by Nancy Farmer
the house of the scorpion
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
A Girl Named Disaster
The Warm Place
The Ear, the Eye and the Arm
Do You Know Me
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Nancy Farmer
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by O’Lanso Gabbidon
The text for this book is set in Bembo.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farmer, Nancy.
The house of the scorpion / Nancy Farmer.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patrón, the 140-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.
ISBN 0-689-85222-3
eISBN 978-1-439-10655-6
ISBN 978-0-689-85222-0
[1. Cloning—Fiction. 2. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.F23814 Mat 2002
[Fic]—dc21 2001056594
To Harold for his unfailing love and support, and to Daniel, our son. To my brother, Dr. Elmon Lee Coe, and my sister, Mary Marimon Stout. Lastly, and no less importantly, to Richard Jackson, il capo di tutti capi of children’s book editors.
CONTENTS
YOUTH: 0 TO 6
1. In the Beginning
2. The Little House in the Poppy Fields
3. Property of the Alacrán Estate
4. María
5. Prison
MIDDLE AGE: 7 TO 11
6. El Patrón
7. Teacher
8. The Eejit in the Dry Field
9. The Secret Passage
10. A Cat with Nine Lives
11. The Giving and Taking of Gifts
12. The Thing on the Bed
13. The Lotus Pond
14. Celia’s Story
OLD AGE: 12 TO 14
15. A Starved Bird
16. Brother Wolf
17. The Eejit Pens
18. The Dragon Hoard
19. Coming-of-Age
20. Esperanza
21. Blood Wedding
22. Betrayal
AGE 14
23. Death
24. A Final Good-bye
25. The Farm Patrol
LA VIDA NUEVA
26. The Lost Boys
27. A Five-legged Horse
28. The Plankton Factory
29. Washing a Dusty Mind
30. When the Whales Lost Their Legs
31. Ton-Ton
32. Found Out
33. The Boneyard
34. The Shrimp Harvester
35. El Día de los Muertos
36. The Castle on the Hill
37. Homecoming
38. The House of Eternity
CAST OF CHARACTERS
THE ALACRÁN FAMILY
Matt: Matteo Alacrán, the clone
El Patron: The original Matteo Alacrán; a powerful drug lord
Felipe: El Patrón’s son; died long ago
El Viejo: El Patrón’s grandson and Mr. Alacrán’s father; a very old man
Mr. Alacrán: El Patrón’s great-grandson; husband of Felicia, father of Benito and Steven
Felicia: Mr. Alacrán’s wife; mother of Benito, Steven, and Tom
Benito: Oldest son of Mr. Alacrán and Felicia
Steven: Second son of Mr. Alacrán and Felicia
Tom: Son of Felicia and Mr. MacGregor
Fani: Benito’s wife
VISITORS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE ALACRÁNS
Senator Mendoza: A powerful politician in the United States; father of Emilia and María; also called Dada
Emilia: Oldest daughter of Senator Mendoza
María: Younger daughter of Senator Mendoza
Esperanza: Emilia’s and María’s mother; disappeared when María was five
Mr. MacGregor: A drug lord
SLAVES AND SERVANTS
Celia: Chief cook and Matts caregiver
Tam Lin: Bodyguard for both El Patron and Matt
Daft Donald: Bodyguard for El Patron
Rosa: Housekeeper; Matt’s jailer
Willum: Chief doctor for the Alacrán household; Rosa’s lover
Mr. Ortega: Matt’s music teacher
Teacher: An eejit
Hugh, Ralf, and Wee Wullie: Members of the Farm Patrol
PEOPLE IN AZTLÁN
Raúl: A Keeper
Carlos: A Keeper
Jorge: A Keeper
Chacho: A Lost Boy
Fidelito: A Lost Boy; eight years old
Ton-Ton: A Lost Boy; driver of the shrimp harvester
Flaco: Oldest of the Lost Boys
Luna: Lost Boy in charge of the infirmary
Guapo: Old man celebrating El Día de los Muertos
Consuela: Old woman celebrating El Día de los Muertos
Sister Inéz: A nurse at the Convent of Santa Clara
MISCELLANEOUS CHARACTERS
Furball: María’s dog
El Látigo Negro: The Black Whip, an old TV character
Don Segundo Sombra: Sir Second Shadow, an old TV character
El Sacerdote Volante: The Flying Priest, an old TV character
Eejits: People with computer chips in their brains; also known as zombies
La Llorona: The Weeping Woman; mythical woman who searches in the night for her lost children
Chupacabras: The goat sucker; mythical creature that sucks the blood out of goats, chickens, and, occasionally, people
ALACRÁN FAMILY HISTORY
the house of the scorpion
1
IN THE BEGINNING
In the beginning there were thirty-six of them, thirty-six droplets of life so tiny that Eduardo could see them only under a microscope. He studied them anxiously in the darkened room.
Water bubbled through tubes that snaked around the warm, humid walls. Air was sucked into growth chambers. A dull, red light shone on the faces of the workers as they watched their own arrays of little glass dishes. Each one contained a drop of life.
Eduardo moved his dishes, one after the other, under the lens of the microscope. The cells were perfect—or so it seemed. Each was furnished with all it needed to grow. So much knowledge was hidden in that tiny world! Even Eduardo, who understood the process very well, was awed. The cell already understood what color hair it was to have, how tall it would become, and even whether it preferred spinach to broccoli. It might even have a hazy desire for music or crossword puzzles. All that was hidden in the droplet.
Finally the round outlines quivered and lines appeared, dividing the cells in two. Eduardo sighed. It was going to be all right. He watched the samples grow, and then he carefully moved them to the incubator.
But it wasn’t all right. Something about the food, the heat, the light was wrong, and the man didn’t know what it was. Very quickly over half of them died. There were only fifteen now, and Eduardo felt a cold lump in his stomach. If he failed, he would be sent to the Farms, and then what would become of Anna and the children, and his father, who was so old?
“It’s okay,” said Lisa, so close by that Edua
rdo jumped. She was one of the senior technicians. She had worked for so many years in the dark, her face was chalk white and her blue veins were visible through her skin.
“How can it be okay?” Eduardo said.
“The cells were frozen over a hundred years ago. They can’t be as healthy as samples taken yesterday.”
“That long,” the man marveled.
“But some of them should grow,” Lisa said sternly.
So Eduardo began to worry again. And for a month everything went well. The day came when he implanted the tiny embryos in the brood cows. The cows were lined up, patiently waiting. They were fed by tubes, and their bodies were exercised by giant metal arms that grasped their legs and flexed them as though the cows were walking through an endless field. Now and then an animal moved its jaws in an attempt to chew cud.
Did they dream of dandelions? Eduardo wondered. Did they feel a phantom wind blowing tall grass against their legs? Their brains were filled with quiet joy from implants in their skulls. Were they aware of the children growing in their wombs?
Perhaps the cows hated what had been done to them, because they certainly rejected the embryos. One after another the infants, at this point no larger than minnows, died.
Until there was only one.
Eduardo slept badly at night. He cried out in his sleep, and Anna asked what was the matter. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t say that if this last embryo died, he would be stripped of his job. He would be sent to the Farms. And she, Anna, and their children and his father would be cast out to walk the hot, dusty roads.
But that one embryo grew until it was clearly a being with arms and legs and a sweet, dreaming face. Eduardo watched it through scanners. “You hold my life in your hands,” he told the infant. As though it could hear, the infant flexed its tiny body in the womb until it was turned toward the man. And Eduardo felt an unreasoning stir of affection.
When the day came, Eduardo received the newborn into his hands as though it were his own child. His eyes blurred as he laid it in a crib and reached for the needle that would blunt its intelligence.
“Don’t fix that one,” said Lisa, hastily catching his arm. “It’s a Matteo Alacrán. They’re always left intact.”
Have I done you a favor? thought Eduardo as he watched the baby turn its head toward the bustling nurses in their starched, white uniforms. Will you thank me for it later?
2
THE LITTLE HOUSE
IN THE POPPY FIELDS
Matt stood in front of the door and spread his arms to keep Celia from leaving. The small, crowded living room was still blue with early morning light. The sun had not yet lifted above the hills marking the distant horizon.
“What’s this?” the woman said. “You’re a big boy now, almost six. You know I have to work.” She picked him up to move him out of the way.
“Take me with you,” begged Matt, grabbing her shirt and wadding it up in his hands.
“Stop that.” Celia gently pried his fingers from the cloth. “You can’t come, mi vida. You must stay hidden in the nest like a good little mouse. There’re hawks out there that eat little mice.”
“I’m not a mouse!” Matt yelled. He shrieked at the top of his voice in a way he knew was irritating. Even keeping Celia home long enough to deliver a tongue-lashing was worth it. He couldn’t bear being left alone for another day.
Celia thrust him away. “¡Callate! Shut up! Do you want to make me deaf? You’re just a little kid with cornmeal for brains!” Matt flopped sullenly into the big easy chair.
Celia immediately knelt down and put her arms around him. “Don’t cry, mi vida. I love you more than anything in the world. I’ll explain things to you when you’re older.” But she wouldn’t. She had made the same promise before. Suddenly the fight went out of Matt. He was too small and weak to fight whatever drove Celia to abandon him each day.
“Will you bring me a present?” he said, wriggling away from her kiss.
“Of course! Always!” the woman cried.
So Matt allowed her to go, but he was angry at the same time. It was a funny kind of anger, for he felt like crying, too. The house was so lonely without Celia singing, banging pots, or talking about people he had never seen and never would see. Even when Celia was asleep—and she fell asleep easily after long hours cooking at the Big House—the rooms felt full of her warm presence.
When Matt was younger, it hadn’t seemed to matter. He’d played with his toys and watched the television. He’d looked out the window where fields of white poppies stretched all the way to the shadowy hills. The whiteness hurt his eyes, and so he turned from them with relief to the cool darkness inside.
But lately Matt had begun to look at things more carefully. The poppy fields weren’t completely deserted. Now and then he saw horses—he knew them from picture books—walking between the rows of white flowers. It was hard to tell who rode them in all that brightness, but it seemed the riders weren’t adults, but children like him.
And with that discovery grew a desire to see them more closely.
Matt had watched children on television. He saw that they were seldom alone. They did things together, like building forts or kicking balls or fighting. Even fighting was interesting when it meant you had other people around. Matt never saw anyone except Celia and, once a month, the doctor. The doctor was a sour man and didn’t like Matt at all.
Matt sighed. To do anything, he would have to go outdoors, which Celia said again and again was very dangerous. Besides, the doors and windows were locked.
Matt settled himself at a small wooden table to look at one of his books. Pedro el Conejo, said the cover. Matt could read—slightly—both English and Spanish. In fact, he and Celia mixed the two languages together, but it didn’t matter. They understood each other.
Pedro el Conejo was a bad little rabbit who crawled into Señor MacGregor’s garden to eat up his lettuces. Señor MacGregor wanted to put Pedro into a pie, but Pedro, after many adventures, got away. It was a satisfying story.
Matt got up and wandered into the kitchen. It contained a small refrigerator and a microwave. The microwave had a sign reading PELIGRO!!! DANGER!!! and squares of yellow notepaper saying NO! NO! NO! NO! To be extra sure, Celia had wrapped a belt around the microwave door and secured it with a padlock. She lived in terror that Matt would find a way to open it while she was at work and “cook his little gizzards,” as she put it.
Matt didn’t know what gizzards were and he didn’t want to find out. He edged around the dangerous machine to get to the fridge. That was definitely his territory. Celia filled it with treats every night. She cooked for the Big House, so there was always plenty of food. Matt helped himself to sushi, tamales, pakoras, blintzes—whatever the people in the Big House were eating. And there was always a large carton of milk and bottles of fruit juice.
He filled a bowl with food and went to Celia’s room.
On one side was her large, saggy bed covered with crocheted pillows and stuffed animals. At the head was a huge crucifix and a picture of Our Lord Jesus with His heart pierced by five swords. Matt found the picture frightening. The crucifix was even worse, because it glowed in the dark. Matt kept his back to it, but he still liked Celia’s room.
He sprawled over the pillows and pretended to feed the stuffed dog, the teddy bear, the rabbit (conejo, Matt corrected). For a while this was fun, but then a hollow feeling began to grow inside Matt. These weren’t real animals. He could talk to them all he liked. They couldn’t understand. In some way he couldn’t put into words, they weren’t even there.
Matt turned them all to the wall, to punish them for not being real, and went to his own room. It was much smaller, being half filled by his bed. The walls were covered with pictures Celia had torn out of magazines: movie stars, animals, babies—Matt wasn’t thrilled by the babies, but Celia found them irresistible—flowers, news stories. There was one of acrobats standing on one another in a huge pyramid. SIXTY-FOUR! the caption said. A NEW RECORD AT
THE LUNAR COLONY.
Matt had seen these particular words so often, he knew them by heart. Another picture showed a man holding a bullfrog between two slices of bread. RIBBIT ON RYE! the caption said. Matt didn’t know what a ribbit was, but Celia laughed every time she looked at it.
He turned on the television and watched soap operas. People were always yelling at one another on soap operas. It didn’t make much sense, and when it did, it wasn’t interesting. It’s not real, Matt thought with sudden terror. It’s like the animals. He could talk and talk and talk, but the people couldn’t hear him.
Matt was swept with such an intense feeling of desolation, he thought he would die. He hugged himself to keep from screaming. He gasped with sobs. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
And then—and then—beyond the noise of the soap opera and his own sobs, Matt heard a voice calling. It was clear and strong—a child’s voice. And it was real.
Matt ran to the window. Celia always warned him to be careful when he looked out, but he was so excited that he didn’t care. At first he only saw the same, bleached blindness of the poppies. Then a shadow crossed the opening. Matt recoiled so quickly, he fell over and landed on the floor.
“What’s this dump?” someone said from outside.
“One of the worker’s shacks,” said another, higher voice.
“I didn’t think anyone was allowed to live in the opium fields.”
“Maybe it’s a storeroom. Let’s try the door.”
The door handle rattled. Matt squatted on the floor, his heart pounding. Someone put his face against the window, cupping his hands to see through the gloom. Matt froze. He had wanted company, but this was happening too quickly. He felt like Pedro el Conejo in Señor MacGregor’s garden.
“Hey, there’s a kid in here!”
“What? Let me see.” A second face pressed against the window. She had black hair and olive skin like Celia. “Open the window, kid. What’s your name?”
But Matt was so terrified, he couldn’t squeeze out a single word.
“Maybe he’s an idiot,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “Hey, are you an idiot?”