“Are you certain that there is no way to dial a Pegasus gate?” she asked.
Rodney closed his laptop. “We could dial a Pegasus gate. If we didn’t mind running the ZPMs down. Zelenka’s stunt with the wormhole drive cost a lot of power, and we expended a great deal more energy keeping the shield up through the battle and the landing on Earth. And right now we’re expending a lot of energy keeping Atlantis cloaked. In fact, there will be a point in the not too distant future where the energy we’re spending to keep the cloak up will preclude using the hyperdrive.”
Teyla blinked. “Rodney…”
“Yes, that is exactly what I mean,” Rodney snapped, but she knew the impatience in his voice wasn’t for her. “If we ever intend to take Atlantis back to the Pegasus Galaxy or anywhere else that involves using the hyperdrive, we have to do it before we deplete the ZPMs too much using the cloak. We’re running the cloak 24/7 for weeks at a time. We’ve never done that before. And it eats power.”
Teyla put her hands on the smooth edge of the console, cool and steadying. “So you’re saying if we dial a Pegasus gate…”
“We may not have the power to take the city back.” His blue eyes were frank. “Right now, this minute, I could dial New Athos for you. But keeping a lock on it for long enough for you to go through would probably mean that Atlantis would be stuck on Earth permanently.”
Teyla let out a long, shuddering breath. “I cannot ask you to do that, Rodney. Not simply to allay…” She stopped and could go no further.
Rodney ducked his head, trying to see her eyes. “You’re worried about your people.”
“Of course I am worried,” she said. “But it is not only that.” Teyla looked away, but there was no one nearby, only Rodney, and his eyes were kind. Perhaps he would understand after all. He had surprised her, recently, since his experience with the brain parasite and the Shrine of Talus. “They will dial and dial, and they are dialing an address that no longer exists, a dead gate.” Teyla shook her head, looking away from him, her eyes on the ring of the Stargate. “Kanaan had a son before, a boy who was Culled by the Wraith when he was eight years old. When the gate address is inoperable, they will assume… He will think Torren is dead.” She met Rodney’s eyes and saw the sympathy there. “How can I put him through that? He has lost one son already, and now he will think that the Wraith have had Torren.”
Rodney frowned. “I could send a data burst, but there’s no one on New Athos who could read it. We might have enough power for that, but it wouldn’t do any good.”
Her eyes searched his face. “And it would be dangerous, would it not?”
“If by dangerous you mean it would deplete the ZPMs a lot, yes,” Rodney said. “We could do it. But it’s going to cut weeks off the time we can maintain the cloak and still have it be possible to return to Pegasus.”
“I cannot ask you to do that,” Teyla said. “Not for my own private concerns.”
“You must miss him a lot,” Rodney said. “Kanaan, I mean. Not Torren, since he’s here.”
“He is my friend,” Teyla said carefully.
Rodney blinked. “He’s your husband, isn’t he? I mean, I thought…”
“He is not my husband.” Teyla shook her head. “Rodney, we do not think of these things the same way you do, and Kanaan and I have never stood up together. He is my friend, as you are.”
“But you and me… I mean, we…” Rodney stuttered. “We never…”
“We have not gone apart together. But that is not to say that we would not, were the circumstances different.” Teyla leaned forward on her elbows, her arms around her body. “Imagine that you had lost Jennifer, that she had been fed upon and killed by the Wraith, Jennifer and your child together. Now imagine that I was there with you at a festival, coming from Kate Heightmeyer’s funeral, with her death song still in my ears. Would it be so strange for us to walk apart together and find in one another what comfort we might?”
Rodney looked down at his hands, leaning against the console beside her, his face serious. “I suppose not,” he said. “I’ve never thought about you that way. But if it were like that…”
“And would you not be nervous, the next time you were to see me? What if you came, not knowing what would be said or what was thought, to find me taken by Michael?”
Rodney looked at her sideways, and there was understanding in his eyes. “Is that what happened?”
“Yes.” She took a long breath. Beneath her elbows the board slumbered, everything in standby. “The next time I saw him, he was one of Michael’s brain-bound servants. Torren was a gift unexpected, to him as well as to me, but not enough I fear to bring us together. Kanaan and I fit no worse together than you and I might, and no better.” She risked another glance at Rodney. “But I would never wish him pain. And he is suffering now, mourning Torren as lost.”
Rodney nudged her with his shoulder. “Have you told anybody else this? I haven’t heard any of this around and I thought…” His eyes flickered to the door of Woolsey’s office.
“I have not spoken of this to anyone except you, Rodney,” she said, and she could not stop the words in her throat. It had been so long, and the words were so bitter. “Do you think I have not lived long enough among your people to know what they would say? Do you think I do not know what Mr. Woolsey would say, who has been so kind to me? Or what most people would think? Do you think I do not know that the nicest thing would be that I am a silly woman, a primitive who does not take proper care? That would be the nicest thing, Rodney.”
“I think you underestimate a lot of people,” Rodney said.
“I envy you,” she said, and leaned against his shoulder beside hers. “You never care what anyone thinks of you.”
Rodney shrugged. “You’ve got that wrong. I care what the people I care about think. But the rest of the sheep can trot off a cliff.” He looked at her sideways again. “There are some people who matter.”
“I will ask you not to repeat this,” Teyla said, but it was balm that he was friend at this moment.
“John…”
“It is not Colonel Sheppard’s business,” she said sharply. “And I prefer to keep his good opinion, so much as I have it.”
Rodney blinked. “I don’t think you understand.”
“I do not think that you do.” She held his eyes. “Your promise, Rodney.”
He nodded slowly. “I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “If you ask me not to.” His shoulders twitched as though at an unexpected thought. “I’m your friend.”
“I know that.” She looked down at the dialing keys. “And I know you would dial New Athos if I asked you to.”
“You won’t ask me to,” Rodney said.
“No, I will not.” Teyla lifted her chin. “It is not more important than taking Atlantis home. Nothing is more important. No one is more important.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Rodney said. “We’ll get home.”
The first time a door opened for her she thought it was an automatic door, like a supermarket. That’s the kind of thing you expect in an alien city, and no stranger really than in an elegant hotel or an airport. The lights in the rest room come on when you go in. It makes sense. Why leave the rest room lights on all the time? Why not have them detect your body heat or something and turn on only when they’re needed?
Eva Robinson had been in Atlantis three weeks before it struck her as strange, before she realized the doors didn’t open ahead of everybody. She was coming out of her new office on her way to lunch and ran into Dr. Keller in the hallway.
Dr. Keller had a sandwich wrapped in plastic in her hand and a bottle of orange juice, clearly on her way back to her office to eat lunch at her desk. Balancing lunch and drink in one hand, Keller was getting a hand free to push the button beside her door. “Hi,” she said abstractedly.