He waited a long moment for that to sink in, and Teyla gasped. “Then where did they come from? You were certain that the Iratus bug…”
“I am certain that the Iratus bug plays a role,” Carson said. “But there’s simply not enough time after the Ancients return to the Pegasus Galaxy for that to happen. This kind of evolution requires millions of years, not a few tens of thousands. I believe there had to be a human element involved.”
“You mean that the Wraith were genetically engineered,” Teyla said.
“My guess, my working theory at present, is that human colonists were placed on a world where the Iratus bug was native. But as you know, it’s very deadly, and because it never releases its prey until the prey is dead, it’s very unlikely for anyone to survive an attack. My thought is that there was an attempt to create an immunity to the Iratus bug, a blood marker that would prove unattractive to the creatures so that when they attached themselves to an inoculated human they would find the human unappealing and drop off, something that would prevent them from killing. We know that the bugs will not bite one another, and when Colonel Sheppard was contaminated with the Iratus DNA that time we saw that they would not bite him. Perhaps the Ancients intended to create a vaccination against them.”
“That is entirely sensible,” Teyla said. “Because it is not that the bite itself is so bad, but that the feeding process continues.”
“Exactly. If they bit, found the human unappetizing, and dropped off, they would become a nuisance, not a deadly danger.” Carson’s blue eyes met hers ironically. “And you know those wacky Ancients. They were completely cavalier in their relations with humans, as we’ve seen from their social engineering experiments, entire peoples left to spend their lives in a game for watchers in Atlantis. Ascension devices, nanites designed to kill, not to mention the entire Replicator situation! Do we believe that they would not have mixed human DNA with that of the Iratus bug in the laboratory and inoculated a population with their experimental vaccine?”
Teyla let out a long breath. “No,” she said. “We cannot believe that. What you suggest is entirely in keeping with what we know of the Ancients, and with the other things that they have done.”
“And then the experiment went wrong,” Carson said.
“As it so often seems to have.”
He nodded. “And you know what happened then?”
“The same as with the Replicators,” Teyla said grimly. “The same as we did with Michael and his crew. They tried to kill them.” A chill ran down her back. Her imagination was not so clear as John’s, but she could not help but look backward to those experiments now discarded, human beings twisted into Wraith and then hunted as dispassionately as the Ancients did everything in their clean, bright ships. “But they did not succeed,” she said.
Carson’s eyes were grave. “They didn’t. And their experiment came back to bite them in the arse.”
“Carson,” she said, “You know you cannot say these things. You are standing on C4.”
“I know. That’s why I’ve not spoken of this, and will not until I’ve got some better proof.”
“If you say we are kin to the Wraith…” Teyla shook her head. “I can not even begin. That challenges everything we believe about ourselves, everything we know about our place in the universe, about good and evil and our reason for existing! You are uttering what is, to many of the people in this galaxy, the greatest possible obscenity. What you are saying…”
“Makes Charles Darwin look uncontroversial,” Carson nodded. “I get it. But there it is.” He leaned forward. “We already know the Ancients engineered life forms in the Milky Way, and that they messed with the genetic code of our ancestors. We know that they messed with yours too, and that they brought some not inconsiderable number of humans to the Pegasus Galaxy from Earth around 10,000 years ago, in the last days of the war, and that those humans mixed with those already here. That’s written in our blood, yours and mine. My ATA gene, derived from some Ancient on Earth, your mitochondrial DNA arising on the steppes of Central Asia. Do we really think it’s unlikely that the Wraith are a third iteration?”
She let out a long breath. “It is not unlikely. As little as I wish to believe you, as little as I want to believe that the Ancestors would have done this…” Teyla blinked eyes suddenly full. “I saw how they treated the Replicators, their creation. I saw how they treated my people when they returned to Atlantis, shuffling us off Lantea without even speaking with us, as though we were no more than cattle who had strayed into the yard! They sent us from our homes, from our crops in the field, when we had waited for them and praised them. We would gladly have served them. We would gladly have died for their city. But we were so little to them that even our deaths would be worth nothing to them.” Her voice choked. “And now we are a people bereft. We do not know what to believe. We are ripped from our anchors and are adrift on the sea.”
Carson took a drink of his own long cold tea. “It was like that, when I was Michael’s prisoner all those long months. You look things in the eye. You lose your faith. It trickles away down some dark hole. And what it leaves is what you really are, the things you really believe in.”
She reached for his bad hand. “And what do you believe in, Carson?”
“I’m a doctor,” he said. “I try to alleviate human suffering. I can’t know the meaning of it, nor the rhyme or reason, but I do know that’s what I must do.” He closed his fingers around hers. “There’s a poem by Leigh Hunt, about a man who asked an angel if his name was on the list of those who loved God. The angel told him no, it wasn’t. Well then, said the man, put me down as one who loves his fellow men.”
“And was that the right answer?”
“I expect it was,” Carson said.
Teyla put her head to the side. “You are very much like John,” she said. “If he can only save everyone, then he will be worthy.”
“You can never save everyone,” Carson said gravely. “There are always some who are beyond your help.”
“I know that,” she said, “but he does not believe it. It is always a failure in him, a fatal imperfection. If he saves ninety nine people out of a hundred, his thoughts are always on the one who was lost.”
“The good shepherd,” Carson said ironically. “A play on words, my dear.”
“I suppose I have translated it differently,” Teyla said. “In our language Sheppard doesn’t translate as farmhand, but as guide.” She stopped, ice against her spine. “That is Todd’s name, in his own language. I learned it when I masqueraded as his queen, Steelflower.”
“I always thought they had a bit in common,” Carson said. “And speaking of the devil…”
John and Sam Carter were making their way across the mess hall toward them, trays in hand. “Good morning!” Sam said brightly.
“Good morning,” Carson replied. “What’s on your plate today, John?”
“I’m taking the Ancient warship to the Genii as soon as Radek and Kusanagi sign off on it,” he said, sliding in beside Teyla with his eggs and bacon. “You can sit this one out, Teyla. Keller said to stay off that hip, and there’s not really anything for you to do. Kusanagi is coming with us along with a full Marine team, and the Hammond is escorting us just in case, but basically I’m spending two days driving the bus.”
“Some bus,” Sam said with a sideways smile, sitting down beside Carson. “Pity we can’t keep it.”
“And start a war with the Genii,” Teyla said.
“I didn’t say keeping it was a good idea,” Sam replied. “Just that it looks pretty sweet.” She grinned at John. “Race you there?”