Beowulf's Children (27 page)

"So we made camp at night, and the next morning the First set us collecting coffee. We got bored with that, so they took over and we went exploring. An hour later we were looking at a pterodon nest. It was below us, across jagged rock cliffs.

"We watched it until we got hungry, and then we went back for lunch. Trish told Zack. Zack told us not to go anywhere near a pterodon nest, and Hendrick backed him. Aaron, you asked Zack what he thought would happen. He didn't know. Hendrick didn't know.

"We went off again. Mack Reinecke led us around to a place we could get down into the nest. Mack was in the nest—"

"So was I," Aaron said. "And four eggs, way bigger than hen's eggs, and leathery. I took one."

"Yes you did," Toshiro said. "And then one of the adults came back. We all scrambled away as best we could. The other big bird caught us coming up the rocks. That one slashed Jessica across the head and neck, a great gaudy scary slash. Aaron fought them off with rocks while the rest of us got away.

"It took a skeeter to find Mack. He was part eaten. The pterodons knocked him off the rocks."

"All right, Toshiro," Aaron said. "I'll even give you this. Zack and Hendrick gave us the same advice we'd give the Grendel Biters now. We acted like we had ice on our minds. We were children."

"So what will we do?" Katya asked quietly.

"Go back."

The Second looked at each other. Nobody said anything until Chaka asked, "How?"

Aaron shrugged. "Once we decide what we'll do, the how becomes a mere tactics and logistical detail. Are we agreed that we'll go?"

There was a chorus of ayes, Chaka's not among them. Aaron noticed. He raised an interrogative eyebrow. "Have we a problem?"

"Maybe," Chaka said. "Edgar is worried about the weather."

Suddenly, Edgar's onscreen attention was theirs. "There's no doubt about it, the sun is heating up, and the local life-forms—"

"Wow," Trish giggled. "How much? I mean if this is the end we should have a hell of a party—"

"It's not going to cremate us, Trish!" Edgar said indignantly. "You have apocalyptic tastes."

"Oh," she pouted. "Sorry."

Like hell, Chaka thought. She's playing a game, and I can't see it.

"It's normal variance," Edgar said. "Tau Ceti has a fifty-year cycle. We're coming up on the maximum output. More energy means more variable weather. Higher winds. Weather gets less predictable... say, two days ahead instead of four. I've had Cassandra mark out regions on the mainland where we could get tornadoes." A map replaced Edgar's face for a long moment; then he reappeared. The Scribeveldt was an angry red. "Here in Camelot we could get hurricanes and typhoons along the north and west coast. The ecology seems to be heating up too, but you'll have to ask the Chakas about that."

"The wild Joeys around the Stronghold have disappeared," Chaka said.

"The tame Joeys were tearing up their claws trying to burrow. It was making Mary Ann Weyland crazy until she turned them loose. They burrowed in and estivated. At sea we're getting eels—"

"Eels?" Jessica asked.

"There've been over thirty eels since Big Mama," Chaka said. "Eels in nearly every Camelot stream. Father thinks the solar cycle is the trigger. More ultraviolet, and the eels start to spawn. Probably triggers other biological reactions too, but there isn't enough biology on this island to notice."

"But there'll be a lot on the mainland?" Aaron asked. "Interesting.

We'd better make sure Edgar is watching that, too. Edgar?"

"Yeah. Aaron, weather problems will get serious in about four months.

Tornadoes that can tear Robor to tinsel before you can say shit-oh-dear. We could do worse than to leave Robor in his nice safe hangar for the whole season. Watch the mainland from orbit, send some probes, let the First cool down for a year. We can collect so many good questions that it'll drive them crazy by the time the weather settles down."

Chaka waited for Aaron to destroy Edgar. He was surprised when Aaron mildly said, "Sitting on our asses isn't exactly to my taste, but it certainly makes a good default option. Can you and Chaka work up some probes for the interesting mainland ecologies? Chaka, we do this right and we'll have your father foaming at the mouth."

"Hell, yes," Chaka said.

"You'll work on that? Maybe you could talk to Edgar in the bedroom for a while."

Edgar coughed, seeming almost embarrassed. "Not too long a talk, okay?

I have an appointment with Toshiro."

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."

"Asset," 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 assumed 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 Cassandra'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 damned 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 asshole 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 mass. In Japanese, 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 analytic 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 assuage 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?"

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