by Simon Hawke
"Joe."
"Paul," Ramirez replied. "Tell me something, Joe. Have you ever had to investigate a crime where you knew a policeman was the perpetrator?"
"Yeah," said Loomis grimly. "Once. Back in Chicago."
"Then you can imagine how I feel right now. I know all the adepts in this town. Many of them are close friends of mine."
Loomis nodded. "Not a very nice feeling, is it?"
A police cruiser came gliding silently past the police barricades, floating several inches above the ground, operating on the stored power of its thaumaturgic batteries. It settled gently to the ground and Loomis opened the back door for Ramirez.
"If any of those reporters bother you at the office, just give them my name and tell them I asked you not to talk about the case. Better yet, don't even talk to them. Have your secretary run interference for you. How long do you figure it'll take to get those files together?"
"Not very long. It may take a while to get the clearance for those Bureau files, but I can access most of the university records through my computer. However, I think it would be best if you were to get a warrant, otherwise I might have some difficulty with the university administration."
"Fair enough," said Loomis. "I'll stop by with one this afternoon. How long do you figure it'll take a field agent to get out here?"
"I honestly don't know," Ramirez said. "I've never been involved in anything like this before."
"Well, let's hope it doesn't take too long," said Loomis. "I want to get this son of a bitch."
"So do I," Ramirez said grimly.
"Yeah. I'll see you later."
Ramirez nodded and Loomis closed the door. The squad car levitated and moved off in a silent glide past the police barricades and the reporters, who were clearly displeased at not having the chance to ask Ramirez any questions. As they drove back toward the college, Ramirez sat staring silently out the window. The officer driving him sensed that he was in no mood for conversation and left him alone as they drove through the picturesque town.
The Royal City of the Holy Faith had seen a great many changes since it was founded in 1610, a decade before the first Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In the fourteenth century, its site was home to the Anasazi, who called it the Dancing Ground of the Sun. In the early seventeenth century, Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado came with his conquistadores to claim the land of New Mexico for Spain. La Villa Real de la Santa Fe became a Spanish colony. "The People," as they called themselves, were renamed the Pueblo Indians by the Spaniards, from the Spanish word for village. They were the descendants of the Anasazi and their peaceful and spiritual way of life, in harmony with nature, was rudely interrupted by their Spanish conquerors, who came in search of treasure that they never found.
The conquistadores' harsh treatment of their reluctant subjects led to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the Indians succeeded in driving out the Spaniards, but the city was retaken in 1693 by Don Diego de Vargas. More Spanish settlers came to the area, but Spain dealt harshly with foreign traders, imprisoning them and sending them to Mexico. Among their captives was the American explorer Zebulon Pike, whose writings after his release spread word of New Mexico throughout the United States.
Following the Mexican Revolution in 1821, Santa Fe fell under Mexican rule and was opened up to trade, which saw the birth of the legendary Santa Fe Trail leading from Independence, Missouri, to what was now the downtown plaza. In 1823 St. Francis was adopted as the city's patron saint and the official name of the city became La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis, The Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi. After the war with Mexico in 1846, New Mexico became a U.S. territory. The railroad brought more commerce to the area, but the culture of the city continued to remain primarily Indian and Spanish. During the Civil War, the city was briefly in the hands of the Confederates, but Union troops prevailed in the battle of Glorieta Pass and drove the Rebels out. In 1912, the territory of New Mexico became the forty-seventh state.
Located at an elevation of seven thousand feet above sea level, on a plateau between the Sangre de Cristo and the Jemez mountains, Santa Fe in the twenty-third century still possessed much of its original charm and grace. Its residents had always been careful to preserve the authentic southwestern spirit that made their city unique. Many of its historic adobe buildings still stood, lovingly preserved over the years, and developers with their skyscrapers and office buildings had never been permitted to blight Santa Fe with their steel and glass. The Historic Zoning Ordinance, dating back to 1957, insured that only Santa Fe-style buildings could be erected within the city, with five stories being the maximum allowable building height. Industry had always been kept out. That, combined with the city's altitude and climate, gave it air that was free from dust and pollution and the low humidity kept down the mist. The result was a natural light that had attracted artists from all over the world.
By the mid-twentieth century, Santa Fe had become a center for the arts, a mecca not only for painters, but for sculptors, woodworkers, weavers, gold and silversmiths, potters, basket weavers, writers, poets, and musicians. The city was soon discovered by the fashionable set, many of whom came to open galleries and shops, others simply to partake of Santa Fe's easygoing atmosphere. A newcomer from a city like New York or Rome or Paris might have found the profusion of adobe brick structures strange and unfamiliar at first, but inevitably, perspective shifted and a new understanding dawned. There was something about the city's atmosphere and the soft earth tones of its buildings that calmed the spirit and induced a sense of tranquility. Santa Fe was like a graceful Spanish lady whose charm relaxed you in her presence.
The city's ethnic mix, primarily Hispanic, Indian, and Anglo, had given birth to what became known as the "Santa Fe Style," a fusion of the cultures that expressed itself in the way the people dressed and lived. Boots and long, flowing skirts; gold, silver, and turquoise jewelry; western dress and urban chic; Navajo rugs and black Santa Clara pottery; sand paintings and bronze sculpture; brick sidewalks and lovely little placitas with Spanish fountains; kiva fireplaces and oak plank floors; mesquite-broiled steak and blue corn tortillas; mission-style furniture and intricately carved oak doors, all combined to give the city a timeless atmosphere of casual, yet refined southwestern living.
Over the years, Santa Fe had managed to survive the curse of places that are suddenly found to be chic and had kept its essential identity intact. It had grown, but it had not exploded in an uncontrolled paroxysm of development, though the price of real estate had skyrocketed. In the days prior to the Collapse, its many festivals had attracted thousands of tourists every year and numerous hotels had sprung up on the outskirts of the city to house them. However, unlike other towns and cities that suddenly became considered "in," Santa Fe stubbornly remained unspoiled. Even the condos that sprang up in the late twentieth century were built along an architectural design that blended in with the city's classic, old adobe structures.
During the Collapse at the end of the twenty-second century when most of the world was plunged into anarchy, the residents of Santa Fe closed ranks and pulled together. The city had escaped much of the violence that had occurred elsewhere, due in part to its location and relatively small population, and partly to its citizens banding together to preserve their way of life. It wasn't easy, but in some ways, the people of Santa Fe were more fortunate than the citizens of many other cities. Because its people had been resolute in preserving their relaxed, unspoiled way of life, there had never been any industry in Santa Fe and the collapse of technology had not affected them as severely. Those who came in search of refuge were welcomed, while those who came to plunder were repelled by a united, well-armed citizenry.
Many of the city's residents departed, but many more stayed, with Hispanics, Indians, and Anglos all pitching in together and reverting to a simpler way of life from which, in many respects, they had never really strayed too far. The city's artisans found a life of barter, craft, and communal
farming far easier to adapt to than those who had become so dependent upon factories and the sophisticated commerce of technology. Many of them found it relatively easy to abandon their cars, for which no more fuel remained, for bicycles and horses. Santa Fe gradually became once more a peaceful tranquil, almost forgotten little city nestled at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos, an oasis of sanity in a world that had gone mad.
Paul Ramirez had been born after the end of the Collapse, when the old forces of technology had been replaced by magic. Part Indian, part Hispanic, and part Anglo, Ramirez had grown up in Santa Fe, the only son of a widowed blacksmith, farrier, and saddlemaker. From early childhood, Paul had known that he was different, but he did not really understand why. He seemed to have abilities that the other children did not have.
Sometimes, when they played together, he seemed to know what they were thinking. He found that if he concentrated, he could read their minds. Not always clearly, but well enough to make them angry when he did it. It puzzled him that he could do that and the others couldn't. His father couldn't do it either, but he had told him that his mother had the gift.
Paul's mother had been part Navajo and part Chicano, a curandera, a healer who had practiced folk medicine. Some people believed she was a witch. But she could not heal herself when she developed lymphatic cancer and she had died when Paul was still an infant. She had often wished, Paul's father told him, that she could go back East and study what she called "the white man's magic," in the school where the legendary Merlin Ambrosius had taught. By then, everyone had heard about how Merlin had revived from his enchanted sleep of two thousand years and how he had brought back the old, forgotten discipline of magic, known as thaumaturgy.
Santa Fe was not among the first cities to receive the benefits of magic. The art of thaumaturgy was an exacting discipline, requiring years of study and a great deal of devotion. It took time for the first of Merlin's disciples to attain proficiency in the art and more time for them to reach the level where they could take on students of their own. The Collapse was slow in ending and the reconstruction of society based on the thaumaturgic arts took longer still. In time, universities throughout the world were once more filled with students, many of them going on to graduate schools of thaumaturgy administered by the International Thaumaturgical Commission, with local Bureaus of Thaumaturgy regulating the practice of the arts. Yet most adepts had gravitated to the larger urban centers, which had experienced the worst effects of the Collapse. The smaller towns and cities of the world, and all the rural areas, were the last to receive the benefits of magic.
There were still no adepts in Santa Fe when Paul was born. His mother had never had the opportunity to study thaumaturgy, nor could she bear to leave Santa Fe, which she had always believed was a place of power that nurtured her gift. Sam Ramirez had made up his mind that his son would have the chance his mother never had. He made sure that Paul took his studies very seriously and he saved his money. When Paul was old enough, Sam Ramirez wrote to Professor Ambrosius himself, telling him about his son and asking if it was possible for Paul to study with him.
Merlin replied, saying that magic use was not something that just anyone could learn. The old knowledge had been long forgotten, relegated to myth and legend, and once it had returned, the thirst for it was great. However, while some people seemed to have a natural affinity for it, others could only master the very simplest of spells while others still, the vast majority, possessed no talent for it whatsoever. Even the most basic of spells eluded them completely, no matter how hard they worked at them. Merlin had written that magic use required a certain talent that not everybody had, just as not everybody had the natural ability to become a writer, or an opera singer, or a champion athlete. But, wrote Merlin, if what Sam Ramirez said about his son's sensitivity was true, then that indicated that he possessed a natural potential of a very high order and if Sam could arrange for his son to come to Boston and be interviewed, there was a good chance that Paul could get a scholarship. However, Merlin cautioned, there was no guarantee.
It was enough for Sam Ramirez. He made the long wagon trip to Houston with his son, where they boarded a schooner bound for the Atlantic Coast. It had been the first time either of them had ever been aboard a sailing vessel and both of them were violently seasick throughout most of the trip. But the long journey had been worth it. After they arrived in Boston, Merlin himself had interviewed Paul and had reviewed his academic record. The result was that Paul was accepted to Harvard College on a scholarship.
After he had completed the requirements of his B.A. degree, Paul was enrolled in the College of Sorcerers in Cambridge, where he studied under Professor Ambrosius himself. And received an early lesson in humility. In his first week of study, when he had found himself stumped for an answer in class, he had tried reading Merlin's mind. When he regained consciousness, with his fellow warlocks anxiously bending over him, his head was throbbing with a migraine that lasted for a week.
"You have an unusual gift, young man," Merlin had told him, "but remember that with that gift comes a great responsibility. Never try to overreach yourself. That was merely a slap on the wrist. I'll be far less forgiving next time."
There never was a next time. Paul had learned his lesson well. He became very careful about using his gift indiscriminately and, in time, he disciplined himself to refrain from using it. His sensitivity had grown over the years and he had discovered that contact with the inner recesses of other people's minds could be profoundly disturbing. There were some things in people's subconscious minds that were very deeply buried and were better off left that way.
Paul worked hard at the college, devoting every waking hour to his studies. While other warlocks congregated in the campus rathskeller and went out on dates, Paul remained in his tiny apartment, hitting the books. He had no social life to speak of. Before he took his graduate degree, he had already stood for and passed his certification as a lower-grade adept. He graduated at the top of his class and entered upon a wizard apprenticeship with Merlin, working as a teaching assistant at the college.
When he passed his certification as a wizard, offers of employment started to come in. However, he remained at the College of Sorcerers, working as an assistant professor and continuing his studies until he was ready to stand for certification as a sorcerer. He passed with flying colors. At that point, he could have accepted any one of dozens of offers from large corporations eager to pay him a handsome salary, but he missed New Mexico. He told Merlin that what he wanted to do most was teach, but he wanted to do it back in Santa Fe.
Merlin was pleased with his choice. The demand for adepts to teach was great and the salaries they could command were considerably higher than what other teachers could hope to make, but schools still could not compete with the corporate sector, which could provide high-grade adepts with truly luxurious life-styles. There was a great need for adepts in industry, as well. Fewer and fewer of them were going into teaching, especially in the smaller towns and cities. The Bureau of Thaumaturgy did not yet have a branch in Santa Fe and Merlin arranged for Paul to be accepted as a Bureau agent, cutting through the red tape so that Paul could open up a small office of the Bureau at the college in Santa Fe and thereby conduct his own certification exams for his students. Merlin also helped him with the school administration, setting up the curriculum for a College of Sorcerers. It was not much of a college. Paul would be the only teacher, until such point that some of his students would become sufficiently advanced to teach themselves.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out the way that Paul had hoped. People with the innate talent for magic use were relatively few and he was forced to turn away many hopeful students because they simply did not possess the ability. In his first year at the college, he had no students at all and the administration wasn't very happy, but they kept him on for the prestige of having a sorcerer on their faculty. Paul was forced to teach courses in reading and composition. And because he felt guilty accepting a salary signi
ficantly greater than those earned by other professors for teaching the same course, he insisted upon the school paying him the same salary as the other members of the faculty. The school didn't complain. However, in his second year, when he took on his first few students, the administration balked at paying him the salary they originally agreed upon.
It placed Paul in an awkward situation. He was thrilled to finally find some students he could teach, even if there were only four of them during that first year, and he felt a responsibility to them. He could not very well threaten to leave and deprive them of a teacher, so he bit the bullet and stayed on, at the lower salary, thankful for the additional salary he received as an agent of the B.O.T.
The number of his students gradually increased as word got out and he started to draw on a greater population throughout the Southwest. However, there was a College of Sorcerers in Dallas, and there was one at the University of Denver, both more established than Paul's small branch in Santa Fe. He never had more than a handful of students at a time and the university administration saw no need to expand the program and hire another professor. It was all he could do to get a fellowship for one graduate teaching assistant. And with greater opportunities elsewhere, his graduates generally left after passing their first certification levels. Even as lower-grade adepts, they could get better positions in cities like New York, L.A., Dallas, or Detroit as apprentices to corporate wizards and sorcerers.
It took a long time for Santa Fe to build up its small population of adepts. As Santa Fe once more started to become an enclave for artists and craftsmen, students from other areas of the country were attracted by its relaxed, bohemian life-style. In the pre-Collapse days, it was known as "The City Different," a city that was more like a small town, yet possessed of a rich cultural ambience rivaling cities such as Boston and New York. Many of the young people who came to study in Santa Fe chose to stay and among them were some of Paul's students. Not all of them chose to pursue life in the fast lane of corporate sorcery. Some stayed on as Paul's apprentices, anxious to continue their studies with him rather than scramble to be accepted by high-grade, big-city, corporate adepts, who had no shortage of applicants. They fell in love with Santa Fe, with the beauty of New Mexico and its rich cultural heritage.
