Chapter 12

Ray Wilson was sitting at the library table with a young Mexican woman. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and was well dressed, as many Mexican students at UTEP are. Her skirt was perhaps a bit shorter than other women might have worn, but she had the legs for it. Ray had noticed them early on and decided that those legs were worth displaying.

The two had become acquainted in a class they shared and had then met later over coffee at the SUB. Ray found he enjoyed her company and didn’t wonder particularly why she would be willing to spend some of her between-class time with him; it was enough that she did. The age difference didn’t appear to be a factor, or it might have been that she didn’t see him as anything other than a fellow student. But that relationship, slight as it was, had been enough. It was a beginning, in Ray’s mind; perhaps there might be something more later on.

She had come to class today, but was clearly distracted. When he’d mentioned it, after the class ended and they filed out of the lecture hall, she had begun sobbing. A comforting word had not helped, and going to the SUB cafeteria with an obviously distraught young woman was nothing he wanted a part of. After waiting a few minutes for her to stop weeping, he had suggested the library. They had walked there together and she had gotten her emotions under better control by the time they arrived.

The library was quiet, but there was enough background noise to cause them to speak louder than they might otherwise have done. The voices had to overcome the low murmur of other, distant, voices, and the occasional noise of copiers and printers, where UTEP’s students downloaded and printed references or scanned them through microfiche readers.

Two people were at one of the tables and speaking when I walked into the library.

I had come to return materials and see what resources they might have regarding medical services in Ciudad Juarez. I knew that many Americans still crossed the border into Juarez to get dental or medical treatment, even though the recent drug wars had slowed medical tourism to a trickle. Some continued to cross the border, reasoning that despite the additional danger they might be safe if they kept to established streets and only remained long enough to see a doctor or dentist. For some, the poor of El Paso and more-affluent Mexicans who had the documents to cross the border, there was little choice. They now lived in the USA temporarily without any intent to change citizenship, but without American health insurance. Medical costs in the US were prohibitive compared with what was available just across the border. I was still considering whether I might join the medical tourists if I found a surgeon I thought I could trust.

Mexicans taking up a temporary residency was, after all, not so different from their earlier practice of renting a tenement and sharing the cost among families. By so doing, all of them could use the address to enroll their children in schools in El Paso, particularly in the elementary schools that fed into Guillen Middle School and from there, to Bowie High School. It was a relatively simple matter to begin living in those tenements, or in better-class dwellings if they could afford them, when the danger level in Juarez began to rise. Some simply moved in with relatives in El Paso to wait out the troubles.

Despite laws intended to regulate the border, local people crossed daily and many felt as much at home on the northern side as they did on the southern. Cross-border communities often have divided families, with part of the family on one side, part on the other. It’s not to be wondered that so many in El Paso are bilingual, or even bi-national in terms of family. Regardless of US government efforts, people continue to cross the border with relative ease.

Mexican citizens who can afford the cost often come to UTEP, the University of Texas-El Paso, to enroll as students; the university makes attracting them a matter of policy, even a priority. I had become aware of these things while I worked on my own project. Now I wanted to see what I could find out about doctors in Mexico.

The library had an extensive database, so I went there to look.

Surfer had become increasingly paranoid about the explosive charge in his neck; at the same time, he was dubious about allowing me to remove it, even though I would be assisted by Shezzie. Her professional qualifications, excellent as they were, were not enough to convince him. We had tried a mind-meld among the three of us to see if that would convince him, but it hadn’t been enough to change his mind. Surfer’s own Talent was too strong, and it had proved impossible for him to relax enough to allow the deep melding to take place that Shezzie and I had managed in the Middle East.

The unsuccessful attempt did achieve something; I noticed my Talents had once again become stronger. Shezzie had also begun to do things she’d never been able to do, move objects with more strength and even get hunches using the same rudimentary precognition that I had. And we were not yet certain the changes had run their course.

Surfer, unfortunately, had not benefited from the effort so far as we could tell. His powerful Talent had blocked all our effort to meld our minds with his. Shezzie and I had managed the necessary deep connection, but his attempt to join us had allowed only a superficial contact. Even so, we had picked up enough concern that we couldn’t ignore his feelings.

He continued to believe that only a professional surgeon should remove the device; nothing less would do. He had even contemplated forcing a doctor to perform the surgery. He was aware that I could provide the necessary force to compel cooperation from the surgeon, even if he didn’t know just how much I could exert, but he hadn’t thought through all the possible outcomes. Could we then release the surgeon after the operation, to perhaps tell authorities what he’d been forced to do? Should we try to wipe his memory to prevent that, or even murder him? Surfer wasn’t willing to consider the fallout, but I was. I didn’t know how we would prevent the spread of information, but I wasn’t willing to try altering an innocent man’s mind or kill him in order to save Surfer.

There was another option, but I didn’t like that one either. We could vanish just as we had before. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Surfer’s paranoia might force us to go on the run again. There was simply no way of knowing how people would react if they learned about us, about the things we could do.

Even without the devices, we could be killed. It would be harder and take a more determined effort, but it could be done. At the very least, two people currently unknown and unsuspected would become fugitives again, and after the resulting publicity from forcing a doctor to remove the devices we would find it much harder to be anonymous. All of us had that to lose, the ability to remain unnoticed, and there was more. The three of us would be of interest around the world, not only to people in our own government but to others.

What if they thought we had secrets they could use? Private companies too; we could easily steal secrets from a competitor, and the developer of those secrets would never know it had happened. Far better for us to keep the whole thing quiet. The major risk at the moment was to Surfer and to me, and Surfer was the only one thought to be in the US.

I was prepared for Surfer to take risks he wouldn’t assume for himself. I could be more dispassionate, even cold blooded, about what might happen. After all, I had not put the explosive device in his neck, and if it came down to risking Surfer rather than Shezzie and myself he would just have to take his chances.

The thought was cold, colder than others might understand, but I had led men in combat. I had seen two of them killed while under my leadership. They were men whose lives I was responsible for, and I’d failed them. I felt more in common with them and I would have risked much more for them than I would willingly risk for Surfer. I had made every effort to protect them at the time, just as they had done for me while we worked to accomplish our mission. It made the combat losses much harder to bear; those men were personal failures on my part!

But Surfer and I had only gone through a training program, and essentially that defined the relationship between us. I hoped it would not come down to my having to choose between Surfer and Shezzie, or for that matter, between Surfer and myself. But if it did...

No, we had very little in common at all. Even in the area of Talents, he had his and I had mine. He had warned me about the explosive, true, but he had done so in the hope we could somehow help each other. Meantime, Shezzie had become important to me and I wasn’t prepared to risk her life if I could avoid it. So I had come to the library to kill two birds with one stone, return borrowed library materials and look into medical care in Juarez. I could then tell Surfer what I’d found.