The Lord of Opium

“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.