Diplomacy (11a/27)
Title: Diplomacy (Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Chapter1 Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10 Chapter11 Chapter12 Chapter13 Chapter14 Chapter15 Chapter16 Chapter17 Chapter18 Chapter19 Chapter20 Chapter21 Chapter22 Chapter23 Chapter24 Chapter25 Chapter26
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Cruvus, Part II
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1 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 1800 hrs
Daniel sighed, tapping a finger on the desk. "'Nu' has to be 'we.'" Nos, nous, nosotros, noi...it fit well enough with other Latin-based languages.
"Or 'us,' " Robert pointed out.
"Right, okay. 'We' or 'us.'"
"Or 'our.' Don't make any assumptions about morphology."
"But...yes, fine. 'First person plural pronoun,' then."
"Or--"
"Probably," Daniel interrupted, exasperated, because they had to assume a little bit if they expected to get anywhere with figuring out this language. "We'll keep in mind the fact that it's an assumption. Now, 'anquietas'...what does that sound like? 'Inquietus?' "
"As in 'worried?' 'We...worried?' 'We are worried?'"
Meeting Robert's eyes over the text, Daniel winced. "Maybe it was a warning."
"A warning about the head-grabber," Robert suggested.
"That would make sense. Well, no, wait, actually," Daniel amended, frowning. "Think about it. The head-grabber is what...uh, downloaded the ability to speak this language into Jack's brain. It must have been made by the same people who wrote this, or at least the same race. And it was activated by stepping through the inscription."
"Which would be a pretty stupid thing for a warning label to do when they could have just put up a barricade or something instead. Unless, of course, it was a trap."
"Then why would they write anything at all?" Daniel reasoned. "Anyone who could read it would be warned off."
"Unless they were trying to warn off everyone except those who couldn't read it," Robert countered to advocate the devil. Or play at...advocating...some expression Daniel couldn't remember exactly about advocates and devils, but it was an important role they each had to play for the other every time they looked for a new theory on anything.
"Then why would the device give them the ability to read the language after they'd already been affected? That part still doesn't make sense unless the purpose was to impart knowledge somehow."
"But imparting knowledge also doesn't make sense, not if it destroys previously-existing knowledge."
"Okay, so we have no idea if the downloading was supposed to be a beneficial thing," Daniel admitted, "but that's not the point. The point is that 'anquietas' probably doesn't mean 'worried.'"
Robert paused. "Fine. Try a new word."
Daniel nodded, encouraged at the agreement. "What else fits, besides 'inquietus?' There could have been a lot of sound change in the language between this and Latin."
"Well, we have about three words of data to go on, but we know there was a metathesis rule of some sort during the period between Latin and this language, as well as certain sound deletions. There may have been vowel shifts..."
Rolling the word around his tongue, Daniel tried, "Anquietas...Um... Aniquetas... Anquteus... Antiquas..."
"Whoa, stop there. Anti..." Robert held up a hand, eyes flicking about like he was thinking. "What about 'antiquitus?'"
"So...that would make 'We ancient.' Or something like 'We are ancient.'"
"Makes them sound like they were either really senile or really arrogant, depending on what their culture thinks--or thought--about age."
"They wrote it; they're hardly going to call themselves senile and then carve it into the ground. It could be a substantive, too, so: 'we are the ancient ones,'" Daniel said. "Latin doesn't have definite articles."
"Neither did Proto-Indo-European, according to theory," Robert said, and while Daniel lagged far behind him in theoretical and historical linguistics as studied on Earth, he recognized Robert's tone as one of agreement. "Fine. Let's go with that for now. It could be an identification of who they are, not necessarily part of the main message itself. 'We are the ancient ones.' What about the next part?"
"Hic qua videum," Daniel read aloud from his notes.
They stared at the words for a few minutes before Robert took off his glasses to rub his eyes. "Doesn't make any sense at all. I'll guess a 'this' or 'here;' a 'which;' and 'videum,' something to do with being seen. That doesn't mean anything. Nothing meaningful, anyway."
Impatient, Daniel scowled. "That doesn't mean we won't get it."
"We're assuming a lot about how similar these languages are. We might not be able to figure this out at all."
That wasn't acceptable to Daniel. "'This...which must be seen?'" he tried. Maybe the last word was a participle. Periphrastic?
"I mean," Robert said. "Sure. It's possible. But we're still reaching--"
"Then we reach! Look, maybe we're being too word-for-word literal. If we assume 'qua' is a relative pronoun, 'hic' should be a noun, right, not an adverb, so it's either 'this' or a noun somehow related to 'here.' Or both. 'This place,' maybe."
Robert donned his glasses again with a sigh. "Okay, try that. So 'this place...where...it is seen.'"
"What is 'it?' " Daniel asked. "What's seen?" When Robert didn't answer, he added, "That wasn't rhetorical. What did you see there?"
"Oh. Uh, not much. A...a room, no exits, nothing fancy, besides the inscription on the floor. Then the head-grabbing device."
Daniel cocked his head, raising a finger to his lips in thought. "You know..."
"What?"
"Maybe that device was the entire purpose of that room. That entire world, maybe, since there was no way to get out of the room. The device put information into Jack's head that led--or is leading--to..." He flapped a hand, then stopped when he realized it make it look like he was pointing at the math, which wasn't exactly what he meant. "I don't know. Leading to...some kind of knowledge we didn't have before."
"Knowledge about this race's...culture or something," Robert said slowly, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling in thought. "And they're probably...well, either they've left or died off or backed away from whatever's going on, at least on that planet."
"What? Why do you think that?"
"Well, you don't call yourself an 'ancient one' while you're still around. Or, at least, you don't call your entire race that, unless you're trying to present yourself as gods to, you know, 'younger beings' or leave some sort of message or a...a legacy for someone to find." Robert squinted. "Oh, hey...hey, you think...?"
Sitting up fast, Daniel exclaimed, "Yes, that's it! That's what there is to see there. That's what the device was doing--showing their legacy. That's the 'it.' The planet is the place where their legacy is seen."
"Seen...or experienced. Or passed on." Robert stared into space a moment longer, running it through his brain. "Okay. So that planet we 'gated to was the place of their legacy, and they're trying to pass on all the knowledge left behind by their race to...Colonel O'Neill?"
He sounded dubious. As much as Daniel wanted to take offense on behalf of a friend, he admitted to himself that Jack was far from the first person he'd have chosen to pass on complicated cultural information about any race. "Well, not specifically to him, obviously, but to someone."
"That could be it, I guess."
"Yeah, you really think so?" Daniel said hopefully. "I mean, suddenly Jack has all this knowledge that he didn't have before, and apparently it all has to do with the...these ancient ones. It's certainly nothing any of us knew or could do before all this happened." Daniel was pretty certain Jack wouldn't have been able to write all those foreign-looking equations without outside influence.
"Yeah, yeah...that could work," Robert agreed. "'We are the ancient ones--the Ancients. This place where...our legacy is seen.' Other possibilities?"
Suppressing his impatience to see what Janet had to say about the situation, Daniel forced himself to try to be thorough. "Well...okay. We could be completely wrong. For one, we're making assumptions about the grammar. It could be something like: 'See...what is here.' "
Robert nodded, but said, "That doesn't change the semantics too much, though. It's still about showing us whatever the head-grabber was...you know, trying to show."
"And it still sounds relatively welcoming," Daniel added, looking at Robert to see whether that was just wishful thinking.
"Yeah, it does. But we're still guessing about the word 'anquietas,' and the rest is still speculation, too. Let's go through it again, see if anything else fits, and then we'll wait until after Colonel O'Neill's exam and then go tell everyone."
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1 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 2100 hrs
"We believe it says, 'We are the Ancients,'" Daniel said as they stood in the briefing room with General Hammond, Sam, and Janet. "'This is the place of our legacy.'"
"Or something to that effect," Robert said. "We think some race of people called the Ancients left their knowledge behind in that device on P3R-272 in order to pass it on to whoever found it."
"Just like that?" the general asked. "To anyone?"
"Someone not Goa'uld or Jaffa, I think," Robert amended, "but since Colonel O'Neill's the only one to have used it, we can't know if there are other necessary biological or behavioral characteristics for activating and using the device. We're looking at a sample size of one."
"Is Jack okay?" Daniel asked, turning to Janet.
The doctor hesitated, then said, "Teal'c is watching over him, but I'm concerned. The colonel's brain is showing elevated electrical activity--as much as ten times more activity than normal."
"Consistent with having lots of extra information in his brain?" Robert asked.
"It's possible."
"So, the new language, the sudden math expertise..."
"That's not all he's done," Sam told them. "He took apart one of our staff weapons just before you two came down so he could get at the naquadah power cell."
Daniel raised his eyebrows. "Why did he want a naquadah power cell?"
"No one knows, even him. He doesn't seem to realize what he's doing half the time, and he doesn't seem to understand what comes out of it. I don't even understand the math he was doing earlier, and I'm fairly certain he didn't know before today how to dismantle Goa'uld weaponry safely. More importantly, before today, he would never have wanted to do any of those things."
The general pursed his lips. "You're saying that he's being controlled by it in some way?"
Daniel glanced at Sam, who looked even more uncertain than before. "It's possible, sir. He's clearly not in complete, conscious control of himself."
"And there's more," Janet said. "I compared today's scans to the ones we ran just after the mission, and I'm concerned about what this is doing to Colonel O'Neill's health. The foreign activity isn't subsiding; if anything, the problem seems to be advancing. I think whatever affected him might be taking over incrementally."
"Taking...over?" Daniel repeated, rapidly moving from alarmed to scared.
"Well, the 'downloading' analogy is pretty good. The colonel's...hard drive has been filled with information written in a language that his computer doesn't understand. If it continues to progress the way it has thus far, we're going to be seeing more and more of these changes."
"So it could eventually overwrite the current system," Sam said.
Janet nodded in acknowledgement. "Or, in the worst-case scenario, even shut it down. I advise that we focus our efforts on reversing the effects of this device."
"Reversing it?" Robert repeated. "This is a language spoken by a very advanced race whose technology excludes people carrying symbiotes. This could be the key to meeting an important potential ally, General; we can't let an opportunity like this--"
"I have a man whose life is in danger, Doctor," General Hammond said coldly. Robert broke off, looking surprised--Daniel suspected that thought hadn't even occurred to him. "Focus on fixing this."
"Ye--uh, yes, sir," Robert said quickly.
"Is he still in the infirmary?" Daniel asked. "Can I go and talk to him? Maybe it'll help to figure out more."
"I don't see why not," Janet said.
Robert dug into a pocket and pulled something out. "Wait, Daniel--here. Record as much as you can. Until this gets solved, we might as well collect as much data as possible. Here, you've seen me use this: play, record, stop. Okay?"
"Gentlemen..." the general started again, scowling.
"General, it's important!" Robert insisted.
Daniel took the tape recorder that Robert often used to take notes and nudged him a little to the side. The archaeologist didn't always pay sufficient attention to social cues, a luxury that an alien in Daniel's position couldn't afford. "Sir," he said, trying to translate between the two chains of command he obeyed, "the only thing we know about the device right now is what Jack says or does. Any information we can collect, even if it's recorded and might take some time to interpret it..."
The general nodded, placated. "All right, then. Go ahead."
When he arrived, Jack was not in the main part of the infirmary, but rather in the section where Shifu stayed, staring at the baby while Teal'c stood watch over him a few steps behind. There was a nurse watching, too, as there always was when Daniel wasn't with Shifu, but she was staying to one side while Jack and Teal'c were there.
Pushing through the doors, Daniel called, "Jack? Is everything okay?"
Without turning, Jack said, "Perennial."
"Pere--from perennis? 'Continuous' or, uh, 'unending?' " Daniel fumbled with the buttons on the tape recorder until he had pressed the right one.
"Haud," Jack said, shaking his head. "That's not it. It's...malum."
That one was easy, even as Daniel noted with concern the increasing use of alien words. "Malus. 'Bad, evil.' Oh. You're saying Shifu is...what, pernicies? 'Destruction. Disaster.'" He looked from Jack to Shifu. "He...he's not evil," he said, wishing he were certain that it was true. "Jack, that's ridiculous; he's a month and a half old. You've never said that about him before."
"I'm not...I don't know." Jack's hands tightened convulsively on the rail of the bed, though, and Daniel remembered with a shiver that their current hope was that the Ancients might be opponents of the Goa'uld, and that Shifu was the child of two Goa'uld whom even the Asgard refused to shelter. Was he to be the Goa'uld's destruction, or the Tau'ri's? Was that why Sha'uri had tried to warn them to keep him away from Abydos?
And what would the Ancients have wanted to do with a child who held enemy secrets?
"Um...Jack," Daniel said, approaching cautiously. "What, uh...what are you...maybe...we should go somewhere else."
"There's something I need to do," Jack said, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his forehead. Daniel took the opportunity to move closer to Shifu, one hand reaching over the railing so he'd get there faster if he had to. Jack opened his eyes and noticed. "Dammit, I'm not going to do anything to the perennial, Daniel."
Swallowing, Daniel nodded but didn't move, because he was relatively certain Jack hadn't meant to take apart a staff weapon either, and whether he understood it or not, he was still calling Shifu evil. "I know you wouldn't, Jack."
"But he's cruvus, you know."
Immediately defensive, Daniel asked sharply, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"His existence is forbidden," Teal'c answered instead, making Daniel remember that Teal'c was at least as strongly opposed to the Goa'uld as anyone else could be.
"Well...well, that's why we're taking him to Kheb," Daniel said. "There might be something there to help..." He shook his head. "Okay, wait, I'm not here to talk about Shifu or Kheb; I need to ask you some more questions about that device on P3R-272. Jack, do you--"
"Kheb. Illac lume."
Teal'c leaned forward a little. "O'Neill, you know of this Kheb?"
But Jack shook his head. Frozen in place, Daniel thought aloud, "Illac--illic. 'There.' And lume has to be 'light.' There is light at Kheb?"
"I don't... It's a locas axselo."
"A...a place..." Daniel squinted at nothing, trying to think and wishing he had some reference materials with him right now. Axselo? "I don't understand, but you know of it, then. Do you know where it is?"
Instead of answering, Jack slowly backed away from the bed, then abruptly turned and left the infirmary.
"O'Neill--"
"Jack--"
"I need to get to the control room."
"But why--"
"Daniel, I have no clue!"
Daniel exchanged a look with Teal'c. Teal'c hurried after Jack, and Daniel took an extra moment to make sure Shifu really was okay before following them.
By the time he caught up, Jack was sitting at one of the computers, one bewildered technician standing to the side and Teal'c hovering behind. "Jack?"
"Don't ask," Jack said tersely, his fingers flying over the keyboard faster than anyone Daniel had ever seen, and that was including Sam when she was excited. Daniel leaned in for a closer look, but this was outside anything he knew or understood, and the numbers scrolling up the monitor screen meant absolutely nothing to him. Teal'c caught his eye, and he nodded and turned up the stairs to the briefing room where, fortunately, the general was still talking with Sam, Robert, and Janet.
"The point is--" Sam was saying.
"General, sorry," Daniel interrupted. "Sam, Jack's in the control room, doing something on the computer, and no one knows what it is."
"What?" Sam said, starting down the stairs immediately, the general on her heels.
"Colonel," General Hammond said once they were there, "what are you doing?"
"I don't know sir," Jack said evenly, not pausing. "You know me and computers."
"Well, I'm ordering you to stop!"
"I'd love to, sir, but I can't."
"I'm locked out," Sam said, working on an adjacent computer, typing as if racing to reach some result before Jack could. "Main system's down."
The general turned to Teal'c, ordering, "Stop him."
Daniel watched with a mixture of shock and fascination as Teal'c forcibly pulled Jack out of his seat and away from the computer. "No," Jack protested now, his hands still reaching wildly for the keyboard, "No, I'm not farit!"
"Farit," Daniel repeated as Robert came down the stairs, turning to ask him for confirmation. "Farti...fartus? Full?"
"More like 'finished,' going by context," Robert observed with an detached interest Daniel wished he could feel. "A semantic shift from fartus, or maybe some phonological change starting from finis."
"Jack, what were you doing? What were you trying to finish?"
The computers shut off.
"Oh, boy," Sam muttered, reaching out and trying to turn everything back on.
"Captain?" the general asked warily.
"Sir, I can't restart the--oh." Suddenly, the monitors lit back up with the numbers that Daniel had seen before.
"What is that?"
Still caught in Teal'c's grasp, Jack stretched an arm out and managed hit a few more keys before being restrained again. He sighed.
Sam was scanning over the data appearing on the screen. "This is in machine code. Whatever he was entering must've been some sort of program. It could have rewritten massive amounts of our system." Looking torn between annoyance and apprehension, she turned to Jack, asking, "What did you do?"
"Uh, Captain Carter," Robert said as the display changed again.
Sam turned back, her brow furrowed. "This is the destination map. These are all the Stargates we've calculated and dialed."
"Yeah, then what are those?"
Red symbols--representations of the Stargate ring, Daniel guessed--were appearing all over the map. "Sam, are those new 'gates?"
"That's not possible," she said, shaking her head and frowning at the map and the data scrolling beside it too rapidly for Daniel to understand. "It takes days to recalculate an address, and--whoa. Wait a second. Sir," she said, turning to General Hammond, "these new Stargate coordinates did not come from the Abydos cartouche data we put in last year."
"But how can that--"
"Well, if the Ancients were opposed to the Goa'uld," Robert said, "they might've kept records of addresses that the Goa'uld don't know. This makes it look more likely that they're at least as advanced as the Goa'uld."
"Colonel?" General Hammond asked. "You know where these go?"
Jack winced, raising a hand to his head. "Haud."
"'No,'" Daniel translated Robert said together.
Sam was watching him with concern. "General, whatever's going on, maybe something on one of these planets can give us more information. If we could send probes through..."
"Do it," the general said. "Colonel O'Neill..." Jack squinted at him but stayed silent. Looking regretful, but resolute, the general told him firmly, "You are not under arrest. But you are also not to touch anything else on this base without permission. Do you understand?"
Sagging in Teal'c's grip, Jack stared at the Stargate addresses on the screen, then sighed. "Etium, sir."
Etiam, Daniel thought. 'Yes.' "Jack, can you come up with us to the office? Maybe we can figure out something more."
"At the least, we can document more of this language," Robert added.
The general nodded in agreement, and Jack finally acquiesced as well, pulling away from Teal'c and following the two of them to the elevator.
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2 October 1998; SGC, Earth; 0200 hrs
Robert flapped a hand at Daniel and said something.
Fighting encroaching tiredness, Daniel tore his gaze away from Jack. "What?"
"Can you write down that last bit he said?" Robert repeated, refilling a mug of coffee.
"The last...? Oh." Daniel rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, sorry. Hold on."
"I think I've got the whole alphabet by now," Robert was saying "and I'm starting to match sounds to symbols including the stuff from the P3R-272 inscription, but I'm not certain about some of them, since it's so short. And it's in a circle, which makes it kind of hard to tell which is the first letter. It would help if we had a second piece of data, too."
Jack snatched the printout of the circular inscription from Robert's hand. "Nu," he said, circling part of the circle, then irritably tossed it back to the archaeologist.
"All right, then," Robert said. "Should've just asked."
Daniel pulled his notepad toward himself and picked up his pen again. "Jack, could you repeat that, please? Slower, this time?" When no answer came, he asked, cautiously, "Are...are you okay?"
Instead of blowing up like he had several times before, Jack plunged his hands into his pockets. "Ego nishio."
"Ego," Daniel started. "Ni--nesh...nescio. You don't know." A surge of panic tried to rise at that, and he exhaled slowly to force it away.
"You know, I've been thinking," Robert said. "The Goa'uld posed as gods, and so did the Asgard; why not the Ancients? A lot of civilizations believed in deities known as the Ancient Ones."
Connecting the language similarities, Daniel thought about it and then shook his head, saying, "I know Roman mythology. Their gods were named."
"Yeah--but in some records, they do refer to the entire pantheon as the Ancient Ones."
"Yes, but this was centuries after the Stargate closed behind Ra."
"Hey, people on Earth have seen the Asgard long after the Giza Stargate was buried."
"No, they haven't," Daniel said, frowning. "Have they?" Had he been right, then, in guessing that the Asgard had visited Earth and Hanka and other planets like Cimmeria, passing along language and religion in their wake?
Robert paused, then said, "Remind me to explain alien abductions to you later." Daniel frowned harder, wondering what there could possibly be about alien abduction that he didn't already know or hadn't already experienced first-hand. "The point is, we know Stargates aren't the only way to travel. There's no reason to think that very advanced aliens wouldn't have been on Earth recently, or even now."
"You don't think someone would have noticed a very advanced race of aliens?"
"If they're advanced enough and humanoid enough, they should be able to stay hidden--or maybe they left by ship or some other mode of transportation. It would certainly help to explain why a few planets' inhabitants speak something so close to English or other young languages." He tapped the inscription. "Maybe the Ancients were the Roman gods. They did develop a relatively advanced society in ancient times."
"Well...okay, fine, but many other ancient cultures flourished as well," Daniel countered. "That doesn't necessarily require alien intervention." If there was anything he had learned from the Stargate program, it was that humans could be both more obstinately irrational and also more inventively resourceful than most people gave them credit for.
"But alien intervention could've sped things along. Sophisticated political processes, centralized heating systems, an intricate systems of roads, and..."
Wait, Daniel thought as an idea struck. Roads.
"...maybe they learned about roads from the Etruscans, or maybe they figured it out themselves, or...maybe the Ancients gave them some of those technologies. In fact..."
"Wait, wait," Daniel interrupted. "A system of roads, you said. The Romans...they were known as road-builders, right? Road-builders, Robert, and Jack just entered a lot of addresses into the computer. You think, maybe...?"
"Roads," Robert repeated, hearing the implication and already shaking his head. "You mean Stargates."
But the idea had taken root, and, low as they might be on hard proof, it felt right. "We've thought for almost a year now that someone else built the Stargates, and these Ancients obviously have really advanced technology."
"Daniel... That's a...we don't have nearly enough evidence to support that claim."
"But it could be."
"And it could not, too. Look, either way, it's not going to help us here," Robert pointed out.
"Well, they must have had some purpose in mind for...for all this," Daniel said. "Jack, whatever the Ancient device did, can you think up a few possibilities for what it was trying to do?" Jack shrugged silently. "You were taking apart a staff weapon earlier, which is clearly not...you, exactly, and maybe if you, you know, dig into your thoughts, you might be able to figure out what's going on?"
Instead of answering, Jack gave him a blank, almost confused look, pushed off the desk he had been leaning against and paced restlessly, occasionally raising the heel of his hand to his head and grinding it into his temple.
"Is your head getting worse?" Daniel asked helplessly, and then, when no answer came, simply, "Your head hurts?"
"Etium," Jack mumbled. "Motabil."
As Robert opened his dictionary again, Daniel forgot about the translation for a moment as a suspicion began sneaking in. "Jack, you haven't spoken English for...a while."
As if he hadn't realized it before, Jack turned to him, asking, "Veriumas?"
Veritas. "Yes. That's the truth."
"Derentis tua." Striding to a desk, Jack grabbed a pencil and flipped over an old report, writing 'You're nuts' on it in regular, perfect English.
"O...kay," Daniel said. "You can still write in English, but you can't speak it. Not at all?"
"That's not impossible," Robert said. "Different parts of language are controlled by different centers in the brain. Lexicon and grammar, speech production and writing, that kind of thing."
"But how can he understand us but not talk to us?" Daniel asked as he watched Jack prowl uneasily through the office.
"Those functions are separate, too," Robert said, "but linked, of course. Most models of language deficiency show that neurological difficulty in producing speech is often associated with at least some mild limitations in comprehension, too. I'm amazed that we're seeing such a clear split in the colonel, although the effects may be progressive until he can't write or understand us anymore."
Jack didn't seem to be listening. Daniel wasn't so sure that the split between speaking and understanding was so clear, actually, because Jack was answering them less and less, especially in response to long sentences with convoluted syntax, and he suspected it was because Jack was understanding less and less.
Before anyone could answer, Sam appeared at the door. "We've started sending probes to the new coordinates. I thought you'd all want to know."
"I don't understand," Robert said. "How come you don't have to recalculate?"
She shrugged. "Whatever the colonel entered had already been adjusted properly. Apparently, the P3R-272 device understands planetary shift and is better at math than my supercomputers. Speaking of math..." She walked in to peruse the blackboard again. "Sir, I really wish you could explain this."
"He..." Daniel started. "Uh, I don't think he can speak in English anymore." Jack gave Sam a sideways glance and shrugged.
"Really?" She grimaced. "Wow."
"Sam, we have a theory about the Ancients. Okay, I maybe have a theory," he added when Robert looked like he might disagree. "They might have played some part in the mythology of Roman gods and taught them to build roads."
Sam mulled over that for a minute, then said, "Roads. Okay. That's...that was nice of them?"
"No, no, roads. Pathways to other places. A network of Stargates."
She looked from Robert to Daniel, and then to Jack. "You're saying that they built the Stargates?"
"It's speculation," Robert stressed. "But I'll admit it's possible. Maybe they were trying to pass on their obviously-extensive knowledge through that device on P3R-272."
Turning back to the blackboard, she asked, "Including how to do weird math?"
"Dichem ani otta," Jack said, looking blank when their questioning stares found him again.
"Dichem could be 'to say,'" Daniel said, but Jack sighed in exasperation, so he tried again. "Uh, or...ten? Oh," he realized now, since of course it would be a number now they were talking about the math. "Ani is the verb 'to be,' so it's like saying that 'ten equals...what, eight?' " The ridiculousness of that struck him as soon as he said it, so he shook his head. "That can't be it."
Sam didn't seem so sure, however. "Ten equals eight," she said quietly, then picked up a piece of chalk to write something on the board under what Jack had written before. "Ten...equals eight," she repeated, staring in disbelief. "Sir, this is base-eight math. How could you..." She trailed off, her head turning from the board to Jack as if unsure where to direct her incredulous stare.
Jack folded his arms on a desk and rested his head on it. "He doesn't know," Daniel translated unnecessarily.
She replaced the chalk, looking a little disappointed until she caught sight of her CO slumped over the desk. "Right. I should get back, but while I'm here, maybe I can grab one of you--Dr. Rothman? If there's anything from any of the MALP data that reminds you of what we saw on P3R-272, or seems to bear any sort of resemblance to this language, that's something we need to look for."
"Sure," Robert yawned, reminding Daniel, "Keep the recording going. There are blank tapes in my desk drawer if you run out--left side, second from the top."
Sam started out, then stopped at the door.
"Oh, man," she said, staring hard at the equations, then hurried back to the blackboard. "I think...I think this could be a formula to calculate planetary drift. Something in the colonel's mind must have recognized that we have that problem and knew instinctively how to rectify it when he was inputting the coordinates."
"Perhaps that's because the Ancients built the Stargates and therefore know everything about them?" Daniel said, a little irritably, because he'd just said that, and because it didn't really matter what the formula was, did it, as long as it meant they could dial those addresses and find help for Jack.
Sam stepped back from the chalkboard. "Yeah, maybe. Anyway, don't erase that. We'll come back and get you guys the minute we find anything interesting about the other planets."
Continued in Part b...