“So they need a doctor here.”
“They need an entire medical clinic with an electric generator, a stocked pharmacy, and someone to teach surgical techniques. And maybe we can set that up for them eventually. But they don’t have it right now. What they have right now is the Bride. Sure, she’s not here all the time, but are we?”
She looked over at the elderly man whose wife was still spinning. “That’s Garrel. His son was getting ready to take over his fishing boat for him, only then there was a freak storm last year and his son drowned. If I had him back in Atlantis, I could treat his arthritis with painkillers and steroid injections. But that’s not going to extend his life by a single minute, or make him able to spend all day working on a fishing boat again. What Alabaster’s offering means he can keep working his boat until his grandson’s old enough to take over, so that he can feed his family.”
She nodded toward a weedy boy in his early teens sitting eating stew. At his side, a middle-aged woman was knitting, her wooden needles flashing as something indeterminate and wooly took shape on her lap. “That’s the boy and his mother.”
“So which of them… ” Rodney couldn’t quite finish the sentence.
“The mother,” Jennifer said. “I’m trying to keep the trials of the retrovirus limited to adults, even if people here don’t entirely understand why I don’t consider a thirteen-year-old boy to be a grown man capable of giving informed consent. I’m doing the best I can, here, Rodney. And how hard that makes it to sleep at night is not the important thing right now.” Jennifer took a deliberate breath. “So. How is everyone in Atlantis?”
“Fine. You know, the same as usual. I’m sure Carson wishes you were there to help, but he’s managing.”
“Carson has a lot more patience for being Atlantis’s chief medical officer than I ever did,” Jennifer said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“He is. Fine. We’re all fine.”
“That’s good,” Jennifer said. She looked like she was running out of things to say, or at least things that she felt like it was a good idea to say. “How’s Newton?”
“He’s fine, too,” Rodney said. “But he misses you.”
“I’m sure Newton will be okay.”
Rodney took a deep breath. “Of course he will.”
“McKay!” John called from across the room. “Ember’s outside. Let’s go find Ronon.”
Jennifer shook her head. “That should be a fun ride home,” she said dryly.
“Tell me about it,” Rodney said.
The ride home was tense, but nothing compared to Woolsey’s expression when he met them in the jumper bay.
“Would anyone care to explain?” he asked.
Everyone shrugged and looked at John, who squared his shoulders.
“Alabaster’s condition for providing us with information was having one of her people accompany us as an observer.”
“I see.” Woolsey looked as if he were counting to ten, and then tapped his radio on. “Colonel Lorne, please meet me in the gate room with a security team, to escort our Wraith guest to his quarters.”
“A security team will not be necessary,” Teyla said.
“Yes, it will,” Ronon said.
“Colonel Sheppard, I’d like to see you and your team in my office,” Woolsey said, and left them standing around the jumper looking like children who’d been called to the principal’s office.
“I’ll just go and… ” Daniel began.
“He means you, too,” John said.
*Trouble?* Ember asked silently. He might have meant the question only for Teyla, but Rodney could hear him, too.
*No,* Teyla reassured, at the same time that Rodney said, *Maybe.*
Teyla gave Rodney a quelling look, and then spoke aloud. “We’ll talk after we have had a chance to debrief.”
“Of course,” Ember said aloud. *At least you are not throwing me in a cell.*
*We would not do that to our guests,* Teyla said.
*Probably,* Rodney said. It was uncomfortably easy to slip back into using Wraith telepathy, and to think of their guest not as “Ember” but as the flavor of banked-fire caution for which any spoken word was an inadequate approximation. He couldn’t help wondering if the Wraith still thought of him as the racing, skittering brilliance that had been “Quicksilver.”
Ember looked at him with yellow eyes as if he meant to answer, but Rodney deliberately closed his mind; he really didn’t want to know.
“Come on, McKay,” John said, giving him a push in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s go get yelled at.”
Woolsey steepled his fingers and looked at them sternly from across his desk. “I would like to know just how you suggest I inform the IOA that we are planning to share Asgard technology with the Wraith.”
“Well, that’s really a byproduct of the fact that we’re cooperating with the Wraith to find Asgard settlement sites,” Daniel said. This was an old game, and one that he felt he had mastered. “It’s not that we’re planning to share the technology, it’s just that if we happen to find any technology and we have one of the Wraith with us, of course they’ll find out as much as we do about it. Initially. But there’s no need to share any further conclusions we come to as we study… whatever it is we find.”
“I see no need for that either,” Teyla said.
“But we are still cooperating with the Wraith,” Woolsey pointed out. “For a project that, whatever its scientific value, was initially supposed to be an archaeological study of Ancient settlement, and was not supposed to include bringing one of the Wraith to Atlantis.”
“It’s like you don’t want us to do this,” John said.
“Right, but the opportunity to cooperate with the Wraith to find Asgard technology, which we’ve all agreed could be of considerable value to Earth, is really just a byproduct of the strategic reason for bringing one of the Wraith to Atlantis,” Daniel said quickly.
“And what would that be?”
“An exchange of hostages. Not that anyone is putting it that way, but they have Dr. Keller aboard one of their ships. We’re in a better position to feel confident that she’s going to remain unharmed if we have one of their people assisting us in Atlantis.”
Woolsey considered him for a long moment. “I always used to hate it when you did this,” he said.
Daniel shrugged a little. “I know that.”
“All right,” Woolsey said finally. “Find out what Ember knows about the Asgard. If you identify a promising site, we will send him along with our team to investigate.”
“We should show him the climate control device,” Rodney said.
“You mean the weather machine,” John said.
“We don’t know that it’s a weather machine, but, yes.”
“I thought you said it was a weather machine.”
“I said that our best hypothesis based on our preliminary examination of one piece of broken machinery—”
“Gentlemen,” Woolsey broke in. “It’s extremely hard for me to justify sharing the one discovery of Asgard technology that we have made entirely on our own with the Wraith.”
“You need their help to figure it out?” Ronon asked.
“No, I do not need their help to figure it out,” Rodney said indignantly. “I was merely interested in comparing notes with someone who’s worked with similar technology in the past. That doesn’t mean that I’m dependent on someone else’s analysis—”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Woolsey said. “Because for now, I’m going to have to say no. Please confine yourselves to finding out what the Wraith know about additional settlement sites.”