“Which would be, as you say, bad.”
Angelus turned back to the processor, and began typing again. McKay watched him for a while, then wandered away, deep in thought, images of the instability simulation spinning in his mind. If he concentrated, he could almost see the network of calculations and crumpled dimensions needed to destabilize the spacetime plane, but only in abstract. If he tried to pin it down it simply slipped away from him. There was something here he was missing, he was certain, something that was only just out of his reach. Perhaps if he could see some of the simulated data after the compression algorithms had done their work, it would all become clear.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, wincing at a sudden needle of pain there. “Oh man, is the air dry in here? Is it the heat coming off those stacks?”
Angelus glanced around at him. “Is anything wrong, Doctor?”
“I dunno. Something’s starting to play hell with my sinuses, that’s all.” He walked over to where the storage blocks had been set up, putting his hand out to feel the warm air wafted off them by the fans. “Damn. Yeah, it’s these things.”
“Perhaps you would benefit from a walk outside. Call it pacing in a single direction.”
The thought of walking again so soon didn’t really appeal, but the pain in McKay’s forehead was getting worse. He didn’t answer Angelus, but instead wandered away from the stacks.
The mask in his hands was still invitingly cold, despite the dry heat of the air. He flipped it over, studying the interior for the first time. When he had seen Angelus wearing it, it had always seemed to hug his face securely, but he could see no mechanisms inside. Just cool, polished metal.
Through the eyeholes, the floor seemed to waver, as though through a heat-haze. “Yeah, maybe,” he muttered absently. “Thing is, if I go out there, get a good dose of cool sea air, then come back in here, my head’s going to explode.”
“Then perhaps you should —” Angelus halted in mid sentence. Then he said: “Doctor?”
McKay lifted the mask, trying to see more clearly through the eyeholes. As he did, the wavering seemed to increase. “Yeah?”
There was no answer. He raised the mask to his face, and suddenly he was flying backwards.
A folding table hit him in the back. He bounced off it, awkwardly, sending a couple of data tablets flying, and just about regained his balance before he went over. He reached out and grabbed a nearby terminal for support, and as he did so realized that he didn’t have the mask any more.
Angelus was holding it, in both hands, protectively. He must have launched himself from the processor like a cat, and grabbed the mask as he hurled McKay into the tables. How could anyone move so fast?
And more to the point, why? He didn’t look angry. If anything, his face was a picture of fear and confusion. His dark eyes were wide, staring at McKay.
“Are you all right?” he gasped.
McKay opened his mouth and tried to speak, but there wasn’t any air in him. He dragged in a breath, and managed to nod.
“Are you certain?”
“Yeah, I think so… Angelus, what the hell?”
“I am sorry…” The Ancient shook himself, stared down at the visios. “There was no call for that, it was… Unforgivable.”
“I don’t understand.”
Angelus shook his head. “I- You must not…” He took a deep breath of his own, and that seemed to calm him slightly. “The visios is the only thing I have left to remind me,” he explained. “It is for me alone. I am sorry, Doctor. I should not have struck you. But you cannot wear this.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you, okay? But you could have…” McKay winced, put a hand to his chest. He was just starting to realize how much his ribs hurt. “Ow… You could have just told me!”
“I know.” He stepped away, and seemed about to place the mask back down on the processor. Then he paused, and came back. He reached out.
McKay flinched, but Angelus was holding the mask out to him.
He laughed nervously. “Yeah, it’s okay. Really. You keep it.”
“No. Doctor, I believe… Maybe it is time to put this away. I have been dwelling on the past too long. Would you return this to the starhopper?”
“Your ship?” McKay took the mask from him, holding it nervously. “It won’t open.”
“It will now.” The Ancient’s expression had turned to one of gentle sadness. “Please, take it back for me.”
“Okay…” The idea of getting into the golden ship was tempting, he couldn’t deny that. So was the thought of getting away from Angelus for a bit. “It might take a while.”
“Take all the time you need.”
“Sure. Okay then, I’ll…” He backed away, still very much aware of how fast the Ancient could move. “I’ll put this back, right where it’ll be safe…”
The door opened for him as he reached it. He turned, and hurried out into the corridor and past the guard station. Only then, quite out of earshot, did he call Sheppard on his headset and tell him to drop everything and meet him in the hangar.
The hangar was a wedge-shaped segment of the city’s central tower, a two-story space that had been almost unused by the Pegasus expedition since they first arrived. Parts of the tower’s outer wall in that area had been found to be modular, and could be convinced, under power, to fold away, leaving sizeable entranceways. The function of this was not known, but it was hypothesized that occasionally the city’s builders had needed to store things bigger than could be ferried in through the Stargate. In any case, once the equipment stashed there had been moved back against the rear walls and covered with tarpaulins, a space about twenty meters across had been available to house the starhopper.
There was a big double door at the thin end of the wedge, towards the tower core, and Sheppard was waiting there when McKay arrived. “Okay Rodney, what’s up?”
McKay had been walking as fast as he could all the way to the hangar, via various transporters. By the time he got there he was quite out of breath, and his chest was aching. At least now, there was good reason for it to do so. “Give me a minute.”
“You are so out of shape.”
“I am not. I just got a punch in the sternum, okay? A minute.” He bent over, stood with his hands on his knees for a few moments, breathing hard. Then he straightened up. “Angelus just attacked me.”
“He what?”
“Look… Maybe attacked is the wrong word. But he sure hit me pretty hard.”
Sheppard was looking at the visios. “Because you stole his mask?”
“No! Well, actually, yes.” McKay held the thing up. “I was with him in the lab, we were talking about the simulations, you know… There’s this neat algorithm he’s going to use to shave the data down as it goes through multiple recursions, I mean it’s some seriously cool stuff —”
“Rodney,” said Sheppard warningly. “I have other things I could be doing.”
“Sorry. But anyways, I’d picked this up, and there was something funny about the eyeholes. Or I thought there was.” He held the mask higher and stared through its eyes, but there was none of the distortion he had seen in the lab. “Oh. Maybe it was the heat coming off the stacks. So I was going to put it on, and —”
“You were going to put it on?” Sheppard’s eyebrows went high. “Don’t you think that’s a little, I don’t know, rude?”
“It is?” McKay frowned, feeling as though the conversation was getting away from him. “Listen, he’s the one who hit me! Slammed me right across the damn lab!”
“Really.” Sheppard pretended to look impressed. “That’s a big lab. I’m surprised you’re not getting Keller to check you out after such a mighty blow.”
“All right, more like shoved.” McKay rubbed his chest idly. “But he pretty much knocked the wind right out of me, you know? I never knew how fast he could move.”