Jo Graham - Unascended

“Are you injured?”

“Probably nothing broken,” he said. “Definitely some interesting bruises.”

“Then you got off lightly.”

“Good to hear it,” Daniel said. He contemplated the damage that the jumper had done to the field. “Think we ought to offer to pay for this?”

“When we return,” Teyla said. “I think now it is time for us to go.”

The way back to the city from the suburbs wasn’t quiet. Everyone talked, the salvage team and the Eze family comparing notes on the last ten years. What had happened out in the hinterlands, in the mining valleys a hundred miles from the city? What had happened recently with the returning Satedans? There was so much to catch up on. Elizabeth dropped back, walking last, oddly apart with nothing to contribute to the conversation.

One of the men was talking to Jana. “…so the Genii said the Satedan Band were little flowers, and Caldwell said he’d referee a fight…”

Caldwell. That name meant something. She knew him. That came to her in a breath. She knew Caldwell. He knew her. Was he in the city? Where was Caldwell?

Elizabeth looked up just as Margin Bri dropped back beside her. “That was well done,” Margin said.

“What?”

“You’ve negotiated before.”

“Yes.”

“Weren’t you frightened? You didn’t know how many of them there were or if they’d shoot.”

“Not really,” Elizabeth said. It truly hadn’t occurred to her to be frightened. She’d never thought it was a hardened enemy, just a tense misunderstanding that could get out of hand. Those kinds of things needed to be stopped before they started. But no, she’d never been frightened. No one meant to hurt her. She’d done this so many times before that she knew to a fine point where danger was. Why would she be frightened when there wasn’t any?

“Who are you?” Margin asked, an incredulous expression on her face.

“I have no idea,” Elizabeth said.

They reached the city center just after nightfall. Elizabeth was tired and sore, but their sense of triumph kept her going. Not only had they found some medical supplies, but a tie to survivors of Sateda outside the city. They came down the street leading to the back of the hotel, Beron, Jana and Vetra marveling at the electric lights behind windows, the voices of many people gathering over the end of the day meals.

“Let’s go straight to Ushan Cai,” Margin said. She held open the back door of the hotel and they went in.

Cai was in his office off the kitchen talking to a man Elizabeth hadn’t met before, tall and rangy with dark hair and blue eyes. He was wearing an unfamiliar pants and jacket combination that looked almost like a uniform.

“You’re welcome to have a look of course,” Cai was saying, “But anything you find is subject to the same terms as before. I won’t beggar our people’s cultural legacy for boxes of energy bars. Anything Ancient comes straight to me. Then we’ll talk about it. Bear in mind our agreement about the light airplane.”

“Agreed,” the man said. “I’m not from the school of archaeology that’s little short of looting.”

“I’ll take your word on that, Dr. Lynn,” Cai said. He looked up as they paused in the door. “Yes, Margin?”

“I’ve got some amazing news,” she said, and ushered in Beron and his daughters, who stood blinking in the electrical light, a wide smile on Jana’s face. “We met some survivors from outside the city. There’s a settlement of a couple of dozen people up in the old mines near Escavera.”

Ushan Cai got to his feet quickly. “Escavra? You’ve walked all this way? I’m Ushan Cai.”

“Jana Eze,” the young woman said, putting out her hand. Her father looked a little bewildered, as though he’d thought he’d never see so many strangers in one place again. “It’s good to meet you. We didn’t know there were people in the city.”

“We thought there must be survivors in rural areas,” Cai said, clasping her arm wrist to wrist. “We just couldn’t get there. That’s why we’ve been making a deal to buy a light plane from the Lanteans. So we can get out there and see.”

“You’re Lantean?” Elizabeth asked, looking at the man Cai had called Dr. Lynn. Nothing about his face or voice was familiar.

“Er, yes,” he said. “I suppose I am. I mean, I’m British. But we’re all Lanteans to you.”

“How many people? How did you get by?” Cai asked Jana.

Elizabeth drew Dr. Lynn aside. “I have many questions about the Lanteans,” she said.

“I’m happy to answer your questions if I can,” he said.

“How did you come here?”

“Through the Stargate,” Dr. Lynn replied, an answer so obvious as to be useless.

“I assumed that,” Elizabeth replied.

Cai was promising Beron and his daughters supplies. “And we’ve got an electrical generator we can bring out and install. That will give you folks some power to run a radio. We can keep in touch that way.”

“That’s heavy equipment,” Beron said. “And I don’t like to say so, but there’s rough country between home and here. I don’t see how to get something like that back without the trains running.”

Dr. Lynn looked over Elizabeth’s head. “I can answer that,” he said. “We can run the generator over in the puddle-jumper. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. We can take you home as well, along with whatever you’re taking back with you.”

Jana blinked. “In an aircraft? A Lantean aircraft?”

“I assure you it’s perfectly safe,” Dr. Lynn said. “And the puddle-jumper is large enough to carry you and your equipment. It’s just outside. That’s what we brought the trade goods in. It’s much easier to bring the jumper when there are heavy goods.”

“A puddle-jumper. Outside.” A chill ran down Elizabeth’s back. “You have a puddle-jumper outside.”

“Yes,” Dr. Lynn said, looking mystified.

Elizabeth turned and ran out the door of the office, ran down the hall past what had been the welcome desk, past people coming in with boxes, through the front doors. There, in the middle of the square beside the customs shed, was a stubby metal form. She felt her heart leap. She stopped. It sat not far from the Stargate, the tailgate down. Various Satedans were unloading boxes and crates from the back, no doubt the trade goods Ushan Cai had talked about.

Elizabeth took a step forward, then another.

Two men came around the corner of the shed, a small man with glasses and improbably blue eyes, and a taller one with square shoulders and a weapon slung casually across his chest. They stopped as if they’d hit a glass wall, the small man’s mouth open as he muttered something incomprehensible, and pieces suddenly slid into place, final and inexorable as though they had been there all along.

The man with the weapon blinked incredulously. “Dr. Weir?”

She felt herself smile. “Major Lorne, Dr. Zelenka, it’s good to see you.”

“Well, that was interesting,” Daniel said, collapsing into one of the jumper’s seats. He did not appear badly injured, although a bruise was rising on his cheek.

“I am just glad you are all right,” Teyla said as Rodney settled into the pilot’s seat and began checking the jumper’s readouts.

“I’m fine. That could have gone better, though. I’m sorry.”

“It could have gone much worse,” Teyla said. “You are good at talking to people in volatile situations.” She had to admit that Daniel had handled Sora well, keeping her talking and seizing the opportunity to get the upper hand as soon as it presented itself. And he had handled her without hurting her any more than was necessary, even though she was a stranger to him and he had no particular reason to be sympathetic to his kidnapper.