The Lord of Opium

48

EL PATRÓN’S ADVICE

You’re in a fine mess, aren’t you? said El Patrón.

Stop gloating and help us, thought Matt.

Why should I? I’ve already told you what you need to know, the old man said peevishly. Matt imagined him sitting under a grape arbor, watching the statues of his seven brothers and sisters.

Tell me again. If I don’t survive, your ninth life is over. Matt knew there was no use appealing to El Patrón’s better nature. He didn’t have one. But only silence followed this appeal to self-interest. The old man had gone back to whatever entertainments the dead had.

They passed a stirabout and a heap of ruined animal skins. They hurried through the halls of the hospital. Samson carried Listen, who was trying to shred his arms with her fingernails. He bore it stoically.

There was chaos in Glass Eye Dabengwa’s room. Bottles had been overturned, a lamp lay shattered, a nurse knelt at the drug lord’s feet, holding her arm and sobbing. Soldiers were ranged against the wall in postures of defense. Glass Eye himself was swaying like a heavyweight boxer about to land a crushing blow.

“I’ll kill him,” he snarled. “I’ll kill him.” No one dared to answer. Either Happy Man really had run off, or he was pushing up daisies in the forest. “You! Boy! Open the border. I will have more men now!”

Matt flinched. The yellow eyes swiveled toward him, their lids shrunken and dry from lack of use. He swallowed. His throat closed up. “No,” he managed to croak.

“YOU DO NOT SAY NO TO ME!” roared the drug lord.

Matt swallowed. He heard the click, whirr of Dabengwa’s eyes, the creak of his neck, the tiny groans of various parts of the man’s anatomy as he moved. Dear God, was any part of him still human?

“You leave my friend alone!” came a sharp little voice directly under Glass Eye’s nose. “If you’re not careful, I’ll put you into my freezer.”

Dabengwa looked down as though he could scarcely believe what he was seeing.

“If you don’t know what that means, I’ll tell you,” said Listen. “I won’t see you and I won’t hear you. You’ll be a big old lump of ice to me.”

“Listen, please come away,” begged Matt.

She looked directly into the drug lord’s yellow eyes and tapped her foot impatiently. It was like watching a bantam rooster challenge a rottweiler. Utterly courageous and crazy. The rottweiler always won.

“Let me tell you about your original,” rumbled Glass Eye, momentarily distracted. “She was a girl from a small village. I sent for her and she defied me, so I killed her brothers and sisters. She ran away, and I killed her parents. Then she came, hanging her head and apologizing, but she was never obedient. Always she ran, and I had a tracking device injected under her skin. The last time, I broke her neck.”

Listen wavered a little, but she stood her ground. “That was dee-diddly-dumb. You remind me of the Bug. He’s always breaking things, and then he doesn’t have them anymore.”

“The Bug?” said Dabengwa.

“Another clone of El Patrón,” Dr. Rivas explained quickly. “She used to play with him.”

“Dead, I suppose,” said the drug lord.

The doctor nodded, but Listen said, “He’s not dead. He’s running around, opening doors and all sorts of secret places.”

“That’s a lie!” the doctor cried.

“Nope. Dr. Rivas had him open the holoport. Then he took him to other places full of jewels and gold and everything. Ask him to show you.”

“She’s raving, mi patrón. She makes up stories.”

Glass Eye signaled, and a couple of the soldiers restrained the doctor. “This is very interesting, child. Tell me more.”

The little girl took a deep breath. “See, the big people don’t pay attention to me. They don’t think I can understand, but I’m not called Listen for nothing. I heard Dr. Rivas and his son and daughter talk about a room at the bottom of the solar telescope. It’s where El Patrón kept his money. Boy, did they get excited! Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos loaded a hovercraft and took off for the Scorpion Star, but they didn’t get more than a tiny bit of the stuff.” She smiled winningly, an adorable child trying to please.

Dr. Rivas struggled with the soldiers, but they only tightened their grip. “You can’t believe a seven-year-old! Children that age have no understanding of reality. And you need me, Glass Eye. You aren’t out of the woods yet. You need a heart monitor and another clone—”

Glass Eye swung at the doctor and struck him such a blow that Matt heard the man’s neck crack. Dr. Rivas slid to the floor with a look of immense surprise. He lay there, his eyes open, his body trembling for a moment before it became still.

That’s why I always got the better of Dabengwa, commented El Patrón. Poor impulse control.

Matt was too frozen to respond. It had been so quick! The doctor, who had maintained El Patrón’s zombie army for twenty years, who had created his clones, who had created Matt himself, was dead!

Happy Man Hikwa came to the door, supported by a shambling field eejit in a jumpsuit and floppy hat. His black general’s uniform was torn and smeared with blood. “Oh no.” He moaned. “You shouldn’t have done that, Glass Eye. Oh, no, no, no.”

Dabengwa looked like a man waking up from a trance. He seemed to have trouble focusing. “Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“A few of us went to that abandoned church in the forest,” said Happy Man. “But the damn stirabout ran out of energy. We stalled. And this—this monster came out of the church—seven feet tall, I swear! His neck was covered in scars.”

Daft Donald, thought Matt.

“Where are my men?” thundered the drug lord.

“Please don’t blame me, Glass Eye! There were enemies everywhere. We didn’t stand a chance. I was the only one who got away. I ran until I fell over a tree root and sprained my ankle. I saw this eejit and ordered him to help me.” Happy Man slumped and the eejit slumped too. Like most zombies, he tended to copy his master.

“We’ve got to go,” Happy Man bleated. “Please, Glass Eye. We can’t survive here. There aren’t enough of us. Make the Baby Patrón open the border.”

“Why am I plagued with such stupidity?” shouted Dabengwa. “Who told you to go joyriding when we’re in the middle of a war? I should have you skinned and nailed up on a wall as a warning to others.”

“I meant no harm,” babbled Happy Man. “I’ve always been your most loyal follower.”

“Drop him,” said Glass Eye. The eejit obediently opened his arms, and Hikwa fell to the floor with a loud shriek.

“Ai! It hurts! I need a doctor!”

“This is the treatment you get,” said Dabengwa, kicking Happy Man’s ankle. “Now you will open the holoport, boy, and end the lockdown.”

Matt gathered up his courage. “I’ll never do that,” he said, and braced himself for a blow. But it didn’t come. Instead, Glass Eye turned to Listen and grabbed her by the throat. She tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip and she struggled for breath.

“You have seen what I can do. Think carefully.” Glass Eye loosened his grip slightly, and Listen gasped.

Matt dropped his hands to show compliance. He knew the man could snap the little girl’s neck. And he knew that nothing he tried would make the slightest difference. If he attacked, the soldiers would be on him. If he agreed to open the border, it would only postpone the inevitable. Ultimately, Glass Eye would not let either of them live.

Death then, he decided. It would trap the invaders, and Daft Donald and Cienfuegos could finish them off. Opium would remain sealed. Once, he had believed that the country would die without supplies, but that was before he had learned about the biosphere. When the rest of them were dead, the Mushroom Master would free his people and Opium would become the new biosphere.

Matt looked at Listen and hesitated. His hand brushed against a lump in his pocket, and suddenly he remembered El Patrón’s advice: Just because they took your weapons doesn’t mean you aren’t armed. He grabbed Tam Lin’s flashlight and turned it to maximum. A beam ten times the brightness of the sun shot out and struck Dabengwa’s eyes. The drug lord screamed and dropped Listen. He clawed at his face, making mindless groans. His whole body seemed to convulse, as though the various parts of it were at war with one another.

Matt turned off the flashlight. Even the reflection of it dazzled him, and he couldn’t see where to go. But a hand reached through the brilliance and dragged him away. “Good thing I had the sense to close my eyes,” a man said.

They ran until they got outside, and Matt’s vision began to recover. He saw the eejit with Listen slung over his shoulder. “Put me down. I can’t breathe,” she cried. She swayed and held on to him. “Crap! What happened back there?”

“Something I’m sure Sor Artemesia would call a miracle,” said the eejit. “It’s a good thing you still had Tam Lin’s flashlight, mi patrón, because I didn’t know how I was going to take on so many.”

Matt’s heart skipped a beat. “Cienfuegos?”

“At your service,” said the jefe, bowing.

“How did you—”

Cienfuegos smiled. “Nobody notices eejits. I had a devil of a time locating you, Don Sombra. Couldn’t you have dropped a few bread crumbs on the trail?”

“I was out of bread crumbs,” said Matt. He felt like collapsing, the relief was so great.

“I tossed tranquilizer beads around as we left, but we’d better make ourselves scarce.” They walked through the gardens at a normal pace so as not to draw attention. Cienfuegos went in front, with the hangdog posture of an eejit.