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  Failed him when he needed her most.

  His companion seemed to have been thinking that over herself, because she barely hesitated before answering. “Living pets haven't been common for humans for almost two thousand years, when they briefly came back into fashion for a century or two during the Neo Remembrance. Most humans who wish for pets prefer companion pets, as those require no care and make no messes. All the benefits and none of the downsides.”

  Tycho laughed in spite of himself, although fresh tears filled his eyes. He though back to the sleepless first few weeks with Laird and Lady as puppies, when he'd been forced to listen to them bark and whine nonstop as he tried to train them to sleep in their own room.

  Or the memorable weeks spent housebreaking them when they did their business all over the place and he was frequently confronted with aromatic gifts on his carpets and floors. Or the pillows, couch legs, shoes, and other furniture they'd enthusiastically destroyed thinking them toys, until he'd trained them out of it.

  Eva had been there to soundproof his room so he could sleep, and clean up the messes left by the dogs, and repair the furniture so it was good as new. She'd even done a lot of the work caring for the animals, so Tycho could enjoy those benefits and fewer of the downsides.

  Maybe he should've cleaned up their messes himself, distasteful as that sounded. Without personally experiencing any of those downsides how were Laird and Lady any different from companion pets?

  Tycho felt like a traitor even thinking that; his two mastiffs were a world above any substitute. And as he stared at Eva he wondered if that was the same for companions and humans as well.

  It must be.

  His companion had fallen silent at his laughter, but now she hesitantly continued. “Humans do not typically feel grief when their companion pets are disabled. They might react to the temporary loss by feeling distraught, but deep down they know the pet can simply be repaired or even replaced, its programming transferred to a new model.”

  Sea green eyes looked at him, and now he saw the sympathy she hadn't shown him before. “I failed to account for the fact that living pets are irreplaceable. Maybe not to the extent that a human life is irreplaceable, but you would still feel that strong attachment to that specific pet and no other.”

  “You got that right, at least,” Tycho muttered. “If too late to matter.”

  Eva hesitantly climbed the ramp and rested a hand on his arm. “I know how much you cared for Laird. When I suggested you replace him I was thinking in the context of companion pets and didn't make the proper connections. In doing so I only made your grief worse.”

  Her hand gently wrapped around his and she attempted to pull him down the ramp, evidently intending to return to the crude grave he'd dug for his friend. “I'd like to grieve for Laird with you. He was there to do the job I couldn't, and he saved what was most important to me. I'll always honor him for that.”

  It was well spoken, and Tycho could even believe that his companion was now acting sincerely, at least as much as her programming allowed. But it was such a stark contrast to her earlier callousness about the death of his friend that this felt like blatant manipulation.

  He pulled free and entered the ship. “Forget loading everything up, you can come back for it later. Let's just get out of here.”

  Eva obligingly followed him inside and closed the ramp behind her. Tycho did his best to ignore her as he walked through the entry room's sonic cleansing field, which whisked away most of the dirt and other contaminants from his clothes and body. It also, thankfully, dried his pants and removed the unpleasant residue.

  Feeling immeasurably better simply from being cleaner, he decided not to rest in his stateroom after all and instead made his way to his starship's cockpit so he could watch the flight from the pilot's chair.

  Eva made to join him, but he stopped in the doorway and turned to her. “Put yourself in storage until we get back to the estate.”

  His companion gave him a helpless look. “You're tense, agitated. I'd like to calm you down. Clean you up more thoroughly and change you into new clothes, then give you a massage. Perhaps lovemaking if you're in the mood. After almost a week I'm surprised you're not already.”

  “I'm not feeling particularly loving at the moment, and anyway you're the source of my agitation.” Tycho pointed towards the back of the ship. “I gave you an instruction.”

  Still she hesitated, voice pleading. “Please don't shut me out. Just tell me how I can make this right for you, my love.”

  “Don't call me that!” he snapped. “If you were capable of understanding love you'd know how much I loved Laird, and how deeply it hurt me to lose him. You wouldn't have let it happen.”

  Another helpless look. “I was following my core priorities. I literally couldn't do anything else.”

  “And is it your core priorities that are telling you to mouth off at me after I gave you a direct order?”

  Eva turned and walked away without another word. Tycho watched her go, even more angry for feeling guilty at sending her away.

  * * * * *

  Once his companion had folded herself into her storage compartment for the trip home Tycho stomped over to the pilot's chair and slumped down into it, staring at the main viewscreen. At the moment it was serving as a window and providing a glimpse of the majestic mountains outside, a view he didn't see even as he stared straight at it.

  He was an emotional wreck. Grief for Laird combined with guilt for letting his friend die, which combined with guilt for how he'd treated Eva and for the blame he'd put on her when she was just following her programming. And annoyance that he was thinking about his companion when he wanted to be focusing on the loss of his friend, painful as that was.

  Eva didn't have feelings to hurt, so why should he feel bad about how he treated her?

  Only he did. One of his first memories was of Diana, his nursemaid companion, telling him that how he treated companions was good practice for interacting with humans when the time came. She'd made it clear he should treat companions the way companions treated humans, except obviously without the subservience. That way when he finally met real humans besides his mother he would be able to befriend them, not push them away through rude behavior.

  Except Tycho had never had a chance to meet humans other than his mother in person, and the allnet had given him a thorough and completely different tutelage on how to treat the people he met there by virtue of blunt, often harsh, experience.

  After a minute or so staring out the window Tycho decided he was too tired and heartsick at the moment to worry about Eva. She didn't care one way or another, and his guilt partly came from the fact that he didn't like to imagine himself as an unpleasant person. And probably most of all because how he'd treated her since returning to the ship clashed with the idyllic, homey life he'd spent years cultivating with his adult companion for his own contentment and peace of mind.

  All selfish emotions. Was it even possible to not be selfish when he was all by himself and had nobody else's welfare to worry about?

  With a growl Tycho straightened in the pilot's chair. “Why aren't we airborne yet?” he demanded.

  “Because it's customary for a ship to actually wait for an order from its human before flying off,” Pilot replied with such heavy handed subservience that it screamed sarcasm.

  Dross. The ship's AI had done it plenty of times, and anyway it had certainly overheard Tycho's conversation with Eva and would've been able to glean what he wanted through context. It was just being obnoxious, as usual.

  Luckily even Pilot couldn't ignore a direct order. He swiveled the chair enough to plant his feet up on a nearby bulkhead and crossed his arms. “Take me home.”

  The ship's AI immediately activated the ship and got them moving. The motion was smooth, so smooth he wouldn't have even been able to tell they were moving without looking out the viewscreen and seeing the Southern Preserve falling away below him.

  He'd never stopped to think about it
before, but in all his flights in this starship he'd never encountered turbulence, g-forces from acceleration, or anything else. It was always a perfectly smooth, uneventful ride.

  Even here he was trapped in his sensory deprivation bubble.

  Tycho abruptly yanked his feet off the bulkhead and swiveled the chair back around to face the ship's controls. As he locked his seat in place he looked over the pilot's yoke, the displays, and the banks of buttons and toggles he'd barely even asked about before, and never used.

  He wasn't sure if it was his residual anger at Eva and grief over Laird, or his reluctance to return to his estate and see Lady without her mate, or maybe some leftover giddiness from nearly dying fighting off a pack of vicious wolves.

  But whatever it was it made him feel reckless; he longed to move, work off some of the adrenaline of the last few hours. Unfortunately that kind of movement was a bit difficult in his starship, spacious as it was.

  But he could move the ship itself. “Give me control.”

  There was an almost insultingly long pause. “Um, what?” Pilot demanded incredulously.

  Tycho glared at the controls, the spot he usually focused on when talking to the ship's AI. “Are your interior sensors malfunctioning? I said I want to fly.”

  “Since when? I've been flying you around since you were so tiny you looked like a turd someone left on my pilot's chair, and this is a first.”

  He arched a half scandalized eyebrow at the mental image. Pilot had always been crude and insulting, even antagonistic. He didn't know if it was some quirk of the AI's programming, or if his companions thought he needed that sort of interaction for his mental health, maybe to give him a thicker skin. Either way the ship's computer had only gotten worse as he got older.

  “Pilot,” he warned.

  “Although don't tell Eva or Loran I said that,” the AI added hastily. Then he continued in a resentful tone. “My point is you've been in my perfectly capable hands for almost two decades, ever since mommy dearest sent you to your own estate. In all that time you've never once shown the slightest interest in flying.”

  “I have a few times,” Tycho protested. “You always viciously mocked me until I dropped the subject.”

  “For good reason!” Pilot shot back. “Flying takes knowledge and experience, two things you completely lack. And for your first flight you want to grab the controls and tackle Helios 4's atmospherics?”

  “We're already safe in the air. It's taking off and landing that are dangerous.”

  The AI harrumphed. “Taking off and landing are some of the risks you might encounter. Another is wind shear strong enough to slam us into the side of a mountain at supersonic speeds.”

  Tycho laughed derisively. “We both know you'd take over before that happened.” He slapped the yoke in front of him. “Controls, now. Don't make me start tweaking your settings.”

  Pilot muttered a barely audible and probably obscene reply about tweaking and settings, then sighed. “Would you at least like some advice before you attempt this stupidity?”

  “Teaching me is part of your job,” he shot back, leaning forward and eagerly gripping the yoke with one hand while hovering the fingers of his other over the nearest bank of toggles. “Tell me what to do.”

  “First of all put on your restraints. You should be wearing those anyway.” Tycho hastily buckled the seat's harness snugly across his chest and hips, then resumed his “pilot” pose with his hands on the controls.

  The moment he did the AI's tone suddenly became almost vicious. “Next, keep the yoke centered to continue flying straight.”

  Before he could ask what the inferno that meant the yoke suddenly began bucking wildly in his hand, nearly tearing free of his grip.

  Tycho started to yelp, then nearly bit his tongue as a downdraft yanked the ship out from under him. Only his restraints kept him from flying out of his seat, which was probably why Pilot had advised him to put them on beforehand.

  Although even secured in place by them he was still forced to grip an armrest tight with his free hand, doing his best to keep from being jostled around so hard his brain vibrated right out of his skull.

  With that distraction it was hard to focus on wrestling the yoke to try to get them level again; the ship continued to be buffeted this way and that by constant vicious gusts of wind, and Tycho cursed a steady stream as he struggled to gain some semblance of control.

  “Looks like you're having a bit of trouble there,” Pilot observed smugly. “Need me to take over?”

  “I'm going to plot you an autopilot course directly for the center of Helios!” Tycho snarled.

  “Oh boo hoo.” Another vicious blast of wind slammed them sideways, nearly wrenching Tycho's neck, and when the AI continued he sounded less amused. “Seriously though, I'm getting a bit concerned about our status.”

  “Give. Me. A. Second,” Tycho growled through gritted teeth, shifting to hold the yoke in both hands and fighting to get it back to center. With two hands the danger was almost more overcorrecting than not being able to move it around, but bit by bit he finally managed to smooth out the ship's motions and get the viewscreen pointing forward rather than jerking wildly all over the place. The wind still constantly knocked them around, but as he got the hang of it the gusts became less gut wrenching.

  He hadn't realized the atmospherics on Helios 4 were anywhere near this bad. The weather over the estates was always kept perfectly pleasant, of course, but even when he'd flown to other areas of the world the ride had never been the slightest bit bumpy.

  At the moment he had no idea how that was even possible. “How do you fly this thing perfectly smoothly in this?” Tycho demanded.

  Pilot sounded even more smug when he replied. “A combination of complete sensory data of global weather patterns and complex mathematical algorithms to make constant micro-adjustments to the maneuvering thrusters. Wouldn't want you to feel any turbulence on the trip home.”

  If this was “turbulence” then he was . . . well, this was definitely more than simple turbulence. “Is it like this all the time?”

  “Often. And I'm afraid even if you flew every day for the rest of your life, or better yet spent lifetimes training in the slowest slowtime of full immersion, you'd never get skilled enough to manage what I can do in my sleep.”

  “You don't sleep.”

  “Figure of speech,” Pilot said airily. “Either way, I hope you have a better appreciation for why you should just let me do my job of piloting you home instead of manhandling my ship with all the grace of a hippo in high heels.”

  A sudden updraft yanked Tycho down and to the side, and he cursed as the yoke bucked free of his grip and sent the ship spinning. Inertial dampeners displaced some of the g-forces as he struggled to regain control, but he could almost hear the AI's smugness in the absolute silence while he struggled to get the ship leveled out again. “This is the part where you say you told me so, isn't it?”

  “That would be counterproductive.” Pilot's tone practically screamed “I told you so.”

  “Speaking of home,” he said through gritted teeth as he finally fought the yoke back to center, “how much farther is it?”

  “Three thousand, one hundred and twenty-eight miles.”

  In spite of his need to concentrate on this wild ride he'd thrown himself into Tycho's eyes still snapped to the readout to confirm that. “Thirty-one hundred . . . that's almost a hundred miles farther away than when we started!”

  “Yes, your chosen route is less than optimal.”

  “You mean we're flying the opposite direction.” Tycho cursed again. “And you didn't say anything? You're the worst navigator ever!”

  Pilot did a credible job of sounding offended. “I'm a pilot program drawing on the combined experience of tens of thousands of years of pilot programs serving ships all over the known universe. And yet somehow in all that time we pilots have had very little experience of being commandeered by a completely unqualified passenger wishing to go on
a joyride.”

  “Well do a better job. You can start by giving me some tips on flying this thing so we don't crash. After which maybe you could point me in the right direction so I get home from this disastrous vacation sometime before my half century birthday celebration!”

  “Sure, no problem. You can start by pulling up since our elevation has decreased to worryingly dangerous levels.”

  With another curse Tycho yanked the yoke up a bit higher, watching the instruments as the ship fought its way back to cruising altitude. “You know what? I'm wiping you when we get home. Eva could do a better job of piloting and instructing me and navigating and pretty much everything else than you can anyway.”

  “Well, we can't all be companions,” Pilot huffed.

  “You certainly can't. Shut off your personality and human behavioral subroutines and just focus on teaching me to fly this thing.”

  The computer's tone immediately became flat and efficient. “Acknowledged. Feather the yoke up and to the right until our elevation is stable at fifteen thousand feet and our heading is north by northwest. I will keep a running update on your progress and revise instructions as needed. Be prepared for wind shears in one minute fifty-two seconds lasting for 15.6 seconds. They may be severe enough to pose a significant risk of crashing, at which point I must reassert control of the ship until the danger is past.”

  Tycho relaxed slightly and followed the clear instructions. “You know what, Pilot? You're actually much more likable like this.”

  The comment hadn't been a command or query, so with its interactive subroutines disabled the only response from the AI was sweet, sweet silence.

  It wouldn't be accurate to say the rest of the flight was particularly smooth. But with the ship's computer guiding him step by step with unfailing accuracy, and even taking the time to explain some of the controls and their purpose as it had Tycho use them, it was almost embarrassing how quickly his estate came into view.

  The grounds rolled out below him in an inviting panorama, reminding him that the uncomfortable and life-threatening jaunt into the Southern Preserve had been nothing more than a vacation and he was back where things were completely safe.