The Lord of Opium

Tomorrow I’ll have to turn the owls loose, he thought. I’ll take Mirasol and Listen back to the biosphere. Except that he didn’t know the combination for opening the door. Could he bang on the walls? Would the inhabitants even notice?

He heard a thump and a yelp from outside. “¡Maldito sea! I’ll kick you so hard you’ll spit out shoelaces,” swore Cienfuegos. The man threw open the door. “Why didn’t you turn on the outside light? I couldn’t see anything in the dark.”

Matt was so relieved he didn’t take offense. “I didn’t know how.”

“Tomorrow I’ll teach you. You might as well learn to fly, too. ¡Bueno! You looked after the girls and the livestock, and I see you were standing guard like a real man. Move over. I’ll do the driving.”

Matt happily vacated the seat. You were standing guard like a real man played over and over in his head like a piece of music. He’d done the right thing. He was worthy to be patrón. He smiled into the darkness as the hovercraft took off and didn’t worry that Cienfuegos said not another word until they arrived in Ajo.

27

PLANNING A PARTY

Now came the time Matt had been waiting for. Under his direction, the beam that sterilized trains crossing the border was shut off. Ten doctors and twenty nurses, plus equipment, medicine, and all the other things they would need arrived safely and were loaded into hovercrafts. With them came a dozen hovercraft pilots and a hundred new bodyguards recruited from Scotland and Ireland. This was urged by Daft Donald to shore up security.

The new people went to Paradise for orientation and training. All of the medical staff stayed there, except for one, who came to the hospital in Ajo. With the money Matt was paying them, he wanted them to concentrate on working with Dr. Rivas. Nurse Fiona was reassigned to washing dishes. She complained so bitterly that Matt gave her the job of watching Listen, although this didn’t stop the complaints. “What do they think I am? A bloody babysitter?” she yowled to Celia. “That little scrap is the devil’s spawn. She’s got a mouth on her that would do a sailor proud.”

The train returned to Aztlán, bearing Esperanza’s samples and several tons of opium.

Matt felt guilty about continuing the trade, but it was only a temporary measure. The cookie cans outside the opium factory by now extended half a mile, and the dealers in Africa, Europe, and Asia were getting hysterical. Happy Man Hikwa, Glass Eye Dabengwa’s representative, called again and again. At first Matt ignored him. The last thing he wanted to do was deal with Glass Eye, but Cienfuegos pointed out that this would look like weakness to the sinister drug lord.

“I’ve seen him at El Patrón’s parties,” the jefe said. “He has an instinct for terrorizing the weakest person in the room. He killed the Old Man of the Mountains, who you may remember was in charge of the Iraqi cartel.”

Matt remembered. The Old Man of the Mountains had once been a feared and dreaded drug lord. He was one hundred and twenty years old by the time Matt saw him, broken by illness and stoked up to the eyeballs with hashish. Glass Eye had sat next to him at a banquet. The boy couldn’t hear what the African said, but he saw the effect on the Old Man. The Iraqi tried to move away, but Glass Eye detained him with a heavy hand. And then the Old Man slumped facedown into a plate of mashed potatoes.

I should have changed the seating arrangement, El Patrón had said, in a mellow mood after the banquet. Something about Glass Eye brings on heart problems. Ah, well. There’s a silver lining. The Old Man’s customers are up for grabs.

Matt remembered this now as he accessed the holoport and found Happy Man’s new address. He was no longer in Africa. He had a new address in Marijuana, on the eastern border of Opium, and his light was blinking furiously.

Happy Man Hikwa was sitting in front of the portal. There was an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a pot of coffee, and a bottle of aguardente, a villainous Mozambican vodka that smelled like crushed beetles. Hikwa looked like he’d been living in front of the portal. His clothes, a plaid suit without a shirt, were dirty, and Matt could smell stale marijuana smoke. He was a drug addict.

Matt smiled to himself. Drug addicts were the easiest clients to handle. They would agree to anything.