The Lord of Opium(125)
Cienfuegos carefully gathered up the sheets, keeping them in order. “This is gibberish to me. I’ll take it to the Mushroom Master later. It’s strange. He knows more about science than we do, and he’s a hundred years in the past. He says we depend too much on machines. All we know how to do is press buttons, but he knows how the buttons work.”
50
THE SECRET ROOM
When the sun slipped behind the Chiricahua Mountains, they left the abandoned observatory. Heat still radiated from the ground, and a wind had whipped up a dust storm. It blew into their eyes and dried their lips, but it also made them less easy to spot on the treeless road.
The white dome of El Patrón’s observatory loomed against the shadow of night rising in the east. To the south appeared the Scorpion Star, always the first to be seen at evening and the last to disappear at dawn. They slipped into a side door and tiptoed along the dark, curved wall to the door of the lunchroom. No one noticed them. The technicians were busy with screens and computers.
The room was deserted, and they helped themselves to hot chocolate and donuts. Only the greasy wrappers that had been around the turkey burritos were left. “We’re taking a huge chance, but I think Listen is right. We need a pick-me-up before tackling the solar telescope,” said Cienfuegos. Matt found a machine that served boxes of apple juice, and he pocketed a few of these before they went to the other building.
He dreaded the giant shaft plunging beneath the solar telescope in a way that wasn’t quite rational. After all, they had survived it before. Yet something about the enclosed space, the hot air gusting up, the darkness and awareness of tons of earth over his head made him break out in a sweat before they even got to the elevator.
“I wish we could leave Listen up here,” Matt whispered when they had reached the shaft door.
“She’s safer with us,” said Cienfuegos.
“Don’t worry, Listen. We did it before and we can do it again,” said Matt, more to reassure himself than her. He held on to the elevator door, wishing he could back out.
“I’m not scared of heights,” the little girl said.
“You can’t be sure of that. You’ve never seen a drop like this.”
“She’ll be fine,” said the jefe, pulling the door closed. And then they were sinking at a forty-five-degree angle. Round and round they spiraled the huge tube of the telescope. Dim lights gleamed on its dark-green surface. “It’s hot down here,” said Listen, pulling her blouse loose. She was already drenched in sweat.
Air conditioners whirred at various levels, and a warm breeze rose out of the depths. They passed another elevator slowly rising and saw the sickly faces of the eejits moving up.
The heat was unbearable, even at night. Soon they were all panting, and Matt opened one of the apple juice boxes and handed it to Listen. They passed a platform in an alcove and saw eejits mending a pipe with an oxyacetylene torch. Sparks showered into the elevator cage. More heat.
The elevator bumped at the bottom. They moved quickly, but before they got to the door, they heard the sizzle of more sparks. Cienfuegos signaled for them to stop. Matt saw an eejit trying to cut through the wall to the forbidden room.
Listen grabbed Matt’s arm. “I can see Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos,” she whispered.
Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a lightning bolt snaked out of the wall and incinerated the eejit. The odor of burnt flesh drifted through the hall. “Next!” shouted a voice Matt recognized. Another eejit took up the torch. There was a line of them waiting in the space between the telescope and the wall.
“This won’t work,” said Dr. Angel. “We’ve tried it before.”
“When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” said Happy Man Hikwa. “Each time the wall will degrade a little more. Eventually, we’ll break through.”
“It isn’t just the substance the door’s made of, it’s the force field running through it. There’s a plasma current that reacts to energy,” said Dr. Marcos. “The more you pour in, the more powerfully it pushes back. We’ve tried this before.”
Happy Man barked a command, and a soldier struck Dr. Marcos on the head with the butt of a gun. The doctor fell to his knees. The next eejit blasted the wall until another tongue of fire erupted from it. The remaining eejits watched passively.
“Can we do anything?” whispered Matt.
Cienfuegos watched as the next man moved into position. He drew his stun gun and fired at Happy Man twice in rapid succession, a lethal shot. The jefe jumped back, pulling Matt and Listen with him. “Run,” he said, but when they got to the elevator, it was gone. They had forgotten to prop open the door, and someone had called for it. They could see it slowly spiraling upward. “Climb!” the jefe said desperately.