Teyla pushed to her feet, turning to watch him dubiously. "What do you mean?"
"She was acting," John said, poking sourly at the force shield.
"Since when do Wraith act?" Rodney started to struggle into a sitting position, and Teyla moved to help him. "I don't think she was lying about never having seen a human before."
Frowning, John stepped over to him and leaned down, offering Rodney a hand up. "Why?"
Rodney gripped John's hand and groaned as John hauled him to his feet. Rodney eyed him a moment, then made an erratic gesture. "Some of our equipment was beamed up with us. She came in here to get it while you and Teyla were unconscious. It just didn't look like..she had seen a human before."
"Whatever. If they don't eat humans, they eat somebody else." John looked around again, frustrated. He hated being locked up. "You want to check these walls, see if there's any way to-"
"Wait." Teyla was staring intently toward the door. "Someone is coming."
John turned, stepping sideways so he could see into the outer compartment. The hatch was sliding up. Yeah, here we go, he thought.
Trishen stepped through the hatch into the outer compartment, stopping just inside it as if she was afraid, as if they weren't across the room and trapped behind this force shield. Instead of the concealing environmental suit, she was wearing a dress, purple-gray in the tinted light, with a utility belt around her waist holding various tools and pouches. She also had a silver wristband with control pads on it, like the others John had seen Wraith wear, but more compact.
"Long time no see," John said easily.
Trishen didn't come any closer. She pressed her hands together; if she had been human, John would have said she looked nervous but resolved. And he wished like hell she would stop doing that, stop acting like a person, because it was pissing him off. She said stiffly, "What were you trying to do to the Mirror?"
Rodney lifted his chin and folded his arms. "Why should we tell you?"
She blinked at him. "I know what you think I am now, I know why you were afraid. But I am not one of them. My species may appear similar, but we do not…use sentient beings for sustenance. I won't harm you."
John exchanged a look with Teyla, whose expression of grim skepticism said she wasn't buying this either. John said, "Okay. Then drop the force shield and let us out of here."
Trishen had the audacity to sound pissed. "I can't. I know you would kill me."
Teyla lifted her brows, her expression dry. "We would be fools to believe you when you can offer us no proof."
Trishen shook her head in apparent frustration. "I'm not lying! There are no humans in my reality. We know that the Creators tried to seed a human race at the same time they created us, but their early colonies died out from some sort of plague."
Rodney snorted with annoyance, giving them all a sour look. "Do you people have all day to stand here and argue this point? Because I don't." He turned to Trishen, waving a hand dismissively. "Let's stipulate for the moment that I believe you're telling the truth. If you don't intend to feed on us, what exactly do you want?"
She took a step forward, her fists knotting. "There's an array on the roof that has an effect on the Mirror's accretion surface. Were you trying to destabilize it?"
Rodney gave her a withering look. "Of course we were. And again, why do you ask?"
John shot him a glare and Rodney glared back. Okay fine, if she knows what the pulse generator is for then she probably already realizes what we were doing there, John thought. But Rodney needed to be a little more reticent with the information, here.
She took a sharp breath. "If you help me stabilize the Mirror, I will let you go. I'll take you back to your ship-"
"No." Rodney's mouth twisted. "Next question."
Trishen shook her head, frustrated and angry. "I just want to get back to my own reality-"
Rodney's voice was acid. "Yes, well, I'm sorry we can't make your welfare a priority, since we're a little more concerned at the moment with saving the lives of our entire species."
It was her turn to glare at Rodney. "The Mirror is not a weapon. I thought you understood that."
Rodney gave her the little "you're so stupid" laugh, the one guaranteed to send his science team colleagues into paroxysms of fury. "Please, not counting any stray Ascendants, I'm the Pegasus Galaxy's foremost expert on Quantum Mirrors, and yes, it's not a weapon." His expression hardened. "But your ship is."
Teyla shifted uncertainly, throwing a look at John. Yeah, he really didn't want to put those cards on the table. He said, "Rodney."
Trishen made a sharp gesture, apparently genuinely exasperated. "This ship has no offensive weapons! You're the ones with weapons-"
Rodney set his jaw. "Our weapons are woefully inadequate against the Wraith, and most of the humans here have no weapons, they've been bombed back into a preindustrial level of technology-"
John stared at him incredulously. "Rodney!"
Rodney raised his voice, out-shouting John to finish with, "-so the Wraith, your nearest genetic relatives in this reality, can keep them like cattle and feed on them at their leisure!" He shot a look at John and said, lowvoiced, "I know what I'm doing."
John hoped like hell Rodney knew what he was doing, that he hadn't just issued an invitation to a whole different set of Wraith from another reality to invade Pegasus and feed on its nearly helpless inhabitants. He just said, "You'd better."
Ignoring him, watching Trishen narrowly, Rodney said, "The Wraith destroyed the Ancients, drove the last of them out of this galaxy by sheer force of numbers, but they never defeated their technology. The weapons, the sensors, and the cloaking device on our ship are the only way that we can put up any effective resistance whatsoever. Do you see where I'm going with this?"
Trishen stared at him, and it was hard to read the expression in those alien eyes. "My sensors. They use technology left behind by the Creators-your Ancients. That's why I could see your ship through its cloaking device." She shook her head. "If you think I will give it to the Wraith-I have no reason to do that! I just want to go home."
"I don't think you'll give it to them." Rodney stepped forward, his face grim as he hammered his point home. "I think they'll take it. And if they know there's more in your reality, I think they'll go through the Mirror to get it."
Teyla was watching Trishen with clinical detachment. She added, "And if you believe your resemblance to them makes you safe, you are wrong. They will feed on their own kind when no humans are available. And there are far too many of them awake now; for the past year they have been in search of a new feeding ground."
John added, "So if you're not going to eat us, let us go.
Trishen stood there, staring at them, breathing hard. "I can't-I have to think about this." She turned in a whirl of skirts and vanished back through the hatch, the door sliding shut after her.
John let his breath out, pacing a few steps away and rubbing his eyes. His jaw hurt, they were stuck here, and he wasn't seeing much hope of keeping this ship and its technology away from the Wraith. He wasn't seeing much hope of keeping them away from the Wraith, either. "I see where you're trying to go with this, Rodney, but we could have tried to string her along a little."
"We don't have time for that." Rodney turned to him impatiently. "Ahiveship is probably on the way here right now.
"Do we have time for this?" Teyla asked him pointedly. "You really think she will see reason and release us to destroy the Mirror?"
Rodney's jaw set in stubborn certainty. "She's a scientist. Yes, I think she'll see reason."
"She is a Wraith, whatever she calls herself." Teyla's voice was hard. "She will have no concern for anything except feeding and her own hive."