As if he’d heard her thought, he looked around the edge of the paper and smiled. “Thank you for sharing your table.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said.
He disappeared behind the local section again. It was the Virginia edition. He’d probably bought it at the airport.
“You live in NoVa?” she heard herself asking.
He folded the paper down. “Fairfax. You?”
“In the District.”
He nodded. Someone stumbled over Elizabeth’s roller bag, kicking it and going on without pausing. She pulled it closer under the table. The coffee shop was packed. Through the windows across the concourse she could see the rain-streaked runway. Travelers hurried by with overcoats, not glancing to the left or right. “Messy day,” he said.
“Yes.” She picked up the first section and disappeared behind it, feeling oddly flustered. The rest of the article about Gingrich, the latest from Ken Starr…
“Have a good trip.” He got up, leaving the paper on the table. “Enjoy the paper.” He tossed his paper cup in the trashcan and headed off down the concourse.
“Thank you,” she said.
Her plane was late boarding, no surprise. She had a window seat on the left side, one seat beside her on the aisle and then the three across of the center section and then the two on the other aisle. Elizabeth had brought the paper with her and read the second section while the rest of the passengers boarded. There was a small commotion in the aisle, and she looked up.
A harried Spanish-speaking woman was remonstrating with the flight attendant. “But I am sure we had two seats together!” She had a little boy about three years old with her. “We have B and C!”
“B is here,” the flight attendant said. “C is across the aisle.”
“But…”
Elizabeth stood up. “I’ll be happy to trade with you,” she said in Spanish. “Why don’t you take A so that you can sit next to him, and I’ll take C?”
“That is so very kind of you!” The woman beamed. “Thank you so much.”
“It’s no trouble.” Elizabeth got up and moved out of her seat, letting the woman help the little boy in and get him settled. She sat down in C. Which didn’t have a window, but there probably wouldn’t be much to see anyhow.
“That was kind of you.” The passenger in D had come in from the other side and was in his seat. It was the man from the coffee shop. “Hello again.”
“Hello.” He seemed almost like an old friend. “So you’re going to Ecuador?”
He nodded. He’d taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. “Quito.” He’d opened his briefcase and taken out a medical journal.
“You’re a doctor?”
“A pediatric dentist,” he replied, hunting around for the end of his seat belt. “I’m with Project Toothfairy. Every year I take three weeks’ vacation from my practice and go down to volunteer with a free clinic in Ecuador.” He shrugged. “It’s what I can do.”
“It’s an excellent thing to do,” Elizabeth said. “Those clinics make so much difference on a person to person level, changing lives.”
He looked at her keenly. “State department?”
“Amnesty International.”
“Ah.” He offered his hand. “Simon Wallis.”
“Elizabeth Weir.”
Elizabeth shook her head, the reverie of memory shredding like clouds. Out the window of the Durant’s mess she could see the blue shifted stars of hyperspace.
Dekaas sat down opposite her. “Thinking?”
“Remembering,” Elizabeth said. It was bittersweet.
“Someone you loved?”
“Yes.”
Dekaas took a bite of his bowl of warm grains, that same deceptively unobtrusive tone in his voice. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t remember.” She had thought he was dead, but no. That was a false memory, implanted by… She shivered, her whole body shaking.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. And Simon wasn’t dead. That memory was false. Though why it being false was utterly terrifying…
Simon knew she was dead.
That thought came to her suddenly, and though she didn’t know why, tears sprang to her eyes. He would have been told. Someone — who? Someone would have told him. It would have been someone’s job to tell him. To tell him she wasn’t coming back.
An older man in a blue suit, colored ribbons on his chest, a man you could scream at in your grief and he would take it, take every hurled accusation and question, a man who knew what it was like to lose someone you loved… “O’Neill,” she said.
“That’s the name of the one you love?”
“No. O’Neill will have to tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“That I’m dead,” Elizabeth said. She looked at Dekaas. “I’m dead. I died nearly three years ago.”
Dekaas’ voice was calm and kind. “You don’t seem to be dead,” he said.
“Something happened.” Elizabeth put her hands to the opposite shoulders, trying to control her shivering. “My body died.” She looked at him, a sudden terror gripping her. “What if I’m not human? What if I’m not really alive?”
Dekaas put his head to the side. “How could that be?”
“What if I’m artificial? A robot? A Replicator?” Her voice shook.
“I can certainly find out if you are or not,” Dekaas said. He got to his feet and held out a hand to her deliberately. “Let’s go back to the infirmary and run some tests.”
“Will that tell you…”
“It will certainly tell me if you’re not a biological being. It will certainly tell me if you’re a Replicator.”
He was humoring her, she thought. Dekaas didn’t think for a moment that she was other than human, but he was being kind. Perhaps he was a psychologist as well as doctor, to lay to rest an irrational fear with hard facts. But he was wrong. She wasn’t human. It would be better not to know that. It would be better to lie. For her. Not for anyone else.
Elizabeth got to her feet. “Promise me,” she said, meeting his eyes firmly. “That if I am a Replicator you will kill me.”
Dekaas paused a long moment. Then he took a deep breath. “I promise,” he said.
Chapter Ten
Lorne strolled out of the Stargate and looked around the barren plateau. “So, this is our potential alpha site. What are we looking at here?”
“Nothing. Nada,” Sgt. Anthony said. “The science team’s survey report checks out. You got your cactus, your little lizards—”
Lorne squinted at the bushes. “Poisonous lizards?”
“Sir, I have to ask, why does everybody assume they’re poisonous lizards? Why is it that when we report that we’ve seen foot-high cactus, everyone asks ‘but does it have poisonous spines that kill you if you touch them’?”
“Actually, those would be venomous lizards,” PFC Harper said, tugging at one corner of the tent that she and two of the other Marines were setting up. “Poisonous is when it kills you if you eat them. Venomous is when it kills you if it bites you.”
Anthony gave her a suspicious look. “How do you know that?”
“I listened to the briefing when we got here, Sergeant.”
“You also probably heard in the briefing when you got here that planets with Stargates that aren’t inhabited are usually uninhabited for a reason,” Lorne pointed out.
“We’re in the middle of a desert,” Sgt. Anthony said. “Plus the Stargate is on top of a big shelf of rock, and if you want to go anywhere else, you have to rappel down a cliff and then hike across several more klicks of desert before you get to — wait for it — more desert.”
“It can’t all be desert,” Harper said.
“Actually, it is,” Lorne said. “Up near the poles, it’s colder desert.”