WIP Amnesty part 2: The Athosian Queen
It's a real wrench to let this one go. I'm sure I'll finish it one of these days - maybe if I had a good talk about it with someone who could help me steer it towards the actual plot - and I'm still utterly in love with the idea, but for now, I am taking this reel_sga ficathon contender off life-support.
Sheppard/McKay, 4100 words, based on "The African Queen" with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Rodney and Jeannie's not-quite-missionary-because-that-would-be-too-AU professions based on life of late paternal grandfather. Hi, Pardy!
~*~
The boat came in at midday, when the sun was at its peak and all the wildlife was snoozing in the undergrowth, and even the most tolerant Athosians were falling asleep in the aisles. Rodney McKay was totally failing to hold their attention with Darwinian evolution when one child - Jinto, who must have snuck out the second his back was turned - stuck his head around the door of the schoolhouse, shouting, “The supply boat came! Hey, everyone!” and the building emptied of every man, woman and irritating child before Rodney could even shout a full sentence. He was left glaring impotently at the open, sun-striped doors and the hand-carved benches and desks left crooked by the hasty exit, while bits of precious loose-leaf paper drifted in the heavy air.
God. He may as well have been back at university.
But he'd promised himself he wouldn't dwell on that, so he decided to suck it up and start wiping the blackboard clean.
Aside from some of the textbooks, this blackboard was the only thing they'd brought all the way. It had been carried by sea and air, over mountains and through thick jungle; it had been shot at, knocked, scarred, defecated on by small rabid animals, and partially burnt. When he was younger, Rodney had had some of his most ingenious breakthroughs on this board. It had belonged to Mrs. Harding, his Mathematics teacher right up until year six, and even though he never followed into her field, she'd still wanted him to have it. He'd never intended to let it gather dust - it was a working blackboard - so when Jeannie mentioned that they needed one, he'd packed it up without hesitation.
It was the only thing he'd ever defended with his life. Well, the bullet had actually hit the wooden arm of the board, and the splintered hole had since been sanded down, but it was the intention that counted, he thought. He'd defended it with his life; he just hadn't done a very good job. He rubbed a chalky thumb over the groove, frowning.
The door banged open again, making him jump a little; he turned around, scowling, but it was only his sister.
“I see you let them out early,” Jeannie said brightly, adjusting a broad-brimmed hat, deflecting his scowl without any apparent effort. Rodney narrowed his eyes. It was a calico hat with a blue ribbon around the crown, certainly not the battered one she used when she was gardening or doing other enthusiastic outdoor things, and oh God, was that her best dress? “Are you coming out to meet Captain Sheppard? I remember you got on so well last time,” she added with a terrifying sparkle in her eyes, and stepped out into the blinding sun with a cheery wave.
Rodney practically snarled.
The river bank was behind a copse of trees, shaded and much cooler than the rest of the village, and by the time Rodney got there, the Athosians had unpacked most of the boat's supplies - tinned food, medical supplies, clothing, letters, chalk and so on, as well as a few items that had been personally asked for - and were distributing them, the younger children taking the opportunity to go for a swim in the incredibly unsterile water, splashing the people left on the shore and frolicking around the boat like dolphins, if dolphins were sun-brown and gangly and made loud whooping noises. And if dolphins lived in rivers. So not very like dolphins at all, really.
The supply boat came up the river every month, and the Athosians - and Jeannie - treated it like Christmas every time. It was a low, ugly, ancient steamboat that had been painted and re-painted so many times that Rodney couldn't even tell what colour it was supposed to be, and it was piloted by a tall, charming man who was handsome to the point of prettiness, had every female within a hundred miles falling over themselves to bat an eyelash at him, and yet still managed to sail a boat called the Athosian Queen without irony. As Rodney stalked towards it, John Sheppard broke off an intense-looking conversation with Teyla Emmagen and graced Rodney with his attention. “'Morning, Doctor McKay,” he said pleasantly, grinning still wider when Jeannie fluttered over, beaming like someone who didn't have two PhDs and a commendation by the Prime Minister. “Doctor McKay,” he added, and tipped his cap to her. Jeannie giggled. Rodney seethed.
“Would you like to come into the shade, Captain Sheppard?” Jeannie purred. “For some coffee?”
It was going to be a very long day.
~*~
Aside from all the supplies, one good thing about Sheppard's visit was that he brought all kinds of news from up the river with him, some of which was scurrilous gossip and hearsay, so third-hand as to be completely useless except for entertainment, but much of it useful information about tribal politics that might influence trading partnerships, significant weather patterns, and other events that might affect the village. These were all very interesting to the Athosians, and the most influential, like Halling, Teyla and that wizened old lady who could make something miraculously tasty out of turnip peelings and corned beef, all had their own peculiar ways of pumping him for information, whether it involved manly bonding, manual labour, alcohol or food. For Rodney and Jeannie, he also brought a month's backlog of newspapers from wherever he could scrounge them, and remembered bits of the BBC World Service when couldn't, because the village was so strangely situated that the radio wouldn't pick up anything but static. By the time his supply boat came around, they were a little desperate for news of the outside world.
“The Genii are kicking up a fuss again,” he sighed, bent over a tin cup of Rodney's coffee. (That was another important thing the boat brought.) “There's patrol boats up and down the river, they're trying to set up embargoes...” he shrugged, looking completely unconcerned.
“But how do you avoid them?” Jeannie asked, fascination in her voice. Rodney couldn't fathom it, since Sheppard, while unfortunately useful, evidently had the brains of a pea and the worldly concern to match: if the Genii were truly making things difficult for river traders, then it wasn't Sheppard who would be worse off - Jeannie and Rodney relied on the Queen, and despite their proud self-sufficiency, so did the Athosians. It was getting harder and harder to find friends, these days, and more than one tribe with established trading links had disappeared entirely.
Sheppard, however, just smiled charmingly and said, “Oh, I know the river better than they do; their boats are all too big to get down all these little creeks and tributaries, but the Queen, well, she could slip across a puddle. She's a lithe little girl.”
Rodney remembered something then, making a noise into his coffee. “If there's nothing to worry about, what was that that had Teyla looking so concerned this morning?” Belatedly, he waved a hand - “Though of course if it's anything of a personal nature I don't want to know at all-”
Sheppard looked torn between smirking at Rodney's verbal flailing and taking a much grimmer expression - that expression won, and drew Rodney's attention. “It's nothing like that - it is important. I'm just not sure whether to tell you.”
Both Rodney and Jeannie started voicing their protests at the same time, so Sheppard interrupted before anything could be heard very clearly: “The Wraith are waking up.”
Rodney sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically. Jeannie smiled diplomatically and said, “Mister Sheppard, you can't possibly believe those stories, can you? Now, I know that people have gone missing-”
“Entire tribes have gone missing, Ms. McKay,” Sheppard said mildly.
“- But all urban legends have some basis in fact. If there is one thing causing it, or even one tribe going on some sort of campaign, there's no need to attribute any sort of, of magic to it. We're here to stamp that sort of thinking out, after all.” She smiled encouragingly.
Rodney, standing beside the coffeepot and halfway into his fourth cup of the morning, observed a strange change on Sheppard's face: a smooth but rapid slide from earnest warning to easy, charming smiles, without any kind of slip in between to make it seem insincere. It pointed to a sort of natural diplomacy that Rodney wouldn't have thought such a man capable of, and didn't like in any case. “Well, magic or no, Doctor McKay, they still sound like a threat, and they've certainly got the Athosians worried. I'd watch your borders - you're awfully alone out here.” He got up, sliding out of the chair in a graceful movement. “I'll be around, Doctor McKay.” He nodded to Rodney with a wan smile - “Doctor McKay.”
~*~
And of course, of course it happened the very next night, at dusk, when Rodney and Jeannie were reading through their new backlog of scientific journals, and the Athosians, skittish but not yet anticipating anything, were inside at their evening meal.
It wasn't quite dark outside. The light was low, not gone, filtering blue and monochrome through the light fog that evening brought, and a few children were still playing outside while their dinner cooked. The loudest noise was the croaking of lizards and frogs. Then the irritating shrieking of children running around free turned into the shrieking of children who were terrified, actually terrified, and by the time Rodney could hear adults at the edge of the village joining in and decided that maybe it was worth seeing what was wrong, the birds had come.
Birds were what Halling had called them, remembered from stories he'd heard second-hand from a vaguely reliable source. What they were, what screamed overhead like an echo of the people below them, were nothing Rodney had ever seen, heard of or believed possible. And when they swept over the village, over the huts that had been set alight, over the Athosians, herded by fire and noise into one milling, struggling herd, the people just disappeared - one here, four there, a dozen again there, until there were only a few people left, not even bothering to run, just looking up and screaming, screaming, screaming.
And then they were gone, too, and the birds, the deafening wedges of black overhead, tipped up and peeled away, like swallows. Rodney, clutching the trunk of one of the bay trees that separated the village from the schoolhouse and the small building he shared with his sister, turned to the left to see Jeannie's face, white and sick with eyes so wide and wet he could see every bit of flame and darkness that he'd just turned away from.
From between two burning huts, in the middle of the square where Halling told stories and Teyla beat men twice her size and the children had been playing, three figures stepped out, one ahead and two behind, silent. The firelight cast their sickly-pale skin into relief, and lit their bright white hair. He couldn't see the faces of the two behind - he couldn't say why, because they were close enough, but their faces just seemed blank - but the one in front, lithe and tall and walking gracefully, looked around and smiled with long, white teeth.
Rodney heard a muted sound from next to him, and Jeannie stood up and walked out from between the trees.
The thing with the teeth didn't even move. Jeannie stood before it in her white dress and green shawl and big, muddy boots, and it just tilted its head and said, “And what are you?”
“Doctor Jeannie McKay, District Commissioner for Education,” she said, voice shaking with rage. “What have you done to my people?”
And Rodney, paralysed, fingers locked to a tree, watched it smile again, stick its hand out, and leave Jeannie McKay a little, white-haired corpse in the square.
~*~
Sheppard found him around dawn, sitting in Jeannie's chair on the veranda of the schoolhouse, and it was only when Sheppard broke into his field of vision that Rodney realised that he was damp and freezing.
“Doctor McKay?” Sheppard's voice was quiet, but it still jarred him. “In the square, is that - is that-?”
“That's Jeannie,” Rodney said distantly, looking very intently at Sheppard's knees; the man was close, leaning forward so the floorboards creaked, and Rodney thought that if Sheppard reached out to touch him or slap him on the shoulder or something Rodney might deck him and run screaming. He had to talk fast to make sure Sheppard didn't try to comfort him. “They came last night, they came at dinner,” and then, looking up at last, looking into Sheppard's wide, muddy eyes, “What are you doing here? You left yesterday-”
“I was only a mile away,” Sheppard said. “I was taking a rest, and the way the river bends you can travel for miles and not go far at all.” He looked at Rodney for a few long seconds, like he was looking for something, and then he straightened up, looked behind him towards the bay trees. “Doctor McKay-”
“Rodney,” Rodney said.
“Rodney. It's Summer, and the sun's almost up. Your sister, we can't...” He trailed off, sounding unhappy.
“Right,” Rodney said. “Rate of decomposition. She'll putrefy.” He stood up to get a shovel, called over his shoulder, “There's a spot round the side where we can dig.”
So Sheppard brought her to the side of the schoolhouse, where Rodney was trying to dig a hole, and then Rodney had to sit against a post with his head between his knees while Sheppard dug the hole, just deep enough that scavengers couldn't dig the body up and eat it, and then he put her in it and covered her up, and Rodney put her journal and a pile of stones on top of the grave.
There wasn't a soul left in the village - no more bodies like Jeannie, not even bodies in the burnt-out huts and tents of the village. Sheppard picked through the black struts and ruins while Rodney sat against a tree, trying to control the shaking in his arms which was probably related to sleep-deprivation and lack of food, even though his stomach was a tight hot ball and he was so wide awake his whole body thrummed with it. He didn't know what he was going to do, since there wasn't any point in staying here and he didn't know if he could rely on Sheppard or his tiny little boat to get him anywhere; he couldn't think of anywhere he wanted or needed to be in any case. Jeannie had come here because she was a fervent believer in her cause; he'd come here because there was nowhere else on earth that wanted him.
Sheppard came back.
“We have to move.” He gave Rodney a hand up, then stepped away carefully, adding, “I haven't got enough food on the boat for two people - did you have any in the house?”
They did; in fact, they'd used the back room of the schoolhouse to store most of the food that the Queen brought them, as well as the surplus of crop yields. Rodney, thinking of the weeks it would take to get anywhere resembling civilisation, left Sheppard to choose appropriate food but hauled out a crate of fresh ground coffee sealed in vacuum flasks, ignoring Sheppard's look. It took them half an hour to load it all onto the boat, Rodney fretting all the while about weight distribution and hull thickness and how much, much lower she seemed to be in the water and Sheppard nodded and smiled and completely ignored him, piling crates in what seemed to be a completely haphazard fashion and doing vigorous, noisy things to the ancient boiler.
“I'm a physicist!” Rodney cried, “- among other things - so I think I know a little about flotation, which is something four-year-olds can grasp, and-” He sat down in the stern, suddenly, feeling dizzy and nauseous.
“And I'm telling you that I've sailed her up and down this river with loads ten times this mass for six years,” Sheppard said, with that patient voice again, “So trust me to know when she's too heavy to float, will you?” He turned away from the boiler, looping a rope around his elbow and shoulder that Rodney realised had been mooring them to the little jetty on the bank of the Athosian village. They were starting to move, slowly and with little more noise than a groan below the waterline and the hush of their wake. Sheppard sat beside him on the bench, putting a confidant hand on the rudder between them, and gently started to steer - all without taking his eyes off Rodney, which Rodney hoped he wouldn't do for much longer because it was a very irresponsible way to steer anything.
“There's a blanket under the bench if you're still cold,” he said quietly. Rodney was, and found the thick wool blanket wrapped in oilcloth to protect it from water. He sat on the bottom of the boat in front of the bench so that he wouldn't get in the way of the rudder (the boat was that small, it was no wonder Sheppard travelled on his own). He sat facing the waves spreading out behind them, watching the jetty disappearing behind the curve of the river and the forest getting less and less familiar, until it was all just a long green blur and Rodney was resting his head on the railing, still cold but grateful for the shade of the boat's canopy.
At some point, he fell asleep.
~*~
He woke up in the evening, still tired but very hungry and cranky and feeling more like himself. Sheppard was banging around further forward, with tins and tin-openers and tin cutlery. When he saw Rodney, he smiled, in a nice way that made his eyes crinkle at the corners, and offered Rodney a plate of beans and sausages and a cup of water - “It's been boiled, don't worry,” - all of which Rodney wolfed down before he'd said a word to the man or even really opened his eyes.
“More?” Sheppard said. He looked fascinated. It was inexplicable.
“Yes please,” Rodney said, in a tone that meant obviously, you imbecile.
While Sheppard filled his plate again, he looked over the side of the boat, and up the river - since the only thing lighting it was the moon, which was gibbous, the river was the only thing outside the boat he could see in any detail: it stretched out, silver and black, without any discernible bend for some miles; wide, deep and barely rippling.
“Where are we going?” he asked, taking his plate and another cup of water - he was so thirsty; it had been very irresponsible to let himself get so dehydrated. He hadn't been thinking clearly.
Sheppard piled his dishes into a corner, and from behind the boiler he produced a map of the river, much-abused and worn to small holes where it had been folded. He pointed out a section that Rodney couldn't really discern from any other section, saying, “I was thinking of the Lantean city, here; it's a journey and a half, but it's a safe harbour, secure, and you can go wherever you like from there.”
“Why is it such a journey?” Rodney said, putting down his plate. Now that he looked at the map properly, had the scale worked out, he thought he recognised the section they were in by Jeannie's maps of the village and the nearby tribes. “We're... here, yes? It seems like a pretty straightforward route.”
“But it's not,” Sheppard said, leaning over until their shoulders were brushing, staring intently at the paper. “It would have been once, but we'll have to go down every stream and tributary on the river to avoid the Genii-” he sighed - “And then there's this part.” He stabbed a section of the map quite near where the city was marked out. “Right near where we need to go. People think the Wraith were sleeping there; they even say it was the Lanteans woke them up. People think they've got a - a battleship of some kind? Something we need to avoid. You all right with that plan, McKay?”
Battleship. Rodney thought of the birds, the dark arrowheads that screamed over the village, and wondered what kind of battleship that thing with teeth could think up. “Why is it still there?” he asked.
“Why is what still there?”
“The battleship.” Rodney's breathing quickened. “I mean, if they're killing people - if they're so close to the Lanteans, if people know about them, why hasn't anyone tried to get rid of them?”
“I think they're trying to not start a war, McKay,” Sheppard said; his voice was even.
“Start a-” Rodney stood up, making the boat wobble; he sat down again very quickly, hissing, “People are disappearing in their hundreds, maybe every night, dying just like Jeannie for all I know, and you - what, you think there's no war? Just because one side is standing around like a herd of sheep and not admitting anything's wrong doesn't mean there's no war, it just means that it's going to be over very quickly and probably not in a way that is favourable to you or I! Don't you want something to be done about it?”
“Of course I do!” Sheppard looked furious for the first time since Rodney had known him; furious, and frustrated, and tired. “I'd love for someone to blow the shit out of them, McKay, but I'm just the captain of a damn little tramp steamer in the middle of the river; it doesn't matter what I want.” He blew out a breath, running his hands through his hair, making it stick straight up. He mumbled, “Hell, I'd blow the shit out of them myself. Time was I could have.”
“So why don't we?” Rodney said. The solution was incredibly simple, now that he thought of it; and ingenious, but he would have expected that of himself.
“Pardon me?”
“I said, why don't we? We have all the materials we need to make some extremely powerful explosives - don't look like that, I can make nitroglycerine out of half the stuff you eat for breakfast. Hey, are those oxygen tanks? They are! Do you know how to make a torpedo?”
“What? No!” Sheppard looked flabbergasted, which wasn't encouraging, but he could work with it. “And I don't think you do either - do you know the level of sophistication in those instruments? All the gyroscopes and-”
Rodney waved a hand. “Don't be ridiculous. The fancy tech is just to keep the torpedo stable and accurate while it travels; all we need to do is make a sufficiently powerful explosive - or even two,” he said, eying the oxygen tanks - “and then we attach them to the bow of the boat and ram the Wraith ship!” He grinned. “Crude, but effective. What do you think?”
Sheppard stared at him. “I think you're crazy,” he said.
“But you also think I'm right.” He could see it in Sheppard's eyes. “We could do it. We could.”
“Yeah. We could.” Sheppard folded up the map, slowly. “You know, this boat is my livelihood. You're proposing to blow it up?”
“If the Wraith take many more villages, you're not going to have much of a livelihood anyway,” Rodney pointed out in what he thought of as his most patient voice. “Besides, do you really want to float up and down this river for the rest of your life?”
“It's not the worst way to live,” Sheppard said stoutly. “Fine - I think you're insane, but I can't think of a better plan. But you'll tell me everything you're doing; I know a little about making nitro too, and I don't trust you not to blow up my boat before its time.”
“What, do you think I'm incompetent?” Rodney squawked, but then he waved a hand and said, “Fine, fine, I grant that you don't know me very well and therefore can't know how ridiculous it is to doubt my intelligence. Besides, it's your boat - you'll get at least forty percent of the credit.”
~*~
Aaaand I'm done.
Sheppard/McKay, 4100 words, based on "The African Queen" with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Rodney and Jeannie's not-quite-missionary-because-that-would-be-too-AU professions based on life of late paternal grandfather. Hi, Pardy!
~*~
The boat came in at midday, when the sun was at its peak and all the wildlife was snoozing in the undergrowth, and even the most tolerant Athosians were falling asleep in the aisles. Rodney McKay was totally failing to hold their attention with Darwinian evolution when one child - Jinto, who must have snuck out the second his back was turned - stuck his head around the door of the schoolhouse, shouting, “The supply boat came! Hey, everyone!” and the building emptied of every man, woman and irritating child before Rodney could even shout a full sentence. He was left glaring impotently at the open, sun-striped doors and the hand-carved benches and desks left crooked by the hasty exit, while bits of precious loose-leaf paper drifted in the heavy air.
God. He may as well have been back at university.
But he'd promised himself he wouldn't dwell on that, so he decided to suck it up and start wiping the blackboard clean.
Aside from some of the textbooks, this blackboard was the only thing they'd brought all the way. It had been carried by sea and air, over mountains and through thick jungle; it had been shot at, knocked, scarred, defecated on by small rabid animals, and partially burnt. When he was younger, Rodney had had some of his most ingenious breakthroughs on this board. It had belonged to Mrs. Harding, his Mathematics teacher right up until year six, and even though he never followed into her field, she'd still wanted him to have it. He'd never intended to let it gather dust - it was a working blackboard - so when Jeannie mentioned that they needed one, he'd packed it up without hesitation.
It was the only thing he'd ever defended with his life. Well, the bullet had actually hit the wooden arm of the board, and the splintered hole had since been sanded down, but it was the intention that counted, he thought. He'd defended it with his life; he just hadn't done a very good job. He rubbed a chalky thumb over the groove, frowning.
The door banged open again, making him jump a little; he turned around, scowling, but it was only his sister.
“I see you let them out early,” Jeannie said brightly, adjusting a broad-brimmed hat, deflecting his scowl without any apparent effort. Rodney narrowed his eyes. It was a calico hat with a blue ribbon around the crown, certainly not the battered one she used when she was gardening or doing other enthusiastic outdoor things, and oh God, was that her best dress? “Are you coming out to meet Captain Sheppard? I remember you got on so well last time,” she added with a terrifying sparkle in her eyes, and stepped out into the blinding sun with a cheery wave.
Rodney practically snarled.
The river bank was behind a copse of trees, shaded and much cooler than the rest of the village, and by the time Rodney got there, the Athosians had unpacked most of the boat's supplies - tinned food, medical supplies, clothing, letters, chalk and so on, as well as a few items that had been personally asked for - and were distributing them, the younger children taking the opportunity to go for a swim in the incredibly unsterile water, splashing the people left on the shore and frolicking around the boat like dolphins, if dolphins were sun-brown and gangly and made loud whooping noises. And if dolphins lived in rivers. So not very like dolphins at all, really.
The supply boat came up the river every month, and the Athosians - and Jeannie - treated it like Christmas every time. It was a low, ugly, ancient steamboat that had been painted and re-painted so many times that Rodney couldn't even tell what colour it was supposed to be, and it was piloted by a tall, charming man who was handsome to the point of prettiness, had every female within a hundred miles falling over themselves to bat an eyelash at him, and yet still managed to sail a boat called the Athosian Queen without irony. As Rodney stalked towards it, John Sheppard broke off an intense-looking conversation with Teyla Emmagen and graced Rodney with his attention. “'Morning, Doctor McKay,” he said pleasantly, grinning still wider when Jeannie fluttered over, beaming like someone who didn't have two PhDs and a commendation by the Prime Minister. “Doctor McKay,” he added, and tipped his cap to her. Jeannie giggled. Rodney seethed.
“Would you like to come into the shade, Captain Sheppard?” Jeannie purred. “For some coffee?”
It was going to be a very long day.
~*~
Aside from all the supplies, one good thing about Sheppard's visit was that he brought all kinds of news from up the river with him, some of which was scurrilous gossip and hearsay, so third-hand as to be completely useless except for entertainment, but much of it useful information about tribal politics that might influence trading partnerships, significant weather patterns, and other events that might affect the village. These were all very interesting to the Athosians, and the most influential, like Halling, Teyla and that wizened old lady who could make something miraculously tasty out of turnip peelings and corned beef, all had their own peculiar ways of pumping him for information, whether it involved manly bonding, manual labour, alcohol or food. For Rodney and Jeannie, he also brought a month's backlog of newspapers from wherever he could scrounge them, and remembered bits of the BBC World Service when couldn't, because the village was so strangely situated that the radio wouldn't pick up anything but static. By the time his supply boat came around, they were a little desperate for news of the outside world.
“The Genii are kicking up a fuss again,” he sighed, bent over a tin cup of Rodney's coffee. (That was another important thing the boat brought.) “There's patrol boats up and down the river, they're trying to set up embargoes...” he shrugged, looking completely unconcerned.
“But how do you avoid them?” Jeannie asked, fascination in her voice. Rodney couldn't fathom it, since Sheppard, while unfortunately useful, evidently had the brains of a pea and the worldly concern to match: if the Genii were truly making things difficult for river traders, then it wasn't Sheppard who would be worse off - Jeannie and Rodney relied on the Queen, and despite their proud self-sufficiency, so did the Athosians. It was getting harder and harder to find friends, these days, and more than one tribe with established trading links had disappeared entirely.
Sheppard, however, just smiled charmingly and said, “Oh, I know the river better than they do; their boats are all too big to get down all these little creeks and tributaries, but the Queen, well, she could slip across a puddle. She's a lithe little girl.”
Rodney remembered something then, making a noise into his coffee. “If there's nothing to worry about, what was that that had Teyla looking so concerned this morning?” Belatedly, he waved a hand - “Though of course if it's anything of a personal nature I don't want to know at all-”
Sheppard looked torn between smirking at Rodney's verbal flailing and taking a much grimmer expression - that expression won, and drew Rodney's attention. “It's nothing like that - it is important. I'm just not sure whether to tell you.”
Both Rodney and Jeannie started voicing their protests at the same time, so Sheppard interrupted before anything could be heard very clearly: “The Wraith are waking up.”
Rodney sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically. Jeannie smiled diplomatically and said, “Mister Sheppard, you can't possibly believe those stories, can you? Now, I know that people have gone missing-”
“Entire tribes have gone missing, Ms. McKay,” Sheppard said mildly.
“- But all urban legends have some basis in fact. If there is one thing causing it, or even one tribe going on some sort of campaign, there's no need to attribute any sort of, of magic to it. We're here to stamp that sort of thinking out, after all.” She smiled encouragingly.
Rodney, standing beside the coffeepot and halfway into his fourth cup of the morning, observed a strange change on Sheppard's face: a smooth but rapid slide from earnest warning to easy, charming smiles, without any kind of slip in between to make it seem insincere. It pointed to a sort of natural diplomacy that Rodney wouldn't have thought such a man capable of, and didn't like in any case. “Well, magic or no, Doctor McKay, they still sound like a threat, and they've certainly got the Athosians worried. I'd watch your borders - you're awfully alone out here.” He got up, sliding out of the chair in a graceful movement. “I'll be around, Doctor McKay.” He nodded to Rodney with a wan smile - “Doctor McKay.”
~*~
And of course, of course it happened the very next night, at dusk, when Rodney and Jeannie were reading through their new backlog of scientific journals, and the Athosians, skittish but not yet anticipating anything, were inside at their evening meal.
It wasn't quite dark outside. The light was low, not gone, filtering blue and monochrome through the light fog that evening brought, and a few children were still playing outside while their dinner cooked. The loudest noise was the croaking of lizards and frogs. Then the irritating shrieking of children running around free turned into the shrieking of children who were terrified, actually terrified, and by the time Rodney could hear adults at the edge of the village joining in and decided that maybe it was worth seeing what was wrong, the birds had come.
Birds were what Halling had called them, remembered from stories he'd heard second-hand from a vaguely reliable source. What they were, what screamed overhead like an echo of the people below them, were nothing Rodney had ever seen, heard of or believed possible. And when they swept over the village, over the huts that had been set alight, over the Athosians, herded by fire and noise into one milling, struggling herd, the people just disappeared - one here, four there, a dozen again there, until there were only a few people left, not even bothering to run, just looking up and screaming, screaming, screaming.
And then they were gone, too, and the birds, the deafening wedges of black overhead, tipped up and peeled away, like swallows. Rodney, clutching the trunk of one of the bay trees that separated the village from the schoolhouse and the small building he shared with his sister, turned to the left to see Jeannie's face, white and sick with eyes so wide and wet he could see every bit of flame and darkness that he'd just turned away from.
From between two burning huts, in the middle of the square where Halling told stories and Teyla beat men twice her size and the children had been playing, three figures stepped out, one ahead and two behind, silent. The firelight cast their sickly-pale skin into relief, and lit their bright white hair. He couldn't see the faces of the two behind - he couldn't say why, because they were close enough, but their faces just seemed blank - but the one in front, lithe and tall and walking gracefully, looked around and smiled with long, white teeth.
Rodney heard a muted sound from next to him, and Jeannie stood up and walked out from between the trees.
The thing with the teeth didn't even move. Jeannie stood before it in her white dress and green shawl and big, muddy boots, and it just tilted its head and said, “And what are you?”
“Doctor Jeannie McKay, District Commissioner for Education,” she said, voice shaking with rage. “What have you done to my people?”
And Rodney, paralysed, fingers locked to a tree, watched it smile again, stick its hand out, and leave Jeannie McKay a little, white-haired corpse in the square.
~*~
Sheppard found him around dawn, sitting in Jeannie's chair on the veranda of the schoolhouse, and it was only when Sheppard broke into his field of vision that Rodney realised that he was damp and freezing.
“Doctor McKay?” Sheppard's voice was quiet, but it still jarred him. “In the square, is that - is that-?”
“That's Jeannie,” Rodney said distantly, looking very intently at Sheppard's knees; the man was close, leaning forward so the floorboards creaked, and Rodney thought that if Sheppard reached out to touch him or slap him on the shoulder or something Rodney might deck him and run screaming. He had to talk fast to make sure Sheppard didn't try to comfort him. “They came last night, they came at dinner,” and then, looking up at last, looking into Sheppard's wide, muddy eyes, “What are you doing here? You left yesterday-”
“I was only a mile away,” Sheppard said. “I was taking a rest, and the way the river bends you can travel for miles and not go far at all.” He looked at Rodney for a few long seconds, like he was looking for something, and then he straightened up, looked behind him towards the bay trees. “Doctor McKay-”
“Rodney,” Rodney said.
“Rodney. It's Summer, and the sun's almost up. Your sister, we can't...” He trailed off, sounding unhappy.
“Right,” Rodney said. “Rate of decomposition. She'll putrefy.” He stood up to get a shovel, called over his shoulder, “There's a spot round the side where we can dig.”
So Sheppard brought her to the side of the schoolhouse, where Rodney was trying to dig a hole, and then Rodney had to sit against a post with his head between his knees while Sheppard dug the hole, just deep enough that scavengers couldn't dig the body up and eat it, and then he put her in it and covered her up, and Rodney put her journal and a pile of stones on top of the grave.
There wasn't a soul left in the village - no more bodies like Jeannie, not even bodies in the burnt-out huts and tents of the village. Sheppard picked through the black struts and ruins while Rodney sat against a tree, trying to control the shaking in his arms which was probably related to sleep-deprivation and lack of food, even though his stomach was a tight hot ball and he was so wide awake his whole body thrummed with it. He didn't know what he was going to do, since there wasn't any point in staying here and he didn't know if he could rely on Sheppard or his tiny little boat to get him anywhere; he couldn't think of anywhere he wanted or needed to be in any case. Jeannie had come here because she was a fervent believer in her cause; he'd come here because there was nowhere else on earth that wanted him.
Sheppard came back.
“We have to move.” He gave Rodney a hand up, then stepped away carefully, adding, “I haven't got enough food on the boat for two people - did you have any in the house?”
They did; in fact, they'd used the back room of the schoolhouse to store most of the food that the Queen brought them, as well as the surplus of crop yields. Rodney, thinking of the weeks it would take to get anywhere resembling civilisation, left Sheppard to choose appropriate food but hauled out a crate of fresh ground coffee sealed in vacuum flasks, ignoring Sheppard's look. It took them half an hour to load it all onto the boat, Rodney fretting all the while about weight distribution and hull thickness and how much, much lower she seemed to be in the water and Sheppard nodded and smiled and completely ignored him, piling crates in what seemed to be a completely haphazard fashion and doing vigorous, noisy things to the ancient boiler.
“I'm a physicist!” Rodney cried, “- among other things - so I think I know a little about flotation, which is something four-year-olds can grasp, and-” He sat down in the stern, suddenly, feeling dizzy and nauseous.
“And I'm telling you that I've sailed her up and down this river with loads ten times this mass for six years,” Sheppard said, with that patient voice again, “So trust me to know when she's too heavy to float, will you?” He turned away from the boiler, looping a rope around his elbow and shoulder that Rodney realised had been mooring them to the little jetty on the bank of the Athosian village. They were starting to move, slowly and with little more noise than a groan below the waterline and the hush of their wake. Sheppard sat beside him on the bench, putting a confidant hand on the rudder between them, and gently started to steer - all without taking his eyes off Rodney, which Rodney hoped he wouldn't do for much longer because it was a very irresponsible way to steer anything.
“There's a blanket under the bench if you're still cold,” he said quietly. Rodney was, and found the thick wool blanket wrapped in oilcloth to protect it from water. He sat on the bottom of the boat in front of the bench so that he wouldn't get in the way of the rudder (the boat was that small, it was no wonder Sheppard travelled on his own). He sat facing the waves spreading out behind them, watching the jetty disappearing behind the curve of the river and the forest getting less and less familiar, until it was all just a long green blur and Rodney was resting his head on the railing, still cold but grateful for the shade of the boat's canopy.
At some point, he fell asleep.
~*~
He woke up in the evening, still tired but very hungry and cranky and feeling more like himself. Sheppard was banging around further forward, with tins and tin-openers and tin cutlery. When he saw Rodney, he smiled, in a nice way that made his eyes crinkle at the corners, and offered Rodney a plate of beans and sausages and a cup of water - “It's been boiled, don't worry,” - all of which Rodney wolfed down before he'd said a word to the man or even really opened his eyes.
“More?” Sheppard said. He looked fascinated. It was inexplicable.
“Yes please,” Rodney said, in a tone that meant obviously, you imbecile.
While Sheppard filled his plate again, he looked over the side of the boat, and up the river - since the only thing lighting it was the moon, which was gibbous, the river was the only thing outside the boat he could see in any detail: it stretched out, silver and black, without any discernible bend for some miles; wide, deep and barely rippling.
“Where are we going?” he asked, taking his plate and another cup of water - he was so thirsty; it had been very irresponsible to let himself get so dehydrated. He hadn't been thinking clearly.
Sheppard piled his dishes into a corner, and from behind the boiler he produced a map of the river, much-abused and worn to small holes where it had been folded. He pointed out a section that Rodney couldn't really discern from any other section, saying, “I was thinking of the Lantean city, here; it's a journey and a half, but it's a safe harbour, secure, and you can go wherever you like from there.”
“Why is it such a journey?” Rodney said, putting down his plate. Now that he looked at the map properly, had the scale worked out, he thought he recognised the section they were in by Jeannie's maps of the village and the nearby tribes. “We're... here, yes? It seems like a pretty straightforward route.”
“But it's not,” Sheppard said, leaning over until their shoulders were brushing, staring intently at the paper. “It would have been once, but we'll have to go down every stream and tributary on the river to avoid the Genii-” he sighed - “And then there's this part.” He stabbed a section of the map quite near where the city was marked out. “Right near where we need to go. People think the Wraith were sleeping there; they even say it was the Lanteans woke them up. People think they've got a - a battleship of some kind? Something we need to avoid. You all right with that plan, McKay?”
Battleship. Rodney thought of the birds, the dark arrowheads that screamed over the village, and wondered what kind of battleship that thing with teeth could think up. “Why is it still there?” he asked.
“Why is what still there?”
“The battleship.” Rodney's breathing quickened. “I mean, if they're killing people - if they're so close to the Lanteans, if people know about them, why hasn't anyone tried to get rid of them?”
“I think they're trying to not start a war, McKay,” Sheppard said; his voice was even.
“Start a-” Rodney stood up, making the boat wobble; he sat down again very quickly, hissing, “People are disappearing in their hundreds, maybe every night, dying just like Jeannie for all I know, and you - what, you think there's no war? Just because one side is standing around like a herd of sheep and not admitting anything's wrong doesn't mean there's no war, it just means that it's going to be over very quickly and probably not in a way that is favourable to you or I! Don't you want something to be done about it?”
“Of course I do!” Sheppard looked furious for the first time since Rodney had known him; furious, and frustrated, and tired. “I'd love for someone to blow the shit out of them, McKay, but I'm just the captain of a damn little tramp steamer in the middle of the river; it doesn't matter what I want.” He blew out a breath, running his hands through his hair, making it stick straight up. He mumbled, “Hell, I'd blow the shit out of them myself. Time was I could have.”
“So why don't we?” Rodney said. The solution was incredibly simple, now that he thought of it; and ingenious, but he would have expected that of himself.
“Pardon me?”
“I said, why don't we? We have all the materials we need to make some extremely powerful explosives - don't look like that, I can make nitroglycerine out of half the stuff you eat for breakfast. Hey, are those oxygen tanks? They are! Do you know how to make a torpedo?”
“What? No!” Sheppard looked flabbergasted, which wasn't encouraging, but he could work with it. “And I don't think you do either - do you know the level of sophistication in those instruments? All the gyroscopes and-”
Rodney waved a hand. “Don't be ridiculous. The fancy tech is just to keep the torpedo stable and accurate while it travels; all we need to do is make a sufficiently powerful explosive - or even two,” he said, eying the oxygen tanks - “and then we attach them to the bow of the boat and ram the Wraith ship!” He grinned. “Crude, but effective. What do you think?”
Sheppard stared at him. “I think you're crazy,” he said.
“But you also think I'm right.” He could see it in Sheppard's eyes. “We could do it. We could.”
“Yeah. We could.” Sheppard folded up the map, slowly. “You know, this boat is my livelihood. You're proposing to blow it up?”
“If the Wraith take many more villages, you're not going to have much of a livelihood anyway,” Rodney pointed out in what he thought of as his most patient voice. “Besides, do you really want to float up and down this river for the rest of your life?”
“It's not the worst way to live,” Sheppard said stoutly. “Fine - I think you're insane, but I can't think of a better plan. But you'll tell me everything you're doing; I know a little about making nitro too, and I don't trust you not to blow up my boat before its time.”
“What, do you think I'm incompetent?” Rodney squawked, but then he waved a hand and said, “Fine, fine, I grant that you don't know me very well and therefore can't know how ridiculous it is to doubt my intelligence. Besides, it's your boat - you'll get at least forty percent of the credit.”
~*~
Aaaand I'm done.