"I expect they're all some sort of corundum. Your basic aluminum oxide gemstones. A more expensive piece would probably have asteroid gems, like spinels. Anything so long as it was red - or maybe pink." Pink for marrow.

When he returns she is tipping the box back and forth between her hands, trying to calculate how much of its mass was circuitry. She'd need to build the tools to make the tools to work on it, plus do all her regular work. The hardest part would be tracing all the hard-baked coding lines of personality and carefully coaxing them into changing themselves.

"Tears?" She looks at the box, and when she goes on her voice is a little slower. "Maybe. I hope not. I've worked with - on - full-sentient AIs and had it not work out. Tried to change them, the way I changed Horanckk, and had it all fall apart." Code splintering under her fingers, her desperately trying to stop the chain reaction, Horanckk trying to help as well or disconnecting rather than be dragged down with the failing AI. "I've never tried uplifting a proto-sentient to full intelligence and personality." A sigh. "I just hope I don't give it the option to become a whole person, and then it rejects it to stay in its little code-cage."

Better safe than free, it might think.