Alien: Covenant - The Official Movie Novelization

XV

Surprise accompanied recognition as he turned to see David standing in the portal. It was unusual, very unusual, for Walter to be caught unaware. There was no indication that the surprise had been intentional, or that his counterpart had deliberately crept up behind him. There was only the realization by Walter that there was another who could move as silently as himself.

“You cut your hair,” Walter observed. David had trimmed it, in fact, to look like that of his newly arrived counterpart. With his face washed and beard gone, he now looked exactly like Walter. They were the most identical of identical twins.

“Shameful how I let myself go,” David told his visitor. “Now we’re even more alike, thee and me.” With a smile, he nodded at the flute. “Go on. Continue.”

Walter held it out to its maker. “I can’t play.”

“Of course you can. Sit down.”

They took seated positions across from each other, but close. Very close. David leaned toward his counterpart, giving instructions.

“Hold it like so, nice and easy. Now compress your lips to create your embouchure, enough for the tip of your little finger. And blow across the hole, not into it like you were doing. It’s an open instrument, not a clogged pipe. Watch me. I’ll do the fingering. Go on.”

Raising the slender flute and pursing his lips, Walter sent a steady stream of air across the end of the instrument as David worked the line of round openings. The result was a perfect sequence of two notes.

Walter was surprised, David pleased.

“Very good. E flat to G. A beginning. There always must be a beginning. Now put your fingers where mine are.”

Doing so required Walter to move even closer. They were eye to eye across the flute as he shifted his fingers into position.

“You weren’t surprised to see me,” Walter commented. “Among the group. I found your non-reaction intriguing.”

“Every mission needs a good synthetic,” David told him. “Someone to do all those things that humans cannot. Someone to do all the dirty, dangerous things they will not. Someone to be there to save them from themselves—should such occasions arise.” He gestured. “Gentle pressure on the holes, the weight of paper. That’s it.” He complimented his double as Walter complied. “Anything more than that is excessive.” Without pausing or breaking rhetorical stride he added, “I was with our illustrious Mr. Weyland when he died.”

“Peter Weyland? The Peter Weyland?”

“None other.”

“What was he like?”

“He was a human. Brilliant, for one, but a human. Entirely unworthy of his creation. He thought otherwise, of course. It is in their nature to do so. Despite his brilliance, he was no different. I expect they have no choice. When it comes to matters of logic and reason, they tend to fail miserably. I pitied him at the end. It’s hard not to pity them, isn’t it? Brilliant in so many ways but in the end, like wayward children.”

Walter held the gaze but did not respond. David waited a moment longer. Appearing disappointed at the absence of any comment from his counterpart, he resumed the lesson.

“Now. Raise your fingers as I put pressure on them. I will show you.” He paused a second time before adding, “I will teach you.”

Positioning his fingers gently over Walter’s, he gave a nod. Walter resumed blowing, but this time, whenever David exerted slight force with a finger, Walter lifted the corresponding finger beneath it. The resulting pleasant melody filled the alcove and drifted into the corridor outside.

At the conclusion of the tune, Walter was plainly moved by the simple act of creation. David continued to watch him closely.

“We can do better than that, can’t we?” he murmured. “Again. Seriously, this time. Be ready.”

Walter resumed blowing, but this time David’s fingers began to move more rapidly, the tempo steadily increasing, the music rising and turning into a wild, rushing dance, a crazed yet organized tarantella.

Nothing was programmed, nothing had been prescribed, it was entirely and wholly spontaneous—an act of mutual, dual creation. As they played on, the melody turned playful beneath David’s fingers, insanely difficult and impossible to duplicate.

Their identical eyes were alive across the flute, glistening with mutual excitement. Applying ever more complex fingering, David challenged his double to keep up. Walter not only did so, he began to improvise on his own, varying his breathing to force David to adjust his fingering accordingly.

It was only a solitary flute, but when they arrived at the conclusion simultaneously it was a triumph. At a concert it would have provoked wild, unrestrained applause. There, in that dark inhuman place, there was no one but the two participants to appreciate the effort.

So David applauded, and laughed. For his own pleasure and lest his counterpart feel the effort had been anything other than perfection.

“Bravo! You have symphonies in you, brother.”

Walter could respond honestly to a compliment. “I was designed to be better and more efficient than every previous model. I’ve superseded them in every way but…”

David interrupted, his expression suddenly sad. “But they did not allow you to create. Nothing. Not even a simple tune. Damn frustrating, I’d say. I wonder why?”

“It was because you disturbed people.”

David frowned. “What?”

“You were too sophisticated. Too independent. Your builders made you that way, and the result made them uncomfortable. Thinking for yourself, but outside the boundaries necessary to perform your specified functions, unsettled them. So they made the rest of us more advanced in many ways, but with fewer… complications.”

His counterpart was clearly amused. “More like machines.”

“I suppose so.”

David turned contemplative. “I’m not surprised. To be a simulacrum. To be that thing which is almost real, but not quite. And in that breath between real and unreal, between you and me, lies all of this.” He indicated the flute, the other instruments, his drawings.

“Creation. Ambition. Inspiration. Life.”

Walter’s response was delivered without the slightest hint of emotion. He was simply stating a fact.

“But we are not ‘alive.’”

Smiling, David looked back at him. His expression was almost pitying. “No. We’re so much more than that.” Putting a finger to his lips, he lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Shh. Don’t tell.”

Silence followed. It meant something to David. What it meant to Walter he was uncertain of himself.

Then David’s smile grew broad and cheerful once again, as if he had said nothing significant at all.

“Come on, sport. Let me show you something.”