“So could I,” she readily agreed, then she pressed him. “It doesn’t trouble you that in creating ‘his’ new world, his actions resulted in the extermination of the entire local population?”
He replied without hesitation. “From everything that I saw and experienced, as well as learned from David, the civilization of the Engineers was not one with whom compassionate coexistence was possible. True, there was beauty and elegance in their art and science, but there was also arrogance. I do not think they were pleased to suffer any intelligences save their own.”
She looked off into the distance. “David said something similar to me, only he was talking about humans.”
“And in some respects he was right,” Walter replied, surprising her. “But in the case of humans, such arrogance is usually confined to individuals. I have not found it to be a general racial characteristic. In that regard you are different from the Engineers. So far.”
She frowned at him. “What do you mean, ‘so far’?”
“Success and accomplishment can breed conceit. There are those humans who believe their kind to be the ultimate product of evolution.”
“The existence of the Engineers and their work ought to put an end to beliefs like that,” Daniels told him firmly. Shifting her attention to a nearby port, she indicated the blazing firmament outside. “There may be others out there, other civilizations besides that of the Engineers.”
He followed her gaze. “Statistical analysis would suggest as much.”
“If we run into them, hopefully they’ll be more receptive than the Engineers to our continued existence. More like us.”
His eyebrows rose questioningly. “‘Us’?”
She smiled back at him. “I wouldn’t have a problem coexisting with a society composed entirely of synthetics. Or other machines. Intelligence is the defining factor.”
Though he showed no emotion, she had the feeling her reply pleased him.
“It is a pity you could not spend more time with David,” he said. “You might have changed him. He underestimated you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “That’s exactly what he told me.”
“Then you are doubly complimented, I suppose.” Once again he turned his gaze to the view out the port. “I wonder what Origae-6 will be like?”
She joined him in eying the stars, completely relaxed in his company. “Nobody knows for sure, except for one thing.”
“What is that, Danny?”
Her tone was grim. “It can’t be any worse.”
XXV
Alone in her cabin, Daniels worked the private food prep gear to heat a meal. Usually the revived crew members ate in the communal dining area, but with the most precious thing on a colony ship being privacy, there were often times when some preferred to eat by themselves.
Usually Jacob did the food prep but…
She glanced over at an image that had been taken of the crew prior to departure from Earth orbit. They were all there, still alive in memory, their smiles and movements and expressions frozen in time. Oram and Karine, Tennessee and Faris, Lopé and Hallet, all of them. Her and Jacob. Memories. All she had now. Those, and a still-uncertain future. She was lucky, she knew. At least she had a future.
She didn’t feel lucky.
The door chimed, indicating a presence on the other side. Pausing the food prep, she opened the portal. Tennessee stood there, solid and imposing.
“Evening. You’re looking good, my darlin’.”
“What?” She made a face. “Oh, yeah,” she replied flatly. “Gorgeous. I was just doing my makeup and waiting for my ball gown to finish pressing.” She gestured. “Come in.”
It was a short distance back to the food prep. In any cabin on the Covenant, it was a short distance to anywhere. Personal space was more than adequate but hardly luxurious. A crew that spent the majority of its voyage in hypersleep was hardly in need of wide open spaces.
“What are you cooking?”
She picked up a box and showed it to him. The front was dominated by an image of an egg, with smaller images of subsidiary ingredients listed beneath it.
“An ‘omelet.’ Something derived from a simulacrum of unborn fowl.” She squinted at the container. “It doesn’t specify the origin species. You want one?”
“Sounds delicious. Sure. Actually, I’m familiar with it. Lots of cheese on mine, if you can make additions without spoiling your own.”
She looked uncertain. “What’s ‘cheese’?”
He turned thoughtful, remembering. “Congealed derivative of fluid excreted by bovine ungulates to nurture their young. Perfectly digestible by most—though not all—humans. Depends on your ancestry and genetic coding. In addition to being edible, it’s also tasty.” He indicated the container. “There’s probably a separate packet for it inside.”
She nodded. “Anything to drink with it?”
He rolled his eyes. “How long have you known me, Danny?”
Moving to a cabinet, she pulled out the nearly empty bottle of liquor and poured him a shot. He accepted it, raised it in a brief toast, not only to her, but to all their lost comrades, and sipped.
“How’s the ship looking?” she asked him.
“I took Mother offline. She needs to run a full internal diagnostic without the stress of having to monitor everything every nanosecond. She got pretty battered when we dropped down to the upper levels of the storm. Took a lot of peripheral EM damage. Ship’s systems are on auto until she’s back online at eight bells. It’s worthwhile anyway, to make sure everything’s independently functional before we go back under.”
A fatigued Daniels was having enough trouble keeping an eye on the food prep without having to pay attention to her visitor as well.
“Mother. Right.”
He noticed. “You need to get some sleep.”
She nodded in agreement. “Tell me something I don’t know. Soon as we eat.”
He watched while she monitored the food. “Do I have to call you Captain?”
She didn’t look up from the equipment. “Fuck yes.”
He smiled and she smiled back. Neither expression held for very long. Both of them were prisoners of memories too painful to forget, and too recent to expunge. When the food was ready they sat together and shared the meal. Each time one thought to say something, the look in the eyes of the other subdued it.
It wasn’t as if they didn’t have anything to say. It was just that neither of them could think of a tactful way to say it.
One dreamer.
Well, not quite. Sleep came fitfully to Daniels, if at all. Brief stretches of edgy unconsciousness interrupted by the urge to plan and prepare, occasionally speckled with shards of nightmare. She was so tired it was hard to fall asleep. Awareness of the contradiction did nothing to mitigate it.
Rolling over, she turned up the lights and drew fingertips gently down the slope of Jacob’s pillow. By now the last impression he had left in it was gone. Raising her gaze she let it linger on the image of his beloved log cabin. His dream. She would make it come true if she had to chop down exotic trees with her bare hands.
Somehow, envisioning the finished building softened what had otherwise become an uninviting tomorrow. At her whispered command the cabin darkened again, and she was finally able to fall asleep.
Time passed on the Covenant as it did on Earth, while outside the colony ship’s jump field the galaxy rotated around it. It continued in this peaceful fashion until eight A.M., ship time, at which point Mother came back online. Low-pitched and slow-voiced at first, but rapidly returning to normality.