The Lord of Opium

21

THE SCORPION STAR

Matt realized he would have to postpone his return to Ajo. Mbongeni was all right. He was a cheerful infant and his needs were simple, but Listen had to be taken away from El Bicho. Matt moved her next to his room and got one of the nurses to keep an eye on her. Listen didn’t like that one bit.

Matt found her surprisingly informed about some things and completely ignorant about others. When he tried to read her Peter Rabbit, she sneered at him.

“Rabbits don’t wear clothes,” she said scornfully. “They don’t eat currant buns. That’s a stupid book. I hate it.”

“It isn’t supposed to be real,” Matt explained. “You have to pretend you’re a rabbit and imagine what it’s like being hunted by a farmer who wants to put you into a pie.”

“Why would I do that?” asked Listen.

“To grow your imagination. To give your brain a workout.”

The little girl considered the possibility that brains needed workouts. “It’s still a lie,” she decided. “Dr. Rivas says that scientists always tell the truth.”

Except when it involves you, thought Matt, but he didn’t say it aloud.

Listen then told him about Dr. Rivas’s rabbits, which he kept for experiments. She didn’t seem upset that he killed them afterward, or that he let her watch dissections. She knew the names of organs and how the bones were put together. When you cut open the stomach, she said, all that was inside was lettuce, not currant buns. Matt realized that she had patterned herself after the doctor. It wasn’t surprising, since he was the only normal adult she saw, but she didn’t realize that she was just another rabbit to him.

No one had ever sung her lullabies or tucked her into bed. No one had ever held her when she had nightmares, and she did have them. Matt heard her screaming in the middle of the night, but she wouldn’t tell him about the dream. She’d never played hide-and-seek, although she’d done plenty of hiding from the Bug. She was, in her way, as isolated as Matt had been at that age, except that she didn’t have Celia to tell her stories or Tam Lin to take her exploring. And she didn’t have María.

Matt vowed to make it up to her.

The Bug was a much more difficult problem. Once he was cleaned up and his fingernails cut, Matt visited him. Eejits stood on either side, restraining him with a pair of leashes, just as large, vicious dogs were sometimes controlled. The boy’s legs were hobbled so that he could walk, but not run. The eejits forced him into a chair facing Matt.

Mirasol brought in a cart with cookies, cheese slices, strawberries, and glasses of milk. For a moment Matt was struck by the similarity between this meeting and when he had first met El Patrón.

Matt had been so traumatized then that he couldn’t speak, but he had instinctively liked the old man. Everything was right about him, the color of his eyes, the shape of his hands, his voice. Matt went up to the drug lord without the slightest hesitation, and El Patrón had asked him gravely if he liked cookies.

“Do you like cookies?” Matt said now to the scowling, simmering boy.

“Crot you!” said the Bug.

“Dr. Rivas says you’re intelligent. You don’t act like it.” Matt edged the plate of snacks closer.

“I’m smarter than you are, roach face. I’m the boss of this place.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Matt, pointing at the eejits holding leashes. “Let’s start over. If you’re as bright as Dr. Rivas says, you’ll want to get along with me.”

“When you die, I’m going to take your place,” boasted the Bug.

“That’s a really stupid thing to say. Only an idiot threatens a man holding a gun.”

El Bicho sat very still. After a moment an amazing transformation came over him. His body relaxed, and he grinned like a normal kid who only wanted to make friends. “I guess I acted like a real turkey,” he apologized. “You’re right. Let’s start over.”

“Okay,” Matt said warily. The shift of personality had caught him off guard. “Do you like cookies?”

“You bet,” said the Bug. “I like milk, too. And strawberries and cheese. It was nice of you to invite me to lunch.”

“Help yourself,” said Matt, and was surprised by the boy’s elegant table manners. He’d expected Mbongeni’s type of chaos, but of course the Bug had normal intelligence. Better than normal. “What do you do all day?” he asked.

“What do I do?” El Bicho’s gaze was far away as he tried to remember. “Sometimes Dr. Rivas teaches me things, and sometimes we go for walks. I watch TV a lot.”

“Where do you walk?”

“Here and there,” the boy said vaguely. “I like going to the observatory. Dr. Rivas’s children are astronomers—well, two of them are. The oldest son is a crot—sorry—an eejit. Sometimes they let me look through the telescope.”

It sounded like a normal outing except for the leashes and hobbles. Did the boy wear them most of the time? “Do you like Dr. Rivas?”

“Of course. He’s like a father. Or what I think a father is. Like you, I don’t know much about families.”

For some reason Matt felt like there was a pane of glass between himself and the Bug. What the boy said was reasonable, but it was just words, with no connection to the person behind them. The Bug was saying what he thought Matt wanted to hear.

“El Patrón’s father lived a hundred fifty years ago,” said Matt. “In a way he was our father too. We had a family back then, but they died long before we existed. It’s so strange. Sometimes I feel like an old photograph hidden away at the back of a drawer. Did you ever meet El Patrón?”

El Bicho shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“I knew him well. He talked a lot about his brothers and sisters, and it bothered him that they’d never had a chance. That fountain outside the lab is supposed to be statues of them.”

“Are they our brothers and sisters?” said the Bug.

Matt shied away from the idea. “Not really. The statues were copied from Illegal children. There weren’t any pictures of the originals. People like us have to make our families.”

“So that means you’re my brother,” said El Bicho.

“I suppose,” Matt said unwillingly. He considered for a moment. “I think that people have an instinct for a family. You look until you find a mother, a father, a sister, a brother. They don’t have to be blood relatives. They just have to love you. And when you find them, you don’t have to look anymore.”

They ate in silence for a while. Matt had no appetite and passed much of his food on to Mirasol. He thought about Celia and Tam Lin, and about Fidelito, who had called him brother. Was María his sister? No, she was something more. He kept looking at the Bug’s hobbles and wondering whether he dared to remove them. “If I took off your leg restraints,” Matt said carefully, “do you promise not to throw a fit?”

“Sure,” said El Bicho.

“We could go for a walk.”

“I can show you the way to the observatory,” said the boy, showing genuine interest for the first time. “It’s great! There’re all kinds of machines and computers. The smaller telescope looks at the sun, and the big one looks at the rest of the sky.”

The Bug’s enthusiasm transformed his face, and Matt thought, What kind of childhood has he had, shut up in a nursery with eejits for company? No wonder he isn’t normal. But that could be changed. He ordered the eejits to unlock the hobbles.

“Remember. No tantrums,” Matt warned as they went into the gardens, but he needn’t have worried. El Bicho danced around from the joy of being outside before settling down to a steady pace. The eejits followed solemnly, holding their leashes.

To Matt’s surprise they went to a hovercraft port concealed behind a hedge. There were a dozen or so small craft parked on magnetic strips, and the Bug went up to one and opened the hatch. “It’s a long way to the observatory,” he explained.

“I’ll get Cienfuegos to pilot,” said Matt.

The Bug laughed. “Anybody can fly these,” he said, climbing inside. The eejits followed him, pressing themselves against the back wall. “You need a pilot to take up a real hovercraft. This is a stirabout for short hops.” He patted the seat next to him.

Matt climbed in, hoping that he wasn’t making a mistake. The change in El Bicho had been so gratifying, he didn’t want to spoil the boy’s mood.

“First, you uncouple the magnets,” explained the Bug. He pushed a green button. The stirabout lurched up, and Matt caught his breath. “It’s okay. We can’t go more than ten feet off the ground,” said the Bug. “Now you press the go button and steer with this wheel. I’ll let you try it on the way back.”

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.