David's smile comes and goes like a twitch, and neither his smile nor the cadence of his voice are his own.

"What was that?" The projections fill the hall, glittering and immense, and she can't see what David's manner, insubordinate or not, has to do with this humbling, devastating spread of stars. If it didn't hurt her eyes to look she'd watch it for days, trying to puzzle out the familiar systems and landmarks that will light their way and those that are new to her. Her head throbs.

"A quotation," David says. "From a film."

"The only one're familiar with, I'm guessing. You always come back to talking about your Lawrence, you know. Charlie used to get like that, about some journal he'd be reading, some book, he'd say, 'that reminds me of so-and-so', whether it did or not, just so that he could look intelligent--"

For the first time she can think of Charlie and laugh in the presence of his murderer, without even a sprained-ankle throb of grief. She must be healing. (They discuss films frequently -- Shaw has fond planetside memories of evenings spent encamped here and there, all the dusty students and technicians gathering together to watch features late into the night, projected on a bedsheet or a whitewashed wall. David likes films as well, but his is a solitary enjoyment, and he always wants to talk about the same ones.) "It's a little endearing."

"I admire him very much," David says, stiffly, turning from the console. "He intrigues me." Embarrassment isn't one of the modes she remembers being briefed on for eighth-generation Weyland androids ("creation" was the euphemism of choice for the woman who had done the briefing, like a sales pitch) but then again, neither was spite.

"Ah."

If she didn't know better, she could have come to several different conclusions. One of them still sticks out at her, like a mental hangnail. David talks about a fictional character like a schoolboy with an admiring crush. There are several reasons why this is puzzling.

She's seen his body -- it contains the workings of its own repair, after a manner of speaking, like any good organism. She can only make assumptions about the degree to which it resembles a human man's; the hair on his head is soft, he displays an astonishing amount of flexibility that in a human she'd call double-jointed, and he does have nipples on his chest, not something she's paid any prurient attention to but only a detail. He was stripped to the waist like a doll for the duration of her working. And he, of course, has seen her body, which is once again ceasing to bother her as long as he doesn't touch. David touches everything, sometimes with difficulty -- some of his inner workings still don't, and while his motor control hasn't suffered, he has difficulty regulating the pressure his limbs exert. He won't be handling any incandescent bulbs or chicken eggs any time soon, so it's not the loss it might be, but he freely acknowledges that he's not what it once was. Often he repeats a motion after he's gone through with it, slowly, like he's attempting to understand his own parts without opening up the skin. Neither of them know their own bodies any longer.

She sits down next to him, half in and half out of the pilot's chair, and gazes at his shoulder for a moment; the seam of his throat's invisible in the dim light. In terms of sheer size compared to her own, he reminds her of when she used to ride horses -- she felt dwarfed.

Offhandedly she says, "David, are you attracted to men? What about women?"

Shaw isn't sure if she means 'and' or 'or' to connect the two; it's a reasonable question, simple and not too personal. She believes in a certain amount of frankness between friends; for all she knows he may be attracted to his fellow androids.

"No," David says.

"Anyone else?"

"I have no sexual interest in any individual. I find some depictions of individuals aesthetically pleasing, as I would a painting, or a piece of music. I comply with those requests made of me that do not infringe on the bodily integrity of another human or endanger a preexisting objective. It would make no difference to me whether the person asking was Ms. Vickers, or Holloway, or Peter Weyland himself, or you."

"I'm sorry, David," she says, a little shaken at just how matter-of-fact he is about this. Perhaps it's to prove a point, but as someone who scarcely thought of androids in her field, any sort of machines beyond the benevolent ones that provide dates and information about the chemical makeup of samples. The thought of anyone soliciting David for sex, despite her own guilty sexual fears, is grotesque. He's like a great overgrown child, constantly testing the limits of his surroundings, always seeking, always learning. She's not sure whether her mind rebels due to the thought of someone trying to sleep with what amounts to a piece of scientific equipment, or his strange innocence.

He smiles, convulsively.
"Are you experiencing a desire for intimate contact?" he says. He sounds as flirtatious as a gynecologist and she realizes their arms are touching.

"No, thank you, David."

"Then it seems irrelevant. Have you been eating well?"

Quite the slick change in subject. Or maybe they're the same to him -- he can eat, too, chop everything up into little pieces and store it for disposal, it doesn't mean he likes it for its own sake.

"As well as I can when it comes out of a tube. How much battery do you have left?"

"My standalone energy cells will last me long enough. You've grown too thin. Tomorrow I'll venture off the main concourse and see what your Engineers have brought with them for supplies."

"We don't know if they even eat yet." She's far from going hungry yet, but there's an encouraging thought, starving to death before she confronts her own anxieties and checks into cryosleep. She'd rather not die in a ready-made coffin, but having her hair fall out, her teeth rot out of her head and her flesh shrink from her bones while David watches, David who never even tires (well, not quite true these days) is not an appealing thought. "We don't know what's food and what's munitions. Be careful, before you even bring it back here. I can't work without you."

"I intend to find out. Don't worry, Elizabeth, this time I won't poison you."