He set a course for Atlantis, sliding from day into night, the towers' lights a tiny point in the distance, and finally glanced at Teyla. She looked completely composed, as usual, her hands resting lightly on the arms of the chair, but there was a faint line between her brows. "Any luck with Alabaster?"
She gave a rueful smile. "Indeed, I do not know. She has a solid claim to have spoken with Steelflower, and to be doing her bidding, but — I do not know if the men will follow her in preference to Guide." She shook her head. "I've done what I can, John."
If only we could find the damn weapon — if only McKay hadn't screwed around with it in the first place. If only they'd never found the thing. If only. John swallowed those thoughts as pointless, letting the puddlejumper slide deeper into the atmosphere. "Yeah. So have we all."
"What can I do for you?" Jennifer said as Daniel Jackson stuck his head diffidently into her office.
"Actually, I just figured I might not be in the way down here," Daniel said. "Everyone's pretty busy, and I always find it hard to nap when we're about to have a space battle."
"Me, too," Jennifer said. "I probably ought to get some sleep, because I expect we'll have casualties coming in later, but…" She shook her head. "Want some coffee?"
"Please," Daniel said. He took the cup she handed him and hovered politely behind the visitors' chair.
"You're welcome to have a seat," Jennifer said. "There's nothing else for me to do until the shooting starts. When it does, I'll have to kick you out."
"Of course," Daniel said. He shook his head. "I always used to wonder how Jack could sleep when we were waiting for a battle. I used to think it was a trick I'd pick up eventually. Apparently not."
"If you were going to, I think you would have by now."
"Yep. I've been doing this for… too long." Daniel shook his head. "I'm hoping to have the chance to see more of Atlantis when this is over, but this doesn't seem like the moment for sight-seeing."
"It's not the best circumstances."
"It never seems to be."
"At least you haven't been nearly electrocuted this time."
"Not yet. Don't jinx it."
"Sorry."
"I'm sorry to have missed the Wraith," Daniel said.
Jennifer looked at him in bemusement. "You know, most people don't say that."
"We still know so little about them," he said. "I mean, looking at the recent reports, this is the first confirmation we have that the Wraith even have personal names. And we've learned something about the status of Wraith queens within the hive, and about division of labor, and a tiny bit about family relationships. But that's pretty close to the sum total of what we know about the Wraith after six years, aside from the obvious and admittedly distracting fact that they eat people."
"We've studied their written language."
"We've started studying their written language, but, again, we've mostly been focused on basic translation, so we haven't gotten much farther than establishing that it's based on Ancient, which of course follows. But I'd like to actually look at how the two languages diverged, given that now we have some idea of when the Wraith were created. And get some idea of how the language works in practice in a telepathic society — we know that Wraith names have a telepathic component, and that what they're giving us are rough equivalents, so I think looking at their non-verbal communication would be fascinating." He trailed off, with a wry expression. "That may just be me."
"No, it is interesting," Jennifer said. "It's been really hard to find out anything about Wraith culture. Basically most of our interactions have been with prisoners, and they haven't wanted to talk to us very much. Like you said, this is the first time they've even been willing to tell us their names."
"And I see that the part where they eat people makes ethnographic study tricky."
"We haven't really been in a position to send somebody to observe them, no. They think of us basically as livestock."
"That was always fun with the Goa'uld," Daniel said. "Except they thought of us as slaves and potential hosts, which was a little better, but… not really that much. But at least when we were dealing with the Goa'uld we had the Jaffa to explain them to us."
"I suppose we could talk to the Wraith worshippers," Jennifer said. "But I think a lot of them don't ever see the Wraith at close quarters. It would have to be someone who'd lived on a Wraith hive ship, and we've never heard of anyone who did that and then left the ship alive."
"Believe me, I see your problem."
"At least the Wraith — Guide's Wraith — are talking to us right now. I don't know how long that's going to last after we defeat Queen Death. Assuming we defeat Queen Death. And then there's the question of the retrovirus."
"The one that makes humans able to survive being fed on by the Wraith?"
Jennifer nodded. "We don't really have any idea what that's going to mean for Wraith society, assuming it's even used on a wide scale. Whether they can ever start thinking about humans as people."
"What do you think?" Daniel asked.
She sipped her cooling coffee and considered that. "I think it's possible, once they don't have to eat us," she said. "I think some of them — Guide, for instance — are aware on some level that we're people, but they have to be able to feed to live, so they tell themselves that most humans are no better than cattle at the same time that they're willing to work with us."
"Do you think they'll accept the retrovirus?"
"It's not entirely up to them," Jennifer said. "Humans in Pegasus are going to use it whether the Wraith want them to or not. I think it's a strategic advantage in some ways — they have a population problem, and being able to feed on humans more than once would help them avoid having to go into hibernation because there's not enough for them to eat. Guide was certainly interested in our previous retrovirus, which would have made it unnecessary for them to feed at all, although I'm getting the impression that would have been harder for them to accept."
"A bigger cultural change," Daniel said. "If humans didn't have to eat or drink, that would be great, right? Only think how disruptive it would be to have all of our cultural rituals around eating and drinking suddenly become unnecessary, and maybe impossible."
"And people do like eating and drinking," Jennifer said, raising her coffee cup. Beyond its effect as a stimulant, she had to admit that the coffee was comforting to have in her hand.
"They do. It's pleasurable and psychologically rewarding, and it's a major part of social rituals. A dietary shift is easier to accept."
The intense light of interest on his face was hard to resist. "If we win the battle, I'll see if I can introduce you to the Wraith, all right?"
"I'd like that," Daniel said.
Sam scrolled to the last page of the reports, her eyes skimming past the details to the final summary: ninety-eight percent ready. Ninety-eight percent of optimum, and forty-eight hours ago she'd have laughed if you'd said she could get the Hammond ready for battle in that amount of time. But her crew had worked miracles, her people and Zelenka's team from Atlantis and Bill Lee and his crew from the SGC. She hoped they got the respect they deserved for it, especially Bill. He'd been in her shadow, and Daniel's, and even McKay's, and if he'd been anywhere else he'd have been the top man, not the guy who was always second best. She'd said as much in the report she'd just finished, and now she touched the keys to add it to the queue for the next databurst, but she wasn't under too many illusions about the likelihood of it reaching Earth any time soon. Yes, they'd been in impossible situations before and somehow survived, but there were four hiveships bearing down on the planet, and still no sign that Todd was going to help them.