Chapter 14 – Necklace
Colonel Caldwell was sitting on the edge of the balustrade surrounding the great balcony of the Atlantisian city complex. The weather was nice, golden sunbeams were falling onto the metal surface of the buildings and dancing on the transparent windows. The colonel was holding his palmtop on his left knee, and he was looking down at the screen, examining the picture of a chess board. He pressed a button on the keyboard, making the queen slide across the black and white fields until it reached the desired position in the opposite corner of the board.
"Is it more interesting to play chess against you than against me?" he heard the biting question, and as he turned in the direction of the voice, he saw Elizabeth Weir standing not far from him, watching the screen of his palmtop with her eyebrows raised. He exited the chess-game program with an indignant click.
"I was just checking on a combination of moves, but, anyway, it's none of your business how I spend my free time," he replied brusquely.
"Oh, so you have free time now?" she asked with an animated smile, neglecting his unfriendliness. "I'm sure you have an hour for me, then. I'll bring my palmtop right now, and we can play a match..."
"No, you don't need to bring it," Caldwell got up from the side of the metal balustrade and closed his palmtop. "I'm going now to look at how the scientists get on with the resettling of the beam-technology database of the Daedalus."
Doctor Weir was smart enough to fake diplomatic stolidity on her face, though his answer hurt her extremely. She was angry with herself for trying to be nice to him in spite of the fact that she knew beforehand how mindless it was, in spite of the fact that last time she had promised herself not to try it again and in spite of the fact that it would have been much easier to return his hostility than to make a fool of herself with her hopeless efforts to straighten up things.
"Are you doing this to me because I sent you away on the almost suicidal mission with the Orion, or because I mentioned the Goa'uld case when Teyla disappeared, or because I ordered Doctor Beckett to save the Wraith?" she asked resentfully. "Or you just can't stand my presence so much that you feel unable to spend an hour with me?"
Caldwell's muscles stiffened, and, for a moment, he seemed unable to find words to answer, but then he slowly took a breath and gave a brief response, "All four of these options."
He turned away from her and started to walk in the direction of the inner parts of the city complex. She rushed after him and made him come to a halt by stepping in his way.
"You can stay, if you want," she said to him, forcing calmness in her voice. "I'm outta here, I just came to see what you were doing and to talk with you a bit, but, okay, I see now how stupid of me it was to do so. Sorry for disturbing you." She left with quick steps, fighting hard to keep her paces composed and placid.
When she was about to take the stairs in the direction of the Control Room, she nearly bumped into Doctor Beckett, who was hurrying down right from there. "Oh, Elizabeth, nice to see you here," he said ardently. "I've been searching for you."
"Is it something urgent?" she inquired, hoping that nothing bad had happened to the captured Wraith.
"No, I just wanted to ask for your permission if I can give this to Claire." The doctor showed her a necklace, a chain from white gold. "Lindsey Novak wanted to pass me something in return because I've been caring for her wounds for almost two weeks, and because I gave tranquilizer to her mutant dog bought from the Athosians instead of killing it, and now it's quite a nice pet. When she heard that I was searching for a chain for Claire, she insisted on giving this to me. Novak said she wouldn't wear it anyway."
"You want to give a necklace to a Wraith? Carson, it sounds a bit... uhm... creepy," Weir answered, stepping closer to him.
"No, no, no, you've misunderstood it, it's not a present. Do you remember that Claire had a necklace with a special pendant? I just want to replace the damaged chain. I promised her."
She still had a worried expression on her face. "Why did you promise anything to a Wraith?"
"Because I saw that this necklace was important for her..."
"So what?"
"So I made a guess that if I gave it back to her, it would improve her attitude towards us."
Elizabeth looked him in the eye pensively. "Carson, who is Claire you named our captive after?"
"It's a long story," he responded with a casual flick of his hand. "I'll tell you when we have more time."
"I have enough time now to discuss this question."
"I'm sorry, but I don't," the doctor apologized. "I have to visit Novak and the other victims attacked by her dog, and then..."
"Okay, I see," she cut him off quickly, she had enough of being dismissed for the day. "You don't want to share it with me, it's alright, but be careful, you shouldn't be too partial about that monster. Don't forget that we represent food to her, and this fact is unchangeable. She can't be anything else, just our enemy."
"I know, I know," he nodded. "I have a bad opinion of Wraiths, you don't need to worry that I turn out to be their friend."
"I didn't mean that. I know that you are not a friend of the Wraiths."
"Then, what's bothering you?"
"Just... just promise me that you'll be careful. It's an incredibly risky thing that we brought this monster to Atlantis, and I don't want you to top it with getting into trouble..."
"I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself," Carson answered gleefully, and he took a few steps backwards, in the direction of a door. "And now, if you could excuse me, I have to look after my patients. So, can I give the necklace to Claire or not?"
Elizabeth nodded vaguely. "Do as you think fit."
The doctor left, smiling contentedly, while she folded her hands chillingly. She started to feel worse and worse ill about the whole situation that a Wraith was nursed in the heart of the city, and Carson's blindfold behavior just enhanced her bad intuition.
Doctor Beckett walked into the ward, and he stopped not far from Claire's bed. The Wraith was lying silently, but he could clearly see that her wounds on her skin at the places where the straps chained her to the bed were torn up again from her trials to free herself.
"How are you today?" he asked from her thoughtfully.
"You didn't come this morning to read out for me," she hissed. "Are you beginning to get bored with playing the role of the friendly, care-taking healer who listens nicely to everything what the lonely, gullible captive might let out?"
Doctor Beckett sat down comfortably on the chair next to her bed, showing her with a smile that he became amused at her reaction. "I didn't come this morning, since I was searching for something and that took my time," he explained.
She made a grimace and did not inquire about what the doctor had been seeking for. Carson did not wait for her to ask it, he pulled out the white golden chain from the pocket of his medical robe and took her pendant from the night-table. He threaded the pendant with the emerald-like stone on the chain with mindful cautiousness, and then he showed it to the Wraith.
"Are you contented?" he asked from her.
She gave no response, just stared at him with unreadable glitter in her grayish eyes.
"Lift your head up a bit, please," he told her, and she obeyed without any hesitation, as far as her ties let her do it. He put the jewel around her neck and clasped it with a light click.
"Now you got it back," he hemmed in front of himself.
"Thank you," she said suddenly. Doctor Beckett's smile widened, he did not really expect her to show gratitude, it was a nice surprise for him that she did so. "I see this necklace is truly important for you," he remarked.
"Yes, it is. It's the reason why I asked your friends to save me and not let me die there in the desert."
Carson's astonishment grew even greater. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"I didn't want this necklace to rust alone, wasted in a gray, endless sand-sea. I've been planning to present it to my future spawn, it has been the only dream of mine. I didn't want to give it up."
"So you have no Wraith children so far?" the doctor inquired. "You have no family? Or I don't know how I should put it..."
"I see what you mean," she answered slowly, "But you have to know a few things about Wraiths and the connection between us to understand things. We lay eggs, and we leave these eggs alone in damp, dark caves or in special incubators aboard a hive, and that is the last time we see them. We'll never know if our eggs hatch and turn out to be healthy spawns or if they rot with no life originating from them. I have no idea if I have any living descendants or not."
"Uhh... What?" Carson blinked at her dumbfounded.
"I know that for you humans, who spend your whole life with your children, it's strange to imagine a life without family ties..."
"Oh, no, no, I got what you said, and it's okay, but how do you want to give the necklace to your spawn if you have not the faintest idea which Wraith is your descendant?"
"The same way my mother gave it to me," she replied calmly. "She squeezed the pendant through the soft, flexible shell of my egg, and when it hatched and I came to my senses, I found this jewel next to me, and I know it's from my mother and she got it from hers and so on because Wraith mothers show with a heritable piece of jewelry how much they care for their spawns."
"Wow, that's interesting," Carson enthused, "But if you have only this one piece of necklace, what did you give to your other eggs?"
Claire's pupils were narrowing.
"Nothing," she answered in an unemotional, cool tone of voice. "Those eggs were of an unhealthy color and they were small, I'm almost sure they never hatched. I want to leave this pendant for a big, properly flexible egg, because I want to make sure that a living spawn finds it."
"Oh, okay, I see," the doctor said. "It sounds a bit cruel to me, but I understand that there are differences in the ways we see this question..."
"It's not cruel in the least," she reflected on it. "You know, all my life I've been wearing this necklace with the greatest pride, with the feeling that I'm special, because my mother chose me to possess her pendant. If she had given jewels to all of her spawns, I couldn't experience this pleasure of knowledge that I'm important. I want one of my spawns to feel the same way I do."
Doctor Beckett mused a bit over the things she said, and then he nodded wordlessly.
"It's hard to make you understand it, I know," she went on, "You humans have a very twisted sense of personal relationships, but I think the way you see them is just over-reacting simple things."
Carson laughed as he heard her opinion. "From your point of view, I'm sure you're right, we make a great fuss about emotional attachments, but if you examine the question more thoroughly, these personal relationships are not simple at all. They make our lives more beautiful..."
"Or more miserable," she added scornfully.
"Yep, sometimes they do."
"I don't envy you for these feelings. They must be perplexing and unpleasant, not to mention the mixed up habits and the bizarre traditions you humans built around these superfluous things."
"I think..." The doctor could not go on with sharing his opinion on the topic, because the door of the ward opened, and John Sheppard marched in, followed by four armed soldiers.
"It's time to escort our captive down to the basement into the Wraith cell," he announced. "She is obviously fit enough to walk on her own now, she doesn't need to occupy a ward anymore."
Doctor Beckett put his hands anxiously on the edge of Claire's bed. She seemed a bit apprehensive too, her flat nostrils started to extend slightly as her breathing quickened. "Well, maybe you'll have a better place there," the doctor told her encouragingly. "There won't be straps to fasten you to a surface of a bed..."
"Carson, don't you have other things to do, for example in the infirmary?" Sheppard interrupted him with sarcasm in his voice. "This monster will be quite alright with us."
"Okay, okay, don't be so offensive, I was just trying to explain what will happen to her," the doctor replied, and he obediently left the room with a sad expression on his face. Claire followed his steps with a dull, gloomy look in her eyes.