Free Sky Coyote by Kage Baker Page A

I thrust out a hand. “Facilitator Grade One Joseph reporting to AltaCal Base.”
    “Good.” The welcomer smiled, took and dropped my hand. “And Botanist Grade Six Mendoza?”
    “Reporting.”
    “Good. This way.” We followed him to our shuttle, which was a rickety car set to run on a wooden track held above the earth on cement piers. It looked like a roller coaster. It drove like one, too.
    The wind would have torn our voices away if we’d tried to speak out loud, but the man made no subvocal communication attempts either. Nothing like
So this is your first time in California?
or
Wait’ll you folks taste the abalone chowder we fix around here
. He might as well have been a mortal. Mendoza just stared off inland; God knows what she was thinking. I watched the blue Pacific glitter in the sun. It certainly was blue, I gave it that.
    We rattled away north to a beach at the mouth of a canyon. The main base was here, a plain modular station backed up on its piers into the cliff at the south side of the cove; the kind of place that could be removed later, and a judiciously engineered rock slide or two would hide any evidence it had ever been there. It was painted for camouflage, but otherwise featureless. Like the personnel. Everyone I saw was wearing Company base issue, which is blank utility clothing with a lot of pockets and no style. Houbert would have been appalled. Men and women alike worethe same one-piece garment. No lace, no padding, no embroidery. I’d worn it myself once or twice, back in prehistory, but I could see Mendoza staring at it aghast.
    Or maybe she was looking aghast at the mortals, of which there were a surprising number among the base personnel. Not natives that had been fixed for maintenance labor like the Mayans, either, but actual officers. Kids from the future. It must have cost the Company a fortune to ship them all here.
    Aren’t those
—she subbed at me, and I replied,
That’s right
.
    Our little thrill ride took us right up under the base, where at last the roar of the wind was shut out. Our driver popped the door open for us, and I ventured, “Lotta youngsters here, aren’t there?”
    “Yep.”
    “Real windy place, too.”
    “Sure is.”
    “I was expecting something a little more temperate.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Say, you don’t talk much, do you?”
    “I’m busy.” The guy half-turned. “Mr. Bugleg asked that you report to his office immediately upon arrival. Go up those stairs, and the admitting desk will direct you.”
    I figured it out at last. He was an immortal like we were, all right, but a recent recruit: probably born in the twenty-third century. So that’s what they looked like in the future? Was
he
ever caught between two worlds.
    We clambered up the steps with our luggage, and Mendoza growled, “Always the same damn story. I’ve never in my life seen an escalator in one of these places.” She grabbed up her train with one hand and hoisted her suitcase in the other. I pushed my tricorne to the back of my head and followed.
    At the top of the stairs we were met by a smiling mortalwoman with a clipboard. She might have been good-looking in a silk mantle, with maybe a little lace apron. She wore the sexless coveralls, though, like everybody else we’d met so far.
    “Um, welcome to AltaCal Base Eight. You must be Facilitator Joseph, and you must be Botanist Mendoza, am I right? Hello and welcome—”
    “Yeah. Hi,” replied Mendoza. “Look, that driver told us we’ve got to report directly to a meeting. Was he kidding? Don’t we get to see our quarters first, wash up a little? That’s pretty inconsiderate, don’t you think?”
    “Oh, Mr. Bugleg wants to see you right away. It’s very important.” Rapidly the girl clipped little ID tags to us and our luggage. Her own tag read STACEY . I guessed she’d seen a few of us in her brief lifetime, but not enough to be cool about it. She was radiating discomfort. A little fear, a little more repugnance. I could