The Lord of Opium

by Nancy Farmer

  Matt had seen enough. No way was he going to open the border for a shipment to Dabengwa. He reached for the off button.

  “Hey! You can’t go! We need our opium!” cried Happy Man Hikwa, but by that time the holoport had closed.

  Matt sat, shaken by what he’d seen. He knew things were bad in the old Dope Confederacy, but this mindless destruction was worse than anything he’d imagined. He accessed addresses in Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. In each one a window showed a scene of devastation. What kind of country was Glass Eye building? He and his men acted like a swarm of locusts Matt had seen on an old TV show. Eat one field, move on to the next. You needed infinite fields to keep an army like that going.

  Matt found a few portals in rural areas where marijuana and tobacco were grown. The crops had withered, and the bodies of eejits filled dry canals.

  He was too exhausted to look anymore. Even though the holoport had adjusted to his slightly different handprint, the scanner still made him nauseated. He went to El Patrón’s apartment and lay down. The windows opened onto green lawns, and the odors of flowers and cut grass drifted in. The sound of eejits using scissors to trim the lawns soothed him. El Patrón’s empire was evil, all right, but it was still alive.

  Soon, Matt promised himself, he would rip out the opium and plant different crops. Cattle would be turned onto healthy fields of grass. When the eejits were free, he would offer them jobs as normal farmers, or they’d go back to whatever lives they’d had before. It would be their choice. Far fewer were dying now that Matt had added meat and vegetables to their diet.

  His days were packed with work—learning to ride Real Horses, flying a hovercraft, and even driving Hitler’s old car with Daft Donald at his side. The seat was pushed forward so he could reach the pedals, and he enjoyed the cheers from the gardeners and Farm Patrol. “¡Viva El Patrón!” they shouted, as though the old man had been reborn. Sometimes Matt had the creepy feeling that El Patrón was actually sitting in the backseat, admiring his kingdom from the dark halls of the dead. This is the most excitement I’ve had in years, the old man said, grinning with delight. Matt shivered. He knew the backseat was empty, but he didn’t turn around to look.

  Best of all was planning the party. It would be the greatest celebration ever seen in Opium. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito were coming on the next train, and their eyes would drop out when they saw what Matt had arranged. They would have a circus, a professional soccer game, a rodeo, guitarists from Portugal, and food undreamed of by boys who had lived in a plankton factory. Ton-Ton had eaten ice cream only a few times in his life, and Fidelito had only seen pictures of it. So many wonderful experiences lay in store for Matt’s compadres. He had only to stretch out his hand, and whatever he wanted was his.

  Cienfuegos had been correct about Esperanza. She seemed to have forgotten about Major Beltrán’s existence and had little interest in anything besides the plant and animal samples. Matt managed one unsatisfactory meeting with María, with her mother present, and called the girl his novia openly. Esperanza only gave him a tight smile that reminded him of a sprung mousetrap.

  As for Cienfuegos, he was short-tempered for reasons Matt couldn’t discover. The man was never rude, and yet the boy sensed a gathering tension. It worried him, and finally he approached Celia about it.

  “He’s being foolish,” Celia said. “He knew what Dr. Rivas would do when the new staff arrived.”

  “Dr. Rivas was going to train them,” said Matt. “Is there something else I should know about?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Celia, putting down the soup ladle she was holding and wiping her hands on her apron. “New staff can’t just be turned loose in Opium.”

  “What are you talking about?” Matt had the queasy feeling that things had moved out of his control.

  “Remember what I said about the bodyguards and Farm Patrolmen being microchipped?”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t tell Dr. Rivas to alter their brains!” cried Matt in horror.

  “They’re violent men,” Celia said. “El Patrón said that chipping them was no different from a rancher turning bulls into steers. Left alone, bulls fight, and it’s dangerous for anyone around them. That’s why Major Beltrán had to die. He intended to kill you when he discovered you were the only Alacrán left. Cienfuegos understood.”

  “You knew about the murder! You were in favor of it!” Matt was astounded. This was the woman who had sung him lullabies when he was a small child, but who had also coldly watched El Patrón die.

  “I may be only a cook, but I’ve been close to the center of power for fifteen years,” said Celia. “You don’t rule a country by being weak. Thousands have died in Opium and will keep on dying if we don’t do something. The drug trade is too powerful to stop without shedding blood. God will forgive us our sins if we manage to stamp it out.”

  Matt sat down, feeling that the room had suddenly filled with shadows. El Patrón had shot down a passenger plane to avert a war. Esperanza felt righteous about killing the eejits in Cocaine. Dr. Rivas held poor Mbongeni hostage to fend off Glass Eye. Where did it all end? How much wickedness could you do in the service of good before it turned into pure evil?

  “Cienfuegos blames me for microchipping the new bodyguards,” said Matt.

  “He’s too personally involved,” Celia said.

  “What, exactly, is the effect of the process on him?” Matt asked.

  The woman frowned. “You know the chips keep him from harming you or leaving the country. They also forbid him to feel pity or love.”

  Matt thought about the jefe’s reaction to Listen’s tears. The man had clearly wanted to comfort the little girl, but he dared not do it. If he had touched her, what would have happened? Would he have doubled up in agony as he had when he attacked Matt?

  “Cienfuegos is a very unusual man,” concluded Celia after a moment’s thought. “He fought like a tiger when the Farm Patrol first caught him. Very strong-minded people have more resistance to the microchips.”

  Without being asked, she dished up a bowl of soup for Matt and set out bread still warm from the oven. The boy wished she would sit with him, but Celia no longer thought it was proper. He ate without much appetite. Cienfuegos did care about people, Matt thought. He liked Listen, pest though she was, and he was upset about the new bodyguards. It was there under the surface, and it was driving him mad.

  Matt finished his meal with dulce de leche ice cream covered in marshmallow sauce. How Fidelito would like that when he arrived! The thought cheered Matt up, and he made plans to find more things to delight the little boy.

  “By the way, you don’t have to keep paying the doctors and nurses those outrageous salaries,” said Celia, removing his dishes to the sink. “They’ve been microchipped too. You can’t have people who hold the power of life and death out of control either.”

  * * *

  Matt eagerly watched the train cross the border on the holoport screen. Workers unloaded suitcases and carried them to waiting hovercrafts. Wonderful, magical passengers disembarked and stretched their legs in the shimmering desert heat. First a group of musicians, five men and one woman, got out, carrying their instruments. They removed their coats and looked around to see what must have been a land of fables to them, a zombie kingdom ruled by an ancient vampire. They wouldn’t realize that the workers around them were zombies.

  Next came a group of cowboys for the rodeo—short, raw-boned men who seemed made of gristle and steel. Their leather jackets were scuffed from being thrown from horses. After the rodeo, Matt planned to stage a pachanga, a kind of bullfight where no animal got killed.

  The soccer players from Brazil and Argentina were taller than the cowboys and moved with easy grace like thoroughbred horses. Matt had never seen a soccer match, because El Patrón didn’t like sports. He said that only games with real risks were suitable for men.

  The sport he approved of was called pok-a-tok and had been played by the ancient Maya. It was somewhat similar to soccer. The
players used a hard rubber ball, which they weren’t allowed to touch with their hands, and scored points by knocking it through a stone ring. It was more like a religious ceremony than a game, El Patrón said, a symbolic battle between life and death. The winning team represented life, and the losers, who represented death, got their heads cut off.

  A troupe of tightrope walkers and trapeze artists hauled equipment out of the train. Long ago circuses had contained lions and tigers, but now those animals were extinct. Except here, Matt thought happily. Wrestlers followed, walking with a rolling gait as though they were already in the arena. They were dressed in Levi’s and T-shirts, but inside their suitcases were costumes that would transform them into creatures of fantasy.

  Matt watched anxiously as the performers were flown off to Ajo. He wasn’t going to let them anywhere near Dr. Rivas, and anyhow they were short-time visitors. Now the door of the last car opened and out tumbled Fidelito, pursued by Ton-Ton and Chacho. Matt could almost hear Ton-Ton shout, C-come back or I’ll beat the stuffing out of you! But he knew the big boy would never do it, and so did Fidelito. The little boy danced around, kicking up sprays of sand. Then a fourth person stepped out of the train.

  Sor Artemesia.

  Matt’s heart leapt to his throat. María was on the train! She had to be. Esperanza had relented at the last moment and decided that he was good enough for her daughter. Matt watched in a fever as the nun stepped down carefully and grimaced when her feet touched the hot sand. She gave a command, and Fidelito immediately stopped prancing and took her hand. Together they walked to the last remaining hovercraft.

  Workers swarmed over the train to remove cartons of supplies. María never appeared.

  28

  SOR ARTEMESIA

  Matt and Listen waited at the Ajo holoport to greet his friends. He saw the black craft grow from a distant speck to a sleek ship with a bulging, transparent top. As it settled down, he saw that the pilot was not one of the new pilots he’d hired, but Cienfuegos. Fidelito was bouncing up and down, trying to touch the ceiling, and the jefe pushed him into a seat.

  “Are those crots?” asked Listen.

  “They’re Real Children. Don’t use that word,” Matt said. “It’s extremely insulting.”

  “If they’re crots, they won’t be smart enough to care,” the little girl said reasonably.

  “Just stop swearing. It’s a bad habit.”

  The hovercraft set down, and the antigravity recharger snaked up and fastened onto the nose cone. The door opened. Fidelito attempted to jump out and was yanked back inside. “You turkey,” said Ton-Ton. “L-ladies go first.”

  Cienfuegos helped Sor Artemesia step down, and she looked around until she found Matt. “Please forgive me, mi patrón. Doña Esperanza sent me away because she says I’m a bad influence on María. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “You are most welcome here,” said the boy, and he meant it. The more he saw of the nun, the better he liked her. “María must be unhappy, though.”

  “She is. Doña Esperanza hardly ever pays attention to her.”

  By now Fidelito had wriggled free, and he ran straight to Matt. “You’re really here. You’re not a picture. Wow! What a great place! Is it all yours?”

  “Of c-course it is,” said Ton-Ton, catching up to him. “He’s the king.”

  Chacho came behind, somewhat hesitantly. His face was thinner, and he had dark circles under his eyes. “You really are a king. I bet movie stars don’t have as much as this.”

  “I was just lucky,” said Matt, embarrassed. “I’m the same kid you knew at the plankton factory.” But he could see that wealth made a difference. Both Ton-Ton and Chacho looked amazed by the huge gardens, the hacienda, the many other buildings, and in the distance, the swimming pool winking in the desert light.

  “Mi abuelita says that if you have food, water, and a roof over your head, you’re rich,” Fidelito said, quoting his beloved grandmother. “You don’t need a lot of stuff. After all, you can’t eat a hundred hamburgers or sleep in a hundred beds.”

  “That’s crap,” said Listen. “You can save the hamburgers for another day.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Listen, not that it’s any of your business.”

  Fidelito reached out and she slapped him. Hard. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Okay,” said the little boy, rubbing his face. He seemed hypnotized by her.

  “¡Que barbaridad! He was only trying to be friendly,” Sor Artemesia said.

  “Don’t want friends,” Listen said.

  “Whether you want them or not, there’s no excuse for being unkind.”

  Listen made a rude noise. “You aren’t the boss of me. I’m going to grow up to be beautiful and marry a drug lord.”

  “You’re already pretty,” said Fidelito. Ton-Ton and Chacho rolled their eyes.

  “Crot you!” swore Listen. That was too much for Sor Artemesia. She picked up the little girl in an expert hold and strode off.

  Cienfuegos laughed. “Sister Artemesia knows her way around here. I’ll bet she’s on her way to the kitchen to find a bar of soap. I’d better calm things down before they go too far.”

  He left, and the boys went up the marble steps of the hacienda. The trunks of orange trees on either side were painted white, and the dark-green leaves above were starred with creamy blossoms. An eejit was spraying them with water. More eejits dusted and polished furniture in the great entry hall. Like the field workers, they were dressed in drab brown uniforms, but they needed no hats because they worked indoors. “You sure have a lot of servants,” remarked Chacho. Matt realized that he hadn’t noticed the deadness in the workers’ eyes or the mechanical way they went about their chores.

  “El Patrón liked a lot of servants,” Matt said uneasily. The boys knew about eejits, of course. TV shows portrayed them as crazed zombies that lurched around and ate brains. Nothing could have been further from the dreary reality.

  A peacock, sitting in a window, gave a loud cry as the boys passed. “Ohhh,” Fidelito said, sighing. “What a beautiful bird!” And so Matt was saved from discussing eejits. They passed a side garden with a blue tile fountain, and Chacho halted.

  He went up to the fountain and put his hands into the spray. “Water,” he said reverently. He stood there, letting it fill his palms and pour over the sides. “So much water,” he murmured. Several peacocks posed like works of art on a velvety green lawn. At the top of a tree, a mockingbird sang. Chacho listened with his mouth open, as it trilled one song after another until it flew away.

  Matt heard, in the silence that followed, the sound of an eejit clipping the lawn with scissors. “Let’s go,” he said. He hurried them on to El Patrón’s private wing, where one of the rooms had been cleared for the boys. Matt made a mental note to have another one prepared for Sor Artemesia.

  Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito eased their way past a clutter of ancient Egyptian statues and Roman glassware that had, through the centuries, taken on the rainbow color of soap bubbles. The plunder of a long lifetime crowded the halls. Ton-Ton reached for a rooster made of pure gold and hesitated. “It’s okay. You can pick it up,” said Matt.

  “I m-might leave fingerprints on it. My hands are, uh, dirty.”

  “You can roll it in the mud for all I care. Relax, compadre. There aren’t any Keepers here,” Matt said, referring to the men who had enslaved them at the plankton factory.

  “It’s too p-pretty.” Ton-Ton looked longingly at the golden rooster. “Where did you get it?”

  “It belonged to El Patrón. He collected tons of stuff.” Matt saw that he would have to do something to put his friend at ease. “You should see his music boxes. Remember the gentleman and lady doing the Mexican Hat Dance? There are dozens more.”

  Ton-Ton brightened. Machines were something he understood. They went on, past paintings of men and women in somber black clothes. The effect was chilling, as though they were being watched by a throng of disapproving ghosts.
“There’s a nice one,” cried Fidelito. In one alcove was the portrait of the woman in a white dress that had impressed Matt. “Is that María?”

  “It can’t be,” said Matt, smiling because he, too, thought it looked like María. “These paintings are hundreds of years old.” The woman smiled as though she had a secret she was dying to tell someone. He thought she was like a ray of light in the dim hallway.

  “There’s a label,” Chacho said. He brushed away a plume of dust from a brass plate below the picture. “It says ‘Goya.’ What’s a Goya?”

  “I think it was the artist’s name,” said Matt.

  They gathered in front of the portrait, admiring the skill with which it was drawn. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to paint like that,” said Chacho.

  “You can study art here,” offered Matt. “I can hire teachers.” Chacho gave him a sad smile that meant, Oh, sure. Poor boys like me don’t get such chances. But Matt meant it. Why shouldn’t the boys stay here forever? They had no homes to return to. Why shouldn’t he, with his limitless wealth, give them everything they wanted? Chacho could paint; Ton-Ton could build machines. It was too soon to know what Fidelito was good at, but something would turn up.

  They spent an hour playing with music boxes. Ton-Ton took one apart and showed everyone how the gears moved and how a metal hammer hit notes on a tiny marimba. More gears moved the dancers’ feet or caused them to twirl around. It was complicated, but the older boy knew exactly how everything fit together. It was the way Ton-Ton thought.

  The most interesting box had three people on it—a cowboy playing a guitar, a woman in an old-fashioned dress, and another man dressed in black. They danced around one another, with the man in black always coming between them. Having three dancers meant the mechanism was far more complex than the other boxes, said Ton-Ton. Even he wasn’t sure how it was done.