“Will it be winter there as well?” she asked Ronon, more for something to say to break the tension than because the answer mattered. She wished she had not spoken the moment after she had, because she thought she could read his expression well enough: he had forgotten after so long, and was trying to work out how his calendar fit with the Earth one they had grown used to.
“I think so,” Ronon said after a minute. “You ready?”
“We are,” Radek said.
“Then let’s go do this.”
It was warm as they stepped through the gate, too warm for winter, with a light breeze blowing and the sun shining bright. Teyla saw Ronon’s look of startlement, and for a moment she took it for a reaction to the weather until she realized that the square surrounding the Stargate was not just as they left it.
Much of the rubble that had filled the square and the streets leading out from it was gone, the pavement swept bare of glass. There were canvas tents set up on one side of the square, with lines strung between a few of them where someone had hung out clothes to dry. Many of the windows that faced on the square had been boarded up, and others that still had glass looked clean. Smoke was rising behind one of the buildings, not the smell of burning buildings but the smell of cooking.
She raised her P90 as she was taking it all in. If there were scavengers living here, they were not likely to be much of a threat, but it was rare for scavenging parties to make this much of a camp. Most of those who made their living hunting through the ruins of Culled worlds were the very young or the very desperate, those who had no trade they could follow that would make them welcome in a settlement.
“It appears that someone is living here,” she said.
“I see that,” Ronon said.
“Is that good or bad?” Radek asked.
Ronon shrugged. “Doesn’t look like Wraith, at least.”
“No,” Teyla said. The Wraith rarely camped on planets except at utmost need, and they had no need for cooking fires.
Ronon brought his pistol up at movement in one of the doorways. An older man with white hair stepped out into the sunlight, followed by two younger men with rifles slung over their shoulders. Teyla thought the rifles were not the ones the Genii used. They might be Satedan, although it had been years since the Satedans had offered such things in trade on Athos.
The older man was dressed in a dark coat and patterned waistcoat over dark trousers, his white shirt open at the neck. His boots were good but worn, and the trousers were mended at the knee. He looked at them as if sizing them up, curiously but without alarm, his gaze coming to rest on Ronon.
“You’re Satedan,” Ronon said.
“We are,” the older man said. Teyla could see Ronon beginning to smile, looking suddenly younger. She was pleased to see it, but she kept her eyes on the men with the rifles, not yet ready to relax. “Have you come to trade? Or to join us?”
“I’m Ronon Dex,” he said. “This is Teyla Emmagan and Radek Zelenka.”
“Ushan Cai,” the man said, clasping Ronon’s forearm with a smile. “You are from Atlantis, then. We have heard many stories of you.”
“I hope you have heard well of us,” Teyla said.
“You’ve killed a lot of Wraith,” Cai said. “But we heard that the City of the Ancestors had been destroyed.”
“It’s still here,” Ronon said. “We had some problems for a while.” He glanced at Teyla as if expecting her to speak; negotiating was normally her task, but these were his own people. She gave him an encouraging look, and he went on. “We came to see if we could find some titanium. We didn’t think anyone was here.”
“We’ve been here the better part of a year,” Cai said. “I would say we should talk terms for it, but as you’re Satedan yourself, and you’ll have to do the work of finding what you want and hauling it out… Well, come inside and have a drink while we talk. I’m the provisional governor of Sateda, or so everyone says. I’m not sure how much that means, but it makes people feel better.”
He turned back toward the building, and after a moment, Ronon said, “We should go hear what he has to say.”
“I agree,” Teyla said. She lowered her weapon, but kept it at the ready. She meant no disrespect for Ronon’s people, but it was best to be cautious with strangers, and the Satedans were not like the Athosians. If she had come home to find some of her people still on Athos, they would be people she knew, lost friends or relatives whose arms she would have readily rushed into.
This man was a stranger to Ronon, for all that he was one of Ronon’s people, and her time on Earth had taught her just how little being of the same people could mean to those who lived in great cities. She caught Radek’s eye, intending to tell him to stay watchful, but she saw that he was watching Cai’s guards carefully himself.
Radek was not a trusting person by nature, Teyla thought, and was glad of it.
The building Cai showed them into had once been a hotel. Ronon remembered it full of wealthy travelers, in the city to make business deals or to spend the night before making a trip through the Ring. It had been a place for people from offworld to stay, too, if they weren’t guests of someone important.
He had never stayed there, but had been inside a few times, to have a drink or on some errand. He remembered laughing with Tyre about a huddled knot of offworlders in the bar, their clothes severe and their backs straight, who were scowling as if the courting couples listening to music over glasses of beer might as well have been taking their clothes off in a brothel.
The place was empty now, the soft carpet waterstained and the electric lights gone dark, part of the staircase up to the second floor crumbled away and the rest braced with a frame of timbers. The tables in the bar were scrubbed clean, though, and there were oil lamps lit on the sills of boarded-up windows. A radio set still stood in the corner, and he had the weird desire to turn it on, even though he knew it wouldn’t make any sound.
“We got the coal boiler working, but we haven’t got all the coal in the world, so we don’t run it in good weather,” Cai said. “By next winter we’ll have hauled in more.” He waved them to a table and poured drinks for them himself, not beer but strong grain spirits that should have been mixed with something. “Nobody’s brewing beer, and what we can get in trade goes fast, so if you don’t mind drinking what’s lasted — ”
“Not at all,” Teyla said, although he saw her exchange a look with Radek when she tasted hers. Ronon hoped both of them had sense not to drain their cups fast, or they’d end up reeling, as small as they both were. He drank thirstily himself, letting the strong drink take the edge off the weirdness of being here.
“What are you doing here?” Ronon said after he’d drunk.
Cai put his own cup down. “It’s been ten years,” he said. “Going on eleven, now, but it was reaching ten years that got a few of us thinking maybe we’d risk it.” He shrugged. “I had warehouses full of trade goods that had been sitting here ten years, not to mention what other people left behind. It seemed like that was worth coming back for. And besides, it’s our home.”
“Not much left of it,” Ronon said.
Cai nodded. “Not much compared to what was. And not enough people to farm or mine coal or do the things we’d need to bring back what was. But there’s enough here that we can sell offworld that we don’t need to farm. We’re no better than scavengers right now, it’s true. But at least we’re home, and by the time what we can salvage begins to run low, we may be able to manage light industry again. It seems like a better bet than trying to start again as farmers and trappers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he said quickly to Teyla.