The Furies

Chapter Twenty-five Devils and Dust

It was going to be close. Jack could see that. One vote, maybe two in either direction. A vote against sending Woolsey back to Atlantis was essentially a vote for Daniel. Now that they’d gotten in contact, it was obvious that someone had to be appointed immediately, and the crowd who didn’t want Atlantis in the hands of the Air Force weren’t about to leave it that way forever, with Sheppard in “temporary” charge that dragged on for months and months. If he’d really wanted to power grab, Jack thought, the smart thing to do would be just stall. Sheppard could run the show for the better part of a year that way.

But it wasn’t Sheppard’s forte. He’d gone into this intending to send Woolsey back to Atlantis. If that wasn’t possible, Daniel was the best option, though frankly Daniel might kill him. Administration was not exactly Daniel’s thing.

The swing vote was Roy Martin. And so Jack was surprised to see him by himself in the conference room a good fifteen minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. The IOA ran on diplomatic time, which meant the principals arrived fifteen minutes late. So Martin shouldn’t put in an appearance for at least half an hour. Also, surely the other IOA members wanted to bend his ear one way or the other? Unless they were all sure of his vote.

All of that ran through Jack’s head in the moment he checked in the doorway, an ironic smile on his face. “Senator Martin. Speak of the devil!”

Lieutenant Anderson, who was laying out the coffee service at the back of the room, started to attention, but he waved her down. She was furniture today, albeit furniture with sharp ears.

“Am I the devil, General?” Martin’s eyes had a distinct twinkle. “I recall my honorable opponent did put cartoon horns on me in that ad back in ‘84. But then I expect he and the devil were old friends.”

“As I recall you lost that election, Senator,” Jack said.

“If at first you don’t succeed…” Martin said. “You can’t keep a good man down. And some other clichés.” He laid his leather portfolio on the table before a chair with its back to the window. “Let me ask you one question, General.”

“Anything,” Jack said, opening his arms expansively.

“I’m not sure I want to know just anything,” Martin said. “That’s a dangerous opening to give me.”

“I expect it is,” Jack said.

Martin met his eyes. “Who’s the better man?”

Jack swallowed. “Daniel Jackson.”

“Who’s the man for the job?”

“Richard Woolsey.” Jack sat down on the edge of the conference table. “There are some jobs that don’t call for good men. They call for men who can get it done.”

“Who can handle this, you mean,” Martin said. He leaned on the back of his chair. “Why do you think I have this job, here in my golden years?”

“You raised a hell of a lot of money,” Jack said.

Roy Martin laughed. “A lot of people raised a lot more. I’ll tell you why I’m here, General. I’ve been governor and I’ve been senator. I’ve lost and won and lost and I’ve served my time. Other than the importance of keeping active as a senior citizen, I’m here for one reason. I’m the President’s man. I’m never running for office again and this is my last appointment. I don’t owe anybody anything, and I’m not thinking about my career on down the line. I’m seventy-eight years old. I’m here because the President can trust me to serve no one’s interests but his.” Martin shrugged. “The President is satisfied with Richard Woolsey’s performance. That’s good enough for me.”

Jack nodded slowly. “That’s very clear, Senator Martin.”

Martin sat down in his chair, beckoning to Anderson who was hovering with the requisite cup of decaf. “Hell of a thing,” he said with a smile that might have been gamin sixty years ago. “Making decisions about other planets. But I suppose it was me or Dean Smith or Andy Griffith. You might do better with me.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said easily, sitting down in his usual place. “Andy likes to fish. Do you?”

Lt. Colonel Davis stuck his head in the door. He was far too experienced to look surprised to see Martin already there. “Sir? Mr. LaPierre and Ms. Dixon-Smythe have arrived. Shall I bring them up?”

“Sure,” Jack said. “Let’s get this party started.”

Dick Woolsey looked around the gate room with an expression of immense satisfaction. Winter sunlight streaked in through the high windows, the multicolored glass transforming it into patterns of light across the floor. Atlantis, just as it should be.

Except for the Wraith. It took him a moment to remember that Teyla was still in her disguise and not recoil when she hurried down the steps to greet him, her smile strange on the face of a Wraith queen.

“Welcome back to Atlantis, Mr. Woolsey,” she said.

“It’s good to be back,” Dick said, and dropped his voice. “I didn’t really expect to be.”

“We are very fortunate that you are,” Teyla said.

“I see you’ve been busy,” Dick said, gesturing at her embroidered skirts and boots, the rest of the Wraith queen clothes.

“Very busy,” Teyla said, “But I think it has proved useful.”

Dick couldn’t help a smile of admiration. “It’s very convincing.”

“Wraith politics is complex,” Teyla said. “I should like to discuss it with you more fully at your convenience.”

“I’d like that,” Dick said.

Colonel Sheppard came down the stairs in his black uniform, an expression on his face that Dick was almost ready to call relief. Or at least thankfulness that they were getting no worse than Dick Woolsey returning. “It’s good to see you back,” he said.

Dick nodded, lifting his head to the soaring ceiling. “It’s good to be home.”

Jennifer hesitated outside the door of Woolsey’s office, straightening her jacket and taking a deep breath. She’d prepared her arguments and run through her reasons for why she needed to test the retrovirus again a hundred times in her head. The problem was, in her head she’d been arguing with Colonel Sheppard. She was pretty sure that Woolsey wasn’t going to buy ‘he’s a member of your team, so we need to do whatever it takes’ nearly as easily.

Still, now he was expecting her, and if she made some excuse to postpone the meeting, there was no telling when she’d actually get his undivided attention again. Her whole point was that they couldn’t afford to wait. She squared her shoulders and went in.

“Dr. Keller,” Woolsey said. “I’m glad to see you’re up and around. I hear you had quite an ordeal.”

“Actually, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “You’ve read my report on the retrovirus, right?”

“I have,” Woolsey said. “Although I admit I’ve been trying to get up to speed on a lot of things pretty quickly. It sounds like things have been busy around here while I was gone.”

“That’s one word for it,” Jennifer said. “Okay, here’s the thing: I’d like permission to conduct another trial of the retrovirus. I figured out what we did wrong the first time, and I feel really confident that this time it’s going to work.”

“Another trial,” Woolsey said. He raised his eyebrows. “And by that you mean letting Todd…”

“Feed on me again,” Jennifer said. “After I’ve taken a dose of the new retrovirus.”

“I’m sorry,” Woolsey said. “I think that’s out of the question.” He shook his head. “Even letting you conduct a human trial of the retrovirus at all at this point is a fairly severe breach of normal research protocols, and with the additional risk of being fed on — I can’t authorize that.”

“It may be the only way to save Rodney’s life,” Jennifer said. “We’re not sure that he’ll survive any attempt to restore him to human form without having recently fed. And it’s not like we can let him just — just go out there and feed on somebody without this.”

“No,” Woolsey said. “But I’m also not going to let you risk dying — again — in an attempt to come up with a treatment that, at best, will benefit a single patient. I know weighing costs and benefits isn’t very popular, but it has to be done, especially when the cost may be someone’s life. Your life.”

“Todd isn’t going to kill me,” Jennifer said. “He has every reason not to. After all, he wants to prove that this will work.”

“You think it would be that useful to him to be able to feed on humans without killing them?”

“I think he knows what it could mean for both the humans and the Wraith,” Jennifer said. “It would mean that we don’t have to kill each other.” She expected him to interrupt, but when he didn’t, she went on. “As long as the Wraith have to kill humans to live, they have a problem. We’re not going to stop fighting them until we entirely wipe them out. They can’t entirely wipe us out, or they’ll starve to death. So they just knock down any world that gets too technologically advanced, and then eventually people rebuild and start fighting them again. It’s never going to end.”

“Unless we find a way to destroy the Wraith,” Woolsey said.

“Which we still might. I think we’ve convinced Todd that if we keep working on the problem, we will. Which leaves him two options.” She shrugged. “Destroy Atlantis and wipe out technological civilization on Earth, knock us back to the Stone Age — well, that’s easier said than done, and he’d still have to deal with the Genii.”

“Not to mention that Earth isn’t the only power in the Milky Way,” Woolsey said. “I’m not sure the Wraith really want to take on the Jaffa and the Lucian Alliance.”

“And the thing is, even if they could do it, it’s still just a temporary solution,” Jennifer said. “At least it is from Todd’s point of view. He’s thousands of years old. We’d probably all be dead by the time the survivors on Earth found a way to fight back against the Wraith, but Todd probably wouldn’t be. Because they have to leave some of us alive, or they’ll eventually starve to death. And we have to keep trying to kill them all.”

“And Todd thinks this retrovirus changes the game.”

“I think it does,” Jennifer said. “If the Wraith didn’t have to kill people… okay, it’s disturbing. Believe me, having just gone through what I did with Todd, I’m disturbed. But the fact remains, there are already some humans who choose to live under the protection of the Wraith.”

“As an alternative to being horribly murdered,” Woolsey said.

“Which right now we can’t prevent. Maybe eventually we can wipe out the Wraith as a species. I have a problem with that, but it’s not going to be my decision. But right now, we can’t defend every human planet in the Pegasus galaxy. We may want to, but we can’t.”

“No, we can’t,” Woolsey admitted. “Frankly, we’re having enough problems right now just defending Atlantis and Earth. But that’s a temporary situation.”

“We hope,” Jennifer said. “Look, we’ve stopped some Cullings before, right? When we happened to be in the right place at the right time. How many haven’t we stopped? How many people have died who wouldn’t have died if the Wraith could feed without killing?”

“How many would essentially be slaves aboard Wraith hive ships, fed on again and again?” Woolsey said. “Do you really think that wouldn’t happen?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “Maybe it would, and I think that’s as awful as you do. But at least there would be a chance of coming up with something better than having the same war keep going on for the rest of our lives.”

“You’re asking me to take an enormous risk for a very slim chance that this will actually work out well,” Woolsey said.

“I’m asking you to let me find out if this works,” Jennifer said. “Here’s a cost-benefit analysis for you: how many people in Atlantis have died from being fed on by the Wraith?”

“More than I’d like,” Woolsey said after a moment.

“If this works, we could make our people immune to the harmful effects of being fed on. I wouldn’t have to send anybody else home to die that way. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s worth a lot.”

Woolsey looked at her for a long moment. “If we start down this road, there’s no going back,” he said.

“I don’t think we can go back now,” Jennifer said. “Todd’s going to keep working on this retrovirus with or without my help. Unless we’re talking about killing one of our only sort of allies among the Wraith—”

“That’s probably a strategically bad idea,” Woolsey said.

“Then he’s going to figure this out. The only question is whether we’ll have any control over how this first gets used, and whether we’ll be able to use it for our own purposes.”

“I’m probably going to get fired for this,” Woolsey said.

“Didn’t they just confirm that you were the best person for this job?”

“They’re going to wish they’d hired Dr. Jackson,” Woolsey said.

Jennifer felt her heart leap. “So can I do it?”

Woolsey closed his eyes for a moment. “You have my permission to test the retrovirus on yourself,” he said. “We’ll have to arrange another meeting with Todd to see if it’s actually effective.” He looked up at her. “You know, I’ve barely gotten back, and already I’m beginning to wonder why I wanted this job so badly.”

“Believe me, I know how you feel,” Jennifer said.

“Guide.” Queen Death’s tone was dulcet, but there was no mistaking the steel behind it, even through the subspace transmission, and he bent his head deeply in respect. “I should like to speak with your queen immediately.”

“As it please your Graciousness,” Guide said, feeling his heart leap in his chest for all that he knew there was nothing strange in his reply, “she is not aboard this ship at this time.”

Queen Death did not seem to disbelieve him, but rather smiled. “I have indeed heard that she is traveling aboard a cruiser. Is that not so?”

“It is so,” Guide said. If she had been captured…

“I understand she has met with young Waterlight,” Death said. “And I am confused as to why she has not met with me.”

“Waterlight is quite insignificant,” Guide said truthfully. “I do not think she would dare to approach you as sister to sister.”

Queen Death looked somewhat mollified, though her smile did not change, warm and dangerous as ever. “That is very respectful of her. Though I, of course, do not hold to such formality that I believe that only the elder may approach the younger! It is not such grave disrespect for the junior to speak first, provided her words are those of friendship.”

He could but nod to that. “I am sure Queen Steelflower devoutly desires your friendship,” he said cautiously.

“I am pleased to hear that,” Queen Death said. “And since she feels that she must observe the niceties and wait upon my invitation, it is incumbent upon me to provide it.” Her eyes flickered over his face. “I am sending coordinates at which I will wait for her, so that we may meet face to face as allies should, with no proxies or blades to stand between. If, as you say, your Queen does indeed devoutly desire my friendship, she will not let this opportunity go to waste.” A slow smile spread across her face. “You may tell her so, Guide. Otherwise I will not believe that her desires are so sororal.”

“Of course,” Guide began, but the transmission ended before he could phrase another word.

Ember looked at him, a crease beginning between his fair brows. “And now?” he said in a tone studiously neutral of reproach.

It could not have lasted forever, Guide told himself. Sooner or later, Queen Death would insist on seeing his queen, and he could not deny her forever. It had come sooner rather than later. But perhaps all could still be turned to his advantage.

“Find me the nearest Stargate,” he snarled. “I have a message to send.”