The Lost

Chapter Twenty-nine: Quicksilver

Quicksilver dreamed, and in his dreams he was far underground. The chamber beneath the earth was vast, vast enough to hold a glittering Stargate. It turned, red chevrons flaring, symbols rotating like a ring of fire.

She was standing next to him, the Queen he remembered, her dark hair pulled back severely, her arms crossed over her chest, watching the gate turn.

“Why am I dreaming you?” Quicksilver asked. Banks of lights danced behind her, strange machines humming and jumping. “Why am I dreaming you?”

She turned to him with a secret smile. “Because you want to, Rodney,” she said.

The gate opened, blue fire erupting like water.

“Where does that gate go?” Quicksilver asked.

“Where do you think?” The Queen who was called Dr. Weir looked at him, her eyes on his. “Do you remember the nanites? Do you remember the first time I was infected? Where do you think it goes?”

“I don’t know,” he said. There was something profoundly disturbing there, something just out of reach. Something he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to remember. “Can you go with me?”

She shook her head sadly. “No. You have to go through that gate alone.”

“Oh,” he said, the surface reflecting before him like ripples of light on water. “Why?”

“Because you’re not dead, Rodney,” she said. “You’re only sleeping.”

“Are you dead?” He didn’t want to ask, but some part of him had to.

There was that smile again, secret and rueful. “Why don’t you ask Dr. Jackson about that?”

“Who’s he?” He felt he ought to know, but the memories ran away from him like droplets of water through his hands.

“Walk through the gate and see.” Her voice was gentle, but also steel.

Quicksilver looked toward the gate, cold blue light flooding over him, and yet he could not take a single step. It faded as he woke.

He worked in the laboratory later that day, bending his head over the datapad, trying to make sense of things that should have been easy, and anger welled up in him. How could they have taken this from him, these Lanteans? Was it not enough to hurt him, to break his body in a thousand ways? How could they have taken from him his mind as well? What if he could never relearn it? What if it never again became easy?

Dust had named him the cleverest of clevermen, and he knew that was true. He was the smartest. Without that he was nothing. Without the quicksilver grace of his intellect, how should he be worth anything to anyone? He would be worth nothing to himself.

There was a stir at the door, and one of the blades he had sometimes seen in the gaming room came in, his midnight blue leathers ornamented with jet, and spoke to Dust in low tones. “We have had word from one of our worshippers with the Genii,” he said. “And as you can imagine it is a matter of great concern, worth a very carefully placed operative.”

Dust straightened. “You have come from the Queen?”

“Just,” the blade said, “And she is disturbed.”

“What is the nature of it?” Dust asked, casting a quick glance around the room. Quicksilver bent his head, blinking as if he made little sense of their words.

“She Who Carries Many Things has returned,” the blade said. “With a new warship, one that is said to be deadlier than any before. She and her Consort were with the Genii, meeting in secret, and all is well between them. He took nothing on himself, and seemed to have many marks of her favor, so any hope of a falling out there is nothing but hope.”

“She and her Consort both?” Dust shook his head, and worry was evident in every line of his face. “That is ill news indeed. What can the Lanteans be up to?”

The other blade might have spoken, but Quicksilver broke in. “Is there no way to probe my mind for the information you seek? I am sure I know the gate address to Atlantis! If it is that the Queen is concerned about hurting me, I beg you to think no more of that! I would gladly suffer whatever is necessary to help!”

Dust came round the table to him, and put his hand to Quicksilver’s cheek in affection. “My brother, I know that you are brave and that you would like to help, but there is nothing that can be done. Your mind is so damaged that even the Queen can reap nothing from it. We have only to hope that as you heal you may remember. Give yourself time, and tell me of each thing that comes to you, for even the smallest thing may hold a clue, no matter how unimportant it may seem.”

Quicksilver nodded. “I will do that,” he said eagerly. “And perhaps if I try very hard to remember, I shall find more. Perhaps, if he disregarded the words of that queen he dreamed, he could find the information that hung just out of reach.