“Tam Lin told me this privately,” Celia said. “Farm Patrolmen never admit to the operation because it makes them seem less than men. It’s why they’re so cruel to eejits. To prove they have nothing in common with them.”
A sudden thought struck Matt. “The bodyguards. Were they chipped?” She nodded. “And Tam Lin?”
Celia smiled sadly. “Him too.”
Matt could hardly bring himself to ask the next question, but he had to know. “What about you, Celia?”
Her eyes turned as cold as those of an idol Matt had seen on TV, the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, who wore a necklace of severed hands. He remembered that it was Celia who had brought about El Patrón’s death when the armies of Aztlán and the United States had been unable to touch him. “I wasn’t worth worrying about,” Celia said. “I was only a woman.”
Silence hung heavily in the room. They weren’t alone, though they might as well have been. Several eejits worked at their appointed tasks. One washed dishes, going over each plate exactly five times with a sponge. He passed it to another man, who dunked the plate exactly five times in rinse water. A woman kneaded bread dough: push, fold, turn . . . push, fold, turn. A teenage boy, who reminded Matt unpleasantly of the boys at the plankton factory, was slicing onions. It took a lot of servants to prepare a meal, because each of them knew how to do only one thing.
“Could I have some ice cream?” said Matt, to break the tension.
“Oh! Of course!” Celia woke up. The goddess Coatlicue disappeared. “Do you want pistachio, mango, or dulce de leche?”
“Dulce de leche.”
She opened a giant freezer and hauled out a gallon tub of ice cream. Fog swirled around her as she kicked the door shut with her heel.
Matt tried to think of something to say. “What do you know about Waitress, the girl who serves me meals?”
“Her? Why are you asking?”
“No reason. She just seems more alert than most eejits.”
Celia dug out scoops of ice cream and poured marshmallow syrup over them. “As I said, not all implants are the same. Most dull the mind so that a person can perform a simple chore for hours without stopping. A few leave a person’s basic skills intact. I have a helper who’s very good at making sauces. He used to be a French chef.”
Matt ate the disgustingly sweet dessert, which he loved, and thought about Waitress. “I want to change her name. Is that possible?”
“Ask Cienfuegos,” Celia said impatiently. “He’s in charge of training.” She went over to tell the boy, who’d run out of onions, to stop chopping.
* * *
That afternoon Matt had the old mattress on El Patrón’s bed burned. He gave orders for quesadillas, coffee, and fruit to be served for breakfast. He sent the bath eejit away to be retrained.
In the evening he and Cienfuegos sat down to dinner in El Patrón’s grand dining room. Now that Matt took the time to study it, he saw how unusual it was. The walls were covered with priceless Spanish paintings of kings and queens. Royal children, dressed in stiff clothing, stared dolefully out of dark nurseries. They didn’t look as though they knew how to play, and their only entertainment seemed to be dwarfs. Spanish kings collected dwarfs, to go by the number of them, the way other people collect stamps. A brooding misery hung over all the scenes. There was even, in one shadowy corner, a painting of heretics being burned at the stake.
“Those are all originals,” said Cienfuegos. “Muy, muy valioso.”
“I don’t care how valuable they are. I think they’re creepy,” said Matt.
“They’re marks of prestige. A man who can afford such things is like a king.”
“Who am I going to impress?” asked Matt. With the border closed, no visitors came to the hacienda. Its rooms and halls were deserted except for the occasional shadowy figure of a servant dusting a statue.
They sat across from each other. The crystal chandelier shed flecks of light over the tablecloth, and they also had a heavy gold candelabra, for the room was large and dark. Waitress served them dinner. She poured pulque for Cienfuegos and water for Matt.
“This was where El Patrón entertained his most important guests,” said the jefe. “Presidents, dictators, and drug lords. Ah, those were the days!”
“Were you invited?” Matt shook his head at Waitress when she tried to cut up his meat.
“I was one of the bodyguards. We stood around the walls and watched the guests.”
Unlike now, Matt thought, realizing he might have made a mistake by inviting Cienfuegos to eat with him. It seemed important to show underlings that he was too important to be friendly. Celia had told him he should hire more bodyguards, too, because Daft Donald wasn’t enough. A drug lord with only one bodyguard, she said, was like a general with only one soldier. The other drug lords would make fun of him.