“Surely the Genii homeworld is much further,” Teyla said, trying to picture it on the moving map in Atlantis. She was used to knowing worlds by their gate addresses — finding them by their physical location always seemed strange to her.
“Atlantis isn’t.”
“We are going straight back to Atlantis?”
“We need to get Carson to a doctor. And the Avenger needs a lot more than we can do here before she’s spaceworthy.” John put the canteen down on the other side.
Teyla shook her head, seeing a course through the politics as he did through space. “Ladon Radim will be very upset.”
“Ladon Radim would like to get his sister back breathing.” John glanced at her sideways. “It’s too far. And the ship is in crap shape. I don’t think a bunch of these bulkheads will hold when exposed to vacuum. We’re going to have decompressions. This stuff is just too old and too beat up. Dahlia’s done a good job, but she doesn’t have the right materials. And propulsion’s all she’s got. No shields, no weapons control, no long range communications. It’s stuff we can’t replace on the fly. We’ve got no transmitter dish for communications. Dahlia can’t pull one out of her back pocket.”
“Why do we simply not fly the ship to the Stargate?” Teyla asked. “Then Carson and I could go through and send a science team back.”
John shook his head. “The terrain around the Stargate is pretty broken up. Canyons and plateaus, nowhere near flat enough to land a ship this size. If I could even be sure I can land it in one piece. In Atlantis if the landing goes sour I can ditch it in the ocean and there will be a rescue jumper there in minutes. If I try to put it down on a bunch of rocks with no backup? It won’t be pretty.”
“That is true,” Teyla agreed. “But if we do not arrive with the warship in good time, Ladon Radim will take it as a breach of your bargain.”
“We’ll give him the Avenger. But we’ve got to make Atlantis first. Dahlia will see that.”
“I hope so,” Teyla said. She leaned back against the bulkhead again, and he sat beside her, stretching his legs out tiredly. For a long moment they sat there in companionable silence.
He apologized for not listening to her, not for bringing her here in the first place. He was not sorry she was here. It was her place. This was who she was, Teyla Who Walks Through Gates, Teyla Who Would Never Return to New Athos, who could never again be satisfied with a smaller world. Not when two galaxies in their courses stretched before her, filled with people moved by familiar motivations. How could she be satisfied trading furs for silks when there were trades to be made that dwarfed anything she could once have imagined? There were trades that changed the lives of millions, saved them or squandered them. Elizabeth had called it diplomacy and Woolsey called it The Great Game. Ladon Radim called it politics, the world as it is. The art of the possible. How could she go home and raise tava beans, and hope that the deluge would not come?
“Kanaan has asked me to release him,” she said.
John looked at her sideways. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“No?” His expression was somewhere between sheepish and startled. He took a deep breath, as though hunting carefully for the right words. “I mean, I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. It’s rough, getting divorced.”
Teyla smiled ruefully, leaning her head back against the wall. He would think what he would think. “We never made those promises to one another.”
“But you…” He sounded confused, but she would not look to see. “You planned to have a child together.”
“We planned no such thing. Torren was…an unexpected blessing.” She would not look at him. She did not want to see a change in his face, the loss of respect in his eyes.
John’s voice was low. “You could have told me that to start with.”
“And was it any of your business?”
“No.” That had come out harsher than she intended. He sounded hurt.
Teyla shook her head. “I knew what you would say. What your people would say. Do you think I do not hear the things that people say, the jokes they make? About breeders and people who are wasting their lives with children? About women who might have amounted to something? Do you think I did not hear what Rodney said about Jeannie? Do you think I do not know the words ho and baby-mama?” She looked at him and he was wincing, but this anger had been building in her a long time, and it would not be stopped now. “Do you think I wish to be a figure of fun? Do you think I do not know that everything I do reflects upon my people? That is a responsibility I accept. I will be their representative. I will be their ambassador. But I know what that means.”
John looked down at his lap, at his big hands resting on his thigh. “Teyla, you’ve got to understand that these people aren’t typical. The original expedition — they’re all a little crazy. People with any kind of functional relationship don’t sign up for a one-way trip. The people who came were the people who were too screwed up to have anybody to leave.” He looked at her, frowning. “Maybe kids like Ford weren’t. They were real young and thought it would be an adventure. But all the scientists, everybody older… Most people on Earth aren’t like that. Most people on Earth aren’t basically dysfunctional to start with. Most people would have somebody who would miss them.”
John shrugged. “The new people aren’t like that. All these Air Force guys O’Neill pulled in — it’s another deployment for them. They’ve got girlfriends, husbands and kids at home, parents, friends. But the original ones who took a one way ticket like me and Rodney and Radek and Carson — that was kind of different.” He looked up at the ceiling. “It’s like Rodney, you know? He goes on about Jeannie and how she could be doing something else, but he’s the guy in a hurry to get married, the one wondering if he missed the boat.”
She knew what was unspoken in those lines of tension in his face, all the worry for Rodney he would not voice, the fears he would not give shape to, lest naming them make them real. “We will find him,” she said, and squeezed his hand.
“Yeah.” He nodded, his eyes on their hands. “Yeah.”
“And you?”
“I sunk that boat.” John swallowed. He did not look up. “But I want you to know that I don’t think anything bad about you. There’s nothing you said that would make me lose respect for you or something.”
His hand in hers, her fingers against his wristband. “Truly?”
“Yeah.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “You know. Stuff happens. Life happens.”
She could not help but smile back, finding his words. “I think it is possible…that I am kind of dysfunctional too.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“We are ready to go.” Dahlia Radim stood in the doorway, her jumpsuit streaked with oil. “Or at least as ready as I can make us.” She looked from one to the other of them, and to Carson, rolled insensible in a mound of blankets. “Is Dr. Beckett all right?”
“He took another pain pill and he is sleeping,” Teyla said, releasing John’s hand as though it were nothing. “But I will have to wake him up to get him in a vacuum suit.”
“A vacuum suit?” Dahlia looked at John.
“There are some in the forward locker that check out,” John said. “And I think we’d better all get into them. I’m not confident about how much pressure the Avenger can take.”
Dahlia nodded. “That’s prudent. Though we should not seal them unless a failure seems imminent. It is much too far.”
John got to his feet. “Not to Atlantis,” he said.
Dahlia went pale. “What?”
“Not to Atlantis,” John said. “It’s seventeen hours in hyperspace to your homeworld and just under six to Atlantis. We’re going to Atlantis.”