“I will never be ashamed of you,” she said, and her eyes didn’t waver from his. “I’m sure of that, John.”
John blinked, and blinking opened his eyes. The snow was swirling past the windows of Kate Heightmeyer’s…no, Eva Robinson’s office. Teyla sat on one end of the couch, her eyes closed and her breathing slow, while Carson was glancing through one of Eva’s books on the credenza.
Eva was still talking, her voice even and monotonous. She glanced at John as he started, gave him a nod. “…down a flight of stairs into the past. And as you go down, you will be going deeper and deeper into your subconscious.”
He had dozed off for a moment. Or maybe he’d been caught in it too. Kate had said once that he’d be a spectacularly easy subject, something he’d run from like his tail was on fire. The last thing he needed at that moment was another weird thing in his life.
The memory had seemed so real, so vivid. It had been like walking back twenty one years, like seeing his mother again, as though he’d really walked into that house that had been sold long ago and found her there. John blinked. Teyla had asked him about her a couple of times. She’d asked him what his mother was like. What she’d think of her. John had mumbled and said he didn’t know, and it wasn’t important anyhow. Frances had died when he was twenty-five.
He should tell Teyla, he thought. He should tell her that his mother would have loved her.
Chapter Ninteen
First Mothers
“…down the stairs, deeper and deeper.” Eva Robinson was speaking to her in some distant place, but it didn’t matter.
She stood in the curve of the stairwell, one hand on the rough hewn stones, looking out the narrow window. Below, the waves beat against the cliffs, white spray flying and leaping, the booming sound of the sea echoing through all, while the cold wind sang around the tower, pale sea birds soaring and turning on its currents.
It was like some other place she had known, Osprey thought in some small part of herself that was not this, some part left behind. The view from a tower of storm-tossed sea…
But it was not.
“I am Osprey,” she said aloud clearly. Someone had asked, and she answered.
She was Osprey and her child quickened within her, hers and Wind’s, her choice of them though all the men protected her as though she were their own wife. Nine and her, eleven when her daughter was born at the turning of the year. She had seen her in dreams, a white haired miniature of her, long limbed like Wind.
“Three years,” she said.
Someone asked her how long she had lived there, but that was only this world, the first haven they had found. She had lost track how many it had been before that, running from one world to another, hunting through the Ring and disappearing like mist, always a step ahead of the hunters who sought them. Sometimes they came upon another band, sometimes Gryphon or Night or Cloud. Cloud had two sons now, the eldest walking and speaking well. Perhaps he would make a mate for her daughter in time, perhaps if they dared to plan so far. Life does not wait for death, even among the Returned.
This world was nothing, like so many seeded and forgotten. Car Leonid, the Ancestors had called it in their machines, but there were no lions, just the seals that harvested the rich oceans, and the men who lived on them. The land was poor, but the oceans were rich. People lived here, hunting the mammals who hunted the fish, hunted in turn by the Returned. They spoke of the tower on the cliff as a haunted place, the dwelling of soul-renders, and they did not come near.
The Lanteans had no reason to come here, and the humans had no way to call them. The Ring was in orbit. The Returned could reach it with the ships they had stolen, but the humans were poor. They called the Lanteans gods and prayed to them as though they heard, and the Lanteans had not made themselves felt in many lives of men. As a home it was safe enough.
For the moment.
After the birth, when she was strong again, they would move on.
Osprey descended the stairs carefully, one hand on the stones. She could no longer see her feet beneath her belly. Outside the wind was rising. Another storm was coming in off the sea. The sound of the waves echoed through the base of the tower, a deep thrumming that was never still.
It disturbed the cochlea, and Osprey reached for them with her mind, quieting them. It is only a storm, little ones, she said. You have seen many before. She felt them move, felt them still under the touch of her mind. The length of her hand or smaller, they were some sort of mollusk with a spiraled shell, living in vast colonies, taking their sustenance from the sea. They were not intelligent animals, but they did have some residual psychic ability. Osprey and some of the others could touch them with their minds, which was proving very useful.
Ashes had named them cochlea, and like some other mollusks they secreted their shells, building a tough bone framework around their soft bodies. They also secreted shell anchors on stone to which they attached their egg sacs, and this was what Ashes had found a use for. When it dried, their shells made an almost impenetrable mortar, securing rough hewn stones together as tightly as the concrete of the Lanteans. This tower was built with their aid, Osprey and the others egging the small creatures on. The Returned set the stones in place and then the cochlea cemented them, snug and tight against the winds that blew and the waves that flowed.
Some distant part of her, some part that was not Osprey, found it fascinating. Such tiny creatures, and yet they could build something so strong…
Where is the power device you took from the Lanteans, it asked her. Where is it now?
Another day, a spring day, her daughter an infant that dozed in a cradle of shell… The sun struck sparks of light from the water and the white birds were hunting out to sea in a vast shoal of birds, mirroring the unseen shoals of fish beneath the surface.
“Another day,” Wind said, climbing the first steps of the tower to where she waited. “Ashes says we’re almost done with the repairs.” The sea breeze tugged at his long white hair, blowing strands of it about his face. He wore dark leathers against the chill, even in the summertime, battered and stained with salt.
“There is one more thing,” Ashes said at his elbow. He squinted looking up into the sun, photosensitive as so many were.
There were none besides themselves close at hand, and yet Osprey spoke mind to mind, as though she feared to be overheard. *Hyperion’s weapon,* she said.
Ashes nodded. “It is dangerous to carry it around with us. It’s not impossible that we will be captured or that we will lose our ship or be forced to abandon it. And you know if that happens…”
“I don’t see why we don’t just throw it in the ocean,” Wind said.
Ashes snarled. “How many times have I told this great brawler that throwing it in the ocean will not destroy it? It is made of the Lanteans’ most sturdy materials, metal that even our brightest flames will not scar. Even when, if you remember, I exposed it to the vacuum of space it did not crack or show any damage at all, no more so than the orbital Rings do. I do not know any way to unmake this thing.” He shook his head, and his eyes were on Osprey’s. “It is only our ignorance. I cannot make things as the Lanteans did. I do not know how. I was a student of sciences biological, and none of us, not in any band, understood the physical sciences at the level which would be applicable. Another more clever man another time might solve this problem, but I can tell you now, Osprey, that I cannot.”
“Then what do you suggest we do?” Wind demanded, his hand on his hip.
“We must hide it,” Osprey said. “Hide it and the source that powered it. It is dangerous as you say to carry it with us, and we cannot destroy it.” She glanced about at tower and cliffs, at windswept sea. “The cochlea give us an opportunity. Let us carry it down to one of the sea caves and have the cochlea seal it in. Beneath layers of bone and stone it will be impossible for anyone to stumble over who does not know that it is there. And none shall know where it is cached except the three of us.”
Wind nodded slow
ly. “That is well thought.”
“And perhaps the time will come when we may return and destroy it,” Ashes said. “That day yet may come.”
Sea caves, dark and damp and cool, comfortable and quiet… They did not need torches, not they whose eyes saw in the dark. They did not need anything to light their way to its resting place. The sounding sea called around them. The dark shielded them. The metal cases lay side by side on the floor of stone, and the cochlea came at her command, crawling back and forth leaving their pale trails, stone and bone, sealing the cave for all eternity…
For ten thousand years, till Osprey’s distant daughter should remember.
“I know where the ZPM is,” said Teyla Emmagan. She lifted her head, blinking, while outside the towers of Atlantis the snow swirled. “I can find it.”
Chapter Twenty
Pilgrims
John knocked on the door to Woolsey’s office, waiting for him to look up from his laptop and motion him in. “Got a second?” he asked.
Woolsey nodded, pushing back from the desk. “Yes, of course. It’s probably time I took a break anyhow.” He didn’t look happy. “I was reading through my emails from the IOA.”
The databurst had come in three hours ago, downloading all the emails sent through the SGC. John had had four, three of them from Sergeant Walter Harriman about various logistical issues affecting the military detachment in Atlantis, all of them already answered promptly and in the outgoing mail. There had also had been one from his brother, but John hadn’t opened that one yet.
Woolsey had more than three hundred emails in his queue. No wonder it was taking him hours to get through them.
“Anything bad?” John asked, slouching into one of the visitor chairs. He’d made a point of slouching initially when Woolsey arrived and hadn’t gotten out of the habit.
“Yes, actually.” Woolsey frowned at his laptop. “For Dr. McKay at any rate.”
John sat up. “We’re not going to…”
Woolsey raised a hand. “Nothing like that, thankfully,” he said, his mouth pressed together in a thin line. “But they are concerned, very concerned, over the extent of Dr. McKay’s transformation. They have heeded my recommendation that his confinement or lack thereof be contingent on the medical advice of Dr. Beckett, Dr. Keller having recused herself from the decision based upon personal considerations. Subject of course to the review of SGC medical personnel.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” John asked.
“And contingent upon one other thing,” Woolsey said. He sighed. “That Dr. McKay is not to return to Earth under any circumstances until it is clear that all effects of the retrovirus are completely eliminated.”
“That may never happen,” John said. “Carson and Jennifer said…”
“I’m well aware of that, Colonel Sheppard,” Woolsey said. “Dr. McKay may have to spend the rest of his life in the Pegasus Galaxy.”
John bit back his first answer. That’s not so bad, he nearly said. And it wasn’t. Not compared to being locked up. Not compared to being a Wraith forever. Not to having to go back to Earth. Being exiled to Atlantis for the foreseeable future wasn’t so bad at all…
“We’ll just have to see how it goes,” Woolsey said briskly. “After all, these effects may fade in time. It’s only been six days. In a few months the situation may be entirely different.”
“That’s true,” John said. “It may clear up on its own.”
“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” Woolsey asked.
“Yeah.” John pulled his head back. Rodney stuck in Atlantis wasn’t horrible at all. Better that, some part of him said, than Rodney being recalled to Earth. “Dr. Robinson has been doing some hypnosis work with Teyla. We think we’ve got a good lead on a ZPM and I want to take the team to check it out.”
“Go on.”
“It’s a space gate — we dialed it years ago and never checked it out further once we discovered it was in high orbit around a planet that didn’t seem to offer anything. No lights, no radio or EM emissions, no signs of technology. I can’t swear it’s uninhabited, but it’s unlikely to have a population that would be a threat to us. In and out in a cloaked jumper, checking out this lead. Pretty much minimal risk. If we don’t find anything, we’ve wasted an afternoon.”
Woolsey folded his hands. “That does sound like minimal risk. Do you think there’s actually a ZPM there?”
“There was once.” John shrugged. “That’s about all we’ve got anywhere. It may be gone, it may be destroyed, who knows? But it’s worth taking a look.”
“All right.” Woolsey took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Assemble your team whenever you’re ready. You have a go, Colonel.”
John warmed up the puddle jumper, checking the board carefully though he’d done this hundreds of times. There was no such thing as a perfunctory flight check. Teyla slid into the seat beside him. “Ok?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I am sorry that I am late. I was seeing Torren off to New Athos.”
“It’s ok. Radek’s not here yet either.” Everything was green. They could get going anytime Radek showed up. Ronon was already in the chair behind him, leaning back with his eyes shut like he was taking a nap. John keyed the radio on. “Radek? We’re waiting for you in the jumper bay.”
“In a moment,” Radek said. The noise around him sounded like he was downstairs in the gate room. Probably people had about ten things they wanted him to do before he left. “I am…” The end of his sentence was cut off.
Teyla smiled. “I am glad I am not the latest one.”
“Not by a long shot,” John said. Radek would be a while.
“Ready to go?” Rodney’s voice was cheerful as he appeared in the cockpit door. Ronon came to his feet in one move, while Teyla and John swiveled around. His hair was dead white, standing up spiked like an 80s rock star, in sharp contrast to his black leather Atlantis jacket, but otherwise he looked like himself, like old familiar Rodney. Maybe he was a little thinner, looked a little older, but his voice, his hands — all Rodney.
“What?” Ronon said.
“Carson’s cleared me out of the infirmary,” Rodney said with a smile John didn’t quite believe. “So I’m good for duty. Radek out, me back in.” He looked at John. “Right?”
John opened his mouth and closed it. He could see every word written on Ronon’s and Teyla’s faces, just as if they’d discussed it for an hour. No from Ronon, yes from Teyla. But it was his call, and he knew perfectly well it was about more than this mission. If he said no, if he sent Rodney downstairs and had him send up Radek, it was saying he was off the team. It was saying he couldn’t be trusted. And everyone would know that. If John wouldn’t trust him, who would?
“Are you sure you’re ok to go in the field?” John temporized. “You just got out of the infirmary. And don’t you still have some…” Wraithy bits didn’t seem like the way to put it.
“I’m good,” Rodney said with that same not-right smile. “Never felt better. Of course, I’ve still got this pesky telepathy thing.” He waved his finger around beside his ear. “But since the only person who can hear it is Teyla…”
“It may prove very helpful on this mission,” Teyla said warmly. “I am glad you are back, Rodney.”
Teyla was staking out a position. It wasn’t warning to him, but to Ronon, who looked thunderous. John didn’t think she understood quite how freaked out Ronon had been, how far he’d been pushed.
And so he looked at Ronon, not Rodney. “If Rodney’s himself again and good to go, let’s do it,” he said. “We’ve all had some bad times and come back.” They’d trusted Ronon again after he’d turned. Now Ronon could do the same. And no, it wasn’t easy. It was never easy.
“Ok,” Ronon said and sat down, but his eyes didn’t leave Rodney as he bustled around, fussily arranging his gear in the seat behind Teyla.
“Control, this is Sheppard,” John said into the radio. “Opening the bay do
ors.”
“Confirmed,” Airman Salawi said confidently. “Clear the gateroom floor, please.”
The jumper descended into the gateroom and John dialed the gate, listening to Radek talking to Salawi. He sounded relieved.
This was better. This was how it ought to be. The wormhole opened and the jumper threaded the needle.
It was a high orbital gate, just as John remembered. The jumper sent back a wave of telemetry. No other ships, no wreckage, no satellites, nothing but the gate. Below, a mostly blue and brown planet turned serenely, seamed by the long white cloud layer of a cold front, deserted and quiet.
“Teyla?” he asked.
She shook her head, her eyes on the starfield. “I am not sensing Wraith,” she said. Her eyes flickered back to the seat behind her. “Or at least not more than a slight distortion that I believe can be accounted for.”
Rodney huffed, and then Teyla smiled, their eyes meeting over the chair back as he shrugged with an offhanded smirk. John shook his head. He was going to have to get used to their little telepathic asides.
“Ok, Teyla,” he said. “Tell us where to set down.”
Teyla looked over the map now unscrolling on the heads up display, the jumper neatly filling in water and land and weather patterns at his prompting. He gave her time. After all, she was trying to match what she saw to a memory ten thousand years old.
“There, I believe,” she said, pointing toward the eastern coast of the large southern continent. “I think that is the right area.”
“Ok.” John put them into a lower pass, dropping down through cloud layers and jet stream to about ten thousand feet. One of the indicators blinked briefly. “Picking up some wreckage to the north of here. No power source.”
“Some space junk,” Rodney said. “Probably.”
The puddle jumper’s readings were clear. “It’s old,” John said. “Not even any residual radiation. Not our problem.” This was the kind of world the Travelers liked. If they’d crashed or scrapped a ship here long ago they would have stripped it bare. And the sensors weren’t suggesting the kind of rare alloys an Ancient ship would have had. “Let’s keep our minds on the ball here. Teyla, where are we going?”
STARGATE ATLANTIS: Secrets (Book 5 in the Legacy series) Page 21
