The Lord of Opium

It was a diagram etched in metal. It was very close to the one he’d seen in the abandoned observatory, and now he realized that the man who had lived there was one of the designers of the Scorpion Star. What had happened to him? Had he been drawn by the chance to build something so marvelous that the ethics about its use hadn’t bothered him?

What had driven him out in such a hurry that a book lay open on his desk and his glasses were left beside it?

The diagram wasn’t exactly the same. Some of the buildings were of different sizes, and an area called Savannah was missing. There were no cryptic notes or formulas, but at the bottom was a pair of glowing scorpions and the words COUPLE and UNCOUPLE.

Matt knew more or less what those words meant. “Couple” was to bring together, as happened when people married. They became a couple. And “uncouple”?

Matt reached out and pressed his hand against the scorpion above UNCOUPLE. The familiar energy went through him, so something was happening. He waited a few minutes and stepped back. Outside, the eejits were waiting. He put his hand on the door, and it slid back into place. “Come with me,” he told them.

51

UNCOUPLING

Listen was lying where he’d left her on Cienfuegos’s body. Matt touched her, and she shook her head violently. “Not moving,” she said.

“You have to,” Matt said gently. “Cienfuegos is no longer there. I don’t understand much about death, but María says the soul lives on. So does Sor

Artemesia. When I go to the oasis, I feel that Tam Lin is still there, sitting by my fire and listening to me. People can return to those they cared about.”

Listen shrugged off his hand. “Cienfuegos is alive.”

Matt sighed. He was trying very hard to stay in control. He felt just as devastated as she did, but he knew the jefe

was dead. He knew how many times the man had been shot. “Come with me, chiquita. I’ll call down the elevator.”

“I’m not leaving,” the little girl said. “I left Mbongeni for just ten minutes, and look what happened to him. I’m staying put.”

Matt saw the elevator descending and a group of unusually active eejits inside. They were talking excitedly, and one of them called to someone on the ground. He looked at the eejits who had come with him and saw that they, too, were animated.

Had he actually disrupted the signal from the Scorpion Star? For the first time Matt thought clearly about what might happen when the eejits were freed. He’d imagined them waking up like people who have had a very long sleep. But the shock might send them into convulsions, like Eusebio. Or they might all go rogue.

“Hey, you guys!” shouted Listen. “We got a sick man here, and he needs to go to the hospital.”

“Don’t attract them,” said Matt, warily eyeing the eejits as they got out of the elevator.

“You don’t understand,” Listen said fiercely. “All this talk about Cienfuegos coming back for chats by the fire is crap. He isn’t dead.”

“You poor child, he has to be.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing here? I’ve been listening to his heart. It’s beating, and you can’t say that about a dee-diddly-dead rabbit. Hold that crotting elevator, you guys!”

The eejits were awake, no question about it, but they were bewildered. They seemed to have no memory of how they had arrived in this hot, dark pit, and they willingly followed Listen’s orders. They chattered to one another as the elevator slowly began to ascend, asking about relatives and towns they had left behind.

Cienfuegos stirred and gasped. The harshness of his breathing frightened Matt. He might yet die—and to think that he’d almost been abandoned! Thank God for Listen’s persistence!

“What can you remember?” Matt asked one of the eejits.

“I crossed the border. I was with my wife. Then the Farm Patrol came and there was pain. Pain.” The man’s voice trailed off. Matt wondered what his reaction would be if he learned that the man they were trying to save was the head of the Farm Patrol.

The scene outside was chaos. Eejits wandered about, calling the names of friends and family members. The technicians, who were far less affected by the microchips, had some memories, but they also seemed bewildered by what had happened. “I was twenty when I came to work here,” one of them said. “It was like yesterday, but now I look fifty.”

Matt put the technicians in charge of the eejits. “I’ll send people who can explain later,” he said. “There’s been a national disaster. Get these people food and send them to their shelters to rest.”

“Are we at war? Look! There’s a rocket!” cried one of the eejits. A fireball streaked across the sky. Then another and another.

“It’s a meteor shower,” said a technician. “A nice one too.”