"They activated that computer again?" he asked.
"Yes, they did."
"And? McKay and Zelenka worked out quantum communications?"
"No, they did not."
They didn't? Why not?"
"It became of secondary importance when Ikaros made them, as you say, an offer they couldn't refuse. An offer your military leadership couldn't refuse."
He stirred. "Am I right in assuming that this was a bad idea and Ikaros turned out to be my evil twin?"
"A little of both. Although I don't believe Ikaros's intentions were evil." Guided by years of knowing the exact place of each item in her cave, she walked over to the cot, felt his hand on her arm, easing her to sit next to him. She clapped her fingers over his, gently pulled him into the link. "I believe he truly meant to help."
Elizabeth woke with a start, drowsily blinking into black and unable to tell what had woken her. The mystery was solved when-her-radio gave another squawk.
What in the name of-
"Elizabeth? Elizabeth! Oh, for heaven's sake, you can't be asleep now! Wake up!" the radio chattered into the darkness of her room.
Reaching over to where she'd last seen the bedside table, she limply padded around until her fingers brushed the small radio set. As it turned out, she'd grabbed it the wrong way and poked the stalk mike into her eye while attempting to find her ear. It didn't improve her mood.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" she barked when she'd finally managed to fiddle the earpiece into place.
"Twenty-three past two. Why?"
"In the morning, Rodney!"
"Yes, I am familiar with the twenty-four hour clock. Thank you, Elizabeth. Now that that's cleared up, would it be too much to ask for you to come over to the computer lab? McKay out."
Murder had never struck her as a particularly viable approach to handling interpersonal issues, but she was contemplating it now. The other alternative was simply ignoring Dr. McKay. Which would last for… oh, five minutes, tops, before he radioed her again. That aside, she was too irritated to go back to sleep.
"Alright," she muttered, rolling out of bed. "You got it, Rodney."
Yawning, she donned pants and a t-shirt and raked her fingers through her hair by ways of getting rid of a rare case of pillow-head. She seriously doubted that Rodney's state of mind would permit him to take in any details of her personal grooming.
A few minutes later she burst through the door of the lab. To her surprise, John Sheppard was there, looking like she felt, bleary-eyed and punch-drunk. Evidently, he'd been thrown out of bed as well. The really amazing thing about it was the fact that Rodney was still alive and apparently unharmed.
"About time," he observed, not bothering to look up from his laptop. "What took you so long?"
"No idea," she said, suppressing that recurring urge to throttle him. "This had better be the cure for cancer or, at the very least, a permanent solution to our little Wraith problem."
"Door Number Two," John said sleepily. "According to Zelenka. Sorry `bout the cancer cure."
"Radek's here, too?"
By way of an answer, John cocked a thumb toward the back of the console. Zelenka was crouched behind it, tinkering with what looked like a holo-laser array. "You know, it would really be a lot easier if we just connected Ikaros to the mainframe," he lobbed across the console at Rodney.
"Oh, absolutely! And then your friend Ikaros takes over each and every system of Atlantis. Which, I can't emphasize enough, is perfectly within the realm of possibility and should have occurred to you before we even started this."
"Jde mi to na nervy," Zelenka growled to himself and added a couple of oaths that were new to Elizabeth. She decided against translating.
"He kinda reminds me of Hermiod when he does that," whispered John, gently listing in her direction.
"More hair," she whispered back.
"More clothes."
The air above the console began to stir and flicker, seemed to congeal for a moment, and then vanished into, well, thin air again.
"If that's what you guys drummed me out of bed for, I'm gonna be seriously pissed," John observed casually.
Rodney spared him a withering glance. "Given that some of us haven't been to bed at all, perhaps you should stop obsessing about your beauty sleep."
"Nobody ordered you to-"
"Je u± malem cas!" A blend of triumph and satisfaction in his voice, Radek popped up from behind the console like a glove puppet. "Try it now!"
This time it wasn't a stir and flicker; a charge of energy sizzled through the air, and Ikaros shimmered to life. "I cannot believe you people ever managed to find Atlantis, let alone get here!" The boy wore black Special Ops BDUs and a frown. "If I'd known that a simple technical task would take this long, I'd have done you a drawing."
"What's with the costume?" Elizabeth asked, baffled.
It brought a huff from Rodney. "For some unfathomable reason, he appears hell-bent on emulating the good Colonel here."
"There's good news, too," Zelenka chimed in. "In all essential things, such as character, social skills, and general affability he takes after Uncle Rodney."
"I'm glad you didn't include intellectual brilliance," said Ikaros, and going by his moue of disdain he meant every word of it.
McKay ignored him, suggesting that this kind of exchange was a regular occurrence, but Elizabeth gave a small hiss. She was beginning to understand why Rodney had reservations about giving Ikaros access to the Atlantis mainframe. Why he had reservations about Ikaros, period. "Is he always like this?"
"I believe you people consider it impolite to refer to some one actually present in the third person," Ikaros pointed out. "If you have any questions, Elizabeth, feel free to address them to me directly."
Elizabeth?
"That's `Dr. Weir' to you," John snapped, before she could say it herself.
"Why? You call her `Elizabeth. "'
"You're not me."
"Certain, uh, privileges have to be earned," she explained, trying to defuse the tension, only remotely worried about the fact that she was attempting to pacify a machine. Whether she liked it or not, Rodney's warning still resonated. Well, what if Ikaros does a HAL? Goes nuts? Or power crazy? Or simply throws a tantrum? To all intents and purposes, this machine was a teenager, and it was the wrong time of day for dealing with teenage fits of temper. "For now let's stick with `Dr. Weir,' alright?"
"Fine, Dr. Weir." The kid smiled at her. "I've got to earn it, yes? How much would you bet on the fact that you'll let me call you `Elizabeth' as soon as we're finished here?"
Suddenly she had a niggling suspicion that waking her and John Sheppard in the small hours of the morning hadn't been Rodney's idea at all. Could a hologram be bored? "I don't bet," she said curtly-hedging her bets.
Ikaros shot her a knowing grin, as if he'd heard that little wordplay in her mind. It wasn't the insolence that unsettled her, it was the scary intelligence looking out from behind John's eyes. Not that John-the real one-was stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but what she saw in his juvenile doppelganger defied human terms of intelligence. Hardly surprising. She had scoured the Ancient archives for references to Ikaros and had finally found what amounted to a footnote-short but chilling.
The boy-the flesh-and-blood version-had been identified as exceptionally gifted, even by Ancient standards, and the Council had ordered him enrolled in a special study program. He'd out-studied, out-thought, out-smarted his teachers within months and begun to rebel against the dogma handed down by the Council, which he considered to be narrow-minded and restrictive. The only one of his teachers with whom he continued to have any kind of productive relationship was Janus, already chomping at the bit himself. Student and teacher must have fueled one another's defiance and creativity, but when interviewed by the authorities after the fact, Janus claimed that he'd had absolutely no knowledge of Ikaros's project, said that, had he known, he'd have prevented the boy from going through with the experiment at any cost. It might even be true, because what Ikaros had done was outrageous even by Janus's standards.