STARGATE SG-1 ATLANTIS: Homeworlds : Volume three of the Travelers' Tales (SGX Book 5)

by Sally Malcolm

  However, many of the people who came in were old friends. Many were people she had known from childhood, friends as old as Kanaan who had been their agemates. They invariably came over to greet her, several being pointedly friendly to Rodney as though expecting to be introduced to him as her new partner, and Teyla remembered the awkwardness a few months ago when it had been rumored that Rodney had replaced Kanaan in her affections. Teyla was very quick to say that Rodney was simply visiting with her because of the proposal they intended to put before the Council, but she wasn’t sure how many people believed her. There were a few knowing glances and “I’m always glad to see your friend,” comments, enough that even Rodney noticed.

  *Hey, they’ll get over it,* he said mentally. *I mean, not that it’s an insult or anything. At least not to me. I mean, you’re not my type, but there’s nothing wrong with you.*

  *There is nothing wrong with you either,* Teyla replied gravely, refraining from rolling her eyes. If this was how Rodney generally complimented women, it was no wonder his last relationship had ended so abruptly. Jennifer would not have appreciated being told there was nothing wrong with her, as though that were all the good that could be said.

  The crowd quieted suddenly as Halling stepped out to the center, raising his arms above his head. “We are gathered in Council,” he said formally. “We are gathered at the request of Teyla Emmagen, who has brought a proposal for us to consider. Will we grant her leave to speak?”

  There was the expected chorus of assent, and Teyla got to her feet, giving Halling a warm smile as she stepped out to stand beside him. “I give you good evening, my friends, and good rest after,” she began. “Many of you already know Dr. McKay. He has come with me so that we might put before you a matter of importance.” She gestured for Rodney to come and stand beside her. “As most of you know, near the Ring of the Ancestors on Athos is a ruined city which stories tell us was once called Emege….”

  After Teyla and Rodney had spoken, and entertained questions at length, they were asked to leave the Council and wait in the cooking tent. It was almost deserted. The night meal was done and the dishes cleared away. Only two of the cooks remained, cleaning up the last of the cooking utensils and setting a big pot of dried peas out to soak overnight. There was tea in the urn, stewed to hair-raising strength and sweetness, but Teyla sipped it out of a small cup anyway.

  “Why don’t they want us in there?” Rodney said, pacing.

  “It is normal to ask those who have proposed to leave the debate after they have answered questions,” Teyla said. She settled down on one of the benches, her tea in her hand. “It is so offense will not be given if the debate turns on the trustworthiness or competence of the people proposing.”

  “But they’ll still know,” Rodney said.

  “They will not have to hear people speak against them,” Teyla said. “And if they do not have to hear, they do not have to treat anyone differently.” She smiled up at him. “We are a small town, Rodney. We have to preserve relationships and civility between people because we know we have to live with them. We are not like your great cities on Earth where people can offend each other as they wish, knowing that they will never see this person again. We are more like Atlantis.”

  “Where every grudge and fight lasts forever. I see that.” Rodney sat down too. “We’re not good at that. At managing conflicts.”

  “You have never had to be,” Teyla said. “For most of your people, this is the first time in their lives they have not been free to insult people with no consequences.”

  “You make us sound awful.”

  “You are not awful. You are used to telling a stranger to stuff it and walking away. If there were no strangers, if everyone you knew was someone you had grown up with, or the spouse of your co-worker, or the mother of your client, you would be careful what you said.” Teyla shrugged. “People adapt. But I do not know if I could adapt to living in a place where I did not matter to almost everyone I saw.”

  The flap of the tent opened and Jinto came in, his satchel under his arm. “Teyla, Dr. McKay.”

  “Hello, Jinto,” Teyla said. She had seen him in the back of the Council meeting, but he had not spoken, young as he was. “How is the discussion going?”

  Jinto shrugged, his lanky frame awkward as he sat down on the bench beside Rodney. “Pretty well. The Manarians don’t really care whether you look for a shield generator or not, so they’re not going to vote against it. I mean, Athos was never their world, so why would they care if there was a generator there or not?”

  “That is true,” Teyla said.

  Jinto shrugged again. “But there are a bunch of us who do care. You know. People who feel like the old city is a shrine. It’s a war grave and it shouldn’t be disturbed. That it would be disrespectful. So that’s what the debate is about right now. Is it disrespectful for you to poke around looking?”

  “We’re not going to go toss somebody’s grandma’s bones out in the street,” Rodney began.

  “That is a valid question,” Teyla said. “But I hope the answer is that they know me and they know Dr. McKay, and they trust that we will be respectful of our dead.”

  “That’s what my dad says,” Jinto said.

  “What does Kanaan say?” Rodney asked.

  Jinto opened his mouth and closed it again, and Teyla shot Rodney a look. “We do not need to know what each individual Athosian says.” But she knew what that look meant, and it burned in her even as she told herself to be reasonable, that Kanaan was not speaking against this just to spite her. That was not like him. If he spoke on a different side, it would be out of sincere belief, and he was entitled to speak from his beliefs like any Athosian.

  Jinto plopped his satchel on the table hurriedly. “Dr. McKay, I was wondering if you would help me with something.”

  “What?”

  “Dr. Zelenka gave me some homework, and I don’t actually understand it. I’m supposed to figure out which formulas I’d use to know how much stress different building materials can handle in terms of weight bearing, and then figure out which material would be best to build a column of a certain size.”

  Rodney snorted. “That’s just the kind of stupid homework Radek would give. Like people go around building columns! Ok, show me the problem.”

  Jinto grinned, his eyes flicking to Teyla. “Thank you, Dr. McKay.”

  Teyla cupped her hands around her tea and sat back, letting Rodney explaining the mathematics wash over her like so much white noise. Here, in the cooking tent, it was possible to believe that little had changed since her girlhood thirty years before. The tables were much the same, the scents of cooking the same, the flavor of the tea in her mouth. And yet they were on a different world, and they were different people. She was not the same person at all as the girl she had been, or the young woman who walked through gates and refused to be bound to only one world, a trader always looking for something new. There were few now among the Athosians who even remembered that girl.

  The tent flap lifted again, and this time it was Halling who ducked through. Teyla got to her feet to greet him, hearing the scramble behind her as Jinto dropped things back in his satchel. “Halling! What did the Council decide? I assume they must have reached a decision if you are here.”

  Halling went over to draw himself a cup of tea. “They’ve reached a decision on some points, and we’ve adjourned. There are other things that are going to be the subject of many discussions, and they cannot all happen tonight.”

  “Well?” Rodney asked. “What about the shield generator?”

  “You may look for it.”

  “Fine, then….”

  Halling held up one big hand. “Just you and Teyla. That was the compromise. Everyone is willing to agree that you and Teyla will be respectful of the remains of our ancestors and will do no harm to the city or its bu
ildings, or our heritage. You are known to many, and you have our trust.” He glanced at Teyla. “Teyla, of course, is one of us. But there are to be no Marine teams tramping around the city. There are to be no scientists newly come from Earth to photograph the bones of our relatives and write papers about them. You and Teyla may look for the shield generator, and you will tell the Council what you have found.”

  “But we need….” Rodney began.

  “We do not,” Teyla said. “Rodney, you and I can look for the generator. We do not need ten people to help us, or even John and Ronon. This is the City of Emege. There are no large predators or strange creatures. It is Athos. The two of us are more than adequate to see if there is a generator or not.”

  She thought that he would at least argue further about the need for more scientists, but to her surprise Rodney shrugged. “Ok. It will take us longer because more people could cover the ground faster, but sure.”

  Halling visibly relaxed. “I am glad this will do.”

  “It will do admirably,” Teyla said. “After all, we do not know if such a thing exists there or not. Or if it once did, if it was so utterly destroyed by the Wraith that there is no way to make it operable again. It is best not to get people’s hopes up too much.”

  He nodded. “I, for myself, would welcome the chance to go home. Athos is our home, Teyla! I miss it like a hole in my heart.”

  “I know.” Teyla met his eyes. “This world is fine, but it isn’t Athos. I hope we can at least give everyone a choice.”

  “And that choice is what is hotly debated, and will be much discussed in the coming days. But we have adjourned the Council for now since we have said that there is no point in debating to death a hypothetical. If there is no shield generator, there is no point in arguing.”

  “True,” Teyla said. “Rodney and I will find out if there is one. And then a decision can be made, or there will be no need of one.”

  The pale morning light was slanting across the gate field when Teyla and Rodney stepped through the Stargate to Athos. The sky was a perfect autumn blue, high and clear and bright, while the tall grass had turned golden, heavy seedheads not even stirring in the still air. As the gate deactivated and the wormhole died, Teyla took a deep breath. This was home. This smell to the air, this slant of the light — this was home.

  “Ok,” Rodney said. “Let’s go. How far is it?”

  “It is several of your kilometers around the lake,” Teyla said. “If we walk around the north end, that will be shortest.”

  Rodney snorted, slinging his weapon across his chest. “You’d think people would, just once in a while, build the city next to the Stargate.”

  “I suspect there was a town here too then, when the Ancestors put the gate here,” Teyla replied. “The city was there, across the water, and there was once a wide road. I think there was a town around the gate, a traveler’s pale, perhaps. When we dig down on these plains we often find ancient stones and pavement.”

  Rodney looked up as they walked, as if measuring the distance between lakeshore and any major stand of trees. Behind the ruins of Emege on the other side of the lake, the mountains reared up green and cool, already crowned with the first snows on the heights. They ringed the valley about, casting long shadows before the sun rose high. “The road was over there?”

  “I think so. We are roughly following its course.”

  A water bird started from the reeds by the lake, spreading its white wings as it lifted in to the growing light — an osprey. For a moment Teyla felt the world shift, the landscape before her juxtaposed with ancient memory, the lineage memory of the Wraith queen, Osprey, who stood among her ancestors — another morning, this same lake, a white bird rising against shadowed water. Teyla shook her head to clear it. That was not the track of memory she was following today, not the ancestor she honored. She sought a later time, when Osprey’s descendants made war upon the people of Emege.

  Rodney had stopped and was looking at her, and she realized she had completely missed what he’d said. “I’m sorry, Rodney. What?”

  “I said, have you seen a map of the city? Do you know where we’re going?”

  “I have not seen a map. I do not think one survives. I have seen pictures, and when I was a girl I was in the city once or twice. But there are many stories that tell us about Emege’s form.”

  “Stories.”

  Teyla smiled. Once he would have scoffed. Now he knew the truth of too many stories. “The stories tell us that there was a great central tower, like the one in Atlantis, though there were many lesser spires around it. I would presume that the generator would be beneath it, if Emege was built like Atlantis and the other Ancient installations we have discovered. I think that is the best place to begin looking.”

  “Of course it’s the best place to look,” Rodney said. “The Ancients were rather boring really. If you think about it.”

  This time she laughed. “They were. But Emege was not an Ancient city. It was Athosian, belonging to human allies, not the Ancestors themselves. So it might not be the same in all ways. However, there is a description of the city in the Tale of Saite. Have you heard that story?”

  “Er, no.” And didn’t sound like he particularly wanted to. But while they were walking around the lake, Rodney was a captive audience. He would have to learn something that was not science whether he wanted to or not.

  “It is the story of how the woman Arda loved was captured by the demon Urtel, and how he rescued her even though she was held in the bowels of the earth. Arda and his kinsman, who was married to Saite, traveled into the underworld itself. But in the first part there is a description of Arda’s city, which is Emege. Once, when Arda ruled in Emege….”

  They stopped to rest halfway around the lake, Rodney taking sips from his water bottle and then offering it to Teyla, who took it gravely. They sat for a moment.

  “This story about Saite is all great and all,” Rodney said, “but how does it tell us about the city?” His words had no heat in them, and he seemed in no hurry to actually get up and get moving. Perhaps he was mellowing, Teyla thought. The Rodney she had first met would have been too impatient to wait even a little, too disinterested to hear her out. Perhaps being in a tale himself had given him a greater appreciation of them.

  “I am just coming to that part,” Teyla said. “Now when Saite came to Emege, this is the form of the city. The city was built in three parts. Oldest and prime was the Old City, which was built on the hillside following the curve of the land, more or less in the shape of a tava bean. It had been walled and made of stone long ago, before the Ancestors walked among their children. The second part of the city was the Outer City, which had grown up outside the great walls and was made of wood with roofs of pottery. Last and newest was the High Citadel, which had been built in the very center, in the curve of the Old City, by the Ancestors themselves. The highest tower surpassed all, and from its height the entire plain could be seen as far as the southern mountain peaks on the other side. All the land that could be seen from the high tower, Arda ruled.”

  Rodney nodded. “So the human city predated the Ancients.”

  “That is what I take from it, yes. The Ancestors brought us here and then left us for some considerable amount of time, long enough for us to build cities of our own, before they returned.”

  “That makes sense. Lots of the Ancient installations we’ve found were built not long before the war.”

  “Yes.” Teyla got to her feet, clipping Rodney’s water bottle back to the back of his pack. “I wish I understood what changed among them. Why did they begin to bring these peoples under their rule, no matter how benign it might have been, when they had been content to watch from afar? Why did they…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Why did they start experimenting on people?” Rodney asked. He had his familiar quirky smile. “You w
ant to know what I think?”

  And time was she would have brushed off his opinion as irrelevant, based on Earth prejudices that had nothing to do with the situation, but she had learned better than that. “Yes, Rodney. I do.”

  “I think that the more stuff you have, the more you want.” Rodney shrugged his pack back on. “I mean, look at them. They had all this stuff and more besides. They could blow up suns and they understood time and space like nobody else, maybe even more than the Asgard! They could do anything they wanted. Except live forever.”

  “The Asgard wanted that too,” Teyla observed, falling into step beside him.

  “Yeah, and look how they screwed up! They got their individual immortality at the expense of the future of their species.”

  “The Ancestors wanted to Ascend. But only a few were good enough to do so on their own.”

  “I don’t know about good,” Rodney said. “But most people couldn’t do it. And their devices don’t really work. So they tried to figure out how to genetically engineer bodies that wouldn’t age.”

  “And created the Wraith,” Teyla said grimly. Now that she had opened them, Osprey’s memories were always there just beneath the surface, as close as her own. Sometimes they were horrific and sometimes searingly sad, but often they were happy, a thing astonishing and appalling in its own right. Surely someone so destroyed, so altered and twisted and doomed, would be pitiable. Yet Osprey was not. The more of her memories Teyla recalled, the more she found indomitable joy. She had loved her people and her children and her Consort and had lived a long life full of love despite all sorrow and pain. Surely that was not what one should expect of the legacy of tainted Wraith blood. It would be easier to pity. It would be easier to reconcile with all she had been taught.