"All right, Prin—uh, Berry," Thandi said, quietly but firmly. She rose from her squatting position in front of the hatch, where she'd been watching Ruth at her work. "Now you get your butt out of here."

For a moment, Ruth looked mulish. Smiling, Berry hauled her away from the hatch.

"Leave it be, 'Berry, ' " she whispered. "You are not trained as a commando."

As reluctant as she might be to break away from the action—it was obvious to Berry that, deny it however she might, Ruth had been having the time of her life—the Princess didn't really put up a struggle. The young royal was adventurous, true, but she wasn't downright insane. She'd already done what she needed to do: break the codes which would enable Thandi to open the hatch leading to the bridge without setting off any alarms. From here, it would be all mayhem and fast-moving havoc. As relatively athletic as she was, Princess Ruth had no chance at all of keeping up with Thandi Palane and her Amazons. She'd just get in their way, and she knew it.

Berry guided her toward the hatch on the opposite side of the small chamber, which led back into the slave quarters.

"Damn," Ruth muttered. "You know as well as I do that once my aunt finds out about this..." She made a face. "I'll be lucky if she ever lets me out of my own suite in Mount Royal Palace. Till I'm dead or she is."

"Hush," whispered Berry, nodding meaningfully toward the hatch she was starting to open. "And don't forget that you're still me and I'm still you."

Ruth nodded. She and Berry had managed a quick, whispered consultation after Thandi and her assault team had been welcomed into the slave quarters. They'd both agreed that it would be best to keep the masquerade going.

That had been Berry's suggestion, and she still felt weird about it. There was actually no reason to maintain the subterfuge, from the standpoint of the Masadan enemy. Those enemies would either be dead in a few minutes or they'd all be dead when the ship exploded. So why keep up the rigmarole?

But the simple fact was that—

Weird-weird-weird.

—by now, Berry had established a peculiar position among the slaves. The combination of the news she'd brought and her assumed identity as a "princess" seemed to settle their nerves. She'd noticed that the steering committee, which had been in continuous—and often raucous—session since they'd learned of the plans for Congo, was now often turning to her to serve as something in the way an informal court of final appeal.

Weird-weird-weird.

Still, it seemed to work. The steering committee's members were all strong-willed, were by no means all personally fond of each other, did not necessarily share the same political opinions, and had little experience working together—not to mention that the committee itself had been slapped together in the press of circumstances. Even with Kathryn's generally sure leadership, tempers had gotten frayed.

But, they'd never snapped—and not least of all because, very quickly, Kathryn had started using Berry as a calming agent. It didn't even matter so much what Berry said or didn't say in the disputes. As a rule, she said as little as possible, being mainly concerned simply with keeping everybody calm.

It was simply who she was. Or, rather, was supposed to be.

"Princess." What was it, Berry wondered, that gave that term—a fake term, as it happened—such a peculiar magic?

Ruth had seemed to understand it immediately, when Berry tried to explain.

"Oh, sure," Ruth whispered. "It's 'cause your authority doesn't derive from anything really legitimate. Might be better to say, from an arbitrary legitimacy that stands outside of the hurly-burly. Monarchy's really a silly business, when you get right down to it—but don't you dare tell Aunt Elizabeth I said so. I'm going to be in enough trouble as it is."

The two girls shared a conspiratorial glance around the mess compartment. Fortunately, all of the slaves were still completely preoccupied by the presence in their midst of Thandi Palane and her Amazons.

"Amazons." When Thandi and her women had first entered the mess compartment being used for the slave headquarters, Berry had been sure there'd be a brawl right then and there, despite her own efforts to prepare against it. Any slave of Manpower would have immediately recognized the tell-tale genetic traces on the faces of the "Amazons," and within two seconds, prepared or not, they'd been like so many dogs facing off in an alley with their hackles raised and their fangs bared.

Scrags. The self-proclaimed supermen who had, for several generations now, served Manpower as its bully boys. It was enough to be a "Scrag" to be under sentence of immediate death, so far as any member of the Audubon Ballroom was concerned.

Fortunately, Thandi's glower had intimidated everyone for just long enough. And a very intimidating glower it was, too, coupled to that fearsome physique. Berry had made an immediate private vow to make sure that Thandi remained her "big sister." Had given that priority, in fact, precedence over her vow to start exercising and taking political lessons from Web Du Havel.

(It had been an easy vow to make, of course. Being on close personal terms with Thandi Palane did not fall into Berry Zilwicki's definition of oh, yuck. )

Just long enough—for Berry to pitch in and capitalize on her own earlier spadework to settle it all down.

"Thandi!" she'd exclaimed, leaping from her seat and practically hurling herself into a embrace. Then, quickly, disengaging the embrace and hurling herself upon the nearest Amazon.

"Yana! S'great to see you again!" Disengage; embrace another—quick, quick, quick .

"Lara!"

"Hanna!"

"Inge!"

Lara even had the presence of mind to exclaim "Princess Ruth!" when she returned the embrace. Granted, the woman's grin tended to detract from the solemnity of the occasion.

Still, it was enough. By the time Berry resumed her seat, if nothing else, she'd muddled up the slaves' automatic reactions to the point where immediate mayhem was ruled out. And, thereafter, she was relieved to see that Kathryn had the good sense to continue using Berry as her combination sounding board and social relaxant.

Did it more than ever, in fact. Berry suspected that Kathryn was even more relieved than she was at the way things were remaining reasonably harmonious. And she was beginning to understand, concretely and not abstractly, what Web Du Havel had meant when he explained the political pitfalls awaiting newly liberated slaves.

Like open wounds, all of them, she thought. Never being given enough time to heal before being lacerated open again. Be nice to each other, boys and girls. Oh, and here's another crisis. More salt to rub into your bleeding flesh.

Too, there was this: Berry was by nature a very empathetic person. So, within a short time, happening almost like a gravitational attraction, she found herself emotionally identifying with the slaves and their predicament. Not the immediate one—Thandi Palane would either save their lives, or she wouldn't—but with the very uncertain future which faced them all.

"Freedom." A splendid word, especially in the abstract. A sanctified and hallowed one, even, when the person uttering it has no immediate prospect of escaping bondage. Like a mantra, or the name of a saint whispered in prayer. But once it loomed as an imminent reality...

Freedom to do what ?

Starve? What does a slave do, when he or she gains her freedom—having been bred and trained to do nothing except a master's bidding?

Historically, the answer had generally been bleak. "Freedom" meant the freedom to fight over the scraps—or sell yourself back into another form of bondage, to someone who would give you the scraps from his table.

And so, in the time that followed, Berry was almost oblivious to her friend Ruth, perched nearby on a chair a little back from the central table where the deliberations and arguments took place. She was much too intent on the discussion itself, bending all her will and attention to the task of keeping it steady and as relaxed as possible.

Ruth, on the other hand, was not oblivious to her. She was fascinated, actually, watching Berry at the table. She'd come to cherish Berry's friendship, but realized now that—like everyone—she'd never really thought of Berry except in terms of friendship.

Now, studying her friend in action, "on her own" as it were, Ruth Winton applied to the task all the intent scrutiny and thought of which she was capable. Which was a great deal, indeed. Ruth had not been boasting when she told Thandi that she always studied the things she loved and the things she hated.

Here, she could do both at the same time. It did not take her long to reach a conclusion, and she resolved to raise it with Web Du Havel at the first opportunity.

The opportunity to do so would come, not long after. That didn't surprise Ruth, knowing Thandi as she did. Du Havel's reaction, on the other hand, did surprise her. Astonished her, in fact. She'd been expecting either a long lecture on girlish folly or a simple sneer of disdain.

But, he simply grinned. "Join the club, Ruth Winton. There are now two of us in the universe who are crazy."

This is crazy, thought Thandi. Pure lunacy.

She tried her very best glower on the Amazons.

"Are you all insane?" she hissed, hooking a thumb toward the bend in the corridor. She was trying to speak as quietly as possible while still being forceful—a difficult task, to say the least.

"If the schematics Ruth pulled out of the ship's computer are accurate, we're less than fifteen meters from the bridge."

As she whispered, Thandi continued stripping off all of her gear except her armored skinsuit itself. Now that she had been able to size up the tactical situation concretely, she'd decided speed was the key. She'd make the assault armed only with a hand pulser. Thandi was an expert with just about any kind of handheld weapon, but she was particularly proficient with sidearms.

"There's only one hatch leading into it," she pointed out. "How in the hell do you think you're going to pull off a 'mass charge'? And what's the point, anyway, beyond giving the bastards a lot of targets? If it can be done at all, I can do it alone."