The Lord of Opium

Matt looked up. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, dazed. “I don’t want her to be disposed of as though she were an animal.” He looked through the wide portico of the veranda to the distant fields. There were thousands and thousands of bodies out there. Cienfuegos had told him once that he had flown over the sand dunes of Yuma on a full moon night. By day you couldn’t see it, but by night the bones of Illegals showed up like a ghostly army sleeping on the earth.

“We need a coffin,” Sor Artemesia said. “A beautiful one. Perhaps one of the eejit carpenters could make it. The children’s choir could sing, and I will say the appropriate words. A priest would be better, but unfortunately we don’t have one.”

“El Patrón had a collection of Egyptian mummy cases,” said Matt. “Some of them are very beautiful.”

That very evening a procession of eejits dressed in white robes and adorned with flowers carried the coffin of an Egyptian queen. It had been buried thousands of years before in the hot sands of the North African desert. The queen’s likeness was carved on the lid. She wore a crown of gold and lapis lazuli. Her body was sheathed in white linen, and her arms were covered with carnelian bracelets. In her hand was a sacred blue lotus.

They came to the Alacrán mausoleum, a building as large as a house and covered with so many plaster cherubs it looked like a flock of chickens. Behind them came bodyguards carrying torches. Celia and the other servants, the boys, and Listen came next. Last of all walked the eejit children. They hummed the theme from Pavane for a Dead Princess, and the old choirmaster walked at their side to be sure they did it right.

Matt and Sor Artemesia met them at the mausoleum. On either side of the glass doors were what looked like chests of drawers. The name of a departed Alacrán was inscribed on each long drawer, but there were several that hadn’t been used yet. One was pulled out, and here the eejits deposited Mirasol’s body in the Egyptian queen’s coffin. Sor Artemesia performed the funeral ceremony, and two burly bodyguards slid the drawer closed.

They went outside. The sky was clear after rain, and the stars shone brilliantly. One of them fell, a bright streak across the blackness, and Celia turned to Listen and said, “Look, chiquita. That’s a prayer being answered by God. One of the angels is flying down to carry out His orders.”

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.”