by Martha Wells
“It was Dr. McKay who first mentioned the cannibalistic mutants with psychic powers,” Teyla contributed helpfully.
McKay frowned at her in a wounded et tu, Brute way.
The others looked confused. “Cannibalistic mutants what?” Ford demanded.
Kavanagh was still stolidly eating his MRE. He shook his head in disgust. “I wonder about you people sometimes.”
Corrigan was pretending to be engrossed in his field notes, and John caught Kinjo mouthing the word ‘sometimes?’ at Boerne.
Kolesnikova held up her hands placatingly. “All that aside, I have had the gene therapy, and I too feel something is not right about this place. I haven’t had as much experience with exploration as you all, so I had put it down to that. I thought it was normal to be afraid all the time.”
“It is, but I don’t think it’s just that,” John told her.
“Which is what I just said,” Rodney insisted.
“Maybe it’s something else that’s making you guys jumpy,” Ford said. “Maybe something in the air down there.” He threw a cautious look at Kavanagh, apparently not wanting to be caught in the middle of the earlier argument. “If they were experimenting with chemical or biological warfare…”
“There may be dangers down there our equipment can’t detect,” Kolesnikova added.
Rodney said, not helpfully, “If there was anything airborne, it was too late the moment that shaft opened.”
Kavanagh shook his head. “The air down there isn’t stale,” he said, obviously giving it serious consideration. “It’s being recycled, and must be drawn in from outside. There were probably scrubbers in the system, though it’s unlikely they would last this long. But the air movement has been constant; anything released in the destruction would have been flushed away long ago. We should, however, avoid opening any more of those sealed cells. If there’s a contagion, it’s in there.”
Teyla nodded, her face sober. “Yes, there must be a constant source of fresh air. There is no odor of mold or rot.”
“It does stink down there,” John countered, surprised she hadn’t noticed, and that Kavanagh hadn’t mentioned it. “Kind of musty, and rotten. Really rotten. You could smell it when the shaft opened, and it got worse the longer we stayed down there. Just like you’d expect from…” Everybody was staring at him quizzically. “What?”
Kavanagh was frowning slightly at him, the way you did when you thought someone was making an inappropriate joke. “There’s no odor, Major.”
If it hadn’t been Kavanagh, who didn’t have a sense of humor at the best of times, John would have suspected they were screwing with him. He still suspected it. “Oh, come on.”
“It is true, Major Sheppard,” Teyla assured him carefully. “There is no odor of death. Salt from the sea, rock, metal, dust, but nothing foul.”
Ford nodded agreement, and none of the others objected. John looked at Rodney for help, always a mistake. Rodney was squinting at him with deep suspicion. “Are you seeing things? Or hearing things? You know olfactory and auditory hallucinations are a sign of—”
“Stop. It.” John glared at him, then grabbed his pack, firmly stuffing his water bottle back in. “We need to get some rest, people. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
Teyla stood out on the plaza under the stars, breathing the sea air. She was on the third watch, after Major Sheppard and Lieutenant Ford, and was rather enjoying the peace and quiet. Like Atlantica, this planet had two small moons, one nearly full, the other just a rising sickle shape, and they lit the plaza and the old ruins with a gentle pearly glow. She thought Sheppard was right; there was something in the air about the repository, something wrong in the building’s very walls. Something that didn’t seem inherent to the ruined city, or the sea and the plain beyond it. Even this small distance away from the structure, her spirits had lifted a little. Enough that she was able to enjoy the night air and the sky, to feel comforted by the small sounds her friends made as they slept in safety.
A footstep on the pavement made her turn and she saw a figure step out of the doorway of their shelter. She moved toward it, recognizing him by his height and the way he stood. “Dr. Kavanagh? Were you unable to sleep?”
His head turned toward her, and he said a little uncertainly, “Yes, I just needed some fresh air. It’s all right.”
Teyla’s brow knit in concern, and she stepped closer, trying to get a better look at him in the dim light. “You do not sound well. If you are ill, you should tell Major Sheppard and return to Atlantis immediately. If there is some contagion in the lower levels—”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I’m not physically ill,” he assured her so readily that Teyla believed him. “It’s just…” He gestured helplessly. “I’m not sure what it is. Just restlessness, I suppose.”
Teyla could understand that. She felt restless herself. “Do you truly think… I cannot believe that the Ancestors would use this place to experiment on humans, even if they meant to find a way to destroy the Wraith.”
Kavanagh didn’t hesitate. “They wouldn’t. McKay’s an ass, but he’s right about that. Frankly, they wouldn’t need to. Their science was so advanced, they could run their experiments as simulations on artificially created genetic material. They wouldn’t have needed human test subjects at all, much less unwilling ones.”
Teyla nodded, feeling a flash of relief. It was just one other learned man’s opinion, but from what she knew of him, Kavanagh was a very unsentimental person. She thought that he didn’t romanticize the Ancestors the way her people and many of the expedition members did.
He took a deep breath, putting his hands in his pants pockets. “There’s some other factor here. Something we aren’t quite understanding, or interpreting correctly. You know, I thought I had it earlier today, but now I’m not so sure.” He shook his head, started to turn away back toward their shelter.
Teyla heard stone click and slide, and reached out to steady him as his boot slipped. He caught her arm, leaning heavily on it for a moment, then found his footing. “Sorry,” he said. He lifted a hand to his head, saying a little vaguely, “Maybe I’m more tired than I thought.”
“You should go back and rest,” Teyla urged him. Like McKay, like all the scientists, Kavanagh would work himself to exhaustion if allowed to. “We have another long day tomorrow.”
“I will,” he said, still sounding distracted. “Good night, Teyla.”
“Good night, Dr. Kavanagh.” Absently scratching her arm, she watched him make his way back toward their shelter, just a dark shape in the shadows. He had spoken of “another factor” and she thought he was right. There was something here they just didn’t understand yet.
CHAPTER FOUR
“This is odd.” Rodney crouched near the lip of the shaft, frowning at the life sign detector.
John, checking the safety rope for today’s descent, looked up sharply. “What?”
Rodney gave him that look. “Again, I point out that if I had seen indications of a ravening horde of something, I would have said, ‘My God, Major, run!’ rather than, ‘This is odd.’”
John rolled his eyes and deliberately turned his attention back to the safety rope. “Fine, then. Golly gee whiz, Dr. McKay, what’s so odd on this lovely morning?”
So he was still jumpy. Last night hadn’t helped. John was used to Marines and airmen, who slept when it was time to sleep. Scientists who got up every five minutes and wandered around, he would never get used to. McKay’s ability to function on little or no sleep for long periods of time was great when lives were in danger, irritating when he was standing on the edge of your sleeping bag chewing loudly on a power bar and contemplating the meaning of life and time or whatever the hell he was doing in the middle of the fricking night. What made it intolerable this time was that Kavanagh and Kolesnikova shared this bizarre behavior. John had stopped asking people where the hell they were going when Kolesnikova had replied with some annoyance, “I’m going to pee, Major, and I didn’t
think you all would like it if I did it in here.”
And it also didn’t help that it was a lousy morning. The sky was dark and overcast and the white-capped sea like dull pewter. The forest on the other side of the Stargate’s platform was a brighter green against the purple-gray clouds, and the wind blew sand through the ruins and across the plaza. John had taken the jumper up into the atmosphere to look around and check the long range sensors, making sure this coast wasn’t about to be hit by a hurricane or a tropical storm. All he had found were ordinary rain clouds, and he had landed again feeling inexplicable disappointment.
Kolesnikova had told him earlier that she had seen all there was to see in the repository’s command center and wanted to tackle the lower levels with them. He hadn’t argued with her, having the feeling that she thought she had let them down by not going yesterday. Corrigan was actually gleaning far more information in the city’s ruins, and wanted another day out there. John was leaving Boerne and Kinjo up top again, to keep watch and back up Corrigan. Ford had been chafing at the inactivity yesterday and he wasn’t needed on the surface, so John was adding him to the belowground group. Hopefully more searchers meant faster progress. And maybe with Kolesnikova’s engineering background, she would see something that McKay and Kavanagh had missed.
“I’m getting more pronounced energy readings,” McKay said, finally answering the question.
That got Kavanagh’s attention. He nearly dropped the pack he had been sorting through and strode to the shaft, pulling out his own detector. McKay lifted his brows and sat back on the floor, making a production out of waiting for Kavanagh’s assessment.
Fortunately for team harmony and John’s already depleted supply of patience, Kavanagh didn’t notice. “You’re right,” he said, also failing to notice when McKay took an ironic half-bow. “This is markedly different from the readings we took yesterday.”
“Thus the choice of the word ‘odd’ in my original statement,” McKay added. He pushed to his feet. “Something changed down there.”
“Maybe you guys tripped something without knowing it,” Ford said, leaning out to peer down into the shaft. “Set off something that increased the emergency power, or activated some other stuff.”
“But there appeared to be no changes.” Teyla shook her head. “We took readings throughout our search, and before we left, and there was no increase in power at that time.”
“What she said,” McKay added.
Ford shook his head, gesturing helplessly. “Maybe it took a while to get going.”
For some reason, everybody then looked at John. He shrugged, pretending this new development didn’t make him uneasy. “We’re not going to figure it out up here.”
Once they had gotten down to the bottom of the shaft, the readings were stronger. “This way.” His eyes glued to the detector, McKay pointed them toward a corridor John knew they had tried yesterday. They hadn’t found any cells along it, just debris from laboratories smashed so thoroughly that McKay and Kavanagh had only been able to make guesses as to what their original purpose had been.
The blue emergency lighting glittered off the wreckage of twisted metal and the unidentifiable stains on the stone walls on either side of the broad walkway. John had a bad feeling about this; he remembered what else they had found down this corridor and he had a strong suspicion of where the detector was going to lead them.
McKay dug out the PDA with the map he had made yesterday and wordlessly shoved it at Kavanagh. Bringing up the map, Kavanagh scanned the screen hurriedly. “Damn,” he muttered, obviously coming to the same conclusion John had just drawn. “I wouldn’t have expected that. Our suppositions about the layout of the active power conduits must have been—”
“Wrong.” McKay’s voice was grim. He stopped next to a round opening in the walkway, where metal stairs curved down into a dark well. They hadn’t bothered to search down there or in any of the other dark areas yesterday, believing the power source would be where the active power grid lay. McKay let out his breath, looking up and shaking his head in exasperation. “Well, this is just fantastic. It’s pitch dark down there.”
John stepped to the lip of the well, shining the P-90’s light into the depths. Teyla moved up next to him, leaning over to peer downward. He estimated the stairs descended about forty feet; the light reflected off a metallic floor. If he had a choice of where to lead their little group, a dark hole in a ruined bunker was about the last place he would pick.
Grimly resigned, he took a moment to get the infrared night-vision goggles out of his pack, Ford doing the same. They would rely on the flashlights since the scientists’ field packs didn’t include the goggles, but John wanted to be ready in case something attacked them and they needed to kill the lights. Everybody else used the time to check their handlight batteries. When everyone was ready, John looked them over. He knew McKay had too much awareness of his own mortality to wander off in the dark, and Kolesnikova, uneasy but game, would stay as close to Ford or Teyla as she could without actually holding hands with one of them. “Now everybody stick together. Do not go off on your own, under any circumstances. Do not stop to examine anything without letting me know. And yes, I’m mainly talking to you, Dr. Kavanagh.”
John went first, testing the stairs cautiously with each step, the P-90’s light revealing a passage larger than the one above, high-ceilinged, with a jumble of the large opaque pipes branching down. The pipes joined up with another set and ran off along the far wall. The sinuous shapes were almost organic, their material gleaming faintly in his light; John was uncomfortably reminded of movies where aliens exploded out of people’s chests. The smell, which he had been trying to ignore, was distinctly worse. “What the hell are those pipes, did we ever figure that out?” he asked, exasperated. “It’s like the damn Nostromo down here.”
Kavanagh, just stepping off the stairs and pausing to give Kolesnikova a hand, said, “It’s part of the air system, Major.” His tone was laconic but still managed to have an element of
are you stupid? in it.
The others made their way down, and John leaned over to look as McKay consulted the detector again.
“It’s stronger now. This way,” McKay said, jerking his chin toward the other end of the large passage. “Back toward the center portion of the building.”
“That makes sense,” John said. McKay threw a look at him that he couldn’t quite read in the reflected glow of the detector. “What? The power source would be under the main part of the complex.”
“It makes as much sense as anything does,” Kolesnikova answered for him. “This signal is strong, you should have picked it up yesterday.”
Kavanagh shook his head, watching his own detector. “We must have activated something. Like the lights and the other systems that came online when we first arrived in Atlantis. It just took some time to power up.”
“That’s what I thought,” Ford pointed out.
John had to admit it was reasonable, but it didn’t make him feel any less uneasy. Still studying his detector, McKay grimaced suddenly and said, “I think the floor above us is shielded. And there seems to be some electromagnetic field activity—Check your radios.”
John tried his headset and got nothing but static. From what he could hear from the others, he wasn’t the only one. He swore. “Oh, that’s all we need.” The detectors were Ancient technology and wouldn’t be affected, but their communications equipment was all good old-fashioned Earth-manufacture.
He took the lead with McKay to guide them with the detector, and put both Ford and Teyla to watch their six. Ford was leaving route markers with a reflective spray paint to keep them from mistaking the way. Their lights seemed to make the shadows even darker, and the detector led them into one branching corridor, then another. The giant pipes veered up the walls and over the ceiling, and they caught sight of more piles of wreckage.
The uselessness of the radios was making John’s nerves jump. As they moved through the large dark space he had
to suppress the impulse to make everybody choose a buddy and hold hands. If they lost somebody down here, if someone fell in a hole, got lost, wandered off… And the more ground they covered, the worse that odor got.
Finally, after they had been threading their way through this giant maze for about twenty minutes, he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He said, plaintively, to McKay, “Look, seriously, are you sure you don’t smell that?”
“No.” McKay threw another opaque look at him. “I have a theory about that.”
“Oh, right, that theory. I’m really beginning to resent the implication that I have schizophrenia. I—”
“I did not say you had schizophrenia. I said—” McKay stopped abruptly, staring at the detector. “Hold that thought, I think we’re here.”
“Where?” Kolesnikova asked anxiously.
“There.” McKay flashed his light on a section of wall and John made out the shape of a large blast door. The pipes that ran along the walls swooped in from across the passage and above to end in the wall around the door.
“A bunker within a bunker,” John said. “That’s…vaguely disquieting.” He steadied his light on the door as McKay’s flash flicked around wildly for a moment, then settled on a panel to one side.
“Vaguely?” Kolesnikova questioned softly.
“It makes perfect sense,” Kavanagh said, his voice tense with suppressed excitement. “Extra shielding for their power source. We should have expected that.”
McKay had already pried the panel open, holding his pocket flashlight in his mouth so he could see. John didn’t see any control crystals, just a mass of dark wiring and circuits. McKay threw Kavanagh a hard look, taking the light out of his mouth so he could talk. “This panel is the only intact piece of equipment we’ve found so far.”
