Berry was getting a little desperate. She'd been certain she could elude her captors, once she got into the ventilation ducts. She knew very little about air circulation systems on large space stations, and nothing at all about the specifics of this one. But the man who'd adopted her had once been a yard dog for the Manticoran Navy. Since Berry found everything interesting, she'd managed on several occasions to get the normally taciturn Anton Zilwicki to talk about his experiences. And she could remember him telling her that, second only to the electrical network, there was nothing as convoluted in a large space habitat as the ventilation system.

Unfortunately, she was discovering, abstract knowledge was not the same as concrete familiarity. She realized now that she'd been too quick to assume that the ventilation system of The Wages of Sin would be like her well-remembered Chicago underworld. The difference was that she knew thatunderworld and its passageways, and didn't know this one.

So, she'd lost time, guessing at which route to take and—twice!—finding herself in a cul-de-sac and forced to retrace her steps. Retrace her crawls, rather. And frustrated, over and again, by the fact that the ventilation covers in the space station had not been designed to be easily opened from the inside of the ducts. So, time after time, she'd had to pass by inviting but impossible avenues of escape back into the main corridors of the station.

She could hear the scuffling sounds of her pursuer not far behind her. Piss-poor design philosophy, anybody wants my opinion, she thought crossly. They should have taken into account the possibility that somebody masquerading as a princess might someday be crawling through these ducts trying to escape a slavering maniac.

The humorous edge to the thought reassured her, though. She was still steady, still calm. She couldn't really remember a time in her life when she hadn't been. Berry had little of the sheer athleticism of her sister Helen, and none of the martial arts training. But she could remember Helen once telling her: If I ever met anyone with nerves of steel, Berry, it's you.

Maybe it was true. All Berry knew was that she was an expert on only one subject in the universe—survival —and you didn't survive by getting rattled.

So, she crawled on, using her smaller size and relaxed ease in cramped passageways to offset the fact that her pursuer—she'd caught a glimpse of him, once—had the superior reflexes and agility of a Scrag. Even if she hadn't been able to find an actual escape, she seemed to be able to stay ahead of him. And she remembered something else her father Anton had told her:

A stern chase is a long chase.

Staring at the carnage in Tube Epsilon, the two Imbesis appeared to have lost some of their usual composure. Naomi's freckles stood out in sharper relief than ever, against a skin that seemed drained of blood. And even Walter, with his many more years of experience, had a grim expression on his face. Victor couldn't see the faces of the six armored guards from the space station's special weapons unit—they'd finally arrived, too late to do any good—but from what he could sense of their body language, they were just as shocked as anyone. Coming on top of the gruesome scene in the main gaming hall, this latest scene of mayhem was probably overwhelming them a bit. Even well-trained security guards don't expect to see their place of employment turned into a slaughterhouse.

Web Du Havel was less visibly shocked, but he did appear subdued. He'd arrived in the gaming hall just as Victor and the Imbesis had started to leave, looking for the spot where the special weapons unit had reported finding Templeton's body. Du Havel had insisted on accompanying them, once he was assured Ruth Winton was safe. Web was not only very fond of Berry herself, but was obviously feeling guilty that he'd been resting in his room when the attack was launched. Not that he would have made the slightest difference if he'd been there, other than to have probably gotten murdered himself.

"For the love of God," Walter muttered, "what did she use on them? A sledgehammer?"

Victor was able to study the scene with more in the way of clinical detachment. But even he was a little shaken. It was a bit odd, perhaps, since the gore and blood left in the main gaming hall was actually far worse than this. But one expects to see gore and blood when pulsers come into play.

He looked, again, at the corpse of Abraham Templeton, lying prone on the floor. The back of his head had literally been caved in; the occiput not simply broken but splintered—and then the pieces driven a centimeter or more into the brain.

"Just her hands and feet and elbows," he said quietly. "I really don't think you understand what she is, Walter."

"She's a freak," hissed Naomi.

I have had enough of you! Victor began to snarl something in reply, but Walter cut him off.

"Shut up, Naomi," her uncle snapped. "There's no such thing as a 'freak,' when it comes to human beings. Except an actual sport of nature, like a mutant. But those are just objects of pity, and almost always die young anyway. This is... something else. Explain, Victor."

Victor decided to ignore Naomi's sullen expression. Whatever attraction the woman had once had for him was gone now, anyway.

"The thing is, Walter, that if the Mfecane worlds had remained isolated from the rest of the human race—say, maybe twenty more generations—they probably wouldn't have been part of the human species any longer. Not, at least, in the precise biological sense of the term 'species.' "

The scions of Erewhon's great families were highly educated, so Walter understood the point immediately. "Part of the same gene pool, able to interbreed. The variation had diverged that much? In such a short space of time? Those worlds were only isolated for a few centuries, as I recall."

As usual, an intellectual problem was enough to settle down Du Havel.

"Over a full millennium, actually," he said. "Their ancestors were almost as lunatic as the original Graysons, if for somewhat different reasons, and they set out about the same time and had less distance to travel."

The professor glanced around at the carnage, wincing. "Natural selection on those two planets was ferocious, Mr. Imbesi. I know a fair amount about the Mfecane worlds, as it happens, because they're one of the standard extreme cases used by theorists when we calculate the effects of genetic variation on political processes. The child mortality rate in the first few generations approached eighty percent. Worse than that, on Lieutenant Palane's home planet of Ndebele, which was the more extreme of the two environments. Combined with an isolated population, those are the classic conditions for rapid speciation. Plenty long enough, even leaving aside the genetic manipulations of the founding colonists. In fact, if the population had been one of simple animals, they probably would have become a separate gene pool. But that's always harder to manage, when the animals involved are intelligent. A lot harder. It's—ah—" He smiled, perhaps a bit ruefully. "The final step in speciation is always the development of a distinct set of mating rituals, and that's very hard to do with humans. We're just too bright not to be able to figure out how to screw around."

He examined Templeton's corpse again. "So, she's still human, in all that matters. Still part of the same gene pool—as Manpower proved by incorporating so much of the Mfecane genotype into some of their breeding stock. For that matter, I'm sure you've heard of Duchess Harrington?"

Both his listeners nodded, and he grinned crookedly. "The Salamander" was one of the very few Manties whose name had not become "Mud" in Erewhonese ears.

"Well, she's not as extreme a case as Lieutenant Palane, but that's probably only because her ancestors managed to avoid an environment quite as extreme as Ndebele."

Victor chimed in here. "When the Navy captured her—back before she escaped from Cerberus and blacked both of StateSec's eyes in the process—we were... motivated to assemble even more data on her. That's when we found out that she's descended from a genetic modification program which has a lot in common with Thandi's ancestors.

"But Thandi's ancestral environment's taken it quite a bit further. For instance, her bones are much denser than those of most people's. Harrington apparently really enjoys swimming, but someone like Thandi Palane would have a hard time doing that without artificial aids, because her body won'tfloat. For any distance, that is, although she could certainly sprint faster than most people. But, per unit volume, even with her lungs full of air, she's heavier than water. Her muscles aren't simply harder and stronger; like Harrington's, they have a different composition. A higher percentage of quick-firing cells, a—"

He broke off. This was not the time for an extended lecture on human physiological variation. "It's a mixed bag, of course. These things always are. Gain here, lose there, there's no magic involved. She can break most people in half, including strong men—but put her in a concentration camp on starvation rations with a bunch of withered crones, and she'd be the first to die."

"No endurance, you're saying?"

Victor shook his head. "No, that's not it. As long as she's fed, her endurance will be phenomenal. Way better than yours or mine."

Walter nodded, looked about at the bodies lying all over the floor of Tube Epsilon, and then glanced at Naomi. His niece's face was still tight with anger.

"There will be no breeding in-round in my family, girl," he said in a low, cold tone. He turned back to Victor.

"What are the possibilities for encouraging emigration from those worlds? Here to Erewhon, I mean. Unless I miss my guess, we're all in for 'interesting times' in the years to come."

Victor grinned, like a wolf. "As it happens, that's just what I've been thinking about. It'll depend on the Ballroom, of course, but if they get their own planet..."

Du Havel started. This was the first time he would have heard anything about Victor's long-range plans. His interest was obviously acute, but he managed to keep silent and simply listen.

Walter matched the grin. "They'll have one of two choices. Keep it an exclusive little club—surest way in the universe to sink like a stone—or make it a beacon for the galaxy's despised and unwanted. With Erewhon—and its comforts—just a hop, skip and a jump away."