“You’ve talked about a new day,” Dick said. “You’ve talked about a new era of working with our allies and building new relationships. With Atlantis, you’re talking with a gun at their throats.”
“Is that a bad thing?” the President asked mildly.
“Right now, at this moment, you rule the world,” Dick said. “You can hit any target, anywhere, and cannot possibly be hit. You can demand anything from anybody, and you can make it stick. Not to mention the knowledge contained in the Ancient databases. Not to mention control of the planet’s two Stargates. Is anyone going to believe you negotiate in good faith when you hold all the cards? I doubt that even the Prime Minister…”
“I’ve already heard the Prime Minister’s views,” the President said. “And General O’Neill has briefed me on the strategic situation. Now I’d like to hear what you think.”
Dick took another deep breath. He’d lose if he rolled too low. That’s what his instincts told him. “I think Atlantis must return to Pegasus, Mr. President.” His feet left impressions in the thick carpet, a strange thing to notice at this moment. “The situation there is almost incomprehensible. Humans hunted like animals for food or for sport, entire peoples wiped out, genocide on a scale that makes our worst moments look small. The refugees are uncountable, not hundreds of thousands but millions left homeless by the Wraith and Replicator war. There is starvation and disease on a level I doubt our world has experienced since the Black Death. True, our humanitarian relief has been a drop in the bucket, and I doubt even if the full resources of our planet were mobilized we could ameliorate all the suffering, but we owe it to our brothers and sisters to try.”
Dick saw the opening, saw light shining through it, not the speech he had prepared, but better. “They are our brothers and sisters, sir. The Ancients created both them and us from their own genes, made us in their own image, as it were, at some time in the distant past. But that distant and tenuous connection wasn’t the last contact. Our genetic tests based upon analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggest that at some point in the recent past, broadly speaking, there were people brought from Earth, perhaps as part of the Ancients’ scouting activity prior to their return. If they had always been an entirely separate genetic pool, none of the recent mutations in mitochondrial DNA would be common between them and us.”
The President shook his head. “I’m not a geneticist, Richard. Bottom line it for me.”
“Humanity on Earth has a broad spectrum of mitochondrial DNA markers, all originally derived from one woman, our mitochondrial African Eve, as the popular press calls her. All the humans in the Milky Way also descend from her, because the Goa’uld seeded her descendants throughout our galaxy. If the peoples of the Pegasus Galaxy were solely derived from a separate beginning by the Ancients, none of their mitochondrial DNA would match ours, as they would have been derived from another original source. Yet we have found, in our notably limited samples, that roughly 25 per cent of the people from the Pegasus Galaxy have mitochondrial DNA common on Earth, which is to say derived from the same ancestors. Some of the branch points were as late as 8,000 BC. For example, one of my colleagues from the Pegasus Galaxy carries a mitochondrial DNA marker that differentiated on the steppes of Central Asia between 10,000 and 8,000 BC, which is now most common among the Pashtun peoples.” Dick paused for effect, and to make certain the President was keeping up.
He nodded seriously. “And this tells us?”
“That people from Earth, at least with certainty women from Earth, were brought to the Pegasus Galaxy during the last days of the war. We’ve found evidence that the Ancients set up social science experiments, planets where the inhabitants were part of elaborate games or simulations. Perhaps they wanted to understand what had happened with our ancestors on Earth in their absence, and picked out some lab mice to run the maze, as it were. Or perhaps they brought them as allies. We’ll probably never know why. But we do know, for a fact, that some reasonable percentage of the people there are our distant kin. These are our brothers and sisters, inheiritors of an impoverished legacy. Atlantis is their only defense, and their only chance of rebuilding a civilization that can hold its own against the Wraith. For us to take it and keep it beggars the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles or the Bust of Nefertiti, because it is not merely their cultural treasure we take. It is their sole chance of survival.”
The President looked grave, but his voice retained the measure of a schoolmaster, as though this were merely an academic question. “And yet it may be our sole chance of survival too.” He glanced over at the desk and the folders of classified material scattered on it. “Goa’uld. Ori. Wraith. Can we send away our best chance of turning back another assault?”
“Wouldn’t we prefer to engage our enemies out there rather than here?” Dick asked.
The President smiled. “I’m not sure you’re going to convince me with the domino theory, Richard.” He shook his head ruefully. “We can’t get things straight here on Earth. We can’t prevent starvation in the Sudan or find Osama bin Laden or negotiate peace in the Middle East. How are we going to do it in another galaxy? And in case you missed it while you were in Pegasus, we’re having a global economic crisis. I’m wondering how we’re going to prevent the Big Three automakers from going bankrupt. I’m wondering how we’re going to find the money to fund healthcare here. And you’re asking for perhaps the most ambitious commitment mankind has ever attempted.”
“We have a duty to humanity,” Dick said. “Even if we cannot expend this planet’s resources defending the peoples of the Pegasus Galaxy, the least we can do is not take from them their last and best chance. If we can do no more, let’s take Atlantis home and turn it over to them. We can do no less.”
The President steepled his hands against his lips thoughtfully. “Give Atlantis away.”
“Return Atlantis to the people of the Pegasus Galaxy.”
“And, in your opinion, are the people of the Pegasus Galaxy capable of preventing Atlantis and its Stargate from falling into the hands of the Wraith?”
Dick saw the pit opening in front of his feet. “No,” he said quietly. “Not even the Genii.”
“Would you say that it’s a fair assessment that turning Atlantis over would result in the Wraith gaining control of Atlantis in a short while?”
Dick closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“I can’t do that.”
He opened them again. The President’s brown eyes were grave. “You know I can’t do that, Richard. I can’t hand the Wraith the keys to Earth.”
Dick took a quick breath. “We’ve held Atlantis before. A small team of military advisors, perhaps with Colonel Sheppard…”
“A small team of military advisors turns into a big team of military advisors turns into a couple of divisions turns into an undeclared war,” the President said. “That’s what history teaches us. We cannot afford another war. If we can’t back our troops up sufficiently, I’m not sending them in. I’ve had some hard words with General O’Neill, and with the Joint Chiefs. Our armed forces are stretched painfully thin, and I have cries for more troops from every quarter. To start another commitment at this time is very rash.”
Dick swallowed, and the taste in his mouth was bitter.
“On top of that, I have our closest allies and China both screaming about this, that it’s a violation of non-proliferation treaties, that we’ve intentionally misled them as to the purpose of the Stargate program and the Atlantis Expedition. The IOA is not going to permit Atlantis to go anywhere. In fact, they want me to open it fully to international teams and cede it entirely to their authority as an extra-territorial location.”