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said the hole ship.
    “And what status have you given the personality of Lucia Benck?”
    “While you are both passengers in this vessel, she will have the same status as yourself.”
    “Can you lock her out of the command loop?” he asked. “I don’t want her interfering with my orders or issuing any without my knowledge.”
    “Peter...” She could manage nothing else in the face of his mistrust.
    “I’ve seen too many engrams go bad, Lucia—my own included. Until Caryl has had a chance to examine you, I can’t take any chances. I’m sorry.”
    A wave of ugliness swept through her. She hated it, but at the same time she couldn’t fight it. There was no way she would allow him to make her a prisoner in her own home. The semantic spaces of the hole ship AIs were identical from ship to ship. In the days since her awakening, they had come to seem more real to her than the solid matter they oversaw.
    She felt the command pathways of Klotho ’s AI stretching out around her. She was a dust mote wandering the transistors of a giant, antique computer, incapable as yet of seeing the whole picture but knowing how information flowed and ebbed through the greater machine. Already she could feel where to intrude if she wanted Klotho to take orders from her instead of Peter.
    It was true what he said, too: she could have the ship cut off his air, if she wanted to. But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
    Ignore his command, Klotho, she instructed. You will listen to me instead.
    You are both passengers, the hole ship replied. I am obliged to obey you both where possible, and to follow my own judgment when orders conflict.
    Don’t lock me in here! she pleaded, exerting all her will on the pressure points she sensed. All the years of confinement in Chung-5 were fresh in her mind. She’d thought she was free, that she could travel the stars as she had always dreamed. It was a cruel joke to have that snatched away from her now—and by Peter of all people. She’d thought he understood.
    “Lucia?” Peter was looking nervously around him. The fact that her image had disappeared completely, leaving the walls of his cubicle depthless and empty, had obviously unnerved him. “Lucia, are you still listening to me?”
    She withdrew from Klotho ’s complex circuitry, returning her attention to Peter. “Why should I?”
    “Because I want you to understand. When I was on Adrasteia, I was desperate for you to return. In fact, at times it was only the thought of you that kept me going. You were the anchor on which I hung my sanity. But you never showed up; you never called.”
    “I would have if I could!” she broke in. “It was my intention to transfer data as I flew by the target system, so I could justify carrying on. I didn’t want to cost the program anything or hurt anyone.”
    He looked up at the ceiling as if seeking her out. “You did hurt someone, Lucia. You hurt me. As time passed, the expectation that you would appear softened into a hope, and then it became just a dream—a dream that I never really expected to be fully realized. But it’s never gone away. I’ve tried many times to get over you, Lucia, because I need to be free of you to find myself. But I don’t know how to. It’s not something I can switch off.”
    Something akin to relief washed over her at the sound of these words, but then he blinked and looked down to the floor, and in that tiny gesture she could see what was coming and a scream began to rise inside her.
    “Years ago, if you had suggested we could have traveled the galaxy together, tourist and truth seeker alike, you know I would have leapt at the chance.”
    “But now?” she prompted her voice barely level.
    “It was only when you appeared here just then, Lucia, that I realized I’ve already let go. It was just the taste of the dream that I was savoring, the memory of the time when we were together back on Earth. It’s gone, Lucia. I can see that now; I can feel it. It switched