Radek waited for a long time before slowly sitting again beside her. "I don't know. I just don't know."
If there was a problem, Anna fully trusted Doctor Beckett to fix it. In absence of that, those marines were huge. Their guns were threatening. And nothing about Lieutenant Kenmore seemed to be all that dangerous. Sure, he was obviously a military guy of some kind with the frame to leave little doubt. But he probably couldn't take out three of them, plus the off-duty ones sitting nearby.
"Forget it," Radek said suddenly in a whisper, turning to her. "Everyone else knows. There's no reason you shouldn't."
"Know what?" She found herself whispering, too, speaking in Czech because he was, even though he usually didn't like to do that in public. Unless he was swearing.
He picked up his tray and walked, even though he hadn't finished. He wrapped up his sandwich and picked up his boxed salad. Anna followed, even though she hated eating in the lab. There was no view, and it was dark compared to just about any other suitable eating venue in Atlantis. That, and it pretty quickly killed any conversation since there was so much for Radek to do and look at.
Usually, Anna was left pondering her own half-hearted equations and flowcharts for an abandoned chip factory while he tackled whatever the next step in his own work was.
This time, though, he slowed when they turned into the second hallway on the way to the transporter. "His name isn't Kenmore, and he's not human."
Anna paused her steps for half a moment to process that, try to recall the man she'd seen in the mess hall. If he wasn't human, she wasn't sure what else he could have been. She'd never met another alien besides Asgard and Wraith, though she knew they existed… For the most part, though, most aliens seemed to very much be on their own aesthetic track. Wraith were vampiric pale green with weird whiskers and white hair, Goa'uld were snakes, and Asgard were little grey men. Humans were… humans. Plenty of variety and no real way to mix them up.
"What do you mean he's not human?" she asked, continuing in Czech even though they passed a scientist on the way in the hallway. Radek didn't scold her for being rude.
"That's what I mean. He's… he's a Wraith."
"What!"
"Remember the retrovirus that turned Sheppard into some kind of Iratus bug/human hybrid a few months ago?"
Anna nodded, trying to fathom how that had only been a few months ago. Maybe he'd forgotten she'd been here almost a year now, and that escapade dominated one of her earlier months. She barely knew John at the time, though the way to friendship had been pretty well been paved with Hitchhiker's Guide.
"It was part of a project that Carson was working on. He's theorized that the Wraith are essentially Iratus bug/human hybrids, too. One of them—I don't know if it's the bug or the human—took on the features of the other in ancient times when the Iratus bug fed on humans. Carson's plan is to turn off the component DNA of the Iratus bug, leaving only the human."
Radek punctuated his speech by stepping off the transporter onto the lab level. Anna followed him reluctantly up the stairs toward Lab 02.
She wondered how long this had been happening and she hadn't noticed. Sheppard's transformation had been pretty quick, but then he'd had traits essentially added. She had no idea how it worked when traits were taken away. And it seemed like Doctor Beckett might have been on to something, because Lieutenant Kenmore looked for all the world like an actual human…
"It looks like it might have worked?" she said, though she still wasn't sure what she thought about it.
Radek shrugged, sliding his box salad onto his desk and walking over to the row of servers along the back wall. He fiddled with some of the buttons and reset one of them with an anxiously blinking yellow light. "I don't know if we can tell."
Anna stood in indecision in the doorway, Radek predictably getting immediately distracted by something on his computer. It was probably better than fretting about anything other than the former Wraith wandering the hallways with only two marines to make sure he didn't get into anything he wasn't supposed to. Touch anything he wasn't supposed to.
"When do you think we can tell?" Anna went to his desk with her lunch, set it aside, and leaned heavily on one side. It probably would have tipped except for all the heavy machinery in the middle of it.
With a sigh, Radek looked down at her. "I don't know. I'm not a doctor. Or a psychologist. Or whatever sort of person would be qualified for this situation."
"Assuming nobody is qualified," Anna said. She didn't know why she cared so much, except that she liked to think that "being human" to the point of not having to be escorted around by marines like he was always in a prison was something eventually achievable over time. Just like a lot of her goals were achievable over time, regardless of the inclinations she was born with. The inclinations that, best case scenario, ended in rooms like this. "Or that you are qualified enough," she added when he didn't answer immediately.
Anna realized that this was more of a sore spot than Radek had wanted to admit. She probably shouldn't have pressed, but it was already done.
It took Radek so long to answer, Anna wondered how sure he could have been of his answer… But when he spoke again, he sounded sure. "Never. I don't think he can be human. He's not human. There are some things we don't get to choose." Radek walked around one of the server racks and started clicking buttons, flipping switches, and pausing to read the display on his tablet.
"I don't think so," Anna said. She slid into his chair and picked up her sandwich.
Radek leaned out from around the servers, and smiled before. Patronizingly, she thought.
"Why?" she asked.
He clearly gave it some thought, casting a glance every second or two toward his servers and then his tablet. Finally, he responded, "Because of Rodney," and disappeared back behind the rack.
Because of Rodney…? Anna pondered that for a few minutes before deciding she wasn't going to get it on her own. Rodney was a condescending and narcissistic ass, but she liked to think that, if he really wanted to, he could become something other than that. Something maybe a little bit more. Something that he'd apparently showed the beginnings of when he and Radek came to the mutual conclusion that he'd be a good guardian for her in the event of Radek's death. It would take a lot of work, and willingness to do the work was generally what she considered the limiting factor.
She left her sandwich on Radek's desk and went to the corner of the wall of servers. "What about Rodney?"
"Would you say it's not self-aggrandizing to say I'm a genius?" Radek asked.
Anna huffed, though there was some amusement at the understatement. "No, I'm pretty sure you can be reasonably labeled a genius."
"I will never, no matter how hard I try, be as smart as Rodney." Radek looked at her, and his smile was genuine. "Do not tell him I said that, please."
Anna hadn't realized her smile had dropped off her face until she felt her heart sink. In sympathy or selfish disappointment, she wasn't sure… True, she'd come to that conclusion for herself, a long time ago. She would never be as smart as Rodney. She would probably never be as smart as her father. But that was because she knew she wasn't motivated enough to be that smart. She could have been… at least until Radek said he couldn't. Not that he wouldn't—because who wanted to dedicate that much time and effort to intellectual pursuits. But that he couldn't. Why should she try if she couldn't?
"Don't get me wrong, I am very, very smart. I am smarter than most of the people on Earth, even 99% of the people in my field. Most people will never find a limit like this, so I suppose that is 'limitless potential,' practically. But objectively, just because you haven't found a limit or won't live long enough to doesn't mean there isn't one. I'm happy and lucky to be where I am. But I am, at least, close enough to know it's there. And, of course, I would like to be smarter than Rodney, but I know that's a limit I can't cross." He nodded toward the door, as if in the direction of Michael Kenmore somewhere out there in the city, and said, "I feel confident that whatever it means to be Human, there is a limit to how much a Wraith can become more Human."
"You don't know that, though…" Anna said quietly.
"Yes, this is truth. I don't know anywhere close to everything, and close to nothing about the things I don't study." He chuckled and added, "I think there is a saying somewhere about not going to a physicist for life advice. You can support that twelve times over just going next door."
There was a certain logic to what he'd said… and it did seem like he'd given it some thought before Michael Kenmore even came along. There was something to be said for believing in limitless potential, but even Anna had to admit most people probably meant that laterally when talking to someone of her age. As one got to be as old as Radek, his options closed, in a way. There was always more than one path, and some went further than others, but there was an end to every path. And some of those paths, he just wouldn't live long enough to find the end of.
"I don't want you to be confused," Radek said suddenly. "We are experimenting on him as a prisoner of war. I think that's wrong, in no uncertain terms, regardless of whether he's technically human or not. The spirit of the Geneva Convention doesn't become irrelevant just because we aren't on Earth, or because the things we're experimenting on differ from us genetically a fraction more than usual."
Anna nodded, since she hadn't thought about it and didn't really want to. Her heart shuddered with the realization that Radek thought what Doctor Beckett and the others were doing was so morally wrong that even a committee of bureaucrats could agree some things were reprehensible. And Doctor Beckett of all people…?
"Either way, the fact that he is being followed around by a battery of marines means that someone somewhere agrees with me, at least a little. His Wraith component is inert, but he's still dangerous… because he's still a Wraith."
"But knowledge and intelligence… that's different from being Human. Isn't it?" Anna wondered.
Radek shrugged. "We aren't talking about humans, all of which are so incredibly similar it's practically pointless to differentiate. We learn, and that's how we live."
Of course, he wouldn't think it was different. Everything was, to him, knowledge and intelligence. He'd given spending time with her practice and study. It was intelligence to figure out what kind of knowledge it was, and, to Radek, perhaps, they had learned to love each other. There was something just as flattering about that as if love and understanding were something intrinsic. Maybe even more flattering.
"Aren't you assuming that there's something 'Human' that Wraith don't have?" Anna asked.
He gave her a grin. "Or something 'Wraith' that they can't get rid of. Yes, I am. And I admit I don't know what that is. It's not perfect, and I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. You're welcome to think differently than I do."
Anna sighed and went to stand next to him, see what he was looking at on the tablet. "Hard to do when you're the smartest person I know." She gave him a sideways glance. Even smarter than Rodney.
If he noticed, he made no indication. "I only know what I know and what I don't. People smarter than me in this area have already decided that Michael is Wraith enough to necessitate a marine escort. It seems to me just as likely as not that Michael has found the limit of how human he can be."
"Which isn't human enough…?"
Radek looked at her, but said nothing. After a moment, he went back to his servers.
"You think this is going to turn out really badly, don't you?"
"Don't go by me… I always think this is going to turn out really badly."
#
"Where are you going now?"
"Taranis."
"Oh, that, uh…" Radek snapped his fingers a few times while he tried to remember. He stopped when he realized that he'd picked that up from Rodney a moment later. "The people with the Lantean technology on their planet."
"Yeah." Rodney sighed and looked around. "Well, hold down the fort and all that."
Radek nodded. The place did seem somewhat fragile these days. "Lieutenant Michael Kenmore" had been wandering the halls of Atlantis, if not freely, for almost two weeks now. Radek started ignoring the updates on his condition a while ago. Hearing about his frequent visits to Doctor Heightmeyer and his apparently growing friendship with Teyla were neither interesting nor entertaining light reading. He purposefully lost track.
The chatter about the things Radek would be doing while Rodney was away was hardly enough to keep his mind off the situation, but he could talk about Atlantis's power systems and deep space sensors on autopilot.
"Bring me a souvenir," Radek said, when they were almost at the tower.
"A souvenir, hm?" Rodney said, smiling. "What kind of souvenir?"
"Nothing too exotic," Radek said, feigning disinterest in the joke before he got to the punchline. Finally, he snapped and pointed at Rodney. "I know. Bring me a ZPM."
"Oh, is that all?" Rodney sounded irritated, and Radek couldn't tell if it was genuine.
"What are you two doing?" Sheppard squinted at them as they walked into 'gate room.
Radek exchanged a glance with Rodney, unsure what Sheppard could have meant. Perhaps that they were standing in close proximity and not arguing. A part of Radek hated to admit it, but he and Rodney must have been treating each other differently. Radek had no doubt his staff and Rodney's had noticed. Radek realized a few days ago that he'd gone almost a whole week without his intelligence badly degraded. Almost. People never changed, not really. Somehow, that was still a good thing.
Either way, Radek figured it was only a matter of time before things got back to normal and Rodney was back to his old self who remembered that Radek was an insufferable moron and deserved to be derided at any juncture, reasonableness notwithstanding.
Rodney looked just as baffled as he turned his gaze back up the two steps to level with the lieutenant colonel. "Nothing?" Rodney said.
"Okay, well, let's get out of here."
"Have fun." Radek stood back and watched the team gather on the stairs.
Rodney didn't join them. "You want to go instead?" He looked at Radek, and, for a moment, Radek couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"Rodney." Radek frowned and glared.
"Kidding. Obviously." With a sigh, Rodney started moving off to join his team. "Have fun tomorrow."
"We will."
With that half-hearted goodbye, Radek climbed the stairs slowly to the main room. It had been just over three weeks since returning from Genii prison, and climbing the stairs had gotten steadily better. He could move around without pain, and his lung hadn't collapsed again. Apparently, that was a worry at some point.
Elizabeth nodded, somewhat absently, at his eye-contact outside her door. He went in, crossed the room to what he'd come to think of as his chair, sat, and waited.
She looked up, the lightest of smiles on her lips and brightness in her eyes. "Well, good news. A message from Major Lorne came through—he'll be back with the Daedalus next month. And he says he owes you fifty dollars. Your cut for staying?" The quirk in her eyebrows showed a curiosity she wasn't going to press.
For the best. Radek couldn't help his returned grin. He knew Evan would be back—he should have put money on it, actually. It was likely everyone knew just as much as Radek did, though. Of course, he was coming back. "I hope he had a good time with his family."
"Which leads me to an obvious question…" Elizabeth said, looking at him somewhat pointedly.
"Yes?" He'd already told her that he was staying, though the wild idea he was going anywhere barely got seventy-two hours in the sun before it died the strangest death he could have imagined. Just in case, he reminded her, "I told you Anna and I are staying, yes?"
"Oh, yes, of course you did. You're staying on Atlantis," she said, waving that away as if it was so far back in history she had to clear the air of fog to see it. "I know you're still recovering, but what are you thinking about continuing with Lorne's team? Though I am curious; you never did tell me how your talk with Rodney went." She didn't give him time to answer what was, he thought, a pertinent question—and her eyes glinted in mischief.
Gossip. It was the bread and butter of such a small place. "Obviously, it went…" He didn't want to say it went "well," per se. Though, it did. "We're here," he finished. "And we're staying."
"Yes."
Elizabeth wanted more… the whole story. "Alright, as long as you swear to me this information goes nowhere. They can mock me when I'm dead."
Elizabeth grinned. Nodded.
"Rodney is my first choice to care for Anna in absence of myself." Radek sighed and remembered the mild anxiety he felt at not having received a message back from his sister about this development, yet. Regardless of whether she was upset or not, he knew she wouldn't fight him. She would just be confused, disappointed, or insulted in the worst case scenarios. Only slightly better worst case involved sentiments like… relief.
Elizabeth shook her head. "I'm surprised, but I'm not surprised. He convinced me, too."
There was obviously more for them to be surprised about—not limited to Rodney's apparent sincerity in how serious he was at the time. "Unbelievable."
"He's like a puppy. Impossible to say no to when he gives you those mournful eyes."
Radek chuckled and waved that off as he leaned back in his chair. "Please, stop with this. There's only so much appreciation of Rodney I can take." He got enough of that, anyway. Tongue-in-cheek, probably, but it was better than what Radek got on a regular basis.
"Understood." Elizabeth pressed her lips together and, apparently, was trying not to smile. Failing, but failing beautifully. "What's on the menu for you this afternoon?"
Radek squinted. "Menu?" Looked up.
"I mean, what are you doing? Your checklist."
Radek nodded slowly, then shrugged. "Finishing plans for tomorrow, responding to some requests for end-of-year meetings… things like that. You?"
"Hm." She looked at her tablet, scrolled. "The same. I'm included in breakfast tomorrow, still?"
"Yes," he said. "Yes, of course."
He wanted to say she could be included in his whole day, but… well, no. He didn't want to say that. Since his recovery had taken up a lot of Anna's time and energy, it was more important that she have a good day tomorrow than he did. And, while she didn't dislike Elizabeth by any means, there were still obviously no fond feelings between them.
Radek didn't know what he expected.
Elizabeth had fallen into silence, starting with the work she had set aside for this afternoon, so Radek did the same. If only he'd figured out something like this when he were younger, that he could be happy and productive at the same time. That he could spend time with someone no matter what he was doing—but there were just some things he'd never stop learning. There was something nice about that, something comforting. No matter how long he lived, no matter how close he could get, there was always something more.
A/N: I think the point is I've been mulling over the Michael situation way more than was ever intended. It always seemed like the dumbest possible way to handle the situation, but that's not something Anna could have reasonable changed so I guess we're stuck with these characters being what I count as unaccountably dumb. I wonder what would have happened if they were just honest with Michael from the beginning... I think it would have turned out better. But I guess that's another fic for another time.
Thank Yous
SabreKai - Oh, Sabre, I'm so sorry for your loss. Of course, there's nothing to say on this side of things, but I hope you're doing okay. I think you're right about Atlantis in general, and certainly about Rodney. He avoids unpleasant reality until the last possible moment. But then he comes through. All while being, as you say, an arrogant SOB. Thanks very much for reading and commenting. It means a lot to me that you're enjoying it, and hopefully the next chapters continue the trend!
Next time: I feel a little bad that this is a surprise.
