XIV

"This is the right street?"

Jack had assigned himself the job of driving the Preston kid back home, despite a mountain full of eager young airmen who seemed to positively live for the excitement of ferrying people about. Or appeared to when they were in the General's presence, anyway.

He'd been glad of the excuse to get off the base for a while. He still had a headache, a fact which he couldn't let slip for fear of being hauled down to the infirmary, and the presence of his clone made him decidedly itchy. By mutual consent they'd avoided being in the same room ever since Thor had beamed them back down.

Still, he felt an odd obligation to honour his other self's commitments, and that meant delivering the sleepy-eyed boy in the seat beside him safely back to his parents.

"Uh, yeah, um... it's that house there." The kid pointed, then brought his hand back to cover a yawn. Jack pulled up on the opposite side of the street and gave him a sideways glance.

"Sure you're not going to get into trouble with your folks?"

He considered. "Uh... nothing that could be improved by having an Air Force General talk to them."

"Okay." Jack accepted that. "We've got your moped in storage. I'll have a guy bring it back to you tomorrow after they've checked it for... stuff." Bombs. Naquadah. Alien parasites hanging out in the gas tank. Who knew what his scientists felt it necessary to search for?

"Okay." Jamie yawned again, and started to get out of the truck. He paused with his hand on the doorhandle. "I'm never going to find out what happens to Jon, am I?" he said, rather sadly.

"I'll have him come see you next time he's in the area," Jack promised. It wasn't worth much, and they both knew it.

"Yeah. Okay, well-" The kid popped the door open and the light came on, causing the blond highlights in his hair to glow. Jack couldn't help flinching at the brightness, slamming his elbow on the steering wheel. Jamie paused. "Are you okay?"

"Fine." Jack forced himself to straighten his face out of the grimace of pain. "Fine," he repeated, more gruffly. "Go."

The kid didn't look happy about it, but he went. Jack watched until he was inside the house, and then restarted the engine.

Goddamn headache. It was getting worse by the moment. He'd have to swing by his house on his way back to the base, grab something low-strength out of the medicine cabinet to take the edge off. No way was he going to stop by the infirmary and endure a plethora of tests just to pick up a bottle of pain pills.

He managed to make it about half a mile down the road before he had to pull over, the flashing lights behind his eyes rivalling the headlights of the oncoming traffic.

"Aw, crap," he said with resignation, and picked up his cell to dial Daniel.

It was, Daniel had to admit, entirely possible that he'd consumed, maybe, just a little too much coffee. Or perhaps it was just the excitement of what they'd been discussing during the coffee.

"Jack, it's Atlantis!" He briefly removed one hand from the wheel to gesticulate, and Jack pointedly tightened his grip on the edge of his seat. "A city - a whole city - that was once occupied by the Ancients! Can you imagine how much this would advance our understanding of their culture? We've been trying to piece things together from, from ruins and isolated pieces of technology. It's like trying to build a viable picture of modern America from looking at your truck, a TV and the Lincoln Memorial."

Jack's eyebrows quirked and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "That would about cover it," he decided eventually. Daniel narrowed his eyes.

"Jack, this is an incredible opportunity. The Asgard have offered us transport on one of their science and exploration vessels that's headed in that direction. I can't imagine what favours Thor's called in to arrange this for us. We haven't had any luck locating another ZPM with enough power to open a wormhole to another galaxy, and considering how much time has passed since their departure, it seems that the Atlantis team doesn't have access to one either. This could be our only chance to make contact with them."

Calling on Jack's loyalty to the people under his command generally worked better than appealing to his sense of intellectual curiosity.

Which Daniel was sure he had.

Somewhere.

Exceedingly well-buried.

"The Atlantis team could be dead," Jack said dourly. Daniel could tell from the way he was grimacing that his head was still causing him trouble. It had to be a pretty high event on the Jack O'Neill pain scale for him to actually bite the bullet and call out for assistance. Not that he would admit that if asked.

"Jack, this could be your clone's only chance," Daniel reminded him gently. "The Asgard can't fix what's wrong with him this time."

It was funny, he mused, how framing the argument in the terms of Jack's clone instead of Jack himself made it a lot easier to talk about things without being shut down. Maybe they should have tried getting Jack to talk about himself in the third person years ago. Hey, Jack, we know you're fine, but how do you think your clone would feel in this situation?

"Fine, so we can send the kid," Jack said. "If he makes contact with the expedition team, he can bring you back their research. Allocation of resources, Daniel. It doesn't make sense to send you into a potentially hostile situation we know nothing about when your expertise isn't necessary to the mission."

Jack only busted out the vocabulary words when he was using them as a euphemism for 'no'.

"Well, actually, I was thinking not so much sending as... accompanying," Daniel admitted. Jack's eyebrows lowered.

"I can't leave the SGC to spend weeks in another galaxy, Daniel, you know that." His tone was equal parts censure and longing.

"Jack! You heard what Thor said. The Ancient device is restructuring your brain too. How long before you end up in the same state as your clone?"

"You don't know that's going to happen."

"We don't know that it's not!" Daniel shook his head as he pulled up outside Jack's house. "Jack, you can't afford to take the chance. Sam's already spoken to General Hammond-"

"You took this over my head?" Jack's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"There was no time!" he said with a defensive shrug. He stopped the engine, and turned to face Jack. "You were out here without a secure phone, and we had to get things moving. Thor's Asgard buddies will be here tomorrow."

There was a familiar flare of white light, and the inside of his car traded places with the interior of an Asgard ship.

"Or earlier," he added.

Jack smiled wryly. "Uh-huh."

The key to managing large-scale projects, Elizabeth had discovered early in her diplomatic career, was understanding that different subgroups within them had very different priorities. In the military, the only thing that mattered was whether it worked. In government, the only thing that mattered was whether it was well-documented.

With scientists, the only thing that mattered was whether it was interesting.

"Yes, we are having great difficulties with the power supply," Radek told her cheerfully. The fact that he'd yet to get the Ancient scanner to do anything that could even loosely be construed as useful didn't seem to bother him. "Doctor Kavanagh believes that the crystals we retrieved from Iaerona are designed for a device with greater tolerance for power fluctuations."

"Is he right?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he allowed. "But we do not intend to tell him so. Doctor Kavanagh works best when he is convinced we are all out to undermine and discredit him."

She smiled. "Speaking of feeling undermined... I hear Rodney's been plotting a takeover bid from his hospital bed?"

"He is sending me many helpful diagrams," Radek said wryly. "Unfortunately, Carson has forbidden him to read or hear any details of our work here, so he is helpfully solving problems that we are not actually having. On the plus side, should we come to encounter any of them, we will be very well prepared."

She shared his infectious grin for a moment, then turned as she heard footsteps arriving along the corridor. It was Sheppard and Teyla, still dressed in their offworld gear. Even though the mission they'd been on was a low-risk diplomatic follow-up, Elizabeth felt her tension slip down a notch to see them back.

"You made contact with the Iaeronans?" she asked.

"We were invited to the post-Wraith party," Sheppard said laconically. It was impossible to tell if he was pleased or disgusted by that fact. For someone who had so little self-restraint it was a wonder he survived in the military, the Major could be remarkably hard to read when it suited him.

"Aethred says that his people do not know of any other crystals like the ones we traded for," Teyla supplied more helpfully.

"But we did get them to agree to trade food," Sheppard added brightly.

Her trepidation probably showed on her face. "And you've agreed to trade... what, exactly?"

In theory, the moderating presence of Teyla should have prevented anything too heinous emerging from the Sheppard school of interplanetary diplomacy. In practise, there was always the possibility of one of those cultural blind spots where the Athosian people saw things differently to your average Earth native.

"Actually, the Iaeronans are more interested in knowledge than material goods," Teyla said.

"Technical knowledge?" Elizabeth said dubiously, but Sheppard shook his head.

"Nuh-uh. They have laws against learning from history." He gave a dark little smirk. Teyla looked slightly reproachful, but resigned to his attitude.

"The people of the Cycle believe that we should examine the past, but not try to recreate it," she explained. "They would be very interested in anything we could tell them of the culture and history of the Ancestors, but they have no interest in learning how to use their technology."

"Or how to defend themselves," Sheppard added bitterly.

"It is not their way," Teyla said simply. Elizabeth admired her ability to accept the values of another culture - even if, under oath, she would have to admit that her own private feelings leaned toward Sheppard's. Where did you draw the line between imposing your values on others, and attempting to prevent atrocities or unnecessary suffering? It was an ethical question the Stargate Programme had wrestled with since its inception, and there was little they could do except deal with each case as best they could as it came up.

When it came to the Iaeronans, repugnant as it might be to Sheppard to stand by and watch them refuse aid and defences, they couldn't force a people to protect themselves from being slaughtered.

"Okay," she said. "So what did you promise them?"

"Nothing," Sheppard said proudly, dark mood sliding away into whatever depths he hid such things in. He bounced on the balls of his feet. "This time. I told them that our leader, the wise and powerful Doctor Weir, would do our negotiating for us."

"Really?" She was impressed.

"Really," he confirmed. Maybe there was hope for Major Sheppard, interplanetary diplomat yet.

Elizabeth looked at the deliberately inane grin he was continuing to hold while he waited like a kid for her response.

Okay, she admitted to herself. Maybe not.

"Colonel Carter." Teal'c gave her a dignified nod as his patrol of the ship brought him back around to their quarters. He was coping with being cooped up aboard the Skidbladnir the best out of all of them, which was... not a surprise to anybody, really. There were few situations Teal'c couldn't adapt to with a degree of grace and dignity that left his human teammates looking like fidgety six-year-olds.

Of course, Sam would have felt like one anyway. She'd seldom had the chance to be aboard an Asgard ship without minor distractions like Replicator armies trying to eat it out from under her, and this one was an explorer vessel, built for speed rather than battle. She itched to start popping panels open and examining its innards.

That was the trouble with having allies. When you were running around a ship that belonged to the enemy you could steal technological secrets to your heart's content, but when there were diplomatic relations on the line you had to stop and ask permission before you looked at anything.

Politics. Bah.

"How's the General?" she asked, as she fell into step beside Teal'c. General O'Neill had not been entirely happy to be, as he put it, shanghaied into coming along on this expedition. Even though it was out of the question to have left him behind, she still felt guilty to have leapfrogged the chain of command to put in a call to General Hammond. There just hadn't been time to argue General O'Neill into placing self-preservation over the call of duty, so they'd planned on a sharply barked order from a superior to do the job instead.

Of course, as it turned out, there hadn't been time for that, either. Which probably explained why was he so pissed to have been beamed up and flown halfway out of the solar system before he even knew what had happened.

Or maybe that was down to the fact that the Asgard crew hadn't known to bring along his headache pills. He'd been lying in the dark with an arm over his face for several hours, snapping at anyone unwise enough to come within bitching distance.

"He says that he is well," Teal'c said, not needing to flavour the words with any inflection to convey a wealth of information. "However, I believe the proximity is problematic for both O'Neill and his clone."

She nodded soberly, remembering how Jon had been twitching in his sleep last time she'd looked in on him. If what Thor had said about the nanite agents communicating between the bodies of both O'Neills was true, trapping them together in the finite space of a starship could accelerate the degeneration in both of them. "I just hope this ship can move as fast as Thor said it could."

Teal'c cocked an eyebrow. "Have you not been conversing with the crew?"

Sam squirmed a little. "I tried! But... they look at me funny."

They were sharing the ship with five Asgard, but none of them were much inclined to talk technology with her. There was a perky little guy named Bragi who only wanted to pepper her with questions about Earth, the surly expedition leader Frode who either didn't speak English or was pretending not to, and three engineer types who were fascinated by their primitive Tauri gear but barely seemed to register that it came with real live primitive Tauri.

There was no denying it. They were onboard a ship crewed by Asgard science nerds.

"Much the same way, perhaps, that you would look at General O'Neill should he ask you to describe the inner workings of a naquadah reactor?" Teal'c said mildly. Sam narrowed her eyes. See, this was what people on the outside missed about Teal'c. He could be sly. Sly like a Jaffa who had a very Tauri-compatible sense of humour under that deadpan eyebrow.

"Where's Daniel?" she asked, because there was no point trying to call Teal'c on it when he was making fun of you.

"He is speaking with the Asgard Bragi."

She grinned. "A cultural exchange?" The thought of the two of them babbling at each other at ever increasing speed was an amusing one.

"Indeed. However, I do not believe that Daniel Jackson will learn much about the Asgard. When I left their company, he was attempting to explain to Bragi the function of bubblegum."

After years of practise introducing Teal'c, Cassie and later Jonas to the ins, outs and occasional corkscrews of Earth culture, the thought of such conversations no longer fazed her. "Did he mention the baseball cards? You know Daniel's not going to do well with baseball cards." For someone who could talk for several hours on the minutiae of a culture that had left behind a single stone tablet as their sole remaining record, Daniel had a remarkable gift for reducing team sports down to 'well, essentially two teams compete to score points with a ball' and then talking about the symbolism.

"I have recommended that Bragi seek clarification on points he is confused on from O'Neill."

Seeing Teal'c smirk his ass off, no matter how much more common it had become lately, would never get old.

They continued on in comfortable silence, and split up at the next junction without needing to acknowledge it. Patrolling was ingrained habit as much as restlessness. No matter how benign a situation, the universe could figure out a way to get the drop on you.

On her next circuit past the sleeping quarters, Sam looked in on both the O'Neills. The General was finally snoring, the arm that had been over his face now dangling outside the Asgard sleep pod to brush the floor. In the opposite chamber, Jon appeared to be equally unconscious, but every so often he would jerk in his sleep, as if responding to a static shock.

And with every one of his spasms, the General's breathing hitched. Just for an instant, a tiny break in the rhythm of his snores... but Sam didn't think they could pin this one on his hyper-sensitive threat awareness. Whatever was going on inside Jon's body, the General was starting to feel the effects too.

She turned away, and once more made for the bridge. Maybe, if the Asgard wouldn't talk to her about their engines, she could at least get an estimated time of arrival out of them.

Because she had a horrible feeling that, however fast this ship might be, it wasn't going to get there fast enough.

"The people of Iaerona traditionally spend four days in negotiations before accepting a trade agreement," Teyla was explaining. "They attach great importance to cycles of time, and they believe that peoples must take time to know each other before they can call themselves friends."

"Sensible," John interjected, thinking of the Genii. So apparently the Iaeronans' die and let kill policy didn't extend to their fellow humans, only beings higher up the foodchain. He was really growing to hate the human instinct to worship all things big and scary.

It wasn't the fact that the Wraith fed on people that made them evil. It was the fact they made people believe they were there to be fed on.

"Four Iaeronan days? That's a long time to be away from Atlantis," Doctor Weir said dubiously. John could tell she was itching to get through the Stargate and onto a planet with fields and trees and other such normal things... which was exactly why she was fighting so hard to find arguments against it.

John didn't think the Iaeronans had ulterior motives, and it was pretty unlikely they'd get hit by the Wraith again this soon after the last raid, but he still would have liked to join Ford and Teyla in escorting her. Unfortunately, on the rare occasions Elizabeth Weir went off-world, he was exactly the last person who should be out there with her. Especially with McKay incapacitated.

Not that the idea of him or Rodney McKay taking over command of the Atlantis base was anything short of absurd and terrifying, but they were, nominally at least, the ones with the next most authority.

Chain of command was a bitch. John wished, not for the first time, that Colonel Sumner had survived long enough to take charge of Atlantis's military contingent. He hadn't been able to stand the man, but even taking orders from a by-the-book boot-polisher was better than taking orders from nobody at all.

Way back when he'd first joined the Air Force, people had talked about the burden of command. No one, however, had ever mentioned the holy-crap-there's-no-one-out-there-to-catch-me freefall of command. Being responsible for the safety of his people did things to his stomach that no amount of aerial manoeuvres could begin to touch.

And Weir was responsible for all the same people he was, plus him, plus the ones who didn't come under his jurisdiction until they were standing in the middle of a firefight arguing that yes, they knew the Wraith were attacking, but this set of readings was quite important so could the whole 'fleeing for their lives' thing wait a few minutes?

Which was exactly why she needed to spend a few days sitting in on a hunt festival, trading stories for food. John pasted on his most appealing smile.

"Hey, but McKay's safely squirreled away in the infirmary," he reminded her. "That ought to exponentially reduce the opportunities for chaos. Besides..." he gave an easy shrug, "I'll be in charge."

Elizabeth twisted her mouth in a wry smile. "That's exactly what I'm afraid of," she noted.

He tried hard to look innocent.