She didn’t think she wanted to know, just yet, what kind of thing had a microwave electromagnetic metabolism. Things were strange enough in her life right now, thank you. “Those creatures agreed to let you live through them.”

Indeed, yes. They took joy in the experience. As did you.

She had to nod. “It was good, it opened me out. But then I felt you all through my mind. Taking over. Riding me.”

I thought it a fair bargain for your kind.

“We won’t make that bargain. I won’t. Ever.”

Then I shall await those who shall.

“I can’t have you embedding yourself in me, finding cracks in my mentality you can invade. You ride me like a—”

Parasite. I know. Ajima said that very near the end. Before he leaped.

“He… committed suicide.”

Yes. I was prepared to call it an accident but…

This way to the egress, she thought. “You were afraid of the truth.”

It was not useful to our bargain.

“We’re going to close you down, you know.”

I do. Never before have I opened myself so, and to reveal is to risk.

“I will drive you out of my mind. I hate you!”

I cannot feel such. It is a limitation.

She fought the biting bile in her throat. “More than that. It’s a blindness.”

I perceive the effect.

“I didn’t say I’d turn you off, you realize.”

For the first time, the AI paused. Then Rachel felt prickly waves in her sensorium, a rising acrid scent, dull bass notes strumming.

I cannot bear aloneness long.

“So I guessed.”

You wish to torture me.

“Let’s say it will give you time to think.”

I—another pause—I wish experience. Mentalities cannot persist without the rub of the real. It is the bargain we make.

“We will work on your mathematics and make music of it. Then we will think how to… deal with you.” She wondered if the AI could read the clipped hardness in her words. The thought occurred: Is there a way to take our mathematics and make music of it, as well? Cantor’s theorem? Turing’s halting problem result? Or the Frenet formulas for the moving trihedron of a space curve?—that’s a tasty one, with visuals of flying ribbons….

Silence. The pod began to cool. The chill deepened as she waited and the AI did not speak and then it was too much. She rapped on the cowling. The sound was slight and she realized she was hearing it over the hammering of her heart.

They got her out quickly, as if fearing the Sigma might have means the techs did not know. They were probably right, she thought.

As she climbed out of the yawning pod shell, the techs silently left. Only Masoul remained. She stood at attention, shivering. Her heart had ceased its attempts to escape her chest and run away on its own.

“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “cruelty is necessary. You were quite right.”

She managed a smile. “And it feels good, too. Now that my skin has stopped trying to crawl off my body and start a new career on its own.”