STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) (31 page)

“It could kill him,” Carson said. “I know.”

“I looked at your notes on the original experiment,” Jennifer said. “Your suggestion if the first research subject didn’t survive the transformation was for Sheppard’s team to go out and get you another Wraith.”

Carson closed his eyes for a moment, his good hand tightening on the lab bench. This was part of the reason he’d wanted to spend his time out in the field, not doing this kind of research anymore. It all twisted together in his stomach, the experiment on Michael that the first Carson Beckett had done but that he could still remember, the experiments on the hybrids, the ones who hadn’t survived, who’d been disposed of as wasted materials—

“Carson?” Jennifer said, sounding concerned.

He made himself take a deep breath and focus on Rodney. Rodney, who God willing would be their patient soon, and who deserved to be well and whole again if anyone did. “We can put him in stasis,” he said. “Take the time to come up with a solution that isn’t as risky—”

“And eventually we’ll have to test it,” Jennifer said. “His best chance of surviving that is if he’s fed recently. Tell me it isn’t.”

“I can’t tell you it isn’t,” Carson admitted after a long moment. “But I can’t imagine that he’d want you to endanger yourself this way just to make his chances better. And if you think he’s just going to be willing to feed on you to survive, even if you know it won’t kill you—”

“If it won’t kill me, then it’s like… like if he needed a kidney transplant or something. It’s an acceptable risk for the donor, even if the process isn’t very pleasant. I’d be willing to do that for Rodney, if it was what he needed to stay alive. Wouldn’t you?”

“A kidney is one thing,” Carson said. “Letting him feed on you—”

“We’re hoping the process won’t be nearly as painful if we get it right,” Jennifer said. “And even if it is, wouldn’t you do it if it would save Rodney’s life? Wouldn’t Colonel Sheppard, or Teyla, or… Okay, maybe not Ronon, not after what the Wraith have done to him, but you get my point.”

“I suppose I would,” Carson said.

“This is not going to kill me,” Jennifer said. “If the worst thing that happens is that I go through what just happened to me again, I can accept that.”

“We’ve seen that being repeatedly fed and revived causes significant side effects,” Carson said. “When you treated Ronon after the Wraith brainwashed him, he was physically addicted to the Wraith’s reverse feeding process. That wasn’t easy for him to recover from, and I’m not sure I would say there aren’t any lasting psychological effects.”

“He said they did it to him over and over,” Jennifer said. “I’m not talking about anything like that. Once more, maybe twice at the most. Colonel Sheppard survived more than that under worse circumstances, and he’s fine.”

“For a certain definition of fine,” Carson said.

Jennifer spread her hands. “The one we use around here,” she said. “I treat Marines and airmen all the time who’ve been wounded in action. Some I can patch up, and they’ll be fine in a week. Some are going to carry the scars they got here for the rest of their life. Some of them have disabling injuries, or disabling post-traumatic reactions. I can’t watch that every day and not be willing to do the same myself.”

“You’re not a soldier,” Carson said.

“I know,” Jennifer said. “And I don’t want to be one, and I’m actually not sure—” She hesitated, and then went on more deliberately. “I’m not sure I want to be part of a program that does that to people for the rest of my life,” she said. “But right now what’s important is that this is what I need to do to save Rodney’s life. Even if we never use this thing again, even if it never saves anybody else from the Wraith, if we can save Rodney, then I want to do this.” She raised her chin. “Will you back me up on this?”

“There’s no such thing as ‘never using it again,’” Carson said. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

“Yes or no, Carson?” Jennifer said.

“Everything you’re saying is true,” Carson said. “I’ll say as much to Colonel Sheppard. As to whether I think you should take the risk…” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t do it to you as your doctor. But I want to help Rodney as much as you do, and if you’re determined to do this to yourself, I won’t stand in your way.”

“Thank you,” she said, her expression lightening.

Carson shook his head. “I just hope we won’t both be sorry.”

Sam ducked through the noisy gym to the small practice room in the back, dodging around four treadmills occupied by jogging Marines who were watching a long-ago recorded football game on the TV along the wall and arguing about every play. The door wasn’t locked and it was quiet. Which was a good thing. She preferred not to try to concentrate on yoga with TV and football and loud arguments about ‘You are so bogus, man!’ Her Zen was a little harder to find than that.

Teyla stood in the middle of the room, bent into an incredibly painful looking pretzel pose, her green Wraith skin incongruous with her Athosian gym clothes.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, starting to back out. “I didn’t realize this room was taken.”

“You are welcome to come in,” Teyla said, extending her arms to begin coming out of the posture. “It is very noisy in the main gym.”

“Thanks.” Sam put down her towel and bag on the bench beside the window. It was dark outside, and the stained glass looked muddy against the night. “I was looking for somewhere to do yoga without so much of a crowd.”

“It is difficult to concentrate with the television,” Teyla agreed, bending in another way that Sam thought seemed pretty much impossible. Teyla made it look easy.

“That, and I’m not sure I want some twenty year old commenting on my fat ass or saying, ‘Hey, Carter can only bench press whatever.’ I never used to be able to figure out why Jack started using the SGC gym at an ungodly time of morning, but now I get it.”

Teyla looked at her critically, and also upside down. “I do not think your ass is fat,” she said calmly.

“It’s not as skinny as it used to be, and I do a lot of sitting on it on the
Hammond
.” Sam sat down on the floor, taking off her shoes. “I have to be a lot more conscientious about going to the gym now that I don’t have people chasing me and shooting at me on a daily basis.”

“And you are not twenty,” Teyla said serenely, inverting and stretching forward on her toes.

“That too.” Sam started her stretches while Teyla leaned forward again, her back leg perfectly straight as she bent from the waist over her front leg. Sam was forty one. She couldn’t have done that when she was twenty, and Teyla couldn’t be more than a couple of years younger than she was. And she’d had a baby.

“I do not wish that I were,” Teyla said contemplatively as she came up. “I was very foolish when I was twenty.”

“I was very serious.”

“I imagine that you were.” Teyla looked at her, and her Wraith face was hard to read, though her voice was not. “Have you always known exactly what you wanted?”

“No.” Sam put her right leg out, bending forward over it. Her forehead sort of touched her knee. Kind of. If she shifted off the hip bone. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

“I have too,” Teyla said. Her voice was rueful. “That one’s name was Jorrah, and I was unwise to marry him.”

“Mine was Jonas,” Sam said. She could definitely feel the pull in her hip. God, she was sick of that thing popping! Her hip was getting as bad as Jack’s knees. “But at least I didn’t quite marry him.” She straightened up. “He turned out to be crazy.”

“Jorrah was not crazy. Only manipulative.” Teyla was on the other leg now, but there was a wobble in the pose this time. She wasn’t holding it right. Left leg. The bone bruise she’d had a couple of months ago, no doubt. Those things took time to heal.

“Check,” Sam said. “I dated one of those too. He wanted to get a dog and that was really the last straw.”

Teyla didn’t look up. “What is wrong with dogs?”

“Nothing is wrong with dogs.” Sam switched legs, stretching her left one out. “If you like dogs. If you have the kind of life where you know you’ll be home at a certain time and you can let the dog out and feed it.”

“Of course,” Teyla said. That hip was definitely wobbling, but she was determinedly holding the pose. “I thought perhaps it was some sort of Air Force taboo against dogs.”

Sam snorted. “No. We’ve got some weird ones, but nothing against dogs. I was engaged to that one too.”

Teyla’s mouth twitched. “You seem to have had some close calls. You have been engaged how many times?”

Sam put her forehead to her left knee. That was easier. “Three,” she said, only hesitating slightly. “Maybe I’m just hard to marry.”

“That may be so,” Teyla said seriously.

Sam stretched. “You know, when you live like this… Maybe the time will come when I’m ok with staying on Earth and getting a dog and being home at night. One day the
Hammond
will be somebody else’s. But I can’t imagine who I’d be if I didn’t want to walk through the Stargate.”

Teyla’s voice was rueful. “Nor I,” she said, coming out of the pose. “I am Teyla Who Walks Through Gates, and I cannot imagine that I would remain myself if I were content to always be in one world when there are so many to know. But it seems that my compromises do not have to be as cruel as yours.”

“Don’t they?” Sam asked, lifting her eyes to Teyla’s Wraith face, feeding hand and Athosian clothes.

Teyla took a breath. “Perhaps they are,” she said. “Only different.”

“You have your son.”

“Yes.” Teyla sunk to the ground in one graceful move, her legs folding under her like some sort of water bird. “But I no longer have my rank and position among my own people. You have that. Athosians tolerate the Gift, unlike most of the peoples of this galaxy. But this…” She glanced down at her arms, her long emerald nails. “If I say that I am Steelflower? This they will not understand. It is too far and too much. I will be outcast.” She shook her head, looking up at the darkened window above. “You have your starship.”

“I do.” Sam crossed her legs. “And that’s not as smooth as I’d like it to be. I’ve always been the wonk, not the inspirational leader. I’ve always been part of a team. A starship crew has to be a team, but the captain has to stand a little apart. I can’t be in there shooting the bull with Franklin and Chandler.”

“I can see that.” Teyla leaned back on her arms, arching her back. “What about Mel Hocken? Is she not officially part of the
Daedalus
’ crew? It seems that the two of you have much in common.”

Sam took a deep breath. “There are complicated reasons why that’s not a good idea.”

“I understand,” Teyla said, and she thought she did. After all, she had lived among these people for more than five years, and she thought she understood their taboos, even if she did not understand the reasons for them. “Athosians are more accepting than many peoples because we have been repeatedly been culled to the bone. We live so close to the borders of the land of death that we know better than to reject any love that comes, whatever its shape or form. Who shall say that anyone should not care for another, or that a child should have one father alone when what is important is that everyone be part of the whole? Otherwise we will die.” She leaned her head back, looking up at the beveled ceiling. “And yet if Kanaan saw me like this he would wonder if Torren were safe with me.”

“You would never hurt Torren,” Sam said sharply.

“Who knows what a Wraith would do?” Her smile was grim. “People would wonder. If Kanaan said, ‘I do not want Torren to live with her because Atlantis is too dangerous, and because the new man she has chosen is not of our people,’ Athosians would mock him. Kanaan is jealous, they would say. It is unseemly to be possessive of one who has moved on, problematic to upset the group with attachments which are not mutual. He would lose face, and none would listen to his complaints. But if he said, ‘She is Wraith, and she no longer knows who she is,’ that would be a different matter. ‘Who can tell what she might do? It is too dangerous for a son of Athos, for my son.’”

“That totally sucks.”

“So do your compromises.”

“Yeah.” Sam said. “They do.”

“Which is not to say that Kanaan would do such,” Teyla said. She sat up straight, her brow furrowed. “I do not think he would. But I have been wrong so badly before.”

“Jorrah?”

“Yes.” Teyla shook her head.

“At least he didn’t try to set himself up as a god on a small planet?” Sam asked.

Teyla laughed, as she’d meant her to. “No. Did Jonas?”

“Oh yeah.” Sam put the water bottle down. “Never can say I don’t have taste.”

“I think perhaps we will chalk it up to experience,” Teyla said. “But John may be right that we are all a little cracked.”

It was
going to be close. Jack could see that. One vote, maybe two in either direction. A vote against sending Woolsey back to Atlantis was essentially a vote for Daniel. Now that they’d gotten in contact, it was obvious that someone had to be appointed immediately, and the crowd who didn’t want Atlantis in the hands of the Air Force weren’t about to leave it that way forever, with Sheppard in “temporary” charge that dragged on for months and months. If he’d really wanted to power grab, Jack thought, the smart thing to do would be just stall. Sheppard could run the show for the better part of a year that way.

But it wasn’t Sheppard’s forte. He’d gone into this intending to send Woolsey back to Atlantis. If that wasn’t possible, Daniel was the best option, though frankly Daniel might kill him. Administration was not exactly Daniel’s thing.

The swing vote was Roy Martin. And so Jack was surprised to see him by himself in the conference room a good fifteen minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. The IOA ran on diplomatic time, which meant the principals arrived fifteen minutes late. So Martin shouldn’t put in an appearance for at least half an hour. Also, surely the other IOA members wanted to bend his ear one way or the other? Unless they were all sure of his vote.