[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Brigid turned confidently toward the door. "Then we shall be there."
Kane also turned, but Ivornich spoke sharply and though he didn't know what
she said, something in her tone conveyed that she had addressed him. He cast her
an over-the-shoulder glance, eyes masked by his dark glasses.
"Unlike your colleague," Ivornich said, her throaty voice humming with menace,
with a grim humor, "you have the look of a professional, of one of us. I should
know you, especially if you outrank me. Why don't I?"
Kane only glared at her. Brigid spoke up sharply, "Your security classification is
not high enough, Captain, to know this man or even to speak to him."
Ivornich hooked her thumbs into her belt. "We shall see. Until then, keep this in
mind the worst kind of death is reserved for agents provocateurs. They rarely
die easily or quickly."
Brigid and Kane walked out of the office. Grant, still seated on the wag, sagged
with visible relief when they came down the steps. Kane whispered, "My, she is
a bitch, isn't she?"
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"Da," Brigid agreed gloomily.
"She didn't even offer us coffee."
"No, but she did seem awfully interested in you."
"A purely professional interest, I'm sure," Kane replied blandly.
"What was all that gibberish about?" Grant asked.
As she and Kane climbed into the cart, Brigid said, "Let's get rolling and I'll tell
you."
"Get rolling to where?"
"The railhead."
"I don't know where that is," retorted Grant.
Brigid forced a wan smile. "We had better behave like we do. I'm sure the good
captain will put a tail on us to make sure we get there."
Grant snapped the reins, and the horse began walking. "So far," he murmured to
the animal, "our first few hours in Mother Russia are turning out to be a whole
lot of no fun."
Chapter 14
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Lakesh stepped out of the elevator, through the archway and into the Historical
Division. He passed archivists going off shift, and they greeted him with
respectful, deferential nods. The only person who didn't nod was a black-coated
Mag who had stepped into the elevator with him at the promenade. In fact, he
went to a great deal of effort to pretend he hadn't noticed Lakesh.
The Mag remained behind in the elevator, and Lakesh knew he was whispering
into his lapel trans-comm, reporting to Salvo that he was here, reappearing
unannounced after a two-day absence.
Lakesh repressed a smile. The Mag, and others like him, were victims of forces
too powerful and too insidious for them to combat or understand. The man
wasn't an enemy. The forces that had made him a Magistrate were the enemies.
He walked through the long, broad corridors of the division, past scores of sealed
doorways that led into hundreds of chambers and antechambers. All of them
were filled with the relics of vanished cities and long-dead people. The quiet air
smelled of dust and time time past, time present, time future and time twisted
out of shape.
Most of the storerooms were crammed to the ceiling with racks upon racks and
shelves upon shelves of a vast number of books, magazines and technical
manuals, articles of clothing, crates of paintings, pieces of statuary and sculpture
 anything that had survived the nukecaust more or less intact. Lakesh
pretended that he took pride in the fact that the Cobaltville Archives contained a
greater volume of predark artifacts than any other ville in the network.
He entered the main work area, the chemically treated rainbow insignia on his
bodysuit allowing him to pass through the invisible photoelectric field without
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activating alarms. A long row of computer stations, half-enclosed by partitions,
all faced a long blank wall. Hidden behind the stone-and-steel-reinforced wall
was a bank of sophisticated mainframe computers, the heart and brains of the
division's database.
Around him the archivists hurried to their machines. There were fifty direct-
digital-control computer stations in the huge room, with sixty operators always
on duty. The ten extra archivists were kept as a reserve force in the event that
someone became too incapacitated or in Brigid Baptiste's case too arrested to
handle his or her keyboard.
The warning buzzer sounded, and the monitor screens lit up. The room filled
with the faint clatter of fingers on keys. Long rows of silent men and women
became automatons who served as the revisionists and editors of human history.
Lakesh scanned the faces of the archivists and wondered how many of them
wished they would drop down dead. It was impossible to tell from their facial
expressions somber and preoccupied, with perhaps a touch of cold intellectual
resolve. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]