“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 control. 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.”
“No one can do that,” said Esperanza.
“I intend to try,” Matt said. “I want you to find me some expert brain surgeons.”
“That’s going to take time,” she protested.
“Do what you can. And I want María and the boys I knew in the plankton factory to visit me.”
“Not possible,” said Esperanza. “Think! You have Glass Eye Dabengwa leaning on your eastern border. He’s not stupid. He’s going over and over your lockdown system, trying to find a way to break it open. Do you really want your friends in his path if he invades?”
Matt was deeply disappointed, but he knew she was right. “We’ll talk about it later,” he conceded. “Right now I want you to find me doctors. I’m going to open the border for brief periods, but be warned—”
Esperanza rubbed her forehead vigorously, and her lips were compressed into a thin line.
“—if your peacekeepers try to get in, I swear that I will fry every gopher, bighorn sheep, and bunny rabbit from here to the Salton Sea. Do you understand?”
From Esperanza’s furious expression, he knew she did.
“Fine. I’ll call you in a few days to see what progress has been made. How do I turn this thing off, Cienfuegos?” But the jefe didn’t need to do anything. Esperanza had already broken the connection.
9
THE GUITAR FACTORY
You should have seen him, Celia!” exclaimed Cienfuegos over lunch. They were in the kitchen, feasting on her excellent chiles rellenos. “It was like having the old man back again.”
“I don’t like the idea of having the old man back again,” said Celia, casting a troubled look at Matt.