The Lord of Opium(97)

They went outside. The sky was clear after rain, and the stars shone brilliantly. One of them fell, a bright streak across the blackness, and Celia turned to Listen and said, “Look, chiquita. That’s a prayer being answered by God. One of the angels is flying down to carry out His orders.”





38





THE MUSHROOM MASTER VS. THE SKY




Matt moved his office to another part of the hacienda. He couldn’t bear to be in the place where Mirasol had danced. He closed up the room and ordered the door to be nailed shut. Ton-Ton hid all the music boxes after Matt smashed one of them.

There was plenty of work to occupy Matt’s mind. What with sending samples to Esperanza, keeping the opium dealers at bay, and laying out plans for new fields, there was barely time to relax. He moved like a robot from one task to the next. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito left him alone, and Listen had been rebuffed so many times that she hid when Matt came into a room.

He didn’t care. At one point—it was hard to keep track of the days—Cienfuegos told him that the light for the Convent of Santa Clara was blinking on the holoport. Matt was in the kitchen, dining alone as he preferred now. “I don’t want to talk to Esperanza,” he said.

“It could be María,” suggested the jefe.

“She’s always with her mother.”

“It’s better than nothing,” said Cienfuegos.

“It is nothing.” Matt took another bite of a sandwich that tasted like sawdust to him.

“That’s no way to treat a friend,” said the jefe, drawing up a chair. “You liked María before Mirasol came into the picture.”

“I loved her,” Matt said.

“And still do, mi patrón. Please do not speak of her in the past tense. Es muy antipático. Disagreeable.”

“You don’t have to call me patrón anymore. I’ve chosen a new name,” said Matt.

Cienfuegos looked surprised and then pleased. “I hope it’s frightening. I always thought El Picador—the Meat Grinder—had a certain nasty charm.”

“I want to be called Don Sombra, Lord Shadow.”

The jefe thought for a moment. “It isn’t as scary as I’d hoped, but then it depends on what you mean by shadow. A lurking danger, an unseen threat. Yes, it could do.”

“It’s what I want. You can tell the others. Now leave me alone. I want to think.” Cienfuegos withdrew and Matt thought, Mirasol means “look at the sun.” She thought I was the sun, and now that she’s gone, there’s nothing left but shadow. He didn’t answer the holoport call on that day or on the next five occasions.

The monsoon departed, drifting back now and then to drench the soil and cause flash floods in the hills. The days were hot. Matt wore a hat like the Farm Patrolmen and, when he had time, rode out to inspect the opium fields. Eejits worked to remove stones from new tracts of land where Matt intended to plant with corn.

Field eejits were trained to prepare soil, but they understood only one type of crop. Cienfuegos had tried them out on a small stand of corn, and predictably, they slashed the growing cobs with razors and waited patiently for the resin to ooze out. “I’ve tried every command I can think of, but they won’t change,” the jefe had said. “It’s possible to retrain them, but think of the time wasted, not to mention the high mortality.”

“Are they living longer now?” Matt had asked.

“Much longer,” Cienfuegos had said. “Of course there are the usual accidents. One of them turned the wrong way and marched out into the desert instead of returning to the pens. No one noticed until the following day. We found him at the bottom of a wash. Two or three go rogue every month.”

Matt had turned away. He was preparing fields no one would use unless the Farm Patrol and bodyguards could be persuaded to do it. They wouldn’t like it. It was beneath their dignity.

Now Matt walked alone toward the mushroom house. The experiment had worked better than anyone’s wildest dreams. Polluted soil now sprouted with grass. Waste from the water treatment plant no longer drained into fetid pits but spread into enclosures, where it was set upon by hordes of ravenous Shaggy Manes. Matt could understand why the Mushroom Master was so proud of his pets.

He saw the Mushroom Master now. The man was carrying a large, brown umbrella that came down past his shoulders and made him look not unlike a mushroom himself. “Hello there!” he called. The man tipped up the umbrella and lowered it again.

“Please forgive me for not stopping, Don Sombra. I was checking a leak in the sprinkler system and must go back inside at once. You are welcome to visit, of course. I have some excellent pu-erh tea.” The Mushroom Master scurried through the door as though a rattlesnake was lunging at his heels.