Standing beside Weyland, waiting for the next question or command, David remained silent. He had plenty of questions.
And plenty of time.
II
Daniels slept. Daniels dreamed. The cognitive borderland her thoughts inhabited was profound, yet such distinctions were of no interest to her. What mattered was that the content meant contentment.
Something traced its way across her lips. It was slim, fleshy, and the pressure it exerted was slight. Enough to alert her. Recognizing it, she smiled before opening her eyes. The usual slight downturn of her mouth was subsumed in a smile.
A familiar face hovered above hers. She knew every pore, every crease, every line in it. There weren’t many of the latter but she wouldn’t have minded had there been a few more. They would come with time, though. More than likely she would be responsible for some of them, she knew. That was just reality. Real life.
It was something she looked forward to. A bit of mutual countenance inscribing. Part of me in your face, part of you in mine. Living together, growing together. Wife, husband, and eventually, children.
Smooth visage and all, Jacob leaned a little closer and kissed her.
“Morning,” he said. “I moved the chimney.”
Information, but hardly news. With a groan she smiled anew and tried to entomb herself under the pillows. Grinning, he pushed them aside. She blinked, her wide brown eyes gazing affectionately into his. They dominated a face that was girlish yet serious, framed by neatly clipped bangs that covered her forehead and a very slightly cleft chin. Though she had the aspect of someone who was often thinking of something else, she was very much alert to her surroundings.
“C’mon, sleepy-head. You have to see this.”
Holding a small cube, he rubbed one discolored side. A three-dimensional image sprang to life from within, expanding in front of them. It appeared perfectly solid. Holding the cube in one hand, he used his other to manipulate the image of a modest structure, sometimes rotating it to provide a different angle, at others zooming to the interior, and then out again. With a single finger gesture he imposed notations on the image, occasionally enlarging them to make them easier to read, sometimes shunting them aside.
Finally settling on the perspective he wanted, he nudged a profusion of notes out of the way to permit an unobstructed view of the building. His excitement was barely restrained.
“Look, look. I moved it from the southwest corner to the northwest corner. Looks better there, right? And if we ever actually have to use it for heating, the airflow will be better from the northwest.”
Her expression one of resigned amusement, she shook her head a couple of times, clutching one pillow while gazing up at him.
“You did not wake me up for that,” she said. “Tell me you did not wake me up for that.”
“And I made coffee,” he added by way of atonement. “And it’s snowing.”
She sighed, momentarily buried her face in the pillow, and then rolled out of the bed.
He would have brought the coffee to her had she asked, but somehow his version of the ancient brew was never quite right. Easier to prepare it herself. A glance out the window showed that it was indeed snowing. Large, fat flakes accumulated on the sharp angles of tall buildings outside, softening the normally bleak cityscape. The metropolis was tired, spiritless, all but visibly sagging.
Unable to avoid the weather, a few pedestrians slogged their way along the sidewalks, not talking, not looking up, not communicating with their neighbors. Their perceptible gloom matched that of the surrounding structures. In the weather, their lives, and their prospects, they took no joy.
Coffee in hand—two creams, two sugars—she wandered back toward the bed. Having appropriated her place, Jacob was lying on his back tinkering with the module’s projection. As his index finger traced, bits and pieces of the cabin projection responded.
“This is gonna be our home, the chimney location’s important.” He frowned. “Wait, maybe it was better on the other side after all. Without having a proper picture of the actual surroundings, it’s hard to tell. Airflow’s important, but so’s aesthetics. Only gonna build this once, so have to get everything right the first time.”
She didn’t interrupt. Just sipped her coffee and watched him. He was so in love with his log cabin… and she was so in love with him. She could have spoken, could have voiced an opinion, if only to indicate that she was listening and paying attention, but she didn’t want to interrupt. Didn’t want to break into his dream.
Turning, she peered again toward the window and the winter wonderland outside. She wondered if their new home would have snow. For all they knew at this point, all of their options might be tropical.
A voice declaimed. She didn’t hear it. It wasn’t Jacob, and it wasn’t in his dream. It wasn’t in her dream. It was real.
“Seven o’clock,” Mother declared in exactly the same voice she utilized for all such declarations. “All’s well.”
The announcement was followed by a brief musical tone. It was a recording of a ship’s bell, early twentieth century, brought forward in time on something of a whim by the Covenant’s designers. A fragment of the past carried far into the future by builders of the present. A small amusement to gratify those who added it to the ship’s program but who, stuck on Earth, would never be able to hear it when it was actually in use.
On the other side of a long curving transparency that wasn’t glass and was not a window looking out onto a grim urban panorama, a figure stood gazing down at the sleeping, smiling Daniels. Its name was Walter and it… he… was perfect—as perfect as perfection could be rendered in synthetic form.
In her dream Daniels smiled anew at some secret thought. It prompted a reactive smile from the synthetic. Moving to the side of the sleeping woman’s pod, he made a quick check of the readouts. All normal. Methodically, without minding the repetition that would have numbed a human but did not bother him in the slightest, he moved on to check the adjacent pod.
Jacob. Also normal.
Having completed his morning round of the crew hypersleep room, he turned and made his way to the adjoining chamber.
Two thousand individual cryo-pods were ranged along both sides of the facing walls, pod beside pod, simultaneously defying time and comprehension. Behind the transparent view ports could be seen the sleeping faces of men, women, children. All content, all slumbering, all nominally swaddled in the comfort of reassuring dreams. The continuing life, health, and especially the future of each and every one of them was his responsibility.
Walter did not take it lightly.
In the distance, a single flashing amber telltale called out. No human—not even one with the very best eyesight—could have picked it out. He noticed it immediately. Making his way to its source, he checked the applicable pod’s diagnostics. The briefest of pauses allowed for analysis, following which he made a small necessary adjustment. The amber light promptly turned a steady green. He was pleased.
Time to check the embryo containment unit. Opening one of the drawers, each of which held a human embryo at a different stage of development, he sampled the readouts. All were green and, as Mother had observed, all was well. He allowed himself a smile.
“Walter.” Mother’s voice again. Informative, instructive, never commanding. A computer could no more issue a command than could a synthetic. “Please report to the bridge. It’s about time to recharge the grid. Let’s be about it.”