She got to her feet. The green eyes were unblinking. She started toward them, away from the fires.
An arm around her waist, picking her up and carrying her back. “Let me go!” she said. “I want to see the lions!”
“The problem is if the lions see you, little one.” He put her down as her mother came hurrying.
“Oh Dr. Birna! Thank you so much. Elizabeth, you must never wander off like that. You have to stay by the fires.”
“I want to see the lions!”
“Lions are very dangerous,” Dr. Birna said, kneeling down so that she could see his face, dark beneath white hair. “They know better than to attack a camp, but a child who wanders off alone is fair prey. You must do as your mother says and stay by the fires.”
“…stay by the fires…” She turned, reaching out.
“You are by the fire. There is nothing to worry about.” A man’s voice, calming, and she opened her eyes. She lay under alien stars, wrapped in a shearling blanket. The boy’s father bent over her. “You’re safe,” he said. “There are no predators here that will attack a camp as large as this.”
“Lions,” she said, sitting up. The dream and the present folded together seamlessly. She thought he was Dr. Birna for a moment, but who was Dr. Birna? His face, his name, and then it was gone.
The grandmother had also sat up, turning to face her. “Did you remember something?”
“Kenya,” she said. The name was there suddenly. “We were in Kenya.”
The man frowned. “I don’t know this world, Kenya. Is it your home?”
“No.” She shook her head, certain of that. “We were visiting. Traveling. My father…” His face didn’t come, but the sense of him did, the shape of his hands with a brush in them, brushing away red earth from bones. “He studied old things. Bones. Looking for clues about how humanity began. We were in Kenya and I was very small.”
“Do you have kin there?” the old woman asked gently.
“No. It was a long time ago. And my father is gone.” She knew that. He had died a long time ago, an old sadness long healed over.
And that was all — the shape of his hands, the brush moving quickly and carefully over bone, the light of the fires, the eyes in the dark, the radio playing a song about diamonds.
The man put his hand on her shoulder gently. “You don’t remember any more?”
The dream was fading. There had been the lions and Dr. Birna and he had handed her to a woman, to her mother…
“My mother called me Elizabeth.”
Chapter Two
Ronon jogged along the upper catwalks of the city, John following doggedly at his heels. He could still outdistance John easily, maybe even a fraction more easily than he’d been able to four years before, but he preferred the company. He appreciated it, too, as a sign that he hadn’t burned too many bridges with John in the last few months.
He’d screwed up, he knew, letting himself be tempted to use Hyperion’s weapon, and even worse in keeping it hidden when half the city had been looking for it. He’d gotten people killed in the process, not on purpose, but he still wasn’t proud of it. And he had to admit now that while it would have been worth a lot to get rid of all the Wraith, it wouldn’t have been worth killing everyone with the Gift. Not worth killing Teyla and Torren, who were as much his family as if she’d been born his sister.
And his duty had been to turn the damned thing over to his commanding officer. If he’d started to doubt some of the decisions his commanding officers made, now that they were making treaties with the Wraith and working with them as allies, disobeying orders still wasn’t the way to handle that. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to handle that, but he was trying not to think about it very hard.
Apparently that wasn’t working. He picked up the pace, grinning fiercely over his shoulder at John. “You got soft while you were in charge of the city.”
“A few weeks in a desk job isn’t enough to get soft.”
“So prove it,” Ronon said, and listened for the sound of running footsteps speeding up.
They sprinted to the end of the catwalk, and Ronon slowed his pace to let John catch his breath.
“See? Woolsey’s back in charge, and everything’s back to normal,” John said between gasping breaths.
“Yeah. I’m beating you.”
“Like I said, back to normal. Probably to everyone’s relief.”
“You weren’t so bad,” Ronon said. “At least having you in charge means having someone who isn’t completely stupid.”
“Thanks,” John said dryly. “You mean unlike Woolsey when he got here.”
“He wasn’t stupid,” Ronon said, considering more carefully. “But he didn’t know anything about how things work here.”
“He’s learned. We’ve all learned.” John looked at him sideways. “I thought you didn’t like some of my decisions very much when I was running the city.”
Ronon shrugged. “Do you like everything Woolsey decides?”
“I’m not Woolsey.”
“Carter, then.”
“Not everything. I didn’t like everything Elizabeth decided, for that matter. But I liked enough of their decisions that I didn’t mind following their orders.” John shook out his damp hair, and then added in an apparent effort at scrupulous honesty, “Most days.”
“I don’t mind following yours.”
“Most days?”
Ronon shrugged. “Ready to go again?”
“Bring it on,” John said, and Ronon started running again.
The outside seating at the mess hall was deserted in all but the finest weather Atlantis’s new home world had to offer. Daniel took advantage of the quiet, making his way to the rail and leaning against it to look up at the city, his hands in his pockets against the chill wind. The spires stretched for the sky, deliberately impractical, the exuberant creation of people who wanted to impress. Or maybe who just liked beautiful views.
After so many failed attempts to arrive in a position where he could see this particular beautiful view, it was hard to believe that he was actually standing in the city of the Ancients without any immediate disaster ensuing. The last time he’d been here, he’d barely managed to scratch the surface of the city’s mysteries before exploring the wrong laboratory had resulted in triggering a poorly designed Ancient weapon, leading to a disastrous encounter with the Pegasus galaxy Asgard.
He was sure that he’d have better luck this time. It would be hard to have worse luck, anyway.
Teyla came out onto the balcony and came to join him, turning to look up at the city herself.
“Do you ever get used to it?”
She tilted her head to one side curiously. “To what?”
He shrugged. “Living in the city of the Ancients.”
She shook her head, smiling a little. “I do not expect I will ever take living in Atlantis for granted. But after so many years, it has become my home.”
“That sounds nice,” Daniel said.
“It is for many people. But many others eventually wish to return to their own homes. The city is not for everyone,” Teyla said. “I have seen Earth, and it is a beautiful world. And a safer one.”
“I think safer depends on who you are.”
“If you choose to be on a gate team, you will not have a safe life, certainly,” Teyla said, sounding a little amused.
“No. But I wouldn’t rather sit around wondering if the Goa’uld or the Ori or whoever shows up next is going to take over Earth and enslave everybody or blow out all life in the galaxy like blowing out birthday candles. They’re candles, that—”
“I have seen many birthday celebrations for members of the expedition,” Teyla said, now decidedly amused.
“You probably have. Sorry, I tend to over-explain. My point is that I don’t think I’d feel better knowing that there were huge threats to Earth and not being able to do anything about them.”