Kane sighed. “And Grant? He was with me in the slag-hole. Did he learn too much?”
“Not unless you got very careless.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good. Then Grant is safe, though it’s probably best to expedite his administrative transfer and get him out of the field.”
“I agree,” said Kane. “He knows me too well.”
Salvo smiled broadly. “True. Remember what I said about old loyalties. Now, let’s get you home so you can rest and come to terms with the new burdens you have accepted to carry.”
“It’s a heavy load,” replied Kane, matching Salvo’s smile. “But I look forward to the challenge. Sir.”
BRIGID WAS ESCORTED to C Level, down a series of twisting corridors and then into a large, featureless room. Several metal doors lined the walls on both sides. There, she was stripped of her bodysuit and underclothes and searched. She detached her awareness and endured the humiliation of rough hands pawing her, sliding down her body, cupping her breasts and probing every nook, cranny and orifice.
The cell into which they pushed her measured hardly six paces one way by five the other. There was not a stick of furniture in it to relieve the monotony of the smooth white rockcrete. A dim, wire-encased overhead light cast a pallid illumination.
As soon as the door banged shut behind her, Brigid’s submissive attitude vanished. She darted first to one wall and then to another, laying her hands against the cool walls. By touch, she located the miniature spy-eye lens hidden in a mortared seam, complete with a microscopic sound pickup.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, and the rockcrete beneath slowly warmed from her body heat. She regulated her breathing and closed her eyes, as if she were producing eidetic images. Though it required a great deal of mental effort, she refused to think about Kane. She lost herself in the recesses of her mind, studying, examining and weighing everything she had learned in the Dulce file.
Several hours must have passed when she heard the harsh click-clack of the locking mechanism on the door. She repressed a smile. The Mags watching her at the other end of the visual-audio hookup must have grown concerned over her immobility.
The door opened, and Salvo stepped through and shut it behind him. He looked down at her. “We cannot be heard or observed now, so you can drop your act.”
Sighing in relief, Brigid stood up, stretching her arms and rubbing her legs to restore circulation. She didn’t attempt to conceal her nudity. There seemed little point in it.
Salvo watched her in admiration. “How could you sit like that for so long?”
“Elementary yoga. How long was it?”
“Six hours, I’m told. It’s daybreak. Probably the last time the sun will ever rise on you.”
“Since I can’t see it, it hardly matters, does it?”
Salvo smiled thinly. “You lead rather a double life, don’t you? A key-tapping archivist by day, an insurgent by night. Who are the Preservationists?”
Brigid cocked her head at a quizzical angle. “The who?”
Salvo chuckled. “We’ve known about them for quite some time. Decades. You do know you’re officially charged with sedition?”
Brigid’s bare shoulders moved in a shrug. “I have my defense ready.”
“It will avail you nothing. When treason is the charge, the baron himself acts as the judge and jury, and the trials are conducted in secret.”
“And the verdict is already in,” she said dryly.
“Of course. However, you may receive a modicum of leniency if you tell me what you know about the Preservationists.”
“I know nothing. I’m a historian.”
Salvo’s sallow face twisted in a smirk. “And therefore the perfect tool.”
“You seem to know more about them than I do.”
He laughed sharply. “The Preservationists represent an underground-resistance movement They follow an idealistic principle of someday freeing humanity from the heel of the barons by forcing the ‘truth’ down their throats.”
He paused to shake his head. “If it were not for the laws of the barons, as manifested in the villes, we would still be barbarians, trying to reconstruct all the horrors of the pre-dark that led to the nukecaust.”
“Or,” said Brigid, “we would have learned our lesson and built toward a Utopia.”