The Lord of Opium

  “Get out,” Matt said.

  “Make me,” jeered the major.

  Too late Matt realized that he and Celia were the only Real People in the kitchen. He wasn’t strong enough to tackle the man by himself, and Celia was too old. But it was dangerous to let Major Beltrán get away with defiance. A weak drug lord was very soon a dead one.

  “You’re only a boy,” the major said scornfully. “Or at least that’s the official position. I would call you something else. You can’t possibly inherit this country.”

  Celia watched the man with large, worried eyes.

  “You have no authority over me,” Major Beltrán said. “I will go and come as I please. All those who would have protected you are dead, and your only guardians are a fat, old cook, a deaf music teacher, and a half-wit bodyguard who can’t even speak.”

  Casually, without any attempt to hurry, Matt walked over to the soup eejit and watched what he was doing. His mind was racing as he hunted for some way out of this situation.

  “Quit stalling, little drug lord,” the major said. “Doña Esperanza sent you here to open the border, and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Matt had gone to the stove with no purpose, or at least none that he was aware of. But once there a voice, deeply buried in his mind, whispered, He wants to kill you. It was so real that the boy glanced up to see whether someone else was in the room.

  “I’ll open the border when I think it’s the right time,” Matt said, watching the soup eejit.

  “If you do it now, Doña Esperanza will be merciful. She doesn’t have to be, you know. She has an entire army at her disposal.”

  Matt felt the back of his neck prickle. He wanted to spin around, to discover what the major was doing, but he instinctively felt that this was bad strategy. He must look as though he were in control. Do it, the voice in his mind said. “Do what?” Matt said aloud.

  Don’t waste time with stupid questions! thundered the voice. Do it! As though someone else had taken control of his body, Matt’s hands grabbed the pot, and he whirled around. The major was much closer than he thought, and Matt threw the boiling soup at him.

  The major jumped back, but not quickly enough. The soup splashed over his coat, and he frantically pulled it off. A knife clattered to the floor. Celia screamed. In the same instant Matt was aware that Cienfuegos was in the doorway.

  The jefe launched himself across the room, slammed the man into a wall, and punched him three times like a professional boxer. The major collapsed. Cienfuegos casually took a pitcher of ice water from the table and poured it over him.

  “It was good strategy using the soup, mi patrón,” he said, “but next time throw it at his face.” He went to the hall and called for eejits to carry the major to his apartment.

  * * *

  Matt’s hands were shaking as he clutched the mug of coffee Celia had given him. He didn’t know which had upset him more—the major’s attack or Cienfuegos’s lightning response. “Would he really have killed me?” he asked. “If he had, no one could have opened the border.”

  “He would have taken you hostage and forced you to do it. I’ve had my eye on him ever since he learned you were the sole heir,” said the jefe.

  “You need more bodyguards,” said Celia, supervising the eejit who was cleaning up the spill.

  “I don’t know why I threw that soup,” Matt said. “Something just came over me.”

  “That’s how the old man was,” Cienfuegos remembered fondly. “He was like a samurai warrior, always in the present. No one had time to outguess him.” The jefe was lounging with his feet up on the table, holding a similar mug, except that his had pulque in it.

  “I don’t really like to hurt people,” Matt admitted.

  Cienfuegos gazed at him over his drink. The jefe’s light-brown eyes were intent, like a coyote watching a rabbit. “You get used to it,” he said at last.

  Celia bustled around, preparing another pot of soup. “I’ve been thinking about possible names for our new drug lord,” she said. “How about El Relámpago, the Lightning Bolt, or El Vampiro?”

  “I lean toward vampires,” said Cienfuegos. “They come out after dark and drink blood. Very scary.”

  “For the hundredth time, I don’t want another name,” Matt said.

  8

  THE HOLOPORT

  When they had finished, Cienfuegos led the way to the holoport, and Matt was surprised to recognize the place. He’d discovered it while exploring the secret passages El Patrón used to spy on people. It was a warehouse filled with computers and surveillance cameras, and normally it would have been full of bodyguards.

  “I should have thought of this room,” the boy said. “It’s one of the few places El Patrón allowed modern machinery.”

  “You’ve been here before?” Cienfuegos sounded surprised.

  “El Patrón and I used to watch the surveillance cameras together.” Matt was lying. He’d never been here with the old man, but it pleased him to keep the jefe off balance.

  “That’s odd. He never let his other—” Cienfuegos halted.

  He never let his other clones in on the secret, Matt silently finished. You can’t use the word “clone” around the new Lord of Opium, any more than I can use the word “eejit” around you.

  The jefe threw open the doors of a cabinet to reveal a giant screen. It brightened to show an office overlooking a large city. An address at the bottom read HAPPY MAN HIKWA. BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE. Matt remembered that Happy Man was one of El Patrón’s most voracious customers. He distributed drugs under the leadership of Glass Eye and was now probably an enemy.

  Matt was pleased to recall the man’s identity. When El Patrón was alive, the boy had memorized long lists of drug contacts, trade routes, and the correct mordidas, or bribes, to pay.

  After a few minutes a new picture appeared of a shed half-filled with boxes: WAREHOUSE #7. ABUJA, NIGERIA. A red light flashed in a corner of the screen.

  “They’re trying to contact us,” explained Cienfuegos. “Everyone wants to know where his shipment of opium is, and I can’t answer because I’m locked out. Everyone is. Have you ever used a holoport?”

  “I never had reason to,” Matt said.

  “It’s easy if you have access,” said Cienfuegos.

  And that’s why you’re willing to serve me, thought Matt. Only El Patrón’s handprint—or that of his clone—could unlock the security system and disarm the weapons on the border. For the first time Matt realized what the old man had really intended. It wasn’t enough to fill his tomb with slaves for the afterlife. El Patrón had meant to kill everyone in Opium.

  With the border closed and no one alive to open it, supplies would run out. Oh, the few Real People might scratch out an existence eating squirrels, but the vast eejit army would perish. And how long could the Real People survive without medicine, seeds, livestock, or food? Opium was a one-crop country, and everything else was imported. When all were dead, El Patrón would rule a kingdom of shadows, with ghostly eejits tending the fields and Celia eternally preparing meals and Daft Donald forever polishing Hitler’s car.

  But he didn’t count on me, Matt thought.

  “How do I dial up Esperanza?” he said aloud.

  “I don’t know, mi patrón,” said Cienfuegos. “If you wait long enough, all the addresses will appear.”

  Matt watched as pictures flashed onto the screen. Places in the United States and Aztlán appeared, although officials in those countries were not supposed to be involved with the drug trade. Warehouses in Russia, India, Japan, and Australia were shown, lingered a few minutes, and faded.

  The air in the room was cold, and a hum vibrated almost out of the range of hearing. Matt shivered. He’d gone from near solitude to someone who would have to stand up to presidents and generals. The thought of going toe-to-toe with Glass Eye Dabengwa filled him with dread. He’d seen Glass Eye. The sight of those motionless yellow eyes had turned Matt’s spine to water, and the man wasn’t even lo
oking at him. No matter how many pillows Cienfuegos put on Matt’s chair to make him look tall, Glass Eye would know he was just a kid.

  The Convent of Santa Clara appeared with the words ESPERANZA MENDOZA. SAN LUIS, AZTLÁN.

  “Put your hand on the screen,” said Cienfuegos in a tense voice. When Matt obeyed, a thousand tiny ants swarmed over his skin and his heart raced madly. He’d felt this reaction before. It was what happened when El Patrón’s defense mechanism was deciding whether you were friend or foe. He saw the jefe step away.

  The sensation passed. The screen dissolved into a long, dark tunnel swirling with milky vapors. It looked for all the world like a passageway you could climb into, and Matt found himself attracted to it. He smelled the sharp odor of rain falling on dust.

  “Stay back!” shouted Cienfuegos from somewhere nearby. Matt realized he’d been about to fall into the tunnel.

  The holoport found its destination, and the scene cleared. A nun, sitting at a table, was embroidering a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was as real as someone seen through an open window, so close that Matt felt he could reach out and touch her.

  The nun dropped her embroidery. “Oh! Oh! It’s a transmission! What do I do? What do I do?”

  “Don’t be frightened. I only want to talk to you,” Matt said, surprised at her panic.

  “I shouldn’t be here at all,” the woman protested. “I’ll get into such trouble. I never thought the holoport would activate—”

  “If you aren’t allowed to talk, please call Doña Esperanza,” said Matt. But at that moment Esperanza herself came in.

  “Sor Artemesia, you booby!” scolded the woman. “You’re going to get your head handed to you for poking into places where you don’t belong.”

  “I meant no harm! This was such a nice room to sew in while María was at the hospital—”

  “Weren’t you supposed to be teaching her math?”

  “Well, I meant to. Really I did. But she didn’t want to study. She says that visiting the sick is a greater duty and that Saint Francis—”

  “Go find her!” thundered Esperanza. Sor Artemesia fled.

  Esperanza was a small, extremely fierce-looking woman with black braids pinned across her head like a crown. She was dressed in black and wore silver rings on every finger and a large silver brooch with the portrait of an Aztec god. The jewelry did nothing to lighten her appearance. She reminded Matt of a crow on a piece of roadkill. “You survived,” she said without a trace of a smile.

  “I survived,” Matt said, staring back.

  “Is that Cienfuegos lurking in the background? Somebody must have left a screen door open.”

  “I love you, too, Doña Esperanza,” said Cienfuegos.

  “Well, get me Señor Alacrán or that lump my daughter married, Steven. Whoever’s in charge. We’ve got to unseal the border and allow a peacekeeping mission to enter.”

  She doesn’t know, Matt thought. But how could she know that everyone who had attended El Patrón’s funeral was dead, including Esperanza’s husband and her older daughter Emilia? “They—uh, they can’t come,” said Matt, searching for the right words.

  “Don’t stall for time,” the little woman spat at him. “You may enjoy swanking it up in your old home, but I have world affairs to consider. Don’t worry, chiquito. You’ll be well cared for.”

  “I thought you were going to have me declared the heir,” said Matt, stung at being called a little kid.

  “Yes, probably. In due time.” Esperanza waved her hand impatiently. “If you can’t find anyone else, you can rustle up that good-for-nothing husband of mine.”

  “You have to tell her,” said Cienfuegos.

  “Tell me what?” the woman snapped. “That they don’t want to open the border? Give me a break! Either they let the international peacekeepers in or the whole country will starve to death.”

  Everything that Cienfuegos had said about the destruction of Cocaine came back to Matt’s mind. What would happen if he allowed the so-called peacekeepers in? Esperanza didn’t care whether the innocent suffered. She was a fanatic. Somewhere deep inside Matt an old, old voice whispered, I’m like a cat with nine lives. As long as there are mice to catch, I intend to keep hunting.

  El Patrón, thought Matt, shocked. It was like the voice he’d heard in the kitchen—an actual person whispering in his ear! It frightened him because it was so real, but also comforted him because in a strange way he had found an ally.

  “You don’t need to have me declared the heir,” he said in words he barely recognized as his own. “I am the Lord of Opium, the only Alacrán left.”

  Esperanza’s eyes opened wide.

  He told her. He described how the eejit children sang the “Humming Chorus” from Madama Butterfly at the funeral. The mourners—though you could hardly call them mournful—had waded through drifts of gold coins as they entered the tomb. El Patrón’s coffin was laid out like the sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh. His likeness as a young man had been painted on the lid. Then Tam Lin brought out a case of wine that had been laid down the year the old man was born, and Steven, Emilia’s husband, had opened the first bottle. It smells like someone opened a window in heaven, he said.

  How little he knew! Everyone who drank it went straight to the afterlife, though probably not to heaven. All the drug lords died and their wives, too, including Emilia. The others—the priest, Senator Mendoza, Tam Lin—fell with them.

  Matt looked for signs of emotion in Esperanza’s face, but all she did was sigh. “That certainly makes things awkward,” she said.

  Awkward? What kind of woman was this who didn’t cry when she heard about the death of her husband and daughter?

  “I had hoped to negotiate with one of the older family members,” she continued. “No offense, Matt, but you’re only fourteen years old.”

  “I’m more than a hundred,” Matt said. And I am, he thought. I was grown from a strip of El Patrón’s skin.

  “Yes, well . . .” For the first time Esperanza looked uncertain. “We don’t really know what happens when clones grow up. We’ve never had one your age. I do know that you’re inexperienced and ill-educated.”

  Matt smiled. “El Patrón only had a fourth-grade education, and he founded an empire.”

  “¡Por Dios! You sound exactly like him. It’s unnatural!” Esperanza cried. She wiped her forehead with a heavily ringed hand. “The situation is more complicated than you think. Most of the Dope Confederacy was on its way out. The land had been farmed until it was exhausted and then polluted with chemicals. The drug lords rode around in hovercrafts and shot all the wildlife. Glass Eye won’t find it easy to make money out of his new territory, which is why he’s looking toward Opium.”

  “He is?” Matt asked sharply.

  “El Patrón was a monster, but he had a quality the others lacked. I can’t believe I’m saying something good about him.”

  Matt waited as she struggled to control her anger. Through the holoport he could hear doves in a far-off courtyard. When he was recovering in the hospital of Santa Clara, María had pushed his wheelchair into the convent garden. Together they had watched the birds bobbing and cooing in their half-witted way as María threw bread crumbs at them.

  “Saint Francis once rescued a basket of doves from a market,” she had said.

  “I don’t blame him. They taste good with oregano,” Matt had replied, goading her.

  “Be quiet, Brother Wolf. I’m trying to civilize you. He gathered them in his arms and said, ‘My innocent sisters, why did you let yourselves be caught? I will make you nests so that you may raise your young in safety.’ The doves obeyed him and never flew away unless they were given permission.”

  Matt had looked at María’s black hair hanging in a bell about her beautiful face and knew that he loved her utterly and forever.

  “Opium is a lifesaver, if used properly,” said Esperanza, breaking into Matt’s thoughts. “We don’t want to eradicate it, just to keep it under contr
ol. But there’s something else about your country. Do you remember what Aztlán looked like?”

  Matt did. His first vision was of a seething mass of factories and skyscrapers. The sky was smudgy as though someone had been burning rubber tires. Worse than that was the booming, clanking, thundering din that filled the air. His first day in Aztlán had been horrible, but he soon got used to it.

  “I wondered how anyone could live in such a place,” he said.

  “The border area is the worst, but the rest of the country is a mess too,” said Esperanza. “The United States isn’t any better. Wild animals there can only survive in zoos. The flowers that once covered the countryside have vanished. People huddle in houses, afraid to go anywhere because of crime, and children have forgotten what it’s like to play outside.”

  Matt was surprised. So the United States wasn’t a paradise full of Hollywood mansions after all.

  “In fact, the whole world is an ecological disaster,” said the woman. “The rich can escape to their little enclaves with gardens and high walls, but even they can’t escape the air. It has become what religious people call God’s Ashtray.”

  “God’s Ashtray,” repeated Matt, liking the term. It reminded him of a giant bowl in which rested a single, giant cigarette butt.

  “Opium is the only place in the world with an undamaged ecosystem,” said Esperanza. “The UN has declared it a natural refuge. We hope to use its plants and animals to heal other lands.”

  “Wait! You’re telling me that El Patrón is going to save the planet? He’s the patron saint of endangered species?” Matt’s whoop of laughter made Esperanza wince.

  “This project is too big for you, Matt. You need advisers. You need UN peacekeepers to maintain order.”

  “Oh, no! We’re going to do things my way. I want the border free to bring in food, and I don’t want any of your peacekeepers maintaining order like they did in Cocaine. Later on we can discuss exporting the ecosystem. Right now my first concern is to reverse the eejit operation.”