The heat was unbearable, even at night. Soon they were all panting, and Matt opened one of the apple juice boxes and handed it to Listen. They passed a platform in an alcove and saw eejits mending a pipe with an oxyacetylene torch. Sparks showered into the elevator cage. More heat.
The elevator bumped at the bottom. They moved quickly, but before they got to the door, they heard the sizzle of more sparks. Cienfuegos signaled for them to stop. Matt saw an eejit trying to cut through the wall to the forbidden room.
Listen grabbed Matt’s arm. “I can see Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos,” she whispered.
Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a lightning bolt snaked out of the wall and incinerated the eejit. The odor of burnt flesh drifted through the hall. “Next!” shouted a voice Matt recognized. Another eejit took up the torch. There was a line of them waiting in the space between the telescope and the wall.
“This won’t work,” said Dr. Angel. “We’ve tried it before.”
“When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” said Happy Man Hikwa. “Each time the wall will degrade a little more. Eventually, we’ll break through.”
“It isn’t just the substance the door’s made of, it’s the force field running through it. There’s a plasma current that reacts to energy,” said Dr. Marcos. “The more you pour in, the more powerfully it pushes back. We’ve tried this before.”
Happy Man barked a command, and a soldier struck Dr. Marcos on the head with the butt of a gun. The doctor fell to his knees. The next eejit blasted the wall until another tongue of fire erupted from it. The remaining eejits watched passively.
“Can we do anything?” whispered Matt.
Cienfuegos watched as the next man moved into position. He drew his stun gun and fired at Happy Man twice in rapid succession, a lethal shot. The jefe jumped back, pulling Matt and Listen with him. “Run,” he said, but when they got to the elevator, it was gone. They had forgotten to prop open the door, and someone had called for it. They could see it slowly spiraling upward. “Climb!” the jefe said desperately.
There was a chicken-wire barrier enclosing the elevator shaft, and Matt tried to haul himself up, but the openings were too small. His feet didn’t fit, and he could only cling with his fingers. Cienfuegos tried to boost Listen into a position to climb, but the structure of the barrier was against them. She wasn’t strong enough to hold on. The jefe turned, thrusting Matt and the little girl behind him, and took aim at the soldiers.
He brought two down, but a third one shot him. It was an old-fashioned gun with metal bullets, and the impact threw Cienfuegos against the barrier. He raised his weapon and was struck by several more bullets. He crumpled to the floor. Listen screamed. The soldier took aim at Matt and a voice shouted, “Stop!”
It was Dr. Angel. “Stop! He’s the only one who can open the door! That’s El Patrón’s clone!”
The soldiers halted. They looked back. “We only take orders from our patrón,” one said.
“You don’t have a patrón anymore,” Dr. Angel said. “If you want to survive, join us. If not”—she looked upward—“the Farm Patrol will take care of you.”
Dr. Marcos came up behind her. His head was bleeding, but he seemed to have recovered. “Take the boy,” he ordered. “Leave the girl and the eejit.”
“Stay with him,” Matt whispered, hoping that Listen would, for once, follow orders. She did. She fell over Cienfuegos’s body and clung to his shirt, which was beginning to ooze blood. Matt forced himself to look away. He couldn’t think about it now. He couldn’t fall apart.
“I thought you were on your way to the Scorpion Star,” he said as soldiers shoved him down the hallway.
“We had to turn back at the border,” said Dr. Angel. “Someone reactivated the lockdown, but no matter. There are worse things than becoming the Lady of Opium.”
The door glowed faintly with residual heat, but the mark of the scorpion was still visible. “Let it cool,” Matt said. “If you burn my hand, nothing’s going to happen.” The charred lumps of the two eejits had been kicked aside, and the body of Happy Man was slumped against a wall. The other eejits were waiting for orders. “What happened to Glass Eye?” Matt asked.
“You killed him,” Dr. Marcos said. “The bright light sent his brain into shock. Half of it was nuts and bolts anyway.” He splashed water from a bottle against the door to cool it faster.
“You tried to cut through this wall before,” stated Matt.
“Father did,” said Dr. Angel. “He used up more than a hundred eejits, but that was in the good old days when we had more than we needed. Now, with the border closed, we have to treat them like pampered, pedigreed cats. Good food, new houses, rest periods.” She shook her head over the foolishness of it all. “I suppose we have you to thank for that, Matt.”
“You’re not calling me patrón anymore, I see.”
Dr. Angel laughed. “We’re the patróns now. If you’re good, we’ll let you live, and maybe that foul-mouthed little imp, too. How did you train an eejit to kill? Father was never able to do it.”
“The eejit has to have been a soldier or policeman before,” said Matt, who realized that the doctor hadn’t recognized Cienfuegos.
“Interesting,” said Dr. Angel. Matt could see who the dominant member was in this family. He wouldn’t give much for Dr. Marcos’s chances if he tried to order his sister around. Neither of them seemed to be grieving for their father.
“I think it’s cool enough,” said one of the soldiers. “What happens if one of us touches that scorpion?”
“Try it and see,” said Dr. Angel, but the soldier, who’d seen lightning come out of the wall, was in no mood to experiment.
Matt flexed his hands. He was a little frightened himself of touching that wall. Who knew what changes all that fire power had caused? But the sooner he satisfied the greed of these doctors, the sooner he could get back to Listen. He would not think about Cienfuegos. Not yet. Not if he wanted to stay sane.
He put his hand against the scorpion. Ants crawled over his skin. His heart shuddered with the impact of the scanner. And then the reaction faded. The door in the wall slid back, and he heard a collective gasp behind him. Dr. Angel shone a flashlight inside.
Thousands of gold coins formed a path down a long, dark hallway. They winked and glittered as the flashlight in the doctor’s hand trembled. The soldiers had their own lights, and soon a dozen or more beams were illuminating the walls and discovering side chambers.
On either side of the door were the grim statues of Mayan warriors, not genuine ones, of course, for none had survived the Spanish conquest. These statues were copied from wall paintings. They were beautifully done, their heads long and slightly deformed from the way Mayan infants were bound to their mothers’ carrying boards. Their noses were large and aristocratically curved. Their ears were heavy with turquoise and gold. They wore loincloths of jaguar, and the teeth of jaguars hung about their necks. They were pok-a-tok players.
Dr. Angel rushed down the dark hallway, followed by Dr. Marcos and the soldiers. In the distance were more treasures—real art works from Babylon and Mohenjo-daro and many other ancient, forgotten places. There was a room made entirely of amber, and a diamond throne that had belonged to the shah of Iran. Matt heard exclamations as each wonder was discovered. He followed them a short way, but his attention was drawn to something else near the door.
It was a diagram etched in metal. It was very close to the one he’d seen in the abandoned observatory, and now he realized that the man who had lived there was one of the designers of the Scorpion Star. What had happened to him? Had he been drawn by the chance to build something so marvelous that the ethics about its use hadn’t bothered him?
What had driven him out in such a hurry that a book lay open on his desk and his glasses were left beside it?
The diagram wasn’t exactly the same. Some of the buildings were of different sizes, and an area called Savannah was missing. There were no cryptic notes or formulas, b
ut at the bottom was a pair of glowing scorpions and the words COUPLE and UNCOUPLE.
Matt knew more or less what those words meant. “Couple” was to bring together, as happened when people married. They became a couple. And “uncouple”?
Matt reached out and pressed his hand against the scorpion above UNCOUPLE. The familiar energy went through him, so something was happening. He waited a few minutes and stepped back. Outside, the eejits were waiting. He put his hand on the door, and it slid back into place. “Come with me,” he told them.
51
UNCOUPLING
Listen was lying where he’d left her on Cienfuegos’s body. Matt touched her, and she shook her head violently. “Not moving,” she said.
“You have to,” Matt said gently. “Cienfuegos is no longer there. I don’t understand much about death, but María says the soul lives on. So does Sor Artemesia. When I go to the oasis, I feel that Tam Lin is still there, sitting by my fire and listening to me. People can return to those they cared about.”
Listen shrugged off his hand. “Cienfuegos is alive.”
Matt sighed. He was trying very hard to stay in control. He felt just as devastated as she did, but he knew the jefe was dead. He knew how many times the man had been shot. “Come with me, chiquita. I’ll call down the elevator.”
“I’m not leaving,” the little girl said. “I left Mbongeni for just ten minutes, and look what happened to him. I’m staying put.”
Matt saw the elevator descending and a group of unusually active eejits inside. They were talking excitedly, and one of them called to someone on the ground. He looked at the eejits who had come with him and saw that they, too, were animated.
Had he actually disrupted the signal from the Scorpion Star? For the first time Matt thought clearly about what might happen when the eejits were freed. He’d imagined them waking up like people who have had a very long sleep. But the shock might send them into convulsions, like Eusebio. Or they might all go rogue.
“Hey, you guys!” shouted Listen. “We got a sick man here, and he needs to go to the hospital.”
“Don’t attract them,” said Matt, warily eyeing the eejits as they got out of the elevator.
“You don’t understand,” Listen said fiercely. “All this talk about Cienfuegos coming back for chats by the fire is crap. He isn’t dead.”
“You poor child, he has to be.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing here? I’ve been listening to his heart. It’s beating, and you can’t say that about a dee-diddly-dead rabbit. Hold that crotting elevator, you guys!”
The eejits were awake, no question about it, but they were bewildered. They seemed to have no memory of how they had arrived in this hot, dark pit, and they willingly followed Listen’s orders. They chattered to one another as the elevator slowly began to ascend, asking about relatives and towns they had left behind.
Cienfuegos stirred and gasped. The harshness of his breathing frightened Matt. He might yet die—and to think that he’d almost been abandoned! Thank God for Listen’s persistence!
“What can you remember?” Matt asked one of the eejits.
“I crossed the border. I was with my wife. Then the Farm Patrol came and there was pain. Pain.” The man’s voice trailed off. Matt wondered what his reaction would be if he learned that the man they were trying to save was the head of the Farm Patrol.
The scene outside was chaos. Eejits wandered about, calling the names of friends and family members. The technicians, who were far less affected by the microchips, had some memories, but they also seemed bewildered by what had happened. “I was twenty when I came to work here,” one of them said. “It was like yesterday, but now I look fifty.”
Matt put the technicians in charge of the eejits. “I’ll send people who can explain later,” he said. “There’s been a national disaster. Get these people food and send them to their shelters to rest.”
“Are we at war? Look! There’s a rocket!” cried one of the eejits. A fireball streaked across the sky. Then another and another.
“It’s a meteor shower,” said a technician. “A nice one too.”
The stirabouts at the observatory hadn’t been drained of their power, and Cienfuegos was loaded into one of them. He groaned and spat blood. Matt flew the craft, and Listen curled up by the jefe.
“Dr. Angel,” the little girl said suddenly. “I bet she’s trying to blast her way through that secret door.”
“She doesn’t have to. I opened it for her.” Matt swooped up as gently as possible to avoid jarring Cienfuegos.
“You did? Were there jewels and gold inside?”
“There was enough gold to satisfy a hundred Dr. Angels. There was a room made out of amber and a diamond throne that once belonged to the shah of Iran.”
“Wow! I bet that made her happy.”
“Very happy. She and Dr. Marcos and all the soldiers ran inside. The soldiers filled their pockets with gold coins.” Matt could see the lights of the hospital ahead and a crowd of eejits milling around. He landed outside the emergency room. He got out and ordered them to carry Cienfuegos inside. Listen ran in front to find a doctor.
Fortunately, like the technicians, the doctors had noticed little difference when their microchips were deactivated. And since they had been recently hired, they weren’t disturbed by the passage of time. They hurried the jefe to the operating room and began working on him at once. “¡Por Dios! Do you see what he’s wearing under that jumpsuit?” one of them cried.
“We’ll have to cut it off,” another said.
“You’d need bolt cutters,” said the first doctor, and in the end they had to ease it over Cienfuegos’s head. It was a silky vest, now bloodstained, and when it was removed a clatter of bullets fell to the floor. “That’s what saved him,” the doctor said.
They sent Matt and Listen to another room to wait. Matt knew he should go outside and try to restore order, but he was too worried. They sat in the room where he’d seen the dead soldier and where Dabengwa’s men had ambushed him. “Is Glass Eye dead?” Listen asked.
“Yes,” said Matt.
“Good. I didn’t like him.” She thought for a moment. “What about Happy Man?”
“He’s dead too.”
“So the only ones we have to worry about are Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos.”
“I think they’ll be happy with the contents of the secret room,” said Matt. By now they would have discovered that the door was closed. The soldiers would fire their weapons at the wall—much good it would do them—and then their flashlights would fail. They would be alone in the dark with the pok-a-tok players.
“You can see him briefly, mi patrón,” said a doctor at the door of the operating room. “He’s heavily sedated, but he seems to have an amazing resistance to drugs.”
“He would have,” said Matt.
He and Listen stood by Cienfuegos’s bed and saw, from his eyes, that he recognized them. “He thought you were dead, but I knew you weren’t,” said Listen.
The jefe smiled.
“That’s the most amazing bulletproof vest,” said a nurse who was sitting by the bed. “I’ve heard of them, but this is the first one I’ve seen.” She pointed at the garment soaking in a bucket. “It’s pure spider silk, stronger than steel. They say it’s harvested from giant African spiders and that little girls are trained to reel it out as it’s produced.” The nurse shuddered. “The jobs some people have!”
They left, to allow Cienfuegos to recover, and the doctor explained his injuries outside. “Mostly broken ribs. The bullets didn’t get through, but the force of the blows must have been terrific. There’s some damage to the liver, and a broken rib pierced a lung. Fortunately, his heart is unharmed. He’ll be laid up for a long time.”
The gardens were filled with eejits—or ex-eejits, Matt reminded himself. Paisanos, he would call them. Fellow countrymen. He supposed he should address them, but he was too exhausted. Instead, he gave orders to the nurses and lab technicians to see
to their needs. He would tackle the problem in the morning.
“I’m really tired,” said Listen, trotting by his side.
“Me too, but there’s something we have to do before we can rest,” Matt said. For once she didn’t complain about the long walk. They were both too anxious to see their friends. Matt lit the path by the stream with Tam Lin’s flashlight, and they saw the gleam of rabbits’ eyes as the creatures hopped out of their way.
The chapel was visible long before they arrived. Dozens of candles had been lit and fastened to rocks. The inside of the building as well was illuminated by flickering light. All around the outside were newly freed eejits, Farm Patrolmen, and bodyguards, among them Daft Donald. Sor Artemesia stood in the doorway with María, Fidelito, and the Bug. The Bug was on a leash.
“You did it!” shrieked Fidelito when he caught sight of Listen. He ran through the crowd and hugged her. “You can slap me all you like for touching you. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“It isn’t worth it,” she said, hugging him back. “You’ll only do it again.”
Matt and María held each other’s hands. They were more restrained, being older, and somewhat embarrassed by the large audience. “Well, then,” said Matt.
“Well, then,” replied María.
“I guess things have worked out.” He wished they could be alone.
“God has answered your prayers,” said Sor Artemesia in a ringing voice. “He has sent his messenger.”
“What in hell are you up to?” asked Matt. He saw the gathered men kneel. Some were weeping openly.
“You know who you resemble,” said the nun. “These men are frightened, and they need sympathy. Try to look saintly.”
First Cienfuegos tells everyone that I’m El Patrón, and now I’m supposed to be Jesús Malverde, thought Matt. When will I ever be myself?
Matt spoke what he hoped were consoling words and sent everyone away to their hostels and bunkhouses. Then he went inside with María, and they embraced behind the statue of Malverde, where the Bug couldn’t spy on them.
The Lord of Opium Page 33