Ellenex nodded politely and left the room again, her pale hands clasped serenely in front of her like a nun’s. Chanur said with disgust, “Rotten thing is malfunctioning. It doesn’t listen to a word I say.”

Maybe you shouldn’t have frozen Reimi, then, Park wanted to reply, acid frustration simmering in her gut. She’s the only one who can fix them, after all.

But she held her silence, and Jimex, who hadn’t moved, turned to Park and said, “I hope you have recovered from your gastric distress, Dr. Park.”

She couldn’t keep her lips from quirking ruefully, looking at him. Because he looked so human, it was easy to forget that Jimex was a simple custodial android, a janitor robot tasked with sanitizing and organizing things aboard their research vessel. His was a primitive model, far more basic than Ellenex’s nursing AI, and the disparity between even their speech patterns was vast. His was not a product line known for glowing conversation, or even polite conversation: he didn’t know how things sounded.

Still. She found something about him charming, even childlike, even though he was a slim, platinum-haired adult male who towered over her. Looking at him standing beside her cot now, she supposed she could see why the other crewmembers disliked the sight of him: he looked ghostly in the medical bay’s pale light, gaunt of frame and sporting colorless eyes and a stark, rigid face. She’d even heard some of them calling him “Ecto,” after ectoplasm, that trail of ghostly slime. He certainly haunted the dark spaces of the ship like some lost spirit.

“I’ve recovered, thank you,” she told him, almost wanting to pat his hand—though he wouldn’t understand the gesture. “And thank you for bringing me to the medical bay. Dr. Chanur says you were the one who found me.”

He looked at her steadily, not acknowledging her thanks. “Has a reason been determined for your illness?”

She glanced at Chanur. “Someone slipped emesis tabs into my food.”

There was a short pause as the processors in Jimex’s head whirred. He didn’t seem to know how to respond.

“In your opinion,” Park continued, fully aware of Chanur watching her now, “who on the ship do you think is most likely to do that?”

Jimex blinked slowly. The buzzing from his head increased. “I do not understand the question.”

“Who, in your opinion, do you think would try to poison me?”

Chanur wheeled on her then, eyes flashing with disapproval. “It doesn’t have an opinion, Park,” she said tightly. “Being a machine.”