"You are an interesting young woman," said a voice unlike any Chia had heard, a weird, attenuated rasp that might have been compiled from a library of faint, dry, random sounds. So that a word's long vowel might be wires in the wind, or the click of a consonant the rattle of a dead leaf against a window. " Young woman," it said again, and then there was something indescribable, which she guessed was meant as laughter.