In the Garden of Iden: The First Company Novel (The Company, 1)

This is the first novel in what has become one of the most popular series in contemporary SF, now back in print from Tor. In the 24th century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life (for profit of course). It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company, Dr. Zeus. One of these is Mendoza the botanist. She is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden. But while there, she meets Nicholas Harpole, with whom she falls in love. And that love sounds great bells of change that will echo down the centuries, and through the succeeding novels of The Company. Poor Mendoza. She's not thrilled about being sent to Renaissance England. It's a cold, backward, unsafe country. Gray curtains of rain. The food crawling with bacteria. No flush toilets. She won't get to see Shakespeare either. He hasn't been born yet. The English hate the Spanish like smallpox, especially now with bulldog-faced Mary on the throne. But Mendoza is no longer a frightened little girl in the dungeons of the Inquisition; she's a Company-trained botanist and has an assignment - to save Ilex tormentosum, a species of holly that will go extinct in a hundred years. She must save it for Dr. Z and the twenty-fourth century. Kage Baker, in her first novel, tells the story of a spunky young cyborg who, though an immortal operative, falls for Master Nicholas Harpole, a mortal with pale blue eyes, good legs, and a smooth, rich tenor that hangs on the air like a violin. IN THE GARDEN OF IDEN: A NOVEL OF THE COMPANY......Page 2 CHAPTER ONE......Page 5 CHAPTER TWO......Page 13 CHAPTER THREE......Page 24 CHAPTER FOUR......Page 46 CHAPTER FIVE......Page 49 CHAPTER SIX......Page 57 CHAPTER SEVEN......Page 67 CHAPTER EIGHT......Page 88 CHAPTER NINE......Page 98 CHAPTER TEN......Page 111 CHAPTER ELEVEN......Page 118 CHAPTER TWELVE......Page 134 CHAPTER THIRTEEN......Page 157 CHAPTER FOURTEEN......Page 168 CHAPTER FIFTEEN......Page 180 CHAPTER SIXTEEN......Page 202 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN......Page 217 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN......Page 241 CHAPTER NINETEEN......Page 249 CHAPTER TWENTY......Page 264 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE......Page 275 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO......Page 295 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE......Page 305 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR......Page 325