Lieutenant Anderson, who was laying out the coffee service at the back of the room, started to attention, but he waved her down. She was furniture today, albeit furniture with sharp ears.
“Am I the devil, General?” Martin’s eyes had a distinct twinkle. “I recall my honorable opponent did put cartoon horns on me in that ad back in ‘84. But then I expect he and the devil were old friends.”
“As I recall you lost that election, Senator,” Jack said.
“If at first you don’t succeed…” Martin said. “You can’t keep a good man down. And some other clichés.” He laid his leather portfolio on the table before a chair with its back to the window. “Let me ask you one question, General.”
“Anything,” Jack said, opening his arms expansively.
“I’m not sure I want to know just anything,” Martin said. “That’s a dangerous opening to give me.”
“I expect it is,” Jack said.
Martin met his eyes. “Who’s the better man?”
Jack swallowed. “Daniel Jackson.”
“Who’s the man for the job?”
“Richard Woolsey.” Jack sat down on the edge of the conference table. “There are some jobs that don’t call for good men. They call for men who can get it done.”
“Who can handle this, you mean,” Martin said. He leaned on the back of his chair. “Why do you think I have this job, here in my golden years?”
“You raised a hell of a lot of money,” Jack said.
Roy Martin laughed. “A lot of people raised a lot more. I’ll tell you why I’m here, General. I’ve been governor and I’ve been senator. I’ve lost and won and lost and I’ve served my time. Other than the importance of keeping active as a senior citizen, I’m here for one reason. I’m the President’s man. I’m never running for office again and this is my last appointment. I don’t owe anybody anything, and I’m not thinking about my career on down the line. I’m seventy-eight years old. I’m here because the President can trust me to serve no one’s interests but his.” Martin shrugged. “The President is satisfied with Richard Woolsey’s performance. That’s good enough for me.”
Jack nodded slowly. “That’s very clear, Senator Martin.”
Martin sat down in his chair, beckoning to Anderson who was hovering with the requisite cup of decaf. “Hell of a thing,” he said with a smile that might have been gamin sixty years ago. “Making decisions about other planets. But I suppose it was me or Dean Smith or Andy Griffith. You might do better with me.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said easily, sitting down in his usual place. “Andy likes to fish. Do you?”
Lt. Colonel Davis stuck his head in the door. He was far too experienced to look surprised to see Martin already there. “Sir? Mr. LaPierre and Ms. Dixon-Smythe have arrived. Shall I bring them up?”
“Sure,” Jack said. “Let’s get this party started.”
Dick Woolsey looked around the gate room with an expression of immense satisfaction. Winter sunlight streaked in through the high windows, the multicolored glass transforming it into patterns of light across the floor. Atlantis, just as it should be.
Except for the Wraith. It took him a moment to remember that Teyla was still in her disguise and not recoil when she hurried down the steps to greet him, her smile strange on the face of a Wraith queen.
“Welcome back to Atlantis, Mr. Woolsey,” she said.
“It’s good to be back,” Dick said, and dropped his voice. “I didn’t really expect to be.”
“We are very fortunate that you are,” Teyla said.
“I see you’ve been busy,” Dick said, gesturing at her embroidered skirts and boots, the rest of the Wraith queen clothes.
“Very busy,” Teyla said, “But I think it has proved useful.”
Dick couldn’t help a smile of admiration. “It’s very convincing.”
“Wraith politics is complex,” Teyla said. “I should like to discuss it with you more fully at your convenience.”
“I’d like that,” Dick said.
Colonel Sheppard came down the stairs in his black uniform, an expression on his face that Dick was almost ready to call relief. Or at least thankfulness that they were getting no worse than Dick Woolsey returning. “It’s good to see you back,” he said.
Dick nodded, lifting his head to the soaring ceiling. “It’s good to be home.”
Jennifer hesitated outside the door of Woolsey’s office, straightening her jacket and taking a deep breath. She’d prepared her arguments and run through her reasons for why she needed to test the retrovirus again a hundred times in her head. The problem was, in her head she’d been arguing with Colonel Sheppard. She was pretty sure that Woolsey wasn’t going to buy ‘he’s a member of your team, so we need to do whatever it takes’ nearly as easily.
Still, now he was expecting her, and if she made some excuse to postpone the meeting, there was no telling when she’d actually get his undivided attention again. Her whole point was that they couldn’t afford to wait. She squared her shoulders and went in.
“Dr. Keller,” Woolsey said. “I’m glad to see you’re up and around. I hear you had quite an ordeal.”
“Actually, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “You’ve read my report on the retrovirus, right?”
“I have,” Woolsey said. “Although I admit I’ve been trying to get up to speed on a lot of things pretty quickly. It sounds like things have been busy around here while I was gone.”
“That’s one word for it,” Jennifer said. “Okay, here’s the thing: I’d like permission to conduct another trial of the retrovirus. I figured out what we did wrong the first time, and I feel really confident that this time it’s going to work.”
“Another trial,” Woolsey said. He raised his eyebrows. “And by that you mean letting Todd…”
“Feed on me again,” Jennifer said. “After I’ve taken a dose of the new retrovirus.”
“I’m sorry,” Woolsey said. “I think that’s out of the question.” He shook his head. “Even letting you conduct a human trial of the retrovirus at all at this point is a fairly severe breach of normal research protocols, and with the additional risk of being fed on — I can’t authorize that.”
“It may be the only way to save Rodney’s life,” Jennifer said. “We’re not sure that he’ll survive any attempt to restore him to human form without having recently fed. And it’s not like we can let him just — just go out there and feed on somebody without this.”
“No,” Woolsey said. “But I’m also not going to let you risk dying — again — in an attempt to come up with a treatment that, at best, will benefit a single patient. I know weighing costs and benefits isn’t very popular, but it has to be done, especially when the cost may be someone’s life. Your life.”
“Todd isn’t going to kill me,” Jennifer said. “He has every reason not to. After all, he wants to prove that this will work.”
“You think it would be that useful to him to be able to feed on humans without killing them?”
“I think he knows what it could mean for both the humans and the Wraith,” Jennifer said. “It would mean that we don’t have to kill each other.” She expected him to interrupt, but when he didn’t, she went on. “As long as the Wraith have to kill humans to live, they have a problem. We’re not going to stop fighting them until we entirely wipe them out. They can’t entirely wipe us out, or they’ll starve to death. So they just knock down any world that gets too technologically advanced, and then eventually people rebuild and start fighting them again. It’s never going to end.”
“Unless we find a way to destroy the Wraith,” Woolsey said.
“Which we still might. I think we’ve convinced Todd that if we keep working on the problem, we will. Which leaves him two options.” She shrugged. “Destroy Atlantis and wipe out technological civilization on Earth, knock us back to the Stone Age — well, that’s easier said than done, and he’d still have to deal with the Genii.”