The House of the Scorpion

by Nancy Farmer

  “You can learn a lot from studying a place like this,” Tom said in a casual voice. “The ibises live on frogs, the frogs eat bugs, and the bugs eat one another. It teaches you about the meaning of life.” Tom had on his professional Cute Kid smile. It didn’t fool Matt for one second.

  “Let me guess. You’re on the side of the ibises,” Matt said.

  “Of course. Who wants to be at the bottom of the food chain?” Tom said. “That’s the difference between humans and animals, see. The humans are at the top, and the animals—well, they’re just walking T-bone steaks and drumsticks.” He strolled off—an easy, good-natured stroll to show he wasn’t concerned that Matt had disturbed his evil game. Matt watched him disappear into the house.

  What rotten luck, Matt thought. He didn’t want Tom poking around while he was talking to María. If only he could slip Tom the laudanum. For a moment Matt savored the idea, but he knew that would be going too far.

  María had the dog glued to her all morning and all through lunch the next day. Finally, Senator Mendoza said, “For God’s sake, María. It stinks.”

  “Did you roll in something icky,” she said fondly, holding the creature up to her nose. “Did you, sweet-ums?”

  “Get it out of here,” her father snapped.

  Matt was observing this from behind a wall hanging. He slithered along the curtains and followed María. If he could talk to her now, he wouldn’t have to kidnap the stupid dog. She thrust Furball into her apartment and closed the door. Agonized yips broke out from the other side.

  “María—” began Matt.

  “Oh, hi. Listen, I’ve got to run. Dada will get mad if I don’t come back right away.”

  “I just want to talk.”

  “Not now!” cried María, dodging past him. She ran down the hall, her sandals slapping against the floor.

  Matt felt like crying. Why was she making things so difficult? Would it kill her to listen?

  He hurried to Celia’s apartment to get a bowl of raw hamburger he’d noticed in the refrigerator. When he returned, he looked around carefully for servants coming down the hall. The minute he opened María’s door, Furball yelped and scurried under a sofa. Great.

  Matt picked up the side bag María used to cart the animal around. He opened it temptingly and placed a chunk of hamburger inside. The dog whined and drooled as he watched. María fed him a special diet recommended by a vet, but it didn’t include raw meat. She didn’t like the idea of raw meat.

  “You want that. You know you do,” said Matt.

  Furball licked his chops.

  Matt held up a glob of the stuff and blew the smell toward the animal.

  Furball trembled all over and swallowed several times. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore and darted out. In an instant Matt had him trapped inside the bag. Furball snarled and tried to claw his way out. Matt poked a crumb of hamburger into the bag and got a bite that drew blood. Furball howled piteously.

  “Here! Eat yourself silly,” Matt cried, shoving fistfuls of meat inside. Matt heard slurping, gulping, and frantic licking. Then—miraculously—the animal stretched out in the bag and fell asleep. Matt peeked inside to be sure. This was even better than he’d hoped.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder, expecting outraged yips when the dog felt himself being moved. There was nothing. Furball was used to being hauled around. He slept in the bag all the time and probably felt safe wrapped up in his dark little cave. Matt could understand that. He was fond of dark hideaways himself.

  He left a note under María’s pillow: Meet me by the lotus pond at midnight and I’ll tell you where your dog is. He signed it Matt. Then, P.S. Don’t tell anyone or you’ll never see him again!!! Matt supposed the last line was mean, but he was fighting against impossible odds.

  He slipped out of the apartment, leaving the door ajar so it would seem the dog had worked it open. The halls were empty and the lotus garden deserted, except for ibises meditating on the existence of frogs. Everything was working out perfectly. Furball stirred slightly when Matt laid the bag down in the pump house, but he didn’t bark.

  Matt decided to leave him in the bag. He could come out when he felt like it and find water and the rest of the hamburger. Matt put the laudanum on a shelf. He was frankly relieved he didn’t have to use it. As much as he disliked Furball, it seemed wrong to feed him the same stuff that turned Felicia into a zombie.

  María discovered Furball missing right after lunch. She enlisted everyone—except Matt—to hunt for him. Matt could hear voices calling, but anyone familiar with the beast knew he wouldn’t answer. He would cower in whatever hiding place he’d found until dragged out, snapping and snarling.

  • • •

  Celia was asleep when Matt left. Most of the hall lights had been turned off, and black areas yawned between them. Not long ago Matt would have been afraid to go out so late. He no longer believed in the chupacabras or vampires, but the dark, dead stillness of night brought them back. What if María was too frightened to leave her apartment? Matt hadn’t thought of that. If she didn’t come, the whole plan would be ruined.

  His footsteps echoed on the floor. He stopped many times to be sure no one was following him. He checked his watch. It was fifteen minutes to midnight, when the dead—according to Celia—threw off their coffin lids like so many blankets. Stop that, Matt told himself.

  The lotus garden was lit only by starlight, and the air was warm and smelled of stagnant water. Not a frond of the palm trees stirred. Not a mosquito whined. Somewhere in the papyrus the ibises were sleeping, or perhaps they were awake and listening to him. What would they do when they realized he was there?

  Don’t be a wuss, Matt told himself. They’re only birds. They’re long-legged chickens.

  A frog grunted, making Matt almost drop the flashlight he carried. He shone it on the pond. He heard a splash and a rustle of feathers.

  Matt walked as silently as he could toward the pump house. It would be truly awful to hear Furball whine right now. Maybe María wouldn’t come. After all, if he was this jumpy, she must be terrified. But she’d come for her dog. Matt didn’t underestimate her courage when she thought something was important.

  He reached the wisteria. Would it be better to wait here or to check on Furball? He didn’t much like going into the dark little house. Anyhow, if he went inside, María wouldn’t know where to find him. He heard a noise—floodlights lit up every corner of the garden. It was El Patrón’s security system! Matt was blinded. He backed into the wisteria and was grabbed by powerful hands. “Let me go!” Matt shouted. “I’m not an enemy! I’m El Patrón’s clone!”

  Daft Donald and Tam Lin frog-marched him to the middle of the lawn. “It’s me! It’s me!” Matt cried. But Tam Lin remained silent and grim.

  Senator Mendoza came out of the Big House. He stood in front of Matt, flexing his hands as though he had to keep them under control. For a long, long moment he said nothing. Then: “You are worse than an animal.” He spoke with such concentrated venom that Matt flinched back against the hands restraining him.

  “Oh, I won’t hurt you. I’m not that kind of man. Besides, your fate lies with El Patrón.” Another long pause. Just when Matt began to think the man wasn’t going to say anything else, Senator Mendoza hissed, “You can count on one thing: You will never . . . ever . . . see my daughter again.”

  “But—why?” said Matt, startled out of his fear.

  “You know why.”

  Matt didn’t. This was all a horrible nightmare, and he couldn’t wake up. “I only wanted to talk to her. I meant to give Furball back. I didn’t mean to upset her and I’m sorry now. Please let me see her. To say I’m sorry.”

  “How can you possibly apologize for killing her dog?”

  For an instant Matt wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Then the full enormity of the situation sank in on him. “But I didn’t! I wouldn’t! I couldn’t do such a thing to María! I love her!” The minute Matt said it, he knew he’d made a terrible mist
ake. Senator Mendoza looked as though he wanted to strangle Matt right there and throw his body into the lotus pond. Nothing could have been more infuriating than a reminder of how close Matt and María had become—so close that Matt had demanded a kiss from her in front of everyone at El Patrón’s birthday party.

  It was unthinkable. It was as though a chimpanzee had demanded to wear human clothes and to eat at the same table as people. Worse. Because Matt wasn’t even a normal, forest-living beast. He was the thing on the bed.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Matt’s mind had frozen. All he could think of was to keep apologizing until Senator Mendoza heard him and forgave him.

  “You’re lucky you’re under El Patrón’s protection.” Senator Mendoza turned and strode into the house.

  “Move along,” said Tam Lin as he and Daft Donald propelled Matt from the garden.

  “I didn’t do it!” cried Matt.

  “They found your fingerprints on the laudanum bottle,” said Tam Lin. Matt had never heard him like this before—so cold, so bitter, and so disgusted.

  “I did take the laudanum, but I didn’t use it.” They were moving rapidly through the halls with Matt’s feet only brushing the floor. They arrived at Celia’s apartment. Tam Lin paused before opening the door.

  “I always say,” Tam Lin said, breathing as hard as if he’d run a long way, “I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It’s how rats are. It’s what makes them rats. But a human doesn’t run and hide in dark places, because he’s something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.”

  “I’m not lying.” Matt couldn’t help crying, even though he knew it was a babyish thing to do.

  “I can believe you made a mistake,” Tam Lin went on. “The bottle said three drops—that’s the dose for a full-grown man. But Furball was a dog. A dose like that would kill him. Did kill him.”

  “Someone else gave it to him!” Matt cried.

  “I’d feel sorry for you if I hadn’t seen María first. And I’d feel more kindly if you stepped up and took the blame you deserve.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “Ah, well. Perhaps I’m expecting too much of you. You’re confined to quarters until María leaves. And now is as good a time as any to tell you El Patrón is leaving at the same time. And taking me with him.”

  Matt was so stupefied, he couldn’t speak. He stared at Tam Lin.

  “It had to happen sometime, lad,” Tam Lin said more kindly. “You’re able to look after yourself now. If anything goes wrong, Celia can send a message.” He opened the door, and Matt was swept up by Celia, who obviously had been waiting on the other side.

  He couldn’t talk to her. As had happened when he was deeply upset before, the power of speech left him. He was six years old again, master of a kingdom of gristle and bone and rotting fruit hidden beneath the sawdust in a little room.

  14

  CELIA’S STORY

  Matt was inside his room when María left. He heard the hovercraft whine as it prepared to lift off. He heard the whoosh of air and felt an eerie stir on his skin as the antigravity vessel passed overhead. He had never traveled in one. El Patrón discouraged such things, preferring to keep his Farm close to the memory of his youth.

  As a boy, El Patrón had observed the grand estate of the wealthy rancher who owned his village. He remembered a statue of a winged baby and a fountain tiled in blue and green. He remembered the peacocks that haunted the garden. In every respect—he told Matt—he tried to duplicate that memory, only of course being vastly more wealthy, he could have dozens of statues, fountains, and gardens.

  The Alacrán estancia was laid out over a large area. No part of the house was taller than one story. The walls were a brilliant white, the roofs of fine red tile. Modern conveniences were kept to a minimum, except in special areas like the hospital. Thus, Celia cooked over a wood-burning stove when El Patrón was visiting because he liked the smell of burning mesquite. At other times she was allowed to use microwaves.

  The gardens were cooled with fine sprays of water, and the rooms, for the most part, depended on shaded verandas to tame the hot desert air. But during the annual birthday party modern conveniences came out. The famous celebrities would have been miserable without their air-conditioning and entertainment centers.

  Not that El Patrón cared whether they were miserable. He merely wanted to impress people.

  Matt listened for the purr of El Patrón’s limousine. The old man preferred to travel by road. If it had been possible, he would have gone by horse, but his bones were far too brittle to attempt such a thing. He would sit in the back with Tam Lin for company. Daft Donald would drive. They would whisk along the long, shimmering highway to El Patrón’s other house in the Chiricahua Mountains.

  Matt stared up at the ceiling. He was too depressed to eat or watch TV. All he could do was play out the events of the past few days in his mind. He went over them again and again. If only he hadn’t put Tom at the baby table. If only he hadn’t made María kiss him in front of the others. If only he hadn’t gone to the hospital.

  The regrets piled thickly on one another until Matt’s thoughts were running around in his head like a hamster on a wheel.

  Everyone thought he’d poisoned Furball. His fingerprints were on the bottle, and he’d left a note, a signed note!—how dumb can you get?—in María’s room. Matt had to admit the evidence against him was pretty good.

  Tom must have seen him come out of the pump house and decided to finish the job he’d started when he dumped Furball into the toilet. But how did Tom use the laudanum without leaving his fingerprints on the bottle?

  Round and round went Matt’s thoughts. Squeak went the wheel in his mind. He heard the limousine start up, the distant slam of a door, the fading roar of the engine.

  So El Patrón was gone now. And Tam Lin. Matt grieved for him. Any rat in a sewer can lie, Tam Lin had said. It’s how rats are . . . . But a human doesn’t run and hide in dark places, because he’s something more. Matt thought he could make María understand if he ever got to see her. She’d forgive him because he was a dumb animal and didn’t know any better. But Tam Lin had called Matt a human and expected much more from him. Humans, Matt realized, were a lot harder to forgive.

  For the first time he saw a huge difference between the way the bodyguard treated him and how everyone else did. Tam Lin talked about courage and loyalty. He let Matt do dangerous things on their expeditions and go off by himself to explore. He treated Matt as an equal.

  Tam Lin often talked to him about his childhood in Scotland as though Matt were another adult. It wasn’t like El Patrón’s memories, which tended to fall into a rut. Matt had those stories memorized right down to the last word. Tam Lin’s stories were about the difficult decisions you made to become a man. I was a proper fool, the bodyguard had said. Turned my back on my family, ran with a rough crowd, and did the thing that brought me here. What that thing was Tam Lin never revealed.

  At the memory of those picnics, tears came to Matt’s eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He made no sound. He had learned that safety lay in silence. But he couldn’t stop the tears.

  Yet in the midst of his sorrow, Matt found a glimmer of hope. Someone, out of all the people who thought he was no better than a dog, believed he could be something more.

  And I will be, Matt promised as he stared up at the blurry ceiling.

  • • •

  Not everything was depressing. Tom was banished from the house. María, when she was hunting for her dog, had innocently asked her father to look in the hospital. Senator Mendoza wanted to know how she knew about the place. The whole story came out about MacGregor’s clone and Tom’s part in luring María to see it. El Patrón banished Tom to a year-round boardingschool with no holidays.

  “Why doesn’t Mr. MacGregor take him, if Tom’s his son?” Matt asked.

  “You don’t understand,” Celia said as she cut cheesecake with fresh
raspberries for dessert. Ordinarily, Matt would have demanded two slices. Now he didn’t think he could choke down one. “Once El Patrón decides something belongs to him, he never lets it go.”

  “Never?” said Matt.

  “Never.”

  “What about the presents he gets for his birthday?” Matt thought of all the gold watches, jewels, statues, and moon rocks people had given El Patrón for over one hundred years.

  “He keeps it all.”

  “Where?”

  Celia dished up the cheesecake and licked her fingers. “There’s a secret storeroom under the ground. El Patrón wants to be buried in it—may the Virgin keep that day away forever.” Celia crossed herself.

  “Like”—Matt had to think—“Like an Egyptian pharaoh.”

  “Exactly. Eat your cheesecake, mi vida. You need to keep your strength up.”

  Matt ate mechanically as he imagined the storeroom. He’d seen pictures of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. El Patrón would lie in a golden box with all the watches, jewels, statues, and moon rocks around him. Then, because Matt didn’t want to think of El Patrón dying, he said, “What does that have to do with Tom?”

  Celia settled back in her easy chair. She was much more relaxed now that everyone had left. “El Patrón thinks a person belongs to him the same way a house or car or statue does,” she said. “He wouldn’t let that person go any more than he’d throw away money. It’s why he wouldn’t allow Felicia to escape. It’s why he keeps everyone under his control so he can call them back in an instant. He’ll never let MacGregor have Tom, even though he can’t stand the boy.”

  “Do you and Tam Lin belong to El Patrón?” Matt asked.

  Celia flinched. “¡Caramba! The questions you ask!”