“You’re still doing it, though,” Ronon said.
“We’re working on altering the retrovirus to reduce the risk of serious side effects. Alabaster’s clevermen are spending a lot of time on that problem in the lab. But Alabaster is determined to go ahead with the testing, and it’s either help her or go home.”
Ronon shook his head. “You think she’d let you go home if you wanted to?”
“I’m not her prisoner,” Jennifer said. “And she’s pretty determined to maintain good relations with Atlantis, so she’s probably not going to kill me even if I told her I wanted to leave. I don’t know how long it would take her to actually get around to dropping me off somewhere with a gate, though.”
“We have a jumper right here,” Rodney said.
“Thank you,” Jennifer said. “But I’m doing okay. I’d rather be here where I can see for myself what the retrovirus is doing.” She shrugged. “Besides the initial side effects, we haven’t been seeing any long-term problems emerging. Nothing like the Hoffan drug. There have been some people who got sick in the weeks after they took the retrovirus, but no more than in the control group of people who didn’t get the injection.”
“And the retrovirus works?”
“It works,” Jennifer said. “At least, so far it does. All the initial experimental subjects survived being fed on with no apparent long-term side effects. That’s one thing we’re checking for on this visit. Alabaster and her people are also feeding on some of the same people to see if there are any harmful side effects of repeated feeding.”
“Are we sure the people are okay with this?” John asked.
“They say they are.”
“They think she’s a god,” Ronon said. “That’s not exactly ‘informed consent,’ right?” Rodney looked at Ronon sideways, and Ronon met his eyes with a little shrug. “Your people say that a lot.”
“I’ve explained what we’re doing and why we’re doing it as best as I can,” Jennifer said. “Believe me, I know this is all ethically questionable. But so is letting people lose years of their lives or die preventable deaths when we can help them.”
“Okay,” John said, looking around at his team as if to forestall further discussion. “Dr. Keller is going to go on doing what she’s doing. That’s not actually up for debate, because it’s not actually our mission or our call. We’re going to go talk to Alabaster about the Asgard.”
“I’ll take you to her,” Jennifer said.
They followed Jennifer out the side door of the building into a tent, its woolen flaps lowered despite the warmth of the day. It was dim inside, and Daniel blinked to accustom himself to the light.
“I’ll let you talk,” Jennifer said, and ducked back through the door into Pilgrim House. Daniel turned, and got his first good look at the Wraith they were here to see.
A scarlet-haired Wraith queen was sitting in a woven reed chair across the tent, white-haired males standing by her chair or standing about the tent in attitudes of what Daniel suspected was boredom. One of them he recognized at once, both from photographs and from his sojourn in the alternate universe.
“Hello, Guide,” John drawled. “We always love to see you.”
“Sheppard.” The tall Wraith bared his teeth. Daniel wasn’t sure whether to interpret that as a smile or not.
The Wraith queen stood, inclining her head, and both Teyla and Rodney looked up as if she had spoken.
“Hello, Alabaster,” John said.
“Welcome,” Alabaster said, but addressing Teyla rather than John.
“It is good to see you again,” Teyla said, sounding more like she meant it.
The Wraith were a matriarchal society, Daniel remembered from the few cultural notes on the Wraith they’d managed to collect. A few queens ruling over many males, who were themselves divided into castes: warriors, scientists, and the non-sentient drones who served as manual labor and cannon fodder. They had been resistant to attempts to explain that human society wasn’t set up the same way; it wasn’t clear to Daniel whether they didn’t understand, or understood but still couldn’t bring themselves to treat human males as equal to females. When they acknowledged that humans were people at all.
“Our test of the retrovirus goes well,” Alabaster said. “We have fed on the same humans again, only months after the first experiment. It weakened them, but they will live.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” John said. Despite the casual words, Daniel wasn’t fooled into thinking he was relaxed.
“You’d hate to have to train new pets,” Ronon said.
“Ronon,” John said firmly.
“I’ve always thought it was unwise to become too attached to pets,” Guide said. “They never live long.”
Alabaster looked quellingly at Guide.
“You look very familiar,” Daniel said to Guide, because it seemed like they were sliding into a conversational abyss that desperately needed filling. “I wonder if the hive I visited in a parallel universe was a version of yours.”
Guide looked at Alabaster. Alabaster put her head to one side and looked at Daniel as if she weren’t sure she had understood him correctly. “Tell me about this other universe.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” John said.
Daniel glanced sideways at him. “How can it hurt anything? We were sent there by accident and we don’t know how to get back, so it’s not like we’re giving away valuable information. And if I understand the theory, there are an infinite number of parallel universes, so basically anything that can possibly happen did happen somewhere. So whatever I say about that universe can’t possibly be a surprise.”
“You’re going to tell them no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
Daniel shrugged one shoulder, not feeling the need to answer that question directly. “We accidentally wound up displaced in our quantum state so that we were in an alternate reality,” he said. “Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
“I have heard of such things,” Alabaster said.
“Okay, good. I can’t tell you how it worked, well, I wouldn’t tell you how it worked if I could, but I also genuinely don’t understand how it worked. I’m not that kind of scientist. Anyway, in the other reality, the Atlantis mission wasn’t doing so well—”
“How unfortunate,” Guide said mildly.
“—and I was taken captive by a Wraith hive. You were one of the ship’s officers, I think,” he said to Guide. “But the queen wasn’t Alabaster. She looked a lot like her, but… older, I think. It wasn’t the same person.”
“So you have met another Osprey queen,” Alabaster said. He wasn’t sure what to make of her tone. “There are few of that line left. I suppose she did not favor you with her name?”
“No. I don’t think she was used to having long conversations with her human prisoners, frankly. The only Wraith who actually introduced himself to me was called Seeker.” He could see both Guide and Alabaster react, although he wasn’t certain why. It pricked his curiosity. “You know that name.”
“He was one of the lords of my mother’s zenana,” Alabaster said after a moment. “Her Master of Sciences Biological.”
“He kept pets,” Guide said. “I always told him that one of them would stab him in his sleep someday.” He sounded more nostalgic than annoyed.
“Perhaps one might have, had he lived so long,” Alabaster said. “He was killed when my mother’s hive was destroyed by her rivals. I escaped, only to be trapped on this planet without a gate for many years.” She raised her chin to look at Guide, who bent his head at her expression. “Besides my son, my human ‘pets’ were my only company.”
“There was a younger queen aboard the hive, but I don’t think that she was you,” Daniel said.