“I can’t believe they’re missing again,” Carson said.
“Yes, well,” Rodney snapped. “Maybe it’s time to face the facts that we aren’t very good at this. Week before last we were taken prisoner by the Olesians and tied up in a hut. The week before that Cadman and I got sucked up by a Wraith Dart. Two weeks before that we spent 24 hours running around the woods in deadly solar radiation trying to catch Off-His-Gourd Ford while Ronon wanted Carson to operate on him in the wilderness with a penknife and a toothpick like something out of MacGyver. Before that…oh yeah. Before that we were besieged by an incredible number of pissed off Wraith. It’s just possible that we’re doing it wrong!”
Carson looked at Lorne as if to say, what did you expect?
“Well, what do you suggest, doc?” Lorne said. “Pack up and go home?”
“No.” Rodney set his jaw. “There’s too much to learn here.”
“Then we take some chances,” Lorne said. “I’m sure if you don’t like being on the gate team that Dr. Zelenka wouldn’t mind taking your place.”
“Zelenka?” Rodney could hardly believe his ears. “Zelenka doesn’t even like to go off world! And he’s agoraphobic or something.”
“You’re claustrophobic,” Cadman pointed out from behind Rodney’s seat.
“Was anybody talking to you? I think not,” Rodney snapped.
“I’m just saying,” Cadman said.
“It’s much worse to be agoraphobic than claustrophobic, from the point of view of a gate team,” Rodney said. “After all, we don’t do a lot of spelunking. But we do kind of have to be outdoors under the sky.”
“I thought you didn’t like that,” Lorne said.
“Only when there’s dangerous solar radiation,” Rodney replied doggedly. “You were incredibly careless. I bet if Carson checked your sperm count he’d be appalled.”
Cadman made some noise that sounded like a stifled sob.
“I don’t need his bloody sperm count!” Carson said. “It’s not a fertility clinic around here!”
“My sperm are just fine,” Lorne said, but he didn’t sound too confident. As well he should not. It was no laughing matter.
Cadman made another strangled noise.
“Look,” said Carson in his best consulting physician tone, “It’s not as though he won’t make more. The kind of long term radiation damage you’re talking about, Rodney, is not something you’re going to get in a day from solar radiation on a habitable planet. The human body is a lot more resilient than you think. In eight to ten weeks Major Lorne’s sperm will be entirely normal. Unless he were planning on impregnating someone immediately, he’d probably be fine. And you know that sperm quality doesn’t necessarily have any physiological side effects. Most men with poor sperm motility don’t even know they have a problem.”
“Do we have to keep talking about this?” Lorne asked.
They were all spared replying by Cadman interrupting. “Look!” she said, pointing ahead. “That can’t be good.”
They were passing over desert and scattered oases, the green of the canopy of groves of palm trees bright against the sands. One, however, was different. A dark line cut across the green, a trail of broken trees and snapped off branches, culminating in a dark spot nearly at the edge of the desert.
“Something crashed,” Cadman said.
Rodney cursed.
“They hit the energy shield too,” Carson said. “Oh, hell.” He had already begun the turn to investigate. Even from this distance it didn’t look good. This was not a controlled landing like theirs. This was much, much worse.
“Ok,” Lorne said, standing up. “Everybody, it’s search and rescue time. Cadman, you take the perimeter.”
Rodney felt ill. They passed close over, seeking a landing site just beyond the trees, and he saw what was left of the other jumper. It lay half buried in dirt and sand, the windshield broken and one of the drive pods completely missing, its side scorched as though by fire. If Sheppard and Teyla had been lying injured in that thing for two days… He couldn’t help but imagine, though he would much rather not. If they’d been lying dead in that thing for two days, while he couldn’t get the crappy DHD to work…
“Dr. Beckett?” Lorne said.
“As soon as we’re down,” Carson said grimly, and Rodney knew he was thinking the same thing. Or perhaps blaming himself for the time lost when they skimmed the energy field themselves. “I’m on it.”
Lorne clasped his shoulder briefly. “I know you are, doc,” he said. “Let’s move out!”
Chapter Sixteen
Shortly after the sun passed its zenith a servant came along the stern deck with water and bread and cheese, which John and Teyla ate sitting along the rail. John cast an eye forward to the canopied section where presumably Tolas and the most important passengers were. “They’re not starving us anyway.”
“Which makes sense if they’re not sure what we are,” Teyla said. The seas were calm and the skies blue. The galley skimmed over the waves light as a sea bird. It would be an enjoyable adventure, were it not for the end they now suspected waited for them — the Wraith, set up as gods over a captive people who literally provided them nourishment. “Thank you,” she said to the servant, taking the cup from his hand. “May I ask you who the people are on the very forward deck?”
He glanced in that direction. “They are participants in the Games. Competitors in the Games of Life.” He nodded quickly and hurried away, as if he had been told not to spend overly long.
“Competitors in the games?” Teyla said.
John shook his head. “No way.”
From where they were it was easy to pick out Jitrine among the passengers on the forward deck, but she was not the only one who was elderly. There were two men who seemed older than she was, one of whom was crabbed and bent. There were five or six others, a tall bearded man who stared out over the sea, a boy and girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, and several women who didn’t look like athletes.
Teyla shook her head. “Those people cannot be competitors. Can you imagine Jitrine and that young boy in some kind of sport against the others?”
“Foot races, track and field…” The crease between John’s brows deepened. “Any kind of boxing or wrestling… Can you see Jitrine boxing or wrestling?”
“She is an elderly woman, and she is hale, but no,” Teyla said. “Either these games are not tests of strength and speed, or…”
“They’re a hoax,” John said. “Some kind of excuse to give these people to the Wraith. Jitrine was clearly Tolas’ prisoner too and she said there was a long story about why, about tribute and how the people in The Chora didn’t want to pay it.”
“Because it was too heavy,” Teyla said. It made a grim sort of sense. “The tribute is people, John. Those participants in the games are the tribute. Unwanted people.”
“People somebody has a grudge against,” John said. “Nice. The Olesians at least bothered to accuse people of a crime before they stocked the Wraith’s feeding pen. These guys pretend they’re sending them to compete in the games.”
“It causes less resistance, I imagine,” Teyla said. “After all, if one is not being sent anywhere bad, why should people object?”
“But they do,” John said grimly. “That’s what Jitrine was talking about. Too much tribute. Too many people just disappearing. Too many friends and family asking too many questions. It gets dicey for a ruler to have lots of people disappear.”
“And then we just wander in to fill the quota?” Teyla’s eyebrows rose. “We take two spots and that is two less local people Tolas has to find. No wonder he wants us to behave. If we start raising a fuss, people will wonder about what is going to happen, where people are going. If we are just traveling along nicely, it is nobody’s problem.”