The House of the Scorpion (37 page)

Jorge propped the cane against a bed and wiped his face with a towel. No one moved or spoke. Everyone looked too terrified to even breathe. After a moment Jorge looked up with the kindly expression of a beloved teacher. The fury had drained from his face as completely as it had once drained from Tom's face, and the change was even more frightening than rage. “I think our young aristocrat has understood the lesson,” he said gently. “Well, Matt. Do you have any personal shortcomings you'd like to share?”

“No,” said Matt, pushing Fidelito out of harm's way. Everyone gasped.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I haven't done anything wrong.” Matt understood the lesson all right. It was this: Even slavish obedience didn't protect you from punishment.

“I see,” sighed the Keeper. “Then there's no help for it. Assume the position.”

“I don't see how it makes any difference,” Matt said. “You beat up Ton-Ton when he was lying on the floor.”

“Do it. It makes things easier,” someone dared to whisper. Jorge whirled around but didn't catch who spoke.

Matt stood with his arms crossed. Inside he was quaking with fear, but outside he gave the Keeper as cold and imperious a look as El Patrón had ever mustered to terrify an underling.

“Some boys,” Jorge said in a thin, almost wheedling voice that sent chills down Matt's back, “some boys have to learn the
hard
way. They have to be broken and mended and broken again until they learn to do what they're told. It may be simple, like sweeping a floor, but they do it eagerly to keep from being broken again. And they do it forever, for as long as they live.”

“In other words, you want to turn me into a zombie,” said Matt.

“No!”
several voices cried out.

“How
dare
you accuse me of that!” Jorge reached for the cane.

“I'll confess for him! I'll do it!” shrieked Fidelito, running to the center of the room. “He dropped the soap in the shower and didn't pick it up again. He threw away porridge 'cause there was a stinkbug in it.”

“Fidelito, you idiot!” groaned Chacho.

“He did those things. Honest!” cried the little boy.

Jorge looked from Fidelito to Matt with an interested look in his eyes.

“Go sit down,” Matt said in a low voice.

“Stop!” shouted the Keeper. “I see we have social contamination of the worst order here. The aristocrat has turned this boy into his lackey. And thus, it is the lackey who should be punished.”

“A beating would kill him,” said Matt.

“No one is too little to learn the value of education,” Jorge said. “Why, even child kings used to be thrashed until they learned not to cry at public meetings—as young as six months of age.”

He's got me
, thought Matt. No matter how much he wanted to resist Jorge's authority, he couldn't do it at the little boy's expense. “Very well, I confess,” said Matt. “I dropped the soap in the shower and didn't pick it up again. I threw away the porridge because there was a stinkbug in it.”

“And?” the Keeper said pleasantly.

“I peed in a shrimp tank—don't ask me which one. I don't remember. And I left water running in the kitchen sink.”

“Assume the position.”

Matt did so, hating himself, but hating the Keeper even more. He kept a stony silence as Jorge pranced around, trying to work on Matt's nerves. And he didn't scream, although he wanted to very much when the man hurled himself across the room and struck him with a force that made him almost pass out with pain.

He straightened up and endured another blow, and another. After six blows Jorge decided he'd done enough. Or—more likely—the Keeper had exhausted his strength beating up Ton-Ton. Matt figured he'd been lucky, but he didn't doubt that
more agony was down the road. Jorge wasn't going to give up that easily.

Matt staggered to a bunk and collapsed. He was barely aware of Jorge's departure, but the instant the door closed the boys scrambled off their beds and clustered around Matt. “You were great!” they cried.

“Jorge's such a loser,” said a tall, skinny boy named Flaco.

“Loser?” said Matt weakly. “I'm the one who gave up.”

“
¡Chale!
No way!” said Flaco. “Jorge crossed the line tonight. If news of this gets back to the Keepers' Headquarters, he's history.”

“No one's going to tell them,” Chacho said scornfully. “This place might as well be on the moon.”

“Soon I'll be old enough to leave,” said Flaco. “I'll go to Headquarters then and tell them.”

“I'm not holding my breath waiting,” Chacho said.

“Anyhow, you were
muy bravo
to take the beating for Fidelito,” Flaco told Matt. “We thought you were a wussy aristocrat, but you're really one of us.”

“I kept telling you that,” Fidelito piped up.

Then everyone started arguing about when they discovered Matt wasn't a wussy aristocrat and when they knew he was
muy gente
, a great guy. Matt let the warm tide of their approval flow around him. He was dizzy with pain, but it was worth it if the others liked him.

“Hey, we've got to get him fixed up,” Flaco said. The boys checked the hallway to be sure it was clear. Then they carried Matt to the infirmary, where Ton-Ton was already sound asleep. A pockmarked boy in a green uniform dressed Matt's wounds and measured three drops of liquid into a spoon.

That's laudanum
, Matt realized as his eyes caught the label on
the bottle. He fought against taking the medicine. He didn't want to turn into a zombie like Felicia or die like poor Furball, but he was too exhausted to resist for long. If he died, Matt wondered as he drifted off into a drug-induced haze, would he meet Furball in whatever afterlife nonhumans inhabited? And would the dog sink his teeth into Matt's ankle, for taking him away from María?

I
feel awful,” groaned Ton-Ton, reaching blindly for the glass of water by his bed.

“You look awful,” observed the pockmarked boy.

“You, uh, you take that back, Luna. I can still beat the stuffing out of you.”

“Not now that I'm a Keeper,” Luna said, smugly.

“You're only a trainee.” Ton-Ton managed to reach the water, but he spilled half of it on his chest when he tried to drink.

“Wait a minute,” Matt said. He was unwilling to reach for his own glass, even though he was extremely thirsty. He suspected that serious pain was waiting for him if he moved. “You're training to be a Keeper?”

“Well, duh,” said Luna. “Everyone does, eventually.”

Matt watched the light dancing on the glass of water just out of his reach. “But there's only twenty Keepers here and—how many boys?”

“Two hundred and ten at the moment,” said Luna.

“They can't all become Keepers. There aren't enough places,” Matt said.

Ton-Ton and Luna looked at each other. “Carlos says every boy who keeps the Five Principles of Good Citizenship and, uh, the Four Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness until he reaches eighteen becomes a Keeper,” said Ton-Ton.

No matter how carefully Matt explained to them the difference between two hundred ten job seekers and only twenty jobs, it didn't penetrate.

“You're, uh, you're just jealous,” Ton-Ton said.

But in one area Ton-Ton was knowledgeable. He knew what went on inside the Keepers' compound, which was surrounded by a high wall. The Keepers had holo-games and a television and a swimming pool. They had all-night parties with delicious food. And Ton-Ton knew all this, Matt now discovered, because he cleaned the Keepers' rooms and washed their dishes. Matt figured they allowed Ton-Ton inside because they thought he was too slow-witted to understand what he saw.

But as Celia often said, some people may think slowly, but they're very
thorough
about it. As Matt listened to Ton-Ton, he realized the boy wasn't stupid. His observations of the Keepers' activities and his understanding of the factory's machinery showed an intelligent mind. Ton-Ton was simply careful about his opinions.

Matt could see the boy was deeply disturbed about the punishment he'd received the night before. He kept going back to it, picking at it like a scab.

“I don't get it,” Ton-Ton said, shaking his head. “I, uh, didn't do anything wrong.”

“You must've done something. He sure whacked the heck out of you,” said Luna.

“No, uh, I
didn't.
”

Matt could see the gears churning slowly in the boy's brain: Whatever Jorge said was good. Ton-Ton did what Jorge said. Therefore, Ton-Ton was good. So why did Ton-Ton get the heck whacked out of him?

“Jorge is
un loco de remate
, a complete weirdo,” said Luna.

“No,” Ton-Ton insisted. “He's something else.”

Matt couldn't guess what conclusion the boy was working toward. “What's it like inside the compound?”

Ton-Ton's eyes lit up. “You, uh, you can't believe it! They've got roast beef and pork chops and pie à la mode.”

“What's pie à la mode?” Luna asked.

“It's got
ice cream
on it! Not melted or anything.”

“I had ice cream once,” Luna said in a dreamy voice. “My mother gave it to me.”

“The Keepers drink real milk, too, not ground-up plankton, and they eat chocolates wrapped in gold paper.” Ton-Ton had stolen a chocolate once. The memory hovered in his mind the way the Virgin of Guadalupe had hovered over Matt's bed when he was little.

“Doesn't it bother you that the Keepers have these things and we don't?” said Matt.

Both Ton-Ton and Luna drew themselves up like offended rattlesnakes. “They earned it!” Luna said. “They put in their time; and when we put in our time, we'll have those things too!”

“Yeah,” said Ton-Ton, but something seemed to be working at the back of his mind.

“Okay, okay. I was just curious,” Matt said. He braced himself
and reached for the glass of water. The pain was worse than he expected. He gasped and fell back.

“Pretty bad, huh?” Luna folded Matt's fingers around the glass. “Want some laudanum?”

“No!” Matt had spent years watching Felicia turn into a zombie. He didn't want to follow her example.

“Your choice. Personally, I love the stuff.”

“Why do you need it? Are you in pain?” asked Matt.

Luna sniggered as though Matt had said something completely stupid. “It's a trip, see. It's a ticket out of this place.”

“You're only a trainee,” Ton-Ton said scornfully. “You're not supposed to, uh, trip out until you move into the compound.”

“Says who?” Luna picked up the laudanum bottle and sloshed it around. “How're they going to count all the drops in here? It's my reward for running the infirmary.”

“Wait a minute,” said Matt. “You mean the Keepers take this stuff?”

“Sure,” Ton-Ton said. “They
earned
it.”

Matt's mind was working very fast. “How many of them? How often?”

“All of them and, uh, every night.”

Matt felt light-headed. This meant that every single night the Keepers turned into zombies. This meant the factory was left unguarded. The power plant that electrified the fence was left unguarded. A big sign flashing
FREEDOM
lit up in Matt's mind. “Do either of you know where San Luis is?” he asked.

It turned out both boys did. Ton-Ton had grown up there. He described, in his halting way, a city of whitewashed houses and tile roofs, of vines spilling over walls, of busy marketplaces and beautiful gardens. It sounded so pleasant, Matt wondered why Ton-Ton didn't want to return. Why was he looking
forward to life inside a compound with a bottle of laudanum for company? It was totally insane.

“San Luis sure sounds great,” Matt said.

“Uh, yes,” said Ton-Ton as though the thought had just occurred to him.

Matt was bursting to tell him to dump the Five Principles of Good Citizenship and the Four Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness and head over the fence to San Luis. But that would have been foolish. Ton-Ton worked toward a conclusion with the same, slow deliberation as the shrimp harvester he drove along the tanks. Nothing could hurry him. And nothing, Matt hoped, would turn him aside, either.

When Matt hobbled to the bathroom and looked into the mirror, he got a shock. All the boys had zits. Matt knew he had them too, but this was the first time he'd had a good look at the damage. There was no mirror in the dormitory. He looked like a loaded pizza! He scrubbed and scrubbed with the gray, seaweed soap, but it only made his skin turn a violent red.

Ton-Ton and Luna guffawed when Matt returned. “They don't wash off, you know,” said Luna.