Kira’s alarm rocketed. Falconi was right. Something was wrong with the ship mind, and it went far beyond his disagreement over their decision to help the Knot of Minds. Gently now. “No,” she said. “I came to see how you were doing before we leave.”

Gregorovich cackled. “Your guilt is as clear as transparent aluminum, yes it is. Yes, yes. How am I doing?…” There was a welcome pause in his verbal vomit, and even the background muttering fell off, and then his tone grew more measured—an unexpected return of something resembling normalcy. “The impermanence of nature long ago drove me as mad as a March hare, or haven’t you noticed?”

“I was trying to be polite and not mention it.”

“Truly, your tact and consideration are without peer.”

That was more like it. Kira half smiled. His semblance of sanity was a fragile thing, though, and she wondered how far she dared push. “Are you going to be okay?”

A snortling giggle escaped Gregorovich, but he quickly suppressed it. “Me? Oh I’ll be fiiiine, sure I will. Right as rain, twice as comfy. I’ll sit here, all by my lonesome, and devote myself to good thoughts and the hope of future deeds, yes I will, I will, I will.”

So that’s a no then. Kira licked her lips. “Why did you do it? You knew Falconi wouldn’t just let you take over. So why do it?”

The background chorus swelled louder. “How to explain? Should I explain? What point now, when actions are spent, and consequences at hand? Hee-hee. But this: I sat through darkness once before, lost my crew and lost my ship. I would not, could not endure it again, no indeed. Give me sweet oblivion first—death that ancient end. A far preferable fate to exile along the cold cliffs where souls wander and wither in isolation, each one a Boltzmann paradox, each one a torment of bad dreams. What is mind, no matter, what is matter, no mind and isolation the cruelest reduction of April and—”

A staticky burst interrupted him, and his voice faded from hearing, but Kira had already tuned him out. He was babbling again. She thought she understood what he’d been saying, but that wasn’t what concerned her. A few hours of isolation shouldn’t have unbalanced Gregorovich this much. There had to be another cause. What could affect a ship mind so strongly? Kira realized she didn’t have much of an idea.

Perhaps, if she steered the conversation toward calmer waters, she could get him into a better mindset and find out what the underlying problem was. Perhaps.

“Gregorovich … Gregorovich, can you hear me? If you’re there, answer me. What’s going on?”

After a moment, the ship mind answered with a tiny, far-off voice: “Kira … I don’t feel so good. I don’t … Everything is wrong ways round.”

She pressed the headphones tighter against her ears, trying to hear better. “Can you tell me what’s causing it?”

A faint laugh, growing louder. “Oh, are we in sharing and confessing mode now? Hmm? Is that it?” Another of his unsettling cackles. “Did I ever tell you why I decided to become a ship mind, O Inquisitive One?”