The House of the Scorpion (24 page)

It was replaced by a feeling that he had overlooked something important. Hints had been as thick as fireflies in the courtyard garden. They brightened with promise. They stayed alight almost long enough to show Matt what they were. But then, like the fireflies, they vanished. Tam Lin and Celia were far too careful.

It had been like that for years. Matt knew there was vital information he was missing. It had to do with clones. He wasn’t supposed to know how they were made. He wasn’t supposed to know that all of them—except for him—were brain dead.

Now, for the hundredth time, Matt thought about why anyone would create a monster. It couldn’t be to replace a beloved child. Children were loved and clones were hated. It couldn’t be to have a pet. No pet resembled the horrible, terrified thing Matt had seen in the hospital.

Matt remembered Mr. MacGregor and El Patrón sitting in adjoining wheelchairs after their operations.
Got me a new liver
, MacGregor had said, patting his stomach,
and went in for a set of kidneys while I was at it
. He’d looked at Matt with those bright blue eyes that were so much like Tom’s, and Matt had been revolted.

No! It couldn’t be!

Matt remembered the birthday party where El Patrón had so suddenly recovered his mental abilities.
Fetal brain implants—I must try that sometime
, MacGregor had said.
It’s done wonders for you
.

Don’t put it off too long
, El Patrón had replied.
You have to give the doctors at least five months’ lead time. Eight is better
.

It couldn’t be! Matt pressed his hands against his temples to keep the idea inside. If he didn’t think it, it wouldn’t be real.

But it slipped through his fingers anyway. MacGregor had created a clone so he could have transplants when he needed them. The thing in the hospital had every reason to howl! And what was the source of El Patrón’s fetal implants? Or the piggyback heart that kept his old, leaky one going?

The evidence was all there. Only Matt’s blindness had kept him from seeing the truth—and his unwillingness to think about it. He wasn’t stupid. The clues had been there all along. The truth had been too overwhelming to bear.

El Patrón, too, had created clones to provide himself with transplants. He was exactly the same as MacGregor.

No, not the same. Because I’m different
, Matt thought desperately, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom. Celia had pasted glow-in-the-dark stars all over the surface. From the time Matt had moved into her apartment, he’d gone to sleep under a faintly shining canopy of stars. Their presence soothed and comforted him now.

I’m different. I wasn’t created to provide spare parts
.

El Patrón had refused to let the doctors destroy Matt’s brain. He’d protected him and given him Celia and Tam Lin for company. He’d hired Mr. Ortega to teach Matt music. The old man took great pride in the boy’s accomplishments. That was
not
the behavior of someone who planned to murder you later.

Matt consciously slowed his breathing. He’d been panting like a bird trapped inside a room. Matt had seen birds die of panic when they couldn’t beat their way through a closed window. He had to think the situation through, reason it out. It was clear, whatever had happened to the other poor clones, that Matt wasn’t meant to be one of them.

El Patrón was moved by a motive very different from MacGregor’s. It was, the boy realized, simple
vanity
. When the old man looked at Matt, he saw himself: young, strong, and sound of mind. It was like looking into a mirror. The effect wouldn’t be the same if Matt were a drooling, blubbering thing on a hospital bed.

Matt clutched the pillow the way he’d hugged stuffed animals before he was too old for such things. He felt like he’d been yanked back from a high cliff. There was still the terrible fate of the other clones to consider.

My brothers
, thought Matt.

He trembled as he tried to recall his devotion to the man who had created him. El Patron loved him, but he was evil.
A more evil, vicious, and self-serving man could hardly be imagined
, Esperanza had written in her book on the land of Opium. Matt had hurled the book away violently when he read that. But Matt had been a boy then. He was a man now—or something like it. Men, Tam Lin often told him, had the courage to look things in the eye.

“You have a fever!” cried Celia when she and Tam Lin came to say good night. She hurried off to make herbal tea. Tam Lin stood and watched from the doorway. The silhouette of the bodyguard looked menacing, and Matt remembered he’d killed twenty children with a bomb intended for the English prime minister. The man seemed to soak up the faint starlight from the ceiling.

When Celia returned with the tea, Tam Lin shrugged and said, “In answer to your question, lad, you’re fourteen years old.” Then he was off to his room in El Patrón’s heavily guarded wing of the house.

20
ESPERANZA

M
att woke up sick and feverish. He felt as if a boulder was resting on his chest. The only way he could roll it off would be to learn that his fears were unfounded. He could ask Celia, but she’d be afraid to answer.

Matt felt the pressure of unseen eyes on him. Someone could be watching through the cameras, or the spy room might be empty. He had no way of knowing. Felicia could be in there, wrapped in a fur coat, eagerly searching for a way to destroy him.

As for asking Tam Lin, Matt didn’t know how to bring up the subject.
By the way, is anyone planning to cut me up into T-bone steaks?
Even more terrifying was the bodyguards possible answer:
You hit the nail on the head there, laddie. I always said you were bright as a button
.

How much truth could he endure?

Matt’s mood lightened, though, after getting up. A hot shower and a breakfast of French toast helped drive away the fear. It made no sense for El Patrón to lavish education on someone who was valued only for his spare parts. Transplants didn’t need straight A’s. Matt went to the stables and ordered a Safe Horse.

A ground fog hung over the poppy fields as he rode through. It was common in the early morning, when the water sprinklers misted the cool air next to the soil. The sun would burn it off later, but now it formed a milky sea that reached halfway up Matt’s legs as he sat astride the horse. It was a wonderful feeling to move through this fog with only the horse’s back and head showing. It was like swimming through an enchanted lake.

I’m fourteen years old
, Matt thought.
I’m an adult
.

It made him feel strong and adventurous. Medieval princes went to war when they were fourteen or even younger.

The oasis was shadowy and cool. Recent rains had filled the pool until it lapped at the edge of the grape arbor. Matt dragged the metal chest to higher ground. He took off his clothes and stepped into the water. Tam Lin, who let Matt do quite a few dangerous things, had discouraged swimming here because the bottom was murky with unexpected depths. To Matt, the danger was part of the attraction.

He dog-paddled across the pool. Shoals of tiny fish darted away from his hands. He reached the shore and pulled himself onto a rock by a creosote bush. He shivered slightly. The day would soon heat up, but for now the desert air was chill with night.

Matt looked up at the sky. It was such an intense blue, it almost hurt his eyes. The rain had washed out the dust, leaving the air so clean and pure that it was like breathing in light. The sense of enchantment grew stronger.

What was to keep him from climbing these mountains and going south to Aztlán? It was a poor country, according to Celia, and yet her face lit up when she spoke of it. It was full of people and life, too. It was a new world where he might escape the cameras and the malice of Felicia. He wouldn’t have to meet MacGregor with his patchwork of body parts.

But would he want to live without Celia and Tam Lin? Or María?

Matt’s spirits rose still higher as he thought about traveling through those gray-brown mountains. He didn’t have to make the decision yet. El Patrón could live for years—
would
live for years, the boy assured himself. After all, the old man had the finest doctors in the world. Matt could plan his move carefully, perhaps even take María with him. The sick fears of the previous night had vanished, and he felt like a king: Matt the Conqueror.

He swam back across the water. The sun was beginning to flood the little valley as he unpacked Tam Lin’s books and maps. Now he saw the use of them, and he intended to study them carefully for his future escape.

The history of Opium
, he read in Esperanza’s book,
is soaked in terror and blood
. Matt settled against a roll of blankets with a slice of cold French toast. He still found the author’s preachy manner annoying, but he couldn’t argue with her facts.

Matteo Alacrán, or El Patrón as he soon came to be known, planted opium from the Pecos River to the Salton Sea
, Matt read.
He needed a vast workforce to tend it. This was no problem, as thousands of Mexicans flooded across the border every day. All he needed was to trap them
.

To this end, he established the first Farm Patrol. He recruited his army from the foulest criminals ever vomited up by corrupt prison systems anywhere in the world
.

Matt slammed the book shut. There she went again with a tirade against El Patrón. Esperanza had to be a complete witch. He drank a bottle of juice he’d brought from the house and tried again.

Even so, El Patrón found it hard to control the Illegals. They slipped through his fingers. They helped one another escape. They flooded across Opium to the border of the United States until that government threatened to put El Patrón out of business
.

It was then the Despot of Dope , fearful of losing his slave empire, came up with eejits
.

On the surface
, Matt read,
nothing could have seemed more humane. After all, what is suffering but an awareness of suffering? The eejits felt neither cold nor heat nor thirst nor loneliness. A computer chip in their brains removed those sensations. They toiled with the steady devotion of worker bees. As far as anyone could tell, they were not unhappy. So could anyone say they were being mistreated?

I could!
thundered Esperanza.
El Patrón sold those people’s souls to the Devil! When they died, he plowed their bodies into the dirt for fertilizer. The roots of Opium are watered with blood, and anyone who buys its foul weed is no better than a flesh-eating cannibal
.

That was definitely enough reading for one day. Matt rested the book on his chest and tried to picture Esperanza’s face. She was probably covered with warts like an old witch. She’d have yellow fangs and cheeks that collapsed in like a rotten pumpkin. He flipped through the book, looking for her photo.

On page 247 he found it. She was dressed in a black suit with a pearl necklace. Her black hair hung in a shiny veil on either side of her pale and beautiful face.

She looked a lot like María.

Matt read the blurb under the picture:
Esperanza Mendoza, the ex-wife of Senator Mendoza, is a charter member of the Anti-Slavery Society of California. She has written numerous, bestselling books. She was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in—

Matt dropped the book. María couldn’t possibly know about this. She thought her mother was dead. Esperanza had walked out of the house when María was five years old and never returned. The little girl imagined her mother had gotten lost in the desert, and she woke up night after night, crying that she could hear her mother’s voice. That was why María clung so desperately to keepsakes. She was terrified of losing the things she loved.

And all this time her mother had been living it up in California. Matt felt a deep, burning rage against the woman and against Senator Mendoza too. He certainly knew what had happened, but he’d preferred to let María suffer. Well, Matt wasn’t going to let the situation go on any longer. The next time María visited—and she’d have to come to Steven and Emilia’s wedding in two months—Matt would hit her between the eyes with this evidence.

Matt discovered the reason Tam Lin had forbidden him to swim at the oasis. That night he came down with the worst stomach flu he could ever remember. He spent hours retching into a bucket until his throat burned like fire. Celia insisted on treating him herself. She forced glass after glass of milk down him, and she didn’t leave him alone for a second. In the periods between attacks, he noticed that her hands were as cold and clammy as his own.

Finally, he recovered enough to lie down. Celia pulled a chair up by his bed and sat there all night while Matt drifted in and out of sleep. At one point he woke to find Tam Lin’s face only an inch from his own. The bodyguard straightened up and said, “His breath smells of garlic.”