The Lord of Opium(119)
“Was it the same dove Noah sent out to look for land?” Listen said suspiciously.
“Her great-great-ever-so-great-granddaughter,” said Matt. “María rescued me, even though she was only six years old. She brought Celia to the window, and Celia went to El Patrón.” He told her how Tom—a certified bad guy—had come to the window and shot him with a peashooter until he was covered with bruises. “But then I threw a rotten orange at him, and it fell apart on his face and covered him with wiggly worms.”
Listen crowed with delight. “Did they get into his ears and mouth?” she asked.
“Yes! And two of them went up his nose.” But Matt saw she was getting too wild, and so he made her lie down again and told her about the oasis instead. “It was a secret world. No one except me and Tam Lin knew about it. We had picnics and campfires. We went swimming in the lake. It’s not like being in a swimming pool. The water makes you feel alive, and it’s full of little fish.”
“I wish I had a secret world,” Listen said wistfully.
“I’ll take you there when we get out,” Matt promised.
Later, when he attempted to snatch a few minutes of sleep, he felt Tam Lin’s flashlight under the pillow and wished they were in the oasis now. There sure were a lot of missing people, and tomorrow there might be two more.
* * *
Dr. Rivas arrived about noon, accompanied by two African soldiers armed with machine guns. “This place stinks. We’ll go to the nursery,” he said. He was in a grim mood and shoved Listen away when she tried to hug him.
She didn’t stay depressed long. It was too wonderful getting outside, and she danced for joy. She was dressed in a yellow pinafore and bright pink sandals that had been delivered the evening before. Eejits went about their work in the gardens, clipping grass with scissors, refilling hummingbird feeders, and taking litter out of ponds one leaf at a time.
“Look!” cried Listen. Over one part of the hospital was a column of smoke. “That’s the lab where all the freezers are!”
Five soldiers were scooping buckets of water out of the fountain where El Patrón’s brothers and sisters stood. If only five had been spared to fight the blaze, Matt thought, Glass Eye couldn’t have that many men. Perhaps hundreds of eejits were around, but they hadn’t been trained to throw buckets of water on a fire. The whole hospital could burn down around their ears and they wouldn’t notice.
“A century of research went up in those flames,” said Dr. Rivas. “My life’s work. I begged Glass Eye for more help. I told him his health depended on the lab, and he said that his life depended on being guarded. Cienfuegos is at the bottom of this. I hope he’s proud of his stupid Neanderthal act of terrorism. He must have used a flamethrower.”
He probably is proud, Matt thought. Among those samples were the deadliest germs known to humankind.
The same caretakers were sitting along the wall of the nursery, but the dead eejit had been removed. Listen peeked into the kitchen, the bathroom, and the cupboards. “Where’s Mbongeni?” she said.
“You know where he is,” Dr. Rivas said impatiently.
Listen looked wary. “How would I know?”
“Because I explained it to you when the first Mbongeni was sacrificed. He’s been used for spare parts,” said Dr. Rivas.
Listen shrieked, “You did it! You said you wouldn’t do it, and you did! You did! You did! You did!”
“You’re a beast,” said Matt, trying to calm the little girl.
“We’re all beasts.” The doctor sat down on one of the beds, and one of Mbongeni’s stuffed toys fell to the floor. “Sor Artemesia can talk about souls all she likes, but when we die, we turn into compost like any other piece of rubbish.”
“Mbongeni was not rubbish!” Listen shouted.
“For twenty years I have been El Patrón’s slave. I created life out of nothing, fed it, cared for it, and in the end killed it to prolong his existence. That’s what clones are for, Listen. You knew that, so don’t pretend you didn’t. It’s no different from dissecting rabbits.”
“You don’t cut up people!” she cried.
“Clones aren’t people. They’re collections of cells.”
Listen threw herself at the doctor, but Matt held her back. He was afraid for her. She’d hidden the truth from herself for years. She knew on one level what had happened to the older Mbongeni, and she knew what the fate of the younger one would be. But it was too much for a seven-year-old child to face consciously. The truth had only surfaced in her night terrors.