Garden of Time

by eden Hudson

  Carina closed her eyes as if she were rerunning the scene.

  “Hat?” she asked, reopening them and looking at me. “Sat by the windows?”

  I nodded. “Iceni claims somebody hired him to tail me.”

  “He didn’t look like any of the public investigators I know,” Carina said. “But I guess he could’ve registered recently. I haven’t spent much time at the Enforcers’ HQ over the last couple years.”

  “Or he could be from out of town,” I suggested, thinking of the International Look Out order that Soami jungle baron had put on me.

  “Could be,” Carina said, leaning forward to get another slice of pizza. After she’d closed the hotbox, she leaned back in her chair. We ate for a while in silence.

  I expected her to press the subject of either why a PI from out of town might be tailing me or who this mysterious “she” who warned me about him was, but when Carina spoke up again, she was looking out across the lake toward the hulking black shape on the eastern shore.

  “The visibility’s terrible tonight,” she said. “Is that a high-rise over there?”

  I grinned. Here was a subject we could both enjoy.

  “You bet your life sentence it is.” I grabbed another slice of pizza, then reclosed the box so it wouldn’t get cold. “That is none other than Emden’s very own Ultra Security Prison, the Hotel.”

  I watched her as I said it. Her brows furrowed slightly, and the line of her lips hardened just enough to perceive.

  “I knew it was up here somewhere, but…” She looked over at me. “And you say the Mimic just gave you this lake house?”

  I nodded. “Payment for a job extremely well done.”

  “The one where you stole Crangel’s sledgehammer,” she guessed.

  “The very same.” I waved my pizza at the telescope pressed up against the screen. “Of course, somebody surpassingly handsome and charming might’ve dropped the hint that the only payment he really wanted was a room with a view of the scene of his most daring escape to date.”

  “And the prison his father died in,” Carina said.

  I grinned. “On a clear day, you can see right into his cell. Forty-third floor, eighth to the right.” I caught a piece of bacon as it tumbled off my pizza and popped it into my mouth. “After the twelfth floor up, the place doesn’t even have exterior walls—the First Earth contractors never got them built before the end came. He could’ve jumped any time he wanted, but he stayed in there until he shriveled up and died of old age and bad weather. Arrogant bastard probably thought he’d eventually be able to talk his way out. Of course, other prisoners have moved in and out since. Big, stitch-headed guy was the current owner the last I time I was here. Seemed to really enjoy rape-abalism.”

  “I don’t want to know.” She held up a palm as if that could stop me.

  “It’s when you bite off and eat pieces of the person you’re raping. Stitch-Head seemed partial to faces and fingers.”

  Carina grimaced.

  I giggled and nudged the telescope stand with the toe of my sneak. “You know you’re dying to look. It’s got infrared—the toggle on the side. Go ahead. See if Stitchy’s still there.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve seen enough hellholes to last me a lifetime.”

  “You say hellhole, I say just desserts.” I took a big swig of my water.

  “You do realize that if the Guild could prove even half of the things you’ve stolen, they would throw you in the Hotel and tell Crangel to go nuts, don’t you?” Carina said. “The head of the Taern Enforcers mentioned it to me when I made it back from Soam.”

  For maximum effect, I geysered the water in my mouth at the balcony’s screen before I started laughing.

  “What about that is funny to you?” Carina snapped, sitting up straighter.

  I wiped fictional tears of hilarity from my eyes. “I’ve already broken into and back out of the Hotel once. There’s no way they could keep me there.”

  “They wanted me to testify that you attempted to murder me by pushing me out of that chopper, Van Zandt. To say it was proof that you’re as bad as your father.”

  “But you refused to implicate me in any wrongdoing,” I said, shooting her a wink and a finger gun. I’d picked up that little tidbit on my most recent visit to the Guild, courtesy of the War Angel.

  That shut Carina up. She shrugged and fell back in her seat a touch harder than I associated with her usual graceful movements. She was nearly done with that third beer.

  I read the label on the bottle closest to me.

  “Skull Cap has a higher alcohol content than most beers,” I said. “Eleven point nine percent.”

  “Is that relevant to how hilarious you find it that the Guild wants you punished to the fullest extent of their abilities, or are we back on your hang-ups with alcohol?” she asked. Then she pointed the mouth of her bottle at me. “Or are you letting me know that you intentionally chose Skull Cap with an ulterior motive in mind?”

  I made a long, loud fart sound with my mouth. “I don’t want or need booze’s help getting a woman in bed. Especially not when she loves me so much that she would die before letting the Guild put me in the Hotel.”

  Carina smirked. “So, you’re saying you have been thinking about getting me into bed.”

  “I’m saying one of us is trying to drink up her courage awfully hard tonight. Did you even let Nickie-boy know where you were going? Did you tell him that it’s just me and you again, like the old days?”

  “I definitely remember telling you that Nick and I aren’t talking at the moment,” she said. “Somehow I doubt you’d forget something like that. Why are you so intent on bringing Nick up every chance you get?”

  “Just making sure you can’t claim you were so drunk that you forgot him when you tried to make a move on me,” I said. “I don’t want you to have any excuses later. Additionally, I like that little line between your eyebrows.” I pointed. “That one. You get it whenever I bring up how badly you’d like to cheat on your fiancé with me. If you even consider him your fiancé anymore, what with all the not-talking you guys are doing lately. What happened?”

  The furrow between her brows deepened for a second. Then she shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Excitement prickled down the back of my neck like a low electric current. It was that almost-soft voice, the sound of an invisible tear rolling down her acid scars, the barest whisper of pain.

  “And he won’t tell you,” I said as if I were guessing.

  She nodded, a single slow dip of her chin.

  I exhaled loudly and shook my head as if I were seriously trying to figure it out. “He’s probably just sick of trying not to vomit every time he sees your face.”

  “That joke gets funnier every time you tell it,” she said, her voice flat. Then suddenly she sat up, raising her hands as if she’d just realized something. “Oh, right, you’ll handle the sarcasm around here.”

  “Shut up, you’re drunk.”

  “I know you don’t have much experience with alcohol, Van Zandt, so I’ll let you in on a little secret: people don’t get drunk off three beers unless somebody drugs them.”

  “I wouldn’t bother drugging you, Carina,” I sneered. “All you do is throw hissy fits and cry into your beer about a retard who probably just wanted somebody who wouldn’t jerk him around by the dick with her I’m like you and we are in agreement act.”

  “I never handled Nick. Not once.”

  “Right, just like you never handled me,” I said. “You’re probably doing it right now. Nick and you aren’t even on the rocks, are you? What’d you tell him, that you’re off on assignment for the Guild?”

  Carina held my gaze as if she were trying to memorize every shade, tone, and line in my glorious chocolate irises. Her eyes danced with the firelight, but I caught a glimpse of glacial swamp ice in them.

  “I’ve never lied to you,” she said, her voice cold and dead. “And I would never, ever lie to Nick.”
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  “Maybe not, but have you ever once told the truth to anybody? I bet that’s the real reason Nickie-boy left. Even a retard can sense when the only thing he’s getting is a smokescreen.”

  Carina stood up and jerked open the sliding door to the house. On her way in, she tossed her empty beer bottle over her shoulder. It did a flip, hit the rockcrete of the balcony floor, and shattered.

  “It’s okay, you’ll clean that up tomorrow!” I called after her.

  I relaxed back in my chair and put my sneaks up on the ledge of the fire pit.

  Inside, a door shut. She hadn’t slammed it.

  Did she close it at a normal volume because she was just putting on a show, pretending to be angrier with me than she was? She wouldn’t have forgotten a simple aural cue like slamming the door. Unless she was too drunk to fully commit to the act. Maybe she was genuinely angry, but still respected my property enough not to risk damaging it. Or maybe she realized that it’s the little inconsistencies that make reality maddening and purposely kept from slamming the door to make it impossible for me to draw a conclusion.

  Were we back to playing mind games? We’d had a whole day with no pretenses or defenses. Were we supposed to go back to prowling around each other, just close enough to see the danger, but just far enough away not to give away our intentions?

  I didn’t want to play anymore. I’d brought her to my lake house, for crying out loud. I kicked the hotbox of pizza into the fire pit. Then I wished I hadn’t. Black pepper and bacon would’ve been just what I needed to fill that hollow feeling in my gut.

  The light from the hotbox flaring up illuminated the remaining Skull Caps, sitting by Carina’s chair.

  I stood up and kicked the cardboard pack as hard as I could. The bottles ricocheted off the screen and smashed to the rockcrete, spraying and spewing beer foam all over the floor.

  “Great!” I stalked into my bedroom and slammed the sliding door behind me. “Now my whole fucking house stinks like your booze!”

  Carina didn’t yell back, but I heard the bed shift in the spare bedroom closest to mine as if she had just lain down, so I know she heard me.

  Ignoring me is never a good idea.

  I pursued the deafening silence to her bedroom. The door was shut.

  I kicked it. “I hope you’re happy! I’ll just be dying of PCM in my beer-soaked bedroom while you sleep it off in cozy comfort! Your dad probably didn’t commit suicide because of that brujah broad he was screwing, he probably did it because he couldn’t face what a boozehound his daughter was, trying to get drunk enough to put the moves on the guy she wishes she was with instead of her fiancé!”

  Still nothing. Under the door, I saw the ambient light from her wristpiece screen click on.

  I went back to my room, shut the door, and reached for my wristpiece. I opened the SilverPlatter app and checked the real-time display of what Carina was doing. She had her messages open and was scrolling through old threads from Nickie-boy.

  The muscles in my face spasmed, half attempting to grin, half pulling toward a snarl. I giggled. She missed him.

  She missed him, but not enough to leave me, not even for one night.

  ***

  Around four a.m., I found what I was looking for in my library of ancient texts—

  sacred to the native peoples, who called the cave the “Garden of Many Summers,” a possible reference to the slow growth and change of the formations. Their legends told of children who went missing in the cave only to reappear years later the same age, or warriors who returned from the cave with extraordinary new abilities. Even now, in this Age of Information, few and far between are the locals who don’t have fantastical anecdotes of their experiences with Time Garden Caverns. Many of these anecdotes mimic the central structure of native legend, telling of altered experiences of time. University speleologists have undertaken a geochemical and hydrogeological study of the cave, but to date have been unable to find any evidence to support

  I sat up, kicking a pillow off the bed, and scrolled back through the text until I found where the discussion of Time Garden Caverns began. Stories of temporal disturbances and inconsistencies, of people who, after leaving the cave, were able to appear and disappear at will or cover incredible distances in no time at all…

  I stopped the ancient text crawler from its original search for “Garden of Time” and started two new searches: “Time Garden Caverns” and “Garden of Many Summers.” The hits started pouring in immediately.

  built on the entrance to the Garden of Many Summers, the town thrived for twenty-nine years before being wiped out, literally overnight. The local Shawnee were blamed for the massacre, and the Army

  Time Garden Caverns, located in the beautiful heart of the Ozarks, is a spelunking adventure for the whole family! See beautiful formations such as the Seraph, the Flowstone Tower,

  disappearances linked to Time Garden Caverns, that of Billy Crane (9) and Dano Sutherland (11), gained further intrigue when DNA testing revealed that the young John Doe claiming to be Billy Crane was in fact a perfect mitochondrial match to the only surviving Crane, Billy’s sister Laura. Sixty-eight years had passed since the boys were reported missing

  yet another gruesome mass slaughter on the same site as the Garden of Many Summers Massacre, more than two hundred years later

  The more I read, the harder it became to sit still. I got up and paced. This was it. This was the Garden of Time, I was sure of it.

  FOUR:

  Nick

  Nick stuck one boot on the snout of the fallen leviathan for leverage and jerked the longsword out of the creature’s orbital socket with a wet, grating squelch. Purple electricity crackled along the curved blade, frying blood, eyeball juice, and brain matter to its surface. Nick’s chest heaved as he sucked wind, trying to catch his breath. His head rang from the last wicked blow that monster had gotten in.

  Damn, but that thing was big. Even sprawled out dead, half-submerged in the dirty slough water. Twenty feet at the shoulder, hundred and ten from nose to tail, and thirteen tons if it was a pound.

  A piercing wolf-whistle and the clapping of enthusiastic single-spectator applause cut through the ringing in Nick’s head.

  The witch had spent the entire battle perched up in a rotting cottonwood, cheering, clapping, and whistling.

  Re Suli hopped down with a splash and held out a pale hand, palm up. “All righty, hand it over, Nicolai Éloy Beausoleil.”

  That sick feeling of compulsion poured through Nick like sewage, draining away everything but the earnest desire to follow the witch’s order.

  Nick thumbed the current-lock he’d fitted the sword with to OFF, then jumped down from the beast’s corpse and waded over to her, stumbling a little in his rush. He didn’t want to spend any longer under the compulsion than necessary. It made him sick—not physically, but mentally. Until the order was fulfilled, the need to accomplish it was beyond obsession. He couldn’t think about anything that didn’t directly relate to the task. And then to have the relief of carrying out the order flood him… He didn’t want to think what sort of damage the soul jar’s demand/reward system was doing to his brain chemistry.

  Nick flipped the curved blade around and held the hilt out to the witch.

  As soon as Re Suli took the sword from him, the compulsion lifted. Even with an order that small, the wave of relief was so intense that Nick’s eyes shut as it washed over him.

  The witch flipped the sword’s current-lock back on. The surge of bright purple electricity brought a spark of unadulterated glee to her blue eyes.

  She gave the sword a twirl. “Now that’s a sword to win a war with. Grandpappy would be tickled to death. Good work, sugar.”

  Nick crossed his arms, but kept his mouth shut. He was just glad that rigged-up current generator he’d cobbled together hadn’t crapped out on him in the middle of that leviathan’s first death roll.

  Re Suli shut off the current and slipped the sword back into its rotten scabbard, hangin
g from the piece of twine she’d strung through her belt loops. She sloshed through the water to the leviathan’s closest leg.

  “Yep,” she said as she inspected it. “That’s downright beautiful. Shouldn’t need more’n eight or ten a these bad boys, I’d say.”

  Nick listened without really listening. Now that the compulsion was gone, and he could think about something besides killing that monster, he was wondering what the odds were that he could talk that little kid, Het, into retrieving his wristpiece from the river. Probably not great. Nick wasn’t good with people. Machines he could understand. With a machine, you fitted the parts together, programmed it to do something, and then it did that thing. Simple. Logical. Elegant. People weren’t anything like machines. That backstabbing breaker, for perfect example—Nick had hired the guy to help steal back his soul jar, but the asshole had ended up selling it to a witch instead.

  Nick flexed his fist, barbwire tines stabbing into his wrist and bringing his focus back to solutions. For all that he teased his fiancée, Carina really was good with people. She could even get that breaker to listen now and then. Getting a little kid to help her out would’ve been nothing to her. How would she talk Het into retrieving the wristpiece?

  “Let’s us get down to business,” the witch said, cocking her body and hooking her thumb at the dead leviathan. “Nicolai Éloy Beausoleil, I want you to figure what it would take to fit this thang with some a them fancy doodads. What’d’ya call ’em? Cyborgcromantics?”

  FIVE:

  Jubal

  When I finished researching, calculating, and plotting coordinates, the gray light of dawn was just beginning to stand out behind the dark hulk of the Hotel Ultra Security Prison across the lake. I’d been too busy reading to undress the night before, so I didn’t have to waste any time putting on pants before I threw open my bedroom door and ran out.

  “Carina!”

  Due to the alcohol she had consumed and the number of days’ sleep she’d lost playing Tsunami Tsity, I assumed Carina would want to sleep in. That’s why I was yelling.