Torchwood: Exodus Code

thought Juan, watching the Brazilians in his mirror. It’ll be his last.
    Juan shifted his gears, compensating for the surface changes of the now unpaved road and the gradual incline as the minibus climbed even higher above sea level. With these first few miles of the coastal road, he needed all his concentration. He’d shift his attentions to the real job at hand once he and his passengers were safely at the top.

7
    AIMING HER BINOCULARS out across the landing strip, Isela tracked a plane coming in low through the mountains. It was still a speck, shifting in and out between the snow-capped peaks. She turned her attention to the canyon road, watching for the minibus that would soon be visible on the horizon. Then, shifting herself out of the sun, she turned her binoculars to one of the guests at the hotel who had been reading in the shade of an umbrella at the café since early morning.
    According to one of the hotel’s sous chefs, the man had simply appeared the night before when the town was locked up tight against a raging Pacific storm. The weird thing was, the man hadn’t banged on any doors, hadn’t shouted for anyone to open up, had made no anxious cries for shelter. He’d simply pulled up his coat collar and huddled against the front gates of the hacienda, the lashing rain and buffeting winds pelting him for hours.
    According to her mother, this man was charismatic and charming and cursed – she could smell it on him. That morning at breakfast, after her father had excused himself to his study, her mother had insisted that the stranger smelled of death. Isela rolled her eyes as she remembered her mother’s admonition to stay away from him.
    ‘This stranger has the soul of
El Cóndor
, the ancient one fallen from the heavens, unable to return,’ said her mother in the tone of voice she reserved for North American tourists and Isela. Her mother lifted a pewter goblet to her full red lips. ‘
El Cóndor
carries darkness inside him. His burdens are pressing on his soul. You must stay away or the darkness will suffocate you.’
    ‘How do you know this?’ prodded Isela, well aware that this conversation was shifting into territory that forced her mother to remember her roots, to have to say out loud that she was also Cuari, like her mother and her mother before her, a line stretching back to the Sun King, one of the chosen tribe of women meant to protect the mountain. With three marriages, and a considerable amount of make-up, Isela’s mother had managed to conceal that part of her identity. Until recently when the first tremors began and the mountain got angry.
    ‘I am not stupid, Isela,’ said her mother. ‘I know how you think you can goad me so easily, but mind my words. One day, you’ll understand. Yes, I am a Cuari, and so, my love, are you. So beware.’
    Her mother lifted her goblet and moved to the tall arched window that looked out over the family’s private gardens. Gazing up at the mountain’s plateau, she shivered. Turning to face her daughter, she said, ‘I’d hoped the burden of the mountain would never be yours to endure, but I’m afraid it may be your destiny after all.’
    Directly beneath them a fountain bubbled, its water drawn from an underground spring that was part of an ancient aquifer that kept life in this high desert. Dotted around the hacienda were similar fountains, each one considered sacred, and, according to the stories reprinted in every brochure and website for the hotel, had been flowing continuously since the area was first populated in ancient times.
    Next to the Inca trails that began a few kilometres from the hotel and the nearby Nazca lines, the baths were a tourist draw. The water from the sacred valley was believed to have properties that made men swoon and women shiver; that made love sweeter and bodies more alluring.
    Now, crouching alone behind the tower wall, her binoculars resting on the crumbling surface, Isela finally spotted a cloud of dust on the far horizon.
    At last. The mark.
    The first bus of the day from Lima was coming off the highway and climbing up onto the canyon pass, and this one was bringing her ticket out of this stifling town.
    Picking up her automatic rifle, Isela checked the cartridge, sighting it into the shadows above the café.
    The
cóndor
was staring up at the tower. Isela ducked out of sight.
    ¡Que huevón!

Gaia

8
    Southern Coast of Peru, 1930
    GAIA’S SENSITIVITY TO the world outside the temple had been further