The blonde dimpled prettily and pushed the air off her right ear. "Not now. Maybe some other time if I can borrow something that'd be great."

Elgars reached into the locker and pulled out one of the dresses. It was a violet wrap, consisting of multiple layers of lace in a variety of shades. She looked at it with distaste for a moment then thrust it at Wendy. "Take."

"Are you sure?" Wendy asked. The dress was beautiful.

"Suuurre." Elgars' face worked for a moment as if she was going to spit. "Ah don't lahk purple," she continued in a soft southern accent. There was no trace of a lisp.

* * *

Elgars looked around with interest. The corridors were wide—wide enough to slip a car through with difficulty—and high. And they seemed to go on forever. Every fifty meters there was a set of stairs and every hundred meters there was an escalator flanked by an elevator. At each such intersection there was another emergency pack, but unlike the one in her room, most of these were hanging open and empty. The plastic walls changed color, but all were calming pastels. The tones were pleasant, though, not institutional in any way. Occasionally there were walls of what looked like stone but with a smooth look as if it had been extruded or melted.

Overhead there were regular sprinklers and innumerable pipes with cryptic markings like "PSLA81." At intervals the one of the pipes that was marked with a red and blue pattern would have an extension downward to a double headed ending. Since it was valved and capped, Elgars imagined that it was probably designed to supply emergency water for some purpose.

The main corridors were open but there were memory-plastic doors on either side, some of them marked and others not. Most of the ones that they passed seemed to be residences although a few were marked with names like "The Cincinnati Room." At intervals in the main corridors there were open doors with control panels on both sides. These were heavier and seemed to be designed to close in the event of an emergency.

At every set of stairs or escalator was a sign: "Primary evacuation route" with an arrow up, down or pointing into the corridor. Flanking it was another: "Secondary evacuation route" pointing in a different direction. In addition to the emergency signs there were signs with some of the icons that Wendy had pointed out. Elgars was fairly sure she could figure out the bathroom and the cafeteria signs. But what was the one with three things that looked like feathers?

As Wendy had pointed out, there were regular markings on the walls, a letter followed by three numbers. In their perambulations they had proceeded out of Sector F and into B. It seemed to Elgars that they were taking a very roundabout route; they seemed to be staying in personnel quarters corridors and away from the main thoroughfares.

Most of the residential corridors were narrow, no more than two persons wide, and showed signs of wear. In one area most of the glow-paint had been damaged, leaving long sections of near total darkness. Wendy didn't stop but Elgars noticed that she seemed to be much more cautious in her movements, slowing as she approached intersections as if to listen for other footsteps, and the few people that they passed seemed to avoid eye-contact.

"This is the older section," Wendy said quietly as they were headed down a secondary corridor. This one had scorch marks on the walls as if a fire had once raged through the area and the damage was never completely repaired. "I was here when this corridor was as new and shiny as your room. But it's near a maintenance section now and . . . well . . . it's sort of a bad neighborhood. On the other hand, the security pantywaists don't like it much, so I don't think we have to worry about them."

What they did have to worry about became evident as they came to a residential intersection. In the better sections there was a slight widening of the corridors at the intersection, a water fountain and signs to the significant support facilities in the area. Two of the three corridors leading to this spot had had their glow-paint almost entirely stripped away and the water fountain had been ripped out of the wall and was sitting in a pool of rusty water.

As Wendy stepped cautiously into the shadows along one wall, there was the rasp of a match and a group of figures emerged from one of the darkened corridors.

"Well, whatta we got here?" the leader asked, lighting her cigarette. The girl was below normal height and unhealthily skinny. Her face had been badly tattooed with a figure that was probably a spider and her hair was pulled up in patches that had been dyed a variety of colors. She was wearing heavy boots, short shorts and a midriff top. Elgars would have laughed at the combination if it wasn't for the aluminum baseball bat she was swinging in one hand.

"I think we've got trespassers," giggled another. This one was above average height and heavyset with wide hips and pendulous breasts. The two would have made a comical couple were it not for the weapons in their hands.

"Whatcha got in the bag, cutey," the leader said as the other three started to spread out.

"Nothing you want," Wendy replied quietly. "You just go your way and we'll go ours."

"Oh, I don't think so," the heavier one said, pulling a chain out from behind her back. "I really don't."

"Do we kill them?" Elgars asked with perfect clarity. She was standing quite still, her weight forward on the balls of her feet and her hands at her side. The question was asked in an absolutely toneless voice.

"Uh, no," Wendy said. "Security gets all pissy when you do that."

"Okay," Elgars said and moved. From Wendy's perspective, one moment she was totally still and the next she was practically chest to chest with the leader.

The captain blocked the swing of the bat with her forearm—she was well inside the arc—and ripped the ring out of the leader's nostril. "That's to get your attention," she said in a deep voice just before she head-butted the leader into the far wall.

Wendy's hand dipped into the bag and came up holding the Glock, which more or less stopped the other three in their tracks. "Oh, look, there was something you guys could have used. And, lookey, it's got a silencer on it. Which means that when I blow you all over the wall, security won't even hear. Now, why don't you three just take off while my companion finishes playing?" They took one look at the pistol and decided there were corridors that needed their attention. Like, now.

Wendy winced as Elgars kicked the henchman in a place that is, arguably, more sensitive in women than in men. The chain had disappeared somewhere down a corridor and a knife was already on the floor broken at the tang. The woman was waving one hand in front of her face, fighting to get a word out, when Elgars followed it up with a kick to the side of the head.

"If you didn't want to play, you shouldn't have brought the ball," the captain said, bouncing on her toes with her hands up at shoulder height, fingers folded and palms out. Again, the voice was decidedly deep and clear.

"I think you're done here, Annie," Wendy said, stepping over to the leader to check for a pulse. There was a good solid beat, which was nice considering the bang her head had taken. Wendy flipped out a penlight and checked the pupils. The right pupil was a little sluggish but Wendy figured she had a better than fifty/fifty chance of waking up. The henchman was even better off, already starting to groan into consciousness.

"Damn, you two are luckier than you have any right to be," Wendy said, straightening up. "I'd suggest you run by the infirmary, though." She kicked the leader in the shin. "You've got a pretty good concussion going there.

"Right," Wendy said, "I think we should get as far from here as possible."