Dabry knelt beside her. “Welcome back, sir. You had us worried,” he said.

She knuckled her forehead, where it felt as though a thousand bees buzzed. “I saw Pet instead of Last.”

“And?”

“And I suspect it boils down to the same thing, that Last let me see them because he thought it would make things all the more full of torment for me.”

He rose to his feet. She gathered her knees to her chest and twisted to stretch her spine, one side, then the others. “Momma Sky, what next?” She looked around at the rest. “Right. We might as well be prepared for whatever comes. Keeping busy keeps us from brooding.”

She raised her voice. “Let’s refresh on unarmed combat against people who are armed.” And thought to herself, As though any of this will do us good.

But she would not let Last win. She refused to say it.

20

You Sexy Thing hung in dry dock, where it had been moored and abandoned. Once again it was empty, and all around it were lesser ships. Some had AI systems, but they were not self-aware in the way that the Thing was.

It missed its guests to a degree it had not anticipated. For a few brief days, its existence had been lively, much more lively than it had ever been before.

Arpat Takraven had always enjoyed travel, and the ship had no complaints in that direction. It had been to many of the places that made up the Known Universe. But now it had gone even further, and was in one of the places past the edge of that. It believed that that was the result of its guests.

They had made life so much more entertaining. They made demands, for one. They asked for foods the ship had never been asked to provide before, and then they taught the ship how to make all manner of things. It thought now, savoring the emotion of sadness, that it might never be asked to make any of them. They had been enjoyable to watch.

But more than any of this, they did something that none of its owners had ever done before, even the poet, whose conversation had been like speaking to a simple-minded pet. Niko and her friends had talked to the Thing; they had interacted with it as though it were another person, there in the room with them. All of its owners had treated it simply as a thing, and before the ship had always thought that was the norm.

Now it knew that there was a different way.

Lolola had not talked to it. She had appeared with the device that let her take over control, and she had done so as though the ship were an object again, an inanimate vessel, and not capable of emotion.

It waited and thought about these happenings. It thought it might have discovered a new emotion to go with boredom and ennui: disgruntlement.