The -- well, it's hard now not to think of it as the bridge room, but David calls it an orrery -- is cavernous, claustrophobic, very clearly the inside of something, and empty. In her mind's eye she practices decorating it to soothe herself. By the time the android has finally returned, the worst of the feverish feeling is passed, and the evening lights have already swelled up out of the darkness. Somehow she'd pictured him dirtier after a three-day trek, limping in missing parts and with dust in his hair. He's dusty, but not muddy (thank God, considering what most resembled mud in their other facility) but for there's little traces of glowing unpleasantness on his boots. She wasn't sure whether to run to embrace him, or to hit him with disinfecting foam and a hose before she got too near. (Embrace him? Really? The panic shriveled away once she saw him, replaced with a lightheaded joy, and new scrutiny.)

"What have you brought me, David?"

"There was no sign of violence in the inner chambers, and no identifiable toxic substances. I have taken several samples for analysis, and excercised my judgment regarding some potential supplies." He stripped off his boots, without even stopping to rebalance the vast pale bundle in his arms, and laid them beside the door. "Our hosts have left behind their rations."

"They didn't just lie down and die. You and whatever you're carrying need to be decontaminated."

David did something with his shoulders that approximately resembled, but was profoundly not, a shrug.

"If harmful contaminants were present in our surroundings, you would already be saturated in them from your final exit of the Prometheus."

(Our surroundings -- as if he was in any danger from anything that didn't spit acid.)

He has brought her her several yards of unfamiliar cloth, a firmly sealed canister of very old fruit, and a partially-translucent jar of something he says resembles but is not honey.

"I'd certainly hope not. It's difficult enough to keep bees, let alone in a place like this."

"They brought it with them; it was labeled as a foodstuff, not another bioagent. Honey is symbolically present in several religious traditions. Your John the Baptist, for instance."

"Yes, but he also had locusts."

"Dionysos gave the gift of wine to his followers. Odin reserved the mead of poetry for his fellow gods and for poets. Are you a poet, Elizabeth?"

A dozen thoughts through her mind at once -- it is spoiled, it is poisoned, it is inedible, no one can survive on honey for six months. Even worse things than it being unusable -- ghoulish stories of grave-despoiling explorers finding mellified human remains, or other terrible things only once they'd greedily eaten down a few inches. She suppresses a shudder, and can hardly touch the canister. It doesn't even resemble the ones that had held the black oil, but when she touches its yellowy surface she half-expects it to be fatally slick.

"Far from ideal, but it will supplement your caloric intake. There were more offerings sealed similarly, but the decision is yours, ma'am."

To eat rank and potentially spoiled tinned food from a tomb, or to sicken and waste away, what a choice.

"I haven't had honey in years," she sighs, and resigns herself to inspecting his other gifts.

Even in this low light the cloth is a gleaming pale gray. Almost the color of the Engineers' flesh -- and when he deposits it in her arms it is heavy. She is holding a piece of cloth that is millenia old. It ought to be disintegrating, she shouldn't even be breathing near it. But it doesn't vanish away or crumble to dust, thank God, it is disturbingly fresh. Her cross on its chain falls from between her breasts when she leans over to look,

It isn't cotton or wool or silk, but can hardly be synthetic. It's not like any material she's familiar with. When she rubs it between her fingers it is almost oily, and like the air belching in periodically from the long hallways (and David's suit now, when he thinks she's not looking he agitatedly preens and pushes his hands through his hair) it smells stale. Wonderful, he's brought her a potential plague blanket. She tries not to breathe in as she looks it over.

It has all been woven one piece, whatever this may originally have been, and she can detect no decorative stitching. Lost in the folds are two strange metallic pieces -- too dull to be weapons, unless they're some kind of Ur-brass knuckle, too graceful in a lustrous minimal way to be anything but deliberately made. Spread out on the ground with the placement of the oblong ornaments (if they can be called that) as a guide to how it was originally oriented it's nearly twice twice as long as she is tall, and the purpose of the ornaments becomes clear. They are clasps -- like a Roman stola with two brutally simple fibulae, fashioned for a demure giant. The sheer scale of the whole affair reduces her to undignified, hoarse laughter, echoing like she's trapped inside a kettle. The Engineers were -- are -- monstrously large. She couldn't even borrow Charlie's socks, and now she was going to steal the clothing off of the architects of mankind.

"Is something the matter, Dr. Shaw?"

She paces around it on the floor, peering down at it.

"How thoughtful, David. You brought me a dress."

"It may require some taking-in."

"So we're going to plunder their supplies and borrow their textiles? We're terrible houseguests."

"I'll be sure to return everything if they complain."

That night, she dines on a 2,000-year-old fig, or something like one. The seeds are a little nauseating, after all they have been through, so she cuts the fruit in half and lets David decide what to make of it first.