The Lord of Opium

Sor Artemesia shuddered. “That’s brujería, mijo. Witchcraft. Those are voodoo dolls meant to curse someone, and it’s better if you don’t touch them. I couldn’t get Listen to leave Mbongeni.” The nun found the dolls and threw them away. She draped the altar cloth in the appropriate place and stood back to admire her work. “There!” she said. “That should take some of the curse off this place.”

Sor Artemesia had planned the refuge carefully. She had stashed bottles of drinking water along the walls, and crackers and beef jerky were stored in plastic boxes to keep them from the mice. She told Fidelito to fetch sleeping bags from a cupboard and lay them on the pews for beds.

“Won’t the saint be angry that we’re living in his house?” said the little boy.

“That saint,” said Sor Artemesia, “wouldn’t care if you turned the place into a nightclub.”

They made María lie down and propped her up with pillows. The nun insisted that she eat some jerky and drink a little coffee with lots of sugar. Matt also drank coffee, although he didn’t like it. He’d been fasting for days and felt light-headed.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said.

“You have to, Don Sombra. You have duties,” said Sor Artemesia.

“I never asked for them,” he said wearily. “I’m tired of cleaning up El Patrón’s mess and watching the opium farms churn out drugs. I’m tired of watching eejits die. It’s like a giant machine with no off button. Why shouldn’t I stay here with people I love and forget the whole miserable thing?”

“You can’t, Brother Wolf.” María had been silent until now, but the food had brought life back into her eyes.

“The problem is too big, mi vida,” said Matt. Thousands of people and billions of dollars are involved. We need an army to deal with it, and I can’t trust anyone who has one.” He threw up his hands. “If I had such a force, who would I attack? What would I invade?”

“You must begin by freeing the eejits,” María said gently.

“Oh, sure! Like I haven’t been working on that.”

“I spoke with Cienfuegos before he went away,” Sor Artemesia said. “He says the Scorpion Star is the source of the power that controls the eejits. You have to destroy it.”

Matt looked at her in amazement. This was not the gentle, compassionate nun he was used to. “There are three hundred people on that space station.”

“And at least ten thousand times that number are buried under the fields.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Shoot it down? What would Saint Francis recommend?”

The nun was unmoved by Matt’s sarcasm. “He’d tell you to get off your butt and do the job God has given you.”

The boy had no answer for this. He was bone tired. He wanted to hand the problem to someone else. He wanted to move into the biosphere and herd frogs for the rest of his life. But that wasn’t allowed. He took María’s hand and felt its warmth. “I’ll return when I can,” he said.

“I can help you,” she said. “I don’t want to be left behind. I didn’t risk death to be tossed aside like a kitten that’s only good for chasing feathers.”

Sor Artemesia laughed. It was the first wholehearted laugh Matt had heard from her in days. “I remember the arguments we used to have at school when she wanted to care for lepers. ‘We’ll have to import them,’ I told her. ‘Leprosy has been extinct for fifty years.’ I remember her turtles with cracked shells, the birds with broken wings, and the three-legged cats. You have a drive to do good, María, but you’d slow Matt down in your present condition.”

“No te preocupas, mi vida. Don’t worry. Your turn will come when I’ve sorted out the Scorpion Star,” said Matt, holding her hands and gazing into her eyes. “There will be thousands of people who will need your help.”

“Well, then,” she said, gazing back. He kissed her and left before she could think of an objection.

“Don’t forget Listen,” called Fidelito as Matt left the clearing where the chapel of Jesús Malverde stood.

44

EL BICHO

Matt moved stealthily through the gardens surrounding El Patrón’s mansion. Peacocks fluttered and cried as he passed. Giant carp stuck their noses out of ponds. The old man had imported them from Japan, and they were so tame people could feed them rice balls. They were more than two hundred years old. Animals, both wild and tame, inhabited the gardens, as well as eejits toiling in their drab uniforms and floppy hats.

Matt tiptoed over the tile floors of the main house and came at last to the room he was seeking. The holoport was swirling with icons, and he intended to call Esperanza. He wanted to tell her about her daughter and also ask whether she knew a way to jam the signal, if signal there was, from the Scorpion Star.