Beowulf's Children Part 25

Chaka waited for the criticism, and was again surprised to see Aaron nod understandingly. "This will only take a minute. The rest of us can map out a way to return to the mainland. We'll flash it to you later for comment and refinement." Edgar winked off.

Chaka went into the bedroom and closed the door.

The room was near silent until the monitor returned to a view of the Scribeveldt.

"Edgar," Katya said, "could be a problem."

"a.s.set," Aaron said absently. "The secret to life is turning stumbling blocks into stepping-stones."

"And just how do you do that?"

His grin was pure evil. Instead of answering. Aaron templed his fingers and narrowed his eyes at Trish. "I believe that you have things to do and people to see."

Trish grabbed her gym bag from the corner. "And places to go. On my way."

"Oh, and Trish-you will be endearingly clumsy, won't you?"

She took a step toward the door and stumbled, barely catching herself. She a.s.sumed her best poor-little-me expression. "I just don't know what's wrong with me today." And she was gone.

Jessica stooped to look carefully into Aaron's eyes. "And just what are you up to?"

"I could tell you," he said cheerfully, "but then I'd have to kill you."

"Tsuruashi-dashi," Toshiro barked. Edgar's mind swirled. He was staggering through that twilight zone between fatigue and utter exhaustion. He'd been marching back and forth across the hard rubber gymnasium floor for what seemed like hours but couldn't have been more than fifty minutes.

His legs were sacks of wet sand. The fire in his chest threatened to engulf him. Toshiro stood before him in white pajamas, a garment he called a gi, with a black sash knotted about the waist.

Edgar kept his mind on that belt. His father had earned one back on Earth. Toshiro had earned his by satisfying Ca.s.sandra's kinesthetic model of a third dan karate expert. Joe Sikes had tried to interest Edgar in the formal dances, the complex and challenging stances, the terrifying strikes and kicks of Kyukushin karate. Edgar had learned only his own terrifying vulnerability. He was as likely to perform surgery on a friend as to kill with a mae-geri front kick.

Now Joe was dead. Maybe this penance was a way of keeping a little of his father alive.

Edgar stood in the Tsuruashi-dashi, the crane stance, balanced on his left leg, the right foot tucked up on his thigh, arms spread for balance. His calf was cramping, his toes digging into mat for balance so hard that he felt his toenails ready to rip free.

Toshiro wasn't the laughing funster now. Not the talented guitarist, nor the avid surfer, or careful lover. When he donned that white uniform something else came out. Maybe he was channeling a sixteenth-century samurai. Or Thomas DeTorquemada. One of those fun guys.

No mirth shone in Toshiro's eyes, but finally he acknowledged Edgar's suffering. Toshiro softened his voice momentarily. "Do you feel the similarity between this and the yoga Tree Pose?"

Edgar's whole body trembled. Why was this so d.a.m.ned hard? Bruce Lee made it look easy. He was drowning in a sea of lactic acid. "I, uh . . . I have to stand on one leg?"

"That's the obvious answer. Look deeper."

The room was spinning. This a.s.shole wasn't going to let him put his foot down until he answered! He was going to fall, crack his head, and his brains would run out on the mat. Maybe then the Shogun of Suffering would be satisfied. Edgar almost smiled to himself, appreciating the alliteration.

Wait. Suddenly, he had the answer. "Balance," he gasped. "I have to concentrate on the same place in my body, you know, at my navel."

"Just below your navel, and three inches in. The center of ma.s.s. In j.a.panese, ham. In sanscrit, Manipura. All right, bring your foot down slowly."

Edgar nearly collapsed, almost didn't hear the polite applause from the side of the gym. He turned and saw Trish. She was dressed in a tan leotard that revealed the curves and angles of that magnificent body more than simply nudity ever could. What was she doing here? Was she here to watch him make a fool of himself? This was only his tenth lesson. It wasn't fair!

Toshiro seemed to read Edgar's mind. "Trish asked if she could join us today. It's her fourth lesson. She's having some trouble with her stances."

Trouble? Trish? Hard to believe.

She smiled at him. He wasn't certain, but it might have been the first time he had ever seen it up close. Even when stern she was just drop-dead gorgeous. But her smile was sort of sweet, and disarmingly girlish. "Do you mind?"

"Well, ah-"

"I thought it might be a good idea for her to see a student who is better than she is, but not so much better that it is discouraging," Toshiro said quietly.

I'm better than she is? At something physical?

Suddenly, and quiet dramatically, all of the fatigue flitted away on wings of testosterone. He felt an inch taller, and his muscles-flabby and girded with fat though they were-were suddenly steel bands. Well, rubber bands. But bands nonetheless.

She stood by his side. Taller than he by an inch, and devastatingly feminine for all of the muscle now clearly revealed to view.

"Today you learn to teach what you know," Toshiro said. "Let her take her stance, and you make the corrections."

"Would you?" she asked. There was no mockery in her voice, but some part of him still just couldn't believe it.

"Zenkutsu-dachi!" Toshiro barked. Trish bent her front knee, and leaned forward, straightening her rear leg. She wobbled badly.

"Oh," Edgar said, and just like that his mind slipped into a.n.a.lytic mode. "I see the problem. Your knee is leaning past your toes. And your hips are twisted wrong, see . . . ?

Toshiro nodded approval.

The shower beat down on Edgar's back like a rain of needles, sluicing the sweat and dust from his body. It felt terrific. It just might have been the first time he had ever actually felt good after a workout. Before this, karate sessions functioned mainly to a.s.suage guilt.

With the second half of the day's lesson devoted to teaching Trish, her wide, liquid-brown, humbly grateful eyes following his every move, he had actually gotten out of his head and done well! Maybe his punches and kicks weren't like Toshiro's-blur-fast and savagely precise-but at least they were correct. And Trish liked what she saw. He could tell. A karate man knows these things.

"Toshiro?" he said dreamily, working the soap into his pudgy sides.

Toshiro was rinsing. He was smooth-muscled, his body like a swimmer's. Hard, flat plates rounded by a thin fat padding. For a startling moment Edgar realized that he could have a body like that.

Wow.

"Yes, Edgar?"

"I really did all right today, didn't I?"

"You did fine." Toshiro grinned at him. "I think that Trish would agree with that. Don't you?"

Edgar's face felt hotter than the water beating against it. He thought about Trish again, and realized that he'd better change the subject before his body reacted too obviously.

"You figured out the karate stuff from the tapes, right?"

"Your dad was a help-he'd studied a long time ago. But mostly from the pictures." Toshiro's face was a little dreamy and distant. "Some of it was difficult, but I had balance from surfing. The stances you just do until your legs get so tired that the only way to keep erect is to do them correctly. Then you experiment, I mean, they had thermographs and electromyographs of these old karate masters going through their moves, so you can make pretty good guesses about what was going on under their uniforms, but finally you just have to make guesses."

"I think you did pretty well."

"I wish they had recorded the Grandmaster, Mas Oyama, in his prime. He could kill bulls with his bare hands."

"No." His mind swam. Edgar Sikes, bull-killer. Master of Men.

Toshiro turned off his shower and toweled vigorously.

Edgar followed him. "You know, you're really smart."

Toshiro shrugged. "You're the computer whiz."

"But I never realized all the intelligence that goes into learning to use your body. I mean the yoga, and the surfing, and the karate . . . it's physical smarts, but it's intelligence. You must be as smart as Aaron is. Like Trish is as strong as he is."

Toshiro looked at him, a touch of reserve leashing the energy in the black eyes. "So?"

"So why do you both follow him? He calls the shots, doesn't he?"

Toshiro paused, and Edgar thought that he saw the muscles along his jaw hunching tightly. Then his friend and teacher relaxed. "I guess I'm a little like Justin," he said. "Neither of us wants to be a leader. Justin doesn't think anybody has to be leader. I'm realistic, but it won't be me. Give me the sand, and the sun. And time to work on the old Samurai stuff. Hai!"

Toshiro's left foot whipped up and at Edgar's jaw. That wasn't full speed . . . Edgar was thinking and then realized that he had blocked it, automatically, with his right hand.

Toshiro smiled. "Some must be students. Otherwise there could be no teachers. Who wants to live in such a world?"

Chapter 16.

THREE SEDUCTIONS.

The surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them.

FRANCIS BACON, Essays

Weeks pa.s.sed, and a semblance of normality returned to the colony. The Star Born mostly brooded at Surf's Up and avoided interacting with the Earth Born. Justin stayed at the Bluff. When Jessica came home from Surf's Up, she rarely spoke to her parents, although Cadmann tried to reach out to her.

Then, on a day when Geographic's satellites warned that storm clouds were sweeping in from the mainland, Jessica called her father to ask if she could come for dinner.

There was no mention of any of the unpleasantness during the call. In fact, there had been little public protest of Zack's proclamation. And that, in itself, should have warned them.

Ruth Moskowitz adjusted her chamel's harness for a little more give around the shoulders. The beast's name was Tarzan. All six of the tamed chamels were males. The females were too large and irritable to domesticate, and they'd only captured one before the expeditions into the forests northeast of Deadwood Pa.s.s had ceased.

Male chamels were horse-size and had the exaggerated grace of a praying mantis. They were intelligent and fast, with excellent pack instincts. Only three of them were really tamed, but there was every evidence that Tarzan and the other two might be just the first of thousands. There were some very special reasons why tamed chamels might be ideal hunting mounts.

Ruth had never seen a kangaroo, although the Chakas were thinking of developing one from the fertilized ova banks, but Tarzan reminded her of those in Ca.s.sandra's pictures. Tarzan looked like a kangaroo with feathery antennae and stronger forelegs. He was tan with a greenish tinge, but his back was changing color even now to match Ruth's blue denim outfit.

Tarzan balanced himself on his strong hind legs and reached around to snap at her irritably. She tugged her reins expertly, and spurred him with heels to the ribs. He whistled in exasperation and galloped around the corral for the fiftieth time that day.

She wove him in between carefully s.p.a.ced stakes, wheeled him, jumped him first over a low gate and then over one three feet in height. They were into high golden gra.s.s now, and Tarzan's coat was turning to gold.

Chamels jumped oddly. They would hit the ground, sink, seem to pause for an instant, and then unwind from that deep crouch and spring into the air as if from a standing position. Their hind legs were so powerful that they landed with no shock at all. She loved Tarzan, and everything about training him.

She and Tarzan were getting into a rhythm now, speeding around the quarter-mile perimeter exhilaratingly fast, occasionally dipping into the center of the pen to try weaving and jumping maneuvers.

She was so caught up in her work that at first she did not notice a flat, regular clapping sound. Flushed and sweating, she turned in the saddle to see Aaron Tragon, mounted on a gray horse, just the other side of the gate.

"Bravo," he said, striking his palms together.

She smiled shyly, and trotted Tarzan over to him. Aaron's horse was a mare, a quarter horse named Zodiac with a raucous disposition. The mare tossed her mottled head and eyed Tarzan suspiciously. Horses and chamels existed in an uneasy truce at best.

"You're really bringing him along," Aaron said. His golden hair was tied back in a ponytail, and he wore a loose buccaneer-style shirt cut almost to the navel, crisscrossed with leather thongs. His lips were half opened in a lazy smile.

"What brings you out this way?" Ruth asked. "I thought you were out at Surf's Up."

"Man does not live by wave alone," he laughed. "So what brings you here?"

He looked at her for about thirty seconds without speaking, and Ruth felt her cheeks start to burn. She had to look away.

"To tell you the truth, I just wanted to ask you on a picnic."

She snapped her head up. Her throat felt constricted. "Me?"

"Sure. We had a great catch last week, and we've smoked it. I made fresh bread last night, and I have enough sandwiches for a small army. You look hungry enough for a division."

She felt her heart speed up, had the terrible, crazy thought that she must be dreaming. She felt as if she were falling down a deep well, and made a powerful effort of will to bring herself up sharp.

"Well?" he asked. There was a world of insinuation in his question. His eyes twinkled. "I tell you what," he said. "I'll race you to the grove."

"Winner?" she asked.

"Takes all," he answered, and her cheeks burned again.