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The Engineer’s ship is… surprisingly not as different as Charlie thought it would be. Everything is enormous, including the sanitary facilities, there’s mainly pushbuttons and tones to open the doors (and possibly the airlocks; he hasn’t tried), which is good, because he probably couldn’t reach the panels for an Engineer door lock. One portion of the food that David has found, okayed and tested is enough to do him for an entire day. He’s still not sure about trusting David with his food, but there are no other options.
“You could try the hypersleep chamber,” says David. “Otherwise, it will be a long journey.”
“I could try it,” Charlie replies, “but I’m not going to.”
“Do you think I would do something untoward whilst you slept?”
Charlie scowls. “Given your track record, it’s practically a certainty.”
_____________
He spends the first two days on the ship recovering in one of the huge, cradle-like structures that seemed to have served as the Engineers’ beds. It’s quite soft — possible to be eaten up whole by it — and he drifts in and out of dreams. Elizabeth. Home. One time he gets caught in the blanket and thinks he’s drowning, being smothered in a sea-cave, and on the wall the petroglyphs that show an Engineer pointing at the stars seem to mock him.
David checks on him, once or twice. Brings him food and stilted conversation.
“I have discovered recreation facilities,” he says, in one of Charlie’s more lucid phases, “but most of the machines are too large for you to make use of. There is a treadmill I think I could adjust.”
“Why?” Charlie asks.
“Because you are not going into hypersleep,” says David. “Your body will continue to change. So we must take pains to ensure that it is still functional when we arrive at our destination.”
“And that is?”
David looks untroubled when he says, “My calculations place us roughly at two years to reach this ship’s point of origin, sir, but astrogation is not my specialty.”
“You can call me Doctor Holloway, or you can call me Charlie. Don’t think I don’t know that you use sir when you’re being insubordinate.”
“Certainly, Charlie,” says David, and Holloway isn’t stupid enough to ask which point the synthetic is agreeing to. He flinches when David puts a hand on his forehead, but remembers that some of David’s sensors are clustered in his hands. He’s probably taking a medical reading. “Your temperature is still in an unacceptable range.”
“And who the fuck’s fault is that?”
“I will furnish you with more fluids,” says David. “Try not to get sicker.” He brushes his hand over Charlie’s hair, rather than simply lifting it. “You should get some rest.”
Charlie wants to protest, but he sees the wisdom in it. He even drinks the vaguely lemony fluid that David brings back, before falling back into the arms of Morpheus.
___________
Once he’s well enough to be up and around, he explores the ship. David gives him a flute, and teaches him the basic commands for doors and computer panels, and Charlie’s mind is quick enough that he is able to learn some of the basics of the Engineer’s language. It’s like a modified cuneiform; it seems that most of their communication was visual and tonal rather than verbal, though, so often if he plays a note or two, he gets a holoprojection of how something works, rather than a detailed description of how to work it.
He wonders if this ship was like Vickers’ life pod. Clearly, there was intent that one or more of the Engineers would not be in cryosleep; but why, he can’t ascertain. They’re still too alien to him.
Exploring is how he finds the liquor stash in the rec room. The rec room seems to be set up for all kinds of recreation — there’s the treadmill, some couches and what look like enormous games, a holoprojector that doesn’t work (and that David seems desperate to fix, in case it shows the Engineer version of movies), and when Charlie is tooling around on the flute and hits the right notes, some glittering, silvery engineers pop out of the air, open a panel on the wall, and pour what looks like a drink.
“It’s an Engineer bar,” he says, once he works it out. He’s had years excavating places: he’s good at working out the functions of dead rooms.
David speaks behind him. “That’s all right. We are not particular.”
Whatever. Now that he knows it’s here, he desperately, desperately needs a drink.
“Tell me if it’s poisonous.”
He’s not sure if he’s grateful or disillusioned when he realises that the Engineers used to get drunk. David tests the stuff, of course; fingers in flasks, swilling it in his mouth, scanning and checking, and the synthetic’s verdict is to water it down or risk death by alcohol poisoning.
“Should you imbibe too much, I could of course pump your stomach.”
“Don’t pump my fucking stomach.”
He’s taken out his anger on David a number of times. The first time, he’d been shocked by how hard David’s structure was under the synth-skin — it was easy to imagine he was human, even with the great ripped seam at the base of his head. But under that soft, human-like skin was a hard skeleton, muscles grown in vats, electronics that hummed instead of a heartbeat. The first time, Charlie nearly broke his knuckles, and ended up with bruises, while David stayed infuriatingly perfect.
David lets him do it, when he needs to. Charlie doesn’t know what that says about either of them.
He wants a drink; and he wants, more than anything, to go to a home that no longer exists.
_____________
One morning, he finds Elizabeth’s cross necklace on the pillow beside him. He fastens it around his neck before he goes to find David.
“Why?”
“I have calculated that your mental health is suffering,” says David.
“And you thought this would help?” He’s so angry that he can barely speak. “You killed her.”
David looks away. “It was an accident.”
“No,” says Charlie. “You did it deliberately. Own that shit.”
But sometimes he can’t help wonder at what point all this became inevitable. When he and Elizabeth linked the paintings and carvings of the Engineers together? When they agreed to go with Weyland? At what point had they both known they were never coming back?
“I thought you would find comfort in the metaphysical,” says David.
“You don’t think. You’re a machine.”
“Which is why the cross was useless to me.” David gives Charlie a look that, on a human, would be emotional. On him, it’s calculated — the result of algorithms, of behavioural studies, of human engineers trying to make something in their own image. “I do not find comfort in the metaphysical.”
“How’d you get it, anyway?”
“Quarantine procedures,” says David, placidly. “I stole it.”
He breaks his wrist on David’s face, this time. David straps it without saying anything, which is judgement enough.
_____________
He’s got no libido anymore. One time he tries to jerk it, half-hearted, then he thinks about Elizabeth, and he retches, suddenly, violently, only coming back to himself because that fucking synthetic has taken control of the panic attack, tucked him back in his pants, and is petting his shoulder. At least David has the sense not to tell him that everything’s all right.
_____________
“Why do you keep me around?” he asks, when he’s drunk off his ass and he can ask those kinds of questions. “You killed everyone else.”
“I should think that the Engineers want to meet their creation face to face,” says David. “I am their creation, but vicariously. You are rather more direct.”
“So I’m a bribe.”
“I’d prefer to say a peace offering,” says David. His expression is beatific.
“Awesome. Just awesome.” He closes his eyes, leans back against the distinctly uncomfortable crash couch, made for much larger asses than his. “Does that mean you’re not gonna experiment on me until we make it to wherever the fuck we’re going?” He waits. Nothing. “Just fucking awesome.”
_______________
There are almost no clothes on the ship. Apparently, the Engineers didn’t wear them. Charlie is aware of some basic reasons for this — chiefly that larger creatures have more stable body temperatures than smaller creatures. But it’s annoying as fuck when you’ve got almost nothing to wear.
David offers Charlie his underwear. Charlie declines.
In the end, both of them resort to wearing sheets or blankets like togas, making robes out of them, because Charlie is sure as fuck not meeting a new species in his grotty old underpants and torn trousers. David seems delighted by his new garb, twisting and turning as if he could examine himself, muttering to himself something about some old movie.
Charlie cracks another bottle of the aniseed-tasting whatever it is, even though by David’s internal chronometer, it’s before noon.
He lets David cut his hair, once it’s grown out enough to be annoying. David’s own hair is duller than it was, and it’s stopped growing — he lacks the synthetic substances he’d used on the Prometheus that allowed his hair to grow, nails to lengthen, that allowed his skin to repair small tears and cuts. He’s becoming less and less human; even now, old rips to the synth-skin have opened up, like a nineteenth century sailor with scurvy.
He is ashamed to admit that the feeling of David’s fingers in his hair makes him long for more. Charlie’s never been so long without human contact, and David is not human, but the very visceral need roils under his skin in response to something that is so like human, but so unalike.
He doesn’t push David down and make unreasonable, inhuman requests, but in his mind’s eye he does. It’s a near thing.
_____________
“It is Christmas,” says David, after the days have begun to blur into one another. “We have been out here a year.”
“Fuck you,” says Holloway. He’s in a permanent state of hangover, even when he hasn’t been drinking.
“I thought we should celebrate.”
“You don’t even believe in Christmas. Nor, might I add, do I.”
That had been Elizabeth. He fingers her cross, and is not struck by the memory of her, but by the memory of David, strapping his wrist, of David, gently manipulating Charlie’s hand once it had healed, of David, and his confused attempts to make amends.
______________
“What d’you think we’ll find?” he asks, as they settle into opposite ends of the crash couch. David thinks he’s got the recreational holoprojector working. Charlie’s wondering what the Engineers’ version of Casablanca is. He notices the imperfections in David’s functioning as the time stretches on; David plays a few notes on the flute, and his left hand shakes as he takes the instrument from his lips.
He wonders if David, like Holloway himself, has a limited lifespan under these conditions.
“I am hopeful we will find an example of the culture of the Engineers,” says David. “Films tend to record the minutiae of…”
Charlie laughs. He’s a bit drunk. “Not here, not…Not in the movie. When we get there.”
“I think we shall find out when we arrive,” David says. “My predictions regarding the Engineers have not always been…accurate.”
Charlie thinks about the look on David’s face, just before the Engineer tore his head off. David’s looking like that now, as the holo shimmers into light.
“None of our predictions were,” he replies. “You’re not alone in that.”
_______________
Charlie opens his eyes to see David looming over him, and for an instant he thinks — that’s it. I’m done. He’s snapped.
“Wake up,” says David. “We’re here.”
Charlie gets up. David looks tired, like his skin doesn’t fit right. It probably doesn’t. They’ve been in the air a long time. He follows David to the control room, and there’s a shuddering as they move through the atmosphere — not enough to send either of them off-balance, but enough to make his insides shake. David is a solid presence beside him. Will he really give up Charlie as a peace offering?
At this point, does Charlie even care?
The front viewports show a planet: enormous, inscrutable.
“So we get to find out how it ends,” he says.
“Yes,” says David, and they stand shoulder-to-shoulder as the ship makes its way to the unknown.