"I wouldn't exactly call it stuck," Selena retorted, sounding more than a little miffed. "It's not like this is some primitive planet. Radek is quite happy here, aren't you?"
"Of course I am."
The confirmation seemed to come as a relief to Selena, and Elizabeth began to suspect that Selena and Radek might be a little more than just colleagues. And why not? He'd been stranded here for decades. Compared to that she herself had been lucky. The vagaries of temporal flux that had arisen in the wake of Charybdis had exiled her for a mere four years. She shuddered.
"See?" said Selena, satisfied. "This may not be your home, but it isn't a bad place. And staying here doesn't mean you'll have to give up all hope. Who knows? You may spend less time here than you think, because, naturally, we'll continue our research into the failure of the Stargate system."
"When?" John hurled the question at her as if it were a missile. "In the next, oh, three days? Have you taken a look outside lately? The entropy created by Charybdis is wrecking this galaxy one planet at a time, and guess what? This one's next in line."
"We only have your word for it that it's entropy or that it's even caused by this… Charybdis," Selena shot back. "And, by your own admission, you got it from some old hag who brews herbal teas for a living. Very sound scientific method, I must say."
"Selena!" Radek interceded. "You mustn't underestimate…"
It was the third time within the past two hours that the debate had arrived at this juncture, and Elizabeth didn't think she could take yet another rerun without starting to scream or throw things. She tuned out the voices and quietly slipped from the tent into what should have been dusk over this version of Atlantis.
Except, you couldn't tell unless you had a watch and knew the time of day. The sky remained unchanged… No, that wasn't true, was it? The sky still was the same stomach-churning stew of reds, but, if anything, it had gotten worse, shot through with cankers of black, menacing and malignant, that belched great forks of heat lightning. A hot, violent wind had risen, chasing leaves, torn-off twigs, and small debris up the mountain before it. She squinted against the dust it whipped into her eyes, thinking that, maybe, the gale at least was a good thing. It might just help disperse the carbon monoxide that had pooled in and around the rift in the earth.
The area was deserted now. As soon as the doctors had confirmed what had killed most of the people trapped in the chasm, a ragtag crew of police, firefighters, and soldiers, together with select volunteers, had cleared a wide strip of ground either side of the fault and declared it off-limits until further notice. Tamed by terror, the crowd had complied with the kind of listless docility she recalled seeing in the refugees from every war or disaster zone she'd ever visited. It was as if, after losing wherever they called home, any further evacuation merely served to numb them a little bit more, make them a little bit more indifferent to whatever misery would befall them next.
They'd struck their camps, inasmuch as they'd had them, or else simply shouldered their belongings and trudged uphill to where they were supposedly safe and settled again. The mountainside was dotted with their campfires, small and struggling to survive in the wind, vanes of smoke slanted sharply. Elizabeth fancied she could feel their stares on her, some hostile, most expectant, hoping that, somehow, the strangers would work a miracle, open the Stargate, and lead them all to salvation. Part of her wanted to yell at them to stop staring and accept the inevitable.
Just as she had to accept it.
She had failed. John Sheppard, for once, had failed. That whole madcap scheme of somehow going back and making it all unhappen had failed. As a child she'd learned the hard way that, if you broke things because you were thoughtless or careless or both, you couldn't just turn the clock back and fix them, no matter how badly you wanted to. Somewhere along the line she'd allowed herself to forget that lesson, and back then it had only been a canary that hadn't withstood a week of I'll feed it tomorrow. This time it was a galaxy, a universe perhaps, and, on a less abstract level, all those people huddled around their choking little fires and their hope.
Elizabeth wanted to scream.
Instead, she whirled around to head back into the tent and almost collided with Radek. "It's getting a little stuffy and circular in there, isn't it?" His smile crinkled unfamiliar lines around his eyes. He was an old man. The realization forced another shudder from her, but if he'd noticed he didn't let on. "Don't let Selena get to you. She can be rather reluctant when it comes to wrapping her head around new ideas. But she's a good scientist. One of the best." A little proprietary pride there.
She returned his smile. "I think anybody would have a hard time wrapping their head around this mess."
"Yes." He fell silent and, just as Elizabeth had done earlier, gazed out at the blistered sky, the Stargate, and up at the refugees' new campsites. Finally he looked back at her. "Suppose we find a way and succeed in reversing Charybdis, what will happen to all these people here?"
And how will you react when I tell you the truth? Like the other Radek in that other timeline?
Stifling a gasp, Elizabeth searched for a palatable answer. It took too long.
"I thought so," Radek murmured. "Selena suspects it, too, which is another reason for her reluctance."
"And what about you, Radek?" she asked carefully, not sure if she wanted to hear his reply.
"You mean will I react as… vehemently as my alter ego?"
This time the gasp tore loose. "Colonel Sheppard told you?"
Radek nodded. "He seemed unusually careful in talking to me. I confronted him. I agree that there was no point in keeping it a secret. That… man… he wasn't me, Dr. Weir."
He could have fooled her, had fooled her, in fact, which was none of this Radek's fault.
"Never mind," she said. "It was a difficult situation for all involved."
"That is one way of putting it…" His eyebrows arched in wry amusement, then he sobered as his gaze wandered back to the evacuees. "I suppose some scientists would argue they're not real. They felt real enough to me for the past thirty years or so. They're good people, you know? The universe will be poorer for their never having existed…" Radek sighed and segued to a seemingly unconnected train of thought. "Approximately a month ago our meteorologists discovered signs that the planet's atmosphere was breaking down at an exponential rate. They were working on finding a way of reversing the deterioration when all the rest of this started. The quakes destroyed most research facilities on the planet, which was when the government decided that evacuation was the only option. Except, they ran out of suitable ships inside a day, with eighty-five percent of the population still stranded here." He turned around to face her. "I guess what I'm saying is that, whatever happens, these people will cease to exist, and that disappearing in a flash is a kinder way to go than slowly suffocating in a toxic atmosphere."
Breathing felt difficult enough even now, though Elizabeth wasn't sure if this was due to objective facts or the oppressive menace suggested by that sickly sky. Even that sliver of hope implicit in Zelenka's words did nothing to improve things. "How long?" she asked.
"If it's going at the rate the meteorologists projected, we've got two days. Perhaps less"
The sliver of hope imploded. "Two days?"
"Perhaps less"
She hated herself for asking, but it slipped out anyway. "What can you possibly achieve in two days that you couldn't in thirty-years?"
Radek smiled a little. "More than you think maybe. Something happened when you and Colonel Sheppard came through the gate. It gave me an idea."
Chapter twenty-three