The Lord of Opium

Or, more likely, they were buried under the poppy fields with thousands of other Illegals.

“Cienfuegos paid a price for his life,” Celia said, breaking into Matt’s thoughts. “He was implanted with a microchip.”

Matt looked up, startled. “He’s a . . . he’s an eejit?”

“Don’t even hint that you know about it,” warned Celia, lowering her voice. “It enrages him. All the Farm Patrolmen are chipped to make them more docile. You can’t have murderers and terrorists running around without some kind of control.”

“They don’t act like eejits.”

“There’s more than one type of microchip. This kind doesn’t blunt intelligence, but there are certain things a Farm Patrolman can’t do. He can’t harm the patrón, for example, or cross the border. If he tries, he’s struck by pain so severe that he’ll die of shock. Even thinking about it makes him sick.”

Matt let out his breath slowly. El Patrón had been a genius at maintaining order, and he did have more secrets than fleas on a coyote. There were the hidden underground treasure chambers and the secret passages throughout the hacienda where the old man could spy on people. There were the emergency escape routes and now the invisible chain that encircled the necks of his trained dogs, the Farm Patrol. It was a beautifully constructed system to bring power into one man’s hands. El Patrón’s hands. And now Matt’s.

“Tam Lin told me this privately,” Celia said. “Farm Patrolmen never admit to the operation because it makes them seem less than men. It’s why they’re so cruel to eejits. To prove they have nothing in common with them.”

A sudden thought struck Matt. “The bodyguards. Were they chipped?” She nodded. “And Tam Lin?”

Celia smiled sadly. “Him too.”

Matt could hardly bring himself to ask the next question, but he had to know. “What about you, Celia?”

Her eyes turned as cold as those of an idol Matt had seen on TV, the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, who wore a necklace of severed hands. He remembered that it was Celia who had brought about El Patrón’s death when the armies of Aztlán and the United States had been unable to touch him. “I wasn’t worth worrying about,” Celia said. “I was only a woman.”

Silence hung heavily in the room. They weren’t alone, though they might as well have been. Several eejits worked at their appointed tasks. One washed dishes, going over each plate exactly five times with a sponge. He passed it to another man, who dunked the plate exactly five times in rinse water. A woman kneaded bread dough: push, fold, turn . . . push, fold, turn. A teenage boy, who reminded Matt unpleasantly of the boys at the plankton factory, was slicing onions. It took a lot of servants to prepare a meal, because each of them knew how to do only one thing.

“Could I have some ice cream?” said Matt, to break the tension.

“Oh! Of course!” Celia woke up. The goddess Coatlicue disappeared. “Do you want pistachio, mango, or dulce de leche?”

“Dulce de leche.”

She opened a giant freezer and hauled out a gallon tub of ice cream. Fog swirled around her as she kicked the door shut with her heel.

Matt tried to think of something to say. “What do you know about Waitress, the girl who serves me meals?”

“Her? Why are you asking?”

“No reason. She just seems more alert than most eejits.”

Celia dug out scoops of ice cream and poured marshmallow syrup over them. “As I said, not all implants are the same. Most dull the mind so that a person can perform a simple chore for hours without stopping. A few leave a person’s basic skills intact. I have a helper who’s very good at making sauces. He used to be a French chef.”

Matt ate the disgustingly sweet dessert, which he loved, and thought about Waitress. “I want to change her name. Is that possible?”

“Ask Cienfuegos,” Celia said impatiently. “He’s in charge of training.” She went over to tell the boy, who’d run out of onions, to stop chopping.

*  *  *

That afternoon Matt had the old mattress on El Patrón’s bed burned. He gave orders for quesadillas, coffee, and fruit to be served for breakfast. He sent the bath eejit away to be retrained.