Homecoming

Chapter Six Flight

“Colonel Sheppard?” Dr. Robinson was leaving the mess hall after lunch the next day, and was surprised to see him eating alone reading a magazine. Sheppard usually seemed occupied, either with Dr. McKay or a number of other people she didn’t know yet. At dinner the night before he had Teyla Emmagan and the baby with him, and she hated to intrude with work on hard-won family time. It could wait, she had told herself, but she was surprised to find him alone so soon.

He looked up from the magazine, a wary look coming over his face as he turned it over quickly. It seemed to be reviews of video games, though why that should be hidden escaped her. “Yes?”

She stuck out her hand. “I’m Dr. Eva Robinson. I wondered if I might have a word with you.”

There was the wariness in full, a look she’d seen plenty of times before with military personnel she’d been sicced on. He’d find something terribly important to do in just a second.

“It’s not about work,” she said abruptly, “Or rather it is, but only tangentially. Dr. Keller said that I have the ATA gene, and that I should talk to you about how to use it.”

At that his face cleared, eyes brightening. “That’s great.” He shook her hand and motioned her to the chair across from his. “Did you just find out?”

“Lights have been coming on all over the city for me for weeks, but I didn’t realize it was anything unusual until yesterday,” she said. “So I have no idea how this works.”

“Doors opening? Things working?” Sheppard asked. “Water temperature adjusting?”

“Definitely the doors,” Eva said. “And I was thinking the other night that the shower was reading my mind.”

“Nice.” He folded the magazine up and leaned his elbows on the table. “That will be really useful around here. We don’t have enough people with the ATA gene, and there have been times when we needed everyone we could get our hands on.”

“Dr. Keller said that the Ancients…” Eva searched for the best way to put this. “That you and I may share some long-lost Ancient ancestor who went native on Earth?”

Sheppard shrugged. “It could be. We don’t really know. That’s probably what happened, though they did mess around with the genes of people on planets they stayed on. But on Earth it seems to show up in clusters, suggesting that it was introduced haphazardly, where an Ancient lived and passed on their genes. For example, it’s about 4 per cent of the population worldwide, but more common on the northernmost island of Japan, about 15 per cent. Dr. Kusanagi comes out of that cluster.”

“That does suggest kinship circles,” Eva said. She gave Sheppard a smile to reassure. “Though finding our common ancestor is a little awkward.”

He didn’t seem to take that wrong, matter of fact rather than defensive. “My mom’s family’s from Arkansas and my dad’s was from Georgia a generation back. I expect we wouldn’t have to look too far.”

“I was born in Atlanta,” Eva said. “I came out to the west coast with my husband when I was married. But my folks are from there.”

“Carson and I come out of the same cluster,” Sheppard said. “He’s typed himself all over the place, since he’s the easiest person to work on. We also share a mitochondrial DNA type, and we’re probably related within eight generations. General O’Neill’s from the same cluster. It would be interesting to see if you’re in the same cluster too.”

“Or if there’s another cluster in Africa,” Eva said.

“There is. You’ve never met Dr. Portillo — she left over a year ago — but she was unique to a cluster in East Africa, about 10 per cent of the people tested so far from the Sudan and Ethiopia.” Sheppard leaned on his elbows.

“East Africa.” Eva shook her head. “Not a lot of East Africa in the slave trade. I don’t know so far back, but that doesn’t seem very likely.”

“Carson can do a typology from a blood sample if you’re curious,” Sheppard said. “But it doesn’t matter in terms of what you can do. As far as we can tell, they all work just alike. The ATA gene is the ATA gene, and all the Ancients carried it.” His face was animated. “And the stuff you can do — some of it is pretty amazing.”

“Like what?”

“Like fly a space ship.”

Eva couldn’t help but break into a broad grin. “Now you’re shitting me.”

“I’m not.” Sheppard grinned back. “One time we had to get everybody with the ATA gene out flying jumpers — our space ships — through an asteroid field. We needed everybody. And so we got all the scientists and support people who could handle it, and they did a damn good job.”

“Flying through an asteroid field,” Eva said. “Like in Star Wars?”

“Pretty much. Only we were shooting the asteroids.” Sheppard’s smile broadened. “It was kind of fun.”

“You’re saying I could fly a space ship.” She looked at him disbelievingly.

“If you can drive a car, you can fly a jumper. Maybe not in combat, just like being able to drive a car doesn’t mean you ought to drive in the Daytona 500, but the jumpers are designed to be user-friendly. Probably the Ancients didn’t think it was a much bigger deal to fly one than we do to drive your car down the Interstate.”

Eva grinned back. “I cannot believe this.”

“Come see.” Sheppard stood up. “Let’s go up to the jumper bay and I’ll take you for a spin.”

“Don’t you have things to do?” she asked. It seemed selfish to get the military commander of Atlantis to run her around to satisfy her curiosity, though she hoped he’d say he was free. A space ship?

For a moment his eyes clouded. “Not really,” he said. He tucked his magazine under his arm. “Come on. Give it a try.”

Eva stood up. “Ok.” How many times was she going to get a chance to fly in a space ship? In the course of her ordinary life, precisely none.

She was still musing on that when they went inside the little ship, panels and controls flashing on as they passed them. It was small but looked surprisingly comfortable, like a minivan that flew in space, not like some secret military thing. Not like a space ship ought to.

Sheppard settled into the pilot’s seat like a guy getting in his own car and gestured to the shotgun seat. “I’ll warm it up a second and get clearance.” He hooked a radio headset over his left ear. “This is jumper four, ready for liftoff. Radek, can you open the barn doors?”

An accented voice replied. “I can. But what are you doing?”

“Just taking the good Dr. Robinson up for a little spin. Don’t worry. We’ll keep the cloak on.”

“Has Mr. Woolsey…”

“He doesn’t care,” Sheppard said. “Radek, open up.”

There was a sigh. “All right. Opening up. But keep the cloak on, or we will be explaining UFO sightings all over America.”

“The cloak?” Eva asked.

“It makes us invisible.” Sheppard punched a bunch of buttons as the little ship began to rise straight into the air like a helicopter.

“An invisible space ship?”

“Yeah.” Sheppard gave her a sideways grin. “It’s pretty cool.”

They cleared the hangar doors that slid open for them and then started forward, easing around buildings and then heading straight out over the ocean, low and fast. How fast was hard to tell, because unlike in a plane there was no sense of motion.

“We’re staying low so that we’re under the approach corridors for the airports,” Sheppard said. “With the cloak, planes can’t see us or detect us on radar, so we need to avoid them.” A bright overlay transposed itself on the windscreen, dots and lines moving. He pointed. “See there? That’s a Quantas 747 descending into SFO, dropping down through 17,000 feet. We’ll stay out of their way.”

“You’re a pilot,” Eva said, and wished she hadn’t. Sometimes she had a talent for saying the blindingly obvious.

“Yeah. I’ve been in the Air Force almost twenty years. Flown a lot of different kinds of birds.” He looked at her sideways. “But this is the sweetest one.”

Before them the ocean blurred into a ribbon of blue. Eva made herself stop clutching the armrests. “How fast are we going?”

“About six hundred miles per hour.” Sheppard shrugged. “A nice cruising speed.”

“I don’t feel it at all,” she said.

“Inertial dampeners. You won’t feel it, not even if I pull the kind of stunts I’d pull in a fighter plane.” He banked sharply right, dropping almost to the surface of the sea.

She expected her stomach to lurch, but it didn’t. It was completely smooth. “I do not believe this,” she breathed. “A ship like this…”

“A ship like this can deliver any payload anywhere in the world in thirteen minutes, invisible to radar and completely shielded against any conventional weapon.” Sheppard’s voice was hard. “We have twelve of them.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. “That’s scary.”

“Who knows where they’ll end up if we stay on Earth,” he said. “See what we mean about destabilizing?”

Eva blinked. “Right now you rule the world. You could level the Kremlin or the White House.”

“I could.” Sheppard shrugged. “But it’s not like I can find Bin Laden or make peace in the Middle East. There aren’t any problems here I can solve with a puddle jumper. It’s all more complicated than that.”

“Restraint,” Eva said. She looked at him sideways. “The amount of restraint…”

“How long before somebody who shouldn’t gets their hands on one of these?” he asked. “Sooner or later. The ATA gene doesn’t make you better. It just makes your mistakes bigger.” He put the controls over, changing course. “That’s one thing we’ve learned about the Ancients. They made some really big mistakes.”

The jumper turned upward, the ocean disappearing from the forward window. “Where are we going?”

“I thought you’d like to see space.”

Already the sky was darkening above them, cerulean to deep blue to midnight. She watched, open mouthed, as the stars appeared, first singly and then in chains and clusters, a blacker night sky than she had ever seen. Entranced, she hardly noticed the movement as the jumper leveled off. And then she looked down.

The Pacific Ocean spread beneath them, the islands of Hawai’i spread like a chain of jewels. Southward, New Caledonia glittered emerald against the sea, islands upon islands scattered in the vast distance, while on the far horizon the golden curve of Australia embraced the edge of the Earth.

“Oh my God,” Eva breathed.

Sheppard smiled. “We’re just barely suborbital. It’s something, isn’t it?”

“I can’t imagine,” she began. Eight years old again, watching the grainy black and white television set, her granddad jumping up and down every five minutes to adjust the rabbit ears, listening to those voices from so far away. Men set foot on the moon. They walked on another planet in their heavy spacesuits, oddly bouncy in the light gravity. Men walked on the moon. They went into space. She was in space, Eva Robinson, forty-eight years old, a practical woman who’d always had both feet on the ground. “I wish my daddy could see this,” she breathed.

“Mine too,” Sheppard said.

“He lived his whole life in Georgia,” she said wonderingly. “Except for a stint in the army during Korea when he got as far as Kansas. And I am in space.”

Sheppard got up from the pilot’s chair and stepped to the side. “Want to take it?”

“Me? Fly the space ship?”

“It’s ok. I’m right here.” He scooted out of the way. “It’s easier to fly in space than in atmosphere, and there’s less to run into up here. Give it a try.”

She eased out of her seat and slid into his. The controls were warm in her hands. I wonder how fast we’re moving, she thought. Above, the numbers flashed onto the windscreen, green and bright. The little ship flowed smoothly under her hands like the silken transmission of a sports car. No, not a car. She’d never driven anything that moved like this. It moved like breathing.

Sheppard leaned over. “You’ve got it. Ease up a little bit. You don’t have to clutch the controls. Just touch it lightly.”

Eva looked up at him. “How many people have you taught to fly this?”

“Lots.” He smiled, and she thought he looked really happy. “A couple of dozen. You’re doing great.”

“It’s not as hard as it looks,” she said. It wasn’t about pushing buttons, but about visualizing what she wanted the ship to do, and it seemed to understand that she couldn’t follow the complicated heads-up display Sheppard had used. It gave her a simplified one with easy digital readings. “You going to teach your son to fly?”

“My son?” He blinked, and then his face closed. “Oh, you thought Torren… Torren’s not my son. He’s Teyla’s son. Her…husband is back in Pegasus.”

“Oh.” Eva felt the blood rise in her face. She had assumed. She’d pegged him for the family guy, the one who always keeps his head above water because he’s got something firm to stand on. She knew better than to assume. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“It’s ok.” He smiled, but there was something off in it. “We’re just friends.”

“Of course. I…” And now she didn’t know what to think. If he wasn’t that guy, who was he?

“A little to the left here,” he said, leaning in to guide her. “Here’s Australia coming up, and that’s a good view of Antarctica.”

“That’s gorgeous.” She watched, her breath catching in her throat as they slid soundlessly over white mountains and glaciated snow fields, passing over the most remote parts of Earth as simply as walking, emerging over the South Atlantic. The Amazon River basin spread beneath them like the branches of a tree, winding its way down many courses to the sea. The Andes were wreathed in clouds.

“Let me take it back,” he said, and she slid aside and let him take the controls in sure and steady hands as they descended, his face alive with the pleasure of flight.

Eva found words for her question. “You brought me up here for a reason, Colonel Sheppard.”

He kept his eyes on the instruments. “You’re going to hear a lot of bad things. A lot of really terrible, dark things, the worst things that have happened to people. I thought you needed to see some of the best.” He glanced at her sideways. “There are reasons we do this. There are things that make it worth it.”

“Is it worth it to you?” she asked.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Oh yeah. I wouldn’t trade this in for anything.”

They broke through cloud cover into rain, dashing through a thunderstorm above the Yucatan, flashing out of the edges of it northward. That bright cluster might be Mexico City, but it was gone beneath them in a moment.

“Whatever it costs, there are things that make it worth paying,” he said.

“I think I see that,” Eva said.