Beowulf's Children

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 do

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 spi

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 gri

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!"