Homecoming

Chapter Four Shut Out

Woolsey had only been back in Atlantis half an hour, back from yet another cross country flight to deal with the IOA and the rest of the politics, but he was in his office, his head buried in his laptop.

John slouched through the door without knocking. “Any news?”

Woolsey’s eyes were grim as he looked up. “Shut the door.”

It slid shut behind John without his touch.

“They’re not buying it,” Woolsey said. “Nechayev and Dixon-Smythe have both dug their heels in for different reasons, and I can’t budge either of them.” His eyes flickered over John. “Have you taken care of the issue with Todd?”

John nodded and came around to sit in one of the office chairs. “He’s in stasis. Carson says he’s fine and that the systems are normal. Apparently they adapt to his metabolism as well as to a human’s.”

“One less thing to worry about, at least until the IOA hears what we’ve done with him.” Woolsey pushed his laptop back on the desk. “It’s not looking good.”

“We have to go back,” John said. “We can’t just…”

“You’re preaching to the choir.” Woolsey held up a hand. “Colonel Sheppard, I know what you want and I assure you I’m on the same page. But the IOA is not. Our allies are running scared because of the hive ship. They are beginning to get an inkling of what the Wraith reaching Earth would mean. Now that the Antarctic chair is destroyed, Atlantis is our only way of taking out a hive ship. It’s understandable that they want to keep Atlantis and her weapons capability here.”

“The best way to deal with the Wraith is to hit them in Pegasus,” John said.

“The Wraith are not the only thing that Earth has had to deal with,” Woolsey said. “The Goa’uld and the Ori, for example, have both posed credible threats. The IOA is understandably concerned about leaving Earth defenseless.”

John rubbed the middle of his forehead. “So you’re saying that the IOA…”

“I’m saying that we may be staying,” Woolsey said, and waited a long moment for that to sink all the way to the pit of John’s stomach. “I have not yet hit on any argument sufficient to convince any single IOA member or their government that letting Atlantis return to Pegasus is a good idea. Letting them see this city punched all their buttons. But how could we refuse to let them visit?”

“We could have locked the door,” John said. He was being unreasonable and he knew it. “We could have told them no.”

“On what grounds?” Woolsey shook his head.

“It’s not theirs,” John said. “It doesn’t belong to them.”

“It doesn’t belong to us either.” Woolsey met his eyes. “It’s not your city, John.”

John flinched. It felt like it was. It was his home, the only place he’d ever felt…

“I’m doing everything I can,” Woolsey said. “But it’s only fair to tell you that may not be enough. Atlantis may be staying on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

Teyla looked over at the glass doors to Woolsey’s office and frowned. He and John did not seem to be having a happy conversation.

“Do you know what they are talking about?” she asked Rodney, who was sitting at the control panel with his laptop propped on the DHD.

“Um?” Rodney didn’t look up. “Who?”

“Mr. Woolsey and Colonel Sheppard,” Teyla said. “Rodney, are you paying attention?”

“No.” He didn’t look up, the light from the laptop playing across his face.

“Rodney,” she said in a very different tone, “I need your help.”

He glanced up, startled. She hadn’t meant to sound quite that miserable. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you certain that there is no way to dial a Pegasus gate?” she asked.

Rodney closed his laptop. “We could dial a Pegasus gate. If we didn’t mind running the ZPMs down. Zelenka’s stunt with the wormhole drive cost a lot of power, and we expended a great deal more energy keeping the shield up through the battle and the landing on Earth. And right now we’re expending a lot of energy keeping Atlantis cloaked. In fact, there will be a point in the not too distant future where the energy we’re spending to keep the cloak up will preclude using the hyperdrive.”

Teyla blinked. “Rodney…”

“Yes, that is exactly what I mean,” Rodney snapped, but she knew the impatience in his voice wasn’t for her. “If we ever intend to take Atlantis back to the Pegasus Galaxy or anywhere else that involves using the hyperdrive, we have to do it before we deplete the ZPMs too much using the cloak. We’re running the cloak 24/7 for weeks at a time. We’ve never done that before. And it eats power.”

Teyla put her hands on the smooth edge of the console, cool and steadying. “So you’re saying if we dial a Pegasus gate…”

“We may not have the power to take the city back.” His blue eyes were frank. “Right now, this minute, I could dial New Athos for you. But keeping a lock on it for long enough for you to go through would probably mean that Atlantis would be stuck on Earth permanently.”

Teyla let out a long, shuddering breath. “I cannot ask you to do that, Rodney. Not simply to allay…” She stopped and could go no further.

Rodney ducked his head, trying to see her eyes. “You’re worried about your people.”

“Of course I am worried,” she said. “But it is not only that.” Teyla looked away, but there was no one nearby, only Rodney, and his eyes were kind. Perhaps he would understand after all. He had surprised her, recently, since his experience with the brain parasite and the Shrine of Talus. “They will dial and dial, and they are dialing an address that no longer exists, a dead gate.” Teyla shook her head, looking away from him, her eyes on the ring of the Stargate. “Kanaan had a son before, a boy who was Culled by the Wraith when he was eight years old. When the gate address is inoperable, they will assume… He will think Torren is dead.” She met Rodney’s eyes and saw the sympathy there. “How can I put him through that? He has lost one son already, and now he will think that the Wraith have had Torren.”

Rodney frowned. “I could send a data burst, but there’s no one on New Athos who could read it. We might have enough power for that, but it wouldn’t do any good.”

Her eyes searched his face. “And it would be dangerous, would it not?”

“If by dangerous you mean it would deplete the ZPMs a lot, yes,” Rodney said. “We could do it. But it’s going to cut weeks off the time we can maintain the cloak and still have it be possible to return to Pegasus.”

“I cannot ask you to do that,” Teyla said. “Not for my own private concerns.”

“You must miss him a lot,” Rodney said. “Kanaan, I mean. Not Torren, since he’s here.”

“He is my friend,” Teyla said carefully.

Rodney blinked. “He’s your husband, isn’t he? I mean, I thought…”

“He is not my husband.” Teyla shook her head. “Rodney, we do not think of these things the same way you do, and Kanaan and I have never stood up together. He is my friend, as you are.”

“But you and me… I mean, we…” Rodney stuttered. “We never…”

“We have not gone apart together. But that is not to say that we would not, were the circumstances different.” Teyla leaned forward on her elbows, her arms around her body. “Imagine that you had lost Jennifer, that she had been fed upon and killed by the Wraith, Jennifer and your child together. Now imagine that I was there with you at a festival, coming from Kate Heightmeyer’s funeral, with her death song still in my ears. Would it be so strange for us to walk apart together and find in one another what comfort we might?”

Rodney looked down at his hands, leaning against the console beside her, his face serious. “I suppose not,” he said. “I’ve never thought about you that way. But if it were like that…”

“And would you not be nervous, the next time you were to see me? What if you came, not knowing what would be said or what was thought, to find me taken by Michael?”

Rodney looked at her sideways, and there was understanding in his eyes. “Is that what happened?”

“Yes.” She took a long breath. Beneath her elbows the board slumbered, everything in standby. “The next time I saw him, he was one of Michael’s brain-bound servants. Torren was a gift unexpected, to him as well as to me, but not enough I fear to bring us together. Kanaan and I fit no worse together than you and I might, and no better.” She risked another glance at Rodney. “But I would never wish him pain. And he is suffering now, mourning Torren as lost.”

Rodney nudged her with his shoulder. “Have you told anybody else this? I haven’t heard any of this around and I thought…” His eyes flickered to the door of Woolsey’s office.

“I have not spoken of this to anyone except you, Rodney,” she said, and she could not stop the words in her throat. It had been so long, and the words were so bitter. “Do you think I have not lived long enough among your people to know what they would say? Do you think I do not know what Mr. Woolsey would say, who has been so kind to me? Or what most people would think? Do you think I do not know that the nicest thing would be that I am a silly woman, a primitive who does not take proper care? That would be the nicest thing, Rodney.”

“I think you underestimate a lot of people,” Rodney said.

“I envy you,” she said, and leaned against his shoulder beside hers. “You never care what anyone thinks of you.”

Rodney shrugged. “You’ve got that wrong. I care what the people I care about think. But the rest of the sheep can trot off a cliff.” He looked at her sideways again. “There are some people who matter.”

“I will ask you not to repeat this,” Teyla said, but it was balm that he was friend at this moment.

“John…”

“It is not Colonel Sheppard’s business,” she said sharply. “And I prefer to keep his good opinion, so much as I have it.”

Rodney blinked. “I don’t think you understand.”

“I do not think that you do.” She held his eyes. “Your promise, Rodney.”

He nodded slowly. “I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “If you ask me not to.” His shoulders twitched as though at an unexpected thought. “I’m your friend.”

“I know that.” She looked down at the dialing keys. “And I know you would dial New Athos if I asked you to.”

“You won’t ask me to,” Rodney said.

“No, I will not.” Teyla lifted her chin. “It is not more important than taking Atlantis home. Nothing is more important. No one is more important.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Rodney said. “We’ll get home.”

The first time a door opened for her she thought it was an automatic door, like a supermarket. That’s the kind of thing you expect in an alien city, and no stranger really than in an elegant hotel or an airport. The lights in the rest room come on when you go in. It makes sense. Why leave the rest room lights on all the time? Why not have them detect your body heat or something and turn on only when they’re needed?

Eva Robinson had been in Atlantis three weeks before it struck her as strange, before she realized the doors didn’t open ahead of everybody. She was coming out of her new office on her way to lunch and ran into Dr. Keller in the hallway.

Dr. Keller had a sandwich wrapped in plastic in her hand and a bottle of orange juice, clearly on her way back to her office to eat lunch at her desk. Balancing lunch and drink in one hand, Keller was getting a hand free to push the button beside her door. “Hi,” she said abstractedly.

“Is it a pretty day out?” Eva asked, making conversation. She reached over to push the button for her and the door slid open when she reached for it.

Keller looked around. “Did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Open the door like that.” Keller motioned her in and put her lunch down on the desk. “Did you do that?”

Eva eyed the door panel suspiciously. “Doesn’t it work that way?”

Keller shook her head. “It’s not an automatic door. It’s manual operation unless you have the ATA gene.” She looked at Eva, her head to the side. “Have you had bloodwork done?”

“Just the basics,” Eva said. “ATA gene?”

“Has this happened to you before? Lights going on? Water at the right temperature, that kind of thing?”

“Aren’t the lights automatic?” Eva asked. “I mean, yes. They go on all the time. I thought it was just how the city was.”

Keller’s face changed to a smile. “Congratulations, Dr. Robinson! You have the ATA gene. I’ll need to run a blood sample to be sure, but it looks like you’ve joined an elite club.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you haven’t been with us long you haven’t heard it before. I’m not sure how thorough the hiring briefings were.”

Eva smiled ruefully. “Thorough. Thousands of pages. I’m afraid I haven’t gotten through everything in three weeks. What is the ATA gene and what does that have to do with the lights?”

Jennifer Keller sat down at her desk, motioning Eva to take the visitor’s chair. “The Ancients, the people who built this place, coded most of the functions to their own genetic code. It makes sense as a security measure, certainly. If someone captured the technology they wouldn’t be able to use it. Fortunately for us, after the last of the Ancients evacuated to Earth they mixed to a certain extent with the human population there. Roughly 4 per cent of humans from Earth have the ATA gene naturally expressed. It’s recessive, and therefore rare.” She shrugged. “Most people don’t know they have it, because they never encounter any Ancient technology.”

“You’re saying I have this Ancient gene?” Eva glanced around the curved emerald ceiling of the office. “That I’m descended from the people who built Atlantis?”

Keller nodded. “You and Dr. Beckett and Dr. Kusanagi and Colonel Sheppard, and a handful of other people. We only have eight people on the expedition currently with a naturally expressed ATA gene. There are more who have successfully used Dr. Beckett’s gene therapy to activate an ATA recessive that they’re carrying, and can utilize Ancient technology to a limited degree, but the naturally expressed ATA gene tends to be stronger and easier for people to learn to use. If you have it, consider yourself very lucky.” Keller picked up her orange juice. “At least until people want you to come turn things on all day. Carson complains all the time that he’s the human light switch.”

Eva searched for words. “Do you have this…gene?”

“No.” Keller’s mouth pinched. “And apparently I don’t carry it as a recessive either, since the gene therapy didn’t work on me. It can’t activate what you don’t have.”

“That must be inconvenient,” Eva said.

“Tell me about it. I can’t get half the Ancient medical equipment to work. I have to get Marie to do things since the gene therapy worked on her.” Keller shook her head. “Dr. Beckett can use everything, of course”

“That must be challenging.”

Keller took a drink of her orange juice. “Dr. Beckett is much more qualified for this job than I am. But as far as the ATA gene goes, the person you’ll want to talk to is Colonel Sheppard. I’ll drop him an email and let him know you’ve got the gene. He has the strongest affinity for Atlantis’ systems, so he can best show you how to use it.” She looked away, frowning at her computer screen. “If we’re able to go back, it would be really useful to have someone else on the medical staff with the gene.”

“I’m just a contract employee while you’re here,” Eva said. “To help with transition issues. Besides, didn’t the IOA decide that Atlantis was remaining on Earth?”

Keller didn’t lift her eyes from the screen. “I hope that’s not final,” she said.

“We have systems green,” Radek Zelenka said, peering at the display on his laptop.

Dashing between the city’s screen display and his own, Rodney snapped into his headset, “Carter?”

“We have main power online.” Sam Carter’s voice came over the radio from where she was in the substructural auxiliary power control center. “But I’m getting some fluctuations in E23 and E24.”

“I am seeing those too,” Radek said.

“Those shouldn’t affect the hyperdrive,” Rodney said. “Those are to the atmosphere scrubbers, which we don’t need when we’re parked in California. Ignore them. Sam? Are you reading power to the hyperdrive initiators?”

“I have green on navigation,” Radek said. He frowned. “But I’m not getting an active signal between the hyperdrive initiators and the Chair.”

“Forget the Chair,” Rodney directed. “One thing at a time. Sam? Do we have power to the initiators?”

“We have power to the initiators.” Sam’s voice was crisp. “I’m reading full on one through three. Four is only at 40 per cent.”

“The east pier.” Radek shook his head with a few select swear words in Czech. “Will we ever get that thing fixed?”

“If you hadn’t gotten it shot up,” Rodney began.

“I was not flying, in case you do not remember,” Radek snapped. “That was Carson, and if you have a problem you should take it to him.”

The door to Woolsey’s office opened and he came to stand gravely beside Rodney’s terminal. “Shut it down.”

“What?” Rodney said sharply. “There’s no possible danger of overload. We’re testing the repaired power conduits to make sure that we’ve fixed all the breaks and we’re actually getting power to the hyperdrive.”

“I’m still reading inactive connections from the initiators to the Chair,” Sam said on the radio.

“Shut it down.” Woolsey’s quiet voice carried.

With a glance at Rodney, Radek moved the indicators down.

“Why?” Rodney pulled himself up, towering over Woolsey even with his modest height.

“The IOA has suspended all repairs and systems testing indefinitely.” Woolsey lifted his chin. “Other than routine maintenance of vital systems, we are to shut down all additional work, pending a full review.”

“I’m not reading any power down here,” Sam said on the radio. “Radek, I have a full drop off.”

“Colonel Carter, I’ve shut the test down,” Woolsey said into the radio. “And you might want to come up here.”

“Why in the hell would they do that?” Rodney demanded. “We have things we have to get done! We can’t sit around for months while they review everything! We need to get these systems operable again.”

“The IOA does not agree,” Woolsey said stiffly. “Atlantis is staying on Earth, and therefore the hyperdrive repairs are academic. Especially when they consider the ‘potential hazards of working haphazardly on alien systems.’”

Radek swore softly under his breath, his glasses trembling on the end of his nose.

“Working haphazardly on alien systems?” Rodney shouted. “What do they think we’ve been doing for the last five years? I’m not going to blow up the city fixing a damn power conduit!” Rodney cupped his headset. “Carter! Tell him!”

“Colonel Carter has no jurisdiction here,” Woolsey said. “This is an IOA matter, not an Air Force one. All repairs and research are suspended.”

“Research?” Rodney shouted. “Isn’t the whole point of having an Atlantis expedition to do research? Isn’t that why we wanted an alien city in the first place?”

Woolsey shifted from foot to foot, but his voice was firm. “It’s not my decision, Rodney. Everything is to shut down except routine and necessary maintenance. For the foreseeable future.”

“We are not going back.” Zelenka’s soft words fell like a death knell. “That’s what this is about. It’s over.”

Woolsey looked down at him seated at his laptop. “I’m afraid so.”

“They’re just going to waste everything we’ve done,” Rodney said. “What are they going to do?”

“Conduct a review in a methodical fashion prior to a decision making process about the long-term process of dismantling and examining the Ancient systems in question,” Woolsey quoted.

“They will take it apart,” Radek breathed. “We are not fixing it. They are dismembering her over twenty years.” His voice choked, and he bent his head over the screen, blinking.

Sam Carter came running up the stairs. “What’s going on?”

Rodney’s eyes snapped. “The IOA is shutting Atlantis down. No research, no repairs, pending their asinine review. And then they’re going to start dismantling.”

Sam’s mouth opened and shut.

“Don’t just stand there!” Rodney shouted at her. “Do something!”

“What can I do?”

“This matter is not under Colonel Carter’s jurisdiction,” Woolsey said again. “This is an IOA decision. Colonel Carter doesn’t even work for the IOA. Doctor, you need to calm down.”

“No, I don’t.” Rodney’s head was suddenly absolutely clear. “I am not taking this city apart, and I will not stand down.”

Radek looked up at him. “Rodney, you have to.”

“No.” Rodney stripped off his jacket and thrust it into Woolsey’s arms. “Because I quit.”

“Rodney…” Radek breathed.

“I quit,” Rodney said. “I won’t do it. I’m a civilian contractor, and I can walk. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He spun around on his heel, heading for the stairs. “You’ll have to find someone else to dismember Atlantis. It won’t be me!”