Jo Graham - Secrets

“You can have some of mine, too,” Ronon said, but she shook her head.

“You need more food than I do. And he’s not getting much, anyway.”

She was right, and Ronon settled back, methodically stripping the meat from the bones. It was tough and savorless, tasting more of smoke than anything. If he’d been on Sateda, he would have had salt, carried in a jar no bigger than his thumb: common issue in the army, common property for anyone who traveled wild. This tasted like a Runner’s meat. He killed that thought, made himself keep eating.

Across the fire, Rodney nibbled gingerly at the sliver of coney breast. There was an odd look on his face, as though he were remembering something and wasn’t sure if it were good.

“How do you feel?” Jennifer asked, after a moment, and he looked up with a quick smile.

“Better, I think. I think it’s helping.”

“Do you want some more?” Jennifer was carving as she spoke, and Rodney nodded.

“Thanks.”

Ronon watched him eat, caught in the wavering firelight, a shape in black hunched over a strip of meat. It was not a reassuring sight, even though Wraith do not eat, and he looked away.

“More?” Jennifer asked, and Rodney shook his head.

“No — well, yes, but I think it would be smarter to wait and see.”

“I’ll take first watch,” Ronon said, gruffly, and Jennifer nodded.

“Yes,” she said, and looked at Rodney. “Good night, then.”

Rodney looked back at her across the fire, his face tired and thin, the firelight giving him a passing hint of human color. “Good night,” he said, and for an instant his voice wavered.

Ronon woke in the cool light of dawn to the sound of someone being comprehensively sick on the far side of the dying fire. He rolled over, expecting it to be Jennifer, but she was sitting upright in the shelter’s mouth, her face unreadable. Beyond the fire, Rodney straightened, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“I should know better,” he said, weakly, and Jennifer pushed herself to her feet.

“Let me take a look at you.”

“I’m fine,” Rodney said. “It’s just — you know how I am with strange foods, and alien animals cooked over an open fire kind of fit that description.”

Jennifer ignored him, came around the fire to inspect the mess. Rodney backed away.

“Oh, god, that was bad enough when Newton had a hairball! Don’t tell me you’re going to — oh, that’s disgusting!”

“You said you felt better after you ate,” Jennifer said. Her voice was remote.

“I did!” Rodney paused. “I did.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Jennifer glared at him. “None of this has been digested. At all.”

“I did feel better,” Rodney said. “Until I didn’t.”

Ronon rolled his eyes, crawled out of the shelter. It wasn’t that he had expected Rodney to be better, to be less a Wraith — but, he admitted, he had allowed himself to hope. And they were still a long way from the Stargate. Reluctantly, he picked up the Wraith device that someone — Jennifer, he told himself firmly — had left within reach, and checked the nacreous screen. It showed that they had covered a little more than half the distance to the Stargate, but he couldn’t find that as encouraging as it should be. Not with Rodney still doubled over, one hand pressed against his stomach.

“I’m fine,” Rodney said, to Jennifer, and was promptly sick again.

They got a later start than they had the previous day, and Ronon resigned himself to at least another day’s travel. He’d hoped that maybe, if Rodney was stronger, if everything had gone right, that they might reach the Stargate in one long day’s march. At least he’d managed to snare another coney for this night’s meal, and, if he couldn’t catch another on the march, there were always roots and berries. He recognized several edible species, or at least their close analogues, and the meat had agreed with him and Jennifer well enough that it was unlikely there was anything actually poisonous in the vegetation.

What he didn’t like was the way the ground was changing. The trees were thinning out, the grass growing taller, coarser, and the stream they had been following seemed wider. The current was stronger, too, the sound of the water louder, and he wasn’t surprised when they came out from under the last of the trees to find themselves on the edge of a cliff. The stream plunged over the edge, and ten meters below, rainbows glimmered in the cloud of spray.

“Oh, that’s just lovely,” Rodney said, and sat down hard underneath the closest tree.

Ronon leaned forward, mindful of the loose stones and crumbling soil, and peered down into the canyon. A river had carved it, still ran down its center, shallow but fast, its bed strewn with boulders. It had been higher in the past, Ronon thought, judging from the debris scattered along the banks, but it was fast enough that it would be a struggle to cross. More to the point, the cliff face was close to vertical, and the rock looked loose and friable. He could — maybe — climb down, but he doubted he could get either Rodney or Jennifer down without rope. And rope they didn’t have. Nor were there vines or anything else that looked like a likely alternative.

He straightened, looking along the length of the cliff. Downstream, it seemed to rise higher, but once you crossed the waterfall, it looked as though the slope might ease. If he followed it further, there might be a place they could get down without a climb. And get back up the other side. Except — He looked over his shoulder at Rodney slumped beneath the tree. Rodney didn’t have the strength to waste casting up and down the cliff for a safe crossing.

Jennifer forced a smile. Her hair was coming loose from its severe tail, wisps clinging to her skin, and he couldn’t help thinking again how pretty she was. “I’m guessing this is a problem,” she said, and he nodded.

“Yeah.” Beautiful and fragile and indomitable, he thought, and as hard to read as the Earth people always were.

“I don’t think I can get down there,” she said, and leaned cautiously over the edge. “Not without rope.”

“Which we don’t have,” Rodney said. “Nor, may I point out, do we have anything to make a rope with.”

Jennifer grimaced at that, as though at a memory.

Ronon said, “Rodney’s right.” He glanced at the sky — after noon already, which meant he’d need to find a way down fairly quickly. The river below them looked relatively shallow, no more than waist deep at the deepest points, but the current was fast, and it wasn’t something he wanted to try to cross in failing light. No, he’d have to find a crossing, and to do that, he’d need to leave the others here. Jennifer with Rodney. Jennifer with a Wraith — no, Jennifer with Rodney in a Wraith’s body. That was the only safe way to think of it, the only way he could bear to leave them. He drew his blaster before he could change his mind, held it out to Jennifer. “It’s set on stun,” he said. “I’m going to look for a place to cross. Shoot him if — if there’s any trouble.”

“Oh, for —” Rodney broke off, looking pinched and miserable.

“There won’t be,” Jennifer said, but she took the blaster. “Thank you.”

“If there is,” Ronon began, and stopped, knowing it was pointless. “Don’t hesitate,” he said at last, and turned away.

Rodney rested his head against the bole of the tree, and closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at Jennifer turning Ronon’s blaster over and over in her hands. Somehow this was not what he’d expected from a rescue. First of all, he’d assumed they’d pull it off neatly, and that he’d be back on Atlantis, safe in the infirmary while Jennifer and Carson figured out how to reverse the transformation. Though, given the way missions usually turned out, that was probably too much to expect. He’d lost track of how many plans had gone wildly wrong, starting the first day they walked through the gate. So being stranded on a strange planet three days from the Stargate was probably just more of the same. And he’d expected that the whole team would be there, John and Teyla, and probably a couple of squads of Marines — they’d brought in the heavy guns when Teyla was missing, after all. And, most of all, most painfully of all, for some reason he’d thought that if Jennifer had come to his rescue that somehow it might end up like the movies, Jennifer in his arms promising everything would be all right. He could almost smell the faint clean scent of her hair pressed against his lips, her skin giving way under his claws as he fed —