A welcome pause in his logorrhea, and then almost too faint to hear, “Kira, something isn’t right. Not right at allllll.”

“Can you—”

The chorus of howling voices roared back to full strength, making her wince and dial back the volume on her headphones.

Amid the torrent of noise, she heard Gregorovich say, sounding almost too calm, too cultured: “Fair winds on your upcoming sleep, my Conciliatory Confessor. May it relieve some of your fermenting spleen. When next we cross paths, I will be sure to thank you most properly. Yes. Quite. And remember to avoid those pesky expectations.”

“Thanks. I’ll try,” she said, trying to humor him. “The queen of infinite space, eh? But you haven’t—”

A cackle from the cacophony. “We are all kings and queens of our own dementia. The only question is how we rule. Now go; leave me to my method, atoms to count, TEQs to loop, causality to question, all in a matrix of indecision, round and round and reality bending like photons past deformation of spacetime mass what superluminal transgressions torment tangential tablelands taken topsy-turvy by ahahaha.”

2.

Kira pulled off the headphones and stared at the deck. A frown furrowed her brow.

Moving carefully in the zero-g, she went back out to find Hwa-jung waiting for her. “How is that one?” the machine boss asked.

Kira handed over the headphones. “Not good. He’s…” She struggled to find a way to describe Gregorovich’s behavior. “He’s really off. Something’s wrong, Hwa-jung. Really, really wrong. He can’t stop talking, and a lot of the time, he can’t seem to string together a coherent sentence.”

Now the machine boss was frowning as well. “Aish,” she muttered. “I wish Vishal were still awake. Machines are what I work with, not squishy brains.”

“Could it be something mechanical?” Kira asked. “Could something have happened to Gregorovich when we were on Orsted? Or when you disconnected him from the mainframe?”

Hwa-jung glowered at her. “That was a circuit breaker. It would not have caused any problems.” But she continued to scowl as she tucked the headphones into a pocket. “Stay here,” she said abruptly. “There is something I will check.”

The machine boss turned and kicked herself down the hall and around the corridor.

Kira waited as patiently as she could. She couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Gregorovich. She shivered and hugged herself, although she wasn’t cold. If Gregorovich was as bad as he seemed … keeping him in cryo really might be their only choice. An unbalanced ship mind was a thing of nightmares.

There were, she thought, many different types of nightmares in the galaxy. Some small, some large, but the worst of all were the ones you lived with.

Kira wanted to tell Falconi about Gregorovich, but she forced herself to wait on Hwa-jung.

Nearly half an hour passed before the machine boss reappeared. She had grease on her hands, new scorch marks on her rumpled sleeves, and a troubled expression that did nothing to ease Kira’s worries.