The Lord of Opium

by Nancy Farmer

  “You’ll never know, dear,/how much I love you,” the cowboy sang in a tinny voice, “please don’t take my sunshine away.” But the man in black was dedicated to taking the sunshine away, and the lovers never got together.

  Celia appeared at the door and announced that dinner was served. Salad bowls had been placed at every setting, and Cienfuegos, Sor Artemesia, and Listen were already seated. Listen treated the nun with something close to respect. Matt wondered what had happened.

  Long purple shadows flowed out of the west. The tall windows were open, and the smell of freshly cut grass wafted in. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito sat up very straight, not touching their salads. Matt guessed that Sor Artemesia had drilled them on table manners since they’d arrived from the plankton factory. In the old days they would have fallen on the food like starving wolves.

  “Always use the outermost fork first,” the nun instructed them. “That is for salad. As the courses appear, you move to the next fork and the next. The same applies to knives and spoons.” It was no wonder the boys were cowed. Even Matt wasn’t sure how to navigate through twelve utensils. She must have asked for the place settings in order to teach them.

  Mirasol filled everyone’s goblets with fruit juice, except for Cienfuegos, who had his usual pulque.

  “I’ve heard of this banquet hall,” said Sor Artemesia. “Long ago, before María’s parents broke up, they used to come here to meet with El Patrón and his fellow criminals. I, of course, was left with the girls. Which reminds me, Matt, how did the Alacráns take your being the heir? I imagine Emilia’s nose was put out of joint when she discovered she wasn’t going to be the Lady of Opium.”

  Matt dropped his fork on the floor, and Mirasol quickly replaced it with another. The boys were already eating, glancing at Sor Artemesia to be sure she approved. Listen was picking mushrooms, which she disliked, out of her salad. Matt met Cienfuegos’s eyes. How were they going to get out of this one?

  “By the way, where are Emilia and her father?” asked the nun. “I thought they’d be here, if only to hear about María. What’s the matter? Have I said something wrong?”

  Cienfuegos nodded at Matt. “You have to tell her.”

  “Esperanza should have done it,” said the boy.

  “But she didn’t. She tossed the ball to you.”

  “I don’t want the damn ball!”

  By now everyone had stopped eating, and Sor Artemesia looked worried. “Is something wrong?” she said.

  “You bet there is,” said Listen. “They’re both dead.”

  Sister Artemesia gasped and automatically crossed herself. “Was there an accident?”

  “Nope. El Patrón killed them. Everyone who went to his funeral drank poisoned wine and fell down dee-diddly-dead.”

  “Shut up, you fool!” shouted Matt. Sor Artemesia put her head down as though she were about to faint. He jumped up to catch her, and Ton-Ton put his hands out.

  But the nun raised her head again, and although she was pale, she seemed in control. “I shouldn’t have been surprised,” she said. “Time and again I warned them. ‘Don’t build your house at the foot of a volcano.’ But they didn’t listen. The money was too good.” She sipped the fruit juice absently. “When Doña Esperanza left, I went with her, and when Senator Mendoza sent the girls to boarding school, I made sure to be one of the teachers.”

  “What was Esperanza doing for her daughters?” asked Matt. “María thought her mother had abandoned her.”

  Sor Artemesia sighed deeply. “Some women are not meant to be mothers. Doña Esperanza loved power, and her daughters were merely an annoyance. Which is worse? Someone who is there and resents your existence, or someone who is gone? I did my best for the girls, but Emilia was difficult. She had the worst traits of both her parents, and now it has brought her to this. If you would excuse me, mi patrón, I would like to go to the chapel and pray for their souls.”

  Matt thought briefly of the shrine to Jesús Malverde. That would never do. The church Celia had gone to was several miles away through the opium fields. Its priest had died at the funeral along with the rest. Matt didn’t know whether a church was usable without a priest.

  “I’ll take you,” Cienfuegos said. “We’ll have to drive, but I’m sure Daft Donald wouldn’t mind taking out the car. I’ll wait outside the church, you understand. We wouldn’t want God to strike it with lightning.”

  He gently helped the nun to her feet. They walked together, neither looking at each other nor speaking. In the fading light of sunset, they seemed more like figures from the paintings than living beings. No one said a word until their footsteps had faded away and Mirasol had lit the chandeliers.

  29

  NIGHT TERRORS

  Poor María!” Ton-Ton said at last.

  “She visited me in the hospital every day,” said Chacho. “She brought me sweets when the nurses weren’t looking. You know, they only feed you boiled vegetables and soup. Why do bad things have to happen to good people?”

  “You were horrible to Sor Artemesia,” Matt said to Listen. “Didn’t you realize she cared about those people?”

  “She asked a question and I answered it,” said the little girl pertly. She had a heap of unwanted mushrooms next to her salad bowl and now amused herself by flicking them across the table.

  “Stop that! Where did you get such an ugly word like ‘dee-diddly-dead’?”

  “That’s what Dr. Rivas says when he kills the rabbits.”

  “Well, it’s nasty, and I don’t want you to use it. How did you find out about the funeral, anyway?” said Matt.

  “Dr. Rivas and Cienfuegos talked about it. They don’t call me Listen for nothing.” The little girl scowled. “You’re El Patrón’s replacement. For all we know you could be feeding us poison right now, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late.”

  “Don’t be such an idiot,” Matt said, but he considered how she’d been raised, watching the doctor kill animals and hiding out from the Bug. It was going to take work to rehumanize her.

  Mirasol took away the salad bowls and began serving the dishes Matt had planned to delight his friends—porterhouse steak, scalloped potatoes, and asparagus. At first the boys were too disturbed to notice what they were eating, but the unfamiliar richness of the food soon got through to them. Ton-Ton attacked his steak as though it might run away, and Fidelito chomped asparagus like a horse eating carrots.

  “We should remember our table manners out of respect for Sor Artemesia,” protested Chacho. But the food was too good, and besides, she wasn’t there.

  “More scalped potatoes, please,” Fidelito said.

  “Th-that’s scalloped potatoes, you loon,” said Ton-Ton.

  “Waitress, give Fidelito more potatoes,” Matt said.

  “Why do you repeat orders to her?” asked Chacho. “And why do you call her Waitress? I thought her name was Mirasol.”

  Matt watched as the girl mechanically filled Fidelito’s plate. “That’s enough, Waitress,” he said. She went back to the serving station and stared out at the room with unseeing eyes.

  “That’s weird,” Chacho said.

  “Sh-she isn’t normal,” said Ton-Ton, suddenly alert. “Her eyes . . . ”

  “She isn’t normal,” confirmed Matt.

  Ton-Ton got up and looked directly into her face. Mirasol didn’t react. “I d-don’t believe it. We’ve been around these, uh, servants for hours and I didn’t see it.” He took her hand, and she accepted it passively. “She’s just a kid.”

  “El Patrón didn’t care about age,” Matt said. “There are eejits who are no older than six. He liked them because of their high voices or, if they had no talent for music, their little hands. Child eejits are very good for weeding young opium plants.”

  “She’s a zombie!” shrilled Fidelito. He leapt from his chair and made for the hallway. At the last minute he came to a halt. “There’s more of them out there,” he whimpered. “All those people sweeping and dusting. They’re all
zombies. They’ll eat my brain.” A child of the plankton factory, he grabbed a table knife to defend himself.

  “There are no such things as zombies,” Matt said wearily. “Eejits are only sad people who’ve lost control over themselves. They’re slaves. If you tell Mirasol to drink water and don’t tell her when to stop, she’ll drink until her stomach explodes.”

  The brutal description got to Fidelito faster than any other explanation. “Truly?” he asked. “Her stomach will explode?”

  “Probably. I don’t plan to find out.” In a way Matt was glad he’d waited until now to reveal the existence of eejits. It was harder to evoke sympathy for the mindless robots who toiled in the fields. Mirasol was a beautiful girl who could have been a friend or a neighbor. “Sit down, Fidelito. She hasn’t served dessert yet, and I have a lot to tell you.”

  Warily, the little boy went back to his chair, hitching it closer to the large, protective presence of Ton-Ton. Matt sent Mirasol to get crème caramel custards. Then he told them of all he had learned about the microchips, how some servants were devastated by the operation and others were almost normal. He told them of the dead man he’d seen in the fields long ago, of the eejit pens, the bad air, and the pellets that gave the slaves the bare minimum food for survival. He told them how people like Cienfuegos were controlled—and that they should never mention it in the jefe’s presence. He told them of how he’d tried to change Mirasol’s name and of the terrible torture she had endured.

  Night fell. Neither Cienfuegos nor Sor Artemesia returned. In spite of the chandeliers, the banquet hall filled up with shadows, making the gloomy paintings even gloomier. A cool wind rose out of the desert, bringing the mineral smell of dust and bitter, dry vegetation.

  “Now I want to show you something,” Matt said. He told Mirasol to sit and placed a crème caramel custard in front of her. “Eat, Waitress.” As always, she began ravenously, but when the flavor hit her tongue, she paused. She held the spoon in her mouth. Her eyes almost registered intelligence. “This has been the only way I’ve been able to reach her,” said Matt. “It’s connected to some memory so powerful that even the microchips can’t erase it. I’ve dedicated my life to freeing her. And the other eejits too.”

  The solemnity of that statement impressed the boys. They looked at Matt as though he had suddenly grown taller and nobler than the ordinary run of humanity. “Y-you’re the only one who can do it,” Ton-Ton said at last.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Matt. “I was given the power. I wish I knew what to do with it.”

  * * *

  That night Listen had one of her nightmares. Her screams penetrated Matt’s sleep, and he fell out of bed. He fumbled for his flashlight and switched it on. “I’m coming!” he shouted, although Listen probably couldn’t hear him.

  The boys had tumbled out of their own beds and were standing in the hallway. “¡Por Dios! What’s happened to her?” cried Ton-Ton. He and the others followed Matt, but Sor Artemesia had gotten there before them.

  “You! Take your hands off her!” shouted the nun. The light was on, and Matt saw Fiona shaking the little girl violently.

  “She’s possessed by the devil,” gasped Fiona. “Nasty, spiteful little beast!”

  Sor Artemesia sprinted over and slapped Fiona. She pulled Listen away and held her in her arms. The little girl was a terrifying sight, even worse than the times Matt had found her. Her eyes were open and staring in utter panic. Her arms flailed, and she screamed without ceasing, as though what she saw was too dreadful to bear. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” said Matt, kneeling beside her. He stroked her arm, and Sor Artemesia held her firmly so she wouldn’t harm herself.

  “Please wake up,” said Fidelito, crying himself. “We’re here. We’ll protect you.”

  “She can’t wake up,” said the nun, rocking the little girl. “This is no ordinary nightmare.”

  “She’s possessed,” snarled Fiona.

  “Who knows what damage you did, shaking her,” said Sor Artemesia. “Get this sorry excuse for a nurse out of here, mi patrón, and call the doctor.” Matt didn’t question her authority, in spite of being the boss of all bosses. He rang for help, and soon two of the new guards came in, bowing nervously at being in the presence of the Lord of Opium, followed by the new doctor.

  “Take this dishwasher back to her duties at the hospital,” Matt said, pointing at Fiona. She yelled curses at them, but the boy had no time to waste on her. Listen was still screaming and staring into a horror only she could see. The doctor, an athletic-looking man who might have been Korean, measured her heart rate and wiped the sweat off the little girl’s face.

  “It’s a night terror,” he said. “You did exactly right to restrain her, señora. Children can hurt themselves when they’re in the grip of this.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” said Sor Artemesia. “She can neither see nor hear us, but the fit will pass.”

  “Listen has nightmares, but she won’t tell me what they are,” said Matt.

  “She can’t, chico—Ah! Excuse me! You’re the patrón. I meant no disrespect, sir.” The doctor looked flustered.

  “It’s all right,” Matt said. “Why can’t she tell me?”

  “Because this is a night terror, something very different from a dream,” said the doctor. “It comes from deep inside. It’s caused by fever or exhaustion or sometimes by trauma. Do you know if anything bad has happened to her?”

  She was terrorized by the Bug. She watched Dr. Rivas turn rabbits dee-diddly-dead. Her only companion was a brain-damaged boy. “Her life hasn’t been perfect,” Matt said. “Can you help her?”

  “I wish I could, but all medical science can do is wait for her to recover. With any luck, she’ll outgrow the condition.”

  “I know something,” said Chacho. They turned to him. Matt had forgotten his presence, so different was he from the days when he’d been a noisy, cheerful companion. His face was marked by suffering. He had breathed far less than was good for him when trapped in the boneyard in Aztlán. But more than that, his spirit had been affected by his terrible ordeal. “One of the little kids in the plankton factory had these fits,” he said. “The Keepers used to put his feet into cool water. And they washed his neck and chest.”

  Sor Artemesia immediately set about doing this with the boys’ help, and soon—whether it was the treatment or the fit had run its course—the little girl’s cries ceased, and she fell into an exhausted sleep.

  “That’s one for the books,” the doctor said, praising Chacho. “I’ll have to remember that.” The boy smiled his grave smile.

  Sor Artemesia slept in Listen’s room, but the boys were in no mood to go to bed. Matt led them to the kitchen, which was of course deserted in the middle of the night. There they made popcorn and feasted on ice cream until Fidelito got sick. “Th-that’s the only way you, uh, learn when you’ve had enough,” Ton-Ton said. “By eating too much. N-next time you’ll know.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Chacho. “Fidelito always eats until he falls over.”

  “Ohhhh, leave me alone,” the little boy moaned, but he soon recovered. Matt led them on an exploration of the gardens, now eerily silent without the bustle of gardeners and eejits. The peacocks were roosting in trees. There was no moon, and the Milky Way provided a strange, silvery light over walkways and the ghostly trunks of orange trees. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers.

  “I n-never saw stars like this,” said Ton-Ton, as they sat on the top of the marble steps leading out of the hacienda. “They must have always been there.”

  “The sky was muddy in Aztlán,” said Chacho.

  “Not on the seashore,” remembered Fidelito. “Mi abuelita used to find pictures in the night sky—Orion the Hunter, the Seven Sisters, the Big and Little Bears. She told me stories about them, but there was one big, red star she said was new. See? There it is.”

  “That’s a space station,” Matt said.

  “¿Verdád? You can live on it?” asked
the little boy.

  “It’s like a big city inside a clear bubble. It has buildings and even hovercrafts to fly around in. In the middle is a big garden with trees and animals.”

  “What a great place to live,” said Chacho. “You could see the whole Earth. But it would always be night, wouldn’t it?”

  Matt considered. On TV shows outer space was black, so the skies of the Scorpion Star were probably black too. “There are lights inside the buildings,” he said. “I saw close-up pictures of them from a telescope.”

  “If only I could go there,” said Chacho, with the same longing Matt had noticed in the Bug. And then Matt thought, I own that space station. I can go there whenever I want.

  The thought gave him a chill. When he was young, Celia had told him that the Indians in her village carried charms to keep from being carried off by the wind. And Matt had experienced a strange terror while lying exposed under a dark sky, as though he might lose his hold on the Earth and find himself lost among all those bright, inhuman lights. “Earth is a good place,” he said.

  “Not anymore,” said Chacho, and Matt could find no answer for that. A small sliver of moon rose before the dawn. A rooster crowed somewhere in the shadowy buildings surrounding the hacienda, to be answered by another and another.

  Ton-Ton yawned. “I’m too sleepy to, uh, think now, Matt, but tell me more about the m-microchips later. They seem to work together like the inside of a music box.”

  “What a brilliant idea,” said Matt. “They must work together. If you can figure out how to break a music box, maybe you can do the same to microchips.”

  “Give a box to Fidelito,” Chacho said. “He’ll break it for free.”

  30

  A VISIT TO THE AJO HILLS

  In the morning, as the doctor had predicted, Listen had no memory of her night terror. She shuffled into the banquet room, and Matt noticed how frail she looked. Sor Artemesia lifted her into a chair and fetched a bowl of oatmeal. Mirasol waited patiently by the food cart.