by Jack L Knapp
“Even if they don’t know what I did to help, I know. Shezzie, too. She helped a lot of hurting people.
“I haven’t had flashbacks for weeks and no nightmares either. I also sleep better when Shezzie’s with me. Having her nearby makes a difference. Using the Talent for good, helping people, having someone near who cares…if that’s what it takes to keep the bad feelings away, I’m willing.
“We’ve got friends here. If something happens, even a relatively light earthquake or something like that, we might be the only resource these people have. I can’t see us leaving just because something might happen to us, when our friends are still here.
“We don’t know many people in El Paso. Nobody needs us there. The stuff I did to piss off the gangs was just make-work. They probably started doing the same stuff again as soon as I left.
“But up here, I’ve been doing real work, Shezzie too. I need to do that. Maybe it’s making up for the killings and the failures I had over in the Rockpile, but I like the good feelings I have now and being able to sleep easy at night.”
“I understand, T. We’ll be going back, even though I’m not sure what we’ll do about Ana Maria. You can comm me if you need help. That Chupacabra stuff needs to stop, or at least I need to be there to make sure the gangs don’t catch Ana Maria like they did Javier.”
“Ray, I suspect Javier could only do the PK stuff, not use the bubble to protect himself. Or maybe he tried, but eventually had to drop it and then there were too many of the cartel gangsters around him. Only they, the gangsters, know what really happened. Ana Maria can definitely use the bubble now, even if she’s not as practiced as the rest of us are. But she could do it when she fell off that ledge on Christo Rey, and it will be there in future if she needs it. You might want to take her up the mountain and let her practice tumbling for a while!”
I grinned. “Not for a while, T. And I’ll make sure she understands what’s happening before I push her off a cliff!”
While T and I had been talking, leaning on the railing around the front porch of the cabin, the two women had reverted to domesticity. Wondrous Talents are all well and good, but ordinary, mundane activities take up almost all of our time. They soon brought out sandwich plates and we ate, and then it was time for Ana Maria and me to depart.
The trip back to El Paso was much more relaxed than the trip to Jemez Springs had been. We stopped briefly to look at the wares in a pottery shop near the Jemez Reservation and Ana Maria bought a small ceramic vase. I looked it over and admired the bright decorations; hopefully this one hadn’t been made in China.
It happens; once a craftsperson makes a few objects and begins to get a following, it’s easy enough to contract out some of the work. Let the buyer beware; it’s as true here as it is anywhere.
I wanted to continue the good feeling that had come back. I didn’t yet know if we could resume our former relationship, but for the moment we were comfortable together.
“I saw you floating when I came back to the cabin. Are you comfortable with levitating? If you want to, we can park and have a look at the Rio Grande when we get there. I think it would be fun to just drift along over the water and see what lives along the banks. No one goes there, not even fishermen. They fish near the reservoirs, but most of them won’t venture more than a mile downstream. It’ll be fun, and you can use the practice. You’ll be safe. I can keep you from falling, even if you’re a little shaky when we start out. I was pretty shaky too, that first time!”
We found a parking space just past the bridge, so we waited until there were no cars in sight before leaving the car. I took Ana Maria’s hand in mine and we drifted down, past the slope alongside the roadway. We passed over a cleared spot along the riverbank and slowly drifted down the river, still holding hands.
Busy place, this section of river! We watched a beaver for a time, busily gnawing at a huge cottonwood that hung slightly over the river. That trunk must have been at least two feet thick and probably closer to three, but the beaver was undeterred by size. Muskrats left winding trails in a quiet backwater.
The only disturbance we caused came from a pair of mallards…perhaps they were accustomed to fleeing threats from above! At any rate, they burst up from the water and arrowed downstream, finally rising above the level of the salt cedars that line most of the river before disappearing in the distance.
One day I might just try to catch them. One day…but not now.
“Feeling confident yet, Ana Maria? We can turn back now and I’ll follow you. Just keep yourself ten or twelve feet above the surface and concentrate on not getting too close to the trees. That shouldn’t be a problem. The river is straight here, and it’s at least thirty feet wide and more than that in most places. When you get near the bridge, try to follow the surface up the bank to the right and watch for cars. If there are people around, we’ll have to walk the last few feet. No need to make them think that the aliens and UFO’s have come back!”
The practice had helped. She followed my directions and lifted easily up the bank.
No resistance, I suppose; having followed her quietly as she floated above the water, I now sped under the bridge, scattering a bunch of swallows who’d built nests under there. They avoided me and it was just as well. I couldn’t have avoided them! Too small, too fast, too many; but they had no problem flitting around me, so I turned and went back under the bridge before following Ana Maria up to the car.
We were soon back on the Interstate and headed south. I glanced at her from time to time during the trip. When I did, she was usually smiling.
Chapter Fourteen
T:
Ray and Ana Maria left for El Paso after the mind-meld. Ana Maria now had sufficient control of her budding Talents to at least avoid killing someone by accident. How far her Talents would develop from this early stage was not yet known.
It had been a very busy day for Shezzie and T. T had something he wanted to do, but it would have to wait; for now, the two of them needed sleep.
While they prepared breakfast the next morning, T told Shezzie of his plan to begin a wider survey of the area around Jemez Springs.
The town had grown up around a hot spring that had been developed commercially, but nothing unusual had been reported from the people who managed the spring. Still, if there were changes shallow enough to involve ground water, as had happened at Valles Caldera, the hot springs in the vicinity might also show changes in activity.
More geological incidents appeared to be happening than local earthquakes and steam venting from Cerro la Jara. There had been injuries at another nearby location, Spence Hot Spring; the paramedics he’d worked with had mentioned this in passing as an explanation of why they were so understaffed at the Valles Caldera site.
The medical responders had been grateful for Shezzie’s help but had remained unaware of the unusual things T had done. He was simply the man who’d shown up with the talented nurse, and he’d then gone off to make himself useful wherever he might be needed.
T now had something worthwhile that he could do; he would use his unusual Talents to see what was happening at the various hot springs around the area. Whatever information he gained could be passed on to Professor Goodfellow.
Geologists watched the earthquakes and volcanic activity; if there were more-shallow changes that hadn’t come to their attention, those changes might be revealed by the springs and serve as indicators of future trouble.
#
Ray:
I was happy to get home, and Ana Maria had seemed happy enough during the trip, but she lost her smile as we parked. I didn’t want to go back to where we’d been before we’d visited Shezzie and T, so I asked her if something was bothering her.
The conversation during dinner was quite ordinary, and by the time I asked the waiter for the check, we had decided that Ana Maria should stay at the house for now. It would probably be day-to-day for both of us for a while, but at least it was a start to repairing our relationship.
#
T:
Shezzie fixed breakfast burritos while T made coffee, and when the food was done the two took it outside to the patio. The mountains seemed quiet today; T hoped they would remain so.
Once I get there and ditch the old documents, I buy local clothing and just go to the American Embassy. Tell them I was held captive and the people who were holding me decided I wasn’t worth much as a hostage, so they let me go. A little weak, I think, but fingerprints would establish my identity. There are intelligence contacts within some of the groups, but not all, so there wouldn’t be a way to disprove what I said. The best part is that the Army wouldn’t really have a reason to check my story, plus they carried you as missing at the same time, so it wouldn’t seem to be something I’d done on my own.
Shezzie was following all of this, and she nodded.
They took the dishes into the cabin and put them into the sink for the time being. Shezzie got started on her project and T drove away in his truck.
Before working on the first job that he and Ray had taken for Professor Goodfellow, T had bought a selection of basic reading materials from one of the many ranger stations in the area. A number of the books he’d purchased were about the geology of the state, but he’d also bought a number of books earlier that dealt with aspects of New Mexico history. The books were now stacked on the passenger seat of the truck. T had also picked up a few supplies on impulse, and those were now stored behind the truck’s front seats.
The supplies included a backpack with a titanium frame, a sleeping bag, and a supply of freeze-dried meals. He would need to pick up a few other things before he was ready; cooking utensils, paper products, and two items of specialized gear. The specialized gear included a few small plastic containers with tight-fitting lids, a good-quality metal detector, and a miner’s gold pan.
#
T decided to visit Spence Hot Spring first. It was close to the state road and there were plenty of parking areas nearby, a consideration when driving in the mountains. The landscape meant that roadways were often narrow, wide enough for only two lanes that allowed traffic to flow in each direction.
He drove via State 4 along the canyon cut by San Antonio Creek, a tributary of the Jemez River, and soon spotted th
e large parking area used by visitors to the hot spring. There would usually be a few cars in the parking area, but today it was deserted. The reason soon became clear.
The spring had long been posted against use during the hours of darkness, but now there was a new sign advising that the spring and the area around it were closed until further notice because of safety concerns.
A faint cloud of condensation showed on the hillside across the river where the spring had formerly flowed out of the rocks and run down a shallow slope to end up in the creek. Seeing his truck parked in the cleared area would almost certainly cause questions to be asked, so T restarted the engine and drove back north to the next parking area upstream.
This smaller facility was intended for fishermen to use when they fished the stream, only a few yards downhill from the road at this point. The creek was small here and its bed contained a number of large rocks. This created an environment of small pools and eddies where trout lurked and waited for insects to drift past on their way downstream. Day-fishermen could park in any of several areas created for their use, climb down to the water’s edge, and then spend the day flycasting for trout.
This parking area was also deserted, so T parked his truck and hiked down the steep trail to a rough path that ran along the creek bank. It was a simple matter to then levitate and cross to the other side of the creek before rising up the slope to the approximate height of the hot spring. From there, he followed the canyon wall downstream, slowly drifting through the trees and looking for the faint cloud of vapor that he’d seen earlier.
He adjusted his course slightly so that he could approach the hot spring from uphill. From this viewpoint, he could understand why authorities had posted the pool against use. A solid stream of bubbles now rose through the upper pool and condensed to vapor a few feet above the water’s surface. If the entire pool wasn’t quite boiling, it was still clearly too hot for anyone to use. The pool overflowed and the water ran down to another, smaller pool; from this one, it spilled into the lowest pool of the spring.
