“I’m going to see Woolsey,” Rodney said, and stalked out.
Woolsey steepled his fingers. “Dr. McKay. As much as I would like to believe that Dr. Weir somehow survived being frozen in the vacuum of space—”
“In the body of a Replicator,” Rodney said. “So being frozen in space wouldn’t actually have killed her, just rendered her completely incapable of any kind of movement or thought.”
“Which raises the question of how she could possibly have Ascended while in that state.”
“Maybe it doesn’t require conscious thought. Maybe it’s more of a Zen thing. And, all right, as far as we know it requires certain brainwaves that a frozen Replicator body probably doesn’t have, but maybe something happened to unfreeze her, or maybe there’s a way around that, I don’t know. I suggest we find her and ask her.”
“Even granting the possibility,” Woolsey said slowly, “do you have any evidence whatsoever to support the idea that this is what actually happened?”
“Someone transported me off that puddle-jumper,” Rodney said. “The Hammond was out of range, and Sam says that they couldn’t and didn’t transport me aboard.”
“Consider the possibility that the Hammond’s transport logs could be in error. The ship was actively engaged in battle and had taken considerable damage at that point.”
“They were still out of range.”
“Even so, isn’t it possible that the transport beam might have worked at an abnormal range as a result of the sun’s radiation, or some other unusual circumstance—”
“No,” Rodney said flatly. “That’s not how it works. Ask Carter. She’ll tell you that there’s no way that radiation interference could radically alter the capabilities of the Asgard transport beams that way, let alone do it at the perfect moment to save my life.” He hesitated, and then added, “And she believes me about Elizabeth.”
“I could ask Colonel Carter, if she weren’t on her way back to the Milky Way galaxy with the Hammond.”
“So ask her when she gets there. And in the mean time, we need a plan for how we’re going to get out there and …” He trailed off at Woolsey’s expression.
“Dr. McKay,” Woolsey said. “I’m absolutely certain that you understand that I can’t take Colonel Sheppard and his team off their current list of priorities in order to conduct a search for someone we don’t know is actually missing.”
“So find out. Let us dial the space gate where we sent Elizabeth and the other Replicators and see if she’s still there. If she is, then … then we know that, and if she isn’t, then she has to have gone somewhere.”
“All right,” Woolsey said after a moment. “I’ll send Major Lorne’s team to search the area around the gate.”
“Even accounting for drift, it’s a reasonable area to search. If they’re there, Lorne should be able to find them. And if they’re not, if she’s not—”
“With all due respect, Dr. McKay, suppose we cross that bridge when we come to it.” Woolsey considered him from across the desk. “I understand that you feel ready to return to your usual duties, but considering what you’ve been through—”
“I am fine,” Rodney snapped. “Let me know when Lorne doesn’t find her.”
“I will let you know as soon as I hear anything,” Woolsey said, which was unfortunately hard to argue with.
“You do that,” Rodney said. “I’m going to go ask Sheppard what he thinks.”
“I think you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately,” John said. He was leaning on the balcony looking out over the slate blue sea, the chilly wind whipping the swells into whitecaps and sending them breaking against the pier. Their current planet was colder than either of the previous two, and although it wasn’t actually snowing at the moment, the weather still felt wintry.
“Will you stop saying that? I am not crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were,” John said. “I’ve been in the ‘hallucinating dead people’ place myself, so I haven’t exactly got room to judge. You just need some time to get over this.”
“What connection do you see between having been turned into a Wraith and seeing Elizabeth appear out of thin air to save my life?”
“I think you might have been under just a little bit of stress,” John said. “Remember the time when you were trapped in a submerged puddle-jumper and you hallucinated Carter in a bathing suit?”
“The life support systems were failing. I was hypoxic.”
“And that’s nothing like how you were hypoxic when you appeared in the Hammond’s medical bay, right?”
“It was Elizabeth,” Rodney said. “She was real. We have to go find her.”
“Look,” John said, his tone growing grim. “No one wanted to save Elizabeth more than I did. If there were any way to get her back, we would have already done it. We don’t leave our people behind.”
“I know that.”
“So you ought to know we did everything we could. You can’t let some kind of hallucination—”
“It was not a hallucination. I dreamed about her, when I still thought I was a Wraith. I wasn’t hypoxic then.”
“And dreaming about dead people is a sure sign that they’re alive, right? Listen to yourself, McKay.”
“Something transported me aboard the Hammond. And don’t say it was the Hammond’s transport beams having some strange malfunction unless you know more about Asgard engineering than me and Sam put together.”
“No one is putting you and Carter together.”
“Yes, very funny. My point stands.”
“Maybe you figured something out. That’s what you do. You come up with these last-ditch solutions to save our asses when things go wrong. So, you came up with some way to transport yourself off the jumper, but then because you were hypoxic, you didn’t remember what you’d done.”
“I would remember if I’d broken about ten laws of physics.”
“If you say so, McKay.”
“You don’t believe me,” Rodney said.
John turned to look at him, no humor at all now in his eyes. “Elizabeth’s gone,” he said. “I don’t know if you blame yourself—”
“Of course I blame myself, I’m the one who reprogrammed the DHD to transport her into space.”
“Which she knew. It was the only way.”
“I know that.”
“I know you know that. And I know that you feel bad about some of the things you did when you were a Wraith, which I don’t blame you for, because you had amnesia. But maybe that’s, I don’t know, bringing up some feelings—”
“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me? Don’t make me laugh. You are the last person on the planet who is qualified for that.”
“Pretty much,” John agreed, sounding a little relieved. “You know, maybe you should talk to Teyla. She’s better at dealing with …”
“Crazy people who hallucinate dead friends rescuing them?”
“That kind of thing,” John said.
Rodney ran into Ronon first, clearly on his way back from the gym, with a towel thrown over his shoulder and a stick in hand. He looked cheerful, like he’d been beating up Marines.
“Have you seen Teyla?”
“She went to take Torren to New Athos. He was going to spend the weekend with Kanaan. She should be back by now, though.” Ronon looked at him cautiously. “You’re not having more Wraith problems, are you?”
And that was still a bit of a sore subject; Ronon had come pretty close to killing Rodney with a weapon that would have destroyed everyone with Wraith genetics, and Rodney had come pretty close to feeding on Ronon while he was still physically a Wraith. As far as he could tell, they were dealing with both of those using the traditional Atlantis method known as “let us never speak of this again.”
“All better now,” he said, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Except for the hair, which is a problem I can deal with.”