Daniel shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“I still think you are a terrible diplomat.”
“I’ve been told worse things,” he said. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can be stubborn.”
“Really?” Teyla asked sweetly.
“It’s not my best quality.”
“Still, I admit that you do have some good qualities.”
“Well. Good. I think.”
“Can we please go find Elizabeth now?” Rodney asked.
Ronon dropped down to straddle one of the jumper seats. “What are we going to do about Sora?”
“Nothing for the moment,” Teyla said. “When we return to Atlantis, I expect we should have a talk with Ladon Radim.”
“He already doesn’t trust her.”
“But he may not know that she has allies among the scientists that he is working with. Or that she is close to solving the problem of how to activate the ATA gene.”
“Not that close,” Daniel said. “What do you think she would do if she figured it out?”
“That depends on how many successes she has,” Teyla said. “Even the recessive ATA gene is rare among the peoples of the Pegasus galaxy. Dr. Beckett tried the process on many Athosians, and none of them acquired the ATA gene as a result.”
“Me neither,” Ronon said. “But apparently some Satedans have it.”
“It’s not exactly common on Earth,” Daniel said. “SGC personnel who have the gene are more likely to get sent to Atlantis, so that skews the numbers. But, assuming that she could find a number of people who have the right genetic makeup, then what? It would be stupid for them to try to invade Atlantis at this point.”
“It would,” Teyla said. “But I expect Pride of the Genii is less heavily guarded. If I were Ladon Radim, I would remedy that.”
“That’s all we need,” Ronon said. “Sora Tyrus with her own warship.”
“That is a problem for another day,” Teyla said. “Rodney, can you get the jumper working again?”
“Probably,” Rodney said, sliding into the pilot’s seat. “It’s not like it’s exactly a good idea to crash-land these things, but the Ancients built them to be remarkably sturdy. It’s like they envisioned that future civilizations were going to come along and fly them very, very badly. They apparently practiced idiot-proofing for the ages.”
“Maybe the Ancients also had a lot of really bad pilots,” Daniel said. “We tend to assume these things are like fighter planes, but maybe they’re more the SUVs of Ancient civilization. Complete with airbags and cameras to help you back up.”
“Rodney?” Teyla prompted, in an attempt to head off an incipient discussion of whether Ancient transportation methods were more like one or another transportation method used on Earth. While she was willing to grant that he had handled Sora well, she still felt that Daniel Jackson had an uncanny talent for digressing from whatever the matter at hand might be.
“I can fix it,” Rodney said. “Just give me a few minutes to get everything powered back up and make sure we aren’t missing anything essential that would make this a very short trip.”
The silence as Rodney worked on the jumper was an uncomfortable one. “You really believe it is Elizabeth,” Teyla said finally.
Rodney didn’t lift his head from the jumper’s readouts. “Yes. It’s Elizabeth.”
“She was frozen in space, unable to think or experience anything,” Teyla said. “It is hard to see how she could have ascended while in that state.”
“Maybe she had some kind of help,” Daniel said. “The Ancient who helped me Ascend the first time, Oma Desala — she used to make a habit of helping members of less evolved species achieve Ascension. I was going to die, and she stepped in and helped me take that last step. Now, doing that didn’t work out so well for her in the end, but it’s not inconceivable that someone here in the Pegasus Galaxy could be doing the same thing.”
“We have never encountered such a being before,” Teyla said. “And many of us have died, or been on the point of death.” She felt a flicker of anger at the idea that someone who could have helped her friends who had died might have been watching them and judged them unworthy. The ways of the Ancestors were mysterious, and yet…
“I know,” Daniel said, his eyes on her face. “I know. Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what it means that I got to Ascend and other people I knew good people, people who deserved to live, some of them a lot more than I did died. It’s not that I deserved it more. It’s probably not even that Oma Desala liked me more, although I wouldn’t entirely rule out reasons that random. It’s that I’d already gone a long way down that path already. It’s like being able to pull someone into a boat if they can grab a rope that you throw them. It’s not that you don’t care about people who are unconscious in the water. But you can’t help them if they can’t grab that rope.”
“We know Elizabeth tried to Ascend,” Rodney said.
“And we know that she repeatedly failed,” Teyla said. “Is it not more likely that this is some new trickery of the Replicators?”
Ronon shook his head. “Why would you rather think that?”
“Because I had given up hope,” Teyla snapped. “And the last thing I want is to begin hoping that we will find my friend, when what is most likely is that she is dead and this is only some device of our enemies made in her shape.”
“I understand that,” Rodney said. “Believe me, I’ll be the first to say that pessimism is usually a good way to avoid being horribly disappointed.”
“And yet you believe.”
“She talked to me,” Rodney said. “And, before you say it, it was not a spiritual experience, if by ‘spiritual experience’ you mean ‘thing that isn’t really happening.’ She was there in my head, and she talked to me, and as someone who’s had hypoxia-induced hallucinations before, I think I’m in the best position to say that this wasn’t one.”
“I am not sure that is how I would define a spiritual experience,” Teyla said.
“If I had a spiritual experience, it was the spiritual experience of having Ascended Elizabeth talk to me,” Rodney said. “That is one hundred percent as spiritual as I get. And it certainly wasn’t a hallucination, unless we’re willing to accept that it’s entirely a coincidence that someone who thinks they’re Elizabeth is wandering around with amnesia right now.”
“I think you’re scared to find out if it’s true or not,” Ronon said to Teyla.
“Is that so hard for you to understand?”
Ronon shrugged. “No. I don’t want it to be some Replicator either. And if Sheppard were here, he’d be going crazy trying not to get his hopes up. But it’s better to find out the truth.”
Teyla took a deep breath and then let it out. “Sometimes you are very wise, my friend,” she said.
“Nice to know I’m not always wrong,” Ronon said.
“I did not mean it that way,” Teyla protested, but Ronon was smiling.
“All right,” Rodney said. “I think we’re back in business.”
“You think, or you’re sure?” Daniel said, looking skeptically at the jumper’s controls. “I’d rather not crash in this thing twice.”
“I’m never a hundred percent sure,” Rodney said. “We’re flying around in machines that are thousands of years old. They didn’t come with a warranty. But, yes, I am as sure as I ever am that there’s no particular reason that the jumper is going to crash again today.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Daniel said after a moment.
“So can we go?” Rodney said, his hands poised over the jumper’s control panel.
“Take us to Sateda,” Teyla said.
The open square by the gate on Sateda was as usual full of people making their way between the buildings or sitting outside them to drink tea or talk. Every time they came there, Teyla saw more signs of repairs in progress; windows that had been boarded up a month before now boasted shutters that could be opened to let in light and air, and a few had been mended with scraps of colored glass leaded together so that their patchwork surfaces shone in the sun.