"I recognize you and your minions well enough!"
And that tore it for Rodney. "All of you just shut up! Unless someone is about to reveal the existence of a time machine or any other such saving grace, be quiet and let me figure out what we can do."
"There is nothing," Radek said somberly. "The power matrix cannot support the load with two ZPMs removed."
Another set of running footsteps approached, lighter and faster. "Colonel," Teyla asked, "should we return home with the second ZPM?"
"Might as well." Sheppard's voice sounded agonized but resigned, with a tinge of disgust that surely was directed at the culpable bigot, Vend. "There's nothing we can do with it here."
"No!" Rodney countered, grabbing at Radek's arm. "Have you tried to reconfigure the matrix?"
"I ran several calculations before the ZPMs were removed. There is no way to stop what is happening."
"Wrong answer." Rodney wasn't about to accept that their actions would end so many lives. "Get back on that computer. We can…" His rapidly evolving plan hit a roadblock. There was no way they'd be able to do anything fast enough unless he could use his own eyes and hands. He began pawing at his face. "Somebody get these bandages off."
"Rodney, no," Turpi cried. "You must not" Her hands cupped his face, her mind imploring him.
"I can't save your people if I can't see," he protested. "Even if it does damage my eyes, you can heal them-can't you?"
She did not answer, and somewhere, in a fleeting instant of perception amid his desperate need to put things right, he got the sense that he hadn't asked the right question.
An odd silence filled his mind. It lasted for only a second, but it seemed to stretch endlessly, as if his life had paused just long enough to let him glimpse what might have been. The silence stretched until another second passed. How many millions of liters of water had tumbled out during that pause? And yet he felt that something far greater was also on the verge of plunging to destruction.
Nabu's voice finally broke through the silent void. "You must let him go, daughter." It was filled with overwhelming regret, and a sadness that Rodney might never have intuited had he not been blind.
Let him go? Turpi's voiceless sobs echoed in Rodney's mind, and he struggled to comprehend her anguish. But there was no time. Each second that passed reduced his chances of saving her extraordinary people, her children. He felt her knowledge of that, and then, as her hands fell from his face, he was alone once more.
Other hands carefully removed his bandages. He knew it was not Turpi, because she had backed away, already distancing herself from him. He swallowed back the sense of abandonment. Let him go? He wasn't about to go anywhere without her. He couldn't. When his fingers were free, he pushed the remainder of the gauze away.
Brilliant whiteness overwhelmed his newly grown eyes. He flinched and brought up his arm to shield them. "Lights," Nabu ordered quickly, and the flare dimmed to reveal two of his teammates holding the discarded bandages. Teyla had a nasty cut on her forehead, and Sheppard looked washed-out, but they were there-not blurry or dark, but clear and whole.
As his gaze swept over them and found Radek and Ronon nearby, he fought to rein in his overpowering relief. "It's, ah, good to see you guys," he said weakly. Whatever odd thoughts he'd been having a moment ago were overrun by the return of his normal senses.
Sheppard gripped his shoulder. "It's good to be seen."
Rodney next observed that the lab was now fully operational. Good. He hurried over to the main computer to analyze the power matrix, ignoring the fact that the place was filled wall to wall with people. There had to be some way to reconfigure the distribution in such a way that at least part of the system could be maintained long enough to…
After a few hastily assembled simulations, he was forced to bow to reality. "Congratulations," he told Radek bleakly, feeling sick. "You've done a flawless job of condemning to death hundreds of thousands of people who might have been this galaxy's single greatest defense against the Wraith."
"Don't blame him," Sheppard broke in, his cold fury focused on Vend. "These people have done nothing but screw with us from the moment we got here."
"We will not apologize for defending ourselves against the Wraith," Vene retorted, pulling himself up to his full height and glaring at Sheppard in return.
"For the last damned time, they're not Wraith!"
Anarchy threatened to erupt again, but Turpi's silent voice cut through all the accusations. "Father, I have never thanked you well enough for all you have done-for loving me, and for giving all of us hope for the future. I must now repay you in full measure."
The finality of her words chilled Rodney, enough to make him abandon his frantic attempts to coax a nonexistent solution from the computer. Spinning around in his chair, he searched the room. On one side stood Vend and a number of cliff-dwellers. Through the windows, now clear of sand, he could see that there were dozens more outside. He turned further until he caught sight of tall, distinguished-looking Nabu. Certainly at first glance the man could be mistaken for a Wraith, but the intelligence and wisdom in his eyes belied that thought instantly. There was also something more in his eyes, something Rodney had difficulty comprehending: tears.
And then Rodney understood why, when his gaze came to rest, for the first time, on Turpi, standing alone between the cliff-dwellers and the gifted children they had abandoned to the sands.
The hunchbacked creature was only identifiable as a woman because of her disproportionate breasts. Stick-legged, she had two uneven slits in place of a nose. One eye was missing, the other white and clearly blind. A few tufts of yellow hair stuck out pitifully from odd places around her head, and her ears…as far as Rodney could see, she had no ears.
Under his aghast stare she recoiled, and he instantly knew why the recovery of his sight had pained her so deeply. Turpi was not only a deaf mute, she was also functionally blind-and yet she could see with greater clarity than all of them.
It had taken only a split second between her words and Rodney's comprehension. Nabu reacted faster, crying "No!" as he rushed to her, his black coat billowing behind him. But it was too late. Turpi's body began to glow.
The crowd in the lab backed away, leaving Nabu beside her. "What's she doing?" Rodney demanded, leaping off his chair and reaching for her, terrified that he might already know. "What are you doing?"
The light grew outward from her body, filling the room and turning her translucent until she appeared ephemeral. Helpless, terrified in a way he could not yet define, Rodney looked around the lab. The villagers were cowering fearfully. Nabu's people, however, began to follow Turpi's lead. Those who had hands joined them, while others found different ways to establish some of kind of contact with each other. Remembering how Nabu had described their method of deterring the Wraith, Rodney understood that Turpi was linking many of her people's minds together, in order to…what? He knew, or at least, a part of him knew, but refused to accept.
Radek's stunned voice reached him. "I do not believe it."
It felt like a betrayal to turn away from Turpi. Still, he had to know. "What?" He studied the computer screen, but what he saw didn't fit within any logical rules. Somehow, the power level in the ZPM matrix had been sufficiently augmented to reestablish the force fields and stop the flow of water.
The rest of his team stood near the window, staring out at the landscape, astonished and disbelieving in equal parts. He rushed over to see for himself, pushing Vend aside, and was floored by the scene. An invisible wall had replaced the section of the cliff that had washed away. There was no telltale shimmer from a force field. As insane as the notion seemed, these people, these extraordinary, gifted children, were holding back an entire ocean with the power of their minds.