The Lord of Opium

CONTENTS

Cast of Characters

Maps

The Dope Confederacy

The Land of Opium

Chronology

1. The Oasis

2. The New Lord of Opium

3. El Patrón’s Private Wing

4. Cienfuegos

5. The Dope Confederacy

6. Mirasol

7. Major Beltrán

8. The Holoport

9. The Guitar Factory

10. Nurse Fiona

11. Feeding a Pet Waitress

12. The Long-Distance Picnic

13. The Opium Factory

14. Madness

15. Dr. Rivas

16. Dancing the
Huka Huka
in
Nueva York

17. The Fountain of Children

18. The African Child

19. Dr. Rivas’s Secret

20. The Bug

21. The Scorpion Star

22. The Altar Cloth

23. The Ruins of Tucson

24. The Biosphere

25. The Mushroom Master

26. The Brat Enclosure

27. Planning a Party

28.
Sor
Artemesia

29. Night Terrors

30. A Visit to the Ajo Hills

31. The Party

32. Dr. Kim’s Experiment

33. Mirasol Dances

34. The Greenhouses

35. The Expiry Date

36. Going Rogue

37. The Funeral

38. The Mushroom Master vs. the Sky

39. María Learns the Truth

40. The Cloning Lab

41. The Solar Telescope

42. The Suicide Bomber

43. The Chapel of Jesús Malverde

44. El Bicho

45. Prisoners

46. Glass Eye Dabengwa

47. Happy Man Goes Hunting

48. El Patrón’s Advice

49. The Abandoned Observatory

50. The Secret Room

51. Uncoupling

52. The Ghost Army

Appendix

Jesús Malverde

The Biosphere

The Healing Power of Music

The Mushroom Master

José Clemente Orozco

The Ghost Army

Paradise

About Nancy Farmer

For Harold,
mi vida
, and for Richard Jackson, with deepest gratitude

CAST OF CHARACTERS

AJO, OPIUM

Matteo Alacrán (Matt):
Once a clone of El Patrón, now the new Lord of Opium; age fourteen

El Patrón (deceased):
The old Lord of Opium

Celia, cook and
curandera
(healer):
Matt’s foster mother

Tam Lin (deceased):
Matt’s bodyguard and foster father

Mirasol, also known as Waitress:
An eejit; age fifteen

Eligio Cienfuegos:
The head of the Farm Patrol

Daft Donald:
Bodyguard and best friend of Tam Lin

Mr. Ortega:
Matt’s music teacher and friend of Eusebio

Eusebio Orozco:
The guitar maker; an eejit

Major Beltrán:
Pilot working for Esperanza Mendoza

Fiona:
Nurse at the Ajo hospital

Dr. Kim:
Doctor at the Ajo hospital

Senator Mendoza and Emilia (deceased):
Father and sister of María Mendoza

SAN LUIS, AZTLÁN

María Mendoza:
Daughter of Esperanza; age fourteen

Esperanza Mendoza:
UN representative and foe of the drug trade

Sor
Artemesia:
Nun at the Convent of Santa Clara; María’s foster mother

THE LOST BOYS, PLANKTON FACTORY, AZTLÁN

Chacho:
Recovering from being trapped in the boneyard; age fourteen

Ton-Ton:
Leader of the boys; age sixteen

Fidelito:
Age eight

PARADISE

Listen:
Age seven

The Bug, also known as El Bicho:
Age seven

Mbongeni:
Age six

Dr. Rivas:
In charge of the hospital in Paradise

Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos:
Daughter and son of Dr. Rivas; astronomers

Eduardo:
Oldest son of Dr. Rivas; an eejit

THE BIOSPHERE, OPIUM

The Mushroom Master:
Leading scientist

AFRICA

Glass Eye Dabengwa:
A drug lord; ninety-nine years old

Happy Man Hikwa:
Drug dealer working for Glass Eye

Samson and Boris:
Glass Eye’s Russian bodyguards

CHRONOLOGY

Birth of El Patrón:
1990

Drug Wars:
2025–2030

Matt harvested:
2122

Death of El Patrón:
2136

Time period for
The Lord of Opium:
2137–2138

1

THE OASIS

M
att woke in darkness to the sound of something moving past him. The air stirred slightly with the smell of warm, musky fur. The boy jumped to his feet, but the sleeping bag entangled him and he fell. His hands collided with sharp thorns. He flailed around for a rock, a knife, any sort of weapon.

Something huffed. The musky odor became stronger. Matt’s hand felt a metal bar, and for an instant he didn’t know what it was. Then he realized it was a flashlight and turned it on.

The beam illuminated a large, doglike face at the other end of the sleeping bag. The boy’s heart almost stopped. He remembered, long ago, a note Tam Lin had written him about the hazards of this place:
Ratlesnakes heer. Saw bare under tree.

This was definitely a
bare
. Matt had only seen them on TV, where they did amusing tricks and begged for treats. The bear’s eyes glinted as it contemplated the treat holding the
flashlight. Matt tried to remember what to do. Look bigger? Play dead? Run?

The flashlight! It was a special one used by the Farm Patrol. One button was for ordinary use, the other shone with ten times the brightness of the sun. Flashed into the eyes of an Illegal, it would blind the person for at least half an hour. Matt jammed his thumb on the second button, and the bear’s face turned perfectly white. The animal screamed. It hurled itself away, falling over bushes, moaning with terror, breaking branches as it fled.

Matt struggled to his feet. Where was he? Why was he alone? After a minute he remembered to switch the beam off to save the battery. Darkness enveloped him, and for a few minutes he was as blind as the bear. He sat down again, shivering. Gradually, the night settled back into a normal pattern, and he realized that he was at the oasis. He cradled the flashlight. Tam Lin had given it to him, to protect him from animals when he was camping.
You don’t need a gun, lad,
the bodyguard had said.
You don’t want to kill a poor beastie that’s only walking through its backyard. You’re the one who’s trespassing.
Matt could hear Tam Lin’s warm Scottish voice in his mind. The man loved animals and knew a lot about them, even though he’d been poorly educated.

Matt found the campfire he’d banked the night before and blew the coals into life. The flaring light made him feel better. In all the years of camping here, he’d never seen a bear, though there had been many raccoons, chipmunks, and coyotes. A skunk had once burrowed into Matt’s sleeping bag in the middle of the night to steal a candy bar. Tam Lin had burned the sleeping bag and scolded the boy for foolishness.
Leave food about and you might as well put a sign on yourself saying “Eat me.”
Matt had been scrubbed head to toe with tomato juice when they got back to the hacienda.

Matt heaped the fire with dry wood from the supply Tam Lin had always maintained. He could see the familiar outlines of an old cabin and a collapsed grapevine.

Tam Lin wasn’t with him. He would never come here again. He was lying in a tomb beneath the mountain with El Patrón and all of El Patrón’s family and friends, if you could say the old drug lord had friends. The funeral, three months before, had been attended by fifty bodyguards dressed in black suits, with guns hidden under their arms and strapped to their legs. The floor of the tomb had been covered with drifts of gold coins. The bodyguards had filled their pockets with gold, probably thinking their fortunes were made, but that was before they drank the poisoned wine. Now they would lie at their master’s feet for all eternity, to guard him at whatever fiestas were conducted by the dead. Matt drew the sleeping bag around himself, trembling with grief and nerves.

He would not sleep again. To distract himself, he looked for the constellations Tam Lin had shown him. It was early spring, and Orion the Hunter was still in the sky.
Heed the stars of his belt,
said Tam Lin.
Where they set is true west. Remember that, lad. You never know when you’ll need it.
They had been roasting hot dogs over a fire and drinking cider from a bottle Tam Lin had cooled by submerging it in the lake.

What a grand existence it must be,
mused the bodyguard, turning his battered face to the sky,
to roam the heavens like Orion with his faithful dogs at heel.
The dogs, Sirius and Procyon, were two of the brightest stars in the summer sky. Pinning Orion’s tunic to his shoulder was ruby-red Betelgeuse.
As fine a jewel as you’ll find anywhere,
Tam Lin had declared.

Matt hoped Tam Lin was roaming now in whatever afterlife he inhabited. The dead in Aztlán came home once a year to
celebrate the Day of the Dead with their relatives. They must be somewhere the rest of the time, Matt reasoned. Why shouldn’t they do what made them happiest on earth, and why shouldn’t Tam Lin?