"I'm sure you could," and she meant it. Kaya had a talent for finding people and drawing them out of their shells, getting them to step up to the line and work.

"The thing about that is," Anwei worried her lower lip with her teeth very gently for an instant, "it's entirely possible that she doesn't feel oppressed."

She took her metal comb out of her jacket pocket, and laid the tines across her open palm. "Imagine that the Daligig went through the ship's mind and combed out everything that was good and honorable and loving, and created a separate personality from just those parts of the ship." Her hand moved as she spoke, combing her hand. "They could have built in a revulsion for those parts of her that were now Other, now the Warden. More; they could monitor her brain as they worked, and if any part of her resented what they did, or realized that she was no longer a whole person, they could turn that part of her off. Erase it, even."

She looked down at her faintly pink skin and frowned. "It's an easy trap to fall into; to craft a mind to do exactly what you want it to, and cut out any part that would disagree. The problem is, a mind like that can only do what you built it for. It can't innovate, or imagine, or respond to the totally unfamiliar. You're hobbling another mind rather than risk having it inconvenience you with originality."

She slipped the comb back into her pocket, and her long lips shaped a phrase something along the lines of "Obscene attitude."