The Wizards 2: Wizard at Work

by Jack L Knapp

  We hadn’t done more than put that one gang out of business, but someone else had gone a long way toward doing what we hadn’t. The cartels weren’t hiring El Paso’s gang members now.

  I had no idea how the rest of the changes were being done. Most likely it was some sort of citizen’s group in Juarez reacting to the violence. But the Chupacabras, however they were doing it, had certainly chased the cartels into their holes! At least, in Juarez the gangsters were hiding out now rather than launching raids against each other.

  Maybe the word would get out and more of the ordinary Mexicans would get involved, maybe begin decorating lamp-posts with cartel members. According to the history I’d read, Mexican soldiers during their frequent revolutions had used an even simpler system. Stand the offender against the nearest adobe wall, form a firing squad, bang. Shoot ‘em, forget ‘em, move on. Adios, señor. Vaya con Dios.

  No appeals, no judges who could be bribed or frightened into releasing the cartel members. It had worked when the various armies had done that to the enemies they’d captured. Maybe modern Mexicans would recall those days.

  “I remember, T. What’s your point?”

  “Ray, I was a little busy at the time, but I looked at you. You were floating maybe six inches off the floor. Even while you whacked that guy with the rifle, you were still floating. I didn’t see you when that idiot with the RPG came through the door and we bubbled-up, but I’m sure you were still floating. You were doing it while still dealing with that rifleman.”

  “T, I don’t remember that. You’re sure?”

  “I saw it, Ray. You were levitating or something. You couldn’t have been in the bubble already because you were giving that ganger a new view of the world at the time, twisting his head around. You were levitating.”

  “T, I don’t remember anything like that. You think maybe it’s a new Talent?”

  “Maybe, Ray. Or maybe it’s just part of the PK stuff, the psychokinetics. I could be wrong, maybe the bubble is a separate Talent too. Like the body-regulating thing that happens when I drink or take medication. It’s just there in background, something I don’t need to do anything about. It just happens. Does that happen to you now?”

  “I don’t know, T. I don’t drink very much…you said it kicks in after about three drinks and keeps you from getting drunk? And I don’t take drugs, not even aspirin. So it could be happening and I wouldn’t know about it.

  “Anyway, T, we could try melding again. That might help us figure out what’s going on with the levitating, but not now. Ana Maria’s coming home soon and we can’t tell how long we’ll be doing that meld thing. It wouldn’t do for her to walk in the door and find us looking at each other like a couple of zombies.

  “We could try it tomorrow morning. I don’t have a class, and Ana Maria’s planning to go visit a cousin in Juarez. She’ll be leaving sometime in the morning and won’t be back until the next day. That should give us plenty of time to figure this out, if we can. Maybe it only happens when we’re under stress, you get really powerful and I start to float. Didn’t you say you first realized how strong you’d become after Surfer died?”

  “Yeah. I just got mad and there was a gazebo thing, or something like that, in the roadside park. That sucker took off like a rocket and the department that maintains the parks hasn’t figured out how. They finally did find the gazebo, though. A rancher spotted it out in the desert and called them. There’s been a lot of activity since then. It’s not that far from Roswell, and the UFO nuts are convinced that aliens did it.”

  He grinned, and I joined in. It was funny, but it wouldn’t have been nearly so funny if a cow or a human had been under that falling weight. But New Mexico is pretty empty. That rancher had probably been the first human through there in months, maybe even years. Cows rarely wandered the desert, sticking close to water tanks for much of the time, and even deer and jackrabbits weren’t common. The only likely casualties had been a couple of creosote bushes.

  #

  Ana Maria packed an overnight bag the next morning and headed for Mexico. T and I tried the meld, but nothing appeared to happen. If there was any change, neither of us realized it.

  We finally gave up. I settled in with my books and a calculator and studied for a few hours. T patrolled the northeast side and wiped graffiti. The police got his tips and said thank you. The Times did a short piece on the effectiveness of the Tactical Gang Unit. Ho hum. I enjoyed the stress free day, if you can refer to a day when you’re prepping for a test as stress free.

  I had the television on CNN with the sound turned down. I fixed lunch, leftover bratwurst and pork and beans, with a peach for dessert, and went back to studying. There had been an earthquake but it hadn’t really gotten my attention. California has them all the time, other places too. When it happens in El Paso, I’ll pay attention.

  That attitude lasted until T came back.

  “Ray, did you hear about the earthquake?”

  “I heard something, T, but I was concentrating on math. I don’t hear much of anything when I’m doing that.”

  “Well, this one was in New Mexico. The last one was in southern Colorado, and now there’s been one south of there. There was a geologist being interviewed on the radio, and he said he thinks they might be part of the old Rio Grande rift system.

  “That thing is huge. It runs from somewhere up near Canada and ends up down in the Gulf, I think. Anyway, I went by UTEP and did some research. They’ve got a really good geology department and the library has a lot of stuff. I was able to get in to see a professor too, a young guy. He’s maybe thirty or thirty-one, I think, something like that. Maybe he’s an associate or assistant professor or something, and he’s fuckin’ nuts.”

  “Nuts, T? You and I pick up rocks and stuff with our minds and he’s nuts?”

  “Well, you know what I mean. This guy likes to poke into volcanoes when the lava is barely cool. Sometimes not even that; he looks for holes in the crust, and sometimes it’s still pretty hot where he’s walking. Anyway, he dips a metal rod in and collects the liquid rock. I mean, the volcano is still erupting, even if it’s not exploding. But it’s still leaking melted rock and who knows when it’s likely to burp and bury his crazy butt in melted rock?”

  “Maybe he knows what he’s doing, T. Anyway, you were talking about earthquakes. This guy does volcanoes. How did you get from one to the other?”

  “Volcanoes also have earthquakes, lots of them. Mount Saint Helens blew up because an earthquake caused a landslide. Part of the mountain fell off and the pressure inside blew out the side where the landslide happened.

  “Anyway, he showed me a map of faults. They extend down into Mexico, one big one follows the Rio Grande and there are short ones go off to the side here and there. One of those faults runs up into the Jemez Mountains. There are a couple of huge volcanoes up there too. Valles Caldera’s one of the biggest, and besides the big boys there are a bunch of smaller ones.

  “Next time you pass through Albuquerque, look off to the west. There are five little volcanoes on the edge of the city. Valley of Fires is one too, down near the White Sands. Some of them are just across the border too, down by Las Cruces. They’re a type of volcano that depends on steam to erupt. Ground water seeps in, hits the hot rocks, and pops out a bunch of cinders. Kilbourn’s Hole is that type, a kind called a maar volcano, but he called it a popcorn volcano. Like I said, he’s nuts. Nice guy, though.”

  I took a break and we researched the Rio Grande Rift. T decided he needed to get back to New Mexico. If something was going to happen up there, he wanted to be near Shezzie. There was only the single road through Jemez Springs, and north led past the Valles Caldera and then through a winding mountain road before it eventually came to Santa Fe and Interstate 25. The southern route was relatively straight and intersected the Interstate at Bernalillo, just north of Albuquerque. But if there were problems, those were the only routes out of the area.

  T still had the apartment he leased, the one
that Surfer had lived in for a while. He and Shezzie could move in there if New Mexico became dangerous.

  T made quick work of packing his few things, thanked me, and left.

  #

  I turned on the TV when I got up the next morning. There was no news about the earthquake, but in Mexico the Chupacabra had struck again. Three members of the Juarez Cartel were spattered around an apartment south of the city’s center. The police were able to figure out how many there had been by counting the heads. The bodies were a mess.

  Locals ignored it, except for the cartel members. Most of the really senior cartelistas had gone somewhere else by now. Even their underlings had begun to filter out of town.

  Traffic continued to grow across the bridges, and some of the crossers wanted to see where the Chupacabra had been. A few entrepreneurs conducted tours and explained the legend. Tourists took pictures, the guides signed autographs on occasion, and word-of-mouth stories became ever more lurid. The line drawings and the smiley faces decorated walls and fences in most parts of the city now.

  Chapter Six

  T listened to the radio as he drove north. He looked for as many news reports as he could find, and when one station faded he searched until he found another. But nothing new was being reported now; there had been an earthquake somewhere west of Raton but few aftershocks.

  He gassed up and checked over the truck, but it needed nothing other than fuel. He got a large coffee to go and soon was northbound again on Interstate 25.

  His ‘regular’ cell phone rang as he passed beyond Albuquerque. The throwaway phone he’d used when contacting the El Paso Police Department had been abandoned on the street after T wiped it clean of fingerprints. Someone would pick it up and begin using it. T’s connection to the phone would vanish as soon as that happened.

  He glanced at the screen but didn’t recognize the number. Somewhere in El Paso, according to the 915 area code. It would wait until he could pull over.

  Turning west on state road 550, he stopped at a convenience store and went in for coffee. While waiting to pay the clerk, he decided to return the phone call.

  He got an answer, paid for the coffee, and listened as he left the store.

  “Geology, Randall Goodfellow speaking. Can I help you?”

  “I’m returning your call. It’s Doctor Goodfellow, right? I think I spoke to you in your office earlier this week?”

  “Ah, is this T?”

  “Yes. How are you doing, professor?”

  “I’m fine, but I got to thinking after we talked. I’ve been mostly working in Hawaii, but the volcanoes closer to home are interesting too. Anyway, that earthquake that hit near Raton? It looks like it might be on the same fault line as the Pueblo earthquake last week, one of the major ones zones of weakness that runs south from Colorado.

  “I remembered that you were from New Mexico, and when I looked at the seismograph logs here I got data from some other stations to add to ours and plotted the location of both quakes. There are quite a lot of the seismograph stations, in California and up by Yellowstone and at UC Boulder. One of the people up there was the lead author on a paper that I collaborated on a while back. Anyway, I thought that the faults might be becoming more active in New Mexico and I remembered you.

  “I’m interested in anything you happen to see. I can’t get away right now because of my teaching schedule, but as soon as possible I plan to poke around to see if anything’s happening to the major volcanoes. Will you call me and let me know if you see any changes?”

  “Sure, prof. I can do that, be glad to. And hey, if you see anything I might be interested in knowing about, could you pass it on to me too? I won’t share it with anyone unless you give permission first.”

  “I don’t mind. I don’t worry about leaking data because it’s usually a chore to get anyone to even listen! But I’ll add you to my list of resources and I’ll contact you if anything develops. You’ve got my number, right?”

  “It’s on the phone. I’ll transfer that to the permanent list of phone numbers so that it doesn’t accidentally get deleted.”

  After ending the connection, T posted Goodfellow’s number to the contacts stored in the phone, fired up the truck, and headed west on state 550.

  He listened to the radio and looked around at terrain features. It all looked the same as the last time he’d seen the area when he passed through before. Still, who remembers all the details of which tree stood where or what a rock looked like? Short of dirt or stones on the paved road, he doubted he would notice anything different.

  Passing through the Jemez Reservation, T stopped at the Walatowa Visitor’s center and filled up the tank. In New Mexico, you learn to keep a close eye on fuel levels…there’s one county that has only a single fuel station!

  T stopped to look at Soda Dam and after that the nearby Battleship Rock.

  Sometime in the distant past, Soda Dam had formed when a huge monolith had toppled and blocked the small creek. The water had eventually undercut the soft limestone, a variety called travertine, before it flowed on and joined the Jemez River. A small waterfall now spilled out from beneath the dam. Any shift in position would definitely show up here, but nothing short of a major quake was going to move that mass of rock.

  While any change in Soda Dam was unlikely, there were also several hot springs in the vicinity and a waterfall upstream on the Jemez River. Something might happen there if the earthquakes were other than isolated instances, especially so if any movement of magma was taking place under the mountains.

  Battleship Rock was even larger than the Soda Dam block. The massive tower formed a two-hundred-foot vertical rock cliff that jutted boldly from the mountainside. The projecting cliff was still attached to the mountain and slightly overhung the Jemez River. The rock was a popular location for climbing on weekends.

  T took a much longer look here. The Nikon 8x40 binoculars he kept in the glove compartment brought the view much closer. The rock looked the same, but there was a fallen ponderosa to the left that he hadn’t noticed before. Had it recently fallen, or had it been there all along and not been noticed as he drove through? That might have been the case; the winding, narrow road took a lot of concentration and left little of his attention available for looking around. There were loose boulders around the base of the cliff, but they appeared to be weathered. They had likely been there for hundreds of years.

  T drove on home, taking the time to check in with Shezzie, but she hadn’t noticed anything that concerned her. She was glad he was nearly home, though. Nice to have someone to come home to, he thought.

  He commed Ray as he passed through Jemez Springs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  too, even if the story isn’t big enough to make the evening news.

 

 

 

  We rang off. T went on home and I went online to do some research.

  I found a good resource when I googled ‘Volcanoes of New Mexico’. The state turned out to be covered with them. Some erupted more than a billion years ago, some a million years in the past, and a few erupted only three thousand years ago, no more than an eye-blink as geologic time is measured.

  Of equal interest to me, and probably to T, was that geologists classify explosive eruptions by size, and only six fit within the class of giants that had erupted recently. Just six of them, all huge, world changing eruptions that had happened anywhere in the world.

  The largest and most recent had occurred in New Mexico.

  In the Jemez Mountains.

  I was still looking at the article, a scholarly paper somewhat toned down to make it easy to read by non-scientists. It had been posted on the web by scientists working at New Mexico Tech, a highly respected university specializing in geology among other sciences.