by Nancy Farmer
“I’m glad to see you in high spirits,” he said, smiling. “You may think I’m a boring old Keeper, but someday you’ll understand the importance of these lessons.” He led Matt to the middle of the room. “This boy is going to San Luis. I want you to make him welcome, but don’t push him if he wants to be alone. He’s just been through a terrible loss.”
Raúl’s exit was done smoothly, with the door closed and locked almost before Matt was aware of it. Why did they have to be locked in? And what was a Keeper? It was the second time Matt had heard the word.
He glared at the boys, whose work slowed now that they weren’t being watched. El Patrón always said it was important to establish your authority before anyone had a chance to question it. Matt walked toward the tables as though he owned the place.
“Want to join us?” said a skinny little kid who was making up pills. Matt looked grandly around the room. He nodded curtly. “You can help if you want,” the kid offered.
“My advice is to sit on your butt while you have the chance,” said Chacho from across the room. The big boy was twisting plastic strips into sandals. Matt walked slowly to the sandal-making table. El Patrón said you should never look anxious or needy. People always took advantage of those who were anxious or needy.
“Why is that?” inquired Matt, looking down at the tangle of plastic strips.
“ ’Cause the Keepers are gonna work your butt off tomorrow,” said Chacho. He was a large, rough-looking boy with big hands and black hair slicked back like the feathers on a duck.
“I thought I was going to San Luis.”
“Oh, you are. So am I and Fidelito.” Chacho pointed at the skinny kid, who looked only about eight years old. “But you can bet we’re going to work before we get on the hovercraft, while we’re on the hovercraft, and after we get off the crotting hovercraft. You’ll see.”
So Matt wandered around and watched the various chores the boys were doing. He settled by Fidelito, who was ecstatic to gain the approval of the newcomer. After a while Matt could see why. Fidelito was the neediest kid in the room, and so of course everyone pushed him around.
“What kind of pills are those?” Matt asked.
“Vitamin B,” said Fidelito. “They’re supposed to be good for you, but if you eat ten or twelve of them, you get sick.”
“What a dope!” Chacho said. “Why would anybody eat a dozen vitamin pills?”
“I was hungry,” Fidelito said.
Matt was startled. “You mean, they don’t feed you here?”
“Sure they do, if you produce enough work. I’m just not very fast.”
“You’re not very big,” Matt said, feeling sorry for the earnest little boy.
“That doesn’t matter,” Fidelito explained. “Everyone’s supposed to have the same output. As long as we’re here, we’re equal.”
“It’s hard but it’s fair,” intoned Chacho from across the room.
The other boys picked up the chant, banging the tables until the whole room rocked. One of the border guards told them to shut up through a loudspeaker.
“Did you see your parents taken?” asked Fidelito when the hubbub died down.
“¡Callate! Shut up! Let him get used to it,” several voices cried, but Matt raised his hand for silence, as he’d seen Raúl do. To his great pleasure, the boys obeyed. There really was something to El Patrón’s methods of gaining power.
“It happened yesterday morning,” he said, improvising. Matt remembered the crowd of Illegals who had distracted the Farm Patrol. “I saw a flash of light. Papá shouted for me to go back to the border. I saw Mamá fall down, and then a man grabbed my backpack. I slipped out of the straps and ran.”
“I know what that flash of light was,” said a sad-faced boy. “It’s a kind of gun, and it kills you dead. Mi mamá—” His voice choked and he didn’t say any more. Fidelito put his head down on the table.
“Have—have other people lost their parents?” stammered Matt. He’d been about to create a dramatic story about his escape. Now it seemed a heartless thing to do.
“We all have,” said Chacho. “I guess you haven’t figured it out. This is an orfanatorio, an orphanage. The state is our family now. That’s why the border guards wait along the frontera. They catch the kids of rockheads who make a run for it and turn them over to the Keepers.”
“Mi abuelita wasn’t a rockhead,” said Fidelito from the cradle of his arms.
“Your grandma—Oh, heck, Fidelito,” said Chacho. “She was too old to run to the United States. You know that. But I’m sure she loved you,” he added as the little boy sniffled. “So you see how it is,” Chacho told Matt. “We’re all part of the crotting production of resources for the crotting good of the people.”
“Don’t let Raúl hear you,” someone said.
“I’d like to tattoo it on my butt for him to read,” said Chacho, going back to the tangle of plastic strips on his table.
27
A FIVE-LEGGED HORSE
The rest of the day, from Matt’s point of view, went very well. He drifted from group to group, listening to conversations and storing up information. In case someone were to wonder why he was so ignorant, he didn’t ask many questions. He learned that the Keepers were in charge of people who couldn’t take care of themselves. They took in the orphans, the homeless, the insane and molded them into good citizens. The orphans were known as Lost Boys and Lost Girls, and they lived in different buildings. Matt couldn’t figure out why everyone seemed to hate the Keepers, although no one, except Chacho, said so directly. Raúl seemed nice enough.
Matt also learned that the country of Opium was called Dreamland here. No one really knew what lay beyond its borders. There were many stories of zombie slaves and a vampire king who lived in a castle. The chupacabras haunted its mountains and occasionally crossed over into Aztlán to drink the blood of goats.
Boys who had not seen their parents taken believed they had made it to the United States. Several boys assured Matt they were only waiting for their parents to send for them. Then they would all be rich and happy in the golden paradise that lay beyond Dreamland.
Matt doubted it. The Farm Patrol was very efficient, and besides, El Patrón had told him just as many people ran away from the United States as toward it. If a golden paradise had ever lain to the north, it wasn’t there anymore.
Matt helped Fidelito make pills. It seemed monstrously unfair that the little boy was deprived of food simply because he was slower than the larger boys. Fidelito responded with such adoration that Matt began to regret his good deed. The kid reminded him a little of Furball.
They had a half-hour break for lunch. First the guards checked everyone’s work output for the morning. Then they brought in a steaming cauldron of beans and handed out tortillas. Before anyone was allowed to eat, the boys had to recite the Five Principles of Good Citizenship and the Four Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness. The food was doled out according to whether a boy had reached his quota or not. Fidelito looked at Matt with shining eyes as his bowl was filled to the brim.
After lunch the work started again. Matt helped Fidelito for a while then switched to Chacho’s table for variety. He very quickly figured out the pattern he was supposed to weave. “Enjoy it while you can,” grunted Chacho.
“Enjoy what?” said Matt, holding up a finished sandal.
“The thrill of moving from one job to another. Once you settle in, the Keepers will let you do only one thing. It’s supposed to be efficient.”
Matt considered this information as he continued to weave plastic. “Can’t you ask for something else?”
Chacho laughed. “Sure, you can ask. You won’t get it, though. Raúl says worker bees do the best they can with whatever job they’re given. That’s his way of saying, ‘Tough toenails, sucker.’ ”
Matt thought a while longer. “What was that piece of wood you were working on when I arrived?”
For a moment Matt thought the boy wasn’t going to answer. Chacho t
wisted his strip of plastic so viciously it broke. He had to start over with a new one. “It took me weeks to find that wood,” he said at last. “I think it was from an old packing crate. I polished it and sanded it. I was going to find more pieces and glue them together.” Chacho fell silent again.
“And make what?” Matt urged.
“Promise you won’t tell?”
“Of course.”
“A guitar.”
That was the last answer Matt expected. Chacho had such clumsy-looking hands, he didn’t seem capable of playing a musical instrument. “Do you know how to play?”
“Not as well as my father. He taught me to make guitars, though, and I’m pretty good at that.”
“Was he—was he taken in Dreamland?” said Matt.
“¡Caramba! Do you think I belong with the rest of these losers? Me encarcelaron por feo. I was locked up for being ugly. I’m no orphan! My dad’s living in the United States. He’s got so much money, he can’t even fit it into his pockets; and he’s going to send for me as soon as he buys a house.” Chacho looked absolutely furious, but Matt could tell from his voice that tears weren’t far below the surface.
Matt worked on his sandal, not looking at Chacho. He noticed the other boys were absorbed in their work too. They knew—they had to know—that Chacho’s father wasn’t going to send for anyone anytime soon. But only Matt understood what had really happened to him. Chacho’s father was bending and cutting, bending and cutting poppies all day in the hot sun. And on still, breathless nights he was sleeping in the fields to keep from being suffocated by the bad air from the pits.
• • •
In the evening the lunchtime ritual was repeated. The food was exactly the same. Afterward the boys washed dishes, tidied up the workroom, and moved the tables to one side. From a storage room they dragged out beds and fitted them on top of one another to form bunks three levels high. “Put Fidelito’s bed on the bottom,” someone told Matt.
“Which one is it?” asked Matt.
“Smell the mattress,” said Chacho.
“I can’t help it,” the little boy protested.
They were marched into a communal shower by the border guards. Matt had never seen anyone naked outside the art classes on TV. He found it embarrassing. He kept his right foot planted on the floor so no one could see the writing that proclaimed him a clone. He was very glad to shrug on a coarse nightshirt and retreat to the workroom, now bedroom.
“Do we go to sleep now?” he asked.
“Now we get the bedtime story,” said Chacho. The boys seemed energized by something. They clustered around a bunk bed under a window, and Chacho put his ear to the wall. After a moment he pointed at the window and nodded.
Fidelito climbed the bunk bed like a little monkey and lifted his nightshirt. This was his moment of glory. “Voy a enseñarle la mapa mundi,” he announced.
I’m going to show him the map of the world? thought Matt. Show who? And what did he mean by the map of the world? Fidelito stuck his skinny backside between the bars of the high window and waggled it. A minute later Matt heard Raúl’s voice say, “One of these days I’m going to bring a slingshot.”
Fidelito scrambled off the bed to the cheers of the rest of the boys. “I’m the only one small enough to fit,” he said, swaggering around like a bantam rooster.
When Raúl entered, he said nothing at all about being mooned. He pulled up a chair, and the boys settled on the bunk beds to listen. The title of his talk was “Why Individualism Is Like a Five-Legged Horse.” Raúl explained that things went smoothly only when people worked together. They decided on a goal and then helped one another achieve it. “What would happen,” the Keeper asked all the boys, “if you were rowing a boat and half of you wanted to go one way and the other half another?”
He waited expectantly, and after a while someone put up his hand and said, “We’d go in circles.”
“Very good!” said Raúl, beaming at his audience. “We all have to paddle together to reach the shore.”
“What if we don’t want to reach the shore?” Chacho said.
“A very good question,” said the Keeper. “Can anyone tell us what would happen if we stayed out in the boat for days and days?” He waited.
“We’d starve to death,” a boy said.
“There’s your answer, Chacho,” said Raúl. “We’d all starve to death. That brings me to the problem of the five-legged horse. A horse runs very well on four legs. It’s what he’s made for. But suppose he grew a fifth leg that only wanted to please itself. The other four legs would be running and running, but the fifth leg—which we’ll call individualism—would want to walk slowly to enjoy a beautiful meadow, or it might want to take a nap. Then the poor animal would fall over! That’s why we take that unhappy horse to a vet and have the fifth leg cut off. It may seem harsh, but we’ve all got to pull together in the new Aztlán, or we’ll all wind up lying in the dirt. Does anyone have a question?”
Raúl waited a long time. Finally, Matt put up his hand and said, “Why don’t you put a computer chip in the horse’s brain? Then it wouldn’t matter how many legs it had.” A gasp went around the room.
“Are you saying—?” the Keeper stopped, as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you suggesting we turn the horse into a zombie?”
“I don’t see much difference between that and sawing off the extra leg,” said Matt. “What you’re after is a horse that works hard and doesn’t waste time looking at flowers.”
“This is great!” Chacho said.
“But you—don’t you see the difference?” Raúl was so outraged, he could hardly speak.
“We recite the Five Principles of Good Citizenship and the Four Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness every time we want to eat,” explained Matt. “You keep telling us the orderly production of resources is vital to the general good of the people. It’s obvious we’re supposed to follow the rules and not walk slowly through meadows. But horses aren’t as smart as people. It makes sense to program them with computer chips.” Matt thought this was a brilliant argument, and he couldn’t see why the Keeper was so upset. El Patrón would have seen the logic of it in an instant.
“I can see we have our work cut out with you,” Raúl said in a tight voice. “I can see we have a nasty little aristocrat who needs to be educated about the will of the people!” Matt was amazed at the man’s reaction. The Keeper had asked for questions. In fact, he’d almost demanded them.
“Well!” said Raúl, brushing off his uniform as though he’d touched something dirty. “The sooner this nasty little aristocrat goes to the plankton factory the better. That’s all I can say.” And he flounced out of the room.
Instantly, all the boys crowded around Matt. “Wow! You showed him!” they cried.
“You mooned him even better than I did,” said Fidelito, bouncing up and down on a bed.
“He didn’t even make us recite the Five Principles of Good Citizenship and the Four Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness,” exulted a boy.
“Heck, I had you down as a wuss,” said Chacho “You’ve got more nerve than a herd of bulls.”
“What? What did I do?” said Matt, completely bewildered.
“You only told him the Keepers were trying to turn us into a bunch of crots!”
Late that night Matt lay on a top bunk and went over the events of the day. He didn’t know how much trouble he was in or what kind of revenge to expect. He didn’t dislike Raúl. He only thought the man was an idiot. Matt realized he’d better walk carefully around people who took offense at mere words. What harm could words do? Tam Lin loved a good argument, the more spirited the better. He said it was like doing push-ups in your brain.
Matt felt his right foot under the scratchy wool blanket. This was his one weakness, and he despaired of keeping it hidden. Tam Lin might have said there was no difference between humans and clones, but everything in Matt’s experience argued against it. Humans hated clones. It was the natural
order of things, and Raúl could use it to destroy him. No one must ever see the tattoo that tied Matt to Dreamland and to the vampire who lived in its castle. Vampire! thought Matt. El Patrón would have enjoyed that description. He loved to inspire fear.
Matt had added a few more crumbs to the stash of information he was accumulating about this new world in which he found himself. An aristocrat was the lowest form of life, a parasite who expected honest peasants to be his slaves. A crot—the deadliest insult anyone could utter—was a simple, harmless eejit, like the thousands who had cut grass, washed floors, and tended poppies as far back as Matt could remember. The clean word for them was zombies. Whatever they were called, Matt thought they deserved pity, not hatred.
He couldn’t bring himself to think about Celia and Tam Lin. Sorrow threatened to overwhelm him, and he didn’t want to be caught sobbing like a baby. Instead, he thought about going to San Luis. He’d look for the Convent of Santa Clara right away and find María. The thought of María cheered him up immensely.
Matt basked in the approval of his newfound friends. It was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. The boys accepted him as though he were a real human. He felt like he’d been walking across a desert all his life and now he’d arrived at the biggest and best oasis in the world.
28
THE PLANKTON FACTORY
Raúl gave the boys an inspirational talk in the morning. It was all about aristocrats and how attractive they might seem on the surface but how vile they really were inside. No mention was made of Matt. A few of the younger boys seemed uneasy, but Chacho and Fidelito proclaimed Matt a national hero after the Keeper left.
Matt was put to work the instant the talk was over. He was told to measure pills with the younger children, and his quota was twice theirs, “to teach him the value of labor.” Matt wasn’t worried. When they reached San Luis, he’d be off to the convent faster than Fidelito could say, It’s hard but it’s fair.
