He nodded slowly, the sea breeze pulling at his hair. “I get that,” he said.
“Perhaps you do,” she said. There was always something of the outcast about John, no matter how well he tried to fit in. “I am a bad Athosian,” she said.
“Bad?” He took up a fruit and looked at her over it. “Everybody likes you.”
Teyla laughed. “Oh, I wish that were so! In any group there are currents and counter currents, jealousies and gossip and trouble. We are no different or more virtuous than any other group of human beings! Admittedly right now I have a good amount of what you might call social capital, but I am not a good Athosian.”
“What’s a good Athosian?” John looked bemused.
“Is it so easy to define your people?” Teyla put her feet up on the bench in front of her. “I will try, though.” She looked out to sea and her face sobered. “We marry. We all marry, husband and wife tied together in work. We all marry, and we all have children. I am thirty four and childless, John, and it is a long, long time since I was married.”
“I didn’t know you were married,” he said.
Teyla shrugged. “Why should you know that? It ended long ago, long before your people came to Athos. But I have never Chosen another, and that is unusual.”
“Being divorced sucks,” John said. He took a bite of the fruit, his eyes avoiding hers entirely. “But so does being married.”
“I am not the kind of woman who marries,” Teyla said. “I am Teyla Who Walks Through Gates. I do not have room in my life for someone. I am too selfish, at the heart of it.”
“You’re not the only one,” John said. “It’s kind of a disaster. You know. People wanting things and being disappointed.”
“There are things I do not have to give,” she said. “It is better to make no promises I do not intend to keep.”
“It’s better not to make a lot of promises.” John lifted his hand to shade his eyes, looking ahead to the sea, squinting.
“Your sunglasses,” she reminded.
“Oh, right.” He got them out of his pocket and put them on. “I think there are some other ships out there.”
“There probably are. If this is a major festival, it would not surprise me if there were ships converging from all the islands and ports,” Teyla said. She did not glance around, as that would draw attention, but she already knew there was no one close by. “And I do not like this. Something is wrong here, John. Something is badly wrong.”
“I know.” His expression didn’t change and he didn’t look at her. Anyone observing would think they still spoke of other things. “There’s no way the Wraith haven’t discovered this world, as much stuff as they’ve got. You remember Olesia, right?”
Teyla tried not to twitch. “Since that was a week and a half ago, yes.”
“Elizabeth thinks that the Magistrate had some kind of deal with the Wraith. That it wasn’t just that the Wraith took the first humans they ran into, the prisoners on the island, but that they actually had a deal about it. The Olesians gave some people to the Wraith in return for the rest being left alone.” John looked out to sea, unreadable behind his sunglasses. “Nice deal if you can get it, I guess.”
“Like the warren of bones in Watership Down, the book you gave me,” Teyla said, making a connection. “Where the rabbits know there are snares in the grass but nobody ever talks about it. Nobody ever mentions the ones who’ve been taken.” She grimaced. “We are wild rabbits, we Athosians, all risking the same dangers. At least that way our hands are clean of one another’s blood.”
“Yeah.” John’s mouth was set in a grim line beneath the shades. “That. I’m starting to wonder what the deal is here.”
“You think it’s something like that?” It made sense. Teyla could see how it might be. “Tolas is definitely hiding something, but I would guess that most of the Pelagians don’t know, anymore than most of the Olesians did.”
“The answers are on that island ahead of us,” John said, gesturing with his chin. “This business about a High King and games in honor of the gods. The Games of Life?”
“What if the gods are Wraith?” Teyla blurted. She stopped, thinking about it.
John nodded slowly. “It makes sense. We’ve seen that before, back in the Milky Way. Alien predators setting themselves up as gods to get a never ending stream of stuff without having to do any work. Only in this case, the tribute isn’t stuff. It’s people.”
“Food for the gods,” Teyla breathed.
“I’ll bet you my last cigar,” John said.
“What is a cigar?”
“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Why run around Culling when they can sit on their asses and have the locals bring them tribute? Lazy bastards don’t even have to get up and do any work.”
Teyla smiled grimly. “We, at least, make them work for it.”
“They’ve got the technology to carry off the god thing. You’ve got to have a big technological gap to do that. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” John quoted.
“Who said that?”
“A guy on Earth named Arthur C. Clarke. The Wraith have that kind of advantage here, and it’s the perfect place to do it. It’s got a big population, but unlike Sateda these people don’t have the technology to get it. Ronon would see through their stuff and know it was Wraith tech, not magic. You couldn’t pull that kind of scam there. You couldn’t pull it on the Genii. But these guys aren’t there. They could get by with it.”
Teyla leaned on the ship’s rail. “So now we are being taken to the gods.”
“They’re not sure whether we’re the real thing or not,” John said. “If we really are from another planet, the Wraith will want to question us. If we’re not…” He shrugged. “We’re tasty and crunchy.”
“I will know,” she said. “I will know when we are close enough if you are right and there are Wraith here.”
John nodded seriously. “That will give us an advantage. We know what they are, but they don’t know what we are. They’ll think we’re just more little rabbits.”
“Not El-ahrairah himself.” Teyla could not help but smile. “O prince of rabbits!”
He glanced at her sideways. “I hope I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeves.”
“We have the radio,” she said.
“And we know Wraith tech. They don’t know that we know it. That’s a big thing.” John put his elbows on the rail and leaned beside her, as if also admiring the view of the sea. “We need to wait for the right opening, gather the intel and make the move when we’re ready.”
“Hopefully that will be with Lorne and a squad of Marines behind us,” Teyla said.
“Hopefully.” John lifted his head, looking toward the distant horizon. “I hope Zelenka and Ronon are doing ok.”
“So do I,” she said.
Chapter Fifteen
Radek and Ronon watched as the ship came closer, leaving off waving their arms when it became clear that the ship had seen them and altered its course to intercept them. As it came nearer, they had a better look at it. It was most probably a merchant ship. A single bank of ten oars on each side swept in time, and it was low and not particularly streamlined. An upper deck perched awkwardly astern laden with cargo lashed on with ropes, while on the forward deck a bunch of small livestock in crude cages made a variety of alarmed noises. Some of them looked like pygmy goats.
The men on deck were lean and bearded, wearing sweaty linen tunics that came to their knees, but they called out readily enough as they came alongside the little fishing boat.