Exogenesis

Chapter Fifteen

When he woke the second time, she was there with him before he could even ask. Gentle fingers smoothed his hair, grounding him. "You must be hungry."

Despite the intensity of the emotional release that had overwhelmed him the last time he'd been awake, Rodney was startled to realize that something as fundamental as eating had never crossed his mind. Now that he thought about it, he was starving. A burst of memory caught him unawares, and he felt his throat on fire, his lungs filling with sand. Oh, God! He was choking on the burning sand and he couldn't breathe, couldn't…

The incipient terror melted into an image of the dark-robed man and his steed, carrying him to safety. And Turpi was here with him, as she always was, as she always would be, soothing his pain and making him whole. The memories of agony were only fading nightmares; they had to be, because a magnificent smell came his way. His mind cleared then, and he knew that he was awake and this was real. Turpi was real, helping him to sit up.

The bed dipped as she settled beside him. He wanted very much to reach out and hold her, but the smell promised something wonderful.

"All living things must eat," she said, a smile evident in her voice.

He felt the bowl against his lips and, placing his wrapped hands on top of hers, took a cautious sip. It was a soup, rich and delicious.

After a few gulping mouthfuls it occurred to him that he didn't need to hurry. Turpi wouldn't leave him; she'd promised. Gently halting her hands before she could lift the bowl again, he said, "I haven't thanked you yet. You and your father saved my life."

"Father will be pleased to see you well, but we do not need thanks. Knowing you, being with you, is already more than I ever could have hoped."

That jarred something inside of him. It hadn't been a dream. She had been there with him all the time, taking his pain away, giving completely of herself. But now that he was fully awake, the emotional walls he'd built so sturdily over the course of decades slipped into their habitual place. She was nursing him because he was hurt. There was nothing more to it than that. There couldn't be, because he'd done nothing to deserve such devotion.

She raised the soup bowl, and he took another sip before replying. "But you barely know me at all "

There was light in her laughter, a chiming sound as perfect as everything else about her. "Look within. You'll see that isn't so."

He wanted the walls to fade again, but they were unrelenting, telling him that he needed them to survive-and then, once again, she was there, inside his heart and mind, and the walls seemed less important than they once had. Still, an insistent core of logic prodded him until he asked, "All right, but I don't know that much about you. Would you describe yourself-tell me what you look like?" It seemed a shallow question, one that had held significance for him in the past yet became important now purely because he couldn't see.

"If you wish it. I am near to your age, and not as tall. My hair is short and the color of the sun."

A likeness of Samantha Carter rose in his mind. Without thinking, he reached up to touch Turpi's face and was stymied by the bandages again. She cupped his chin in her hands and dabbed at a comer of his mouth. "Have faith. It will not be long before you can touch again."

For the first time he could remember, he did have faith-in her, this amazing creature who cared so deeply, who made him feel wanted and treasured. He'd become so adept at hiding aspects of himself from others that he had come to believe the mask had fused to what was real. How is it that this woman could so easily separate the two?

He also noticed the silence outside. "Has the storm ended?" he asked, his voice sounding oddly distant.

"It has, but another has come." He felt her move off the bed, and although he couldn't hear her, he was sure that Turpi was moving around the room, collecting things. Then he felt her hands along his legs, smoothing the covers. "In recent days it seems the storms have been more numerous. It is too dangerous to travel to the cliffdwellers' village while the path is masked by sand."

Remembering the close call his team had faced upon their first arrival, Rodney agreed. His team… He should be concerned about them, and about Atlantis. There was work to be done-but he couldn't do much to help them from the other side of a sandstorm. "This village where we are now. It's separate from the cliff-dwellers' village, right? You said your father rode inland to come here. Are you from the newer settlements? Do you interact with the other villages at all?" Avague memory prodded, something about a rapid system of communication with one another, but it eluded him.

"I believe my father will be able to answer that better than I could," Turpi replied. "He is a leader here in our village. Unlike the cliff-dwellers, our people understand the true nature of the sand."

"The true nature-what do you mean?" Admittedly he had been distracted by his own work, but he had taken note of Carson's description of the red grit. And his memory of that diagnosis was very clear.

After a pause, she explained. "The sand does not immediately harm our people the way it does yours. But there are properties in it that have damaged our genetic code over the course of generations. This has resulted in a growing number of children with horrible deformities. In some the deformities are manifested as physical birth defects, while in others a violent madness takes hold without warning ""

If he'd been able to see, Rodney would have stared in surprise. Her description had been remarkably scientific. The villagers he'd met before had been blandly pleasant, with relatively astute leaders and a surprisingly just system of government. If Turpi was any indication, though, some of the communities on Polrusso were considerably more advanced than others. Still, a doubt surfaced. "I didn't see anything like that in the cliff-dwellers' village. All the kids looked fine."

"You did see something, but you could not have recognized it." She came to sit beside him again, and her hand smoothed away the furrows in his brow. "The woman whom you saw crying after your arrival did not lose her daughter in the way you believed. The child went mad, as many have done before, and so it is said by the villagers that her mind was lost. Her mother was forced to abandon her to the sand storm, as all such children are abandoned to protect the village."

"What?" Appalled, he jerked back, and his arm knocked into something. The soup bowl, most likely, but since he didn't hear it hit the ground, there was probably no harm done. "They send their own children off to die? What kind of people can do that?" Granted, he didn't like children, but then he'd never much liked them even when he'd been a child. But to undertake such deliberate cruelty-

"It is not a deliberate cruelty," Turpi assured him. "Many babies are born with deformities so shocking that they cannot live. Others appear normal, but turn insane during puberty and go on murderous rampages, killing their families, friends and mentors. The village has no system of incarceration and its people no heart to put children to death by their own hands. The children's skin is still vulnerable until after puberty, so returning them to the sand seems the only action the cliff-dwellers can take to protect themselves."

"No amount of school shootings could justify that," Rodney insisted, outrage still simmering. "I may, as a teenager, have harbored a few dark thoughts and orchestrated the occasional electric shock of a classmate, but I got over it, for God's sake."

"You need not grieve." She placed a finger against his lips to quiet him. "The cliff-dwellers do not know it, but over the generations my people have taken in and raised the abandoned children. We discovered that their deformity is in fact a gift, in a way, for the madness comes from voices in their minds."

Stunned, Rodney turned his head and stared blindly at her. "They're telepathic!"

Turpi's fingers continued to stroke his face, then reached behind to gently massage the stiffness that he hadn't even realized was in his neck. "Untamed, it brings madness, but when educated to control it, these children are… extraordinary."

When it all fell into place, he felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. The only way Turpi could have known about the village woman was by seeing into his mind. And his concern for Atlantis should have been far more acute. What else had she planted in his head`? How many of his thoughts over the past few hours had actually been his own?

Betrayal, while it should have been familiar, nevertheless stung him, painfully tightening his chest. All this time, he'd thought she cared for him, and like a fool, he'd believed it was because she-

Refusing to even think the word, he batted her hands aside and tried to rise from the bed, but she held him fast. "Please forgive me," she whispered urgently. "I meant no deceit. Your injuries were so very severe, your mind so filled with pain and suffering that I wanted to ease your distress until your health was restored. Now that you are gaining strength, let me tell you the complete truth, so you will see that I have no wish to manipulate you."

Rodney wasn't convinced, and he felt entitled to his suspicions. Between the incident with Cadman and the underwater hell that had left him questioning what was and wasn't real, his sense of control had taken a beating of late. Turpi had made him feel so many things he'd always locked carefully away, and if any of what she'd shown him had been false, he'd feel unspeakably violated. Even so, he sensed a genuine plea from her now. And what choice did he have at the moment? "I'm listening," he said finally. "Although I suppose you don't need me to tell you that."

"My father made no attempt to return you to the cliff-dwellers when he found you," Turpi confessed.

That unexpected honesty both reassured and alarmed him. But before he could explore the ramifications, she continued, "He had gone out in the storm to collect the abandoned, and assumed you were one of them. They are our purpose, you see. We create a loving environment for those cast out by the cliff-dwellers, and we help them to understand and make use of their abilities."

It was hardly the first time his immediate impression of a new culture had been completely off the mark. Nonetheless, he was still deeply disturbed by what Turpi had told him. Cliff-dwellers that indulged in infanticide and neighbors who blithely rummaged around in the one thing absolutely sacrosanct to him-his mind.

"The cliff-dwellers are not evil," Turpi continued, trying earnestly to convince him. "They mourn the loss of their children, and they do not wish to continue in this way. But which is the greater cruelty? To raise a child who will one day fall into madness and kill those who have loved her? To lock a child in a dark cell-where, in his madness, he will attempt to end his own life?"

"But don't the villagers know about you? There has to be a way to make Vene and the Elders understand."

"They do know of us. Their hatred and fear closes their minds to all our efforts. They will have nothing to do with us."

At that moment, the vaguely hazy sensation slipped from his mind, and Rodney became aware of the full extent of his physical condition. He was not only blind but almost certainly deaf as well. He cleared his throat. The vibrations were there but the resultant noise was dim. His breathing was easy, so his lungs had been fully restored, and his sense of smell and taste were there, and… Experimentally, he ran his tongue over the tooth he'd chipped earlier, only to find it intact and undamaged, and realization hit him in yet another sledgehammer blow. Surely their medicine wasn't that advanced, even if their grasp of science was strong. Either Turpi or her father, or possibly both, must possess healing powers to go along with the telepathy.

"It is as you surmise," she confirmed. "The same powers the Ancestors possessed."

So he really had been dying, and had been literally brought back by her touch. "What about my eyes and hands?"

"They are the hardest to heal and take the most time. Do you now believe that I do not deceive you? That I want only to help'?"

Rodney was a master at processing a dazzling array of information in short order, and so he instantly comprehended the true situation on Polrusso, Turpi's actions, and her reasoning. And, despite his own natural inclinations, he hadn't failed to notice that her voice was shy and hopeful. Even with the truth laid bare, her love was still there, still offered freely. "You know I do "

"Then sleep, my dearest. The more you rest, the sooner you will be strong enough to return to your people"

His people. They needed him, and he should be crawling to the door-assuming this place had a door-to help them. But then, from extreme clarity, his mind felt blanketed by cotton wool, fogged by a soft, comforting whiteness. He would get back to his team soon, when he was able. Right now, nothing mattered as much as listening to that lyrical voice, singing him to sleep.

Under the hand she'd placed on his chest, Turpi felt his breathing even out, and she began to relax as well. The depth and range of his emotions had been difficult to weather, but she felt sure that he understood and trusted her now. Such an amazing man, with such a great burden. She did not think she could have borne it if he had hated her.

To Polmssons, both defects and defenses were things to be seen on the surface, but this man wore his differently. She felt a kinship with him, seeing that his abilities had set him apart from others of his kind. Physically, he was whole and handsome, but he was damaged all the same. Unlike so many of the children whom she had fostered, whose parents loved them deeply and were emotionally devastated by having to abandon their young, Rodney had simply been neglected by parents who wallowed in their own hurt. Rejected by his childhood peers because of his great mind, desperate for recognition in his world, he had found friendship with his teammates. But not love, for he dared not lay himself open to that pain. He needed love like no other she had ever encountered, and so she wanted very much to show him that he need not feel alone.

Tenderly, she moved her hand in slow circles over his heart. Her healing abilities were limited to his body, but she would do all she could to heal his soul as well.

John had always had trouble bottling up his anger. Not emotionally; he'd elevated that to an art form. But physically he'd never been all that skilled at keeping his cool. To be able to maintain that perpetually laid-back facade for the world at large, there were times when he needed to fly, to run, to go to the gym and beat the crap out of something. Considering how lousy he felt at the moment, though, none of those things was going to happen in the foreseeable future, despite the way his infirmary stay had magnified his frustration. Instead, he alternated between lying down as instructed and getting up to throw personal items into a pair of standard-issue duffel bags.

Evacuation. After all the sacrifices they'd made for this city, they were going to be forced to run away.

It shouldn't have been necessary. Rodney should have been around to pull a technological rabbit out of his hat like always. Damn it, what would have been so wrong with allowing a rescue attempt? Worst case, John would be lost, too. Given that he couldn't fly and soon might no longer have Atlantis's Ancient tech to light up, would the expedition or the Air Force really suffer without him?

He could deal with Caldwell's distrust. It had been well earned, after all. They'd both taken the same oath to live by a set of principles. One of those principles was meant to be fundamental: those above commanded justly, and those below obeyed. Unfortunately, there were times when that tenet came into direct conflict with another, one he held in even higher regard: reliance on your comrades to do everything possible to bring you home.

And if Elizabeth had been the one on the other side of that blasted time dilation field for six months, slowly losing all sense of perspective, she would have understood just how important that reliance could be.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. John balled up his favorite sweatshirt and slung it toward the bag sitting on his bed. He'd been here before, figuratively speaking, a few years and a galaxy ago. That time, the life at stake had been a fellow pilot he'd just met at the start of their deployment, a man to whom he'd been bound only by a code of honor. This time he had the name and a face of a friend to put to the principle. In his mind, that made the decision all the more clear.

What the hell might as well live up to my billing.

Zinging his football into the open bag, John tapped his earpiece. "Ronon, Sheppard."

Since the response was prompt, Caldwell obviously hadn't confiscated Ronon's com. Lucky break. "Here. You okay?"

"More or less. Listen, Beckett sprung me loose, and if I'm already twitchy, I figure you must be halfway to losing it. Want me to come over? We can play cards."

"I won most of your candy stash last time "

Which was true. Ronon's impassable poker face, combined with a rather… aggressive strategy, tended to work only when he got good cards. Unfortunately for everyone else, so far he'd been getting a lot of good cards.

"My pride can handle it."

"If you say so"

Ronon wasn't going to give the soldiers outside his door the satisfaction of getting any reaction at all from him. Although he chafed at being treated like a criminal, he could understand the others' concerns. It was the way Caldwell had shut Sheppard down that left him amazed. What manner of military gave its leaders authority to command but then tied their hands`?

The door chime sounded, and he went to open it. In the corridor, Sheppard stood between the two guards, none of them looking at each other. "Hey. Up for some pariah poker?"

Stepping aside, Ronon let him in. His team leader was still wearing his jacket and sidearm, and made no move to sit at the table. When the door closed, Sheppard pushed a hand through his hair, seemingly weighing a choice. "Look," he said finally, "this may or may not come as a surprise, but I didn't really come here to play cards"

He'd thought that might be a surprise? Clamping down on a snort, Ronon gave him a look of mild disdain and produced two rappelling harnesses from under his bed.

Blinking, Sheppard just looked at him for a minute. "Okay. I'm really that predictable?"

"Pretty much." Reaching back under his bed, Ronon began to unwind a length of rope. He hadn't measured it, but seven years without such conveniences gave a person lots of practice at estimation. "Your men always leave stuff lying around."

"Tell me about it. How'd you smuggle that stuff out of the jumper bay?"

"Jacket's big."

"Man, I need a jacket like that," Sheppard commented with a hint of envy.

"Figured you wouldn't want to damage the guards, so that left the window as the only other way out," Ronon explained as the Colonel put on and cinched up his harness. "There's a balcony about five stories down from here. How's your balance?"

"Good enough. Just be quick on the belay if I happen to zone out."

"Okay. Haven't decided how to break the glass without being heard yet."

"No sweat" With a tap on the frame, the window slid open. "You'd be surprised how many things around here respond to the magic gene." Sheppard gave him a sidelong glance as they secured the rope. "You don't have to go with me, you know."

He didn't get it, did he? McKay might be a little hard to get along with, but he was a teammate to both of them. Why should Ronon see the situation any differently than Sheppard did? Besides, his own military wasn't around anymore to discipline him, and this one didn't exactly have the clout.

Answering with another wordless look-some of the Marines had started naming Ronon's expressions, and this one had been oddly labeled `duh'-he stepped toward the window. "You going first or second?"

"Right." The flicker of gratitude obligingly vanished from Sheppard's expression, and he gestured. "After you."

This time when he woke, Rodney immediately felt much more alert. Some sensation had returned to his hands, and he was able to sit up without assistance. He could even hear the faint creak of the bed as he shifted. If that was any indication of how his eyes were progressing, he should indeed have the bandages off in a couple of days.

He wondered how much time had passed since he'd been brought to this place, but Turpi was there, sitting beside him on the bed and speaking before he could ask.

"It is good to see you looking so well," she told him, delight in her voice. "And you have woken just in time. I have a surprise for you."

He started to sense another person in the room with them. That notion was soon substantiated when a deep male voice spoke. "How are you feeling?"

The black rider, he was immediately certain. Abruptly, Rodney was struck by a realization. The mental images he had of his rescue couldn't possibly be real memories. He couldn't have seen the rider, because his eyes had been eaten away.

So what had really happened? Who had taken him?

He hoped his growing alarm didn't show-but it was a futile wish, since these people could read minds. In fact, had any conversation he'd had to date involved actual speech? "How did I get here?" he demanded unsteadily, listening for the words in his ears, trying to ascertain if he was indeed deaf as well as blind.

"I beamed you aboard my ship," Turpi's father answered.

That didn't clear anything up. Just the opposite, in fact. "Your ship?"

"Your kind call them Darts."

On the last word, Rodney's stomach did a back flip that even Turpi's touch could not soothe away. If he'd been able to see, panic would have blinded him when her father added, "My name is Nabu."