Mathématique: Chapter 90

“Have you heard about the grail, handsome?” Vala asked. “The holy one?”

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

Text iteration: Late for a late-morning workout.

Additional notes: For this one, I took a few plot-relevant lines directly from the season 10 SG-1 episode “The Pegasus Project.”

Chapter 90

At 0900, Young left the Nautilus Suite and found the city shrouded in thick fog. Cloud erased the tips of towers and swallowed nearby piers. Moving cautiously without his cane, he approached the hip-high parapet and looked into the gray.

Even the ocean was gone. Nothing to hear but the muffled slaps of wavelets at the base of Sanctuary Quay. The air smelled of brine and stone. Odd. There was no wind to bring the scent of wet rock and, as far as he knew, there was no land at all within several hundred miles of Atlantis.

Young pulled out his schedule, copied onto a torn quarter of paper from a spiral-ring notebook Eli had left in the common room. He’d hoped to find the notebook full of something useful, like Ancient vocab, or math, or city power flow diagrams; instead he’d found Astria Porta armor combinations, D&D dice calculations, and doodles of a certain eye-patch-sporting Promethean Technomage with billowing hair and beckoning body language.

The kid had better have space for more in his head than Astria Porta game mechanics and a crush on Ginn Keeler.

His to-do wilted in his hand, mist-damp. His morning physical therapy was done. He had a few hours before he’d meet Rush for the man’s usual late-morning self-defense session. With Teyla gone, Young was on deck. Rush could probably use a few tips about getting out of headlocks. It’d be nice to know whether the man could get through a three-mile run. Or a one-mile run. What he could bench, before he started working on it.

Once Teyla was through her current mission and whatever ghoulish surgery would get rid of her Wraith-y features, maybe she and Young could coordinate. Rush really should start some kind of dedicated endurance and strength training independent of whatever Athosian fighting style he was learning.

Maybe, as Young’s back healed, he’d start doing walk-runs with the civilians on his team. Rush, Ginn, and Eli. Eli would come if Ginn was there, he was pretty sure.

He pocketed his schedule and looked up, toward where the spire of Sanctuary Tower would be if it hadn’t dissolved in the mist.

Much as Young loved strategizing about wringing every possible advantage for SG-68 out of every passing hour—he could optimize later. He was overdue for a check-in with Jackson.

No one answered at the door to the Sand Suite when he rang the chime, so he headed to the mess. 

Jackson and Vala sat across from one another, eating outside on the dew-covered silver terrace despite the thick fog. Jackson frowned into his coffee, condensation creeping over the lenses of his glasses. Vala’s hair had soaked up water from the humid air, and it fell in thick waves down her back. She shot an arm into the air as soon as she saw Young, flagging him down as though signaling through a dense crowd.

There was no one else eating outside.

“I think he sees you,” Jackson muttered.

“Handsome!” Vala said, delighted. “Where is your cane?”

“Taking the morning off.” Young pulled a wet metal chair away from the table and set his tray beside Vala’s. “Call it an experiment. How we doin’, Dan?” He braced his hands on the arms of the chair and lowered himself with care, all the bones of his spine strung in a line.

“Swimming in deep waters.” Jackson tore a piece off his dry toast and dropped it on his plate. “We keep going and either become lost or arrive in a new country.”

“Oh yes, he’s been saying cheerful things like that all morning,” Vala observed.

Jackson gave the pair of them a small smile. The gray of the morning stole all the fire from his eyes. “Sorry, guys.” He tore another shred of bread and dropped it on his plate.

Vala flipped her hair over her shoulder and a mist-wet hank of it grazed Young’s cheek. “Meditation and importuning the stars for intercession have gotten you nothing, darling. Let’s do something.”

“Yeah, Dan.” Young grinned around a bite of oatmeal. “Let’s do something.”

Jackson grimaced and pinched another finger-span of toast free. 

“Have you heard about the grail, handsome?” Vala asked. “The holy one?”

“Ah!” Jackson cut in. “Classified.”

“The ‘Holy Grail’ is classified, huh?” Young asked.

“It’s also known around these parts as ‘Merlin’s Weapon’,” Vala stage-whispered. “Ring any bells?”

Young nodded. “You guys have been after that for—what. About a year? I remember it from the notes of a certain unnamed committee.”

“Great.” Jackson perked up. “So you’re cleared.”

“That might be taking it a little far,” Young began, “but any alternative to the nine-chevron address is something I wouldn’t mind helping out with.”

“Perfect!” Vala slung an arm across Young’s shoulders. “Come to the library with us, handsome, what do you say?”

“It’ll be the Teaching Lab, actually.” Jackson added another sliver to his pile of tattered toast. “I’ve got a few leads on weapon locations. Unfortunately they’re place-names in Middle English, so it could take a while.”

Young took a bite of oatmeal loaded with Athosian berries. “I’ve got a few hours to kill before I’m due for a workout with Rush. And I’ve been brushing up on Lantean history anyway.”

“Tag along, then,” Jackson said. “Woolsey’s cleared us for two hours or one ten-millionth of the Lantean ZPM power reserve, whichever comes first.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Young sipped coffee from a mist-slick mug.

Vala darted a hand across the table, snatched up the dry shreds of Jackson’s plain toast, and hurled them at the silver rail. Most of the pieces scattered over the terrace, but a few scraps made it into the invisible sea.

Young and Jackson stared at her.

“For the ducks,” she said, dusting off her hands.

~~~

When they arrived in the Stellar Teaching Lab, Administrator Woolsey waited for them beneath the domed ceiling. The oculus in the roof was closed to the gray day, and against the windowless gloom of a high vault, the Pegasus Galaxy’s stars scattered like glitter flung into a time dilation field.

“Colonel Young!” Woolsey beamed. “Will you be joining us?”

“Seems like it,” Young replied, “unless there are any security concerns?”

With a respectful nod at Young and a glance at Jackson, Woolsey said, “While I understand the Lucian Alliance insurgency has made my Milky Way colleagues justifiably touchy about security and compartmentalization of information—as far as I’m concerned, you and your team are visiting scholars on special assignment to provide tactical advantage in an ongoing war. I’m happy to grant any reasonable requests for information and resources.”

“Enlightened of you,” Jackson said.

Vala winced theatrically and caught Young’s eye.

Woolsey took the hit. “I try to learn from my past failures, Dr. Jackson. And, I admit, there have been many.” He gestured to the control console, already aglow. “Please. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Don’t mind Daniel,” Vala whispered to Woolsey as they arranged themselves in a line at Jackson’s back. “He needs three cups of coffee before he can behave civilly, and he’s only had two.”

Woolsey favored Vala with a side-eye that said, Look who’s talking, then returned his attention to the shining scatter of star-grain overhead.

Young followed his gaze. Pegasus was rotating, too slow to clock.

Jackson stepped to the podium interface.

A woman appeared on the low dais in the center of the room.

Young recognized her instantly. He’d watched clip after clip of her in the Lantean database while researching her feud with Moros. Her connection to the Wraith. Wavy, shoulder-length hair. Gray eyes. A heart-shaped face with a sharp and stubborn chin. A glimmering white gown that wisped to nothing at its edges.

Morgan le Fay.

“State the nature of your requirement.” Her voice was mechanical, pleasant, and computationally inflected. But there was power in it. Pools and caves and secret places.

Jackson inhaled, long and shuddery. He caught himself midway into a shoulder hunch and straightened. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with—”

“Hello!” Vala stepped to Jackson’s side with a musical-theater wave. “We’re looking for the Holy Grail. You know the one. Made by Merlin? We heard it can be used against ascended beings and we’ve got a bit of a galactic conquest problem. Meaning the Ori are conquesting us at the moment? We’d adore a nice Ori-killing weapon to slip up our sleeves, if you know what I mean—”

Vala broke off as Jackson gripped her by her shoulders and pressed her back a step, repositioning her in line beside Woolsey.

“Hush!” Woolsey hissed. “Every question eats into our ZPM allotment.”

The holographic image of Morgan le Fay flickered. In that flickering, Young could have sworn he saw her eyes shift to Vala. Tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Jackson,” Young said, intending to warn, lacking the words, lacking even the idea of what he wanted to convey.

But Jackson was already speaking. “Display a transgalactic map of all Lantean strongholds and outposts at the time of the Second Exodus.”

The starmap shifted as Morgan spoke. “The Second Exodus refers to the period of weeks during which the heart of Atlantis and all her inhabitants fled Avalon to escape the plague. All ships capable of transgalactic travel and clear of plague crossed the stars to begin a new home, here, in Pegasus.” Elegantly, she gestured at Pegasus.

Jackson studied the overhead map without speaking.

“Milky Way,” Woolsey whispered, pointing subtly as though they were spectators at the quietest baseball game in the universe. “Pegasus.” His finger shifted to clusters of bright lights in two different galaxies then indicated a third speck, glimmering at the margin of the map, unaffiliated with any galactic formation. Woolsey shot Young a questioning look.

Young shook his head. He split from Woolsey and Vala and walked an arc around the starmap to stand beneath the far-flung dot.

“Now run the clock forward to a point that corresponds to—” Jackson paused and clapped his hands to his upper thighs, then chest. At the crinkle of paper, he pulled a scrap from an inner pocket of his jacket and read off a series of numbers.

“When is that?” Woolsey whispered respectfully.

Jackson glanced over his shoulder. “Five thirty-seven AD.”

Overhead, a flower of little lights burst and spread through Pegasus. The lights in the Milky Way went out. The small dot Young stood beneath hung suspended at the far edge of the map but didn’t flicker out, not even when the Pegasus lights began receding.

“Five thirty-seven AD?” Woolsey asked.

“Battle of Camlann.” Young shrugged. “I mean, supposedly.”

Jackson gave him a small smile.

“The name rings a distant bell,” Woolsey said, “but for those of us who aren’t military scholars…”

“The Battle of Camlann corresponds to the death of Arthur and the loss of the grail,” Jackson said, his eyes on the spread of stars. “We should see Pegasus go dark as the Ancients lose ground to the Wraith. Yeah. There. It’s starting to happen.”

Young watched as little lights winked out one by one in the Pegasus Galaxy. A light in the Milky Way came back on, small and lonely.

Eventually, there were only two dots left. One in the Milky Way, the other galaxies and galaxies away.

“Run it back.” Jackson looked at the paper in his hand and read off another string of numbers, corresponding to an Ancient date. “That’s a hundred years prior to the Battle of Camlann,” he translated for the room.

A cluster of lights came back on, maybe seventy-five in all, mostly in Pegasus.

“This, I think, is our pool of candidates,” Jackson murmured. “Merlin completed the grail in descent. He assisted Arthur in descent. That limits his temporal runway. So that means he was likely working somewhere—” Jackson waved at the scattered lights.

“Daniel,” Vala said, quiet and serious. “It’s too many. We don’t have the time.”

“I know,” Jackson breathed.

“Just ask directly for Castiana and Sahal,” Vala said.

“Those are names out of Arthuriana,” Jackson snapped. “She won’t know them. She has no reference frame and the exhaustive search would consume our power allotment. I will get there. Just give me a minute.”

Vala fanned frustrated jazz hands behind Jackson’s back. “It would take all of eleven seconds.”

“What’s this dot?” Young asked, standing under the farthest-flung speck of light.

Morgan turned to him, gray eyes sharp. “That is an anathemic outpost; its name will not be spoken.”

Young, startled, took a half step back and a bolt of pain ran from his spine to his toes. 

Frown lines cut deep into Jackson’s forehead. Addressing Morgan, he said, “Anathemic?”

“Of or relating to the concept of anathema,” Morgan replied.

Jackson sighed. “I think I had her in grade five.”

Jackson didn’t know who he was talking to. But then, why would he? He didn’t carry memories from his time among the ascended; even his most recent viral brush with a higher plane hadn’t left him with anything but the certainty he was supposed to come to Atlantis.

Young redistributed his weight, planted his feet, and said, “Dan.”

Jackson’s eyes gleamed blue under the light of the starscape.

Young pointed up at the woman on the dais. “That’s Morgan le Fay.”

Jackson huffed a laugh. “No. I—” He paused. The reflexive amusement drained from his face. “I would—I would recognize her.” But there was no certainty there. 

“I spent half a day reading about her in the Lantean database,” Young said, landing the words gently. “Some of those entries included video. That’s her.”

Jackson shook his head, eyes flicking between Young and Morgan.

“I’m inclined to agree with the colonel,” Woolsey said, just as gentle. “Our historians have compiled clips of prominent Lanteans. You’re welcome to cross-reference any of them with this hologram’s appearance.”

But Jackson was turning away, hunching his shoulders, shaking his head.

The room was silent. Dark, and full of stars.

Vala hovered a hand near one of Jackson’s hunched shoulders but didn’t touch him. “Daniel?”

When Jackson turned back, his eyes were full of water and shone like a flaming sea. Young had seen the archeologist weep, had seen him ignore his own tears, but this was different. The sheen over his eyes was unnaturally thick. 

“Anathemic.” Jackson repeated the word in a snarling rasp, like he was hurling an attack. “An unusual modern English translation of an Alteran root meant to convey a banner. An anthem. Song and language and a thing to march behind.”

And the hologram blinked. Not quite a flinch. Almost.

“Show me,” Jackson growled, “all anathemic outposts. Don’t shift the time period.”

Above their heads, the Alteran Galaxy lit like a brand. A handful of glowing dots scattered over the Milky Way and Pegasus. And that solo dot above Young’s head kept shining.

“Origen is anathema,” Jackson said, soft and dangerous. “But the anathemic set is larger than Origen.”

“Yes,” Morgan replied.

“Show me,” Jackson said, “non-Origen anathemic outposts in the Milky Way.”

A scattered handful of lights shone overhead.

“I see Kheb.” Jackson’s voice brimmed with anger and longing. The water in his eyes began sliding down his face and Young was sure it wasn’t tears. It was something else. It evoked the running water in the walls, in the floors.

“And Velona,” Jackson continued, water-blind, “and Vagonbrei. Rolan. Dakara. Your rule-breakers. Your weapon-makers.”

“Yes,” Morgan whispered.

“Show me Castiana,” Jackson said. 

A world blazed silver, annotated with a gate address.

“Taoth Vaclarush,” Morgan said.

“And Sahal?” Jackson demanded.

“Valos Cor.” At the name, another world and gate address blazed to life.

Jackson stared up at the shining silver worlds and said, “You’re not a hologram.”

“What?” Vala asked, sharp as a thrown elbow.

Woolsey took a startled sip of air.

Young had been circling that idea for a handful of minutes, but even he wasn’t prepared for the shift in Morgan’s body language as she directed her gray gaze to Jackson, the frankness of her regard, the depth of feeling in her tone.

“You have your answer, Daniel Jackson,” she said. “I suggest you act on it.”

With that, she flickered into her own vanishing.

Young walked and arc around the dais, heading back toward Jackson, feeling the pull in his hip and back as his steps quickened.

“HEY,” Jackson shouted at the overhead starscape, his tone full of rage and grief and fraying at its edges.

“Jackson,” Young began.

“Daniel, she’s gone.” Vala swept a hand toward the empty center of the room.

“No, she’s not.” Jackson glared at the shining addresses above his head. “She’s gonna come back and finish what she started. You’re not fooling anybody here.” He flung his arms wide, encompassing Vala, Woolsey, and Young.

“Dan.” Young clamped a hand around the man’s biceps just above the elbow and dragged him in. “Dan, listen to me. Even if that was her, the real Morgan—if you’re looking for a weapon built by Merlin? You don’t want her advice. They were rivals. Couldn’t stop cutting each other down.”

“It’s true,” Woolsey confirmed, clipped and measured. “She’s not a trustworthy figure in human or Ancient mythologies.”

Jackson pried up Young’s fingers and stepped back to the holographic interface. “I want more,” he snarled. “And you can pass that on to your friends as well. I’m sick of hidden clues and cryptic messages. When this war is over,” he said, gripping the podium, digging into his oratory, spending down his gift for rhetoric, “when every soul left alive is praying to the Ori, feeding their need to be worshipped—”

He killed the build there and let water run down his face.

“Well.” Jackson smiled, all his power gone, replaced with bitterness and with threat. “It’s clear who they’ll come for next. I don’t pretend to know what that war will look like or on what battlefield it will take place, but then, I won’t be alive to see it. I understand that non-interference is the core of your belief system. Of what you’ve become and what you believe. But if you really are trying to help—then help yourself.”

“Daniel,” Vala began, no more than a whisper.

Young pulled her back, shook his head.

“But his eyes.” Vala gestured at her own face, her expression tight with fear.

“I know what I’m asking,” Jackson said, kinder now, softer. “You’re afraid the others will step in. Stop you from helping. But there must be a few like you. There must.”

With a silver-white shimmer, Morgan reappeared.

Woolsey took a step back. Vala curled a hand around Young’s elbow, like she was anchoring herself against stepping forward and demanding answers. Young covered her hand with his, pressed down. 

Morgan and Jackson regarded one another in silence.

Then, without even a whisper of sound or displaced air, Morgan stepped down from the dais. With ghostly fingers she reached up to his face, cupped his cheeks, and passed the pads of her thumbs over his streaming eyes. “You speak from the heart. It’s what I remember most from your time among us.”

Jackson opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “For coming back.”

She let him go, stepped back, and dropped her hands.

Young noted absently that her feet were bare on a floor of silver and inlaid sunstone.

“Why did you send me here?” Jackson asked. 

“Atlantis itself has a form of status. It possesses agency. Rules about non-interference apply to it as well as to humanity. If it chooses to host my image—this is not against any rule.”

“Fantastic,” Vala said, unable to help herself. “Well done, you. So, you’ll help us? Help us more. Won’t you?”

Morgan swept her eyes over Vala. “I’ve given you what you came for.”

“At least tell us which of the planets to go to,” Vala said. “Vagonbrei almost killed Daniel, and that was your ground. If you really want to help us, tell us which.”

Morgan’s gaze returned to Jackson.

“Please,” Jackson said.

Morgan took a breath. Shook her head as though she were about to say no. Instead, in a rush, she said, “Merlin’s weapon is not—” and vanished into blown motes of sparkling silver.

Jackson stared at the glittering silver dust with a burnt-out expression, hollow and frozen and terrible to look at. 

“What just happened?” Vala asked in a small voice.

“Exactly what she was afraid of,” Jackson said dully. “They stopped her.”

“Will she be punished?” Vala asked.

“I don’t know,” Jackson replied.

~~~

In the late morning, the makeshift gym in the city’s Central Spire was mostly empty, just a few off-shift personnel lifting naquadah weights or using the mixture of Lantean and Earth-based fitness machines. Young posted up at the back wall and idly watched Major Lorne work his way through free-weight exercises with more than a little envy. It felt like years since he’d moved with that kind of ease.

So Jackson had gotten a pair of crumbs from a higher plane. If Morgan le Fay could be trusted, and Young was not at all sure she could, maybe that was some kind of progress. Still. It seemed like a pretty thin advantage for all the risk she’d supposedly been running. And what had she tried to say at the end? Merlin’s weapon is not—what?

Useful? Not really a weapon? Not at either of the two addresses? Not what you think it is? Not usable by mortals? Not a good idea? Not working?

Young didn’t like it. He and Dan needed to do a sit-down database dive on the trustworthiness of Morgan le Fay. 

Rush was late.

There was another thing Young didn’t like.

After twenty minutes he was done waiting. He made his way back to the Nautilus Suite, trying not to flash back to the grind of worry about the LA he’d carried all through the summer, the memory of Telford’s Acura, spun across the road, door open, abandoned—

He stopped in on the security station to check in with Ginn, who was manning the cameras while James slept.

“Where’s Rush?” he asked. “He was supposed to meet me at 1100.”

“I know,” Ginn said. “I’ve already reviewed the security tapes. He entered his quarters last night and hasn’t emerged since. He should still be there.”

Some of the spring-loaded tension in Young’s chest eased. “Fatigue is no excuse for skipping a workout.”

Ginn looked up at him, dark eyes solemn. “But this isn’t like him.”

Nope. It wasn’t.

And the bad feeling was back, like it had never left.

Young locked eyes with Ginn. “Wait here. If I don’t check in by radio in ten minutes, wake James and inform the city’s XO that he’s got a security breach. You’ll find him in the gym.”

Ginn’s hand went to her thigh, to where her LA-issued Zat would be strapped if she’d never defected. She shook her head. “You’re injured. I’ll go.”

“Not a chance, kid,” Young said, and made for the inner door of the suite. “Stay here. Follow orders.”

Without his cane, after a morning on his feet, his back and hip ached fiercely. He’d overdone it. All the same he tried not to limp, in case there was anyone lying in wait ahead.

He got all the way to Rush’s bedroom without meeting anyone. Cranking the hatch of the door was hell on his back, and he leaned into the solid metal of the unlatched door for a moment before he swung it wide on silent hinges.

The bed was made. No one was in it. On the coverlet, Young saw a crisply folded piece of notebook paper. It had been origamied into serving as its own envelope. EVERETT was printed neatly on its exterior in block letters.

“Don’t do this to me.” Young picked up the paper. He slid the folds past one another and found a block of text in the center of the paper, enclosed by a geometric frame of creases. It was written in pen, fluid and bold, and it started mid-sentence, as though picking up an argument Young hadn’t known they’d been having.

if you’d not been so bloody honorable, such a ludicrously earnest source of inspiration (here and elsewhere), perhaps I’d have refused. This isn’t an explanation. Can’t be a warning either. Just an apology. I am sorry. I hope events clarify as they unfold. If not…don’t give up. Look after John Sheppard. Win the war. Don’t forget to send Ginn to MIT so Eli will follow. Wasn’t sure when I started, but unfortunately I’m shite at this. Too late to start over. Sorry about that, too. —NR

And that was it.