In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker Read Free Book Online

all the Sin is burned out of you. But if you’ve been bad, you go to Hell. You know what Hell is now, you’ve seen it. And it’s so hard not to be bad.
    “Now, there’s a reason for my telling you this. I don’t like to frighten little girls, I’m not like Fray Valdeolitas. But I had to show you what it is to be a mortal, to be trapped in the round of time. And you don’t have to be trapped there, Mendoza. There is a way out, for you.”
    I lifted my face and stared at him to see if he was lying. But he wasn’t smiling at all. “I would like to find the way out,” I said, conscious for the first time of what Understatement was.
    “Who wouldn’t?” He sat me up on the table and arranged the blanket around my shoulders. “But you’re one of the lucky ones. I’ll tell you a secret, little Mendoza. I’m not really an Inquisidor. I’m a kind of spy. I go into the dungeons of the Inquisition and I rescue little children like you. Not just any little children; if they’re stupid, or if their heads are the wrong shape, or if there’s anything wrong with their bodies, then I can’t save them. But the other ones I save, and I send them to my master, who is a very powerful magician …”
    “Magician?”
    “All right, so he’s not a magician, he’s a doctor. Such a learned doctor, he can cure you of old age and death. Mind you, you will grow up. You won’t stay a little child forever.”
    I nodded and wiped my nose. This was all right with me; I had no desire to stay small. Children lead a miserable life. “What do I have to do, señor?”
    His eyes warmed. “You’ll work for the doctor. It’s the best work in the world, Mendoza: you’ll be saving things and people from time, just like me. What do you say?”
    I swung my legs over the edge of the table and attempted to get down. “Get me out of here and I’m all for this doctor, señor.”
    He laughed and called in a guard. I looked at the guard fearfully, but the Biscayan said:
    “This little girl unfortunately died under questioning. It will be some time before her body is discovered.” The guard just nodded. The Biscayan sat down and filled out a kind of tag, which he fastened to my blanket, and he stamped my hand with a device in red ink. “It was nice meeting you, Mendoza,” he said. “Now, go with this man and he’ll take you to my doctor friend. See you in twenty years, eh?”
    “Come on.” The guard nodded to me. We went into a tiny room that jerked and shuddered and dropped. Then a door opened on a corridor that seemed to stretch away for miles. For all I know, it did. The guard was carrying me by the time we got to the other end; we came out into a great cavern, big as a ballroom, the ceiling vast and distant.
    How to turn my eyes back to the eyes of that little primitive and tell the thing I saw? A silver cannon. A gleaming fish. A tin bottle that somehow had rooms and windows in it, studded with rubies that blinked steadily.
    Oh, I stared. There were people walking around in silver clothes, too. Over in a corner was some furniture: big, thickly cushioned chairs and a table. Huddled around it were three tiny children like me: blankets, tags, no hair. There were toys scattered on the table, but the little kids weren’t playing with them. They clung to each other, silent and owl-eyed. Two of them had been crying. With them sat a lady as beautiful as an Infanta is supposed to be. She was watching them glumly.
    My guard led me to them. Turning to us, the lady switched on a bright smile and stood. “Here’s the other one,” growled my guard.
    “Welcome, little—” She tilted her head to read my tag. “Mendoza!” she exclaimed in peculiarly accented Spanish. “Are you ready to come meet some new friends and take a lovely trip?”
    “Maybe.” I stared up at her. “Where am I going?”
    “Terra Australis.” Flash, flash went her smile. “You’ll like it there. It’s lots of fun. Would you like to come sit with the other