The Lord of Opium

38

THE MUSHROOM MASTER VS. THE SKY

Matt moved his office to another part of the hacienda. He couldn’t bear to be in the place where Mirasol had danced. He closed up the room and ordered the door to be nailed shut. Ton-Ton hid all the music boxes after Matt smashed one of them.

There was plenty of work to occupy Matt’s mind. What with sending samples to Esperanza, keeping the opium dealers at bay, and laying out plans for new fields, there was barely time to relax. He moved like a robot from one task to the next. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito left him alone, and Listen had been rebuffed so many times that she hid when Matt came into a room.

He didn’t care. At one point—it was hard to keep track of the days—Cienfuegos told him that the light for the Convent of Santa Clara was blinking on the holoport. Matt was in the kitchen, dining alone as he preferred now. “I don’t want to talk to Esperanza,” he said.

“It could be María,” suggested the jefe.

“She’s always with her mother.”

“It’s better than nothing,” said Cienfuegos.

“It is nothing.” Matt took another bite of a sandwich that tasted like sawdust to him.

“That’s no way to treat a friend,” said the jefe, drawing up a chair. “You liked María before Mirasol came into the picture.”

“I loved her,” Matt said.

“And still do, mi patrón. Please do not speak of her in the past tense. Es muy antipático. Disagreeable.”

“You don’t have to call me patrón anymore. I’ve chosen a new name,” said Matt.

Cienfuegos looked surprised and then pleased. “I hope it’s frightening. I always thought El Picador—the Meat Grinder—had a certain nasty charm.”

“I want to be called Don Sombra, Lord Shadow.”

The jefe thought for a moment. “It isn’t as scary as I’d hoped, but then it depends on what you mean by shadow. A lurking danger, an unseen threat. Yes, it could do.”

“It’s what I want. You can tell the others. Now leave me alone. I want to think.” Cienfuegos withdrew and Matt thought, Mirasol means “look at the sun.” She thought I was the sun, and now that she’s gone, there’s nothing left but shadow. He didn’t answer the holoport call on that day or on the next five occasions.

The monsoon departed, drifting back now and then to drench the soil and cause flash floods in the hills. The days were hot. Matt wore a hat like the Farm Patrolmen and, when he had time, rode out to inspect the opium fields. Eejits worked to remove stones from new tracts of land where Matt intended to plant with corn.

Field eejits were trained to prepare soil, but they understood only one type of crop. Cienfuegos had tried them out on a small stand of corn, and predictably, they slashed the growing cobs with razors and waited patiently for the resin to ooze out. “I’ve tried every command I can think of, but they won’t change,” the jefe had said. “It’s possible to retrain them, but think of the time wasted, not to mention the high mortality.”

“Are they living longer now?” Matt had asked.

“Much longer,” Cienfuegos had said. “Of course there are the usual accidents. One of them turned the wrong way and marched out into the desert instead of returning to the pens. No one noticed until the following day. We found him at the bottom of a wash. Two or three go rogue every month.”

Matt had turned away. He was preparing fields no one would use unless the Farm Patrol and bodyguards could be persuaded to do it. They wouldn’t like it. It was beneath their dignity.

Now Matt walked alone toward the mushroom house. The experiment had worked better than anyone’s wildest dreams. Polluted soil now sprouted with grass. Waste from the water treatment plant no longer drained into fetid pits but spread into enclosures, where it was set upon by hordes of ravenous Shaggy Manes. Matt could understand why the Mushroom Master was so proud of his pets.

He saw the Mushroom Master now. The man was carrying a large, brown umbrella that came down past his shoulders and made him look not unlike a mushroom himself. “Hello there!” he called. The man tipped up the umbrella and lowered it again.

“Please forgive me for not stopping, Don Sombra. I was checking a leak in the sprinkler system and must go back inside at once. You are welcome to visit, of course. I have some excellent pu-erh tea.” The Mushroom Master scurried through the door as though a rattlesnake was lunging at his heels.

“Is there an emergency?” Matt asked.

“With me, yes.” The Mushroom Master furled the umbrella and placed it by the door. “Thank Gaia for this umbrella,” he said. “Cienfuegos got it for me. The first time I left the biosphere, I panicked like a newly awakened Dormant at his first mating season. He had to drag me out.”

“Is the outside world that frightening?” Matt followed the man through the growing chambers to a small office in the middle of the building. Here the air was pleasantly cool and fresh. A small teapot simmered on a hot plate.

“It’s the sky.” The Mushroom Master leaned forward as though imparting a secret. “You have no idea how terrifying it is to someone who’s always had a roof over his head. It’s so big! It goes up and up forever. I feel like I could be sucked into it.”

Matt was surprised to find that he understood this feeling. “Once, long ago, I camped out under the open sky at night. I, too, was afraid of falling upward into the stars.”

“Stars! I haven’t dared to look at them yet.” The teapot began to rattle, and the Mushroom Master sprinkled the water with dried leaves. After a few minutes he poured out two cups of fragrant liquid. “This is tea. Have you ever had it, Don Sombra?”

Matt said he had and didn’t think much of it. It was brown like old dishwater and tasted much the same.

“Ah! But this is different,” said the man. “Tea isn’t a plant you can boil like spinach. It must be ripened like a fine cheese. Here. Enjoy the aroma first and then sip carefully.”

The boy took the cup with some amusement. The people in the biosphere were peculiar, from the frogherd with his skinny white legs to the people slurping grasshopper stew. But the aroma was pleasant. It wasn’t like flowers exactly. It reminded him of cedar or sandalwood, of something old but not decayed.

He sipped it. “This really is good.”

“You see!” crowed the Mushroom Master. “Even people who have never ventured outside a building can surprise you. Pu-erh is fermented by yeast. Do you know what a yeast is? A fungus! Is there nothing fungi can’t do?” The old man warbled on about spores and mycelia, lost in the wonder of Gaia’s creations.

Matt liked him and on an impulse said, “Why don’t you come to dinner at the hacienda? We can sit outside and stargaze.” The Mushroom Master tensed up. “We’ll stay close to the door so you can escape if it gets too frightening.”

The Mushroom Master considered. “Cienfuegos is always telling me about how beautiful the outside world is, but I’m afraid the farthest he’s got me is one trip to the pollution pits. Can I bring my umbrella?”

“Of course,” Matt said. “You can sit under it the whole time if it makes you comfortable.”

A weight seemed to have lifted from Matt as he made his way back to the hacienda. For weeks he had lived under a cloud, and none of his friends could help him. Everything and everyone reminded him of Mirasol. More than anything, he felt devastated that he hadn’t saved her. He should have found other doctors. He should have stopped trying to wake her up.

The Mushroom Master was different, because nothing about him raised unhappy memories. Being with him was like closing a door and looking ahead.

Matt went by the mausoleum, which wasn’t far from the hospital. He did this often, though both Celia and Sor Artemesia told him it was a bad idea. I don’t even have a picture of Mirasol, he thought, gazing at the dusty glass doors. How could he have been so careless? He remembered her now, but what about later?

Long ago he’d had a teacher, a woman who was one of the higher-grade eejits. He remembered her as very tall, but then he’d been a little kid. Everyone looked tall. She had brown hair and wore a green dress, and her face . . . was missing. It had vanished from his mind as the woman herself had vanished into the opium fields.

I’ll ask Chacho to draw a picture, Matt thought. He went by the guitar factory and invited his friend to dinner.

* * *

Eejits moved a picnic table near the veranda and placed lamps at either end. They were powered by solar cells that gathered energy during the day and refunded it as a pearly glow after dark. Matt thought it would appeal to the Mushroom Master. The table was close to a door where the man could dive for shelter.

Servants brought out bowls of salad, salsa, and tortilla chips. A platter of fried chicken sat in the middle of the table. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito arrived, followed by Listen and Sor Artemesia. Listen went to the end of the table, as far as she could get from Matt.

The Mushroom Master, looking very odd under his domelike umbrella, was escorted by Cienfuegos. Fidelito hooted with laughter and was threatened by Ton-Ton. “If h-he wants to bring an umbrella, that’s his business,” said the older boy.

Matt introduced the old man. “He isn’t used to the sky and feels safer when he can’t see it,” the boy explained. He described the work the man and Cienfuegos had been doing.

“So the cat’s out of the bag,” said the jefe. “I’m warning you prehumans”—he shook his finger at Fidelito and Listen—“if you set foot in the mushroom house, I’m going to feed you to the Giant Gomphidius.”

“There’s no such thing,” said Listen.

Cienfuegos smiled wolfishly. “Come and find out.”

A servant filled everyone’s glass with fruit juice except, as usual, the jefe’s. “What’s that? It smells delightfully moldy,” said the Mushroom Master, sniffing from beneath the umbrella. Cienfuegos signaled for another glass of pulque.

The sun was setting. One tree was full of redwing blackbirds, singing so loudly it drowned out all the other birds. A peacock settled for the night on a plaster cherub holding a wreath of plaster roses. A line of quails hurried from one bush to another.

“We should eat outdoors more often,” Matt said.

“We, uh, did it all the time at the plankton factory,” said Ton-Ton. “We didn’t have birds, though. The Keepers ate them all.”

“Soon the stars will come out,” Matt said, steering the conversation away from that unpleasant memory. “You’ll be able to see them,” he told the Mushroom Master.

“I’ve seen pictures. I don’t need the real thing,” the old man said, grasping the umbrella more tightly.

“One of the brightest is the Scorpion Star. You must be interested in that.”

“Never heard of it,” said the Mushroom Master.

“It’s the space station patterned after your biosphere. A place for people to live off the Earth.” Matt was amazed that the man had never heard of it.

“Why would anyone want to live away from Gaia?” The Mushroom Master reached for a piece of chicken.

Matt exchanged looks with Cienfuegos. “You know, that’s a good question. El Patrón went to huge expense to create the space station, but we don’t know what it’s for.”

“I know he never went there,” said the jefe. “Dr. Rivas and his daughter tried to visit once. El Patrón had them arrested in Aztlán and brought back.”

“How do people get there?” said Chacho. “On TV they show rocket ships flying to other planets.”

“Pfft! The other planets are lifeless balls of rock,” scoffed the Mushroom Master.

Matt turned to him, or at least to the umbrella. “How do you know?”

“I read books. We have a perfectly good library in the biosphere,” said the old man. “It’s a hundred years out of date, but that doesn’t matter. The planets were dead then and still are. Only Gaia is alive.” Salsa and chips were rapidly disappearing under his umbrella.

“People use the Sky Hook to reach the Scorpion Star,” said Cienfuegos. “It’s a long tether attached at one end to a mountain in Ecuador and at the other to the space station. An elevator goes up and down, carrying people and supplies.”

“May I have another piece of chicken?” the Mushroom Master asked.

“You can have as much as you like,” said Matt.

The old man sighed with pleasure. He tipped the umbrella slightly to reach the food and quickly righted it again. Matt heard chewing noises from inside.

“You know, it isn’t going to rain,” said Listen from the far end of the table.

The umbrella tipped up again. “I remember you. I wondered at the time why you weren’t in the Brat Enclosure. You’d like it there. Lots of games and playmates.”

“I would not like it,” Listen said. “Why don’t you put that thing away? Nothing’s going to fall on your head.”

“Are you sure? A star might come loose,” the old man said.

“You’re making fun of me ’cause I’m a little kid, but I’m smart. A star is a ball of fire millions of miles away. It isn’t going to fall on anybody.”

“Don’t talk back to adults, Listen,” said Sor Artemesia.

“Listen. What an interesting name,” the Mushroom Master said. “You must hear all kinds of things.”

“I got ears like a bat,” the little girl said.

“It’s true that I don’t need an umbrella,” conceded the old man. “I’ve lived all my life under a roof, and the sky scares the dickens out of me. But I’m going to put the umbrella away just for you, child.” He furled it and placed it on the ground by his feet. Matt noticed that his eyes were closed. “I can do this,” he murmured. He opened his eyes and gasped.

A crescent moon hung not far above the horizon. Rose and saffron hues glowed above the western hills, while the sky overhead was deep blue as though saturated with light. The Mushroom Master’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve seen pictures, but none of them were as glorious as this. Oh, thank you, thank you, Listen, for pulling me out of my shell.” The old man gazed, spellbound. Above the moon, gradually becoming clearer, was a brilliant point of light.

“That’s the evening star,” said Chacho. He, too, was spellbound by the colors.

“That’s not a star. It’s the planet Venus,” said Listen. “You can tell ’cause it doesn’t twinkle.”

“Sometimes I don’t want too much information,” Chacho said.