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John glanced sideways at Sam, half a smile on his face. “For some reason Woolsey thought he’d better keep me away from the diplomatic parts.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Sam said with a grin. “But you do have to put in an appearance at the reception, and so do I, like it or not.”

“And I should retrieve Torren,” Teyla said. “I should not like for him to bother General O’Neill.”

Together, they walked through the gateroom and out onto the exterior balcony. The tables had been covered with white cloths and a buffet table ranged along one end, a bar along the other. Most of the senior members of the expedition were there looking uncommonly scrubbed, though Teyla thought that Carson must have done something unfortunate to his hair. It was standing up as strangely as John’s.

O’Neill was holding forth to Mr. Okuda and Ms. Blegan, Torren perched on his shoulder cheerfully, one arm around the back of his neck while the other tried to intercept the hors d’oeuvre in the general’s gesturing hand. Teyla made a speedy approach, John and Sam on her heels.

“Thank you so much for watching Torren,” she said, as O’Neill bent and handed him back to her, Torren making one last try for the fancy food. He giggled, curling onto her, grabbing a handful of her hair.

“He’s a good kid,” O’Neill said easily. “I know you’ve both met Teyla Emmagan, but I don’t know if you’ve met Colonel Carter and Lt. Colonel Sheppard. She’s in command of our new battlecruiser, the George Hammond, and Sheppard is the military commander of the Atlantis expedition.”

There were the usual greetings all around, and it was a few moments before Teyla could disengage with Torren, who seemed on his sunniest best behavior. Amazingly. “You are a trader,” she whispered in his ear. “You are the son of a trader and the grandson of a trader, and you have a trader’s smile.”

Torren giggled, his eyes bright.

“He’s the face of the Pegasus Galaxy,” O’Neill observed. Sam was deep in conversation with the two IOA members. He peered down his nose at Torren, who giggled again. “A very charming face.”

“That is what Mr. Woolsey suggested,” Teyla said.

“You don’t have a problem with that?”

Teyla shook her head. “If the sight of my child will convince them to assist the millions of children they do not see, I have no complaints.” O’Neill was frowning. “You think I am being used.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I know I am being used,” Teyla said. “And what of it? My people are not here to speak. If they are moved to the good by a pretty face, then do I not owe it to my people to use whatever means are necessary? I assure you, I am quite comfortable with being a cynical ploy.”

O’Neill’s eyebrows rose. “As long as you’re ok with that.”

“I do have limits,” Teyla said. Her eyes sought Nechayev, who must assuredly be here. Alarmingly, he was standing by the bar with a glass in his hand talking to John. “Oh no.”

O’Neill followed her gaze. “What?”

“I am afraid John is going to give Mr. Nechayev a piece of his mind for hitting on me,” Teyla said. “That would not be wise.”

“Into the fray,” O’Neill said, gesturing her and Torren forward and following them.

“I have been many places,” Nechayev was saying loudly, gesturing with his drink. “But it was unique.”

John laughed, a beer in his hand. “That it was.”

“We are in complete accord,” Nechayev said to O’Neill as he approached. “The Colonel and I have a great deal in common. Many common places, many common experiences. But there is nothing more true than this.” He lifted his glass and touched it to John’s beer bottle, as they said in unison, “Kandahar sucks!”

“Colonel, could you come with me a moment?” Teyla asked politely. “There is someone I have promised I shall introduce to you.”

“Sure,” he said. “Later, Konstantin?”

“Later, John,” Nechayev said cheerfully. “We must cover more ground together, yes?”

“Absolutely.” He waved his beer bottle at him as Teyla towed him away. “What’s up? Who do you need to introduce me to?”

“No one. I did not want you to antagonize Nechayev.” Teyla glanced back at the IOA member, who was now talking to O’Neill.

“We were getting along fine.” John shrugged. “He was in Afghanistan with the Russian Air Force in the 80s. It turned out we had a lot in common.”

“Kandahar sucks?”

“It’s common ground.” John shrugged again, putting the bottle down on the table behind him as Torren made a lunge for him, swinging Torren up onto his shoulder. “He was ok.”

“What did you say to him?” Torren grabbed the back of John’s hair, grinning out over the crowd like a benevolent monarch.

John shifted from foot to foot. “He was fine once I told him you were my wife.”

Teyla blinked. “I suppose that would do it,” she managed. Annoyance and fondness warred within her. He should not misrepresent her so, and yet it did no damage. It was not as though she intended for Nechayev to court her.

“It just seemed like the easiest solution,” John said sheepishly. “He’d seen me walking around with Torren earlier.”

“I am not angry,” she said. “Should I be?”

“I don’t know.” He looked off toward the railing and the sea beyond.

Teyla came and put her hand on the rail beside him, carefully keeping Torren inside. “I am not Sam, who has spent her life proving she can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

He looked at her sideways with a little smile. “You can walk and chew gum?”

“Except that I do not like gum. So I do not chew it to prove a point.”

She glanced past him at Sam, her hair swept up from her collar, wearing her beribboned service dress, talking to the IOA members. Dixon-Smythe was talking to Carson while looking around him to see who of more importance was available, while a very combed Radek was chatting up Blegan and Okuda with Sam. Woolsey had Shen to himself over by the refreshment table, with her maneuvered into a corner with her back to the rail. Desai was filling his plate a foot away, he and Shen completely ignoring one another. Beyond them, the lights of the Bay Bridge hung like pearls on a thread against the dark sky. A cool wind off the sea lifted her hair even in the shadow of the standing heaters. The towers of Atlantis glittered against the stars.

So many currents, so many conflicts, their shadows dancing over every moment of beauty.

“Your world is a very complicated place,” Teyla said.

“You can say that again,” John replied.

Chapter Two

Stasis

The battle was over. The impact of energy bolts on the shield had stopped some time ago, and then after a bit there had been a heavy thud — the city landing, surely. Guide — he would not think of himself as Todd, the meaningless sound the humans had applied to him — had seen nothing of Earth except the military laboratories, but he guessed that there were oceans big enough to land the city. Or perhaps the Ancients had built better than he knew, and the city could be brought safely down onto solid ground.

Speculation was pointless. He rose to his feet, paced the length of the cell and back again, one part of his mind counting the strides. That ritual had passed the time before, given him an illusion of freedom: count the steps until he knew them by heart, the number and the rhythm, every shift of weight and balance, then walk that pattern in his mind, letting them take him elsewhere, to other places with that same cadence, some multiple of those dimensions. In Kolya’s prison, he had walked half a dozen hives, first his own where he ruled, queenless, plotting revenge, and then, as he starved, back and back until he had walked in memory the hive of his true Queen, tracing the corridors where he had been companion and Consort. She had honored him with a son, and then, as his utility had grown, with a daughter, a scarlet-haired miniature of herself. One pattern of steps had taken him through the coiling maze of the ship-wombs, safe and secret at the heart of the hive. In memory he walked the narrow spiral, past the daughter smiling in her sleep, the touch of Snow’s mind gentle on his own. It had been a bright memory then, new and sharp, but too much handling had robbed it of its power, til at the end it had granted him no more than a few tens of minutes’ escape.