by Nancy Farmer
The stirabout obediently followed the road, and Matt’s heart settled down to a regular rhythm. For one thing, he was astounded that a seven-year-old could fly anything. El Bicho was clearly intelligent—he spoke of telescopes and computers with easy familiarity just as Listen spoke of rabbit anatomy. They had both copied Dr. Rivas. Matt thought uncomfortably of his own upbringing. At age seven he’d been interested in picnics and Celia’s cooking. Nothing much to exercise a brain there.
It occurred to him that El Bicho had become much friendlier when he was in charge. Power was what the boy craved, even as El Patrón had craved it all his life.
The valley widened out to a broad plain dotted with mesquite, yucca, and cactus. Here and there were the small observatories once owned by astronomers before El Patrón drove them out. Mesquite trees had grown up around the buildings until their walls were almost invisible. Their round roofs were caked with dirt and bird droppings. Looming beyond them was an enormous white dome, the biggest observatory in the world, Matt remembered, with a telescope that could look around the universe until you could see the back of your neck.
By its side, no less impressive, was a building shaped like the number seven tipped over on its side. The shorter section rose at least a hundred feet into the air. At the top was a solar telescope. The longer section sloped at an angle to the earth and, El Bicho said, extended a thousand feet underground. “Dr. Rivas let me look into it once, but it’s nasty. Dark and hot. Only eejits work there.”
The boy positioned the stirabout over a strip in the parking lot, and Matt felt the magnetism pull them down.
“What you must always do, when you’ve gone for a hop,” said the Bug in the same serious way as Dr. Rivas giving a lecture, “is recharge the antigravity pods. You pull this lever”—Matt heard a whump as a tube with a sucker at the end clamped onto the front of the craft—“and you’re set. It takes fifteen minutes to recharge for the distance we’ve gone.”
For all the authority El Bicho tried to project as he led the way into the observatory, he still looked like a little kid on a leash. The eejits followed him as though they were walking a dog, and Matt struggled not to smile. He sensed that any hint of humor would send the boy into one of his rages.
The building was dark, except for the lights on computers, and it was very warm. “You have to keep the telescopes at the same temperature as the outside,” said the Bug. “Otherwise, they won’t stay still. In winter the astronomers have to wear thick coats.”
A woman in a white lab coat hurried out of an office. “¿Dónde está mi padre?”
“Dr. Rivas was busy, Dr. Angel,” the Bug said grandly.
“You’re never supposed to come here without him,” scolded Dr. Angel. “But who is this? Ah! Father told me at dinner. You must be the new patrón!” The woman bowed as though greeting royalty.
“And you must be Dr. Rivas’s daughter,” said Matt. “I hope we aren’t disturbing your work.”
“Not at all. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Dr. Angel graciously. “Would you like a tour?”
“I’ll show him around,” the Bug objected.
“You will follow me and keep your hands off the computers,” said the woman. “It took us weeks to recover from your last visit.”
Matt was afraid the boy would lose his temper, but he merely shrugged. Dr. Angel showed them the image from the solar telescope projected onto a screen. It looked like a pot of boiling fire with whirlpools and tendrils of darker flame writhing across the surface. They climbed stairs and walked along a causeway circling the larger telescope. A man in a white lab coat was lying on a recliner and looking up into the eyepiece. He didn’t react as they passed. “That’s Dr. Marcos, my brother,” said Dr. Angel. “We’re all called Rivas, so we use our first names to distinguish us from Father.”
Lab assistants stood before banks of machinery, adjusting the focus and movement of the telescope. Dr. Angel explained each activity, but Matt had trouble remembering what she said. It was all so new and unfamiliar that he only took in one word in five. She spoke of azimuths and albedos and other strange things. Mostly, he was impressed with the sheer size of the instruments. After a while Dr. Angel took pity on him and showed him pictures the large telescope had taken.
He saw Jupiter’s moons, Saturn’s rings, and a comet that looked like a dirty snowball with water vapor streaming off it. “That’s baby stuff,” complained the Bug. “I want to see the Scorpion Star.”
“We’re not looking at it right now,” said Dr. Angel.
“I don’t care. I want to see it.”
“I’ll show you the latest picture,” she said. She flicked on a large screen to show . . . Matt wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He saw a collection of skyscrapers floating in black space. Light reflected off red walls, and the whole assembly was enclosed in a bubble of some clear substance. A hovercraft was frozen between two buildings.
“Is that a planet?” he asked.
“It’s our space station,” said the Bug. “Enlarge it, Dr. Angel. I want to see the people.”
She went to a computer, and the image grew larger. It felt like flying down toward a city. You got closer and closer to the buildings until you no longer noticed the bubble surrounding them. Windows and walkways appeared. Now Matt saw a man walking through a clear tube connected to another building. He saw a woman standing at a window next to a potted plant.
Dr. Angel moved the image from one part of the station to another.
Matt saw more hovercrafts. The Scorpion Star was so enormous that people had to fly from one end to the other. “There’s the best part,” said the Bug, pointing. The screen had moved into the heart of the buildings, where another, smaller bubble contained trees and gardens. “That’s how they get their oxygen,” said the boy. “They grow crops and raise chickens and everything. It’s like a whole world where everything is perfect. I wish I could go there!” The longing in the boy’s voice was so intense that Matt turned away from the screen to look at him.
“Earth is a good place too,” he said.
“No, it isn’t! Earth is crappy! Everybody hates me. Up there . . . ” The Bug reached out to touch the screen, and Dr. Angel jerked his hand back. “Stop it, you poo-poo brain!” he screamed. “Up there are real scientists, not fakes like you! They’ll want me. I know they will. Someday I’m going up there, and when I do, I’ll burn this place down and you with it! Let go of me!”
By now the eejits had been alerted, and they moved in to hold on to the raving boy. They wrapped the leashes around him and carried him down the stairs and out into the parking lot. Matt followed, with Dr. Angel. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I thought he would be all right.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” the woman said. “Come back by yourself whenever you like.” She left, and the eejits loaded the boy into the back and sat on either side of him. Matt realized that he would have to fly the stirabout, but fortunately, he had paid close attention to the boy’s directions.
He pulled the lever, and the recharging hose dropped away. He pushed the green button to uncouple the magnets and the go button to start moving. The stirabout almost collided with a tree on the way up, but soon Matt was effortlessly following the road back to the hospital. All the while El Bicho screamed and spat on him until the back of his shirt was wet.
The Bug had screamed himself hoarse by the time they arrived at the little hovercraft port behind the hedge. “When you’ve recovered, we can start over again,” said Matt, struggling to stay calm. Not right away, though, he thought.
“I’ll kill you,” the little boy rasped as the eejits unloaded him.
“I’ll bring you pictures of the space station, and we can talk about what it’s like to live there,” said Matt. He was shaking with nerves. Never had he seen anyone lose control so completely.
“Kill you . . .,” whispered El Bicho as he was hauled off to the nursery. Matt went to his room and put on a recording of Hovhaness’s And God Created
Great Whales. The swelling music soothed him with its power, although the great whales themselves were gone and only the echo of their voices remained in the music. He wanted more than anything to lose himself, to disappear into an ideal world where all was orderly and beautiful.
Not unlike the Scorpion Star that El Bicho longed for.
22
THE ALTAR CLOTH
I want to go back to Ajo immediately,” Matt told Cienfuegos.
“¿El Bicho se encabronó, verdad?” said the jefe. “The little pest got your goat, didn’t he?”
“You find out about everything.”
“It’s my job.” Cienfuegos grinned. “I won’t be sorry to leave this place. Dr. Rivas has too many secrets for my liking, and I can’t make up my mind whether he’s a villain or not. But then Opium is full of villains.” They were sitting under the trees next to a warehouse the jefe had used to store the plants and animals he’d collected for Esperanza. Matt could see cages of squirrels, rattlesnakes, and roadrunners.
“Why would anyone want rattlesnakes?” asked Matt.
“They’re part of the ecosystem, mi patrón. No matter how nasty something is, it has some purpose.” Cienfuegos gazed fondly at the animals he’d rounded up. “This is the kind of work I was made for, not hunting Illegals.” For a moment he looked sad. It was the first time Matt had seen any sign of regret.
“You can spend all the time you like on it,” the boy said, “when you don’t have duties with the Farm Patrol.”
Cienfuegos grimaced. “I always have duties with the Farm Patrol. It’s what I’m programmed to do.”
Matt paused, understanding what the word programmed meant. He tried to think of a way to ask about it without offending the jefe. “This programming,” he began, “there seem to be several levels. You, for example, show no evidence of control. Mr. Ortega doesn’t either, but Eusebio, the guitar master, works like a machine. Music can awaken him briefly, and Mirasol responds to food. The field eejits don’t respond to anything. How is this possible?” Cienfuegos stiffened, and Matt braced himself for an attack.
“If you weren’t the patrón, I would have killed you by now,” the man said. “That is the one topic I can’t bear to think about. I wake up at night remembering what I’ve lost and that there’s nothing I can ever do about it. I can’t kill myself. That’s part of the programming too. All I can do is get up, inspect my troops, and send them out on their missions. Now, of course, with the border sealed, there’s no one to hunt. Long may it stay that way.”
For the first time the jefe had let his guard slip. He was a relentless hunter and showed no compassion for his prey, but how much was part of the man and how much was induced by the microchips?
A breeze brought the smell of pinewoods from farther up the mountain and blew dust along the road. Sometimes the winds were so fierce they made the walls of the mansion shudder. It was a place both wild and ultracivilized, Matt thought. Some parts were beyond anything else in the world, like the hospital, but hawks nested in the crags above its roof, and black bears prowled the grounds after dark.
“The microchips form a kind of constellation,” Cienfuegos said after a while. “Depending on their makeup, they attach to different parts of the brain. Dr. Rivas knows far more about it than I do. The eejits get a dose like the blast of a shotgun. Everything is shorted out. The lab technicians get enough to control their will, but not enough to dampen their intelligence. Almost everyone in this place is controlled to one degree or another. Celia was spared because she was a woman and not considered important enough to be a threat. Dr. Rivas and his son and daughter at the observatory were left untouched as well.”
“Why them?” asked Matt.
Cienfuegos gazed up at the trees, white sycamores that were just coming into leaf. The scanty shade sent speckles of sunlight onto the man’s face and illuminated his yellow-brown eyes. “Dr. Rivas was El Patrón’s guarantee of immortality,” he said. “I don’t know why the two astronomers were spared, but you can bet it was for a good reason. Well”—the jefe stood up—“I’d better see about packing. We’ll need a large hovercraft, though most of the plant and animal samples can go by road.”
“Major Beltrán could help with the collecting,” said Matt. “He’s got nothing better to do.”
Cienfuegos’s sudden bark of laughter took the boy by surprise. “I’m afraid his job is limited to pushing up daisies right now.”
“You didn’t!” cried Matt.
The jefe shrugged. “He was a security risk.”
“But I didn’t want him killed! What will Esperanza do when she finds out?”
“Nothing,” said Cienfuegos. “She has no problem with sacrificing people for her schemes, and she’s probably forgotten Beltrán’s existence. Please don’t look so shocked, mi patrón. Didn’t I tell you Opium was full of villains?”
* * *
What would Esperanza do? Matt didn’t think she’d excuse an out-and-out murder. Would she permanently keep him from María? And would María even want to see him? She’d always forgiven him before, but this time was different. She wasn’t a little girl with simple loyalties and opinions like Listen. She was almost a woman. Matt wished he knew what the dividing line between girls and women was. He might ask Ton-Ton, but he could imagine his friend’s reaction. (“¡Me burlas! You’re kidding! You really don’t know what a woman is? Hey, Chacho! Guess what Matt just told me?”)
No, he couldn’t ask Ton-Ton.
Matt went to the holoport room and sat in front of the giant portal. He hadn’t told Cienfuegos or Dr. Rivas where he was going, but why should he? He was the patrón, the boss of all bosses. He didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission.
The icon for the Convent of Santa Clara was winking, but before he reached for it, he looked around.
Mirasol was sitting on the floor, hands folded on her lap. “Waitress, go to the kitchen,” Matt said, irritated because she wouldn’t leave him alone, and then, “Stop. Stay.” He couldn’t send her to the kitchen, because she made the cooks nervous. Cienfuegos said they were afraid she would go rogue, something that happened to eejits when their brains were under too much pressure.
Perhaps she would be all right if he gave her something to do. “Come with me,” Matt ordered, and Mirasol rose to her feet. He went in search of Listen, but the little girl had dodged her caretaker as easily as she’d eluded the Bug. He found her in Mbongeni’s crib. El Bicho was nowhere to be seen.
“Listen, I told you to stay away from here,” Matt said.
“Yep, you sure told me,” she said, playing peek-a-boo with the little boy, “and I sure ignored you. Mbongeni is my best buddy. I’m not leaving him for anything.”
“You aren’t safe.”
Listen climbed out of the crib and stood before him like a small general. “Why not? I got by before.”
“The bigger El Bicho gets, the more dangerous he is.”
“Why don’t you put him in a cage? Feed him worms or something.” Listen folded her arms and thrust out her chin.
“He’ll never get better if he’s treated like an animal,” said Matt.
“Guess what? I don’t care.”
When Matt tried to pull her away, she shouted insults at him. “I won’t desert Mbongeni! I won’t!”
Matt gave up. The playroom was a cheerful enough place, with pictures of animals tacked to the walls—probably one of Dr. Rivas’s biology lessons. One wall had dinosaurs, another reptiles, and a third insects. Each was labeled with both the common and scientific names. There were no bunny rabbits or kittens.
Six eejits sat in chairs by the kitchen, programmed to fetch food, tidy up, or give baths when a bell rang. “Where’s the Bug now?” Matt asked.
“Dr. Rivas took him off for a walk when I got here,” said Listen.
At least he’s keeping them apart, thought Matt. He’d made it very clear to the doctor that Listen was not to be harmed. “I guess I can leave you for a while,” he said.
“Great! L
et me show you something Mbongeni loves better than anything in the world.” Listen ran to the kitchen and took a bottle of molasses from a shelf. Then she ripped open the side of a pillow and pulled out a chicken feather. “Look, Mbongeni, look,” she crowed.
“Muh! Muh!” cried the little boy, bouncing up and down. Listen dabbed a drop of molasses on each finger and glued the feather onto one. “Muh!” he squealed as he transferred the feather from one sticky hand to the other.
“He’ll do that until the feather falls apart,” said Listen with shining eyes. “He learned to do it all by himself.”
Matt looked away, dismayed, but it was clear that the little boy enjoyed the game. “Waitress, I want you to watch over Listen. This is very important. Don’t let the Bug hurt her in any way.” He waited a bit longer, hypnotized by Mbongeni, until Listen applied molasses to Mirasol’s fingers. Like all eejits, she was programmed to copy others and soon she, too, was transferring a feather from one hand to the other.
* * *
Matt scrolled through the icons in the holoport room and highlighted the Convent of Santa Clara. The familiar room appeared. Sor Artemesia’s altar cloth was pinned on a back wall with a vase of red roses placed in front of it, and next to the roses was María.
He thrust his hand against the screen before she could leave the room. As always, he felt sick and his heart pounded, but he knew the sensation would pass. For a moment the wormhole swirled with mist and he lost sight of María. Don’t go. Don’t go, he implored, and sure enough, when the image resolved she was standing directly in front of the portal.
“Don’t touch the screen,” he gasped, trying to recover from the scanner.
She held her hands clasped over her heart and they gazed at each other, too overcome to speak. They were alone. There was no Esperanza to interfere and no Cienfuegos to make jokes. Finally, she said, “I love you.”