The Lord of Opium

“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.