Futures Near and Far (26 page)

“You’re awfully quiet. Have you been following all this
okay?”

“Fine,” I said, staring at his Far Side desk calendar. “Just
wondering what I’m going to do now.”

“It’s manageable, I would think,” persisted the specialist.
“Over time the symptom may extinguish itself. Meanwhile, there are plenty of
vr
sports that where a slight hesitation
won’t matter. Tennis, perhaps. Certainly bowling. Have you tried golf?”

o0o

“Log on,” I ordered my
vr
deck, and listed the code for Mr. Callahan’s headquarters
dojo
.

“Password?” asked the deck in its pleasant, motherly voice.

I was surprised when it accepted the one I gave. I hadn’t
tried it in eight months. I’d expected Callahan to have dropped me from the roster of those who had clearance into
his
vr
conference address.

The headquarters
dojo
foyer materialized around me. Out
on the floor several players were loosening up. Mr. Callahan was not there; he
would make his appearance precisely at the hour, if he followed his habit. Six
minutes to go.

I felt like a damn fool. I avoided the glances of
dojo
-mates who recognized me. I didn’t
need their pity. I’d been a player who
counted. A player who was going places. Now I wasn’t. Everyone knew
that. That knowledge had kept me away the better part of a year.

Yet retirement hadn’t
worked. Karate-do had written too
many chapters in my book. Call it an addiction, maybe. In any event, I’d
decided I’d rather be able to add a page or two to the narrative once in a
while than let the work lie totally fallow.

For six minutes I paced the foyer. Right on time, Mr.
Callahan winked in on his dais of honor. He raised an eyebrow at me and
gestured at the workout floor where everyone was lining up for the opening
ceremony. I took my place with the others of my rank. Callahan continued in
silence to the front of the room.

I blew out a pent-up breath. First hurdle crossed. I was
allowed to resume training.

The class knelt and bowed. Warm-ups began. I fell into the
familiar routine. With each callisthenic, and later with each move of
kihon
— basics — I relaxed more and
more. This was what I needed. I belonged here.

Finally we wrapped up a choreographed attack drill and lined
up for sparring. Callahan had not taken much note of me — just a slight posture
adjustment during kata practice — but
I didn’t let what he did or did not do affect me. I was here simply to run the
paces. I’d worked out as hard as possible. Harder, even, in that I’d set my
surrogate’s default so that “I” was just a bit out of shape. Normally, like
most
vr
players, I maintained my
body’s programming at the prime level of strength, agility, youth, and
flexibility possible for my morph. Some players complained that they wanted to
be able to switch back and forth to an array of differently configured
surrogates — larger and more powerful I would assume. But I was happy with what
vr
hardware and brain physiology
allowed. It gave me my body as it would have existed had my legs never been
pulverized and were it possible to remain age twenty, perfectly toned, and
completely fresh. The challenge was not to forget to work on the stuff
technology couldn’t cover. Tonight the extra strain kept me focussed. I needed
that if I were to face an opponent.

Mr. Callahan called up a dozen members of the class and
matched them up with partners. He skipped me. I sat twitching as my colleagues
were set free to test their skills, as I wanted to do.

Or rather as I had to do, even if I came away as unhappy and
defeated as before.

The first group sat down.
Mr. Callahan looked straight at me.
My heart rate sped up. To my frustration he selected a combination of
sparring partners that left me out.

And so it went. He called up a total of seven rounds of
players. Some of my buddies got to spar three or four times. Aside from me, the
only students he left out were the ones he always left out, chiefly those
players who were by nature or philosophy opposed to the active combat portion
of the discipline. The rabbits, the jerk from Oakland called them.

“Time to close class,” the grandmaster said. It was over. He
hadn’t given me an opportunity to prove myself. I’d been relegated to the list
of those who required special handling. He might as well have hung up one of
those blue and white placards you see all the time on the best parking places.

I logged off the instant we finished the closing ceremony.

“How was class?” Dad asked as I rumbled across the hallway
to the bathroom.

“Chickenshit,” I said.

o0o

Though attending the next workout gave me as much pleasure
as eating sawdust, I came. Again, Callahan
didn’t allow me to spar. Nor did he the next few times.

I could’ve gone elsewhere to train. The Sacramento-based
martial arts virtuality where I’d started out years before would have been
delighted to take me back. But I’d practiced with the best. Accepting anything
else would have been another kind of surrender.

I also could’ve asked
sensei
why he was treating me as he was. I didn’t. Traditional
dojo
etiquette precluded a student from questioning his master’s
style of instruction. Call it a silly custom, but to me ritual is the essence
of karate. Callahan would accept me by the book, or not at all. I could be just
as Japanese as he.

After six weeks, I did speak with Keith Nakayama. We were
lingering after a class, refining a kata
after the other students had winked out. “Is he ever going to let me spar
again?”

“Does it matter?” Keith asked.

I cocked my head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Sparring is a late addition to karate-do,” Keith reminded
me. “Gogen Yamaguchi introduced it in 1935. You don’t have to spar to be a
legitimate
karateka
. Mr. Callahan
himself stopped sparring forty years ago, and didn’t begin again until the
vr
renaissance. All through his middle
years he practiced only kata and drills, until the arthritis made him give up
that, too. Nobody ever stopped calling him a master. He went from seventh to
tenth
dan
in that time.”

“Not the same,” I said. “That was his choice.”

“Oh?”

Keith sounded like a learned grandpa. And come to think of
it, that was exactly right. Nakayama was one of Callahan’s
sempai
— his senior students. No matter how young he might look
standing there in front of me, he had to be at least seventy years old. To him,
I was an infant.

What was he saying? Clearly, he was serious that giving up
sparring altogether seemed to him an honorable option, one that he felt completely
comfortable with and had at one point chosen for himself. Even now, in
vr
mode, he rarely entered tournaments,
though he participated regularly in freestyle within the context of the class.
He was a damn good fighter, but I strongly suspected that when middle age had
hit him and he’d cut back on
kumite
,
he hadn’t felt it to be a great loss.

But Callahan? He’d taken his first major title at age
eighteen. Men like him didn’t just gracefully accept being put out to pasture.
That’s why he was world champion in his weight class now.

“If . . .” I stammered, “if
sensei
understands what it’s like for me right now, why is he doing
this to me? Shouldn’t he be pushing me to spar, instead of cutting me
off?”

Keith waved his hands vaguely. “I don’t know what he’s up
to, but I trust him. Why not give it some time, and see what happens?”

“How much time?” I asked. Too much had already passed.

Keith smiled strangely, and shrugged.

o0o

I wasn’t sure I had as much faith in Mr. Callahan as Keith
did. On the other hand, I didn’t have any solutions of my own. I kept working
out. Callahan maintained the moratorium on my sparring. Three months passed
before I began to notice a change.

My partner that night was
a very quick player named Tim Bromage. We were engaged in
yakusoku kumite
— prearranged sparring
drills. This was not a circumstance I
enjoyed. Tim wasn’t a problem for me during unrestricted freestyle.
Quick as he was, I knew ways to ruin his balance
and break his concentration. But in
yakusoku
kumite
, it was a different story. Every move was pre-determined. One
side was the attacker, one the defender, and neither partner could throw in
unrehearsed techniques. Much of the practice was by Mr. Callahan’s count. This
left me no opportunity to use intimidation, fakes, alternate angles of attack,
or superior pacing. Form was everything. With my repertoire stifled, Tim had a
way of getting his front kick in on me before I could step back and block. He
was simply too fast for me. It was frustrating as hell.

But not tonight. Every
time Tim kicked, I caught him. Every damn time.

“Good,” said Mr. Callahan as he passed by. It was the first
comment he’d directed at me, other than routine instructions, since the day at
the hospital.

A few workouts later, the class was again immersed in a session of
yakusoku kumite
. This time my partner was a wide, very
powerful
san dan
. His punches were
slow. In freestyle, I could find a million openings on him thanks to his
ponderosity, but if he ever landed one, it was bad news. That night, of course,
the nature of the practice didn’t allow me to get out of the way, and though he
was supposed to pull his punches, I expected to be bruised.

Instead, I blocked him. Powerful as he was I succeeded,
thirty times out of thirty, in performing the defensive technique so precisely,
so well-timed, that his fists never once struck their target.

“Good,” Mr. Callahan said again.

I got the idea.
Sensei
had been emphasizing defense more than usual. Not in an obvious way, but with
such regularity that I couldn’t help but improve that part of my repertoire.
I’d never cared much whether I perfected my blocks — “a good offense is the
best defense” was my motto. He was steering me toward a new personal style.

All right, you fucker, I
thought. I don’t know why you don’t just say it aloud, but if those are the
dues you’re asking me to pay, I’ll become the best damn blocker in the
universe.

For nine more months, I
honed countermoves to every type of offensive technique — even those
that attackers never used. By the end of that time there were still players
better at blocks than I, but I was closing the gap.

One night Mr. Callahan announced at the beginning of the
freestyle section of class, “We’re going to do an exercise I haven’t brought
out for the past few years. Mr. Nakayama and Mr. Titelman will demonstrate.”

The two men, the highest-ranked players there that night
other than Callahan himself, rose and faced each other. “Mr. Titelman may use
only offensive techniques. Mr. Nakayama may only defend.”

The grandmaster gave the command to engage. The two
hachi
dan
s merged in a flurry of technique. Accustomed as I was to
high-level play, my mouth still dropped open. They were awesome. Titelman’s
combinations blended one into the next,
minus the hesitation that came from worrying about counterattacks. Deft, compact, and quick, he radiated such a command of his movements he seemed
unstoppable.

Yet Keith thwarted him.
With inhuman precision my pal deflected, avoided, and battered his opponent’s
fists and feet out of the way. He didn’t look
at all
like a defender. As Titelman kicked, Keith caught him by the
ankle and swept him off his feet. As Titelman swung a
furi uchi
— a whiplike strike — to Keith’s temple, the latter
ducked under it and shoved his attacker far back out of range. Titelman spent
more time on the floor than the guy who should, by rights, have been a complete
victim. It took him half the match to land a single blow.

They bowed to each other and sat down. Callahan pointed to
me, “You will be the defender. Mr. Stevens will attack.”

At last. Though not true sparring, the exercise was the
removal of a tether. I hopped up quickly.

As we faced one another, the
dojo
reprogrammed our appearances.
Stevens’s rugged features dissolved into those of a generic opponent.
Yet for once I did know who I was up against. Stevens was an ex-Marine, a
dedicated
ni dan
with a fighting
style as aggressive as mine had been.

“Hajime!”
cried
the grandmaster.

I hesitated, wanting to leap forward as Keith had done, but
Stevens raced in and my cringing reflex kicked in strong as ever. But I had
time to fade back. My hips twisted, removing my groin — his target — from the
line of fire. I snagged his foot with my palm and guided it away. It was a
classic move known as
sukui uke
— scooping
block. I’d practiced it a million times that year.

He punched. I danced aside and leaped forward, turning him
so that I ended up behind him, my body tight against his. He tried to whirl,
lashing out with his elbows and heels, but I had a good grip on his
gi
, and for five glorious seconds, he
couldn’t touch me. A snarl of frustration leaked from his throat, and my mood
climbed to a height it hadn’t seen in nearly two years.

Good things don’t last. Stevens broke free of my grip. His
elbow connected with my ear. I staggered back, leaving way too much of an
opening. Blocking furiously, I managed to hold on for about thirty seconds
before he knocked me down and killed me with a kick to the back of my neck.

Yet as I logged back on in an uninjured surrogate, I didn’t
feel defeated. Keith, seeing my glow, winked at me as I returned to my place in
the line. He and I both knew that if I’d had to spar a player like Stevens a
year earlier, without being able to punch or kick, I would have been wiped out
in half the time. A warm river of satisfaction percolated through my system.