The Lord of Opium

He told her. He described how the eejit children sang the “Humming Chorus” from Madama Butterfly at the funeral. The mourners—though you could hardly call them mournful—had waded through drifts of gold coins as they entered the tomb. El Patrón’s coffin was laid out like the sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh. His likeness as a young man had been painted on the lid. Then Tam Lin brought out a case of wine that had been laid down the year the old man was born, and Steven, Emilia’s husband, had opened the first bottle. It smells like someone opened a window in heaven, he said.

How little he knew! Everyone who drank it went straight to the afterlife, though probably not to heaven. All the drug lords died and their wives, too, including Emilia. The others—the priest, Senator Mendoza, Tam Lin—fell with them.

Matt looked for signs of emotion in Esperanza’s face, but all she did was sigh. “That certainly makes things awkward,” she said.

Awkward? What kind of woman was this who didn’t cry when she heard about the death of her husband and daughter?

“I had hoped to negotiate with one of the older family members,” she continued. “No offense, Matt, but you’re only fourteen years old.”

“I’m more than a hundred,” Matt said. And I am, he thought. I was grown from a strip of El Patrón’s skin.

“Yes, well . . .” For the first time Esperanza looked uncertain. “We don’t really know what happens when clones grow up. We’ve never had one your age. I do know that you’re inexperienced and ill-educated.”

Matt smiled. “El Patrón only had a fourth-grade education, and he founded an empire.”

“¡Por Dios! You sound exactly like him. It’s unnatural!” Esperanza cried. She wiped her forehead with a heavily ringed hand. “The situation is more complicated than you think. Most of the Dope Confederacy was on its way out. The land had been farmed until it was exhausted and then polluted with chemicals. The drug lords rode around in hovercrafts and shot all the wildlife. Glass Eye won’t find it easy to make money out of his new territory, which is why he’s looking toward Opium.”

“He is?” Matt asked sharply.

“El Patrón was a monster, but he had a quality the others lacked. I can’t believe I’m saying something good about him.”

Matt waited as she struggled to control her anger. Through the holoport he could hear doves in a far-off courtyard. When he was recovering in the hospital of Santa Clara, María had pushed his wheelchair into the convent garden. Together they had watched the birds bobbing and cooing in their half-witted way as María threw bread crumbs at them.

“Saint Francis once rescued a basket of doves from a market,” she had said.

“I don’t blame him. They taste good with oregano,” Matt had replied, goading her.

“Be quiet, Brother Wolf. I’m trying to civilize you. He gathered them in his arms and said, ‘My innocent sisters, why did you let yourselves be caught? I will make you nests so that you may raise your young in safety.’ The doves obeyed him and never flew away unless they were given permission.”

Matt had looked at María’s black hair hanging in a bell about her beautiful face and knew that he loved her utterly and forever.

“Opium is a lifesaver, if used properly,” said Esperanza, breaking into Matt’s thoughts. “We don’t want to eradicate it, just to keep it under control. But there’s something else about your country. Do you remember what Aztlán looked like?”

Matt did. His first vision was of a seething mass of factories and skyscrapers. The sky was smudgy as though someone had been burning rubber tires. Worse than that was the booming, clanking, thundering din that filled the air. His first day in Aztlán had been horrible, but he soon got used to it.

“I wondered how anyone could live in such a place,” he said.