Matt found the campfire he’d banked the night before and blew the coals into life. The flaring light made him feel better. In all the years of camping here, he’d never seen a bear, though there had been many raccoons, chipmunks, and coyotes. A skunk had once burrowed into Matt’s sleeping bag in the middle of the night to steal a candy bar. Tam Lin had burned the sleeping bag and scolded the boy for foolishness. Leave food about and you might as well put a sign on yourself saying “Eat me.” Matt had been scrubbed head to toe with tomato juice when they got back to the hacienda.
Matt heaped the fire with dry wood from the supply Tam Lin had always maintained. He could see the familiar outlines of an old cabin and a collapsed grapevine.
Tam Lin wasn’t with him. He would never come here again. He was lying in a tomb beneath the mountain with El Patrón and all of El Patrón’s family and friends, if you could say the old drug lord had friends. The funeral, three months before, had been attended by fifty bodyguards dressed in black suits, with guns hidden under their arms and strapped to their legs. The floor of the tomb had been covered with drifts of gold coins. The bodyguards had filled their pockets with gold, probably thinking their fortunes were made, but that was before they drank the poisoned wine. Now they would lie at their master’s feet for all eternity, to guard him at whatever fiestas were conducted by the dead. Matt drew the sleeping bag around himself, trembling with grief and nerves.
He would not sleep again. To distract himself, he looked for the constellations Tam Lin had shown him. It was early spring, and Orion the Hunter was still in the sky. Heed the stars of his belt, said Tam Lin. Where they set is true west. Remember that, lad. You never know when you’ll need it. They had been roasting hot dogs over a fire and drinking cider from a bottle Tam Lin had cooled by submerging it in the lake.
What a grand existence it must be, mused the bodyguard, turning his battered face to the sky, to roam the heavens like Orion with his faithful dogs at heel. The dogs, Sirius and Procyon, were two of the brightest stars in the summer sky. Pinning Orion’s tunic to his shoulder was ruby-red Betelgeuse. As fine a jewel as you’ll find anywhere, Tam Lin had declared.
Matt hoped Tam Lin was roaming now in whatever afterlife he inhabited. The dead in Aztlán came home once a year to celebrate the Day of the Dead with their relatives. They must be somewhere the rest of the time, Matt reasoned. Why shouldn’t they do what made them happiest on earth, and why shouldn’t Tam Lin?
Matt found Polaris, around which the other stars circled, and the Scorpion Star (but that was so easy even an eejit could do it). The Scorpion Star was always in the south and, like Polaris, never moved. Its real name was Alacrán. Matt was proud of this, for it was his name too. The Alacráns were so important, they could lay claim to an actual star.
Matt didn’t think he could fall asleep again, and so he was surprised when he woke up in the sleeping bag just before dawn. A breeze was stirring, and a pale rosy border outlined the eastern mountains. Gray-green juniper trees darkened valleys high up in the rocks, and the oasis was dull silver under a gray sky. A crow called, making Matt jump at the sudden noise.
After breakfast and a short, sharp swim in the lake, Matt hiked along the trail to the boulder that blocked the entrance to the valley. In this rock, if you looked at just the right angle, was a shadow that turned out to be a smooth, round opening like the hole in a donut. Beyond was a steep path covered with dry pebbles that slid beneath your feet. The air changed from the fresh breeze of the mountain to something slightly sweet, with a hint of corruption. The scent of opium poppies.
2
THE NEW LORD OF OPIUM
Matt had left the Safe Horse under a cliff the night before. It was still waiting, as it had been commanded, but its head was down and its legs trembled. “Oh no! How could I have been so stupid?” cried Matt, rushing to the trough. It was half full of water, but the horse had not been given permission to drink, and now Matt remembered that he hadn’t watered it the night before. It would stand there, mere inches away from relief, until it died. “Drink!” Matt ordered.
The horse stepped forward and began sucking up great drafts of liquid. Matt hauled on the pump handle, and soon fresh water was pouring over the horse’s head and into the trough. It drank and drank and drank until Matt remembered that Safe Horses couldn’t stop, either, without a command. “Stop!” he said.
The animal stepped back with its mane dripping. Had it had enough? Too much? Matt didn’t know. The natural instincts of the horse were suppressed by a microchip in its brain. Matt waited a few minutes and then ordered it to drink again for a short while.
He climbed onto a rock to reach the saddle. Matt had never ridden anything but a Safe Horse and wasn’t skilled enough to vault into a saddle. He’d been considered too valuable to risk on a Real Horse. “Home,” ordered the boy, and the animal obediently plodded along the trail.
As soon as the sun rose, the air heated up, and Matt took off the jacket he’d been wearing. They moved slowly, but he was in no hurry to return. There was too much to think about and too much to decide. A few months ago Matt had been a clone. Make that filthy clone, he amended, because the word wasn’t used without some insult. Clones were lower than beasts. They existed to provide body parts, much as a cow existed to provide steaks, but cows were natural. They were respected, even loved.
Clones were more like cockroaches you might find in an unguarded bowl of soup. Roaches made you feel like throwing up. Yet even they were part of God’s plan. They didn’t cause the deep, unreasoning hatred that a human copy did. A few months ago Matt had been such a being and then—and then—
El Patrón died.
The original Matteo Alacrán was lying in a tomb under the mountain with all his descendants. Esperanza Mendoza, the representative of the United Nations, had explained it to Matt. In international law you couldn’t have two versions of the same person at the same time. One of them had to be declared an unperson, but when the original died, the clone no longer existed.
I don’t understand, Matt had said to Esperanza.
It means that you are reclassified as human. You are El Patrón. You have his body and his identity, his DNA. You own everything he owned and rule everything he ruled. It means that you are the new Lord of Opium.
“I’m human,” Matt told the Safe Horse as it plodded along, neither hearing nor caring. Now they came to the beginning of the opium fields. The crops were planted year round, and all stages of growth, from the first misting of green to brilliant white flowers to swollen seedpods, were visible. Lines of eejit workers, dressed in tan uniforms with floppy hats, tended the older plants. They moved in unison, bending to slash the ripe pods with razors to release sap or, if they were part of a harvesting crew, to scrape the dried resin into metal pots.