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!”