The Lord of Opium(92)

“Fiona,” said Matt again. “What are you doing?”

“As if you don’t know! Cienfuegos said he would cockroach me if I didn’t work here. He means it too, the bludger. He’s got evil, cold eyes like a snake.”

Matt barely noticed the smell of the pits, he was so surprised by Fiona’s behavior. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.

The woman stopped and scowled at him. “It’s perfectly clear, isn’t it? I’m tending these ghastly mycelia. They eat filth and they are filth, just strings of rot as far as I can see. The whole place smells like toilet.”

Well, it was a job, Matt decided. Cienfuegos had kept his word. Fiona was alive and where she couldn’t do mischief. “Are you getting fed?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Prison rations, not that I can stomach it after eight hours of this. I get a bloody cot in one of those new eejit pens. If I want a shower, it’s all in together with the zombies, watching them soap themselves in unison.”

Matt, in spite of her crimes, felt sorry for her. “I’ll see that you get your own cottage,” he said, and then, rashly, he said, “Fiona, are you microchipped?”

She appeared to swell up with rage. “You’ve got a lot of cheek saying I’m an eejit. I don’t stumble around like a drunk on Saturday night, thank you very much. You need an eye exam.”

“There are other kinds of control, things so subtle you can’t see them. Like wanting to do something and discovering you can’t.”

Fiona turned pale. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did you have any injections when you arrived?”

“We all had immunizations, didn’t we? For the exotic diseases.” She seemed to deflate before his eyes.

“Of course. That’s all it was,” said Matt, unwilling to push the issue. “I’ll tell Cienfuegos to find you a cottage.” He left her standing by the pits. She didn’t move until he was a long way off.

He got the horse and rode on toward the oasis. A few sandhill cranes were huddled in the shady part of the water, panting in the heat. Once there had been thousands of them, but only a few hundred had survived the summers. They moved from pool to pool, seeking coolness.

Matt sat under the collapsing grape arbor and drank some of the water he carried with him. He pulled off his left shoe and looked at the bottom of his foot. The dark line Listen had discovered had always been there, but Matt had never looked at it closely.

Yet he wasn’t as worried here as he’d been outside. Something about the place made him feel safe. He looked around at the rocks enclosing the old campsite on three sides. The fourth side was the lake.

Heed the high cliffs, lad. They keep things out. Now Matt remembered that Tam Lin had actually said this once when they camped overnight. The boy had wondered why they could sleep so soundly with mosquitoes whining in their ears and the hard earth under the sleeping bags.

’Tis not bodily comfort we need, the man had said, but the mind at ease. Something about the rocks holds back the cares of the world. This is the only place in Opium I’ve felt free.

That was the time Tam Lin had told him the sad story of the sandhill cranes. The later Alacráns didn’t know about the oasis, but the old man did. It was the first place he’d come to in the United States, before he established his empire. He’d built the old miner’s cabin and planted the grapevine. Through the years he’d forgotten the oasis and anyhow was too old to climb through the rocks. But in the beginning he’d noticed the sandhill cranes arrive with cold weather and depart in spring.

El Patrón hated to give up anything he thought he owned.

He had his son Felipe net the birds and pull out the lead feathers on one wing. Birds cannot fly unbalanced, said Tam Lin. They tip to one side and fall to earth. The cranes were trapped. Half of them died that first summer, and more the next.

A few had survived, the ancestors of this flock. Matt watched them now, guiltily enjoying their presence. After a while, his mind at ease, he went back to the horse and rode toward the hacienda.





36





GOING ROGUE




The first sign that something was wrong was Cienfuegos galloping toward him through the poppy fields. “There you are!” shouted the jefe, waving his hat. “I’ve had men hunting all over for you. Fiona said she’d seen you ride this way.”

“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.