Open to Negotiation
Lin L. Barrett
Title: Open to Negotiation
Author: Lin L. Barrett
Summary: Janet and Sam attend a marital aids party, with unexpected consequences when SG-1 goes to a world willing to form an alliance with Earth.
E-mail: Shorty@nu-world.com
Rating: 13+
Status: Complete.
Category: Humor
Pairings: Sam/Jack, Janet/Daniel
Spoilers: Forever in a Day; Crystal Skull; Bloodlines; this author's fanfic "The Fifty-Minute Hour"
Season/Sequel: Season Five, approximately.
Content Warnings: Sex toys. Grownup words'n'direct Jack quotes.
Author's notes: I like flat thirds and flat sevenths.
DISCLAIMER: The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-1, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-1 Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fan fiction is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and is meant solely for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea, and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
Author's copyright April 29, 2001 - 21:46:34. Please ask to archive.
Sam Carter grinned at Janet Fraiser. "You know it's going to be fun. Come on. You haven't been sufficiently embarrassed in your life, yet."
"But, Sam, General Hammond's daughter!"
"Do you have a strong wish to explain why you didn't attend?"
"Uh." Well, put like that, of course she didn't. "Sam, for God's sake, I'm not seeing anybody right now. What am I going to do at a marital aids party? - and at General Hammond's daughter's place, yet?"
Sam stopped in front of a display of cheap Oriental silk scarves. They were malling on a weekday both had off, a rarity. "You're going to buy the kinds of things single women buy. Wanna see my collection?"
"But you and Jack - "
"Jack likes 'em too."
"I did not need to know that."
Sam slanted an amused glance down at her friend. "It doesn't make you hot for him, when you've got him on the table in one of those backless-"
"Shut up, Sam. I'm not telling you who I have the hots for."
"Bet it's Daniel."
Janet felt herself blush. "I adore Daniel. I admit to having impure thoughts about him on a regular basis. But he's ten years my junior."
"Since when has that mattered?"
"Since he lost his wife." Janet was well aware that her face was some unbecoming shade of pink, and that she wasn't making any sense. She was not ready to come out of the closet - er, woodwork! - about the fact that her heart went all wonkly the moment a certain archeologist came into view. Had for about nine weeks. Which worried her. Six weeks was the longest she'd ever been able to, ah, entertain impure thoughts about anyone. Nine weeks and counting - that was new.
And "wonkly"? Nice medical term, doc.
Her friend said, "He'll be through grieving one of these years. -- Look, this one is a great color for you. You can wear it on your first date with Daniel." Sam held the sheer stuff up to Janet's face, and the two got back to the other serious things in life: shopping and fantasy.
"Well," Doctor Daniel Jackson, Ph.D., post-doc fellow from several different directions, said to Doctor Janet Fraiser, M.D., Captain, USAF, "it would depend on how inbred the population was, wouldn't it?"
Janet was having a great deal of difficulty concentrating. They'd begun this discussion with the hope that something could be done to boost the genetically-damaged immune systems of the people on P4X387. Some tiny part of her brain was still conducting that conversation, but the rest of it had narrowed its focus down to the presence of one Doctor Daniel Jackson, the way light fell across the planes of his face, the force of intelligence inhis blue eyes, and the place where the collar of his plaid shirt stood away from the strong column of his neck, revealing the pulse under the skin of his throat.
It was out of sync with the erratic beating of Janet's own heart.
Dr. Janet Fraiser, M.D., Captain, USAF, was quite embarrassed by the fact of her cardiac waywardness. She was not a teenage girl in the first throes of lust. She was a once-divorced adoptive mother who was in her forties (just), dammit, ten years older than he. It was completely unfair that he should be able to . . . crank her scooter like this.
She said, aware she was sounding a little short, "You know, Daniel, I'm really not prepared to wing it on these hereditary issues. I need to do some research. Your questions have been very helpful, so let me do my reading, come back to you tomorrow with the medical notes. Okay?"
The archeologist met her eyes (clunk! went her heart, straight into overdrive) and said casually, "Sure, that works. I've got the non-medical research, if you want to see it."
And, at that moment, "Janet," Sam said, poking her head around the door to the doctor's office, "our stuff from the party is in. I'm going to go get it. Want to come along? -Oh, hi, Daniel."
Janet's cheeks had turned a very bright pink. She said, with a totally failed attempt at nonchalance, "Thanks, Sam, but there's a team overdue, so I'm on-call. Will you pick mine up for me?"
Jeez, Daniel thought, what are they doing? Buying pot?
"Sure. Got the slip? And if I stop at the Pig'n' Git, would you like anything?"
(Oh. Not pot, then.) "The Pig'n'Git?" Daniel turned his head to his teammate. "You guys eat there? Jack likes that place too. Will you pick up a box lunch for me?"
"Oh, that would be good," Janet said. "Pork ribs and slaw, hush puppies, and a piece of sweet potato pie. Pineapple chutney, and Carolina sauce on the ribs."
The archeologist smiled at her. Dammit, Janet thought, I wish he'd stop doing that. No, I don't. I wish he'd do it from across a rumpled bed. She turned a little redder, but Daniel had transferred his gaze to Sam, said, "Oh, yeah. Just make it two."
Sam accepted the slip from Janet and grinned at the two of them. "I'll see you shortly, then."
Daniel stood to leave also. "Later, Janet. Give me a call."
"Daniel." She flopped down behind her desk, and fanned herself with a patient file.
Daniel, walking the corridor to his office, thought calmly, I guess I'm going to have to ask her out. I don't think she'll ask me; she'll just turn red.
Contrary to popular belief, Daniel was far from unaware of his impact on the female population of SGC. He was, however, widowed; it takes two years for the human heart to grieve a loss, two years for a painful bereavement to become a cherished memory. In reality, pain doesn't have a timetable, as Jack could have told him sometimes grief is forever, but the heart does eventually find a way to move on, scarred though it might be, and the pain becomes less raw with every beat it makes.
Twenty-eight months is a little more than two years. But he'd been busybeaten the crap out of, zapped, tortured, dead, infested, crazy, out of phase with the rest of reality, you name it, it had happened to him: busy.
If asked, he, like Janet, would admit to entertaining impure thoughts lately. For Daniel this consisted of taking them out for a nice dinner and a couple of drinks then maybe a movie and coming back to his place and cooking breakfast for them in the morning.
Down the road, he wanted to wake up beside a woman he loved every day. Maybe Janet, maybe not. Time would tell.
But, for right now, his fancy had settled on one Doctor Janet Fraiser, M.D. He liked and respected her. His fancy, having settled, didn't give one hot goddamn what Janet Frasier's driver's license said for "Date of Birth." Janet was going to have to get used to that. He knew himself to be both patient and persistent. She'd have a lot of chances.
Sam brought the two packages that didn't contain food back to SGC and carefully put them in her locker. She wasn't sure what the Air Force would have to say about two bags of sex toys in the possession of the 2IC of SG-1, Star Gate Command's first-contact team, but she was also pretty sure she didn't want to find out.
The guys manning the security scanner had been clueless. She hoped. Some of those people had less sense of humor than she did.
She went back to her car and got the lunches.
Then, as she walked by the security office on her way to Daniel's permanent dig, she heard someone say through a closing door, "Yeah, we got to search all the damned lockers tomorrow. Somebody had contraband in one, so now we got to search 'em all." The door clunked home.
Well, who cared - wait a minute, she had two bags of sex toys in hers. Crap. It didn't happen until tomorrow, anyway; she'd have the goods delivered by then.
"Daniel?" she said, arriving at his door.
"Uh, yeah." He raised his head from his newest rock (rats - Jack had her doing it too) and focused on Sam, obviously coming a long way back to do so.
"Pig'n'Git's here. Go get three iced teas from the chow hall and meet us in Janet's office, okay?"
"Oh. Oh, yeah, sure." He rose to his feet, and locked his office behind him.
Sam went to her own, and talked briefly to her computer. (So to - er, speak.)
In Janet's office, she put the three bags on the desk, and snagged a third chair from the waiting room. Crap. She'd forgotten to bring the toys.
Janet finished dulling the needles, or whatever she was doing, and came into her office, shutting the door behind her.
"Yum!" The petite doctor sat down behind the desk, and reached for a bag.
"Why three bags? Is that the pie?"
"No, Daniel will be here with iced teas shortly." Sam grinned at her friend. "I love playing Cupid."
Janet rolled her eyes. "You're a pain in the glutei, Sam," she said.
"Janet, what is, or are, glutei?"
"Plural of gluteus, the big muscle in your rump."
And on that anatomical footnote, Daniel arrived toting three iced teas.
Jack O'Neill had often observed that the archeologist's timing was perfect.
Sam couldn't get the dratted sex toys now.
Even when one is eating barbecue at one's desk, with two friends from work, and must return to work afterward in some semblance of tidiness, there is that about barbecue which demands that the sauce be evenly dispersed over one's person. Trying to eat it neatly merely aggravates this tendency. Sam fared best; she was wearing a black T-shirt and BDUs. Daniel had a plaid shirt on under a dark V-neck sweater. The sweater absorbed its fair share of Carolina sauce without complaint or demonstration. The plaid shirt, on the other hand, became polka-dot.
Janet, of course, had her usual white-blouse/blue tie/lab jacket combo in place. By the time she finished her ribs, they looked as if they had the measles.
The doctor looked down at herself and made an instant diagnosis. "Crap," she said.
Daniel grinned at her. "Actually, Janet, it looks more like barbecue sauce."
Janet rolled her eyes, and Sam made a serious effort to snort coleslaw out of her nose by having to laugh with her mouth full.
And at that precise moment, a beeper went off. Since all three wore the devices, they all looked at their belts, but Sam was the winner.
"Rats," she said, casually. "I have a call from Paris coming through. I'd better get to my office; all my notes are there." She folded the meal carton up, collected her iced tea and pie, and left, saying, "See you later, Janet, Daniel."
(Once in her office, she terminated the "call from Paris" by activating her scheduling program and deleting a certain line. And grinned.)
Janet concentrated furiously on her pork ribs. Daniel was sucking the meat off one of his own; she wasn't sure if she was going to survive the slow. .. leisurely . . . consumption. . . Stop it!
Daniel watched her cheekbones change color in bemusement, and helped himself to a hush puppy. "Tofu tomorrow."
"I've heard worse ideas," she said (comma, relieved. Janet, you chicken). "I can practically feel my arteries clanging shut right now."
"There's an investment," he said cheerfully. "A health-food barbecue place."
"Smoky Carolina tofu, with baked hush puppies."
"Jack Daniel's Lite in the sauce."
"Sweet potato pie without the crust, or the marshmallow topping."
Daniel smiled at her, sipped his iced tea. "Now you've gone too far. Will you have a drink with me, some night after work?"
"A drink?"
He looked her in the eye, something that wasn't quite a twinkle in his own, and said, "Yes, Janet. You know: the civilized consumption of alcohol in a public setting, perhaps accompanied by a meal, and definitely encompassing some conversation."
"I'd like that." Who had authorized her mouth to say that?
"Great. Tonight?"
"I need a day or so. I'm on-call."
"Why don't we all go to the zoo first, maybe Saturday afternoon, then you and I can go on for drinks and dinner?"
"Why, thank you, Daniel. Cassie'd love that. I would too."
He looked pleased. "Great."
Her nurse came to the office, knocked on the door, and said, "Colonel Pierce is awake, Doctor."
"I'll be there in five. Daniel, please finish your lunch; there's no need to hurry." She paused. "I'll call your office and we'll set up the time, okay?"
He gave her an incandescent smile, which she didn't see, as she was moving in doctor-gait: stat.
Daniel finished his pie and iced tea and filled Janet's wastebasket with the detritus of his lunch. He stood to go, and his own beeper went off: it gave him the code for the briefing room.
General Hammond and the rest of SG-1 were waiting for him when he got there.
Hammond said, "Doctor Jackson," and waited for him to slide, breathless, into a seat.
Jack was calm, although the colonel did give the archeologist a "Where have you been?" look.
Daniel ignored it. Sam was poised, as always, her hands folded in front of her; Teal'c was upright and immobile, merely sliding his eyes toward Daniel, then back to Hammond. Who cleared his throat.
"The Tollan have informed us that a race known as the Phenaa have indicated a wish to form an alliance with us. Your mission is to evaluate their society, see what they have to offer, see what they want. Doctor Jackson, you'll be responsible for the actual negotiations. The team will leave in thirty minutes, and the mission will be a standard one; you have three Earth days to complete it. Understood?"
"Sir," Jack said. The general left. Jack stood up, and said, "Okay, everybody, pack your toothbrushes. See you in the Gate room in twenty-five."
Calm and poised Sam's outside may have been, but inside she was saying "Rats Rats Rats Rats Rats Rats!" Two bags of sex toys and no time to do anything with them and a locker search tomorrow! Rats! What was she going to do?
She called Janet, hoping the doctor was "in" her office. No luck. She didn't want to page her; pages were logged at SGC.
She ended by putting the two packages of sex toys into her field pack, and ruthlessly stuffing three days' worth of supplies in on top of them. No time, no time, no time. You do what you have to do.
There was a gravity gradient between Earth and Phenaa. Jack, for once, made a graceful transition; it was Sam who stepped through, put a foot wrong, felt the ankle give.
"Dammit!" she said, and fell on her face.
Jack and Daniel crouched beside her. "It's nothing," she said, "just caught me wrong, I turned my ankle." But when she stood she couldn't put weight on it without wincing.
One small step for men, one giant limp for womankind. They set off, Jack and Daniel taking turns with her arm across their shoulders. (Teal'c took a turn as well, but he was taller than she by sufficient inches to make it unworkable.) The Gate was located some distance from a settlement that looked like the Anasazi caves in Arizona, openings let into the front of a monolith whose bulbous body reminded Jack, at least, of the sailing ships he'd seen once upon a time, in Boston Harbor. "Masts" of the same reddish stone rose randomly from the bulbous body.
A half-dozen other monoliths spread out around them at too great a distance to see whether they had doors and windows. Shrub, about waist-high, grew at random from bare earth. Around the monoliths it gave way to scrubby forest. A few hardy trees scrabbled up the sides of the ships, and three or four grew triumphantly tall from the "decks," surrounded by underbrush.
Beyond the monoliths the shrub gave way to mature large-boled trees: an old-growth forest, with understory and lianas and moss. You expected Tarzan's yell from off in the distance.
A group of animals that might have been kangaroo if you were very nearsighted looked at SG-1, decided that discretion was the better part of breakfast, and moved leisurely away to graze elsewhere.
Birds (maybe) sang in the distance.
Water gurgled invisibly
They walked.
SG-1 had made a couple of miles from the Gate when the Phenaa surrounded them. They were four feet tall at the most, humanoid, and didn't waste any energy growing hair. Their skins were gray, and they had no clothes, no shoes, no jewelry, no paint, no tattoos, no ritual scars. No secondary sexual characteristics the humans could recognize. (And if Teal'c had a clue, he wasn't sharing.) Not a single distinguishing physical characteristic identified one among the hundreds of individuals who surrounded SG-1.
Their eyes were the same gray as their skins. They had defined pupils of blue - all the eyes were an identical blue, a warm blue, about the color of Daniel's eyes.
A constant Brownian motion within the sizeable crowd brought waves of small gray hands out to touch these strangers and their yellow or brown skins. Hundreds of small gray hands, each touching once, gently and respectfully, replaced by another, touching once, gently and respectfully, replaced by another. . . . It was like getting petted to death.
"Hello," Daniel said cheerfully, and was totally ignored. He reached out to touch one who was touching him, and the small creature shied back, but Daniel simply held out his hand, and waited.
The entire group seemed to be focused on that outstretched hand.
"Daniel," Jack said warningly.
Daniel said nothing. Eventually one of the gray persons stepped forward, touched his hand. Then, the entire group drew back and the one who had touched Daniel touched others.
And all of this took place in eerie silence.
Daniel - you could almost see Daniel prick his ears, Jack thought.
Then another came forward to touch Daniel's hand, and the touching renewed among the group.
A third came to Teal'c, and held out - his? her? hand. And a fourth to Sam, a fifth to Jack.
Well, okay. They could do this.
The little gray people were hot to the hand. Clearly, they ran at a higher internal temperature than Earth humans did, Jack thought.
"Got a clue as to language, Daniel?" he asked.
"Jack, so far they haven't said anything. Just touched us."
"That is not a problem," one of the little gray people, one who had touched Teal'c, said. "We have Learned your language."
You could hear that capital L. "Learned"? What the hey does that mean?
Jack and Daniel and Sam all looked at one another, and then at Teal'c, who looked gravely back at them. I don't understand, everyone's eyes said.
It took Daniel to put it into noises you could hear with your ears. "I don't understand."
"We have Learned you," the little gray man - well, maybe - said. "You are Daniel who thinks much on things that once were, and you are Jack who is a warrior, and you are Samantha who thinks much on star-numbers, and you are Teal'c whose world is not the same anymore."
Daniel was less flummoxed by this brutal assessment than any of the others.
"And you are - the Phenaa, who wish to form an alliance with us. Do you have individual names?"
"We are individuals, yes, but we have no need for names. We have all Learned one another," said another. "As for an alliance, now that we have Learned you, that may not be possible."
". . . and why would that be?" said Jack.
"We have no need of the knowledge you possess. Our way of being is very different from yours, and we have little knowledge you, in your turn, could use."
"I see."
The gray one made eye contact with another of the group, and - something - happened that for Jack brought to mind smoke signals in an old western.
One of the eye-contact pair turned to SG-1 again. "Will you come and share a meal and some talk with us? It is unintelligent to terminate a possible alliance on so short an acquaintance, as a wiser friend has reminded me."
She (he?) extended a hand in a this-way gesture, and smiled, exposing a row of sharp bony ridges. No teeth.
A couple of miles later they got to the ship monolith. The team was led to a home a few doors in from the edge. All four had to duck to walk inside; the Phenaa had, of course, tailored their homes to themselves.
The apartment was exceedingly Spartan. Its interior was crafted of the local equivalent of adobe, and seating-height benches stretched around the walls of a main room. An unglazed round window about four feet up let in light. The floor was packed earth. An interior door led to other rooms which also had the built-in seats, but no windows.
"This home is presently unoccupied," their guide said. "You may use it while you stay with us. There are rooms for each of you to sleep in, a refresher - what you call a 'bathroom' - and a kitchen. Tonight we will have a communal meal, and you will be our guests?"
"Yes. Thank you," Daniel said.
"We will summon you," the guide said, and walked back to the group, which evaporated.
No door. No privacy. No door curtain, no window curtain, no fabric of any kind. Daniel began to do some wondering: What did these people do with their time?
Jack prowled the rooms, returned to the main, jerked a thumb straight back. "Can I have this room?" he said. "It's biggest."
"Sure," Daniel said. "Going to set up your model railroad in there?"
"Yeah, but later I want to make the tracks run all around the walls of the living room."
"I want the biggest, I'm the girl," Carter said. All three of the men turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. "Just thought I'd see if it flew," she said, tossed her pack onto the seating ledge in another bedroom, and limped back to the main room.
Jack parked it experimentally on the seating ledge in the "living room," but felt he was in a child's playroom: the furniture wasn't scaled to him. He swung his long legs up onto the seat, facing the rest of the room. A little better. Then he got up and took a seat that let him rest his back against the wall with his legs up on the seat.
Ah. All he needed now was a cup of coffee.
"Okay, kids. Pow-wow. Daniel? What about these people?"
The archeologist walked into the large room and took a seat, much as Jack had. "What do they do with their time? They don't have personal adornment items to find or manufacture. They don't paint, tattoo, or scar themselves. They don't make fabric of any kind, which is quite time-consuming. Their homes are carved out of stone or made of adobe, so they don't have to maintain them. The kitchen is a fire pit and a cistern, the bathroom has running water and a sewer system, I'm guessing."
He paused for a second, and Jack said, "Your point?"
Daniel shrugged. "No maintenance, is the point. I'm really interested to see what we have for dinner. Meat takes time to hunt, vegetables and grains take time to grow or gather." He took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, replaced the glasses. "And they're telepathic. Not just among themselves but with us, too. I wish we had what's-her-name, that psychic, with us."
"You are alone in that wish," Jack said formally.
"I didn't - feel anything - when they touched us," Carter said. She had her damaged ankle up on the furniture, sitting as Jack and Daniel did.
"Nor did I, and my symbiote remained quiescent throughout," Teal'c said.
"Junior didn't mind?" Jack said, genuinely interested.
"Junior did not even notice. And when they spoke of me, it was not Junior they mentioned."
"No. That was interesting," Daniel said. "They dealt with the most salient professional characteristic each one of us brings to SG-1."
"Yeah, and they didn't talk about - other stuff," Jack said. Because if they were going to talk about the most salient fact of my emotional life, they would have mentioned Charlie. And Sara. They didn't mention Sha'uri, Rey'ac or Drey'auc, or Jacob or Selmak.
"Yes. They confined themselves to the professional aspects of what we do."
Daniel looked out of the doorway, but no Phenaa wandered into his vision. "They may have a hive intelligence."
"They seem to be individually intelligent, Daniel," Carter said. Not exactly in protest - this was his area of expertise, not hers - more in observation.
"No - I mean, they share a common base of intelligence. Then, when they touch one another, they communicate that intelligence. They touched us very briefly. It may be that prolonged contact would be necessary for them to learn the deeper details of our lives."
Jack shivered. Daniel, who had taken off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose again, didn't see it, and continued, "And I don't have a clue as to why they think we have nothing of interest to them. It may be that you, Sam, and you, Jack, will have to let them touch you while you're thinking about technology, or something. I don't know."
Jack looked as if that were the Fate Worse Than Death. But hell, he thought, he'd done worse things in his career. Lots worse things. He'd talked to shrinks, for God's sake. Why should letting a lot of little gray people into his cranium bother him so much? They weren't even what's-her-name, Dover.
Then he realized he was saved, and the sun came out from behind the clouds in his personal universe. "Uh, Daniel."
"Jack?"
"Both Carter and I have classified information running around inside our heads."
Daniel stared at him, the glasses still in his hand. His blue eyes were focused and alert; Jack knew that this was misleading. Daniel without his glasses was likely to walk straight into a telephone pole, and then apologize to it.
"That's a problem," the archeologist said.
Dinner was . . . interesting.
They ate a lot of vegetables. Green ones. Yellow ones. Orange ones. Purple ones. Red ones. A white one the size and shape of a manhole cover was four feet long. Sliced thinly it made everyone a plate; dividing the "plate" in half meant you had a napkin, too. The natives ate the plate along with dinner, like the enjera bread in an Ethiopian meal, Daniel thought.
SG-1 passed on the blue spaghetti, on their hosts' advice. There was meat. The animal had been carved by the time it hit the table, and wasn't identifiable. (And anyway, Daniel thought, would you connect the pig to the ham?) SG-1 were served thin slices of something that tasted almost like hot watermelon. The "almost" was a sour-bitter flavor, way under the surface.
Water to drink.
The "dinner party" was unnerving in that it was conducted almost in silence.
Their hosts touched one another in the course of the meal, and touched the team casually.
Jack flinched every time he contacted one of the hot gray skins.
The little gray people spoke aloud, politely, to each member of SG-1 at intervals. Trouble was, if Daniel, say, began a conversation with the person to his left, it was as likely as not that a question he asked that person would be answered by another, three tables over, who would come and sit down in the place of the original conversee. Why, if they shared knowledge?
Then he realized that every person he talked to touched him at least once.
Well. You still couldn't keep track of the players. Worse yet, Daniel's patient, if not persistent, inquiries were proving that you didn't need a scorecard. You weren't now and probably never would be playing the same game.
The archeologist had tried a number of ways to say, "What, exactly, do you do with your time?" And each time he had rephrased that question and asked it again, he got some version of, "We create [the world, the universe, God, ourselves, the suns - there were two in the sky] anew each day." Fine, lovely, and new age to a fault. Maybe even true. But how? And why? "How" - he was an archeologist. Maybe Sam could deal with "how." He was going to try for "why."
"But why must you dream the stars into being each night?"
The little gray person turned to face him. "Is it not so that your - place - circles one of our stars?"
Uh. "We do come from a place which circles a star, yes," Daniel said. "I don't know if you can see our sun from here, or not."
"Does it exist, while you are gone from it?"
"Yes." Oh gods, there was a name for this psychological belief and he couldn't remember it. Later, Daniel. You can look it up later. Right now concentrate on what this little gray person has to say.
"Why?" the gray one asked calmly.
Daniel looked across the table at Sam, involved in a conversation of her own, and at Jack, two places down from her, who was looking back at him, and was not the person to go to for this kind of philosophical doo-dah, anyway.
"It has an existence of its own. It - doesn't need my attention to maintain its existence," Daniel said.
Every gray person within two hundred yards of Daniel - which made it all the gray people - put his, her, or its hands over the two holes in the sides of their heads that Daniel assumed were ears, and made a keening wail.
Way to go, Daniel.
The wail died, and they all turned to look at him, their blue eyes puzzled and resentful. The one to whom he had spoken said, "Why do you utter such blasphemy? The gods will surely cease dreaming of you, now."
Ah. Daniel bowed his head, briefly. "I apologize. I meant no disrespect to your gods. Will they require an act of atonement?"
"Daniel," Jack said, a warning in his tone. You're going to get yourself killed, Danny. Us with you.
The gray person communed for a moment. "No," she (he?) said at last. "However, you may not say such things again while you are here."
Daniel thought he was lucky to get out of that one with their skins intact, and duly warned everyone else what had happened. "Since we aren't telepaths," he added sourly, which earned him a very odd look indeed from Jack.
The next day, the dinner gave no one any problems, although Daniel still got a wary blue-eyed sideways eyeball or two from the gray people.
Carter was in her room, getting away from the boys for a while. Then it occurred to her that being 2IC and Science Officer, she could make everyone else go away for a while.
So she did. Samples, she said. Earth, water, air, she said. Five-mile radius, she said.
Jack had watched her limp to the samples case, and issued the orders. Far out.
Sometimes she just worked around guys too much.
The notes completed, she turfed through her field pack, putting the dirty clothes tidily into the bag she toted for same. She didn't bother to shove all the stuff back in the pack, but assembled a change of attire and thought longingly of a shower.
Wonder of wonders, the Phenaa were acquainted with the concept. There wasn't a lot of pressure behind it, it was kind of like being spat on from a height, but it was a hot shower.
Oh well. Any shower beats no shower any time, Sam mused. Wonder if a cold shower - no, actually, that was the exception to the rule.
She sluiced off and dried herself in a hurry, there being nothing at all like a shower curtain in place, and dressed very quickly indeed. When she went back to "her" room, she found three of the Phenaa had scattered the contents of her field pack. They had opened her bag of sex toys, and were puzzling over its contents.
"Hey!" she said, displeased. To put it mildly.
Precisely then, not one minute later, Jack called out, "Mom? We're home."
Right after that, two Earthmen and a Jaffa were at the door to her room. A minimum of two of them were wondering what the hey was going on. Teal'c probably had it figured out from the get-go.
One of the gray people put a long index finger into a suction cup, and turned on the device with the other hand. The resultant noise widened the blue eyes, and caused the small gray person to jump back, dropping the toy, which fell to the floor and was propelled in a small circle by its tiny motor.
Whizzzzzz....
Carter thought she might die right then and there. When she realized the results of her last physical weren't going to help her out with that wish, she gave up, and burst into helpless laughter instead.
After a moment's shocked silence, Daniel snickered, snickered again, then joined in. Jack simply looked like thunder, and Teal'c - Teal'c had on his I-will-never-figure-out-these-Tau'ri face.
"Carter," Jack said, raising his voice, "report."
"Yes, sir." Sam Carter got hold of herself. "I was taking a shower, sir, and the Phenaa came into my room and rifled through my field pack."
"Teal'c, Daniel," said Colonel Jack O'Neill, USAF, very much the OIC, "please go west to that river we bypassed earlier and take about twenty minutes' worth of water samples."
Daniel bit back another belly laugh, looked from one to the other of them, grinned, and departed, following Teal'c.
"Pardon me," Jack said to the three Phenaa. "Could Major Carter and I be alone, here, please?"
Carter picked up the toy and silenced it. The Phenaa departed, silently.
Jack waited until their footsteps had faded, and then he said, with remarkable patience, "Carter, why the hell do you have a sex toy in your field pack?" Jack looked around the room. "Several sex toys in your field pack, excuse me."
"Er." Well, the story wasn't going to get any more plausible, no matter how long she waited to tell it. So she went ahead, as best she could.
"So," Jack said, after she had finished, "let me get this straight. You went to a sex-toy party, and when you got the goods you heard through the open door of the security office that there would be a locker search - today?"
She checked her watch. "Yes, sir."
"This mission was divulged to you while the goods were in your locker. The advance notice of this mission was so short that you tried and failed to find another place to stash the goods."
"Yes, sir."
"So you brought them along."
"Yes, sir. In the bottom of my field pack."
Jack sighed heavily, and rubbed his forehead. There had been a few lines there. Now, suddenly, there were many many more lines, and they were much much deeper. There was also a tiny pain behind them. He wondered if Monaghan, over on SG-3, had to deal with situations like this he supervised scientists too. But Jack bitterly doubted it. This headache, he was pretty certain, was his alone. His only concern now was to keep it from becoming a sore butt, too, once Hammond got through chewing it.) "Let's just - forget about it, Carter. I'll speak to Daniel, and to Teal'c. The Phenaa don't have any idea what these things are, and I really don't want to fill out the paper work that explains this - incident - to General Hammond. -My house, the first night of our stand-down, eight p.m. Bring those things. Please."
"Sir, yes, sir. At the Colonel's discretion, sir."
"Can the crap, Carter."
Carter canned the crap after he stalked out of the room, and grinned like a maniac while she stuffed all her stuff back into the field pack. Sex toys first.
Fuggedaboudit was an excellent plan. Unfortunately, the Phenaa had other ideas.
Daniel and Teal'c had just stashed the water samples when a group of Phenaa arrived at the door to the house SG-1 had been assigned. One of them stepped through the door and said to the empty room, "Colonel Jack O'Neill, our Elders have consented to speak with you."
Jack rose from the seat he had taken in his own room, where he had been rubbing his temples in the faint hope that he could massage away the massive headache this mission was growing into.
Identical sixty-billion-tuplets. Who were telepathic. Who dreamed the world into being each night. Who didn't, after all, want an alliance with Earth. Who may not have anything to offer in the way of alliance anyway.
Carter's sex toys.
He had once hoped that his knees would hold up until the Stargate project was well under way. Now, he prayed for an ACL blowout tomorrow. Then he and Carter could -
Oh, hell, he was back to the sex toys again. A meeting with the Elders? Piece of cake.
He walked into the main room.
"We will go to the palace of the Elders," the lone Phenaa said. "I am instructed that you are all to bring your field packs."
Nooooo. Not Sam's field pack. "Major Carter is injured, and can't walk very easily."
"The meeting place is not far from here, and the presence of Major Carter and her field pack is required," the Phenaa said politely.
Crap. "Carter! Report! Daniel! Teal'c!"
The Elders' presence explained many things, the lack of secondary sexual characteristics among the Phenaa being one of them.
The Phenaa budded. Exactly as amoebas do.
The Elders were a group of Phenaa identical to all the other Phenaa, except that they all had two heads.
Well, some, in the earliest stages of budding, had only a goiter. Others had a second head and one or two had a second head and neck. One had a division line forming down the center of the body; a second had this division line well marked, and the body divided centrally as far as the bottom of the sternum, with a new arm forming on each side of the inner division of the central split. A third Elder was actually two full people, undivided only at the hip and a third, joint, leg. The division line stretched through the kneecap of this leg, which didn't yet reach the ground.
It was this pair of persons which spoke to Jack, in echo mode, using both mouths.
"We shall see the playthings Major Carter has brought to Phenaa for us."
Jack closed his eyes. This couldn't possibly get worse. "Carter," said, "oblige the Elders, please."
Carter had two bags full of worse.
The bud-bearing Phenaa moved in and took over. Each one picked up a toy and applied it to a hand or two. Or something else.
Jack would have bet it could not get worse than that, and promptly lost his money. The stereo Phenaa said to Jack, "Explain to us how this works."
She/he/it held up a vibrator with a circle of rotating beads at the base.
Jack felt his face redden. He looked at Daniel, who looked with interest at the thing the Phenaa was holding. Jack couldn't look at Carter. He looked back at the Phenaa, felt his cheeks get hot, and said, "Carter. You're more familiar with these things than I am. You wanna just jump right in here?"
And then, drat her, she did a great job. She held the - thing - up and said, "This little ring of beads right here goes around and around, and massages any sore muscles away. If you hurt, anywhere, this will do a great job of taking care of you." She put - it - down and moved on to the next Phenaa, taking a - thing - out of his/her/its hand. "With this one, this little pointy thing here does a great job of getting out really sore spots in your muscles. Just put it on the sore spot, turn it on, and let it help you."
The one with the suction cup: "This one - sucks."
Murderous glance at Daniel, who had made a very odd noise, and quickly clamped a hand over his mouth.
Carter knew that he had stifled a laugh. She had no way to know that the laugh wanted to be huge, or that stifling it had compelled Daniel's sinuses to make a spirited effort to come out of his nose. The sound he had made was occasioned by the suction required to pull them back into place.
But Carter didn't know that.
Jack didn't smile. It was difficult; he wanted to; but his mouth, though it may have had other ideas, was a disciplined military man's mouth. It got to be a thin straight line for the duration of this exercise, did it understand?
It wavered from time to time, anyway.
Carter went on and on, for forty-seven years in her own estimation, in front of her three male teammates (at least one of whom, on the next stand-down night they spent together, was going to pay for this) and all the budding Phenaa.
All the little gray heads cocked at precisely the same angle, listening to Major Samantha Carter, Ph.D., demonstrating two bags of sex toys. Then, in unison, they all cocked back in the other direction.
Daniel, meanwhile, had picked up the white plastic bags the things came in. Had become very interested in the label stuck to one of them. Had read it carefully. Two or three times.
After that Daniel smoothed out the bags, and folded them twice. With an odd, dreamy little smile on his face. While Sam demonstrated sex toys to the Phenaa.
And at the end of her presentation, the stereo Phenaa said, "Perhaps our earlier judgement was incorrect, Colonel O'Neill. There are things we can teach one another."
Daniel watched, fascinated, as a group of six Phenaa levitated a ball of mud from the riverside, moved it in mid-air to the new home in one of the "ships," and formed it into the walls and the built-in seating. All without touching it.
New home, in an established community, three bedrooms, many built-ins.
Jack passed the back of his hand across his forehead. "Can they teach us that?"
Jack had never been so glad to see the inside of a wormhole in his life. On the other hand, he had to write a mission report, and he was not looking forward to that. Oh, man, was he not looking forward to that. Or to the debrief.
And Carter, drat her, won the toss for first shower.
"You seem fine," Janet said. The tube filled with blood, and she pulled the needle from Daniel's arm, placing a cotton ball over the small wound and taping it into place.
"That was my diagnosis too."
She laughed. "Get out of here, Daniel. I'll see you later."
He grinned, buttoning his shirt. Time to amble off to the debriefing.
Daniel pushed his glasses up on his nose. He was really looking forward to this one.
Jack and Carter met in the hallway on the way to the briefing room. "How the hell are we going to present this, Carter?" he said. His 2IC was way smarter than he was, a quality he both respected and ruthlessly exploited from time to time.
Like right now.
"Are you suggesting we falsify a report, Colonel O'Neill?"
"I'm suggesting we find a way to skip lightly over the minefield created by your bags of - of - "
The corridors of SGC were never private enough for this conversation.
"Toys, sir? Recreational items?"
He turned to face her, and her eyes were sparkling.
"Recreational items. Carter, you are a godsend."
"No, sir, just an astrophysicist."
"Daniel probably speaks some language that translates those two terms with the same word."
"They seemed particularly interested, sir, in anything that either created sensation or was meant for amusement purposes."
Hammond watched O'Neill turn purple and Jackson grin. Crap. SG-1 were at it again.
"They're a remarkably curious species, sir," Daniel said. Jack shot him a barbed glance.
Hammond wondered, Why couldn't O'Neill just - Well, mostly because he was O'Neill.
O'Neill was O'Neill, and O'Neill was career, and Carter was career. Jackson was indispensable, and there was no point in wishing he were other than what he was. George Hammond sighed. He was going to trust the officers' professionalism. O'Neill might be a pain, but he hadn't let him down yet. Although he'd read the mission reports with an eagle eye. Crap.
Jack was poking one finger at a time at the keyboard, and watching the laggard letters form unwilling words on his monitor. And using "Backspace" and "Delete" a lot.
So far he had written the beginning of the report, right up until the Phenaa got into Carter's field pack. Then he had cravenly skipped ahead to the summary. He wasn't stupid.
"Major Carter's possession of these toys was a major breakthrough in negotiating with the Phenaa. The Phenaa possess extraordinary mental abilities, including shaping matter by thought alone. They use this method to create their homes and to synthesize food."
Fine. That could stay.
Sip of coffee. More thought. It was too bad he didn't have a window in here, so he could look out of it and daydream.
He had a security camera, but that wasn't the same. Staring at it for inspiration inevitably brought questions from MacKenzie.
Carter knocked and came in. "Sir, I have some information for you." She gave him a floppy disk.
"Aren't frisbees usually round?"
She rolled her eyes at him, put the disk into the drive on his computer, and elbowed him aside from the keyboard. "Have you saved your work?"
"Nope."
She gave an exasperated sigh and another roll of her eyes. Went rat-a-tat on the keyboard. The screen changed. "This is the mission report, sir. I've changed the sections on the Phenaa breaking into my backpack to reflect your point of view and Daniel's. I've also written the demonstration (her cheekbones turned a little pink) from all three of our points of view."
"Carter, you are indeed a godsend, a blessing, a windfall, the answer to my prayer."
"Why, thank you, sir. Tomorrow night, eight o'clock?" Rat-a-tat-tat.
Letters appeared in the blank part of his own report.
Originally it had been the day after that, eight o'clock. But why look a gift horse with two bags of sex toys in the mouth? Er. So to speak.
"That sounds great, Carter."
"Sir," she said, popped out the disk, and disappeared out of his office door.
Daniel rang the bell at Janet's front door. Cassie opened it for him. "Hi, Daniel. Come on in."
Daniel had a tendency to think of Cassie as he had first met her: a gangly preadolescent. That wasn't true any longer. The young woman who opened the door to him probably had to fight the boys off with a stick.
"Hey, Cass. Nice to see you again."
"Thanks. Janet told you, didn't she, that I have a date this afternoon? I'm going to the museum with a friend. Sort of a study date." She smiled at him (she had a mouthful of braces, poor kid), and sat down in the living room, motioning him to a seat. "Janet's still dithering over what to wear."
"I heard that," Janet said, coming down the stairs. It was true, though.
She had stood in front of her closet and hated every single thing she owned. She had finally settled on something that was pretty close to what Daniel himself was wearing, she was glad to see: tan linen pants (his were blue denim), a long-sleeved blue shirt, tan jacket tied by its arms over her shoulders.
Cassie stood up when Daniel did. She went to Janet, and reached down to press her cheek to the petite woman's. "Be home by eleven and don't take any wooden nickels."
"Where did you learn that expression?" Janet said in affectionate exasperation. "See you later. Nan will be here by ten."
Daniel walked her to his car, feeling ridiculously pleased with himself. Once inside the vehicle, he turned the key over, and said, "Well, I guess Cass won't be disappointed if we don't go to the zoo. Is there someplace else you'd rather go?"
"What about the Japanese Botanical Gardens?"
And so they spent hours wandering from scene to scene, feeding their souls on the solitude. Occasionally Daniel, being Daniel, would explain to Janet why things were done so differently in a Japanese garden.
She being Janet and he being Daniel, she kind of got a kick out of it. She found, to her surprise, that she didn't need to feign an interest.
He found, to his surprise, that her hand fell naturally on his arm. (Sha'uri had been much taller. And her people hadn't observed that custom, much.)
They wandered on. Japanese Botanical Gardens anywhere tend to be a labyrinth of nooks and crannies and little loops off the main drag to explore further another time.
They took one of these, quite a long path, and found themselves in sole possession of the view overlooking the tea house.
Daniel turned to her, and dropped a kiss onto her upturned face. She looked up at him, and put a hand on his shoulder.
They kissed again, longer and sweeter. Janet felt his soft lips part, and her own did the same in response. The earth - went somewhere else for a little while. When Daniel drew back, it resumed its usual place.
"That was nice," he said softly. "Again?"
"Yes," she said. "Please," rather shakily.
It was even better this time, his arms going around her, hers finding a place to encircle his back.
They broke the embrace, and Daniel casually possessed himself of her hand, placing it on his arm and keeping it there with his own. "It's seven. Are you hungry yet?"
"Yes. How are you doing?"
"Getting hungry, myself. I didn't make reservations; I thought we might want to wing it."
"Can't go to O'Malley's."
"Oh, definitely not." He grinned down at her. "There's always the Pig'n'Git."
She laughed. "There's also a fish place close to it. Either one would do fine."
The fish place was booked. The Pig'n'Git obliged. It had a small garden strung with Christmas lights to which you could take your carton and your styrofoam cup, but with the sun below the horizon, the night was too cold to eat al fresco.
Your place, or mine?
His. She had a teenage daughter and a friend staying the night for same.
"I'd apologize for the mess, but it always looks like this," Daniel said.
He had papers and artifacts on every single surface of the living room. The kitchen table was clear, the kitchen itself clean, though.
Janet relaxed. Idiosyncratic filing systems she could deal with, if, as here, there was no dirt underneath.
He was assembling plates and knives and spoons and forks and glasses. She stepped behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist, planting a kiss just below the nape of his neck, where the fine hairs ended (which was as high as she could reach).
"I'm not complaining," he said, his amused voice rumbling through his back, "but what's that for?"
"I'm not sure it has a function."
"Good enough," he said, and turned within the circle of her arms to cradle her face in his hands, and start up the kiss thing again. "I hope this isn't too fast."
"Mm. Me too. I don't want to screw this up."
"Good," he said. "Because if you hadn't said that, I might have asked you to stay the night."
"And if I hadn't said that. . .I might have stayed."
But - they didn't want to screw it up. She didn't stay. It wasn't a question of which base you got to, but of being willing to stay in the dugout for hours, talking and kissing.
Sometime before midnight they finally ate.
Thank God for microwave ovens.
Things were a bit different at Jack's place.
"Carter, you're going to kill me."
"Maybe. But not until I've tried a few more of these things."
"Good God, woman, have some mercy."
"Sir, it took me twenty-seven minutes to finish that ghastly presentation to the Phenaa. I've been at this" - she waved whichever toy she was using (Jack had lost count, and his vision was beginning to gray out) to look at her watch - "only seventeen minutes. We've got a little catch-up to play here. Sir."
"Carter?"
"Sir?"
"Don't call me 'sir.'"
"Then don't call me 'Carter,' sir."
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