Keep him talking. “If you could do it over again, would you still make the same choice?”

“With regard to becoming a ship mind, yes. Other choices, not so much. Fingers and toes and Mongolian bows.”

Kira frowned. A slip from him there. “Is there anything you miss from before? I was going to say ‘from when you had a body,’ but I suppose the Wallfish is your body.”

A hollow sigh echoed in her ears. “Freedom. That is what I miss. Freedom.”

“What do you mean?”

“All of known space is—or was—at my disposal. I can outrace light itself. I can dive into the atmosphere of a gas giant and bask in the aurora of Eidolon, and I have. But as you said, O Perceptive Little Vexation, the Wallfish is my body, and it shall remain my body until such a time (if such a time ever arrives) as I am removed. When we dock, you are free to walk away from the Wallfish and go where you will. But not I. Through cameras and sensors I can participate from a distance, but still I remain bound to the Wallfish, and the same would be true even if I had a construct I could remotely pilot. That much I miss, the freedom to move without restriction, to relocate myself of my own accord, sans fuss or hassle.… I have heard there is a ship mind on Stewart’s World who built himself a mech body ten meters high and who now spends his time wandering the uninhabited parts of the planet, painting landscapes of the mountains with a brush as tall as a person. I would like to have a body such as that someday. I would like it very much, although the probability of it seems low at the present.”

Gregorovich continued: “Could I advise myself in the past, prior to my transition, I would tell myself to make the most of what I had while I had it. Too often we don’t appreciate the value of something until it has slipped our grasp.”

“Sometimes that’s the only way we learn,” said Kira. She paused, struck by her own words.

“So it seems. The benighted tragedy of our species.”

“And yet, ignoring the future and/or wallowing in regret can be equally harmful.”

“Indeed. The important thing is to try and, by trying, to improve ourselves. Otherwise we might as well have never come down from the trees. But no point in maudlin navel-gazing when the navel is adrift, spinning and wildling and time all out of joint. I have a memoir to write, databases to purge, subroutines to rearrange, chyrons to design, enoptromancy to master, squares upon squares a wave or indivisible scintilla tell me tell me tell me—”

He seemed stuck in a mental rut, the phrase tell me, tell me repeating in her ears at different volumes. Kira frowned, frustrated. They’d been doing so well, but he couldn’t seem to maintain mental focus. “Gregorovich…” Then, more sharply than she intended, “Gregorovich!”