Secrets

Chapter Twenty-four Fair One

Jennifer glanced over to where her nurse, Marie Wu, was very carefully listening to Thessen’s heart. He looked more interested than frightened by what she was doing, and as Jennifer watched Marie took the earpieces out of her ears and offered them to Thessen so that he could hear his own heart.

Alabaster followed her gaze. “She does much to reassure him,” Alabaster said. “You must realize that the people of their world had no contact with others because they had no access to the Ring. This is entirely new for them.”

“I know,” Jennifer said. Her scans showed that Alabaster was the picture of health for a Wraith, something that probably ought not surprise her. “They seem to be coping well.”

“They are all intelligent men,” Alabaster said. “I chose men to accompany me who I hoped would adapt.”

She sounded like a pleased trainer, Jennifer thought, flinching just a little, pleased that her sheepdogs had performed well at the county fair. They’re good dogs and they’re pretty smart. Made me proud of them.

“So it is you who has derived this retrovirus with Guide,” Alabaster said, her eyes on Jennifer’s face.

Jennifer nodded. “We worked on it together, up to this latest iteration. I took the final trial myself.”

Alabaster put her head to the side. “And you chose to be fed upon yourself?”

Jennifer nodded again, not looking up from her instruments. “I did. And other than being exhausted for several days, and having some aching and soreness at the puncture site, I’m fine.”

“That is quite remarkable,” Alabaster said. “The difference it would make to my people is enormous.”

“Yes, well, I don’t think we’re ready for a mass trial,” Jennifer said tightly.

“Why not?”

Jennifer swallowed. “There are ethical guidelines… We don’t know that what happened with me was what usually happens… I can’t let those men take the retrovirus without being more certain…”

Alabaster frowned. “But they came for that purpose. They volunteered to represent their people and be the first. If it works as you say, then it will do no harm to them.”

“I just don’t think we’re quite ready for that yet,” Jennifer demurred.

Alabaster sat down on the stool opposite her, perching on the edge in a way that seemed utterly incongruous for a Wraith queen. Teyla as Steelflower had always been conscious of dignity. Alabaster knew she was the genuine article and had no reason for anyone to doubt it. “Why did you work with my father on this?”

Jennifer looked up at her, blinking. “Um, because genocide is wrong.” She was suddenly conscious that Marie had stopped speaking, of the silence in the infirmary. Only Thessen, who didn’t know the word, wasn’t looking in her direction. “It is,” Jennifer said. “That’s the bottom line. There has to be a way to stop the Wraith from having to kill to feed, or sooner or later there will be a way for us to kill you all.”

Alabaster’s face was tight. “And if there were such a way?”

“Somebody would use it,” Jennifer said. “I thought…your father and I thought…that maybe there was a third path.”

Alabaster leaned back on the stool, her hands behind her, looking up at the ceiling as though something there held an answer. “I know why my father would prefer such a path,” she said. “But why would you?”

“I told you,” Jennifer said. “Because genocide is wrong. Period. Always wrong. No exceptions, no excuses.”

“And you believe that firmly enough to let one of us feed upon you, with no idea whether or not the retrovirus worked?” Alabaster sounded curious, as though this were all an academic question.

“The first trial didn’t work,” Jennifer said. “Guide nearly killed me. I was in defib when he restored me.”

“And yet you did it again,” Alabaster said.

“Yes.” Jennifer met her eyes firmly. “It’s my job.”

“Your job to save my people from yours? Or your people from mine?”

“My job to save people,” Jennifer said firmly. “I’m a doctor. That’s my oath. I save lives. Your lives, our lives, everybody’s lives.” She slid onto the other stool opposite Alabaster. “I had a job, before I came to Atlantis… It was for an organization that went into the most war-torn parts of the world, places where famine was compounded by guerilla war, by tribal war and rape as a means of war… And we treated everybody. Civilians. Government soldiers. Guerillas. Every tribe. Because we were doctors. Our job was to save lives.” Jennifer looked around the infirmary, where Marie was now getting Thessen’s blood pressure, where Airman Drake’s broken ankle was propped up on nice white pillows while he played video games on his cell phone, and tears pricked at the back of her eyes unexpectedly. “That’s what I came here to do. But it didn’t turn out like that.”

Alabaster put her head to the side, a gesture just like Todd’s, the one Jennifer had thought made him look like a courtly gentleman. “Why not?”

Jennifer shrugged. “I spend most of my time being a General Practitioner in a military setting. I set broken ankles and wrangle over who’s had an eye exam. I dispense headache medicines and antacids and I patch people up so they can go back out and get shot again. It’s not what I wanted to do. It’s not what I planned to do. But Elizabeth needed me to do it, and then…” Jennifer looked away, blinking. “I was thinking recently I’d go back to Earth and maybe do that again, but…” She got up briskly. There was no good end to that sentence. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“If your retrovirus works, you will have saved many lives,” Alabaster said gravely. “Human and Wraith alike.”

“I hope so,” Jennifer said. She brushed her hands off on her pants legs. “Ok. I think we’re done here. If you’ll wait until Marie is finished with Thessen, Captain Cadman will escort you back to your quarters.”

“I will do so,” Alabaster said gravely.

When Jennifer got back to her quarters, Rodney was stretched out on the couch, his laptop and Newton sharing his lap by virtue of Newton making himself very small between Rodney’s leg and the pillows, roughly the size and shape of a meatloaf. A meatloaf that gave her a reproachful glare when she walked in.

Rodney, on the other hand, didn’t look up from the laptop screen. “Oh, hi,” he said.

Jennifer came around the couch and plopped down on the ottoman. “Hi Rodney.”

His color was good — no more pasty skin, and the scars from the sensor slits were fading, looking like no more now than age lines that bracketed his mouth. With the white hair it made him look older, but not inhuman. Just older than he really was.

Rodney looked up from the screen, actually looking at her, like he was taking in her hair falling out of its pony tail, her tired face. “Bad day?”

“Not by Atlantis standards,” Jennifer said. “I had Alabaster in the lab until a few minutes ago. At least she doesn’t want to work all night, like Todd. She’s spent enough time around humans that she expects us to close down and get some sleep.”

“Yes, well,” Rodney said. He shifted, dislodging Newton, who yowled in protest.

Jennifer frowned. “She talks about them like pets. The humans who came with her, I mean. Like nice pets she likes a lot, but pets all the same.”

Rodney shrugged. “Well, that’s kind of what they think, right? I mean, we don’t live very long compared to them, and we can’t talk like intelligent beings and you know, she got used to the people on that planet and she doesn’t want to eat them. How many people would want to kill and eat their dog? Most people would be horrified at the idea. They love their dog.”

Newton gave Rodney a reproachful glare.

Rodney glanced back at his screen, where some kind of analysis was rolling. “Alabaster’s a good dog owner. She wants her pets taken care of and healthy, with plenty to eat and nice things happening to them. She doesn’t want them to be unhappy, and she doesn’t want to abandon them any more than most people want to ditch their dog by the side of the road just because it’s gotten inconvenient. Most people would feel really bad about doing that. So they bring their dog with them and hope it behaves.”

Jennifer stared at him. “Rodney?”

“I’ve been a Wraith, and believe me, it’s different.” Rodney reached down to quiet Newton, who was writhing against his side. “Maybe that’s what the experiment was for in the first place, what the Ancients wanted. The ones who couldn’t Ascend. Wouldn’t it be great to be immortal without Ascending? To have telepathic powers and eternal good health? To never die of old age? To get all the benefits of Ascension without leaving home and without all those pesky rules and things?”

“Oh my God, Rodney,” Jennifer breathed. “That’s exactly why they did it. That’s exactly what they were trying to do.”

“But they weren’t ready to try it on actual people yet. On themselves. They were still trying it on the nearest thing, on humans. Just like we test drugs on monkeys before we go to human trials. Only it didn’t work out the way they wanted it do, and their creations weren’t very happy about it,” Rodney said. “So they tried to kill them and finally came up with a way to do it. But their experiments rebelled first.”

“A way to kill them,” Jennifer said. Things clicked into place. “Is that what Alabaster was talking about?”

Rodney looked abashed. “We found a device on Alabaster’s planet that was designed to kill all the Wraith. I don’t know if it works or how it works yet. Woolsey won’t let me get my hands on it. He says it’s stored in a safe place.”

Jennifer leaned forward, her fingers against her temples. “You want to get your hands on a weapon of mass destruction.” Of course he did. He was Rodney.

“I’ve had weapons of mass destruction for years,” Rodney said cheerfully. “Come on. How many nukes have I had?”

“I have no idea.” Jennifer pressed her hands to her forehead. A weapon that could kill an entire race, not hypothetically, but actually. And the only reason not to use it was her retrovirus. Well, that and the fact that it would be wrong, wrong in a way so big she could hardly get her head around it. But wrong didn’t matter. Not to the people who would make the decisions.

On the other hand, if Mr. Woolsey wouldn’t let Rodney have it, maybe he didn’t mean to use it. Maybe he hadn’t already decided to go there. If he had, he would have been telling Rodney to figure out how to make it work…

“Jennifer? There’s something I wanted to ask you,” Rodney said.

She pressed her fingers to her forehead until she saw red spots before her eyes. There were pressure points that released tension. Maybe Mr. Woolsey was open to trying the retrovirus first…

“You know, it’s been kind of busy since I got back. Since I got out of the infirmary, I mean. Since I was back in my right mind. And we haven’t seen a lot of each other these last few days, but we’ve been seeing each other for a year now, and…” Jennifer looked up, trying to figure out what Rodney was talking about. “We moved in six months ago and yes, ok, I’ve been captured a lot of that time and incidentally Eva says that she has a bunch of resources for the spouses of POWs that she thinks you might find helpful and Jeannie is still here but who knows how long she’ll stay since we’ve got a ZPM now and can open the gate to Earth anytime she wants rather than having to wait until the Hammond leaves…”

“Rodney?”

“And I’m not sure who’s actually qualified to do it, but at the very least we’ve got a ship’s captain and there’s no doubt we’re outside the three mile limit…”

“Rodney, what are you talking about?” Jennifer asked. Genocide. A genocide weapon, a weapon to correct the Ancients’ mistake…

Rodney swallowed. “About getting married. Now. I suppose we could ask the SGC to send a chaplain through if it’s important to you. I think they have one of those.”

“Getting married.” Jennifer felt like she’d been dropped in a bucket of ice water. “Now? Rodney, we hadn’t talked…”

“We’re talking about it now, aren’t we?” he asked with his lopsided smile, the one that always looked overconfident even when it wasn’t. He sat up, dislodging Newton who fled with a hiss, coming to sit on the edge of the couch, knee to knee. “I think it’s time for something solid in my life. I’m ready to make a commitment. If I’m going to stay here forever, it’s time to think about the future seriously. And I’m not getting any younger. If I want to pass along my genes…”

Jennifer seized on the nearest floating plank. “You’re not that old.”

“I’m forty one,” Rodney said.

“And I’m twenty eight!” She hadn’t meant it to come out almost as a screech, but it did. “Rodney, I have no idea…” She couldn’t even make the words work. She bent her head to her hands again.

“No idea of what?” he asked quietly.

Jennifer looked up. “I have no idea what I want to do in five years, much less what I want to do for the rest of my life. I took this job and it’s a great job and I’m not complaining about it or about my decision to come back to Atlantis. But it’s a job. Not something I plan to do for the rest of my life. I’m glad I’ve done it, but I don’t want to be the Chief of Medicine on a military base for the rest of my life! And yes, someday I probably will want to have kids, but not now and not under these circumstances.” She swallowed. She shouldn’t say it, but it bubbled up anyway, truth that she’d thought would be better in six months, better when he’d had time to heal. “And I’ll tell you this about Eva’s resources. I can’t do this again. I can’t be married to someone who is MIA for months at a time, and just when I’ve started to pull it together and move on, turns up again and wants to pick up where it was. I can’t be a military wife. There are women who can, and who do it over and over for twenty or thirty years, but I can’t live like that. I can’t live with the uncertainty over and over, with not knowing. At least when someone is terminally ill you know they’re not coming back.” She stopped, staring at the stricken expression on his face.

“You don’t want to marry me.”

“I don’t want to marry anyone now,” she said. “And I don’t want to marry someone who is going to be out there putting themselves in harm’s way every day. I don’t want to be a young widow with kids the way my dad was, and I know that could happen anyway! My mom died of cancer. That happens. But she didn’t do it on purpose.”

Rodney opened his mouth and shut it again. “But…I thought…you loved me.”

“I do. Maybe I do. But I can’t marry you like this.” She put her hand on his arm. “We can date. We can see each other. We can see where it goes in five years. But I can’t marry you now.”

Rodney looked down at her hand on his sleeve, and she couldn’t see his face. “I need to know that you’re here,” he said finally. “I can’t live with you and get deeper and deeper into this if it’s not solid. If it’s not going somewhere. If you can’t say yes.” He was silent for a long moment, then looked up. “Maybe we need to take a step back,” Rodney said with that same lopsided smile. “I think I probably need to move out. If this is going to be a casual thing…”

“Yeah,” Jennifer said, and she blinked back tears. “If it’s casual…”

“Right.” Rodney got up, folding his laptop shut. “So I think I should find someplace else to stay tonight. I’ll look for new quarters in the morning.”

“Yeah,” she said, not moving. “That’s probably best.”

“I think my old room is taken,” Rodney said, putting his laptop under his arm. “It had a good bathtub. I think somebody snagged it.”

“I’m sure there’s another room with a bathtub,” Jennifer said. She was proud that her voice was steady.

“Yes, I’m sure there is.” He looked at her and then down at the big white slug on the carpet. “Do you mind keeping Newton one more night? I’ll get him in the morning.”

“No, I don’t mind,” she said. “I kept him for months. But I was going to send him home with Jeannie…”

“Well. Now you don’t have to.” Rodney reached down and ruffled Newton’s fur. “I’ll see you in the morning, cat.”

“Good night,” Jennifer said. She couldn’t trust herself to say anymore as he walked over to the door, his steps as jaunty as the old Rodney McKay. “Good night.”