“That’s not an option at the moment, Doctor,” Bates snapped. One of the Marines called for him and he walked away toward the main part of the lab.
“He is afraid,” Zelenka murmured, turning back to the laptop. “It is bad enough that Dorane could take hostages. If he can send our own people to fight us…”
“Aye,” Carson answered, not wanting to hear the rest of it aloud. “It scares me, too.”
John came back to himself leaning against the rough warm trunk of a tree, at the edge of the forest that lay past the Star-gate’s platform. Breathing hard, almost sobbing, he realized he couldn’t hear anything except the rush of the surf. That… was freaky, he thought, cautiously glad he could think at all. He pushed off from the tree, his legs still shaky from adrenaline overload, the puncture wounds from the Koan throbbing painfully. Dry leaves crackled under his boots, reassuringly normal. The breeze was sweet and cool, and birds were singing somewhere in the forest, the song a strange mix of familiar and exotic. He could see the ocean through the scattered trees, where the land curved around to embrace the bay. It wasn’t long after dawn. I’m running around blind — literally if I lose these glasses — on an alien world. That’s incredibly stupid.
Without that cacophony in his head, he could think now. I didn’t imagine that. It was there. It had been as real as a punch in the gut. As a whole lot of punches in the gut. He looked back toward the dead city, the dark shape of the repository looming over it. It had been like a mental broadcast that only he — and the Koan? — could hear.
Dorane had said he had developed his own altered version of the ATA gene. And on their first night here McKay had talked about a theory, that the people who had taken over the repository after the Ancients had tried to imitate the Ancient Technology Activation, and that the differences in their version of whatever field it broadcast was what was making the people with the gene and the ATA therapy feel so uneasy.
Rodney was right again, damn him. Then, Crap, I left him alone.
Cursing himself and Dorane and this planet and life in general in the Pegasus Galaxy under his breath, John started back inland, moving along the edge of the forest toward the Stargate.
He moved quietly by habit, walking in the short yellow grass, sticking to the shadow of the trees. After a couple of hundred yards, he felt a tingling in the back of his neck and knew there was a Koan nearby. Oh great, I can sense them. Rodney was right about that, too, John growled mentally, turning back under the shadow of the trees. He didn’t have time for this.
He circled around, then saw a shape ahead, crouched at the base of a tree.
It was facing away from him, looking toward the city, a slight figure in a rough sleeveless tunic. It was also wearing a hooded wrap, a fold of fabric pulled forward to shield its face, and its hair was long and silver-gray, collected in a neat braid that hung down its back. And there was something else on its face, too. Fascinated, John stepped forward and a dry twig shifted under his boot.
The figure shot to its feet in alarm, causing John to leap backward from pure adrenaline. It was a Koan; he could see the silvery mottling on its bare arms and chest, the spines on its ears as its hood fell back. It was wearing a pair of primitive goggles, the lenses tinted dark. Instead of attacking him it scrambled back in confusion and bolted away through the trees.
Well, that was different, John thought, staring after it.
He studied the ground, kicking aside dead leaves and twigs, and something rolled free. Slowly, John picked it up.
It was a wooden tube, with a braided cord strap for carrying, with little decorative bands inset with bits of polished rock or shell. He turned it over, looked down one of the open ends and realized he was holding a telescope. The lens was colored with some kind of amber pigment. John peered through it, found it too dark, and had to cautiously lift up his sunglasses to see through it. Turning toward the city, he could see the repository’s main entrance from here, though he couldn’t make out much detail.
He lowered the telescope, looking off into the quiet forest. He didn’t need Corrigan to tell him a species composed entirely of animalistic psychopaths didn’t figure out how to grind lenses or make eye protection against the daylight.
So they aren’t all crazy. Over the years some of the Koan must have escaped Dorane’s influence, traveled away from the ruined city, reinvented some kind of life for themselves. And Dorane had said the Ancients had tried to stabilize the Koan’s genetic changes. Maybe they had succeeded, and it had just taken a few generations or so to show up. And Dorane had been too bent on revenge by that point to notice, or care. John looked back at the city. If the ones still inside hear those voices, that noise, all the time… No wonder they were nuts.
John found a branch at about eye level and hung the telescope on it, so the guy could find it if he came back. He searched himself for something else to leave and came up with a power bar wrapper he had shoved in his pocket by habit. He attached it to the branch next to the telescope, It wasn’t much of a way of conveying “I come in peace, sorry I scared the crap out of you” but it was all he had. He could, at least, say it to McKay.
John found Rodney trudging doggedly across the plain between the city and the Stargate, the pack slung over his shoulders, carrying the ZPM. His shirt was stained with sweat and his face red from exertion. He knew Rodney wasn’t in that bad a shape; he must have chased John most of the way through the city before having to give up. As John jogged toward him Rodney stopped, waiting for him to approach, regarding him hopefully. Reaching him, John said, “Sorry. Had a moment back there. Want me to carry that?”
“Yes.” Rodney handed the ZPM over with a gasp of relief.
John hefted the ZPM against his chest. It felt inert, like a kitchen appliance, and not like a subspace power source that when fully charged made a nuclear bomb look like a popgun. It whispered to him again, but this time, without Dorane’s dying technology screaming in his head, he understood it. It was speaking in something that was more like musical notes than words, but he knew it was saying that it was at minimal capacity, and needed maintenance. It was a reassuringly ordinary thing for a ZPM to say, if you thought about it.
They walked for a few moments, and John cleared his throat. “I think I know why the Koan are crazy. It’s got something to do with Dorane trying to create his own version of the ATA gene. Even with everything broken and powered down, something in that equipment in there is still broadcasting, and once he gives you his Koan gene retrovirus, it gets louder and louder until it’s screaming in your head. You were right, that was probably what was making us feel so weird when we first got here. Why we thought the place was creepy. Why I kept smelling rot and dead things when nobody else did.”
McKay nodded, wiping his forehead off on his arm. He took it all in like they were sitting around in a lab or conference room talking about how the puddlejumper’s propulsion system worked. “Because of the gene and the ATA therapy, we were subliminally conscious of it but couldn’t sense it well enough to be more than minimally affected.”
“Right. It didn’t really hit me until we got to the surface. Once I got far enough away from it, I could think again.” John shrugged awkwardly. “And I saw another Koan out there. He was watching the city and ran off when he saw me. So some of them must have escaped over time, and, you know, got over it. They probably saw the jumper land and they’ve been watching us from a distance ever since.”