The House of the Scorpion (22 page)

The closer Matt got, the stronger the stench became. It was a compound of rotten fish, excrement, and vomit, with a sweet chemical odor that was worse than the other smells put together.

Matt grasped the inhaler. He knew he should leave at once, but the buildings were too intriguing. He could see skeletons of fish and seashells embedded in the dirt around them. It seemed the whole place was built on waste from the Gulf of California.

Matt circled around the end of one of the buildings and rode down into a depression that must have been used for waste. The evil smell made Matt's eyes water, and he could barely focus on the dense yellow sludge on the bottom. The horse stumbled. Its legs collapsed beneath it, and Matt had to throw his arms around its neck to keep from being catapulted into the sludge.

“Get up! Get up!” he ordered, but the horse was incapable of obeying. It sat on the ground with its legs folded up under it. Then Matt felt himself getting dizzy. He threw himself off the horse and sucked desperately at the inhaler. His lungs filled with liquid. A terror of drowning swept over him, and he tried to crawl away from the trough. His fingers dug into the rotting, fish-slimed soil.

A pair of hands yanked him up. He was dragged a short way and thrown into the back of a vehicle. Matt felt the motor start. The vehicle moved away in a plume of dust that made him cough. He tried to get up and was instantly slammed down by a boot on his chest.

Shocked, Matt stared up at the coldest pair of eyes he'd ever seen. At first he thought he was looking at Tam Lin, but this person was younger and leaner. He had the same wavy, brown hair and blue eyes, the same physical alertness, but none of the
good humor Matt was used to seeing in the bodyguard's face.

“Where'd you get a horse?” the man demanded. “Where'd you get the brains to make a run for it?”

“He's not an eejit, Hugh,” said another voice. Matt looked up to see another man, similar to the first one.

“Then you're an Illegal,” snarled Hugh. “I reckon we'll run you to the hospital and let 'em put a clamp in your brain.”

“You do that,” Matt said with his heart beating very fast. He was afraid, but Tam Lin had taught him it was foolhardy to show weakness.
Act like you're in control
, the bodyguard had said,
and nine times out of ten, you'll get away with it. Most people are cowards underneath.
Matt realized these men belonged to the Farm Patrol and thus, judging by Celia's stories, were very dangerous.

“You do that,” Matt repeated, “and I'll tell the doctor how you treated El Patrón's clone.”

“Say what?” said Hugh, lifting his boot from Matt's chest.

“I'm El Patrón's clone. I was visiting the water purification plant and got lost. Better yet, you can take me to the Big House and I'll send a message to him.” Matt was very far from feeling confident, but he'd observed El Patrón give orders many times. He knew exactly how to reproduce the cold, deadly voice that got results.

“Crikey! He even sounds like the old vampire,” said the second man.

“Shut your cake hole!” snarled Hugh. “Look, we weren't expecting you out there, Master, uh, Master—what do we call you?”

“Matteo Alacrán,” Matt said, and was gratified to see the men flinch.

“Well, Master Alacrán, we weren't expecting you, and you were by the eejit pens, so it was a natural mistake—”

“Did it occur to you to ask what I was doing out there?” Matt said, narrowing his eyes as El Patrón did when he wanted to be particularly menacing.

“I know we should've, sir. We're really very, very sorry. We're taking you straight to the Big House, and we're most humbly begging your pardon, aren't we, Ralf?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said the second man.

“What about my horse?”

“We'll fix that up.” Ralf banged on the cab of the truck. A window opened, and he shouted instructions inside. “We'll radio for a Patrol to collect the nag. It was in a bad way from the dead air, sir. It might not survive.”

“Dead air?” said Matt, startled enough to drop out of his El Patrón act.

“It sometimes happens around that trough,” said Ralf. “The air doesn't move, and the carbon dioxide builds up. It's like being in a mine.”

“I lost a brother like that,” remarked Hugh.

“You can't tell until it's too late,” said Ralf. “The nearby pens are usually okay, but on still nights we make the eejits sleep in the fields.”

Matt was amazed. “Why don't you clean up the trough?”

Ralf seemed honestly puzzled by the idea. “It's how we've always done things, Master Alacrán. The eejits don't care.”

Well, that's true
, thought Matt. Even if the eejits knew about the danger, they couldn't flee unless they were ordered to do so.

Now that Matt appeared to accept the men's apology, they became almost friendly. They didn't act like most people did when told Matt was a clone. They were wary but not hostile. In fact, they behaved a lot like Tam Lin.

“Are you Scottish?” Matt asked.

“Oh, no,” said Hugh. “Ralf here is from England, and I'm from Wales. Wee Wullie in the cab is Scottish, though. But we all like to play soccer and thump heads.”

Matt remembered something El Patrón had said long ago about Tam Lin and Daft Donald:
I picked up this lot in Scotland, breaking heads outside a soccer field. Always choose your bodyguards from another country. They find it harder to make alliances and betray you.

“Soccer sounds a lot like war,” Matt said.

Both Ralf and Hugh laughed. “It is, lad. It is,” said Hugh.

“The fine thing about soccer,” said Ralf, with a distant look in his eyes, “is that you enjoy both the game and the trimmings.”

“Trimmings?” Matt said.

“Ah, yes. That which
surrounds
the game—the buildup, the crush of fans in the trains . . . ”

“The parties,” said Hugh, with a dreamy look on his face.

“The parties,” agreed Ralf. “You crowd into a pub with your mates and drink until the owner throws you out.”

“
If
he can throw you out,” Hugh amended.

“And then, either before or after, you run into the fans on the other side. So of course you have to set them straight.”

“That's when the head thumping occurs,” Matt guessed.

“Yes. Nothing finer, especially if you win,” said Ralf.

The truck followed a zigzag course through the poppy fields. Matt saw the same eejits he'd observed that morning. They were still bending over the ripe seedpods, but he felt no impulse to call them brothers. They weren't brothers and never would be until they lost the clamps in their brains.

“If you liked it so much, why did you come here?” Matt asked Hugh and Ralf.

The men lost their dreamy expressions. Their eyes became cold and distant. “Sometimes . . . ,” Hugh began, and then fell silent.

“Sometimes the head thumping goes too far,” Ralf finished for him. “It's okay to kill people in a war; then you're a hero. But in soccer—which is every bit as glorious—you're supposed to shake hands with the enemy afterward.”

“Kiss his ruddy backside, more like,” said Hugh in disgust.

“And we didn't like that, see.”

Matt thought he understood. Hugh, Ralf, and Wee Wullie in the cab were murderers. They were the ideal candidates for the Farm Patrol. They would have to be loyal to El Patrón, or he would dump them into the arms of whatever police were looking for them.

The lush gardens and red tile roofs of the Big House were visible now. Nothing could have been further from the long, low dwellings where the eejits lived—that is, when they weren't sleeping in the fields to keep from being gassed.

“Did Tam Lin kill anyone?” Matt said. He didn't much want to ask, but this might be his only opportunity to find out.

Hugh and Ralf exchanged looks. “He's in a class by himself,” said Ralf. “He's a bloody
terrorist.
”

“Can't think why El Patrón trusts him so much,” said Hugh.

“They're like father and son—”

“Put a cork in it! Can't you see who we're talking to?” Hugh said.

The house was near, and Matt was afraid they'd let him out before he learned what he wanted to know. “What did Tam Lin do?” he urged.

“
Only
set a bomb outside the prime minister's house in London,” replied Hugh. “He was a Scottish nationalist, see.
Wanted to bring back Bonnie Prince Charlie or some other fat slug. He wasn't motivated by beer like the rest of us.”

“No, he's a cut above,” Ralf said, “with his fancy ethics and social conscience.”

“It's a shame a school bus pulled up at the wrong moment,” said Hugh. “The blast killed twenty kiddies.”

“That's what social conscience gets you,” Ralf said as he helped Matt climb down. The truck drove off at once—the men seemed eager to get away, or perhaps they were forbidden to show themselves around the civilized halls of El Patrón's mansion.

W
ake up!” said Celia, so close to his ear that Matt fell out of bed with his arms flailing.

“What's wrong?” he cried, trying to untangle himself from the sheets.

She yanked the sheets away and pulled him to his feet. Even though Matt was as tall as Celia now, she was stronger. It must have been all those years of lugging pots of stew around the kitchen. She pushed him into the bathroom.

“Should I get dressed?” Matt asked.

“There's no time. Just wash your face.”

Matt splashed water on his face in an effort to wake up. He'd gone straight to bed after the Farm Patrol had brought him home. He'd felt sick from the bad air at the eejit pens.

He was disturbed by the conflicting images he had of the Farm Patrol. Before he had met them, Celia had filled Matt's head with enough stories to make his blood run cold. They
were creatures of the night, she said, like the
chupacabras.
They infested the trails that wound out of the Ajo Mountains, and they hunted their prey with heat-sensitive goggles.

Matt remembered Hugh's cold eyes as the man slammed him onto the bed of the truck. To Hugh—at that point, at least—Matt was only a rat to be crushed underfoot.

But once he'd revealed himself as Matteo Alacrán, the Farm Patrol had transformed themselves into good-natured boys, out for a drink at the pub with a little head thumping for dessert.

Yeah, right
, Matt reminded himself.
And Tom's the angel Gabriel.

“Hurry up! It's important!” shouted Celia from the other side of the bathroom door.

Matt dried his hands and emerged.

“Have a quesadilla before you go.” Was it Matt's imagination, or was Celia's hand shaking as she handed him the plate.

“I'm not hungry,” he protested.

“Eat! It's going to be a long night.” Celia planted herself at the table and watched as he mechanically chewed. She made him finish every bit of it. The salsa tasted funny, or perhaps it was the aftereffects of the bad air. Matt still felt sick. He'd gone to bed with a metallic taste in his mouth.

The minute Celia and Matt emerged from the apartment, they were met by a pair of bodyguards and hustled through the halls. It must have been very late, because all the corridors were deserted.

They rushed down the front steps and along a winding path, going through darkened gardens until they reached the edge of the desert. Behind them Matt saw the great mansion with its white pillars and orange trees decorated with lights. His bare foot crunched down on a bullhead thorn.

“Ow!” Matt crouched down to remove the thorn.

The bodyguards whisked him off the ground before he could reach his foot. Then Matt realized where they were heading.

“The hospital!” he gasped.

“It's all right,
mi vida
,” said Celia, but it didn't sound all right. Her voice was choked.

“I'm not sick!” Matt cried. He hadn't been to the hospital since he'd seen the thing on the bed.

“You're not sick. El Patrón is,” said one of the guards.

Matt stopped struggling then. It was perfectly natural for them to bring him to El Patrón. He loved El Patrón, and the old man would want to see him if he was very sick.

“What happened?” Matt said.

“Heart attack,” grunted the guard.

“He's not . . . dead?”

“Not yet.”

Matt suddenly felt faint with shock. His vision blurred and his heart pounded. He twisted his head away from the body-guard's arm and vomited.

“What the—?” The man gave a startled shout followed by a string of curses. “Crikey! Look at what he did to my suit!”

Matt no longer bothered about the thorn in his foot. Far worse problems overwhelmed him. His stomach felt like he'd swallowed a barrel cactus. Something was wrong with his eyes, too. The hospital walls swarmed with weird colors.