The Lord of Opium(98)

“Is there an emergency?” Matt asked.

“With me, yes.” The Mushroom Master furled the umbrella and placed it by the door. “Thank Gaia for this umbrella,” he said. “Cienfuegos got it for me. The first time I left the biosphere, I panicked like a newly awakened Dormant at his first mating season. He had to drag me out.”

“Is the outside world that frightening?” Matt followed the man through the growing chambers to a small office in the middle of the building. Here the air was pleasantly cool and fresh. A small teapot simmered on a hot plate.

“It’s the sky.” The Mushroom Master leaned forward as though imparting a secret. “You have no idea how terrifying it is to someone who’s always had a roof over his head. It’s so big! It goes up and up forever. I feel like I could be sucked into it.”

Matt was surprised to find that he understood this feeling. “Once, long ago, I camped out under the open sky at night. I, too, was afraid of falling upward into the stars.”

“Stars! I haven’t dared to look at them yet.” The teapot began to rattle, and the Mushroom Master sprinkled the water with dried leaves. After a few minutes he poured out two cups of fragrant liquid. “This is tea. Have you ever had it, Don Sombra?”

Matt said he had and didn’t think much of it. It was brown like old dishwater and tasted much the same.

“Ah! But this is different,” said the man. “Tea isn’t a plant you can boil like spinach. It must be ripened like a fine cheese. Here. Enjoy the aroma first and then sip carefully.”

The boy took the cup with some amusement. The people in the biosphere were peculiar, from the frogherd with his skinny white legs to the people slurping grasshopper stew. But the aroma was pleasant. It wasn’t like flowers exactly. It reminded him of cedar or sandalwood, of something old but not decayed.

He sipped it. “This really is good.”

“You see!” crowed the Mushroom Master. “Even people who have never ventured outside a building can surprise you. Pu-erh is fermented by yeast. Do you know what a yeast is? A fungus! Is there nothing fungi can’t do?” The old man warbled on about spores and mycelia, lost in the wonder of Gaia’s creations.

Matt liked him and on an impulse said, “Why don’t you come to dinner at the hacienda? We can sit outside and stargaze.” The Mushroom Master tensed up. “We’ll stay close to the door so you can escape if it gets too frightening.”

The Mushroom Master considered. “Cienfuegos is always telling me about how beautiful the outside world is, but I’m afraid the farthest he’s got me is one trip to the pollution pits. Can I bring my umbrella?”

“Of course,” Matt said. “You can sit under it the whole time if it makes you comfortable.”

A weight seemed to have lifted from Matt as he made his way back to the hacienda. For weeks he had lived under a cloud, and none of his friends could help him. Everything and everyone reminded him of Mirasol. More than anything, he felt devastated that he hadn’t saved her. He should have found other doctors. He should have stopped trying to wake her up.

The Mushroom Master was different, because nothing about him raised unhappy memories. Being with him was like closing a door and looking ahead.

Matt went by the mausoleum, which wasn’t far from the hospital. He did this often, though both Celia and Sor Artemesia told him it was a bad idea. I don’t even have a picture of Mirasol, he thought, gazing at the dusty glass doors. How could he have been so careless? He remembered her now, but what about later?

Long ago he’d had a teacher, a woman who was one of the higher-grade eejits. He remembered her as very tall, but then he’d been a little kid. Everyone looked tall. She had brown hair and wore a green dress, and her face . . . was missing. It had vanished from his mind as the woman herself had vanished into the opium fields.

I’ll ask Chacho to draw a picture, Matt thought. He went by the guitar factory and invited his friend to dinner.

* * *

Eejits moved a picnic table near the veranda and placed lamps at either end. They were powered by solar cells that gathered energy during the day and refunded it as a pearly glow after dark. Matt thought it would appeal to the Mushroom Master. The table was close to a door where the man could dive for shelter.

Servants brought out bowls of salad, salsa, and tortilla chips. A platter of fried chicken sat in the middle of the table. Ton-Ton, Chacho, and Fidelito arrived, followed by Listen and Sor Artemesia. Listen went to the end of the table, as far as she could get from Matt.

The Mushroom Master, looking very odd under his domelike umbrella, was escorted by Cienfuegos. Fidelito hooted with laughter and was threatened by Ton-Ton. “If h-he wants to bring an umbrella, that’s his business,” said the older boy.