Secrets

Chapter Twenty Pilgrims

John knocked on the door to Woolsey’s office, waiting for him to look up from his laptop and motion him in. “Got a second?” he asked.

Woolsey nodded, pushing back from the desk. “Yes, of course. It’s probably time I took a break anyhow.” He didn’t look happy. “I was reading through my emails from the IOA.”

The databurst had come in three hours ago, downloading all the emails sent through the SGC. John had had four, three of them from Sergeant Walter Harriman about various logistical issues affecting the military detachment in Atlantis, all of them already answered promptly and in the outgoing mail. There had also had been one from his brother, but John hadn’t opened that one yet.

Woolsey had more than three hundred emails in his queue. No wonder it was taking him hours to get through them.

“Anything bad?” John asked, slouching into one of the visitor chairs. He’d made a point of slouching initially when Woolsey arrived and hadn’t gotten out of the habit.

“Yes, actually.” Woolsey frowned at his laptop. “For Dr. McKay at any rate.”

John sat up. “We’re not going to…”

Woolsey raised a hand. “Nothing like that, thankfully,” he said, his mouth pressed together in a thin line. “But they are concerned, very concerned, over the extent of Dr. McKay’s transformation. They have heeded my recommendation that his confinement or lack thereof be contingent on the medical advice of Dr. Beckett, Dr. Keller having recused herself from the decision based upon personal considerations. Subject of course to the review of SGC medical personnel.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” John asked.

“And contingent upon one other thing,” Woolsey said. He sighed. “That Dr. McKay is not to return to Earth under any circumstances until it is clear that all effects of the retrovirus are completely eliminated.”

“That may never happen,” John said. “Carson and Jennifer said…”

“I’m well aware of that, Colonel Sheppard,” Woolsey said. “Dr. McKay may have to spend the rest of his life in the Pegasus Galaxy.”

John bit back his first answer. That’s not so bad, he nearly said. And it wasn’t. Not compared to being locked up. Not compared to being a Wraith forever. Not to having to go back to Earth. Being exiled to Atlantis for the foreseeable future wasn’t so bad at all…

“We’ll just have to see how it goes,” Woolsey said briskly. “After all, these effects may fade in time. It’s only been six days. In a few months the situation may be entirely different.”

“That’s true,” John said. “It may clear up on its own.”

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” Woolsey asked.

“Yeah.” John pulled his head back. Rodney stuck in Atlantis wasn’t horrible at all. Better that, some part of him said, than Rodney being recalled to Earth. “Dr. Robinson has been doing some hypnosis work with Teyla. We think we’ve got a good lead on a ZPM and I want to take the team to check it out.”

“Go on.”

“It’s a space gate — we dialed it years ago and never checked it out further once we discovered it was in high orbit around a planet that didn’t seem to offer anything. No lights, no radio or EM emissions, no signs of technology. I can’t swear it’s uninhabited, but it’s unlikely to have a population that would be a threat to us. In and out in a cloaked jumper, checking out this lead. Pretty much minimal risk. If we don’t find anything, we’ve wasted an afternoon.”

Woolsey folded his hands. “That does sound like minimal risk. Do you think there’s actually a ZPM there?”

“There was once.” John shrugged. “That’s about all we’ve got anywhere. It may be gone, it may be destroyed, who knows? But it’s worth taking a look.”

“All right.” Woolsey took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Assemble your team whenever you’re ready. You have a go, Colonel.”

John warmed up the puddle jumper, checking the board carefully though he’d done this hundreds of times. There was no such thing as a perfunctory flight check. Teyla slid into the seat beside him. “Ok?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I am sorry that I am late. I was seeing Torren off to New Athos.”

“It’s ok. Radek’s not here yet either.” Everything was green. They could get going anytime Radek showed up. Ronon was already in the chair behind him, leaning back with his eyes shut like he was taking a nap. John keyed the radio on. “Radek? We’re waiting for you in the jumper bay.”

“In a moment,” Radek said. The noise around him sounded like he was downstairs in the gate room. Probably people had about ten things they wanted him to do before he left. “I am…” The end of his sentence was cut off.

Teyla smiled. “I am glad I am not the latest one.”

“Not by a long shot,” John said. Radek would be a while.

“Ready to go?” Rodney’s voice was cheerful as he appeared in the cockpit door. Ronon came to his feet in one move, while Teyla and John swiveled around. His hair was dead white, standing up spiked like an 80s rock star, in sharp contrast to his black leather Atlantis jacket, but otherwise he looked like himself, like old familiar Rodney. Maybe he was a little thinner, looked a little older, but his voice, his hands — all Rodney.

“What?” Ronon said.

“Carson’s cleared me out of the infirmary,” Rodney said with a smile John didn’t quite believe. “So I’m good for duty. Radek out, me back in.” He looked at John. “Right?”

John opened his mouth and closed it. He could see every word written on Ronon’s and Teyla’s faces, just as if they’d discussed it for an hour. No from Ronon, yes from Teyla. But it was his call, and he knew perfectly well it was about more than this mission. If he said no, if he sent Rodney downstairs and had him send up Radek, it was saying he was off the team. It was saying he couldn’t be trusted. And everyone would know that. If John wouldn’t trust him, who would?

“Are you sure you’re ok to go in the field?” John temporized. “You just got out of the infirmary. And don’t you still have some…” Wraithy bits didn’t seem like the way to put it.

“I’m good,” Rodney said with that same not-right smile. “Never felt better. Of course, I’ve still got this pesky telepathy thing.” He waved his finger around beside his ear. “But since the only person who can hear it is Teyla…”

“It may prove very helpful on this mission,” Teyla said warmly. “I am glad you are back, Rodney.”

Teyla was staking out a position. It wasn’t warning to him, but to Ronon, who looked thunderous. John didn’t think she understood quite how freaked out Ronon had been, how far he’d been pushed.

And so he looked at Ronon, not Rodney. “If Rodney’s himself again and good to go, let’s do it,” he said. “We’ve all had some bad times and come back.” They’d trusted Ronon again after he’d turned. Now Ronon could do the same. And no, it wasn’t easy. It was never easy.

“Ok,” Ronon said and sat down, but his eyes didn’t leave Rodney as he bustled around, fussily arranging his gear in the seat behind Teyla.

“Control, this is Sheppard,” John said into the radio. “Opening the bay doors.”

“Confirmed,” Airman Salawi said confidently. “Clear the gateroom floor, please.”

The jumper descended into the gateroom and John dialed the gate, listening to Radek talking to Salawi. He sounded relieved.

This was better. This was how it ought to be. The wormhole opened and the jumper threaded the needle.

It was a high orbital gate, just as John remembered. The jumper sent back a wave of telemetry. No other ships, no wreckage, no satellites, nothing but the gate. Below, a mostly blue and brown planet turned serenely, seamed by the long white cloud layer of a cold front, deserted and quiet.

“Teyla?” he asked.

She shook her head, her eyes on the starfield. “I am not sensing Wraith,” she said. Her eyes flickered back to the seat behind her. “Or at least not more than a slight distortion that I believe can be accounted for.”

Rodney huffed, and then Teyla smiled, their eyes meeting over the chair back as he shrugged with an offhanded smirk. John shook his head. He was going to have to get used to their little telepathic asides.

“Ok, Teyla,” he said. “Tell us where to set down.”

Teyla looked over the map now unscrolling on the heads up display, the jumper neatly filling in water and land and weather patterns at his prompting. He gave her time. After all, she was trying to match what she saw to a memory ten thousand years old.

“There, I believe,” she said, pointing toward the eastern coast of the large southern continent. “I think that is the right area.”

“Ok.” John put them into a lower pass, dropping down through cloud layers and jet stream to about ten thousand feet. One of the indicators blinked briefly. “Picking up some wreckage to the north of here. No power source.”

“Some space junk,” Rodney said. “Probably.”

The puddle jumper’s readings were clear. “It’s old,” John said. “Not even any residual radiation. Not our problem.” This was the kind of world the Travelers liked. If they’d crashed or scrapped a ship here long ago they would have stripped it bare. And the sensors weren’t suggesting the kind of rare alloys an Ancient ship would have had. “Let’s keep our minds on the ball here. Teyla, where are we going?”

“South, I believe,” she said. Teyla leaned forward, looking out the windscreen.

“Smoke,” Ronon said. They swept over a cluster of villages by the mouth of a river, cooking smoke rising into the air from stone chimneys. On the headland above there was what looked like a square tower house, a huddle of outbuildings in its shadow. A fleet of little fishing boats stood offshore. “Not uninhabited,” Ronon said.

“They don’t look like a lot of trouble,” John said. Another fishing village further down the coast where Teyla indicated, twenty or thirty buildings together where a break in the sea cliffs was formed by an outflowing stream. “Teyla?”

Teyla shook her head. “Come around again,” she said.

John brought the jumper around, dropping down to 4,000 feet and slowing. Sea cliffs. Miles and miles of sea cliffs. He could see the white speckles here and there of birds roosting by the hundreds. Every bit of cliff looked alike.

“I cannot tell,” Teyla said, frustration in her voice. “It was a round tower on the cliff distant from any river or stream, but I do not see it or anything that might have been it.”

“These cliffs have probably changed in 10,000 years,” John said. “Erosion.”

Ronon let out a sigh from behind John, one that sounded suspiciously like a sigh of relief. It would be nice to just call the mission off and go home. Couldn’t find it, end of story.

But no. Ronon was going to have to work with Rodney. They were going to have to get over this thing, and they weren’t going to do that by avoiding each other.

“Let’s put it down near that little fishing village,” John said. “Let’s ask the locals if they know anything about it.”

“Do you seriously think…” Rodney began.

That sounded like the old Rodney. “It’s worth a try,” John said, turning the puddle jumper around and looking for some level ground that wasn’t either in the village or too far away.

“A marsh? You had to land in a marsh?” Rodney pulled his boot out of four inches of stinking mud. “There’s a whole planet full of rocks and you had to land in a marsh!”

“Suck it up, McKay,” Ronon said, stepping off the back of the puddle jumper confidently and striding toward the fishing village. Teyla followed him down the ramp, an expression on her face that said louder than words that it was good to hear what passed for normal around here.

“Hang on,” John said, waiting until Teyla was clear of the ramp to close it up and cloak the jumper. “Wait for us.”

“I can’t believe you landed in a marsh.”

“Because in the ocean is a bad idea, and so is in the river. Which left on the cliff or in the marsh. And since I can’t park vertically…” John replied.

Ronon turned around, arms spread. “I don’t know what you expect to get out of these people,” he said.

“They may know something,” Teyla said. “Often there are stories about old ruins, even if there is not much that is visible from the air. And there were sea caves beneath the tower. The caves may still be there even if the tower is gone after ten thousand years.”

“Should have brought Lynn,” Ronon said. “He’s pretty good with those things.”

“If we find anything interesting we’ll go get him,” John said. And he meant it. He’d learned his lesson about not going back for specialists when you needed them.

Some children with baskets were heading toward the sea cliffs, a big black dog with them. The dog snarled, but one of the kids, a girl about twelve, held him by his leather collar.

“Hey, kids,” John said, taking off his sunglasses and giving them a big smile. “What’s up?”

“We’re going egg hunting,” the littlest one piped up, a blond boy maybe six or seven. “On the cliffs.”

The older girl hushed him. “You are travelers from afar?”

“Yes,” Teyla said, coming forward with her best trader’s smile. “We have come a long distance, and we do not know our way around here.”

“We don’t have an inn,” the girl said, lifting her chin. “Not like some. But we do have a Pilgrim House. Are you Pilgrims?” Her eyes flickered over Ronon and Rodney, then came to rest on Rodney. “Is he sick?”

“Yes,” Teyla said. “He is our friend and he has been very sick. But it is not an illness you can catch.”

She nodded. What Teyla had said seemed to pass muster somehow. “I’m Lyra.”

“I am Teyla,” Teyla said. “And I am grateful for your name and your welcome.”

Small population, John thought, looking at the kids. All that red and blond hair was recessive, and tended to be rare on planets that had a lot of contact with other worlds. These kids were mostly tow headed, with the exception of one kid with hair as red as Halling’s. Boys and girls alike wore rough wool trousers and tunics with woolen jackets and caps. There must be sheep somewhere, and that dog looked like it was probably bred for herding and sent with the kids to keep an eye on them.

“Are you here to seek healing for your friend?” Lyra asked, still looking at Rodney appraisingly. “He ought to get well soon with so many people to intercede for him.”

“We hope he will be well soon,” Teyla said. “But we do not know how to find what we are looking for. Perhaps you can help us?”

“Are you looking for the Shrine?” the oldest boy asked. “I know the way. I’ll guide you for a token!”

Lyra shoved him quiet. “You know it’s not nice to ask Pilgrims for tokens! Showing a Pilgrim the way is an act of charity!”

“The Shrine?” Rodney asked. “Is that like the…thing… that time?” He looked at Ronon inquiringly.

“Like the Shrine of Talus?” Ronon’s eyebrows rose. They’d taken Rodney to the Shrine of Talus a year ago and more, when he’d contracted a deadly brain parasite. It had been Ronon’s idea, and despite Jennifer and Woolsey’s objections, taking Rodney there had proved to be the right thing to do.

“I don’t know this Shrine of Talus you speak of,” Lyra said respectfully. “Ours is the Shrine of the Bride. But Pilgrims come from a long way to seek healing for their kindred there. Lots of people are healed.” She put her hand on the head of the littlest boy, the loud one. “My brother would have died when he was a baby if it hadn’t been for the Shrine. He was born with a hole in his heart, the Bride said, but my grandfather made the intercession and he’s just fine. So I know it works,” she said solemnly.

“He looks strong and healthy now,” Teyla said, and only John would have heard the tiny catch in her voice. Birth defects like that killed on Athos too.

“I am!” the boy yelled at the top of his voice. “I’m really strong!”

“I see you are,” Teyla said, and her mouth twitched with amusement. She looked at Lyra again. “We do not know how to do this correctly, how to, what is it you say? Ask for intercession?”

“You go that way,” Lyra said, pointing. “Along the path there, the one that runs along the top, until you get to a path that goes down. It’s kind of steep, but we’ve tried to make it easier for people who are sick by putting a rope barrier along the edge so there’s something to hold onto. You go down to the Shrine. It’s one of the entrances to the World Beneath, the Land of the Dead, and you ask the Bride of the Lord of the Dead to help you.”

“Some kind of local priestess?” Rodney asked. “It’s probably the cave that does it anyway, not flim-flam…”

“Hush,” John said, and no, everything wasn’t back to normal, because Rodney did, looking abashed. Teyla was getting the information they needed, and if Rodney would just shut up they’d have it.

“Anyway, the Bride examines you, and if she thinks that you can be healed she’ll take you and your intercessors into the cave. And then you come back healed,” Lyra said.

“A device like the Shrine of Talus…” Rodney said quietly.

“Shut up, McKay,” Ronon growled.

John turned around. “Look, if we’ve got an Ancient device in a cave we’re on the right track. So let’s just play this.”

“And if you cannot be healed?” Teyla asked.

Lyra looked solemn. “Sometimes she says you can’t be. That’s what she says with very old people a lot. That what’s ailing them is old age, and that there is no cure for it. And so she refuses the fee.”

“Ok,” John said. “Let’s go talk to this Bride. I think she’ll be able to help us.”

“I hope she can for your friend’s sake,” Lyra said brightly. “Give her my greetings if you would, and tell her my mother said to bring her three eggs when we’ve finished the day’s search, so I’ll be there later.”

“We will take the Bride your greetings,” Teyla said warmly. “And thank you, Lyra.”

The children waved as they started up the cliff path, the big black dog running along beside them.

Teyla frowned.

“Something wrong?” John asked quietly.

“No.” She looked out to sea, the birds rushing up in a whirling crowd from the cliffs where the dog ran barking. “This may be the place. I cannot tell. If so, the cliffs have much changed. I think the tower may have stood in a place that is no longer here. The sea may have taken it.”

“Hopefully not the caves,” John said. “Sounds like a local priestess, and maybe she knows about the ruins or about the sea caves. Probably a good person to ask.”

“Yes,” Teyla said, glancing at Rodney. “I expect that you are right.”

The cliffs were steep, but the path was clearly marked as the children had said. Along the edge of the drop there was a rope held in place by iron stakes, evidence of some metalwork at least. They climbed down in single file, John, then Teyla, Rodney and Ronon.

John glanced back at Teyla, who had an unusually abstracted expression on her face. “What do you think this priestess…” he began.

The cave mouth opened up, a broad dark portal in the weathered gray stone, some strange striations in the rock around it like veins of quartz. Bells of brass hung on long pale threads around it, each one moving with the continual wind, a faint soft chiming. He saw the movement inside the door just a moment too late, red hair too vivid for humanity, blue tinged skin too pale. He saw her move, and it seemed to take an eternity to raise his P90, forever, as though he were underwater. The Wraith Queen met his eyes.