Jo Graham - Death Game

Ronon sat in the bow of the little fishing boat eating an energy bar, his eyes on the calm sea.

“We could try to get the sail up,” Radek said. “We want to go southwest and the wind is out of the east. It should just push us west, don’t you think?”

“Probably.” Ronon stuffed the last bite in his mouth and stood up. He grinned, and Radek thought there was a flash of ironic humor there. “How hard can it be, right?”

Radek shrugged and looked at the tangle of rope on the mast. “I have never even much liked sea movies. You?”

“I watched Master and Commander with Sheppard. That’s it for me. I was army, not navy, on Sateda.” Ronon climbed over the benches and started untying things.

Radek looked at him sideways. He thought that perhaps they needed to untie the ropes that kept the sail furled and then find the ropes that raised it. “Yes? That is so?” Perhaps he had heard Sheppard mention something of the kind.

“Yeah.” Ronon didn’t look at him. “22 Foot, the Immortals.” He bent his head over the knots. “Four hundred years without being disbanded, with always a man coming back to begin again. That’s over.”

Radek untied the last one on his end of the mast. “You live,” he said.

“That’s over,” Ronon said shortly and stood up, trying to shake out the sail. The heavy canvas was wet and stiff.

Radek put his head down, and after a moment pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “I tell you a story while we do this,” he said. “The day is long. Why not?”

Ronon shrugged, his back to him, and Radek took that for assent.

I was two and a half years old on August 21, 1968, when Russian tanks rolled into Prague. I remember there was fear. I remember my mother was arrested. I was not there when it happened, but I remember the absence of her, the way my grandmother clutched me, a scarf over her hair and her things ready to go.

My grandmother — what is there to say of her? She was a young woman when we were annexed by the Nazis, a young woman when she got out of Prague for Plzen because of the fear of bombs. My mother was born there in the winter of 42, child of one occupation as I was child of another. So you see, my grandmother had done all this before.

I suppose I cried for my mother. I do not remember. She was held three weeks and then released. She was one of the lucky ones. Some disappeared forever, but no one denounced her enough, I suppose. She was guilty of nothing except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in a peaceful demonstration. And so they let her go eventually. They could not keep everyone, you see.

She regretted it all her life, I think. She got away free, and so many others did not. It was betrayal to live and be happy.

My grandmother did not think so. “It is stolen,” she told me. “All of this is stolen. Every moment is a moment between the wars. Every moment is snatched from death. You be a thief, Radek. You learn how to steal.”

My father was different. He was nearly twenty years older than my mother, a youth rather than a baby before the war, and he was a serious man. He did not have my mother’s fire. Perhaps he once had, but he never got over the pneumonia he had in ’39, all winter in a work camp before they needed industrial labor too badly to keep them there when they could be building vital things for the war effort, men like my father who were neither Slovaks nor Jews. Those, they killed one way or another. Those like my father, blue eyed with German first names? He had work in a factory. You see he was lucky too. I have it on both sides, the Devil’s luck.

It was not so lucky when time came to go to university. My mother had been arrested as a dissident, though she had not been sentenced. My father had been released by the Nazis. University depended on politics as much as anything, and my family was suspect. I should not have gone to university, except that I was very, very good.

And I am also very, very good at not getting caught. I am simple, you see? I am an egghead. I do not think about politics or sex or religion or any of those things. I do not even know who is in office. I have my head in a book, my mind on physics. I am a little egghead wimp, and I am no threat to anyone. I will toil very nicely in the background, doing things that make the reputations of my professors, and never ask for credit. It is good to have Radek Zelenka on oneâ™ team. He will get it done and never make trouble. I am good at getting by.

I was two and a half when the Russians came. And I was twenty three when we threw them out.

I was there on November 17, 1989. We did not know what would happen. We did not know if the army would fire on us, if the Russian tanks would come as they had before. We had learned what to do about tear gas, and how to help someone who has been beaten. I was there when the riot police came. You may not think I am much of a fighter, but that is not the point. The point is not to fight, but to make a barrier of your own body. The point is to be unmoved. Breathe through a wet handkerchief, and be unmoved. I was not much hurt, just some bruises from the scuffle. I am lucky too.

I was twenty four when we won, when we had our country back.

I got my doctorate at Cambridge, and now I am in a distant galaxy doing things my parents and my grandmother could not have dreamed of. And one day I will go home. I will teach and I will research and I will be astonished by the things that children think of.

Or perhaps I will die here. Perhaps the Wraith will have me one of these times, or any of the other innumerable hazards. If it is so, then it is, but I do not plan for it to be. I have the Devilâ™ luck. It may be true that every moment is stolen between the wars. But you and I, Ronon, we can steal.

Ronon said nothing, but Radek saw the set of his shoulders change. Let's get the sail up, Ronon said.

Wait us, Radek said, and stood on the bench to spread one side of the wet canvas. It would dry quickly enough he supposed, in the sun and wind. Yes, he thought, now we will do it together rather than you will do it for me because I am nothing but a package you are supposed to protect. Perhaps we have come that far.

The breeze spread the sail and the boat began to move, skimming forward over the waves a little faster. It was by no means quick, but better than it had been. They were getting somewhere at least.

Ronon grinned, the wind lifting his hair like streamers behind him. It was hard not to be caught in the beauty of it. The pleasure of an engineering problem beautifully solved, as men had done for thousands of years. How many had stood on the deck of a boat like this, looking off across an unknown sea?

He might be the first men in the world, Radek said. The men who discovered sail.

Because we don't know any more about it than they did, Ronon said, but he was smiling, an unguarded look that transformed his face.

We have theory, Radek shrugged. That must count for something.

Tolas was a big man with a shaven head and a very serious expression. He listened to their explanations with what Teyla thought was studious attention, though he said nothing and asked no questions, save whether or not Jitrine had given good service.

John assured him that Jitrine had tended them with every care. While he spoke Teyla was free to look about cautiously, her eyes roving though she stood beside John. Tolas had chosen to meet with them in an inner courtyard where a small ornamental pond was shaded by tall trees. Flowering plants grew around, and the pool was graced with a small statue of a boy playing the flute. Still, for all its beauty, it was secure. The walls of the house were around three sides of the courtyard, three stories tall. The fourth wall had a gate that led to another courtyard from which came the shouts of men, a stable yard or, worse, a barracks. Without some idea of where they were going, they would be running blind into a maze of rooms, or perhaps straight into the greatest concentration of soldiers. And all the while it was pretty and very diplomatic. Teyla thought that this Tolas knew his business.