The Lord of Opium

41

THE SOLAR TELESCOPE

Matt was greeted warmly by Dr. Angel, but Cienfuegos was clearly not on her list of friends. As for the Mushroom Master—whom the jefe introduced as a doctor from California—she quickly decided that he was an eccentric old coot. The Mushroom Master played the role well. He peered nearsightedly at dials, jiggled handles, and poked buttons until Dr. Angel was almost as rude to him as she was to the Bug. Dr. Marcos came out from under the telescope long enough to utter a few surly words of welcome.

The visitors admired pictures of planets and star clusters and endured Dr. Angel’s long-winded explanation of focal lengths. But when they got to images of the Scorpion Star, the Mushroom Master was riveted. “Oh, my, that’s wonderful! And so familiar. If I close my eyes, I can imagine . . . ” The old man hadn’t seen the biosphere from outside, but he knew the layout. Matt could see him comparing the inner and outer shapes of the buildings. “That could be Africa and that Australia,” he murmured. Cienfuegos nudged him and he fell silent.

The Mushroom Master reached out and touched the screen, leaving a visible fingerprint. Matt could see Dr. Angel struggling to control herself. She adjusted the image, and it drew closer to the space station. They saw hovercrafts frozen between buildings and tubelike walkways. People in white lab coats stood at windows. “How many people live there?” asked the Mushroom Master.

“It varies. Around three hundred,” said Dr. Angel.

“Ah. So people come and go.”

“Scientists are rotated. Six months on and six months off. It’s difficult to be isolated for such long periods.”

“And how many children are there?”

Dr. Angel looked at him as though he were crazy. “It’s a space station. There’s no room for children.”

“My, my, my, my, my. That’s not going to do much for the future of the colony,” said the old man.

Dr. Angel looked over his head at Matt, as if to say, Where did you dig up this idiot? “Look, I have work to do,” she said. “Would you mind wandering around by yourselves? And please don’t let him touch anything. No buttons, no switches. Nothing.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” said Matt. “And thank you for your time.”

They went on with occasional stops to watch a technician study graphs or adjust a number on a dial. The Mushroom Master opened every door they passed—carefully, so Dr. Angel wouldn’t notice—and discovered a lunchroom with tables. “Excellent! Let’s have tea,” he said.

Two technicians were sitting at a table, but they left when the visitors arrived. The old man was intrigued by a coffee machine and, by punching a button, managed to scald himself. “Here, I’ll do it,” said Cienfuegos, blowing on the old man’s hand to cool his skin. “Coffee or hot chocolate? I don’t think you’d like the tea.”

“Hot chocolate,” the Mushroom Master said eagerly. They found a box full of donuts and helped themselves. “This is extremely unhealthy,” the old man said happily. “The dieticians at home are fanatical about me not eating sugar.”

“By the way, sir, you do a fine imitation of a Tundran,” said the jefe. “Dr. Rivas and Dr. Angel couldn’t wait to get rid of you.” The Mushroom Master smiled and stuffed another donut into his mouth.

Afterward they explored the solar telescope. A technician carrying a clipboard hurried over and offered to show them around. The man took them to the top of the tower, where the telescope followed the movement of the sun, and then down to the opening of a giant shaft that plunged at an angle into the earth.

“Look at that,” cried Matt. A huge tube filled the inner part of the shaft, and elevators enclosed in a chicken-wire wall spiraled slowly down the outer part.

“The elevators are for the maintenance crew. The tube is like a giant thermos bottle, and it needs to be checked constantly for weaknesses,” said the technician. “The image of the sun is projected inside the tube from lenses in the tower and filtered to remove most of the heat. Even so, the temperature can be lethal. The final image is relayed to computers in the main observatory to study the weather on the surface.”

“The sun has weather?”

“Yes, indeed. The surface is always boiling, and sometimes streams of hot gas are ejected into space. We’re concerned with the ones aimed at the Scorpion Star.”

Lights illuminated the sides of the shaft, but it was so deep that Matt couldn’t make out the bottom. Air conditioners whirred in alcoves at various levels, and a hot breeze rose out of the depths and was sucked through vents.

“Amazing,” said the Mushroom Master. “Even with all those safeguards, it’s still hot.”

“The air-conditioning isn’t perfect,” admitted the technician. “Every now and then we lose a few eejits.”

“What an evil place to work,” said Matt, watching the pasty faces of the maintenance crew in their wire cage. They were dressed in the usual tan jumpsuits, and their skin was bleached from lack of sun. They looked like mushrooms. Matt shone Tam Lin’s flashlight, and powerful though it was, the beam was lost.

He thanked the technician for his help, and the man went back to his work. Matt continued to look into the hot shaft. More elevators slowly rose and fell along the sides, and some had stopped at alcoves to tend to machinery.

“Triple dare you to go down to the bottom,” Cienfuegos said.

“Me? Oh, no! It would be like being buried alive. I hate going underground.” Matt remembered finding part of El Patrón’s dragon hoard at the oasis. A dark shaft had opened up, and he’d glimpsed strange Egyptian gods and a floor covered with gold coins. It was the first of many chambers the old man had created. The earth around Ajo was riddled with them, all interconnected, with the last one leading to El Patrón’s funeral chamber and the bodies of those he had chosen to serve him in the afterlife.

Matt had to hold on to the railing. Looking over the edge made him light-headed.

“And you call yourself a drug lord,” the jefe said scornfully. “The Mushroom Master overcame his fear and threw away his umbrella.”

“Not completely,” reminded the Mushroom Master.

“It’s a work in progress. A real man doesn’t run and hide, Don Sombra. He would be ashamed.”

Matt was shocked. Never had Cienfuegos dared to lecture him like this. It was like having Tam Lin back, scolding him for being afraid to get onto a horse. For a second he was angry, but then he realized that what the jefe said was true. He could not afford to give in to fear. He was the Lord of Opium. You couldn’t be weak and have power at the same time.

“I could have you cockroached for that,” he said in an effort to save face, “but this time I’ll overlook your insolence. Let’s all go down to the bottom.”

Cienfuegos grinned. “Very good, mi patrón. You’re learning.”

Of the three of them, only the Mushroom Master was at ease. He was used to dark, enclosed places like the elevator cage. The heat was unbearable. Their clothes quickly became drenched with sweat as the cage crawled into the depths. Matt found himself panting, whether from fear or heat he didn’t know. Cienfuegos, for all his bravado, looked nervous in the occasional lights that flashed by. Now and then they passed a platform where there was an alcove gouged into the side of the shaft.

“What does ‘cockroached’ mean?” said the Mushroom Master. It was a question Matt had wanted to ask. “We have cockroaches in the biosphere, several kinds, in fact. Our founders tried to preserve as many life-forms as possible, although they drew the line at smallpox.”

“Cockroached?” Cienfuegos seemed half-asleep. He was panting just like Matt. “It’s a punishment El Patrón dreamed up. He got it from some Indian raja. You tie a person down in a room full of roaches, the bigger the better, and pry his mouth open so he can’t close it. The roaches wander around and eventually one of them discovers the open mouth and decides to explore. More follow. There’s only so long you can spit them out. It’s a way of strangling someone slowly, and for some reason it caught the attention of the Farm Patrolmen. There’s nothing they fear more.”

Matt felt like throwing up. The more he learned about El Patrón, the more he wished he weren’t a copy of him.

“The punishment was never carried out,” the jefe said.

“Thank Gaia for that!” said the Mushroom Master.

“The old man liked to dream up lurid punishments to scare the crap out of people, but if he wanted to kill someone, he did it quickly and efficiently.”

The elevator bumped at the bottom. Here the tube ended in a ring of cement, and Cienfuegos locked the door open before they stepped out. They didn’t want to be trapped down here.

They walked around the edge, noting the lights, the air conditioners, and the pipes snaking around the wall. Matt didn’t know what they were looking for, but he was glad he hadn’t acted like a coward. He walked quickly so they could leave quickly.

On the far side of the tube, a red light illuminated part of the wall. “What’s that? Some kind of warning?” said the Mushroom Master. Beneath the light glimmered the red figure of a scorpion.

“Stop!” shouted Cienfuegos as the old man reached out. “I’ve seen those before. It guards something that only El Patrón was allowed to see. It recognizes his handprint and kills anyone else who touches it. You could open it, Don Sombra.”

Both men turned to Matt. He stared at the symbol. There was no telling what it led to, but he was suddenly unwilling to reveal the secret. El Patrón had considered it important enough to hide in this dangerous place. Matt wanted to be alone when he opened up whatever it was.

“I’ll come back another time,” he said in a tone that allowed no room for argument. “Let’s return to the hospital.”