The latex is doing its part like actual blood, to patch up holes in the artificial dermis, and on David's instruction she's moistened the seams and valves. Everything is in place now -- not exactly securely, but slapdash is is better than nothing. There would be plenty of staples left in the medpod, but that's far behind them, and hardly somewhere to which they can return. The only staples are due to work their way out of Shaw's abdomen any day now. One or two have already popped out, to her alarm.

She can feel an artificial heartbeat start up against her arm.

"Do you hear that?"

"Yes--" David says, breathlessly. His eyes glitter like a fever.

His arm comes to life again, flexing convulsively and then gently laying down flat -- the fingers folding up to make a fist and then spreading out broadly until the artificial tendons stand out on the back of his hand. His chest begins to rise, with one gasping unnecessary breath, he moves one leg, and then the other. He raises his chin carefully, and looks thoroughly relieved.

"Thank you, Dr. Shaw. I can proceed with self-maintenance from here, if you would like."

Shaw smiles. "Good luck, David."

Elizabeth has resigned herself to sleeping in her underwear. The suit is showing its wear, and while she still has repair patches to spare, it is also smoked with sweat. David, of course, does not sleep unless he wants to, fully clothed or otherwise. There is no way of telling whether it's day or night, with no reference points of any importance and a working climate control function, so they rely on David's awe-inspiring processing power to dictate whether it's a quarter-past three in the afternoon or it's one in the morning. Once David's completed his own maintenance, and Elizabeth has had her fill of careful exploration and endless quizzing on languages, she'll wriggle away and go into stasis for the greater part of their journey. But until then she sleeps on the floor, next to him at the console. She sleeps with her hands under her cheek.

She wakes up to him on top of her, and screams.

He has her on her back now, even in the dark she knows whose horrifyingly strong limbs these are. One of his hands steadies her head. David's other hand is on her abdomen, her hipbone, dangerously close to the gaunt hill of her mons pubis. He is unfastening the clasp that keeps her underwear on.

"David?" She thrashes and trying to pull out from under his hand and hammering against his chest is like struggling with a wall. "David, what in God's name are you doing--"

He looks right at her and catches out the clip, peeling back the first wrap of bandage.

"Sssh."

Elizabeth screams, and David slides his hand under her head.

"David, no. Don't touch me, you don't have permission to touch me--"

She grabs a fistful of his shirt, raking at the gash between neck plate and shoulder and opening up fresh tears in the surface -- skin, skin, it's skin, he may be an android but he is still a monstrous man.

"David, you can't--"

David laughs genially, and lowers her to the ground, withdrawing himself. Elizabeth's still flooded with terrified adrenaline, the blood pounding in her ears.

"No, I can't. I only want to see how you're healing, Dr. Shaw, I didn't mean to alarm you."

"You couldn't examine me while I was awake?"

The console's lights seem to have responded to their voices, and light swells back into existence, the cavernous room is lit as if with stars. Her eyes are still blurred and stinging from sleep, but the seam stands out starkly in David's neck like a slit throat.

"You wouldn't have let me. I'm sorry, Ms. Shaw, that was thoroughly inappropriate."

She can't get back to sleep, and hardly wants to make conversation with him after that display. The thought of him even looking at her, watching her the way he'd seen her dreams -- as sexless as he was, it felt perverted. It was frightening. She sits in what she's begun to think of as a control chair, and he stands against the far wall, like a disobedient schoolboy.

"Elizabeth?"

"Yes," she says, cautiously.

"If I may ask a personal question -- what made you so certain that you couldn't have become pregnant?"

Elizabeth sighs and presses her hair out of her face. There's enough water for drinking, but no practical way in which to bathe, all other functions require a stumble down one of the less ominous tunnels. She could lie to him and say that she'd been celibate for years, she could say anything, but she tells him the truth and hopes it's satisfactory.

"When I was a teenager, my body mistook its own eggs for potential intruders. Every month I would haemorrhage for two weeks." Shaw hates this, she hates talking about this, and thinking about it, now, makes her want to do something very ill-advised and vomit. She tightens her throat and deadens her voice. "I thought I was dying. I had the necessary parts removed, I couldn't have carried a fetus to term anyway, I couldn't imagine wanting to. And now I can't. Thank you for your interest."

He raises his eyebrows.

"My condolences, Dr, Shaw. That must have been very difficult for you."

"Like hell, you put that thing inside of me and wanted to keep it there--"

"Holloway put that thing inside of you. I had no way of knowing what effect the specimen might have on him, even with his own consent," David says glossily but with caution.

"I don't think you understand, David--" She is shouting at an android, an android who until a day ago was only a head and partial shoulders on the dashboard of an alien vessel. "I cut it out of me -- you wanted to look at it, didn't you? Why don't I turn this ship around and you can take some samples?"

"Because I'm the only one who's familiar with how to pilot this craft. I would like to survive to enjoy my freedom, wouldn't you? You still want your answers, I trust."

"If I may ask a personal question," she says, sharply, "What did you say to the Engineer before he broke your head off and killed your father?"

"An excellent question. I said, 'see what's become of us'."

Shaw doesn't know enough of their primordial language to know if he's telling the truth.