Free In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker Page A

coveralls ran around with service hoses. There was no evidence there that time had passed: nothing had changed but me. Now I, too, was beyond change.
    I dropped my luggage on a settle and collapsed beside it, pushing my hat to the back of my head so the long comb wouldn’t bore into my skull. I leaned back carefully. I was frightened.
    This was sunny Spain, land of my birth. A concrete floor, stretching to the other side of the cavern. Three green couches set around a coffee table. A row of beverage-dispensing machines. I thought longingly of coffee and wondered why there were no cups on the stand. Then blared a voice from the steel box directly over my head.
    “Botanist Mendoza, please report to the arrivals desk.”
    I blundered to my feet and looked around. Not ten feet away, the clerk was putting down her microphone, looking straight at me. I glared at her and dragged my suitcase over.
    “Reporting.”
    “Please sign in. Your transport shuttle has arrived.”
    I signed in. I put down the stylus and looked at her. She was buffing her nails. After a moment she glanced at me, as if surprised to see me there, and said:
    “Up those stairs.”
    I looked around. The stairs were steep, narrow, concrete, and rose into darkness. There was no hand rail. Cursing, I hitched up my skirts and struggled upward. The first few steps were littered with the debris of any transit area: snack wrappers, crushed paper cups. The treads had been painted green once. Traffic had worn a path through the paint, polished the cement to a greasy luster. Cement is one of the few things that look worse polished.
    The light at the top of the stairs was out. I found the VIA panel by groping and flattened my palm against it for identification, hoping the panel wasn’t broken too. It whirred and clicked, but no door appeared. I turned to shout down that chimney of a stairwell but heard a gentle whoosh. The door swung open behind me. I stepped through.
    I was standing on a rock terrace on a mountainside. Big tumbled boulders and cliffs of red stone sat there in utter silence. It was seven o’clock on a warm summer evening, and the sun was low in the sky. Air warm and heavy as milk, but clear: I could see range upon range of mountains stretching out before me to the horizon. Where the late sun slanted on them, they were red and gold. Where it did not, they were violet. A few stark trees, pines mostly, were aromatic in that calm air. I was shaking badly. It wasn’t supposed to be beautiful.
    When I got my nerves together, I picked my way down from there. On a curve of road below me waited a coach. There were two horses standing patiently in harness. There was a small man talking to the horses.
    He was the first mortal I’d seen in years. My transport shuttle had a mortal driver. I would have to put my life in mortal hands. He looked up and saw me. His eyes widened.
    “Señorita!” He swept down low in a bow. “A thousand apologies! You are Doña Rosa Anzolabejar, whom I have been sent to meet?” That was my cover name. How nice that my one travel outfit was elegantly cut.
    “I am even she,” I said in my snootiest Castilian, starting down the hill. “Pray fetch my luggage, if you will be so kind.”
    “Immediately, señorita.”
    While he bustled after my suitcase, I hastily scanned the coach. Mid-sixteenth-century model, built like a Conestoga wagon without appreciable springs. No structural defects, though, no weaknesses or excessive wear in the wheels. I scanned the horses: all eight shoes on tight, no flaws in the harness, placid healthy animals unlikely to bolt or fall over dead. Carefully the mortal brought my belongings down. He opened the wagon door and bowed again, extending a hand to help me in.
    “Allow me, señorita.”
    I took his hand gingerly. He was young, there were no traces of alcohol or toxic chemicals in his sweat, his vision was normal, heartbeat and pulse rate normal, muscular coordination above average. He did have an