House Of The Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
“Get a grip on yourself, lad. All right, I can see you’ve got grounds for suspicion, but credit me with a little decency.”
“How can I trust someone who killed twenty children?” Matt said.
“So they told you that.” Tam Lin looked so sad, Matt felt slightly—but only slightly—sorry for him.
“Is it true?” he demanded.
“Oh, aye. It’s true.” Tam Lin wadded the tape into a ball and stuffed it into one of the horse’s saddlebags. He took out a backpack and heaved it over his shoulder. “Come on. I don’t have much time.”
He started up the trail, not looking back. Matt paused. He could steal the horse and ride north. The Farm Patrol might not know yet that he was marked for disposal. Disposal, Matt thought with a glow of anger. But the animal didn’t look easy to ride. Unlike a Safe Horse, it had to be tied to a tree. It rolled its eyes and flared its nostrils when Matt tried to get near it.
On the other hand, he could follow Tam Lin into the mountains and hope the man’s friendship held. Tam Lin had disappeared among the rocks. He wasn’t even bothering to see whether Matt followed.
I’m probably the world’s biggest idiot, thought Matt as he trudged along the trail.
The oasis was brimming. Fall rains had brought life to the paloverde trees, making them bright with delicate yellow and orange flowers. The grape arbor was leafier than Matt ever remembered, and a small duck paddled away across the water as he approached.
Tam Lin was perched on a rock. “That’s a cinnamon teal,” he said. “They migrate from the United States to Aztlán this time of year. You wonder how they find a speck of water like this in all the dry desert.”
Matt settled on another rock, not too near. The sun was sliding behind the hills and shadows crept into the little valley.
“If it hadn’t been for this place, I’d have run barking mad years ago,” the bodyguard said. Matt watched the little duck work its way along the far shore. “I was half mad when I went to work for El Patrón. It’s a place to hide, I thought then. I’ll leave when the police get tired of hunting for me. But of course things didn’t work out that way. Once something belongs to El Patrón, it’s his forever.”
“So you did kill the children,” Matt said.
“I could say it was an accident—and it was—but that doesn’t take away the horror. I was intending to blow up the prime minister, a fat toad who deserved it. I simply never considered the other people who might get in the way. Frankly, I was such a self-important ass, I didn’t care. I got most of these scars from that explosion, and Daft Donald had his throat cut. That’s why he can’t talk.”
In all these years Matt hadn’t thought about why Daft Donald never spoke. He’d assumed the large, silent man was antisocial.
“El Patrón had an instinct for people he could enslave,” said Tam Lin. “He was such a powerful presence. Power’s a strange thing, lad. It’s a drug and people like me crave it. It wasn’t till I met Celia that I saw what a monster I’d become. I was too happy swaggering around in El Patrón’s shadow.”
“But you let the doctors turn Celia into an eejit,” said Matt.
“I did not! I marked her forehead so it appeared like she was operated on. I put her in the stables with Rosa.”
Matt looked at Tam Lin directly for the first time since they arrived at the oasis. A great weight shifted off his chest.
“She’ll be safe as long as she remembers to act like a zombie. So now I think I’ve earned that lavish apology,” the bodyguard said.
And Matt gave it at great length and wholeheartedly.
“I would’ve brought her here, but Celia isn’t much for climbing rocks.” Tam Lin sighed.
They looked out over the pool with the afternoon sky silvering its surface. The cinnamon teal waddled onto the bank and preened its feathers. A swallow scooped up a dragonfly hovering over the water.
“Am I supposed to live here?” Matt asked.
Tam Lin started. “Ah! My mind was wandering. I love the way swallows turn just before they’re about to crash into the ground. No, lad. You wouldn’t be able to survive. It’s better if you go to Aztlán.”
Aztlán! Matt’s heart gave a bound. “Are you coming with me?”
“I can’t.” Tam Lin’s voice was sad. “You see, I’ve done terrible things in my life, and I can’t escape the consequences.”
“That’s not true,” Matt said. “The police probably stopped looking for you long ago. You could give people a false name. You could grow a beard and shave your head.”
“Of course I could—and may I say, you’re showing quite a lawless streak. Quite a chip off the old block you are. No, I’m talking about moral consequences. I’ve spent years benefiting from the horrors of Opium, and now I have the chance to put things right. I mustn’t pass it up. Celia has made me see that. She’s a very strict woman, you know. Won’t put up with evil.”
“I know,” said Matt, thinking of how Celia had stood up to El Patrón.
“I’ve already packed your bag,” Tam Lin said, unslinging the backpack. “There’s maps in the chest. Take as many water bottles as you can manage, and when you reach the Aztlán border, say you’re a refugee. Your parents have been taken by the Farm Patrol. Act stupid—that shouldn’t be a problem—and don’t tell anyone you’re a clone.”
“Won’t they be able to tell?” Matt imagined the Aztlános’ rage when they realized they’d been duped.
“Here’s the dirty little secret.” Tam Lin bent down and whispered, as though he had to hide the information from the swallows, the duck, and the dragonflies. “No one can tell the difference between a clone and a human. That’s because there isn’t any difference. The idea of clones being inferior is a filthy lie.”
Tam Lin strode off to the metal chest, leaving Matt openmouthed. He watched the man remove water bottles and maps. How could a clone be the same as a human? Everything in Matt’s experience argued against it.
Tam Lin unzipped a pocket in the backpack and took out a clump of paper. “This is money, see. I should have taught you about it before. Here’s a hundred-peso note and here’s a fifty. Always ask the price of something first and offer half. Oh, crikey! You’re not going to learn it now. Just remember to take out one piece of paper at a time and don’t let anyone see how many pieces of paper you have.”
The sun had set and dusk was falling rapidly. Tam Lin built a fire and stacked dry wood nearby. “You should go first thing in the morning. That gives you twelve hours to reach the border. It’s the ideal time because the Farm Patrol is at the house for the wake. Another thing: El Patrón has kept Opium frozen one hundred years in the past.”
“I don’t understand,” said Matt.
“Opium, as much as possible, is the way things were in El Patrón’s youth. Celia cooks on a wood fire, the rooms aren’t airconditioned, the fields are harvested by people, not machines. Even rockets aren’t allowed to fly over. The only places where the rules are relaxed are the hospital and the security system. It was El Patróns way of outwitting Death. One of his ways.”
“But everything’s the same on TV,” Matt protested.
Tam Lin laughed. “El Patron controlled that, too. El Látigo Negro snapped his last whip a century ago. Talk about reruns. In many ways you’ll find Aztlán confusing, but they’ve had a movement back to simpler times recently. They’re trying to turn away from a machine-based economy to the old Mexican culture. You’ll find some things familiar.”
“Wait!” cried Matt as the bodyguard made ready to leave. “Can’t you stay?” The thought of losing his friend and perhaps never seeing him again was devastating.
“I’ve got to attend the wake,” said Tam Lin.
“Then bring Celia here. I could help her climb the rocks.”
“Wait’11 you see the rocks. No, lad. Celia’s too old to make the trip. I’ll keep her as safe as I can. You have my word on it.”
“What should I do in Aztlán? Where can I stay?” Matt was beginning to f
“Where’s my head?” Tam Lin said, stopping at the edge of the firelight. “I left the most important thing out. The first thing you do in Aztlán is catch a hovercraft to San Luis and ask directions to the Convent of Santa Clara. Unless I’m very much mistaken, María will dance rings around you when you walk in the front door.”
There was no stopping him this time. Tam Lin strode ahead with Matt trotting behind. When they reached the hole in the rock, the bodyguard turned and put his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “I don’t believe in long good-byes,” he said.
“Will I ever see you again?”
Tam Lin waited a moment before saying, “No.” Matt drew in his breath sharply. “I’ve never lied to you, and I don’t intend to start now. The important thing is, you’ve escaped. You’re the one possession El Patrón let slip through his fingers.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” Matt said.
“You’re going to find María and, if things work out, her mother.”
“You know Esperanza?”
‘Oh, aye. She used to come to the house. Did you ever see that movie about dinosaurs? The one with the velociraptor?”
Matt remembered a particularly nasty dinosaur with long claws and teeth and a willingness to burrow through rock to get at its prey.
“Well, that’s Esperanza when she’s got a cause. She’s a good person to have on your side.” Tam Lin climbed through the rock and went off into the gathering dark. He didn’t look back. Matt kept himself from shining the flashlight on him.
25
THE FARM PATROL
Matt felt almost light-headed as he walked back to the oasis. So much had happened so quickly. So much had changed. The little campfire seemed unbearably lonely. He built up the fire and then worried about whether the Farm Patrol could see it. He kicked some of the branches away. Then Matt thought about the animals that might come to the water at night. Coyotes for sure, a bobcat maybe. A jaguar was a long shot, but Tam Lin had seen them. Matt built up the fire again.
He found beef jerky and dried apples in the metal chest. He was ravenous, having eaten nothing but cookies since the morning of the wedding. The food lifted his spirits, and soon he was poring over the map in the flickering light. It was like an exciting novel full of possible adventures. Tam Lin had marked the route with a red pen and added comments using his own creative spelling, such as Ratlesnakes heer and Saw bare under tree. Matt finished dinner with a handful of peanuts and a chocolate bar.
He shut the backpack into the metal chest and unrolled the sleeping bag on an exposed slab of rock. He felt safer away from places where he might meet bare under tree. Then he lay down and looked at the stars.
It was oddly frightening to lie on the ground without a shelter. The sky was so black and the stars so many and brilliant. He might lose his hold on the earth. He’d float away, and if he didn’t grab a tree branch, he’d go on forever into those bright, inhuman lights.
Matt ran a rope from the sleeping bag to a tree. Okay, it was a dumb thing to worry about, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Celia once told him the Indians in her village carried charms to keep from being carried off by the sky. They might know something people with houses didn’t understand.
Exhausted by all that had happened, Matt fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Just before dawn the air vibrated with something that was almost—but not quite—a sound. Matt sat up and grabbed the rope. The ground shivered briefly and was still. A pair of ravens exploded off a tree branch and flew around the oasis cawing wildly. A coyote froze with its muzzle dripping from the pool where it had been drinking.
Matt listened. The sound—if it was a sound—had come from all around. It wasn’t like anything he’d experienced. The ravens settled, grumbling between themselves, and the coyote bolted into the rocks.
Matt started a fire with a lighter he found in the backpack. He saw that the metal chest was ringed with coyote prints and something had tried to gnaw the latch.
After a quick breakfast he filled as many water bottles as he could carry, placing an iodine tablet in each one. The last time he drank oasis water, he’d been deathly sick. But that was the arsenic, he realized. How was Celia? he wondered. Would she get enough to eat in the stables? And wasn’t acting like a zombie as bad as being one if you had to do it for years?
I’ll ask Esperanza to help her escape, he thought.
Now that the moment for departure had come, Matt found himself dawdling. He double-checked the supplies. He added a book, tested the weight of his pack, and took it out again. The sun was already high, although the valley was still in shadow. I could spend another night here, he thought. But the oasis might not be safe now that El Patrón was gone.
Matt shouldered the backpack, tied extra water bottles to his belt, and set off through the grape arbor. He would go on, as Tam Lin had, without looking back.
The first part of the trail was easy. Matt had been over it many times. Soon, however, he came to a canyon choked with bushes. He had to break his way through. The dust of the leaves covered him from head to toe and found its way into his lungs. He had to rest in a dry gully to regain his breath. Only an hour had passed. If the rest of the journey went like this, he wouldn’t reach Aztlán for a month.
Matt went through the backpack. In an inside pocket he found an inhaler. The relief it brought his tortured lungs was pure heaven. He also found a wicked-looking machete in a leather sheath. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d looked earlier, he thought.
After a rest Matt hacked his way through the bushes. It gave him a savage pleasure to get even with the plants that had scratched his arms and face all morning.
When he reached the end of the valley, he was confronted by a high granite cliff. Matt checked the map. There it was, with a red line going straight to the top. It was higher than anything he’d ever attempted to climb. Matt looked for another way to proceed, but the map was firm on this point: Onlee way out. Yu can do it, said Tam Lin’s note. Matt stared up at the impossibly distant bushes peeking over the top of the cliff until he was dizzy. The only good thing was that he didn’t have to boost Celia ahead of him.
Matt inched from crevice to crevice until his legs began to tremble with fatigue. Halfway up he thought he couldn’t move another inch. He hugged the granite face and wondered how long he could stay there before exhaustion forced him to let go. He’d fall onto jagged rocks. He’d die there. He might as well have let his heart be harvested by doctors. A shadow passed briefly over him, and after a moment it came back.
Only one thing cast a shadow on a cliff in such a deserted place. Matt was suddenly filled with rage. It was as though it came from some deep place, like lava in a volcano. He no longer felt exhausted or discouraged or anything else except a towering fury to survive. He pulled himself up, foothold by foothold, crag by crag, until he wriggled over the top and lay panting and surprised by his feat.
Matt looked up into the blinding, blue sky and heard the leathery flap of wings as the bird turned in the air. I win, you ugly, good-for-nothing buzzard, thought Matt. He smiled. He sounded just like El Patrón.
Matt celebrated with a bottle of water and a package of cookies. He threw a rock at the turkey buzzard. The map showed he’d come about five miles and there were five more to go. The sun was bending to the west, so he might not make it to the border before dark. Matt wasn’t particularly worried. He had plenty of food, and he felt enormously good after his battle with the cliff.
He traveled on to the top of a ridge. The going was much easier and the view was spectacular. Tam Lin had included small binoculars among the supplies, so Matt stopped frequently to look back at Opium. The land toward Aztlán was still blocked by the mountains.
He could see the long, flat poppy fields and even a brown smudge that might have been a group of eejits. He saw the water purification plant and storehouses for food and fertilizer. The red tile roofs of the mansion spread out in a patch of intense green. Matt felt a strange s
There, on the high ridge of the Ajo Mountains, Matt gave himself over to grief. He wept for Celia trapped in the stables and for Tam Lin, who was trapped in a different way. He wasted no tears on the Alacráns or their slaves Felicia, Fani, and Emilia. But he wept for El Patrón, who deserved pity less than anyone but who was closer to Matt than anyone in the world.
In an odd way it felt as though El Patrón were still alive, and in one sense he was. For Matt still existed. As long as he survived, El Patrón had not vanished from the world.
Matt camped at the top of the ridge. The recent rains had filled hollows in the rocks, and the little folds of the mountain were green with bear grass. Desert mallow spread out peach-colored blooms in pockets of soil, and everywhere lateblooming cliff roses swarmed with bees. Matt wasn’t afraid, although he saw more animals than he had ever observed on his travels with Tam Lin.
White-tailed deer fed on bushes in the late-afternoon sun. He saw a buck rub his antlers on a tree, perhaps to sharpen them or perhaps simply because they itched. Matt didn’t know. He saw a group of coatis running with their tails in the air and their long noses pointed along the ground.
Everything seemed alive. Everything scurried, flew, dug, nibbled, or chattered. Frogs cheeped from an unseen water hole, a rock squirrel whistled when a red-tailed hawk drifted by, a mockingbird sat on the topmost branch of a mesquite and performed every song Matt had ever heard, plus a few extra the bird must have composed himself.
Most of all, it was the wild music that impressed Matt. It did the same thing that playing the piano had done when he was frightened and lonely. It took him into another world where only beauty existed and where he was safe from hatred and disappointment and death.
He stayed up a long time, watching the distant lights of Opium. There weren’t many. The mansion sat by itself in a sea of dark. The factories, storehouses, and eejit pens were all hidden. The air was so still, the eejits had probably been driven into the fields to sleep. Matt heard no sound from the far plain. It might have been a painting instead of a real place. Nearby he heard the hoot of a great horned owl and the incessant chirp of crickets. The mountain was darker than the plain, but it was alive and it was real.