The Lord of Opium (32 page)

“About Fiona—” began Matt.

“No time for that now,
mi patrón
. We have an emergency. Mirasol has gone rogue.” He turned and led the way. When they got to the hacienda, Ton-Ton and Fidelito were waiting outside.

“Don’t get mad at her,” Fidelito begged. “She thought she was doing the right thing.”

“Why would I get mad at Mirasol? She can’t help her condition,” said Matt, sliding off the horse and leaving Cienfuegos to take charge of it.

“Not Mirasol. Listen,” said Fidelito.

“Sh-she was trying to be nice,” Ton-Ton said. “They’re in your office, the, uh, one we’re supposed to stay out of.”

Matt ran through the halls, thinking,
Listen has been playing “Trick-Track.” She’s been trying to wake Mirasol up.
When he got there, he saw that he’d been nearly right. The recording for “Trick-Track” was still in its folder, but music boxes covered the table. Mirasol was lying on the floor, sobbing as though her heart would break.
Sor
Artemesia and Dr. Kim were leaning over her. Listen was huddled in a corner, a ball of total misery.

“I didn’t mean it! I didn’t want to hurt her!” the little girl cried. “Don’t hit me! Don’t put me into the freezer!”

What now?
thought Matt. “I’m not going to do anything to you, Listen. Mirasol is the one we have to worry about.” He knelt next to Mirasol and tried to take her hand, but she threw him off.

“Father! Father!” she screamed.

“It’s all right. I’m here. I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he said. She couldn’t hear him. She kept calling for her father and weeping hysterically. “Can you give her a sedative?” Matt asked Dr. Kim.

“It won’t save her,” the doctor said bluntly. “When eejits go rogue, nothing helps them. The best I can do is give her a lethal injection.”

“
¡ Jesús, María, y José!
What kind of doctor are you? Give her something to let her rest. I’ll take her to the hospital in Paradise. Maybe they’re better at their jobs than you are.”

Dr. Kim showed a flash of anger, quickly repressed. He took out an infuser, a kind of injector, and pressed it to Mirasol’s neck. There was a hiss, and she relaxed. “It won’t last long,
mi patrón
. She’ll need more and more of these until the sedative itself kills her.”

“Give as many as we need to
Sor
Artemesia,” Matt ordered. “I’m going to tell Cienfuegos to get our fastest hovercraft.” He ran outside to find the
jefe
already waiting in the hallway.

“The hovercraft is ready,
mi patrón
,” Cienfuegos said. “I ordered a larger, faster one after your bout of scarlet fever. I hope that was all right.”

Matt looked at him, exasperated. Now was not the time to deal with another hidden spending spree. “How many people can it take?”

“Mirasol, a pilot, you, a nurse, perhaps two more.”

“You will fly the craft,” said Matt.

“
Mi patrón
, that isn’t a good idea.”

“Do as I say! There’s no room for argument.” Matt was in full El Patrón mode now. He felt like a general commanding troops. He got Mirasol loaded onto a stretcher and into the hovercraft.
Sor
Artemesia, who’d had first aid training, was installed next to the girl. Cienfuegos was in the pilot’s seat. “You come too,” Matt ordered Listen, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her into the craft.

“Don’t blame her,” wailed Fidelito from outside.

The craft took off, first balancing delicately on a cushion of antigravity and then speeding away. It
was
fast. They rose through monsoon clouds and now and then were buffeted by wind or spatters of rain. “If we encounter a thunderstorm, we should go around it. It’s safer,” said Cienfuegos.

“Do whatever you like,” Matt said tersely. Turning to
Sor
Artemesia, he said, “Now tell me what happened.”

“I wasn’t there at first,” the nun said. “Listen was alone with Mirasol.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her!” cried Listen.

“Shut up until you’re told to speak,” Matt snapped. She buried her head in her arms and began to cry.

“I don’t think she meant harm,” said
Sor
Artemesia, with a quick look at the little girl.

“I’ll be the judge of that. What happened?”

“Apparently Listen had the idea that music could awaken Mirasol. She took all of El Patrón’s music boxes and put them into your office. She told Mirasol to sit down, and she began to play the boxes one by one. It was all right until she wound up ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ That particular one seemed to trigger something in Mirasol’s mind.”

“She started screaming. I was so scared,” whimpered Listen.

“Who cares if you were scared?” Matt snarled. “You
knew
you weren’t supposed to play music for her.”

“I thought she would dance.”

“And now you may have killed her!”

“Mi patrón, mi patrón,”
interrupted
Sor
Artemesia. “Listen is only a little girl. She doesn’t have the judgment of an adult. She liked the music boxes and thought Mirasol would too. She came directly to me for help, and I called Dr. Kim.”

Mirasol began to stir, and soon she was sobbing again. She sat up and flung her arm at Cienfuegos, who was watching the sky intently. “He killed my father!” she screamed. “He did it! Help me, oh, help me! I can’t escape!” She convulsed, and
Sor
Artemesia quickly applied another infuser.

Matt moved into the seat next to the
jefe
and said, “Is that true? Did you kill her father?”

Cienfuegos turned the hovercraft to avoid a pillar of rain descending from an enormous thunderhead. The craft shuddered as a lightning bolt flashed at the edge of the cloud. “The electricity interferes with the navigation of this craft. I have to pay attention. I may have killed her father. I don’t remember. There were so many.”

There was nothing more to say. Matt watched the
jefe
’s yellow-brown eyes as the man maneuvered around the storm.
Cienfuegos’s attention was riveted on his task, and no trace of regret was detectable. If Matt distracted him, they might never reach Paradise. “Can you go faster?” Matt said.

“No,” the
jefe
said. Now rain began to lash the side of the craft. Another lightning bolt fell, and Listen counted, “One-thousand-and-one.” That was as far as she got. Thunder rocked the sky.
Sor
Artemesia silently told the beads of her rosary.

Matt went into the back of the craft and sat by Listen. “I know you’re only a child. I was angry, but it was out of fear. I’m not angry anymore.” The little girl huddled against him, tears rolling silently down her face. “Did Mirasol say why the music upset her?”

“She said her father used to sing that song. At first she seemed okay. She talked like any other person. She said her father sang to her when she went to sleep, even when they were running away. That’s how the Farm Patrol found them. And then she screamed.”

Matt put his arm around the little girl. “I might have done the same thing. It was just chance.”

Mirasol awoke two more times on the journey, and then they landed outside the hospital in Paradise. Orderlies swarmed out to carry her inside. Matt followed closely. He didn’t trust any of the doctors. Their idea of a cure was a lethal injection.

She was taken to an operating room and Dr. Rivas came in, dressed in hospital scrubs, with latex gloves on his hands. “This is going to be brutal. I don’t think you should watch,” he said.

“What are you going to do?” Matt asked.

“The only thing we can do. Open her skull and pick out the microchips one by one.”

“That doesn’t work. Dr. Kim tried it.”

“So did we. So did I over the years,” said Dr. Rivas. “I sacrificed hundreds of eejits trying to find a cure for my son. I tried nullifying the magnetism with electrical currents. I engineered a white blood cell to attack microchips. I induced high fevers, hoping they would destroy the chips before they killed the brain. Nothing worked.”

“So this is hopeless,” Matt said.

“You can do a procedure a thousand times and sometimes the thousandth time is different. You make a lucky mistake. That’s the only hope I can give you.”

Matt looked down at Mirasol, her beautiful face composed, for the moment, in sleep. How could he order this mutilation without any hope of success? They said eejits didn’t feel pain, but he knew, deep down where no one could detect it, they did. “Leave her as she is,” he said.

“Shall I give her a lethal injection?” The doctor removed his gloves.

“No. Give me the infusers. When she starts suffering, I’ll give her one.”

“She might linger for an hour or two. No more.”

Dr. Rivas left, and Matt sat by Mirasol’s bed. She awoke, and for a moment her eyes were clear and she seemed to see him. Then the anguish overtook her and she screamed. The last time she looked directly at Matt and he bent over and kissed her. “I love you, Waitress,” he said.

She gazed back, really seeing him. “I am called Mirasol,” she whispered, and then, as the infusion flooded her veins, she sighed and did not wake again.

37

THE FUNERAL

M
att did not know how much time had passed. He sat unmoving as the small sounds of a hospital went on around him. Air-conditioning clicked on and off. A blood pressure cuff inflated and deflated on Mirasol’s wrist. A heart monitor searched for a beat, found none, and searched again. Matt was no stranger to death. It had surrounded him all his life. He had seen El Viejo, El Patrón’s grandson, lying in his coffin. He had seen the eejit in the field as a small child. And what he did not see, he was well aware of.

Except for Tam Lin, it had been remote from him. Matt didn’t really know most of those people. But Mirasol, dulled and silent though she was, had been a living presence. Her eyes followed him as the sunflower, her namesake, turned its face to the sun. Now something had departed, and he did not know what it was.

Dr. Rivas came into the room. He was no longer dressed for
surgery, but had reverted to a white lab coat. “I’m sorry,
mi patrón
,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “She was a pretty thing and quite bright for an eejit. I imagine you’d like us to take care of the disposal.”

“The
what
?” asked Matt, coming out of his trance.

“We have procedures to deal with this situation. Cienfuegos does it all the time. It isn’t healthy for you to grieve for someone who wasn’t really there.”

“Just as you never grieved for your eejit son,” Matt said.

Dr. Rivas winced. “I deserved that. But you see, I knew my son
before
. I have memories.”

“And I have memories of Mirasol.” Matt turned back to the motionless figure on the bed.

The doctor fussed with the equipment, detaching the blood pressure cuff and switching off the heart monitor. “I don’t know whether you have any religious preferences,” he said. “El Patrón was a Catholic, or at least he liked the ceremonies. I could have
Sor
Artemesia say a prayer over Mirasol.”

Matt thought of Listen’s quotes from the doctor:
Religious holidays are crap. God doesn’t exist. Mbongeni is a happy baby. The rabbits are dee-diddly-dead.
“Please go. And send me
Sor
Artemesia.”

The nun was as respectful as anyone could wish. She said a rosary over Mirasol and prayed silently. “I don’t think I can give her absolution,” she said hesitantly.

“What’s absolution?” said Matt.

“When someone is dying, Catholics give them the last rites. The person confesses his sins and is forgiven so that he can enter heaven. Mirasol couldn’t have confessed to anything. What sins could she have committed in her state?”

“What happens with dying infants and people in comas?”

“You’re right,
mi patrón
. These emergencies do come up, but
the rite must be done while the person is alive. Mirasol is dead. It’s too late.”
Sor
Artemesia tried to pull the sheet over Mirasol’s face, but Matt prevented her.

“Not yet,” he said. “I say she’s still alive.”

“But the doctor—”

“Are you going to believe someone whose lifework is turning people into eejits? I am the Lord of Opium, and I say she’s alive.”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I don’t even know whether Mirasol has been baptized,” the nun said nervously.

“Then do it now.”

Sor
Artemesia looked from Mirasol to Matt and back again. “I’m so confused. Perhaps eejits do die in a different way. Perhaps life fades slowly and it would be all right. . . . ”

Matt knew she was trying to convince herself. “Saint Francis would forgive you,” he said. “He forgave Brother Wolf, after all.”

Sor
Artemesia left and returned with water, olive oil, and flowers. She poured water over the girl’s forehead and made the sign of the cross over her. “I’m doing a conditional baptism,” she explained. “If Mirasol has already been taken into the church, this one won’t count.”

When the nun was finished, she anointed the girl’s forehead with oil and spoke in a language Matt had never heard before. He didn’t interrupt her, for the ceremony had a quality that moved him deeply. At last she said,
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”
She placed the flowers in Mirasol’s hands.

“What language is that?” Matt asked.

“Latin. It was used by priests for many hundreds of years. The church prefers modern languages now, but I’ve always thought that God pays more attention to Latin.”

They stood silently for a few moments, and then Cienfuegos
came to the door. “Dr. Rivas said you needed me to dispose of Mirasol.”

“Dr. Rivas can go to hell,” said Matt. “We’re taking her back to Ajo. She will be buried in the Alacrán mausoleum.”

A flicker in the
jefe
’s eyes showed how startled he was, but he didn’t argue. “Very well,
mi patrón
. I’ll get the hovercraft.”

*  *  *

Matt found Listen curled up in Mbongeni’s crib. “Come on. We’re leaving,” he said.