Jo Graham - Death Game

John shook his head.

Teyla picked up a piece of fruit and continued. There are, for better or worse, three responses to the Wraith. To hide, as the Genii do, and hope that the Wraith will not discover the extent of one's civilization. To defy them and fight, as the Satedans did. Or to disperse and give them no targets, as my people did. All of the peoples of this galaxy that I have met do one or another of these. These people… Her voice trailed off as the barge came upon another large stone wharf, passing a barge that lay tied up beside it, cattle being loaded aboard. These people are a puzzle.

Something's rotten, John said. I don't like it. He took the radio from his pocket. The light flashed standby.

You will try to call them again?â

He shook his head. The battery is low. And will hear them when they call us in range.â

Surely by now they are looking, Teyla said.

With a sharp pop and a whiff of smoke the control crystal blew up.

Rodney jumped back swearing.

Wordlessly, Major Lorne handed him the third crystal. Good thing I brought four of these guys, he said.

Yes, it is good, Rodney said shortly. Because otherwise we would be screwed more than we've already screwed, which is to say quite a lot. I've been working on this thing for twelve hours, and its been more than twenty four hours since I started investigating the DHD. I should have solved all the major problems of physics by now! But no. I'm still working on this gate.

Maybe you should take a nap, doc, Lorne said, scrubbing his hands through his hair. You've been at this more than a day. Some rest would probably fix you right up.

Yeah and that will be so comfortable, Rodney said. It's about a hundred and ten degrees and the rest of the team is lost and…

Lorne put his hand on Rodney's shoulder. That's not going to do them any good for you to get heat stroke. Get a couple of hours shuteye in the shade by the cliff over there, drink some water, and then get back to work. Gotta be reasonable here.

Rodney blinked. His face hurt. He probably had a sunburn, despite the SPF 50 he was wearing. And the world was starting to get a little surreal. Lorne seemed a little wavery in a way that people didn't usually get when he was just sleep deprived. Maybe he was getting sunstroke. Maybe he was about to pass out.

Take a nap, Lorne said. It'll work better afterwards.

Yeah, Rodney said. He wasn't thirsty. That was probably a symptom of something. Of something bad. A thought struck him. Snakes.

There? Lorne spun about.

There might be snakes, Rodney said patiently. You never know. There might be some over by the cliff.

I'll look before we sit down, Lorne said. He was looking at Rodney solicitously. Maybe he thought something was wrong. Maybe he thought Rodney had sunstroke.

What should I do for sunstroke? Rodney said, dismayed by the note of rising panic in his own voice. Do you think I have sunstroke?

I think you should sit down in the shade, drink some water, and have a nap, Lorne said calmly. You've got to fix the DHD, but you've been up more than 24 hours and working in the hot sun all morning. Lets take this one thing at a time.

Right. Rodney let Lorne lead him over and waited while Lorne checked the rocks for snakes. He did feel kind of shaky. He was probably on the verge of sunstroke. That was probably what was wrong. It was more likely sunstroke than the first symptoms of a deadly alien disease.

Lorne sat down on a nearby boulder and took a long drink from his water bottle. Besides, how much trouble could they be in, right? You said they were going to a tropical island.

A lot of trouble, Rodney said. Lorne had only been in Atlantis a few months. He had no idea what a world of trouble there was. Yet.

Lorne held the water bottle out to him and Rodney drank. Lorne settled back in the shade, looking for all the world like the rocks were the most comfortable thing he’d ever sat on. “So where are you from, doc?”

“Canada,” Rodney said shortly. Some of the rocks might not be as sticky as others. He looked for a place to sit down that seemed less sharp and pointy than the rest.

“I can see that.” Lorne gestured with his chin to the Canadian flag patch on Rodney’s sleeve. “I meant whereabouts in Canada.”

“Vancouver,” Rodney said. Which was about the last place he wanted to talk about.

“You got family?”

“Just my sister,” Rodney replied testily. “We don’t talk much.” Which he hoped would end that entire line of enquiry.

“I’m from San Francisco,” Lorne said, and seemed to take Rodney’s silence for interest. “Yeah, you’re probably thinking what everybody does. How does a kid from the most liberal town in America wind up in the Air Force?”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Rodney said. Why would he be? Like he cared where Lorne was from?

“Or you’re going to say it must be the only way to rebel, right? The only thing you can do when you grow up in San Francisco to get your parents’ goat is join the military?”

Rodney sat down in the shade and took another long drink of water. It did taste good. And there was something about Lorne’s very nonchalance that was comforting. “Let me guess. You’re going to tell me a long, sad story about how you signed away your life for an education.”

Lorne didn’t seem offended. He also didn’t shut up, as Rodney had more or less intended. He looked amused. “It’s not exactly a sad story and not all that long either.”

I was conceived in the summer of ‘69, the Summer of Love, right? My dad had been drafted so he and my mom went on a road trip, one last blast before. She’d just gotten back to San Francisco and he’d reported in when she found out she was pregnant. Strange time, you know? She moved into this apartment in Haight Ashbury with this guy she’d met on the trip, my Uncle Ron. It wasn’t like that. Uncle Ron is gay so they were just roommates. You know, with my dad gone and all. He got sent overseas. He was in the middle of his tour when I was born, on April 30. May Eve, my mom used to say, like that made me special.

My dad’s an ok guy. It just didn’t work out between them. When he got home he was too different and it was all too different. He wasn’t so much into the scene, and he couldn’t stand the city. He wanted somewhere big and quiet, where he could hear himself think, somewhere totally unlike the jungles of Southeast Asia. He works for the Park Service in Arizona now. Big sky and mesas, Navajo country. He was married to a woman who was half Navajo for a while, but they broke up. My sister Dorinda’s a quarter Navajo, though. She’s a great kid. She’s married and has a baby, and she’s in veterinary school in Phoenix now. She’s got it all together.

My dad believes in UFOs. He thinks that there are really spaceships and that aliens have visited Earth before. People think he’s kind of crazy that way. I wish I could tell him, sometimes, that he’s not. That I’ve walked around on other planets and seen the damndest things. That there really are spaceships, and that you’ve never lived until you’ve taken the Tok’ra to a bar in Colorado Springs. Maybe one day I will. I think my dad can keep his mouth shut a lot more than he lets on.

But I didn’t grow up with him. I grew up in San Francisco with my mom. She’s an art teacher. She does all kinds of fabric art, painting on silk and weaving with raw fabrics, but you can’t make a living doing that. So she teaches art to little kids at school. She says she really enjoys it because their minds are fresh. They haven’t learned what they can’t do.

I could have gone to college without the Air Force. My dad said he’d help, and Uncle Ron and Uncle Gene did too, and by then my mom was married to Boris, so it wasn’t like it was just her who’d have to come up with the money. But it was what I really wanted.