Alabaster shrugged. She circled him as she spoke; it might have been only an unconsciously threatening gesture, but it made him glad he had submitted to the retrovirus injection and endured an uncomfortable afternoon’s illness as a result. “Perhaps a sister. Or perhaps in a different universe, my mother had different priorities about what sort of daughter to give to our lineage. We do not leave breeding as much to chance as humans do. “
“How exactly… ” Daniel began, and then noticed John’s look of impatience. “That’s probably not important right now. I’d be very interested in talking to you at some point about Wraith society, though.”
“Your new cleverman is curious,” Alabaster said to Teyla.
“He is visiting from our home world,” Teyla said.
Alabaster looked him up and down. “A pallax of She Who Carries Many Things?”
“Daniel Jackson is a colleague of Colonel Carter,” Teyla said. Daniel wasn’t sure if that constituted agreement with Alabaster or not.
“Her consort’s son,” Alabaster said, as if putting pieces together. She nodded slightly more respectfully to Daniel.
It took him a moment to put that one together himself. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no. That’s not, Jack is actually a very common name—”
“The Asgard,” John said doggedly. “We’re here to find out what you know about the Asgard.”
“And I wouldn’t say that Jack is her—”
“We are very interested in any information you can share,” Teyla said smoothly.
Alabaster stopped circling Daniel, to his relief, and settled herself back in her chair. She looked up at them, considering. “My people took little notice of the Vanir, the ones you call the Asgard when they first appeared in this galaxy. We thought at first they were some misbegotten experiment of the Lanteans. As they did not attack us, we paid them little mind. We had enough trouble with the Lanteans.”
“Only then you won the war and the Lanteans abandoned the Pegasus Galaxy,” Daniel said.
“And the Vanir began expanding their territory. They began experimenting on humans on worlds that were within our feeding territories. We investigated, and it became clear that we had encountered a new and technologically advanced species.”
“More advanced than you,” Rodney said.
Alabaster didn’t seem to take offense, although Daniel felt that had lacked tact. “In some ways, they were more advanced even than the Lanteans, although their ships proved more fragile than the Lantean vessels. There were clevermen among them who were continuing to improve their technology even as we observed them. It became clear that we could not risk letting them live.”
“Of course not,” Ronon said.
Alabaster looked up at him, meeting his eyes calmly. “I might have argued for a different choice, had I lived in those times,” she said. “But my people were vulnerable, after our long war with the Lanteans. And the Vanir were not even our distant kin, as the Lanteans were. We did not think of them as people, and they were too dangerous to hunt for food.” Alabaster shrugged, as if that led to a foregone conclusion.
“We’re looking for any of their early settlement sites,” Daniel said. “Places they may have lived before the Wraith pushed them back to the single planet they inhabit now, or where they may have conducted their experiments on humans.”
“It was long before my time,” Alabaster said, looking up at Guide.
“Not before mine,” Guide said. “But Snow’s hive never fought the Vanir, or paid them any attention. They did not infest any worlds within our feeding territory.”
“You said you knew something about them, though,” Daniel said.
“One of my clevermen does,” Alabaster says. “He is called Ember, and he was born on a hive that fought against the Vanir long ago. He says he remembers the location of some of their outposts, and may have learned something of their technology from the devices they left behind.”
“He’s one of Guide’s men,” John said. “He did some work with Zelenka when we were dealing with Queen Death.”
“He is now one of my men,” Alabaster said, her tone sharp. “My father does not rule in my hive. Much as I value his counsel.”
Daniel couldn’t help glancing at Guide to see how he’d taken that; he wasn’t sure himself whether it worked out to a compliment or to being put in his place. Guide bared his teeth. Was that a smile? — and then sketched an elaborate bow.
“As my queen says.”
He was itching to understand the context for that bit of byplay better. Guide was Alabaster’s father, which had given him status, and probably the role of supervising her as a child, but as an adult Wraith queen, she was, had to be, in charge. It couldn’t be an easy transition, though, under the best of circumstances, and Guide had been in command of his own queenless hive for years.
Alabaster’s eyes met Guide’s for a moment, and he had the sense of silent communication. He wondered if it amounted to we are not arguing in front of the humans.
“Is your cleverman Ember here?” Teyla asked Alabaster. “May we speak to him?”
Alabaster rested her hands on the armrests of the chair, her long claws dark against the woven reeds. “I have not yet heard what you offer in exchange for this information.”
“I don’t suppose our friendship is enough, here.” John said.
Alabaster tilted her head to one side. “Do you threaten that our people will not be friends if we do not share this information with you?”
“We aren’t friends now,” Ronon said.
“Ronon,” John growled.
“What do you want in return for the information?” Teyla asked.
Alabaster leaned back in her chair. “Make me an offer,” she said.
“We’d be willing to share the information we learn with you,” Daniel said.
“Whoa, wait,” John said. “We haven’t actually been authorized to do that.”
“No one said we couldn’t do that.”
“We try not to operate on the basis of ‘everything that’s not expressly forbidden is permitted’ around here.”
“I don’t know, a lot of the time… ” Rodney began, and John shot him a sharp look. “Okay, no. We can’t just hand over Asgard technology without permission.”
“Are you expecting to find examples of their technology?” Alabaster asked with interest.
“Mainly we’re hoping to understand more about early Asgard settlement of this galaxy,” Daniel said. “Which may or may not include finding any technology they left behind.”
“It seems to me that if you will not share your discoveries, we would be making a poor bargain,” Alabaster said. “It would be better to send our own men to investigate the sites Ember remembers, if you believe there is useful technology to be found there.”
“I am sure we can come to some agreement,” Teyla said, looking as if she wished she could hit with a stick the next person on her team who spoke. “We are willing to make the effort to search these sites, with no guarantee that we will find anything of interest. And we will accept any risks involved.”
“Like being chased by dinosaurs who set fires,” Rodney said.
“They were just big birds,” Ronon said.
“The best-preserved sites are likely to be on worlds that are uninhabited by humans,” Teyla went on. “We are both aware that those worlds are usually uninhabited for a reason. We are willing to do the work of investigating with all its attendant dangers, and to share any information about the history of the Asgard that we learn with you.”
“We are uninterested in the history of these creatures,” Alabaster said. “But not entirely uninterested in their technology. We will share our information with you if you are willing to share your discoveries with us.”
“We need to talk about this,” John said. “Can you give us a few minutes?”