Mathématique: Chapter 78

“The term ‘Planetary Asset’ is dehumanizing and we object to it.” Eli stepped to Rush’s shoulder in solidarity.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges.

Text iteration: Dawn

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 78

Rush stood at the heart of Cheyenne Mountain and looked into the dark shaft that rose above the gate. The air smelled of damp stone and grease. The room’s gray cement picked up the pale blue of the open event horizon. The ripples in the field projected faintly over the floor, the walls, the uniformed personnel waiting to depart for the Pegasus Galaxy.

So strange that the warp of space and time should resemble liquid water.

The flux of the field pulled paradoxical emotion from beyond the mnemonic seal of The Greeting. A deep unease, bordering on fear. A profound familiarity more emotional than mathematical. A physical horror more related to the appearance of the field than its concept. A knife-edge of longing hooked into nothing he could name.

And.

He wasn’t sure he could swim.

Staring at the sea-colored pool of the gate, he thought abstractly about a boy growing up in Glasgow with a working class accent, whether he might’ve learned. Whether he might’ve been good at it.

Impossible to say.

He hadn’t known he could speak Ancient until he’d seen it. He hadn’t been certain he could play the piano until he’d been confronted with one. He hadn’t intuited he could cook until Young had told him; despite spending weeks in a coffee shop, creating inventive morning drinks.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Young stood next to him, dressed in crisp black fatigues.

“I’m afraid my thoughts are worth more than that.” Rush poured the words like liquid invitation spiked with mercury. 

He was a flirt.

He wouldn’t have expected that a priori. There’d been nothing in the Nova documentary Eli had insisted he watch that suggested anything of the kind. In fact, he’d displayed so much negative charisma that even Neil deGrasse Tyson had looked uncomfortable.

“What kinda number we lookin’ at?” Young asked, the light of the active gate playing over his features like it belonged there.

“Ten thousand dollars,” Rush replied.

Young laughed. “Why? You wanna put it in Ginn’s 529 Plan?”

He smiled. “It’s a thought.”

Flirting, as a strategy, was profoundly useful. He’d learned to do it at some point, and do it well. Gloria’s influence, maybe? Or a discovery of his own as he’d worked through the world, orienting towards results?

His repertoire of charm and piano and culinary skill, his opinions on style that ran strong and confident when elicited—all of these things suggested an acquired appreciation of life. It didn’t come natively; he’d not spent his weeks in Boston upgrading his wardrobe, securing safe housing, turning it livable. He’d thrown himself in the direction of buying a computer.

How well had he understood himself before this mnemonic veil had dropped? How much had his late wife dictated the flow and content of his life? Had she brought all his culture to him, taken it when she’d gone? The way she’d worn yellow and channeled the joy of a long-gone composer put a lift in his thoughts, even in the stone heart of a fortified mountain.

Eli and SG-68 came through the open door to his right, kitted out in Lantean expedition gear. James and Greer wore black fatigues that matched Young’s. Ginn and Eli wore charcoal-and-sky jackets, marking them as civilians. Eli stopped just inside the room, all his attention absorbed by the open gate. A slow grin spread across his face. The other three, less impressed by an active wormhole, edged around him and arrayed themselves behind Young.

“Dave! It’s BLUE. Just like in Astria Porta!” Eli pointed at the gate, as though maybe Rush hadn’t noticed it. “Do you even care?”

“Call him Dave one more time.” Young glowered at Eli. “See what happens.”

Eli smiled weakly at Young.

“Now now.” Rush leaned into the colonel’s personal space. “I was under the impression there was quite a distinction between military and civilian hierarchies on Atlantis.”

Young lowered his voice, his words meant for Rush alone. “We’re not on Atlantis yet.”

“Dave’s, uh, a nickname?” Eli offered, coming to stand at Rush’s shoulder.

“‘Hotshot’ is a nickname.” Young growled. “‘Shep’ is a nickname. ‘Kid’ is a nickname. ‘Dave’ is a guy working for the Lucian Alliance.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry. I keep forgetting ‘David Telford’ is a real person.” Eli looked at Rush. “Can I call you—”

“No,” Rush said.

Eli sighed.

“And zip your jacket.” Young leaned into the stone-solid authority he was so good at projecting.

In his more adventurous moments, Rush felt a desire to be on the receiving end of authority like that. He wanted the lot of it directed squarely his way so he could methodically, systematically, deliberately dismantle it. Like cutting the camshaft chain in a combustion engine. Young seemed so terribly certain of himself; so determined to make the world fall in line. In the absence of personal memory, he found he wanted a contest of wills and worldview. To see which of them would cave. Who would come out on top. He wanted to know the kinetics. The stability. The holding patterns, if any patterns ever held.

Eli hitched the zipper on his expedition jacket and zipped it to the neck. “This thing is kinda the worst.” He tried to straighten the seams, but only succeeded in pulling the thing more askew. “And why does yours look so good somehow?”

Rush resisted the impulse to run a hand over the charcoal jacket. “Vala had it tailored.”

Eli sighed. “I wish Vala was my extraterrestrial BFF.”

“Successfully navigate Flora Nightingale past the level fifteen Quantum Mirror choke point and y’may get somewhere,” Rush said.

“Dr. Jackson is already so mad at me,” Eli whispered. “He, like, saves worlds. He’s the real Daryl Levant.”

“Life is full of difficult choices,” Rush said philosophically.

The personnel and supplies in the gateroom were thinning out. Sheppard, McKay, Vala, and Jackson were already waiting at the Midway Space Station, supervising the transfer of gear to the second linked network of gates. The remainder of SG-1 would be staying in the Milky Way to deal with an emerging Lucian Alliance crisis involving a psychoactive biological compound secreted in corn, of all things.

Rush hoped they’d learn something that might help with his predicament.

“How you doin’, hotshot?” Young asked.

“Fine.”

In truth, beneath his surface-layer introspection he felt something he couldn’t put words to. A strange yearning for touch. For the curve of a naquadah arch under his fingers. For the warmth of his hand against conductive metal, no real barrier between him and a spinning ring of crystal. 

He wished Vala was here, doing something distracting.

“Colonel,” Landry’s voice came over the room’s speaker system. “You have a go.”

“Circle up.” Young waved them in.

“Are you gonna do a speech?” Eli asked, unmistakably hopeful.

“Yeah,” Young said. “Nick Rush is a Planetary Asset.”

“Oh god,” Rush muttered. “Is this really necessary?”

“Wow,” Eli shot him an impressed side-eye.

Young gave them a stern look, then turned his attention back to his team. “He and his intern are our priority.”

Eli raised his hand.

Young lifted his eyebrows, tucked his chin, and gave Eli a this-better-be-good stare.

“The term ‘Planetary Asset’ is dehumanizing and we formally object to it,” his intern informed the group.

Rush rolled his eyes.

Young didn’t favor Eli’s remark with the courtesy of a reply. He turned back to SG-68. “Unfortunately for us,” he growled, “these two are civilians. That means that they have a lot of latitude in terms of what they can do and where they can go. Our top priority is to ensure their safety.”

Young got crisp acknowledgements from Greer and James. Ginn was half a beat behind.

“It’s about a fifteen minute trip to Midway, as our matter patterns transfer through a programmatically linked series of interstellar gates. All the gates sequentially dial. We won’t experience that time passing; you walk in, you walk out. Don’t stop when you get to the other side, just keep walking until you reach the end of the ramp.”

“On the space station?” Eli laughed. “The space station ramp. That’s the ramp I’m gonna ‘keep walking down’ so I don’t get in anyone’s way? The space station’s ramp.”

Rush considered reining his intern in, but, truth be told, he was quite enjoying watching Young do it.

The colonel stared at Eli without speaking.

“Okay okay, jeez,” Eli muttered, aggrieved. “I’ll make sure I never have any fun ever with anything. You can supervise.”

Rush looked away and bit the inside of his cheek to hold his straight face.

“Greer. Ginn.” Young motioned at the ramp. “You’re up.”

The pair hoisted packs and made for the gate, striding through the event horizon into liquid demolecularization like it was all in a day’s work. For them, he supposed it was.

“James,” Young said. “Stick with Eli. See that his sense of humor doesn’t get anyone killed.”

“Oh c’mon,” Eli complained.

“Yes sir.” James looked at Eli. “Let’s go, kid.”

“We’re, like, the same age,” Eli said.

“Act like it,” James replied brusquely.

“Yeah yeah,” Eli sighed. “Everyone in the Air Force is so cool that they don’t care about being torn into constituent atoms and warped to a whole new galaxy. Yawn.”

“Torn into constituent atoms, eh?” James said speculatively. She tipped her face to the gate, and its light played subtly over her sharp features. “Must be why it hurts so much.”

“Wait what?” Eli glanced at Rush.

Rush rolled his eyes.

“Aw!” Eli grinned at James. “You’re messing with me. Does this mean we’re friends now!?”

“C’mon.” James started forward.

“Seriously,” Eli caught her arm. “What does it feel like?”

“Feels like walking through a waterfall one atom wide,” James replied. “Then a rematerialization shock on the other side that comes from your brain sparking itself back to reality. Hits everyone differently. I’ll help you keep your feet.”

“Oh. Uh. Thanks.”

They started up the ramp. At the top of the metal grating, Eli turned and gave Rush an anxious wave, then touched his fingertips to the rippling film of blue in front of him. He pulled them back, studying his hand. “Weird,” he whispered. He looked back at the gate, his expression charmingly impressed.

James cleared her throat. 

“Where’s your sense of wonder?” Eli asked, the active gate casting waves of bright and shadow over his face at close range.

James watched him without speaking, her face betraying a trace of fondness.

Eli steeled himself, glanced at Rush, and stepped through the gate into liquid dematerialization.

Young watched them go, but made no move to start up the ramp. He leaned into his cane, looking up at the watery shine of the event horizon. The light of sheared spacetime flickered over the curls in hair that seemed a little too wild for Air Force regulations.

“Why do I feel like there’s another speech coming?” Rush asked, with the candied trouble tone that came as easily as breathing.

“No speech.” Young looked at the gate, but there was a strong undertone of feeling in his voice. “I know you spent weeks getting by with nothing but your wits and public internet. Impressive as hell, hotshot. Not sure how easily you’re gonna take to this idea, but—you’ve got a team now. An intern. Use your resources, maybe. Stop spinning gold outta energy you don’t have.” Young eyed the tops of his boots. “Just a thought.”

Rush looked away, confused, aching for memories beyond his reach, suffering the knitting of a wound he couldn’t see, couldn’t even recall. “This is feeling like a speech,” he managed.

“Nah” Young said. “I’m gonna take a hard line with SG-68 because—because that’s the way we do things. And because your intern is gonna stick his fingers into every alien goo we see until he learns life isn’t a video game. You are a different story. And, much as I like taking whatever you’re dishing out, we might have an opportunity to build something here.”

What? he wanted to ask. But what came out of his mouth was, “Not sure I’ve ever built much of anything.”

“I know; you like your wrecking-ball hits. But I saw you and Vala pull a party outta string, antlers, and magazine clippings. You have it in you to bring people together.”

Rush watched the light play over the tops of his SGC-issued boots, trying to muster a defense against Young’s words, against his expression, against the way the man had spent over a week putting himself between Rush and anything that might remotely inconvenience him, but—

When he’d been utterly alone, without prospects or memory, this man’s quantum aspect had sought him out.

“Hey.” Young said softly.

Startled, Rush looked up at him.

“You okay?”

Rush nodded. “Definitely a speech,” he managed.

“You win,” Young said, smiling faintly. “You usually do. C’mon.” He started up the ramp, leaning into his cane. He paused on the threshold of the rippling gate. Its light undulated across his Lantean-issue uniform.

Rush had a strong desire to touch the ring of the gate. Not the puddle of shimmer across it, but the gate itself.

He’d not be doing that.

An unexpected wave of melancholy flooded his mind.

Rush followed Young up the ramp. The arc of the gate pulled on his mind with a whisper of melody, but the naquadah rim was too far to reach from where he stood. “Have I done this before?” Like Eli, he let his fingers trail through the film of blue shimmer.

“Once,” Young said. “With Shep.”

“Our notable day,” Rush murmured.

Young snorted. “Yeah. You and I are gonna try to keep our days less notable.”

“I’m amenable to that.”

“After you.” Young gestured him forward.

As Rush climbed the ramp, the longing in his hands, in his body for the arc and vibration of the gate intensified. He stopped at the top of the ramp, but the naquadah ring was too far to touch, humming with a subconscious D minor chord that seemed to want him as much as he wanted it.

With a wave of instinctive apology, he stepped through the event horizon.

The chord rose to rend the whole of his sensorium and instantly rewove it into a windowless corridor. The walls, the floor, the ceiling were all made of dead and silent metal but the gate behind him sang with transit, with longing, with excitement. He stumbled, already trying to turn in a world that didn’t feel quite right; the floor was curved, the press of the Earth was gone, he had a brief flash of motion, intense and vertiginous. None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the gate behind him, the gate keening at the back of his mind.

Someone caught him, steadied him, set him on his feet, and—

“Hey.” Sheppard was at his side, his body language strange. One booted foot hooked behind Rush’s ankle, one hand on Rush’s shoulder. He pushed Rush’s shoulder subtly away, unbalancing him. He stared into Rush’s eyes as though looking for something specific. All he said was, “Gravity’s dialed back,” with a calm that hit as otherworldly over the driving riot in Rush’s thoughts.

He reached for the arc of the gate.

Sheppard grabbed his hand, shoved his shoulder a little further back, kept Rush’s ankle pinned. “Midway’s tough,” he said softly. “These two gates have a lot of personality. I think it’s their proximity that makes them so—loud.”

Beside them, Young materialized, steady on his feet, even with his injuries. Once he was through, the veil of the active event horizon tore itself to nothing.

“There some reason you’ve got our consultant halfway into a single-leg takedown?” Young asked, his gaze on Sheppard.

“Yup.” Sheppard replied. He returned to studying Rush. “Nick. Can you tough this out? Ten minutes?”

“I—” Rush made an effort to steady himself. “Yes.”

Carefully, Sheppard rebalanced him, unhooked his ankle from behind Rush’s leg, and stepped back.

Young gave him a concerned look. “This is whatever happened to you two on—”

“Don’t.” Sheppard tugged on a cortical suppressor and got a shock for his efforts. “Ow, damn it. Don’t say it. Makes it worse. We’ll be as quick as we can on Midway. Once we’re on Atlantis we’ll do some calibrating.” Sheppard gave Rush a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder. “Right in the gateroom. It’ll be fine.”

Rush took a steadying breath. He nodded at Sheppard.

“I’m gonna get everyone through, quick as I can. I’ll send McKay over. We can try dialing up your inhibitory field a little bit. Might take the edge off.” Sheppard strode away from them, across the dull gray floor.

Rush blinked and forced his focus to the space station.

Midway consisted of a long room, a stargate at either end. The floor was subtly arced, as though part of a large ring. SG-68 and Eli clustered in a small knot a short distance away. Near the opposite stargate Rush saw Vala, ensconced on a throne of crates. Jackson held her injured foot at the ankle, elevating it while she provided direction to the small cluster of personnel preparing for the activation of the gate at the far end of the room. When she saw him looking, she gave him a queenly lift of her hand.

He nodded at her.

Young stepped in. “How we doin’, hotshot?”

Rush swallowed in a dry throat. The room had gone cold. His fingertips were tingling at their tips. “Fine,” he managed. Absently he traced the contours of his cortical suppressor until Young gently lifted his hand away.

Eli looked up from where he was crouched on the floor a few meters away. “I think we’re in a ring! That’s gotta be where the gravity comes from. We’re spinning!”

Rush nodded.

His team studied him with varying levels of overt concern. James and Greer exchanged a glance. Ginn cocked her head, small frown-lines between her brows. Predictably, it was Eli who said something.

“You don’t look so good,” his intern observed.

He imagined not. He felt wretched. Wrung out. Like he was fighting through subconscious dissonance thick enough to blur his thoughts and sear his nerves.

There was something he needed to do (and he was certain he’d know what it was if could only touch a gate.)

He did his best to slow his breathing.

“He’s a little sensitive to Ancient tech at the moment,” Young said.

“What’s gonna happen when we get to Atlantis?” Greer asked. “It’s full of Ancient tech. It is Ancient tech.”

Excellent question. Rush tried not to hyperventilate.

He could withstand this.

No problem.

Sheppard (ostensibly) had the same issue, but he was functioning without noticeable difficulty. He was across the room, speaking intelligibly to the staff in front of the second stargate.

Rush had been aware that something like this might happen (though a problem on Midway had never been explicitly discussed and didn’t seem to bode well for his arrival on Atlantis). He’d been warned about the key signature, he’d been warned about the threat to his cognition, he’d been warned about the risk of seizures, cortical damage, excitotoxic cell death, but no one had mentioned the overwhelming desire to press every centimeter of his body to the arc of a singing gate.

Probably because it was bizarre as fuck.

He’d not be mentioning it either.

He pulled in another breath.

“What does it feel like now?” Eli got to his feet and crossed to Rush’s side. “You’re kinda pale and sweaty. This is reminding me of that night we tried to take your technoswag off.”

Rush tried to force some nonchalance into his tone. “It’s nowhere near that bad.”

Across the room, Sheppard spoke into his radio, and the gate at the far end of the chamber began to spin.

The second gate (lither, younger, more alert) pressed into his mind with a chime of anticipation. Its song echoed strangely from the other side of the event horizon. The gate behind him, older, wreathed with arcana and experience, resonated with appreciation.

He sank into a crouch, palms wet, mouth dry, struggling to control his body.

Eli followed him down, touchingly loyal. “Boss,” he said, on his knees at Rush’s shoulder. “You okay?”

Rush nodded, his fingertips pressed to uninspired metal.

Charcoal pants and military boots appeared in his field of view. He’d know that stride anywhere. Those boots. Recalling sun and sky and Lantean piers, the way he could remember giving up at the end of long runs, lying down, trying to merge with the yearning naquadah beneath him—

McKay knelt, his gaze a blaze of raw physics. He unclipped a Lantean device from his belt. It glowed aquamarine, and Rush could sense the embedded crystal within it. The little device didn’t call to him. It had twined itself with McKay, his hands, his mind. Even centimeters from Rush, it didn’t cling to his thoughts like the gate did. It—

Greer grabbed McKay’s wrist, twisted his arm behind him, and hauled the device away.

“Ow!” McKay, astonished, stared up at Greer, his arm behind his back. “Greer! What the hell is this?” he breathed. “I thought we were cool. We bonded over pork sliders.”

“This,” Greer said, with menacing patience, “is not how we do things.”

“Nice initiative, sergeant,” Young said mildly, “cool it with the execution.”

Greer released McKay.

“Nice initiative?” McKay rubbed his arm. “I’m here to help out before your little math guy passes out from his tech cravings.”

“Be nice if you said something about it,” Young shot back.

“And that’s Planetary Asset to the likes of you,” Eli said loyally.

“Tech cravings?” Young growled.

Rush took a breath and tried to stay grounded on the inanimate metal beneath his boots and fingertips.

McKay shrugged. “It’s an emerging theory. Do you have the—” McKay paused, looking Rush over from hair to boot soles, “almost uncontrollable urge to tear your technoswag off your head and plaster yourself against the thing with the most control crystals in the vicinity?”

Fuck yes. He did. He wanted to drape himself along the arc of the inactive gate behind him. Press his hands against its glyphs, press his body along that massive, waiting curve.

“No,” he breathed.

“Real convincing,” McKay said. “Everyone believes you.” His Lantean device glowed blue in his hand. “May I?” He asked Greer, with a wash of acidity.

With slow melodrama, Greer looked to Young.

“Let him do his thing, sergeant.”

McKay moved the device, passing it over Rush’s chest, up his neck, hovering it near a cortical suppressor. “Ah. Yeah. Two stargates with manual dialing programs and you’re already causing trouble.” He met Rush’s eyes with a faint smile. “Classic Math Team move. Give me a second.”

The pressure against his mind faded. His heart slowed. The edge filed itself off the world, replaced by a slow glaze. The room, his hands, the cast of his thoughts turned warmer. Focusing on people rather than technology came easier. SG-68 stood above him in a fan, looking down at him with concerned expressions.

Rush fell out of his crouch and leaned into Young’s good leg.

“Uh, Nick?” McKay said tentatively.

Rush took a shuddering breath.

Young looked down at him. “His color’s a little better. Not sure about—” he trailed off.

Rush took a breath. The world simplified itself into glassy light and soulless metal. Crates of supplies blurred through the stargate. He looked for Vala, but didn’t see her. 

“Nick.” McKay turned his jaw until their eyes met. “Say something so I know you can still speak.”

“Still speak?” Eli echoed, eyes wide.

“McKay,” Young growled, “what did you do?”

McKay glared up at Young, fierce and bright. “Same thing I do for John, just with a little less finesse. I’m literally suppressing his entire sensorium. Watch.” He flicked Rush’s shoulder, hard, with two fingers.

Rush watched it happen. The sensation felt very far away.

“Was that necessary?” Eli snapped.

“And what does the high school dropout think would be better?” McKay snarled. “You wanna watch me administer an IQ test to illustrate a point?”

“It’s college dropout, actually.”

Rush’s muscles felt heavy. Moving was difficult. Thought came slow. Simplified. His mind was full of dream memory. Shine. Sea breeze. Lying down. Waiting for McKay.

“Sorry,” McKay said, all his torch-like focus warming Rush’s mind as he eased him back against the metal.

“You really did a number on him,” Young growled.

“I overdid it,” McKay pulled him away from Young’s leg and pressed him into the floor. “I’ve gotten good tweaking John’s fields, but everyone’s different.

The device shone in his hand, its light playing over McKay’s features like it wanted to be nowhere else in the universe.

“Thanks, Rodney.” The words he’d been trying to speak for minutes now finally pushed through the lead blanketing his mind.

Startled, McKay met his eyes, then quickly looked away. “Ugh. I hate this. Give me another a second. The more you can talk the more it’ll help.”

An uncontrollable wave of sympathy rolled over Rush, thick and warm. He reached for McKay’s wrist. Their gazes locked. “Thank you,” Rush said, shaking the man gently, his eyes wet.

“Okay,” McKay breathed, prying Rush’s hands off his shoulders. “Little sincere. That’s crushing. That’s fine.” McKay’s breathing quickened. “Let’s, uh, see if we can get that to go away real quick.” He clenched his jaw, sniffed determinedly, and said. “Car is to road as plane is to—”

“Manifold,” Rush offered. Distance points in Euclidean space creating mathematical superstructures in his mind.

“Okay so the bones of your topological reasoning go troublingly deep. I’m not jealous. The answer I was looking for was sky, by the way.”

Sheppard, suddenly, was there, across from McKay, one hand under the back of Rush’s neck. “McKay, what the hell is this?”

“It’s not elegant,” McKay said. “I know that. It’s about tiding him over until we we can set up the kind of remote pulse pattern that allows the same fine-grained control I’ve developed over your cortical processes. His are not the same. I can’t protect him from tech proximity like I do you without practice. I need a full EEG, I need a spectral analysis of his EM field, I need Keller, and I need low stakes.”

“Yeah.” Sheppard spoke to McKay, looked at Rush. “Not sure how low the stakes are going to be on Atlantis if Midway’s causing this much trouble.”

“Thanks,” McKay snapped. “Very reassuring. Nick, when I say ‘a stitch in time saves nine’, what does that mean?”

“No,” Sheppard said, before Rush could speak. “Everyone’s through, and even if you optimize him here, we’re gonna have to do it again anyway on Atlantis. Dial it back enough that he can get up. We’re going.”

The world burned off its glaze.

Rush sat, full of breathless energy, the acuity of the room, the song of the active gate (anticipatory, maritime).

“What the fuck,” he breathed, but Sheppard had already pulled him to his feet, started walking him toward the event horizon.

“You don’t want to talk about this?” McKay trailed after them. “Stagger the transit?”

“There any possibility Shep is also affected by whatever this is?” Young growled, trailing them. “He spent his whole Earth trip day staring toward Pegasus.”

“Maybe. Uh. John, you wanna comment?” McKay asked. “John. John, wait.”

But it was too late. Rush felt the sonic gravity of the open wormhole, the D-minor echo of a melody he could almost hear. Sheppard, too, was caught in it. Sheppard, maybe, had been caught in it for whole handfuls of minutes, deferring the moment of the plunge into the bright well of the gate.

Together, they stepped from Midway’s nondescript gray and into—

Sunlight poured through skylights. Their steps, like chimes, rang on the metal, transforming into fractal tonal spirals. The room was wide, full of space and glass and crystal. The floor sharded upward in sections as they stepped forward, revealing glittering control panels. Ribbons of decorative trim sank into their moldings and liquid water poured along revealed channels. The walls, the floor, the vaulted ceiling sang with the equatorial winds.

Beyond the room, Rush sensed change spread like a ringed wave from the dropped stone of their arrival.

“Oh god,” Sheppard whispered, staring into the light.