Silver, by Sophonisba [folklore challenge]

[saphanibaal]

-title- Silver
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Language geekery and SF references.
-spoilers- For "Hide and Seek." Also, perhaps, foreshadowing.
-characters- Sheppard, Rodney, Zelenka, Simpson, Miko, Gall, Kavanagh, plus various cameos
-disclaimer- The characters aren't mine. The situations aren't mine.
-word count- 3526
-summary- If monsters from the tales of his childhood were going to turn out to be real -- even if they ate with the palms of their hands, unlike the stories -- it'd be just as well if the the traditional defenses were real, too.

Silver

"So," John Sheppard said, sticking his head into the space that Dr. McKay had taken one look at and declared 'physics/engineering labs, dibs!', "how's everyone settling in?"

"With their intellects and their stores of patience," the Czech scientist, Zel something, answered.

Behind him, McKay snorted without bothering to look up from the electric cord-sprouting device he was carefully fastening to the lab wall. "Does that expression even translate properly into this language -- uh, you did notice that you're speaking an entirely different language that's been in all our heads since we walked through the Stargate into the gateroom?"

"If I hadn't, I'd probably have figured it out the first time the Athosians addressed me in it." John rolled his eyes. It wasn't that complicated a language, either; very regular, reminded him of studying classics, or possibly the one three-week leave he'd spent trying to learn Esperanto before throwing it up in boredom. "Teyla told me how anyone who goes through a Stargate learns it."

"All the ones in this galaxy do?" This time McKay did look up. "I wish you'd told me before I sent a flunky off to examine ours -- he may not be totally incompetent, but it might have made just as much sense to wait and investigate someone else's rather than poke at the only one in the city, even if we are all on standdown for the foreseeable future."

"Why are we all speaking in it, anyway?" one of the two women in the lab -- the blonde one -- asked in English.

"Because we all speak equally well?" the Czech guy answered her in the same language, his accent much more evident.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Zelenka. I didn't think."

"Obviously," McKay huffed.

"So," the other guy crawling around on the floor hooking things up said hastily, "Anthro and Linguistics noticed something else interesting. Did you realize this -- Gate-speak -- has two words for 'silver'?"

"No-o-o," John said slowly, sitting on a handy table. He reached in his mind for 'silver,' and felt silver slot into place.

"Well, if I say 'argay' and 'argur,' you hear them as -- "

"'Silver' and 'plate.'"

"Huh," said half the people in the lab.

"That's different," said the guy on the floor -- John thought his name was Something Gale, or maybe Gaul.

"What is the difference between silver and plate?" Zelenka asked.

"Plate is a metal with forty-seven electrons," John explained, "one of which is in its outer shell, and, uh, sixty neutrons -- when it's used to mean a metal and not something you eat off of or a flat piece of something, that is. Silver is used when you'd say 'golden' instead of 'gold' -- silver apples of the moon, silver seas, that sort of thing -- or in general, the way silverware is silverware whether it's made of plate or stainless steel, and when you're fighting monsters or trapping demons or doing magic it's always silver. Oh, and these days, a lot of people use it instead of 'plate,' but I grew up saying 'plate,' so..."

"Hm," said Gaul (or possibly Gale). "That must be regional; I've never heard 'plate' before."

"You don't read enough non-modern novels," said the blonde -- Dr. Simpson, John finally placed her. "It's a bit outdated."

"I first heard 'gin' and 'shirogane,'" the small Asian woman shyly offered. "Even now, when the Athosians say the Silver City, I think 'gin no tokai.'"

"Huh," Gale (or it might be Gaul) repeated.

"I thought they called Atlantis the City of the Ancestors?" McKay asked.

"That too," John shrugged.

"Think of how many names there are for New York," Simpson pointed out.

"Hello, Canadian?"

"Rodney?" Elizabeth's voice in all their ears made them jump a little. Zelenka nearly dropped the piece of computer equipment he was holding.

"Yes?" McKay said.

"Is there a reason Doctors Kavanagh and Grodin are taking apart the control room with Dr. Shen-si and half of Anthro and Linguistics looking on?"

"They're trying to figure out how the Stargate put this new language in our heads," McKay said in the language in question, "and we've only got the one to look at at the moment. Who's Shentz again?"

"Shen-si. Neurology."

"Okay, yes, that makes vague sense. Hey, for you -- what would you say the English of 'the silver city' was?"

"The silver city," Elizabeth automatically answered. "... that's odd. That aside, we will be able to use the Stargate when they're done, won't we?"

"Tell them not to get too happy; they can always take one of the other ones apart once you start sending people through to other ones -- speaking of, when are you?"

"All in good time, Rodney. Elizabeth out."

"What was that about the Silver City?" John wondered.

"Oh, yes, that." McKay's eyes brightened as he turned to John. "See, I was talking to Teela -- "

"Teyla." John thought for a moment, and shrugged. "Whatever... they're your ribs."

"She wouldn't really, would she?" McKay blinked in visible trepidation.

"Ms. Emmagan struck me as a very capable woman."

McKay looked into the distance for a moment, and then snapped his fingers. "Anyway, Teyla said 'and the Ring is made of silver.'"

John waited, but McKay left it there, lifting his chin as if he'd just delivered conclusive experimental data. "And?"

"And what?"

"And what is silver supposed to mean in that context? I'm kind of assuming not plate, since it didn't look that tarnished..."

McKay blinked at him.

"'The Ring' therein means 'the Stargate,'" Zelenka tried explaining.

"Uh, yeah. I kind of figured that out the first time Teyla mentioned it to me."

"And you didn't feel something like your ears popping in your brain when you heard 'made of silver'?" the young scientist on the floor put in.

"Very lovely mental image, Dr. Gall," Zelenka said.

"Hey, I try."

"Major," McKay ignored them, speaking in the slow, careful patient tone used for talking with the concussed, the psychotic, and the preintelligent. "The Stargate is made of Naqada." He pronounced it to nearly rhyme with 'aqueduct,' and John wondered whether it were a Canadian variation or a McKay idiosyncracy.

"The Stargate is made of the capital of Nubia."

"Napata was the capital of Nubia," Simpson corrected. "Before Meroe."

"Naqada," Gall pronounced it more like John's mental sound-image, "was the capital of Upper Egypt -- you know, the one with the white crown that looked like a bowling pin -- way, way back in the day. However, given the relationship between t and d, and the one between p and q, they might both be versions of the same original name."

The entire room stared at him.

"What? I talked with Daniel Jackson when we were in Antarctica."

"Naqadah," McKay said impatiently, and if it really wasn't the city it must be some other word he was more than likely pronouncing correctly, "is an ultraheavy, shiny metal used in the Stargate, the puddlejumpers, most of Atlantis, that spear-gun-thingy you brought back from the Wraith homeworld, and, oh, the naqadah generators. How did you miss that in your briefings? Did you think they were made of a city, too?"

"I've never seen a generator made out of the Graff," John pointed out reasonably. "Or flasks made out of Erlenmeyer -- or batteries made of Leyden, for that matter. And did you say the Wraith bayonet-gun was made of sil -- na-quuh-duh?"

"Yes, I did," McKay huffed, ignoring the first part of the answer -- obviously recognizing that in this case John was right right right, and refusing to admit that he'd been unnecessarily nitpicking.

"It's a very interesting alloy," Simpson said thoughtfully. "Naqadah in its pure form is incredibly heavy, but this keeps its plasticity and hardness while decreasing the weight amazingly..."

"Like mithril," the Asian woman absently said, and then blinked. "Th," she said experimentally. "Th, th, th."

"No wonder it killed the Wraith Queen, then." Cool. If monsters from the tales of his childhood were going to turn out to be real -- even if they ate with the palms of their hands, unlike the stories -- it'd be just as well if the the traditional defenses were real, too. And that reminded him...

"Because of the properties of naqadah?" McKay interrupted his train of thought. "There are a few that might suggest, but you just said you didn't know them -- "

"Because it was silver," John explained very slowly.

"Silver's for werewolves, not vampires," Simpson argued.

Zelenka sniffed. "Of course silver is deadly to upíři. It is pure and they are not. It is also poisonous to werewolves, witches, and water-fouling microorganisms."

"Plate and silver and adamant will cleanse water," John agreed. He thought for a moment. "I don't suppose you could make naqadah bullets? Or, well, naqadah-jacketed bullets, probably a more sensible use of resources...?"

McKay boggled at him. "Aside from the small fact that we have yet to prove whether it in fact had any effect on the Wraith, not to mention the part where we don't have a handy factory for the sort of machined work you should know modern firearms demand, I know they need to be that precise and I don't go around carrying them for a living -- "

"We could perhaps devise equivalent machining," Zelenka offered, "but there is not the naqadah to spare."

"We didn't bring that much," McKay agreed, "and we may be reasonable naqadahsmiths but we can't pull it out of nothing. Or even out of the walls, supposing Elizabeth would agree to it."

"Hey!" The idea of tearing Atlantis apart for -- well -- parts seemed, well, obscene somehow.

"The point is," McKay lifted his chin sharply -- John wondered whether he was as reluctant to tear out walls as everyone else seemed to be, and if so, why he'd brought the possibility up in the first place -- "that we really, really shouldn't use our naqadah for anything but the purposes we brought it for. Um. Unless we're all about to die or something, I'm all in favor of not dying horribly."

"All in favor of not dying horribly, say 'Aye,'" Gall commented, having buried himself back in electronics.

"Aye," said the scientists in a ragged sort of unison.

"I'd rather you guys didn't die horribly, either," John shrugged, mulling over McKay's speeches and hoping they worked out to what he thought they worked out to. "So, um... do you think you could fix my G string? It snapped in Antarctica, and the more I spot-weld them the more they either just break again or bead up in a blob, and that's horrible on the sound."

"Your what?" McKay demanded.

Simpson looked up, apparently interested. The other woman clapped a hand to her mouth and was blushing for some reason.

"I'll just get it," John told him, and ducked out of the lab, trotted down the flights of stairs (sometimes he wondered why there weren't any elevators in Atlantis; after all, if humans could invent them while still working on the combustion engine, they couldn't be that complicated. On the other hand, it certainly kept him in good shape) collected Helva from his room, and carefully carried her back to the lab.

"I'd really appreciate it if you could fix the string," John said when he came back, offering his best helpless-in-the-face-of-disorder hopeful look. "I've had them for a long time."

"Oh," McKay said, looking at the guitar John had laid on a table. "Your G string."

"That's what I said," John agreed. "What did you think I said?"

McKay ignored him in favor of running a finger down Helva's strings. He snapped his fingers. "You," he told the woman with the glasses. "Get that thing we decided was a metal-and-stress analyzer and take a look at the Major's personal item."

"You chose a guitar to bring with you?" Simpson asked. She sounded a little disappointed.

"Not exactly." Helva hadn't fit in the brown paper package; he'd had enough to fit in as it was, even with the weeding-by-coin. "I packed her in with the weaponry -- the boxes didn't quite fit evenly into the crates, so there was plenty of room for a guitar case once I'd rearranged things. We even managed to get two more P-90s in." Dissassembled, but in... although given the situation they found themselves in, more ammo might have been a better bet. Zelenka would probably have to set up his bullet workshop after all, even if it wasn't churning out silver bullets.

"What, you play that badly?" McKay snorted.

"I play perfectly well!" Well, not perfectly, but well enough for most practical purposes. "Much better than I sing."

"Excuse me, please?" The woman waving a blinking piece of presumably-Ancient-technology over Helva's strings looked at McKay piteously.

"Oh, all right, what is it... hmmm."

Simpson wandered over and looked at the device. Her eyes widened.

Zelenka made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat.

Gall paid them no attention.

With no warning, McKay whirled on John. "Where did you get those...!"

"The strings? They're heirlooms." John didn't see how the truth could hurt anything, and McKay was nearly bouncing on his feet. "My father gave them to me, and he had them from his mother, and so on, and so forth." And that was all he intended to say about that. "The guitar I bought in Montenegro after her predecessor met a sadly ignominious end -- the silver strings were about all I could salvage."

"Major," McKay began, thought better of it, and worked his mouth in and out. John was vaguely reminded of a much thinner Nero Wolfe.

"Congratulations, Major," he said at last. "You are very likely the only person in the Pegasus Galaxy to own a naqadah-strung guitar."

"So can you fix it?"

"Can I fix it? Can I fix it?" McKay threw his hands up in the air. "One of the more spectacularly frivolous uses for a priceless element carted along with guns piled over it -- "

"She was in her case," John pointed out.

"-- and he asks 'can I fix it?'"

"These wires are a mess," Simpson observed, peering at the not-screen of her fellow-researcher's examining device. "They ought to be melted down and redrawn."

"Could you redraw them in proper tune?" John asked her hopefully. "I'd kind of like to be able to restring my guitar sometime this year."

"Wouldn't other strings do?" she pleaded.

"I like the sound of these ones."

"Yes, Major." It was McKay who answered him, in a long-suffering tone. "We will restore your personal naqadah to its original function, however much of a waste it might be. Leave the guitar with us, and we'll get around to it in a day or two."

"I'll just bring the case up, then," John said, and went.

It took a while before Helva was restrung, what with McKay and his department getting distracted by artificial gene therapy (apparently involving either a. nanites or b. Alteran paranormal healing capabilities, as it worked in hours rather than weeks) and by an energy-eating creature that nobody else thought was related to the Wraith -- with the possible exceptions of Private Andrews, who apparently believed everything, and the scientist in Rodney's lab with the ATA gene, whose name was Miko Something-longer-than-that and who had yet to venture any opinions of her own.

But a few days later, when John was picking himself up off the mat after having asked Teyla to demonstrate her traditional martial art, wondering how twin rods would fare against a sword and whether she would be willing to teach the art in question, McKay's voice asked "Sheppard?" in his ear.

"Yes, what is it?" John asked his radio.

"I've finished those repairs you wanted."

"Cool. I'll be right up." He clicked his radio off. "If you'll excuse me, Teyla?"

"Certainly." Teyla's smile was amused. He tried to guess its potential significance all the way to the labs.

The scientists, having hooked up their computers to their satisfaction, were currently moving furniture. That is, Gall and Simpson were helping two Marines move any tables and benches that were not in fact integral with the floor, and everyone else was supervising and/or kibitzing.

"Here you are, Major. I've tuned it," McKay announced, waving to where the case leaned against the wall in an out-of-the-way corner.

"Thanks." John was already moving to lift Helva from the case and look at her, her shining strings smooth and even to the eye and touch.

Another of the scientists, Kevin... Kavan... Kavanagh, that was it, snorted. "You traded on your recent stunt to beg off real work to fiddle with that?"

"I saved us all." McKay lifted his chin higher than John would have thought physically possible. "Besides, strings are a little tricky to get right when you don't have extra, and it's not as if we wouldn't have been nearly as screwed without him earlier."

"These are good," John agreed. He peered more closely at Helva's pegs; there was a little less string wound around them than he remembered. "I guess there's always a little matter lost to energy in major shifts... "

"Pretty much, yeah." McKay puffed his shoulders up. "It's not as if there wasn't enough to reach."

"I'm not complaining."

"Maybe you should take your... rituals somewhere else," Kavanagh rolled his eyes.

"Ignore him." McKay rolled his eyes back. "He's just bitter because I saved the city."

"Someone else would have done something if you had not," Zelenka commented. "No, late afternoon sunlight will be in our eyes if we try to use that table there."

"Honestly, Major, what else would you have done?"

John shrugged. "I'd have tried playing Helva at it -- I know a few tunes that don't need me to strum the G string."

"Is that a silver-strung guitar, sir?" Andrews asked, stepping back from the other table as Miko and Simpson walked around it. McKay pointed at John, his mouth opening and closing as he made silent strangling half-swallows.

"Sure is." John smiled. "And if Helva hadn't worked, there's always brute force."

"You!" McKay advanced on John, stalking as if he were a cat. "Stop with the -- the revealing hidden talents!"

John blinked at him.

"First you turn up with the ATA gene! Then you decide to come out with the hypercalculic abilities -- and yes, I know better than to assume those are linked to anything, people just turn up with random better or worse lexic and calculic skills, no relation to what they actually do with them -- "

"It does help when flying," John pointed out, because it so did -- the faster you could run the numbers, the more quickly you got to the point where you didn't need to think of it as numbers, any more than you thought of the way you shifted your balance as you walked upright. "Just call me Slipstick Libby."

"That!" McKay snapped. "You have musical abilities -- at least some, I'm presuming -- and now you're demonstrating familiarity with science fiction! Stop it. Just... stop it."

"No revealing my hidden talents around Rodney McKay, got it," John agreed. He picked out a few chords on Helva, the clear tones almost echoing in the bright glass-and-silver room.

"Good!"

"Does this mean you don't want to hear about my thesis?" The chords turned into the beginning of "Look at the Time" without conscious input to his fingertips.

"Thes-- no! Out, vile... non-grunt grunt person!"

"The Air Force split off from the Army years ago, sir," Andrews told McKay earnestly. "The Major's actually a zoomie person."

Private Stanislaski attempted to kick Andrews in the shin and laugh his ass off at the same time.

Most of the other scientists were laughing, too, as John gathered up Helva's case and wandered out into the hallway, chuckling himself. He hung a left, a left, and another left, and wound up out on a balcony, consolidating his armload in the morning sun.

He regretfully laid Helva away -- it would be awesome to sit on a balcony and play her someday, and perhaps in Atlantis he'd be able to set up the proper resonance to model some of the equations in his thesis; while a guaranteed career had assured that he'd only needed to convince one set of academics that his equations were valid-enough-under-the-conditions-set, a small selfish part of him wanted to demonstrate that all the curves could be made to resolve to each other, music and matter singing together and reshaping the world. John rather thought most of the scientists would understand that; today, however, was not that day, nor was it likely to be that day in the foreseeable future.

He reminded himself, instead, to be sure and have his team keep an eye out for that naqadah-silver once they were permitted to go exploring. It would obviously be immensely useful, and if they stumbled upon enough of it even the scientists -- physicists, chemists, or even metallurgists -- would hardly begrudge his people silver-plated bayonets.

Just in case.