Her body was slender but rounded, long in the leg, the breasts full yet taut, her belly hard and flat above a soft, honey blond triangle at the juncture of her thighs.
The woman put her back to the wall of the little cubicle and stared at him unblinkingly.
Kane could think of only one thing to say, so he asked, “Are you Baptist?”
Some of the terror dimmed in the woman’s eyes. “Are you asking my name or my religion?” Her voice was melodically husky.
Kane swallowed the hard lump that swelled in his throat, and he felt a sudden sharp sense of embarrassment. “What?”
“The way things are,” the woman continued, her tone growing more confident with every word, “I presume you’re asking my name. It’s pronounced Bap -teest . Brigid Baptiste. Why didn’t you knock?”
“I’m Magistrate Kane”
“And Magistrate Kane doesn’t have to knock?”
Embarrassment slowly gave way to ego-induced irritation. “That’s right, Baptiste. Magistrate Kane doesn’t have to knock.”
The woman squinted at him carefully over the rims of her glasses. She seemed infuriatingly at ease with her nudity. Her nose wrinkled slightly.
“Magistrate Kane doesn’t have to be sober, either. Right?”
The absurdity of the situation finally penetrated Kane’s befogged mind, and he surprised the woman and himself. He laughed.
“Magistrates do have to be sober,” he said, “and archivists do have to wear clothes. At least when they’re on duty.”
A bit of the tense wariness left Brigid Baptiste’s posture. “This isn’t an official visit?”
“No,” Kane answered. “Yes. Hell, I don’t know. Why don’t you put something on? I’m distracted enough as it is.”
Brigid obligingly turned her back and took a robe hanging from a clothes hook on the wall of her improvised office. Kane watched her slip it on and tie the sash, aware of a strange yearning growing within him. It wasn’t lust. It felt like melancholy, as if he had glimpsed something wonderful he’d never see again. He knew Brigid Baptiste was afraid of him, but she controlled it admirably. No, correctionshe wasn’t afraid of him as a person, but of the office he represented. He experienced a flash of irrational resentment and anger at his Magistrate persona.
Brigid stepped in front of the desktop console, as if trying to shield it from his view. Calmly she said, “If this isn’t an official visit, you should have knocked or trans-commed me.”
He waved away her comment. “We’re beyond my bad manners, Baptiste. However, if it will make you feel better, I’ll apologize.” He paused, then added, “I am sorry.”
A faint smile touched her full lips. Kane thought, she never expected to hear a Magistrate apologize about anything. For that matter, I never expected it, either.
“What can I do for you?” she asked crisply, sitting down before the computer console.
Kane had almost forgotten the disk in his pocket. Making a wordless utterance of self-annoyance, he fished it out of his coat pocket and extended the gleaming circle toward her. She didn’t take it. Instead, she eyed it as though he were trying to hand her a venomous snake.
“What is it?”
“A CD-ROM,” he answered. “I want you to try to open the encryption lock so I can read it. I see you have a computer here.”
“Why me?” she asked suspiciously. “Your Intel section has comps, doesn’t it?”
“Humor me, Baptiste.”
She didn’t move. “Is this some kind of a trap, to get my prints on that so you can charge me with a crime?”
Kane smiled ruefully. “If I wanted to charge you with a crime, I don’t need to go to all this trouble.”
She returned the smile, though wanly, and took the disk from his outstretched hand. As she slid it into the port, Kane commented, “An old manual DDC model. Thought most of them had been retired.”
“Yes,” she stated matter-of-factly as she worked the keyboard. “Found it in a trash hatch. The housing is somewhat batteredsee the fine cracks on the left of the screen? But that’s just a small external flaw. I reconditioned it, but it’s not tied into a data feed from the mainframes, of course.”
“Of course.” Kane realized he should have lectured her about appropriating division property, even that slated for disposal, but it didn’t seem pertinent. He knew that some archivists were permitted to bend the rules, just like some Magistrates.