The Lord of Opium

40

THE CLONING LAB

The minute they left the ground, the Mushroom Master gave a wail of despair and jammed the umbrella down over his head so hard that one of the spokes snapped.

The rainy season was over except for a few stray storms. The ride was smooth, and the land below was covered with sheets of golden poppies. Cienfuegos flew low so everyone could admire them. “On the way back we’ll fly over the biosphere,” he said to the old man. “You’ll enjoy seeing it from the air.” The only answer was a low moan.

“I told Dr. Rivas that the Mushroom Master is a fungus expert from California,” the jefe informed them before landing. “I don’t think he’d be happy to learn I took someone out of the biosphere.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Matt, whose attention had been focused on seeing María.

“He doesn’t like people poking their noses into what he considers his territory,” said Cienfuegos. “All of you keep your mouths shut about the Mushroom Master—pay attention, Listen and Fidelito. There are microphones hidden everywhere. And you, sir,” he addressed the old man, “please stay close to me. Bad things happen to people when they’re alone with Dr. Rivas.”

Matt wondered what the jefe was up to. He made it sound like the trip was dangerous, and perhaps it was. Neither he nor Matt had forgiven the doctor for microchipping the new security guards, doctors, and pilots.

When they arrived, the Mushroom Master was escorted inside and allowed to recover from his fright. “Airsickness,” Cienfuegos explained to Dr. Rivas, who was waiting to greet them. “Poor old fellow. Barfed his socks up the minute we left the ground.” Sor Artemesia took Listen and Fidelito away, to visit Mbongeni.

The Mushroom Master was soothed with pulque, his new favorite drink. “You must send me the wild yeast responsible for this,” he told the jefe. He then described the chemical reactions that fungi were capable of, the joy of watching a yeast bud develop, and the different odors produced by the action of mold on old sneakers.

Dr. Rivas’s eyes glazed over, and he excused himself quickly to do some work at the hospital.

“I think that went well,” said Cienfuegos, and the Mushroom Master smiled.

“I’d like to see the lab where you were grown,” said the old man. Matt nodded, although he wasn’t happy about showing anyone the unnatural way he’d been created. It still filled him with a sense of shame. They went through the gardens, and the Mushroom Master bravely put aside his battered umbrella to enjoy the trees. “Imagine letting everything grow wild without worrying about whether the ecosystem is in balance. Gaia is an excellent mother.”

“We shouldn’t talk about Gaia here,” warned Cienfuegos, and the old man changed the subject.

They came to the fountain with the children holding their hands out to the water. “Now, that is truly beautiful,” declared the Mushroom Master. “One of the chief regrets I have about my, um, home is the lack of art. All is devoted to practical things.”

“Those are supposed to be El Patrón’s sisters and brothers who died young,” said Matt.

“He must have been an extraordinary man, although I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked him.” The Mushroom Master stepped into the fountain and held his hands up like the children. “Yes, this is a marvelous work of art. I think they are worshipping Gaia.”

“We should go on,” said Cienfuegos, frowning. They came to the lab, with long tables covered in gleaming, stainless-steel pans and microscopes. A lot of work seemed to have been done recently. They inspected the giant freezers containing bottles labeled MACGREGOR #1 to MACGREGOR #13 and DABENGWA #1 to DABENGWA #19.

One of the glass enclosures was no longer empty. A cow walked slowly on a treadmill as her legs were flexed by mechanical arms. Matt halted in shock. “Who—”

Cienfuegos held a finger to his lips to caution silence. “So that was how you were grown,” the Mushroom Master said, peering through the glass. “What an amazing achievement! In some cultures the cow was worshipped as the embodiment of motherhood. I wonder what they would have made of this.”

“I know what the people here made of it,” Matt said bitterly. “They said I was a filthy clone, worse than an animal, and unnatural.”

The old man looked kindly at the boy. “You must not be hurt by other people’s ignorance. Where I come from, animals are revered. I would have been honored to have a cow for a mother. The only thing wrong here is that the poor animal has been drugged.”

“She has a microchip in her brain. Clones aren’t considered human or even animal. They’re property.” Matt sat down, driven by a desire to show the Mushroom Master just how terrible his childhood had been. He took off his shoe. “There! It’s somewhat faded, but that’s the mark of a clone.”

The old man took out a magnifying glass he used to examine interesting fungi. “ ‘Property of the Alacrán Estate.’ That certainly says it all. What does the number mean?”

Matt drew his foot back. “Nothing.”

Cienfuegos grabbed Matt’s ankle and the boy kicked him, but the jefe was very strong.

“I order you to let me go!”

Cienfuegos dropped Matt’s foot. “It’s a date, and I’m willing to bet that you think it’s an expiry date.”

“Expiry date?” asked the Mushroom Master.

“They tattoo it onto an eejit’s foot to show how long he’ll live, but it’s very different with a clone. Yours is a ‘best by’ date, Don Sombra. It tells the doctor when transplants have the best chance of succeeding. You’re good for another eighty years.” The jefe laughed.

Matt grabbed his shoe and sock, furious and relieved at the same time. He wanted to push Cienfuegos’s face into the cow patty that had just appeared in the enclosure. He busied himself with the shoe while the Mushroom Master drew the jefe away to explore the other freezers.

They opened one door after another until they found racks of trays labeled BUBONIC PLAGUE MONGOLIA, BUBONIC PLAGUE CAIRO, SMALLPOX TEHERAN, and many, many more. The Mushroom Master retreated quickly. They went outside without saying another word.

“Let’s take one of the stirabouts,” suggested Cienfuegos. “I’m sure you’d like to see the greatest observatory in the world.”

“I’d be delighted,” said the Mushroom Master, but they went into the flatlands instead, where there was nothing except mesquite trees, cactuses, and a few of the old abandoned observatories.

The jefe settled the stirabout down onto a patch of sand. “We should walk some distance away for security reasons. I hope your moccasins are up to it, sir.” The Mushroom Master put his umbrella up, for here were no trees. The sun blazed out of an empty blue sky. They walked along a trail until they got to a collection of boulders. Cienfuegos poked around them with a stick to check for snakes before they sat down.

“Is this place really that riddled with listening devices?” asked the Mushroom Master, wiping sweat from his face with a sleeve.

“El Patrón had them everywhere. He had bodyguards whose only job was to listen, and he liked to eavesdrop himself.”

“What a dreadful man,” said the Mushroom Master. “And now Dr. Rivas is doing it.”

“Probably.” Cienfuegos took out a bottle of water and passed it around.

“Whose clone is Dr. Rivas growing in that cow?” asked Matt, unable to hold back the question any longer.

“I think it’s his son,” said Cienfuegos.

“The one who’s an eejit?”

“Yes. Eduardo.”

Matt remembered the young man who had been picking leaves out of a pool, one by one. “Is—” The boy stopped to gather his thoughts. “Is the doctor going to do a brain transplant?”

“It’s been tried, but transplanting a brain is far different from doing a kidney or a liver,” said the jefe. “I remember that from lectures at Chapultepec University. The brain is shaped by the experiences of the body, and the body is shaped by the brain. When you learn to walk or swim or fly a hovercraft, both are involved. Changing one part results in lethal confusion for the other. I think Eduardo has been dead for a while, and Dr. Rivas is growing a replacement.”

“What terrible things have happened since the biosphere was enclosed,” said the Mushroom Master.

They sat, each with his own thoughts, gazing out at the low landscape of mesquite trees. The air shimmered over dull green leaves, and in the distance the domes of deserted observatories poked up in the heat haze like Shaggy Mane mushrooms. To the right, completely dwarfing all other structures, was the Alacrán observatory, whose great glass eye was trained on the Scorpion Star. Matt couldn’t see it now, but it was there. Always.

“Dr. Rivas has been getting stranger these past few months,” said Cienfuegos, “not that he was ever sane. I think the death of his son has pushed him over the edge.”

“I’m worried about that collection of germs he has in his freezer,” said the Mushroom Master. “Some of those diseases are legends. They aren’t supposed to exist.”

“Listen told me about them,” the jefe said. “Someday I’m going to take a blowtorch in there.”

“Make it soon,” said the old man.

“Excuse me, sir, but why did you come to Paradise?” Matt asked the Mushroom Master. “I mean, since you don’t like hovercrafts much.” He treated the man with the same courtesy as Cienfuegos did. The Mushroom Master might be odd, but there was no mistaking his quality. He was someone even a drug lord could respect.

“I was talking to Ton-Ton about microchips,” said the old man. “He’s a very clever lad. His methods are slow, but he has one outstanding quality. He overlooks nothing. He has come to the conclusion that the microchips are controlled by an outside energy source. I agree.”

All three of them turned to look at the Alacrán observatory. “El Patrón built that with a quarter of the fortune he had at the time,” said Cienfuegos. “I don’t know what he spent on the Scorpion Star, but possibly twice as much.”

“Controlling the eejits would be a compelling reason,” the Mushroom Master said.

“Could the Scorpion Star really affect people from so far away?” asked Matt.

“Sunlight reaches Earth from nine million miles away. Without it, life wouldn’t exist. Once there was something called a Global Positioning System. It controlled airplanes, ships, and cars from satellites.”

Matt’s thoughts whirled with this staggering revelation. All they would have to do was shut down the Scorpion Star. He could order that. He had absolute power. And then he thought, Order who?

“I wonder why Dr. Rivas hasn’t shut down the space station,” said Cienfuegos, echoing Matt’s thoughts.

“Perhaps he can’t,” said Matt.

Cienfuegos stood up and startled a lizard that had been sitting on an adjacent boulder. It threw itself off and disappeared into a clump of dry grass. “Let’s poke around the observatory and see what we can find out.”