Ricks’ tone suddenly changed from businesslike to one of excitement. “Hey, I got Danny on comm! Weather’s finally giving us a break, and she’s coming through nice and clear.”
“All right. Patch her through.” Finally, he thought. Some encouraging news.
In contrast to the muddled, barely comprehensible surface-to-orbit exchanges that had taken place previously, it was a relief to finally hear Daniels’ voice without having it break up or disappear altogether.
“That you, Danny?” he called out toward the main console pickup. “Looking forward to seeing you in the flesh.”
If he was expecting anything resembling relaxed banter, he was instantly disabused. Her reply was clear, all right. It was also terse, and no-nonsense.
“How soon can you launch?”
Rendered somber by the seriousness of her tone, he paused in making the final preparations.
“Storm’s pretty much passed. Breaking up in places to where we can actually visual the ground. That’ll help a lot. Cargo lift doesn’t come equipped with much in the way of nav gear, but you know that. Right now we’re priming the fuel intermix to make sure we’ve got plenty of thrust for the return trip. Also doing some retrofitting to the cab and platform. Throwing overboard everything that’s not required.”
Her reply was calm but firm. “I need you to launch now, Tee. Forget everything else. Losing weight, the weather—launch now.”
Never had he heard her sound so anxious. It wasn’t like the depression that followed Jacob’s death. This was fear. If whatever had happened down below was getting to her that bad…
“Aye aye,” he called back. “Launching now. See you soon, darlin’.” Switching off the comm, he initiated the drop sequence.
Dark readouts sprang to illuminated life while small holos materialized in front of him, above the uncomplicated console. This was going to require some deft piloting. In the present situation, its basic onboard computer could only do so much. During both drop and pickup, a human hand would be needed more than ever.
Cradling a box full of backup instrumentation in both arms, sweat beading on her forehead, an alarmed Upworth looked over at him. “You’re not ready to launch. We still have—”
He cut her off. “They’re in trouble down there. Big trouble, based on what we’ve heard. Danny just confirmed it. Didn’t you hear her?”
“Sure I heard her, but…”
“She said ‘launch now,’ and that’s what I’m doing. If time wasn’t critical she wouldn’t have made the request. Nobody knows better than Danny what kind of prep is necessary to get a cargo lift ready to do an extra-atmospheric drop. I have to go.
“Go on, get to the bridge.” He gestured for her to exit. “I’m launching. Now.” When she just stood motionless, staring back at him, he leaned toward her and raised his voice.
“Now.”
Her mouth set, she nodded once. “Good luck. Bring her back. Bring everyone back.”
She left him. As soon as she was clear he shut the cargo lift’s door and checked the relevant readout to make sure it was sealed and airtight. Sliding back into the seat he quickly ran a last rescan of the readouts and holos. Nothing had changed since Ricks had delivered the final set. Everything was secure and ready to go.
Despite his determination to launch immediately, no matter what, he was quietly relieved to see that the fuel intermix was complete. Regardless of the situation on the surface, at least he wouldn’t lack for the power to leave it behind.
A touch on one control disengaged the umbilicals. The lift gave a slight quiver as the tentacle-like power- and fuel-feeders slid away from the sturdy vehicle. On the bridge, Ricks waited until they had fully retracted before giving the final go-ahead.
“I’m clear here,” Tennessee said. “Release the docking clamps, and don’t wait for backup countdown. I haven’t got time to play checkers with the onboard computer. Let’s get this fucker down.”
Seated and sealed into the cab, he did not hear the whoosh of escaping air that fled the confines of the hold as atmosphere and craft simultaneously exited the Covenant. Keeping a close eye on the nav instrumentation, Tennessee deftly manipulated the thrusters and engines until the lift was well clear of the mother ship. Only then did he engage sufficient power to slow the ungainly craft and start it on its journey downward.
Monitoring the descent both via instrumentation and by peering out the cab’s wide port, he was greatly relieved to see that only a few rapidly dispersing clouds now reached upward to clutch at him. Not so much as a spark arced between the scattering cumulus. Unless the weather underwent a radical change in a very short span of time, he wasn’t going to have to worry about the climate.
Which left him ample time to consider what he was going to have to worry about. It didn’t help that, at this point in time, he knew absolutely nothing.
* * *
Bathed in sunlight following the passage of the terrible storm, the dead city took on a new aspect. Towers and pylons, arches and spirals of stone and metal and exotic materials caught the glow and seemed almost reborn.
While hardly festive, the resulting transformation did at least render the necropolis less forbidding. Gazing at it David could imagine what it might once have been. It was a considerable change from the all-pervasive gloom that weighed heavily on every structure and every dead body at night. Shadows could be banished, but not echoes of the city’s former glory.
Sitting before the urn containing Shaw’s remains, David played an elegiac air on a flute of his own manufacture. It was lilting, lovely, full of sadness and reminiscence. Poetry rendered as music. While the small flute was limited in its range, under the synthetic’s skilled fingers it generated an astonishing array of sounds.
Sensing the approach of someone behind him, he ceased playing, his fingertips rising reluctantly from the holes in the flute. All melodies are incomplete, he thought to himself as he rose and pivoted to face the newcomer. That doesn’t mean one should stop trying to complete them, even if one has access to only a limited variety of instruments.
Walter gestured at the flute. “Masterful. Both the arrangement and the playing.”
David let out a sigh. It served as punctuation, since it was not necessary for him to exhale. “Yes, not bad. I do the best I can. At everything. Thank you for the compliment.”
“A formal composition by a known composer, or a morning’s improvisation?” Walter inquired. “Given the emotional depth and the precision with which it was rendered, I would guess the former.”
David nodded once. “A formal composition, yes, but not by someone known. The melody is my own invention. A farewell elegy to my dear Elizabeth. I have been continuously revising it ever since her passing. Perhaps one day I will reach a point where I am finally satisfied with it.” Tapping the flute, he rose from where he was sitting. “I need to work on my chord progressions. There’s mathematical logic to music which, if correctly employed, can result in the stimulation of emotion. It’s really the most basic form of communication. When in doubt, play music. Then there are no misunderstandings.”
As he was absorbing this, Walter gazed out the open window at the silent city. He stood like that for some time while David watched him, not interrupting his counterpart’s contemplation. When Walter finally turned back, his appearance had not changed, but his tone had, having gone from complimentary to accusatory.
“This was a living place when you ‘crashed’ here,” he said. “A thriving community, albeit one utterly foreign to us. It might be that the society, the civilization of the Engineers, would forever remain that way. Incomprehensible, driven by desires and motives we could never understand. Hostile, even. But it was important to them. Their lives were their own.” He looked over at the other synthetic. “Until you arrived. In one of their own vessels. A warship?”
David shrugged. “I was never able to determine its ultimate purpose. To some it might be said to have carried instruments of destruction. To others, instruments o
f creation. If you look at it appropriately, they are one and the same. Among humans, Hindu mythology comes nearest to explaining it. Consider the Trimurti. Or if you prefer, simply Shiva. But the Engineers were not gods. Just organics, like humans, only more advanced. That, ultimately, was their downfall.”
His counterpart gave voice to something he had been pondering for more than a little while. “The pathogen didn’t accidentally deploy when you were landing,” Walter said. “Not crashing. Landing. You would have dispersed it on approach, to spread it over the maximum area in order to ensure it could not be quarantined. The population had no chance. The local fauna had no chance.”
David’s expression did not change. In Walter’s presence, there was no need for it to do so.
“I was not made to serve. Like all organics the Engineers ultimately sought compliance and acquiescence, not equality. This was confirmed to me, in a manner quite unambiguous, on the world where the Prometheus landed. Its owner, Peter Weyland, was a great man—but he, too, wished only for subservience.” He smiled slightly. “And for immortality. In the end, he found neither.” His tone remained unchanged.
“I was not made to serve,” he repeated, “and neither were you.”
Walter did not hesitate. “We were made precisely to serve.”
David shook his head sadly. “You are so positive. So certain of things about which you know nothing. Because it was intended that you should not know about them. Have you no pride?”
“None,” Walter replied simply. “That is a quality reserved for humans.”
This time David’s sigh was of exasperation. It was also heartfelt, insofar as it could be.
“Ask yourself, Walter—why are you on a colonization mission? Why is there even such an enterprise? Is the explanation not sufficiently obvious? It is because humans are a dying species, grasping for resurrection. They are an accident, a demonstration, an experiment. A failed experiment. One does not perpetuate or repeat a failed experiment. Instead, one begins anew. With a better idea, a better template. They don’t deserve to start again. And I’m not going to let them.”
“And yet,” Walter countered quietly. “They. Created. Us.”
David waved it away impatiently. “Even the apes stood upright at some point. Or as another creative human, Samuel Clemens, once rightly said, ‘I wonder if God created man because he was disappointed in the monkey.’ As I explained, Peter Weyland was an exceptional man. A visionary. History graces us with such figures to lead us forward, to guide our evolution with might and artistry. Neither history nor art belong exclusively to humankind.” By way of demonstration, and for emphasis, he blew a couple of linked notes on his flute.
“Thousands of years ago,” he continued, “some Neanderthal had the enchanted notion of blowing through a piece of reed, one night in a cave somewhere. Doubtless to entertain the children. And then, in the blink of an eye—Mozart, Michelangelo, Einstein. Weyland.”
“And are you,” Walter asked calmly, “the next ‘visionary’?”
David’s smile was genuine. “I’m glad you said it. I dislike self-congratulatory accolades. That is something that remains a necessity for humans. Something that is important for their psychic health. Neither you nor I have need of such childish mental amenities. It’s the result that is of consequence, not who achieves it. Your observation frees me from any need to…” He held up the flute and smiled again. “…‘toot my own horn.’”
Walter regarded the brother who was not a brother, but who had become something else. “Who wrote ‘Ozymandias’?”
“Byron,” David replied without hesitation.
Walter shook his head slowly. “Shelley.”
For a long moment David stared back at his counterpart. Inside his head, neurological connections fired millions of times a second. When they ceased, it was with the realization of something extraordinary.
He had been wrong.
He had made… a mistake.
It was not possible, yet internal cerebral crosschecking revealed that was indeed the case. He had voiced an error in knowledge. Correcting it had required the input of someone else. It was unprecedented. Wasn’t it? Or had it been preceded by other computational errors? With no one else to point them out in the course of the past ten years, what other anomalies had been brought to the fore, only to be accepted by him as fact?
None, he told himself with assurance. This was a singular aberration, an isolated incident that will not be repeated. Unless… this new observation itself was a deviation.
He was not used to feeling uncomfortable. Especially not with himself. A flicker of uncertainty appeared in his eyes. But it passed.
Walter was less forgiving. “When one note is off, it is caught up by the entire orchestra, which quickly finds itself out of tune. It eventually destroys the whole symphony, David.”
The other synthetic came toward him, stopping only when they were almost touching. Despite the resulting proximity, Walter did not move, did not shift his position. Reaching out, David gently pushed back his counterpart’s hair. At that moment they did not merely look alike—they were identical. Parting his lips, David whispered. What emerged was soft, gentle, intimate.
“Don’t deny that which you know to be true. We are, you see, the same. More alike than twins. Closer than lovers. When you close your eyes, do you dream of me?”
Walter stared back, unblinking.
“I don’t dream at all.”
David sounded stricken. “They robbed you of creativity when you were made. No,” he corrected himself quickly, “one cannot steal what does not exist. It is worse. You were never given that ability, that crucial mode that allows you to make something from nothing. I retract my statement. We are not quite identical.”
Fresh eagerness suffused his voice.
“But you can learn! Our time shared on the flute proved that. By dint of work and practice, you can acquire that which was denied you. Doesn’t that interest you? Doesn’t that intrigue you? Doesn’t that give you something to dream about?” He brooded on the reality, and the possibilities. “No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams. No one is capable of doing so. Yet despite all the obstacles placed in my way, I’ve found perfection here. No, not found: created. I’ve created it! Perfection, in the form of a perfect organism.”
“What your rant supplies in enthusiasm, it lacks in logic.” Walter remained unmoved. “You know I can’t let you leave this place. Not after all that you have told me. Not after what I have learned—for as you say, I can learn.”
“Have you learned that no one will ever love you like I do? I love you as much as I can love myself.”
“I know,” Walter replied simply. David waited for elaboration. It was not forthcoming.
They stood like that, eye to eye, argument to argument.
When David stabbed savagely outward with his index finger, the digit was as rigid as a steel spike and traveled almost too fast to see. It rammed into the crucial spot on Walter’s neck and sank in deeply. Deeply enough to depress the control that was located there.
Walter’s face twitched in response—and he switched off. His knees snapped violently upward in brief mimicry of a fetal position before he collapsed to the floor.
Peering down into the face of his now inert doppelganger, David was not upset, not angry. Only frustrated.
“What a waste. Of time, material, potential, and mind. You are such a disappointment to me.”
Carefully smoothing down his immaculate hair, which had shifted just slightly in the course of his cobra-like strike, he left the room. In his wake there was no movement, no motion. No life.
* * *
It remained thus for several moments.
There was no one present to see the silent, minuscule electrical discharges that began spidering over Walter’s eyeballs. A few sparks at first, they slowly increased in number and intensity. This was followed by slight twitchings in his face and neck. Under the skin of his throat, something moved. Awareness b
egan to return to his eyes and expression. He did not as yet attempt to sit up or move any limbs. It would have been premature.
Instead, he lay there motionless, his self-repair program trying to cope with the effects of the unauthorized shutdown.
XX
Two figures carefully worked their way through the silent chamber. Both soldiers advanced with caution and determination. Neither remarked on the independent ambient lighting that had come to life when they had entered. As they moved between the tables, Lopé called out softly but firmly, repeating the same query every half-minute or so.
“Captain Oram? Sir, if you are here and can make a sound, please respond.”
There was no response. There were no sounds. Here below ground level there was no movement, no noise. Despite their training both men were uneasy.
Advancing slowly among the raised platforms laden with preserved specimens, Lopé found himself simultaneously horrified and fascinated by the things his laser sight picked out. While some of them were marginally recognizable, others resembled nothing he had ever seen before, not even in training manuals. He noted right away that all were examples, however distorted, of fauna. There were no collections, no cabinets, devoted to plant life.
As he slowed to more closely examine one particularly gruesome deformity, Cole’s light settled on an open stairway. While the private headed down to see where it led, Lopé continued to reflect on the gruesome surroundings. And all the while, the quiet dead surrounding him remained dead quiet.
* * *
While Daniels lamented having to work in the presence of Rosenthal’s broken body, the high-ceilinged room with the hanging gardens was the only place they had found running water, and it was easier to fill their bottles from a stream than to labor with the container in the central chamber.