“It will take me some time to gather the information you require,” Todd said.
“The longer it takes, the more she’s finding out from Rodney,” Jennifer said.
Todd’s hands clenched. “I am aware of that.” It occurred to her for the first time that he might find this whole situation frustrating too.
“We’ll keep checking in with you,” Jennifer said. “As soon as you find out where they are, we’ll be ready to move.”
“I do not suggest you remain here in the mean time,” Todd said.
“We’d rather not,” Ronon said.
Todd looked him up and down in what looked like amusement. “You seem somewhat damaged,” he said. “That could be remedied.”
“Touch me and I’ll kill you.”
Jennifer wished it seemed like a good idea to stop and take something for her worsening headache. “Let’s just all take a nice walk back to the Stargate now.”
Chapter Twenty-two: Duty
Eva Robinson was still in the control room when Colonel Sheppard came in escorting a blond woman in her thirties who looked none too happy to be escorted. Though he didn’t touch her, her body language was stiff and her angry stride and clenched jaw spoke volumes. Sheppard, for his part, sported a heavy growth of beard, and sand had caked and dried in his graying hair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he moved with wary tension, like a man who needs to be given a wide berth.
Dr. Zelenka did not hesitate to approach him. “How is Carson?” he asked.
“He tore up his arm pretty bad, but he and Teyla are both on their way to the infirmary,” Sheppard said in a low voice.
Zelenka frowned. “What happened to Teyla?”
“She hurt her hip. Might have broken something.”
Sheppard was interrupted by Mr. Woolsey coming out of his office, his right hand extended. “Miss Radim! It’s a pleasure to welcome you back to Atlantis.”
“It would be more of a pleasure if your intentions were not so perfidious,” the woman replied. “This blatant disregard for our alliance will not be tolerated by the Genii. This warship…”
“Perhaps you will join me in my office,” Woolsey said smoothly, with a glance at Colonel Sheppard. “And we can get to the bottom of this. I assure you that we value our alliance with the Genii greatly.” His eyes fell on Airman Salawi at the near board. “Airman, will you arrange for a courtesy tray? Right this way, Miss Radim.”
The woman preceded him into the office, followed by Sheppard. The door hissed shut behind them.
“What’s a courtesy tray?” Airman Salawi appealed to Zelenka.
At the other end of the terminals Banks stood up. “It’s a tea and coffee service with some light snacks. You call it down to Sergeant Pollard or whoever’s in the kitchen and then run down and get it. It’s a thing they do when they have important visitors. I’ll show you.”
“Thanks,” Salawi said, going down to join her.
Zelenka looked worriedly toward the office door, where behind the glass Sheppard and the woman were taking seats in Woolsey’s visitors chairs.
“Who is she?” Eva asked him.
“She is Chief Scientist Dahlia Radim,” Zelenka said. “She’s a Genii engineer, and also happens to be the sister of their head of state. And she does not look happy.”
“Perhaps this mission didn’t go well,” Eva said.
Zelenka gave her a rather penetrating gaze over the top of his glasses. “You think not? Two people injured out of the team of three we sent, and Colonel Sheppard looking like something the cat dragged in? An unexpected Ancient warship almost crashed on our doorstep, and never a word about the information they went to get? And the Genii furious?”
“I thought the Genii were our allies,” Eva said, dredging the memory out of the reams of briefings she’d read in the past few weeks.
“That is the present theory, yes.” Zelenka pushed his glasses back up on his nose.
“Two people injured,” Eva said slowly, seeing again the way Sheppard had stopped and dropped his voice to talk to Zelenka. “That’s not good.”
“No, it is not.” Zelenka went around her to examine something on the board behind her, looked up at her swiftly. “They are friends, both of them. Close friends. Teyla and Carson both. We have been here more than five years together. We are like family. I watch Teyla’s son for her. For Carson I was a pallbearer. I would be off down to the infirmary now to see how they are, but…” He spread his hands, gesturing to the control room and the Stargate beyond. “I am on duty. I have the watch, and you have seen how fast things can happen around here.”
Eva grabbed at the thing she thought she must have misunderstood. “A pallbearer?”
A flash of a smile illuminated his face. “It is a long story. I do not have time for that one just now, but I will tell you another time.”
“Ok,” Eva said. “I’d like to hear it.”
Everyone in the control room was trying not to stare at the windows of Woolsey’s office, stealing occasional glances, passing the word to others or speaking quietly into headsets. By now half the city would know who was injured and who was here. Nothing ran as quickly as gossip in a small world where everyone mattered to one another. A unique community, she thought, like the seed of something entirely new.
At the SGC she had never forgotten that she was in a real place. Yes, it was a little strange going to work in Cheyenne Mountain, knowing that there was a gate to other worlds a few floors away, talking to people who went back and forth through space like it was nothing. But at the end of the day you got in your car and you drove home. You were in Colorado, in an ordinary American city, a not very famous or interesting city where people went to the dentist and had baby showers and visited their Aunt Erma in the assisted living place out on the interstate.
Atlantis was something entirely different.
Eva looked through the window, frowning. Sheppard moved stiffly in his chair, as though everything hurt. The scientist, Dahlia Radim, was talking, anger evident in every gesture. Woolsey was placating. His bland attentive expression was exactly what one is supposed to learn to convey neutral interest. He had been to school, that one. He knew all the tricks. But this had to count as the management school of hard knocks.
Airman Salawi came up the steps with a tray, coffee and hot water and tea bags and a plate of little cookies looking like they’d just been taken out of a box. “Should I just go in?” she asked Zelenka.
“Knock at the door and Mr. Woolsey will motion you in if it is appropriate,” he said. “He can see you. Don’t be nervous.”
Salawi gave him a big smile. “Thanks, doc. You’re swell.” She walked over to the office door, balancing the tray carefully.
Zelenka shook his head. “Kids today. Do they say swell again? It sounds to me like something out of an Andy Hardy movie.”
“I guess they do,” Eva said. She glanced at Salawi, who had been beckoned inside and was trying to put the tray down on the desk without dropping it in Sheppard’s lap. “You like the training? Like the kids?”
“Let us say I am gentler about it than Rodney would be.”
“Than Rodney would be,” she repeated.
Zelenka shrugged self-depreciatingly. “It is a mania with me. I will not stop speaking of the lost. I will not say their names in hushed voices, as though I were afraid to invoke them. I will not paint them saints or less than they were.”
“You don’t think they’re going to find Dr. McKay?” she asked quietly. That was the question that everyone had, but no one would ask.
Zelenka’s blue eyes were frank, though his voice was low. “I think it is very unlikely that Rodney is still alive. It is unlikely he survived his first interrogation. I have seen the Wraith drink from someone, from a prisoner bound to a chair. I have seen how it goes. And I am not certain that I can wish Rodney still alive for days and days of that.”