The House of the Scorpion (2 page)

I
n the beginning there were thirty-six of them, thirty-six droplets of life so tiny that Eduardo could see them only under a microscope. He studied them anxiously in the darkened room.

Water bubbled through tubes that snaked around the warm, humid walls. Air was sucked into growth chambers. A dull, red light shone on the faces of the workers as they watched their own arrays of little glass dishes. Each one contained a drop of life.

Eduardo moved his dishes, one after the other, under the lens of the microscope. The cells were perfect—or so it seemed. Each was furnished with all it needed to grow. So much knowledge was hidden in that tiny world! Even Eduardo, who understood the process very well, was awed. The cell already understood what color hair it was to have, how tall it would become, and even whether it preferred spinach to broccoli. It might even have a hazy desire for music or crossword puzzles. All that was hidden in the droplet.

Finally the round outlines quivered and lines appeared, dividing the cells in two. Eduardo sighed. It was going to be all right. He watched the samples grow, and then he carefully moved them to the incubator.

But it wasn’t all right. Something about the food, the heat, the light was wrong, and the man didn’t know what it was. Very quickly over half of them died. There were only fifteen now, and Eduardo felt a cold lump in his stomach. If he failed, he would be sent to the Farms, and then what would become of Anna and the children, and his father, who was so old?

“It’s okay,” said Lisa, so close by that Eduardo jumped. She was one of the senior technicians. She had worked for so many years in the dark, her face was chalk white and her blue veins were visible through her skin.

“How can it be okay?” Eduardo said.

“The cells were frozen over a hundred years ago. They can’t be as healthy as samples taken yesterday.”

“That long,” the man marveled.

“But some of them should grow,” Lisa said sternly.

So Eduardo began to worry again. And for a month everything went well. The day came when he implanted the tiny embryos in the brood cows. The cows were lined up, patiently waiting. They were fed by tubes, and their bodies were exercised by giant metal arms that grasped their legs and flexed them as though the cows were walking through an endless field. Now and then an animal moved its jaws in an attempt to chew cud.

Did they dream of dandelions? Eduardo wondered. Did they feel a phantom wind blowing tall grass against their legs? Their brains were filled with quiet joy from implants in their skulls. Were they aware of the children growing in their wombs?

Perhaps the cows hated what had been done to them, because they certainly rejected the embryos. One after another the infants, at this point no larger than minnows, died.

Until there was only one.

Eduardo slept badly at night. He cried out in his sleep, and Anna asked what was the matter. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t say that if this last embryo died, he would be stripped of his job. He would be sent to the Farms. And she, Anna, and their children and his father would be cast out to walk the hot, dusty roads.

But that one embryo grew until it was clearly a being with arms and legs and a sweet, dreaming face. Eduardo watched it through scanners. “You hold my life in your hands,” he told the infant. As though it could hear, the infant flexed its tiny body in the womb until it was turned toward the man. And Eduardo felt an unreasoning stir of affection.

When the day came, Eduardo received the newborn into his hands as though it were his own child. His eyes blurred as he laid it in a crib and reached for the needle that would blunt its intelligence.

“Don’t fix that one,” said Lisa, hastily catching his arm. “It’s a Matteo Alacrán. They’re always left intact.”

Have I done you a favor?
thought Eduardo as he watched the baby turn its head toward the bustling nurses in their starched, white uniforms.
Will you thank me for it later?

2
T
HE
L
ITTLE
H
OUSE
IN THE
P
OPPY
F
IELDS

M
att stood in front of the door and spread his arms to keep Celia from leaving. The small, crowded living room was still blue with early morning light. The sun had not yet lifted above the hills marking the distant horizon.

“What’s this?” the woman said. “You’re a big boy now, almost six. You know I have to work.” She picked him up to move him out of the way.

“Take me with you,” begged Matt, grabbing her shirt and wadding it up in his hands.

“Stop that.” Celia gently pried his fingers from the cloth. “You can’t come,
mi vida
. You must stay hidden in the nest like a good little mouse. There’re hawks out there that eat little mice.”

“I’m
not
a mouse!” Matt yelled. He shrieked at the top of his voice in a way he knew was irritating. Even keeping Celia home long enough to deliver a tongue-lashing was worth it. He couldn’t bear being left alone for another day.

Celia thrust him away.
“¡Callate!
Shut up! Do you want to make me deaf? You’re just a little kid with cornmeal for brains!” Matt flopped sullenly into the big easy chair.

Celia immediately knelt down and put her arms around him. “Don’t cry,
mi vida
. I love you more than anything in the world. I’ll explain things to you when you’re older.” But she wouldn’t. She had made the same promise before. Suddenly the fight went out of Matt. He was too small and weak to fight whatever drove Celia to abandon him each day.

“Will you bring me a present?” he said, wriggling away from her kiss.

“Of course! Always!” the woman cried.

So Matt allowed her to go, but he was angry at the same time. It was a funny kind of anger, for he felt like crying, too. The house was so lonely without Celia singing, banging pots, or talking about people he had never seen and never would see. Even when Celia was asleep—and she fell asleep easily after long hours cooking at the Big House—the rooms felt full of her warm presence.

When Matt was younger, it hadn’t seemed to matter. He’d played with his toys and watched the television. He’d looked out the window where fields of white poppies stretched all the way to the shadowy hills. The whiteness hurt his eyes, and so he turned from them with relief to the cool darkness inside.

But lately Matt had begun to look at things more carefully. The poppy fields weren’t completely deserted. Now and then he saw horses—he knew them from picture books—walking between the rows of white flowers. It was hard to tell who rode them in all that brightness, but it seemed the riders weren’t adults, but children like him.

And with that discovery grew a desire to see them more closely.

Matt had watched children on television. He saw that they were seldom alone. They did things together, like building forts or kicking balls or fighting. Even fighting was interesting when it meant you had other people around. Matt never saw anyone except Celia and, once a month, the doctor. The doctor was a sour man and didn’t like Matt at all.

Matt sighed. To do
anything
, he would have to go outdoors, which Celia said again and again was very dangerous. Besides, the doors and windows were locked.

Matt settled himself at a small wooden table to look at one of his books.
Pedro el Conejo
, said the cover. Matt could read—slightly—both English and Spanish. In fact, he and Celia mixed the two languages together, but it didn’t matter. They understood each other.

Pedro el Conejo was a bad little rabbit who crawled into Señor MacGregor’s garden to eat up his lettuces. Señor MacGregor wanted to put Pedro into a pie, but Pedro, after many adventures, got away. It was a satisfying story.

Matt got up and wandered into the kitchen. It contained a small refrigerator and a microwave. The microwave had a sign reading PELIGRO!!! DANGER!!! and squares of yellow notepaper saying NO! NO! NO! NO! To be extra sure, Celia had wrapped a belt around the microwave door and secured it with a padlock. She lived in terror that Matt would find a way to open it while she was at work and “cook his little gizzards,” as she put it.

Matt didn’t know what gizzards were and he didn’t want to find out. He edged around the dangerous machine to get to the fridge. That was definitely his territory. Celia filled it with treats every night. She cooked for the Big House, so there was always plenty of food. Matt helped himself to sushi, tamales, pakoras, blintzes—whatever the people in the Big House were eating. And there was always a large carton of milk and bottles of fruit juice.

He filled a bowl with food and went to Celia’s room.

On one side was her large, saggy bed covered with crocheted pillows and stuffed animals. At the head was a huge crucifix and a picture of Our Lord Jesus with His heart pierced by five swords. Matt found the picture frightening. The crucifix was even worse, because it glowed in the dark. Matt kept his back to it, but he still liked Celia’s room.

He sprawled over the pillows and pretended to feed the stuffed dog, the teddy bear, the rabbit (
conejo
, Matt corrected). For a while this was fun, but then a hollow feeling began to grow inside Matt. These weren’t real animals. He could talk to them all he liked. They couldn’t understand. In some way he couldn’t put into words, they weren’t even
there
.

Matt turned them all to the wall, to punish them for not being real, and went to his own room. It was much smaller, being half filled by his bed. The walls were covered with pictures Celia had torn out of magazines: movie stars, animals, babies—Matt wasn’t thrilled by the babies, but Celia found them irresistible—flowers, news stories. There was one of acrobats standing on one another in a huge pyramid. SIXTY-FOUR! the caption said.
A NEW RECORD AT THE LUNAR COLONY.

Matt had seen these particular words so often, he knew them by heart. Another picture showed a man holding a bullfrog between two slices of bread.
RIBBIT ON RYE!
the caption said. Matt didn’t know what a ribbit was, but Celia laughed every time she looked at it.

He turned on the television and watched soap operas. People were always yelling at one another on soap operas. It didn’t make much sense, and when it did, it wasn’t interesting.
It’s not real
, Matt thought with sudden terror.
It’s like the animals
. He could talk and talk and talk, but the people couldn’t hear him.

Matt was swept with such an intense feeling of desolation, he thought he would die. He hugged himself to keep from screaming. He gasped with sobs. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

And then—and then—beyond the noise of the soap opera and his own sobs, Matt heard a voice calling. It was clear and strong—a child’s voice. And it was real.

Matt ran to the window. Celia always warned him to be careful when he looked out, but he was so excited that he didn’t care. At first he only saw the same, bleached blindness of the poppies. Then a shadow crossed the opening. Matt recoiled so quickly, he fell over and landed on the floor.

“What’s this dump?” someone said from outside.

“One of the worker’s shacks,” said another, higher voice.

“I didn’t think anyone was allowed to live in the opium fields.”

“Maybe it’s a storeroom. Let’s try the door.”

The door handle rattled. Matt squatted on the floor, his heart pounding. Someone put his face against the window, cupping his hands to see through the gloom. Matt froze. He had wanted company, but this was happening too quickly. He felt like Pedro el Conejo in Señor MacGregor’s garden.

“Hey, there’s a kid in here!”

“What? Let me see.” A second face pressed against the window. She had black hair and olive skin like Celia. “Open the window, kid. What’s your name?”

But Matt was so terrified, he couldn’t squeeze out a single word.

“Maybe he’s an idiot,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “Hey, are you an idiot?”

Matt shook his head. The girl laughed.

“I know who lives here,” the boy said suddenly. “I recognize that picture on the table.”

Matt remembered the portrait Celia had given him on his last birthday.

“It’s the fat old cook—what’s her name?” the boy said. “Anyhow, she doesn’t stay with the rest of the servants. This must be her hangout. I didn’t know she had a kid.”

“Or a husband,” the girl remarked.

“Oh, yeah. That explains a lot. I wonder if Father knows. I’ll have to ask him.”

“You will not!” the girl cried. “You’ll get her into trouble.”

“Hey, this is my family’s ranch, and my father told me to keep an eye on things. You’re only visiting.”

“It doesn’t matter.
My
dada says servants have a right to privacy, and he’s a United States senator, so his opinion is worth more.”

“Your dada changes his opinions more often than his socks,” the boy said.

What the girl replied to this, Matt couldn’t hear. The children were moving away from the house, and he could make out only the indignant tone of her voice. He was shivering all over, as though he’d just met one of the monsters Celia told him haunted the world outside, the
chupacabras
maybe. The
chupacabras
sucked your blood and left you to dry like an old cantaloupe skin. Things were happening too fast.