She nods.  "Deskyl is careful, but," the gesture, again, "different careful."

Walta finishes unhooking herself from the safety harness. "I'll go find him. Deskyl is probably in the guest cabin, that door there... You probably shouldn't go to the bridge- the, uh, front or back of the ship, or up, unless Cap invites you in."

"I'll stay with Deskyl."

"Right. I'll go talk to Captain Vauners then."

Off she goes.

She explains the robot's insistence on how Deskyl will want to work with its electricity, and the idea of leading wires outside the hull and doing the final part there.

"...I'm not sure I like that either, I have to modify the Whale rather permanently. Maybe I can spin it off to a running light or something... Something about them makes me uneasy. I'm still not sure this is a good idea."

"Well, get the robot to do extra work to make up for it? Maybe they know interesting things about tech?"

Nick makes a grumbling noise.

"Not all passengers are bad. They need help, we gave them help, and maybe you can still make money off it."

"It's not about the money. Well, not entirely." Sigh. "Balance the gas cells for me, would you? Deskyl collapsed into a bed but I think I want to talk to this robot. DZ. It's a smart robot as these things go, which is fascinating. Lost tech, who knows what'll turn up."

He goes down and knocks on the cabin's door.

DZ lets him in; Deskyl is still asleep.

"Walta told me the plan for your electricity. I will watch, and I don't want to give you with too many things to do it without additional pay or work, but otherwise that will be fine."

DZ sits back down on the bed to listen.

"I don't have enough language. Wait, please, Captain." She nudges Deskyl, who makes a disgruntled noise but opens her eyes and, after a few exchanged signs, sits up on the edge of the bed next to the droid and closes her eyes again.

He repeats himself, describing the idea of doing any necessary electrical work outside the ship somewhere for Deskyl's benefit, slightly impatient this time.

There's a pause, when he's done, and then Deskyl begins signing, grimacing slightly.

"You can watch, Captain," she agrees, when the signing is over, "and I'll work."

"I apologize for the necessity. I have to be absolutely positive there are no fires onboard my ship. A fire would kill all of us in minutes."

DZ nods. "Deskyl can stop fires. But she'll work outside the ship."

"All I know is that you say she can. Caution is prudent. I'll let you rest, Deskyl. DZ, do you need rest?"

"No, Captain."

"I believe you can't understand Anglish well without her yet, but mimicry will do for the first set of tasks I would like to assign you."

"All right."

Off they go then.

To what appears to be a cargo hold. Crates and shelves and rope and cranes. The huge wads of floatgrass they collected earlier have all settled near the ceiling. Nick pulls a lever that opens a vent thing, presses a button that starts a mechanical noise, uses a long tool to push some into a corner. With a mulching sound the pile is slowly consumed into the vent. "Fuel processing. Simple enough, yes?"

Yep, that's straightforward. She settles in to work.

Nick watches the robot move, fascinated, for a little while.

The ship starts moving after a while. He provides other relatively straightforward work when she's done with that. And then he has no more. He cooks a mediocre lunch for three as Walta takes over piloting the craft and takes the afternoon to let DZ peruse some textbooks and novels that are handy, and then teach some of the more complicated chores of the ship.

She appreciates the books, and goes through them at a pace only a little slower than someone already fluent with the language, occasionally pausing to ask how a word is pronounced. When it's time to get back to work, she proves to be a quick learner, both mimicking his actions and remembering his instructions perfectly.

DZ gets about ten hours' worth of work over the course of the day as they sail, set down again, and Nick does some maintenance.

(Walta appears to be trying to figure out precisely how smart DZ is, going by her subtly strange inquiries and actions and lurking around.)

She has no complaints about the work; when it's done, she asks if there's any more for her to do, and returns to the guest cabin when there isn't.

The picture Walta gets of DZ's capabilities is fairly alien, compared to a human. She's certainly smart - her memory seems to be perfect; complex questions that a human would have trouble holding in their mind aren't a challenge for her at all - and flexible, asking questions and pointing out contradictions as the need arises. But as Walta's questions leave the realm of straightforward fact, she struggles; she's only occasionally able to express preferences, and she seems uncomfortable at the limitation, her body language going tense and submissive if Walta asks too often or presses too much.

"There are stories about smart computers, but we don't have anything like them. Or they're really rare at any rate. They vary a lot. I'm tryin' to figure out what kind you are, because it makes a big difference to what the stories are like most of the time. It's pretty different if you're, uh. Well, there's different kinds in the stories."