by Nancy Farmer
“They don’t act like eejits.”
“There’s more than one type of microchip. This kind doesn’t blunt intelligence, but there are certain things a Farm Patrolman can’t do. He can’t harm the patrón, for example, or cross the border. If he tries, he’s struck by pain so severe that he’ll die of shock. Even thinking about it makes him sick.”
Matt let out his breath slowly. El Patrón had been a genius at maintaining order, and he did have more secrets than fleas on a coyote. There were the hidden underground treasure chambers and the secret passages throughout the hacienda where the old man could spy on people. There were the emergency escape routes and now the invisible chain that encircled the necks of his trained dogs, the Farm Patrol. It was a beautifully constructed system to bring power into one man’s hands. El Patrón’s hands. And now Matt’s.
“Tam Lin told me this privately,” Celia said. “Farm Patrolmen never admit to the operation because it makes them seem less than men. It’s why they’re so cruel to eejits. To prove they have nothing in common with them.”
A sudden thought struck Matt. “The bodyguards. Were they chipped?” She nodded. “And Tam Lin?”
Celia smiled sadly. “Him too.”
Matt could hardly bring himself to ask the next question, but he had to know. “What about you, Celia?”
Her eyes turned as cold as those of an idol Matt had seen on TV, the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, who wore a necklace of severed hands. He remembered that it was Celia who had brought about El Patrón’s death when the armies of Aztlán and the United States had been unable to touch him. “I wasn’t worth worrying about,” Celia said. “I was only a woman.”
Silence hung heavily in the room. They weren’t alone, though they might as well have been. Several eejits worked at their appointed tasks. One washed dishes, going over each plate exactly five times with a sponge. He passed it to another man, who dunked the plate exactly five times in rinse water. A woman kneaded bread dough: push, fold, turn . . . push, fold, turn. A teenage boy, who reminded Matt unpleasantly of the boys at the plankton factory, was slicing onions. It took a lot of servants to prepare a meal, because each of them knew how to do only one thing.
“Could I have some ice cream?” said Matt, to break the tension.
“Oh! Of course!” Celia woke up. The goddess Coatlicue disappeared. “Do you want pistachio, mango, or dulce de leche?”
“Dulce de leche.”
She opened a giant freezer and hauled out a gallon tub of ice cream. Fog swirled around her as she kicked the door shut with her heel.
Matt tried to think of something to say. “What do you know about Waitress, the girl who serves me meals?”
“Her? Why are you asking?”
“No reason. She just seems more alert than most eejits.”
Celia dug out scoops of ice cream and poured marshmallow syrup over them. “As I said, not all implants are the same. Most dull the mind so that a person can perform a simple chore for hours without stopping. A few leave a person’s basic skills intact. I have a helper who’s very good at making sauces. He used to be a French chef.”
Matt ate the disgustingly sweet dessert, which he loved, and thought about Waitress. “I want to change her name. Is that possible?”
“Ask Cienfuegos,” Celia said impatiently. “He’s in charge of training.” She went over to tell the boy, who’d run out of onions, to stop chopping.
* * *
That afternoon Matt had the old mattress on El Patrón’s bed burned. He gave orders for quesadillas, coffee, and fruit to be served for breakfast. He sent the bath eejit away to be retrained.
In the evening he and Cienfuegos sat down to dinner in El Patrón’s grand dining room. Now that Matt took the time to study it, he saw how unusual it was. The walls were covered with priceless Spanish paintings of kings and queens. Royal children, dressed in stiff clothing, stared dolefully out of dark nurseries. They didn’t look as though they knew how to play, and their only entertainment seemed to be dwarfs. Spanish kings collected dwarfs, to go by the number of them, the way other people collect stamps. A brooding misery hung over all the scenes. There was even, in one shadowy corner, a painting of heretics being burned at the stake.
“Those are all originals,” said Cienfuegos. “Muy, muy valioso.”
“I don’t care how valuable they are. I think they’re creepy,” said Matt.
“They’re marks of prestige. A man who can afford such things is like a king.”
“Who am I going to impress?” asked Matt. With the border closed, no visitors came to the hacienda. Its rooms and halls were deserted except for the occasional shadowy figure of a servant dusting a statue.
They sat across from each other. The crystal chandelier shed flecks of light over the tablecloth, and they also had a heavy gold candelabra, for the room was large and dark. Waitress served them dinner. She poured pulque for Cienfuegos and water for Matt.
“This was where El Patrón entertained his most important guests,” said the jefe. “Presidents, dictators, and drug lords. Ah, those were the days!”
“Were you invited?” Matt shook his head at Waitress when she tried to cut up his meat.
“I was one of the bodyguards. We stood around the walls and watched the guests.”
Unlike now, Matt thought, realizing he might have made a mistake by inviting Cienfuegos to eat with him. It seemed important to show underlings that he was too important to be friendly. Celia had told him he should hire more bodyguards, too, because Daft Donald wasn’t enough. A drug lord with only one bodyguard, she said, was like a general with only one soldier. The other drug lords would make fun of him.
“Tam Lin was always present,” remembered the jefe. “I came when El Patrón wanted to know whether someone was lying. I’m very good at reading faces. For example, I know right now that you’re thinking about Waitress.”
Matt almost choked on his food. “I am not!” he objected.
“You’ve been casting shy little glances at her all evening,” said Cienfuegos. “She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she? I’m glad I didn’t train her for farm labor. She’s much more ornamental here.”
A surge of anger almost suffocated Matt. Cienfuegos had captured Waitress and turned her into an eejit. He could have saved her!
“Rage,” the jefe said calmly, pointing his fork at Matt. “Or perhaps jealousy. You like the girl and think that I’m a rival.”
“I’m not interested in her that way,” Matt said, trying to keep the anger from showing on his face.
“I’m afraid it’s a lost cause, mi patrón. Eejits can’t feel emotions.” Cienfuegos went on eating as though he were merely discussing the weather. “Now let’s forget pretty girls for a while and decide what to do about the border.”
Matt took careful breaths to calm down. He couldn’t afford to quarrel with Cienfuegos. He had too few allies. “Is there a way to communicate with the outside world?”
“The holoport has been locked down along with everything else. You could access it.”
“I see,” began Matt slowly, wondering what a holoport was. It worried him that Cienfuegos knew so much more than he did. It gave the man power. El Patrón would have surrounded Cienfuegos with spies who would report to him of any disloyalty. And he would have arranged a convenient accident if the reports were bad. Although, if what Celia said was correct, the man would be struck with lethal pain if he tried to rebel.
“I should negotiate with Esperanza first,” Matt said aloud. “I’d like to lower the security barrier briefly to allow her daughter María to visit.” From the look the jefe gave him, Matt realized that he knew about their friendship. “I’ll tell Esperanza I must find a way to remove the microchips from the eejits’ brains before we discuss anything. It’s a humanitarian problem and should appeal to her. Until they’re free, the business of shipping opium and bringing in supplies must go on.”
Cienfuegos raised his eyebrows. “That’s exactly the sort of plan El Patrón would come u
p with. Esperanza is always bleating about the poor eejits, and we can deflect her until we secure our power base.”
“She didn’t do anything for them during Operation Cold Turkey,” Matt remarked.
“Oh, she wrung her hands and said no one told her what was going on. Esperanza likes to look like a saint.”
It hadn’t escaped Matt that Cienfuegos had said “we” would secure “our” power base. Somehow, he had to make the man understand that they were not sharing power. “I really do intend to cure the eejits,” he said.
The jefe held out his hands in mock submission. “One may intend anything, mi patrón. The reality, alas, is different. In the old days the drug lords used one microchip the size of a grain of rice. It wore out after a few months and had to be replaced. Now they inject thousands that are no larger than bacteria. These spread out over the brain and form a network, and if one fails, the others take over its function. The effect is permanent.”
Matt felt shaken. “If a surgeon tried to remove them . . . ”
“It would be like finding the right grains of sand on a beach.”
They ate in silence. Waitress brought them crème caramel custards and withdrew to stand by a painting of a Spanish infanta being amused by a dwarf. She looked hypnotized, and the dwarf’s face was twisted in an expression that might have been pain.
The windows of the dining room were open, and a cool breeze carried the smell of distant creosote bushes. Matt thought it must be raining somewhere out on the desert. “Please close the windows, Waitress,” he said.
Cienfuegos laughed. “You say ‘please’ to an eejit. You might as well say ‘thank you’ to a duck.”
“It does no harm,” Matt said, disliking the man’s attitude.
“It doesn’t bother me, but you can’t do it in front of important people. I’m telling you this for your own good.”
Waitress had closed the windows, but she still stood in front of the glass, gazing into the darkness. What is she thinking? Matt thought. Does she know what she’s doing? Can she smell the creosote?
“Please meet me in Celia’s kitchen tomorrow morning,” he said, turning back to Cienfuegos. “Eight o’clock. You can show me the holoport.”
“You almost had it right,” said the jefe, grinning. “You don’t say ‘please’ to me, either.”
“It seems that being a patrón means being rude to everyone,” said Matt.
“Pretty much,” Cienfuegos admitted.
“One thing more. I want to change Waitress’s name to Mirasol. Is that possible?”
“Of course. I’ll give her a retraining session tomorrow.” The jefe bowed and took his leave. Matt was left to watch Mirasol at the window.
“Come here,” he commanded. He filled a plate with lamb and mint sauce, asparagus, and half a baked potato, as much as he thought healthy for her. “Now eat,” he said.
And Mirasol ate ravenously. She acted as though she were starving. The pellets that made up the eejits’ diet were running out, so perhaps she was starving.
After she had finished, Matt got her one of the custards from the serving table at the side of the room. It was creamy on the inside and brown with caramelized sugar outside. To his amazement, she stopped eating after the first bite. She sat as though stunned, with the spoon in her mouth, and he was afraid he’d made her sick. But then she began to eat again, slowly, keeping the custard on her tongue for a long time. She had to be tasting it! She had to be!
“I’ll make it up to you,” Matt said softly, watching her. “There has to be a way to find all those grains of sand on the beach.”
7
MAJOR BELTRÁN
Matt woke up feeling elated. He wasn’t confused as he’d been in the morning. He knew he was in El Patrón’s bedroom, but the mattress was new and the windows were open, letting out the odors of old age. Today he would have the servants take up the musty carpets and change the curtains. The tapestries would be stored and the walls scrubbed.
I can do anything I want, thought Matt, stretching out on the clean, fresh sheets. It seemed incredible that he’d been here only two nights. The first he’d slept on the ground at the oasis; the second had been spent here in the lair of the old man. But I can make it my own, the boy thought happily. He sprang up, eager to explore his new empire.
In the old days he hid in shadows, avoiding the cruel remarks from people who thought him lower than a beast. He’d learned to move like a shadow, eavesdropping and trying to make sense of the world around him. Now he had come into the light.
Today he would contact María. She would come to him, and he would show her how everyone obeyed him and how they need never hide their love again. They would be together always and perhaps become prometido, engaged to be married.
Matt halted. What, exactly, was marriage for? María said it was important, but he hadn’t paid attention to her reasons. Why would he? At the time he’d been a clone, and they didn’t get married. He knew that Felicia had been handed over to Mr. Alacrán as part of a drug deal. Fani had refused to marry Mr. Alacrán’s son until her father drugged her. María had been promised to Felicia’s son Tom. It didn’t matter that Tom’s idea of a good time was to nail frogs’ feet to the ground.
Nothing about the Alacráns made marriage even slightly attractive.
Before the wedding there was something called dating, for which you needed a girlfriend. Matt had a vague idea of the practice from watching TV, but nothing of the sort existed in Opium. For most of his life he’d had only one friend, who happened to be a girl. Did that qualify? As for having more than one, it hadn’t occurred to him until he met the boys at the plankton factory.
Chacho and Ton-Ton bragged about all the pretty chicas they knew. There weren’t any chicas at the plankton factory, but the boys assured Matt that they’d been muy popular back in their old homes. Girls, according to them, were the most fun you could have. Especially when they were competing with one another to make you happy. Ton-Ton swore he had at least five following him around.
Matt wondered how Ton-Ton managed this, because he had a face that looked like it had been slammed into a wall. He didn’t dare ask. Nor could he ask Chacho why girls were lining up to take him to parties. He didn’t want them to know how ignorant he was. When it came time for him to describe his own adventures, he stole stories from TV shows. He had to be careful, because the only shows El Patrón had allowed were a hundred years old.
One thing had stuck in Matt’s mind, though: Ton-Ton said that good girls were always chaperoned. Matt wasn’t sure what a bad girl was, but María was definitely good. If he invited her, Esperanza would insist on coming along.
Esperanza. Some of the contentment leaked out of the day.
An antique clock struck the hour, and the sun on its face moved forward as the starry night retreated. It was six a.m. Matt had discovered a whole shelf of clocks that did amusing things: An old woman hit an old man over the head with a broom when the hour struck, a rooster spread his wings and crowed, a ballerina turned to the music of Swan Lake. There were music boxes, too. On one, an old-fashioned gentleman and lady danced around a sombrero to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance. Their tiny metal feet darted in and out, and the lady swirled her long skirts. It pleased Matt to know that the old man had such innocent pleasures.
After breakfast he went in search of Celia but found her together with Major Beltrán. The two had their backs to him, and Matt approached with the stealth that had become second nature to him. Celia was holding a coffeepot while the major sampled the brew. “Disgusting! You should never make coffee with tap water,” the man said. He was dressed in a uniform that was surely meant for a parade ground. His shoulders were broadened with gold epaulets, and a black military hat made him look tall and powerful.
“Throw this swill out and use distilled water,” the major ordered. “Grind the beans just before you brew them. This morning’s offering tasted like floor sweepings.”
“I’m sorry, comandante,” Celia said hu
mbly.
“There was an insect in my bedroom this morning,” Major Beltrán went on. “A dirty, disease-carrying insect such as you would never find in a decent home. I opened the window and it flew in.”
“It must have been one of the bees from the flower beds.”
“I don’t care what it was. I want the apartment sprayed with insecticide and the flower beds, too.”
“Oh, but El Patrón never allowed that—” Celia began.
“El Patrón is dead,” the major said bluntly. “Another thing: I won’t eat food made by those creatures.” He waved his hand at an eejit stirring soup. “They haven’t the faintest idea of hygiene.”
“I tell them to wash their hands,” Celia said.
“Look at this!” Major Beltrán grabbed the soup stirrer’s hand and held it out for her to inspect. The eejit did a little dance like a jittery windup toy trapped behind a piece of furniture. It was an activity Matt had seen before when one of the servants couldn’t fulfill a task. “There’s dirt caked under his fingernails,” cried the major. “From now on you will prepare all my meals.”
“I thought I told you to stay in your apartment,” Matt said. The two spun around.
“He didn’t like the food I sent,” explained Celia. “What was I to do? He’s a representative of the UN. Muy importante.”
“He isn’t important here,” said Matt. “Last I heard, Opium wasn’t a member of the UN.”
“Ah! It’s the little drug lord,” said the major, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Tell me, don’t you feel lonely rattling around in this big mansion? Wouldn’t you like some other children to play with?”
“Please return to your apartment,” said Matt. He clenched his fists and then unclenched them. He didn’t want the man to know that the insult had struck home.
“Be careful, little drug lord. Your country is surrounded by enemies. It isn’t wise to offend an ally.” Major Beltrán let go of the eejit, and the servant grabbed the ladle and started stirring again.