The Lord of Opium(124)
“How was he?” asked Matt.
“Buggy,” the jefe said. “Half the time he screamed and the other half threatened. I was seriously tempted to leave him, but . . . ”
“You felt sorry for him.”
“Not really. He was making a racket, and I didn’t want Glass Eye’s troops to show up. I carried him to Malverde’s chapel. Sor Artemesia is looking after him, and good luck on that job. I’d rather take care of a rabid skunk.” Cienfuegos got up and poured clear upper water into another basin.
“There’s a dead mosquito in it,” complained Listen.
“Yum,” said Cienfuegos, picking it out and eating it. It was difficult to gross out the jefe.
Matt revealed what had happened just before Cienfuegos arrived in Glass Eye’s hospital room, and the man was impressed. “You killed Dr. Rivas?” he asked Listen.
“I guess I did. I made Glass Eye mad,” the little girl said uncomfortably. “But Dr. Rivas killed my best buddy. He promised not to, but he did it. He did.” The energy went out of her and she bent over, grieving silently.
“Well, I think you’re crotting marvelous. If I’m ever elected head of the UN, I’ll issue you a Hero Medal.”
“You said a curse word,” she said.
“It’s okay when I do it. Did you really hear Dr. Rivas and his son and daughter talk about the room at the bottom of the solar telescope?”
“They said it had a big secret inside and they wanted the Bug to open it, but he couldn’t. Dr. Rivas thought I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Big people ignore little kids, and they shouldn’t.”
“I’d never ignore you, chiquita. You’re too dangerous,” said the jefe. “So Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos escaped.”
“I think so,” the little girl said. “They didn’t get any loot, though. I made that part up. I’m hungry.”
They found rusty cans of food in the pantry, which Cienfuegos said were too old to be safe. The loaves of bread crumbled into dust when Listen touched them.
“It’s like an Egyptian tomb with all the things the owner needed for the afterlife,” said Matt, thinking of El Patrón and also of Mirasol. The flowers that had been heaped around her must have withered by now. Or perhaps they didn’t in the world of the dead. Perhaps they still bloomed, and she was dancing with the people she had loved. He had left the music box in her tomb.
“There are clothes in the closet and a toothbrush on the sink, except that the bristles have fallen out,” said Matt. “All we need is a sarcophagus with a pharaoh painted on the lid.” And servants, he thought. Real pharaohs needed servants to get through the afterlife.
“There’s a lunchroom at the observatory,” Listen said. “You can get hot chocolate and donuts and sometimes turkey burritos. We should go there now.”
“Patience,” said Cienfuegos, leaning back in a chair and half-closing his eyes. “Your ancestors didn’t whine about turkey burritos when they were on a hunt. They waited like lions for the game to get careless.”
“So we’re lions,” the little girl said, interested.
“Oh, yes. We’re hunting the biggest game of all.”
“The Scorpion Star,” said Matt.
The jefe smiled gently at the dark ceiling draped with ancient cobwebs and dust. “The Mushroom Master thinks the eejits’ brains are controlled by an energy source on the Scorpion Star. And that the observatory controls the Star. We’ll begin our hunt by looking into that room at the bottom of the solar telescope.”
Matt didn’t like the plan, but he couldn’t think of a better one. He helped Listen search through the desk while they waited. Dried-up fountain pens of a sort only seen in museums filled one drawer. In another were colored scraps of paper that Cienfuegos said were used for sending letters, a concept he had to explain. These were in an envelope labeled FOREVER STAMPS.
The little girl unfolded a large diagram on the floor. The folds cracked, and each section separated from the others.
“That looks familiar.” Cienfuegos got up and weighted the pages with stones to be sure they didn’t get mixed up. “It looks a lot like the biosphere. There’s Northern Europe and Africa. And at the far end is Tundra. It’s even got the name printed on it.”
Matt knelt by it. “It could also be the space station.” The longer they studied it, the more likely this seemed. The diagram was covered with strange symbols and mathematical formulas. Between each ecosystem was a series of zigzag lines and notes like gauss here and outgauss there. In the margin was written 500 teslas. Excessive? No! At the bottom were two words: Couple on the left, and Uncouple on the right.