fic: Looking A Gift Jellyfish In The... [Inhuman Intelligence challenge]

[tielan]

Title: Looking A Gift Jellyfish In The...
Author: Tielan
Summary: Rodney learns not to judge a species by it's exoskeleton (or lack of same).
Characters: Team
Rating: G

Looking A Gift Jellyfish In The...

"But they're jellyfish!"

Teyla watched the glittering, glistening sheen off the creatures' 'hides' through what she presumed was a viewing window, stretching out from the main structure of this research station into the sea.

True to Rodney's protest, these creatures did appear similar to the Lantean jellyfish, with a domed top, from which protuded long, thin tentacles, but their patterning was far more complex and apparently individual, too. She had stood by this window for the last five minutes while her team-mates argued behind her, their voices echoing through the enclosed study platform. Not once had she seen a the delicate, translucent colourings repeated.

"Says they're sentient, here" Ronon was saying, probably more to spite Rodney than anything else.

"They're jellyfish!"

"Jellyfish don't build cities, Rodney." Behind her, John was probably making a gesture at the delicately glowing underwater city beyond. The glass was strangely made, to cast no reflection of the room and yet provide a perfectly clear view of the ocean beyond.

"Jellyfish can't think either! We should be looking for the power source in this outpost, not wasting our time with--"

"Rodney."

There was a great huff behind her, then the sound of swift typing at a keyboard "Look at this. See?"

"What exactly am I seeing?"

"This is the biological data on them from the database here. Look here and here and here."

"I'm looking," said Ronon.

"And we're not seeing," John finished off for him.

"Their biological structure is pretty much the same as that of jellyfish on Earth - they don't have enough synapses to be sentient!"

Teyla frowned a little at the translucent creatures, bobbing gently in the water on the other side of the window. "So who built the city, Rodney?" She indicated the tubular structure on the other side of the watery chasm, lit with the pale glow of bio-chemical light. It looked like a mermaid's crystal palace in one of the books she had brought back for Torran from Earth.

"I don't know...maybe they inherited it?"

"Maybe they built it."

"With what? The fallen bodies of their slain comrades?"

"Slain by what?"

"Whales?"

"Hey, just because Sam likes me better than he likes you--"

Teyla tuned out most of the conversation, only vaguely hearing the back and forth between her team-mates. Out in the water, the 'jellyfish' clustered in groups, their markings blending and blurring with the overlap of their translucent shapes, like layers of gauzy material, one over the other.

Graceful as a dance, they shifted, trailing tentacles, a hazy drift of fragile shape and faint colour.

She tilted her head to the side, frowning a little as she studied them. The shapes they formed were almost patterned. On whimsy, she put her hand up against the glass and watched the nearest creature bob towards it, the tentacles nearest her wafting out like a child reaching for a new and curious treat. Behind it, other creatures bobbed in stationary motion, their tentacles entwined with the foremost one, as though warning it against interaction with the strangers.

A smile touched her face at her human interpretation of creatures who were very far from human.

"Teyla?"

Ronon's query turned her head away from the window.

She had only a moment to glimpse their expressions - surprise and growing horror, only a moment to see John leaping towards her, and turned back as something warm and damp curled around her wrist.

Pain exploded in her head, an abrupt excess of sensation and noise that shoved everything out of her head. Her mouth opened on a silent scream as her vision bled into darkness, colours and details fading and blurring like a morphing program on one of the Lantean computers, leaving only amorphous shapes. There was no feeling in her body, only the numb sensation of floating. There was no sound in her ears, only the endless and all-encompassing silence. There was no thought, only an emptiness that sucked at her mind like the vacuum of space.

Warm hands dragged her back into a world of light and shape and detail, of shadows that resolved into anxious faces and hard pressure on her skin that eased into the firm grips of her team-mates.

"Teyla!"

She lay on her back, gasping with a great need for air, facing the window the creature had passed through - not a window, she realised, but a shield - her head raised slightly off the floor.

"Teyla?" John's hand lifted from her cheek and hovered just off her face before withdrawing. His face was upside-down above hers and her scrambled brain tried to make sense of it.

"I am fine," she said - or tried to. The words would not form on her lips and it took a second attempt before her voice worked as she'd expected. "I am fine."

Rodney, hovering right-way-up beside her, let out a noise that was halfway between a sigh and a snort. "And if you hadn't jerked like you'd been shot we'd be more likely to believe it."

"What happened?" Ronon was facing the window, his weapon out, his arm braced to shoot, but he glanced over his shoulder at her. "It grabbed you."

Her breath seemed harsh in her ears, in her throat. Her heart pounded with the death-life - the energy that came from a close encounter with death. After the cold silence and unsensing emptiness, everything seemed more vivid, brighter, louder, sharper.

"Teyla?"

She ignored John's query and looked to Ronon. "You did not shoot it?"

He frowned. "No."

"Whoa!" Rodney said as she tried to get to her feet. "What are you doing?"

"You're not going anywhere," said John."Unless it's back home."

"No," she protested. "The creatures--"

"Aren't going to touch you."

Impatient with their reassurances, Teyla sat up, pushing wisps of hair from her face. Abruptly, she realised that her head had been pillowed on John's thigh. When he pulled her back, he must have stumbled. "No. They think."

"They think?"

"They are what you call sentient. They think of themselves as 'The People.'"

Her pronouncement was met with silence. She saw the looks they exchanged, frowning, wondering, doubting.

"They're sentient?"

"Teyla, they're jellyfish."

"They were trying to pull you in."

"It is the way they made contact with the Ancestors," she said and blinked.

Ronon frowned down at her. "How'd you know that?"

Teyla was not able to tell him how; she only knew that she knew. The images in her head were strangely-formed, with amorphous outlines and dark billows of shadow, like figures seen through thick smoke. The concepts were not human, but she thought she had some understanding of why it had touched her - and why it had hurt. "They have a way to communicate through touch."

"They're jellyfish, Teyla - they shouldn't be communicating at all!"

Ignoring Rodney's denial, she looked over at John. She did not need him to even speak to know that he was doubtful of her experience; it was plain in the hard line of his mouth, in the shadows of his eyes. "It did not intend to hurt me," she said.

He stared at her for a long moment. "But it hurt you anyway."

"The first time is always the most painful." Yet another thing she knew without quite knowing how.

John levelled her the stare that suggested he was not sure whether to believe her or not. "Teyla--"

"If things do not work out, then you may pull me back."

She did not think it would be enough for John, but it was all she had to offer.

"You shouldn't be doing this," he said, climbing to his feet. "You've got Torran to think about."

And without a further word, he turned on his heel and strode past them all, ignoring Rodney's, "What--? Sheppard!" And Teyla's, "No, John--"

One lightly-tanned hand reached out towards the window-shield...

"I think the word we're looking for is 'anticlimax'," said Rodney after a few moments passed in silence, with no answering movement from the hovering creature in the water beyond.

John turned back to her, frowning. "Teyla?"

She looked from him to the drifting mass beyond the shield. Its tentacles waved in the current, but it had made no move to touch John.

"Maybe he doesn't like you," said Ronon, dryly. His weapon was still up. Teyla pushed it down as she walked past him.

Four steps took her up to the edge of the glass, and she watched as the tentacle rose to mirror her hand's movement. "It is safe, Ronon. Trust me."

Her fingers touched the substance that made up the 'wall', and the gelatinous end of the tentacle pushed lightly through the 'shield' - a curious design to allow them to come through, but not the water - resting the 'pad' at the end against her palm. Something like a light tickle quivered through her nerves.

The first time is always the most painful.

This time, she was prepared - and so were the People.

"Teyla?"

She half-turned to look at John, standing beside her at the shield. His fingers were closed in her jacket arm ready to pull her back at the first sign of danger, but there was no need for his concern. Unlike the explosion of pain that had racked her before, the slow flow of the People's concepts trickled through her consciousness, delicate as mist forming on a tent canvas.

"They were here before the Ancestors came," she told her team-mates. "Long ago, the People worked in partnership with the Ancestors, sharing information and discoveries until the Wraith began killing the Ancestors and they retreated to Atlantis."

There was no term for 'Wraith', but the sense of hunger and sharp vibration needed no translation.

"They wouldn't have been fodder," said Ronon.

"No. And the People were careful not to appear anything more than mere sea creatures." She used the Lantean term, her mouth curving as she looked at Rodney. "You are right. They lack the individual complexity to be sentient, which is why they connect together as a whole."

Rodney stared at her. "Wait - you mean this," he waved at the sea window and the blubberous mass of the People - thousands upon thousands of them interlinked, "is one big jellyfish brain?"

It took her a moment to answer. "Yes. They have others, but this is the one that lies closest to this research centre."

"Which explains why the Ancients built this place where they did," said John. His hand was still on her jacket arm, as though still suspicious that she might be yanked into the sea. The solid warmth of his grip through the fabric was reassuringly human against the alien tide of thought that continued to seep through her.

"Their sense of time is...fluid. They have a memory that spans their entire race - I believe you would call it genetic memory. And they have been waiting for humans to return to the outpost."

"For ten thousand years?"

John was more to point."What do they want?"

Teyla wasn't entirely sure. Urgency was a foreign concept to the People, what they had to do they would do, and they had been at this for tens of thousands of years. The Ancestors had set them a task - and they had continued it all through the long silence when no Ancestor came to commune with them - as much for their own interests as for the sake of the Ancestors.

Chiefly, the problem in communing with the People lay in the fact that there were concepts in their understanding for which she had no words, thoughts for which there was no analogue in human experience. She had touched the hive minds of the Wraith, felt their hunger, understood their group nature, but even their thoughts were far closer to human ones than those of the People.

Now, the People's thinking was beginning to overlay her own. As it had before, her vision was beginning to blur, sharp edges of shapes becoming fuzzy and indistinct. Instinct told her that if the first communion was always the most painful, the subsequent ones were almost always brief out of necessity. This contact now was too much, too soon - and yet, if they had no sense of urgency, there was the feeling that the People had been waiting for this for a longer time than even they could comfortably bear.

Inexorable as the current, the thoughts of the People drifted through her mind, overwhelming her with the thoughts of the collective, the slow ease of their interactions, the sensation of many and not just one.

Teyla squinted into the dark water. Her sight was almost entirely gone. John was a mere black-tipped blob in the corner of her eye, with Rodney and Ronon's shadows dark splodges at her feet. Everything in her vision was blurry - save for a single distant shape in the water, moving across the chasm between the viewing platform and the tubular, faintly-glowing city.

"Teyla?" She could hear them talking around her, the hard edges of their concern biting into her ears.

There was a series of taps behind her - Rodney at the console. "Sheppard, I don't think it's a good idea to leave her in contact with them too long-- They're taking over her brain."

"Wait, John!" Teyla held up her free hand as John's fingers tightened in her jacket.

The thing was coming nearer. It seemed about as big as one of the People, taper-tailed, and with a strangely flat top. A smaller group of the People seemed to be towing it along in their midst, their tentacles caressing it in constant twitches, pushing it on as several bulbous, translucent shapes bore it up from beneath.

"She said it was safe!" Ronon's hand was on her shoulder, closing on her collar.

"Generally it is, but there's records of Ancients who went insane and tried to join them in the water--"

It was too much information and not enough trust for John.

"No! John--" She struggled as he tried to pull her away. At her palm, the tentacle stretched out, trying to maintain the contact. She could feel the flow of information breaking up, but she was so close...

Amidst the People, the edges of the thing were crisp as mature leaves, sharp as a knife. To Teyla's eyes, it glowed in the murky water...

Darkness. Disorientation. Voices snapping angrily at each other, their sharpness masking their concern.

"Should have looked at the database sooner!"

"Hey, at least I wasn't trying to play the hero by inviting the jellyfish to come and take me instead!"

"How is she?"

"She's not respondi-- Hang on."

Once again, there were blurry shadows above her, resolving into dark hair over pale faces, backlit by the overhead lights that made her eyes swim with tears. One of the blurs - John - crouched down beside her. "Teyla?"

"Yes," Teyla tried to say, and again could not seem to get her tongue around human language. Her mouth was dry and she swallowed hard and tried again. "I am here."

Ronon passed her a water bottle from Rodney's backpack and she drank, thirstily. Her mouth felt bitter and dry, as though it had been full of seawater. "Hey!"

John's hand turned her wrist over to study the damp spot the tentacle had left. There was no pain, just the lingering chill of waters that never grew warm.

"What was it doing?"

She turned her hand into his, palm to palm, drawing the warmth of his flesh into her, and as his fingers tightened around hers, she used him as a prop to stand up.

"What are you doing?"

"They have something for us."

"You're not going in again," warned John. His hand gripped hers, as though prepared to drag her away from the window should it become necessary. On her other side, Ronon, had a hand on her wrist and shoulder, also prepared to hold her down.

"No," she agreed, her eyes on the window. "They are bringing it now."

"It--?" Rodney began before he saw what the People were bringing.

Teyla tugged gently at the hands that held her, looking at her team-mates to reassure them as she stepped up to the edge of the shield to catch the object that toppled across the shield and into air. It was heavier than she expected, the hard edges of it biting into her hands, the chill of it biting into her skin.

A moment later, it began to warm as though in response to her touch. And with the warmth came the familiar orange-gold glow of the ZPM. Turning, she held it out to a stunned and uncharacteristically speechless Rodney.

His hands lifted - a seemingly automatic gesture rather than a conscious one. He held it rather the way he did Torran - as though terrified that he might break it - and lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. "But...they're jellyfish!"

"Jellyfish with ZPMs," said Ronon.

"Yes, I think we've established that since I happen to be holding one of them!"

"So," John asked, looking from the ZPM to Teyla. "What else can these...uh...People do?"

There had been glimpses of other things before the connection was broken. "I believe they have many things they wish to show us," she said, choosing to extemporise.

"Just not now," said John.

"No," she agreed. Her head was still dizzy from her contact with the People.

Ronon was the one to notice her sway on her feet and caught her hand. "You okay?"

"I would like to sit down," she said and stumbled to the nearest wall solid wall by the console, assisted by not only Ronon, but John also. His brows drew down, narrowing his eyes in a studying gaze that turned back to the ghostly forms of the People, still drifting in the ocean beyond the shield.

"You know, if this is going to happen every time someone talks with these guys, I don't know that it's such a good idea."

"Not every time," Teyla told him. "It grows easier to commune with practise. And what they have learned since the Ancestors' time could be valuable to us."

"Could be valuable?" Rodney was almost spluttering. "If they can actually make ZPMs, then there's no 'could' about it!"

John glanced up at their team-mate before he stood up from his crouch, his knees making a slight cracking sound. "We'll see. In the meantime, why don't you go find out if that thing actually works as advertised?"

"Me?"

She didn't need to see his face to know John had rolled his eyes. "Take Ronon and report back."

"Should I look both ways before crossing the street?"

"Do not talk to strangers," Teyla advised as she drew her knees up and rested her hands on them, feeling slightly trembly. The information she had been given suggested the People simulated the electronic impulses of the mind in order to 'speak' with humans - something they'd learned from the Ancestors. She did not think it needful to tell her team-mates - they would only fret needlessly; but she would mention it to Jennifer upon her return.

"Oh, like you can talk!" Rodney mimed putting his hand up against the shield, then grimaced as Ronon thumped him on the shoulder and began herding him out.

"Let's go."

"What's got you in such a hurry?"

"Teyla wants to sit down. I wanna get back to Atlantis in time for dinner. You wanna test the ZPM. Sheppard wants to wait for Teyla to be okay."

"So?"

"So he is suggesting you do not look a gift jellyfish in the mouth, Rodney," said Teyla, half-laughing.

"Rodney," John said, clearly exasperated, "just go!"

They went, their footsteps echoing away down the empty corridor, leaving John and Teyla with the wafting shapes of the People and the tubular city that gleamed dully in the blue ocean.

- fin -