The Musashi Flex (37 page)

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Authors: Steve Perry

BOOK: The Musashi Flex
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Shaw barreled in, changed levels, and Mourn reacted, reaching for the block—
bad idea
—!
Shaw slapped Mourn on the left side of his head, a little bit above the temple, so the strike rocked him, but didn’t gray him out—
Shaw punched again with his other hand, and all Mourn had time to do was tense the muscles of his belly for the impact—
If Shaw stayed there and kept pounding away, Mourn would have been in deep shit—he turned, managed to get a low elbow in the way, but the counterattack with the other elbow to the high line was a full beat behind—
Shaw laughed and leaped away.
That was a tactical error. He wanted to damage Mourn, back off and look to see, then come in again, striking like a shark or a dire-wolf, rather than staying and clinching. If Mourn could catch him, grapple him still for long enough, he could hit back—
Shaw bore in again, and since he was depending on his velocity, he left an opening, the solar plexus. He wasn’t worried, probably was sure he could cover it in time.
Mourn started his punch when Shaw was still a meter and a half away, at the same time, covering his face for the high punch that Shaw’s lowered shoulder promised was coming—
Mourn’s block was good, it deflected Shaw’s attack so it missed. His punch was better—it hit Shaw solidly, aided by the terrific speed of the man’s attack—
Shaw reeled away, gasping for air.
Mourn bore in, moving as fast as he could—
Too slow, he could see, but he threw one of the attack
sambuts,
high to the face, then low with the same hand changing the line halfway through, going for the belly, and the other elbow horizontally for Shaw’s head—
Shaw blocked all three attacks, but they kept him off-balance enough so that he couldn’t generate a counter—
Shaw broke away, retreated to gain himself room—
He’s too fast to trade techniques with
.
How do you beat a man who can fly rings around you? You can’t move quickly enough to swat a hummingbird . . .
Shaw came in, and this time, Mourn knew he wasn’t going to throw a couple of punches and back off, he would stay and use his superior swiftness to try and end it—
How do you swat a hummingbird? You don’t—you have to . . .
Shaw fired off a kick and a punch, and Mourn knew what he had to do—
He didn’t try to block either attack. He opened his arms wide, as if to offer himself up for the slaughter—
The kick caught him on the thigh, it hurt and it would slow him, but that didn’t matter now—
The punch smashed into his left cheek—the bone cracked and his vision flashed red and gray, but Shaw was there—
Mourn wrapped his arms around Shaw, pulling him in tight.
It didn’t matter how fast he was,
if he couldn’t move
—
!
Shaw’s instinctive reaction was to try and push away, but Mourn wasn’t having any of that. He snapped his head forward, twisted his neck slightly so that the head butt was where his horn would be if he’d had any, and slammed Shaw’s nose—
Shaw’s nose broke, and the impact stunned him. He struggled to escape—
Mourn butted him again, slightly higher and to the left, and felt the impact jar him as he smacked into the orbit of Shaw’s right eye—
Shaw went slack, dazed even more—
Mourn slid his left foot forward a hair, hooked his instep around Shaw’s right ankle, and butted him again, forehead to forehead. His vision swam with Brownian motes—the impact was nearly enough to knock himself out, but not quite—he had the momentum and the intent, he knew it was coming—
Shaw almost collapsed. Mourn let his bear hug go, threw a short elbow to Shaw’s upper chest, and pulled inward and upward with his left foot, sweeping Shaw’s leg clear of the ground, leaving him no support on that side—
Shaw fell, hard, and Mourn dropped with him, bringing the point of his elbow straight down and just below the xiphoid process. The nerve plexus there was not very well protected, and the impact knocked Shaw’s breath from him—
Mourn twisted, and used his left elbow, a strike to Shaw’s right temple, to finish it. Shaw went limp, out cold.
When he managed to slow his own breathing, Mourn got back to his feet. He had won the title he’d wanted. He had defended it against a man who should have beaten him. He had added a ninety-seventh step to the art he’d discovered.
Not a bad couple of days, when you thought about it.
“If he’s dead, so are you,” a woman said.
Mourn turned and saw a beautiful brunette standing there. She had a spring gun in her hand, pointed at him.
“He’s not dead, just unconscious,” he said. “He’ll have a headache, probably a concussion when he wakes up.”
“Back away.”
Mourn did so.
The woman kept him covered, the pistol rock-steady as she moved toward Shaw.
“Put it down, sister, or you’ll be taking a nap, too.”
Mourn looked to his left. Cayne stood there, her hand wand aimed at the woman who was bending over Shaw.
The woman looked. She tossed the spring gun to the side and reached down to touch Shaw’s face. Shaw groaned. The woman smiled.
Cayne walked closer, stiff, her weapon still pointed at the woman.
“I thought you weren’t coming to any more of these.”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because if you died, the man who did it wasn’t going to be walking away.”
He smiled.
“What now?”
“Now? I’m going to put in a call to the runners. I’m retiring.”
“You serious?”
“Yes, fem, I am serious. As serious as an old guy like me gets.”
Her face lit with a big grin.
“Ellis?” the woman cradling Shaw’s head with one hand said.
“What happened?” Shaw said, his voice just above a whisper. He turned his head to the side and vomited.
Now it was the woman’s face that shone with a smile, even as she wiped puke from his lips with her bare fingers. Mourn nodded to himself. Cayne had come to avenge him, if necessary. The woman with Shaw must have had the same idea.
He hoped Shaw was worthy of that kind of care.
He hoped he was, too.
“We’re done here,” he said to Cayne. “Let’s go.”
35
Cayne came into the cottage. Mourn had heard her return once she’d cleared the courtyard’s gate and noticed that her steps weren’t quite even. He saw why she was off-balance as she stepped into view:
She was carrying a guitar case.
“Happy birthday, Mourn.”
He blinked. “How did you know that?”
“I’m a trained journalist, remember?”
She put the case on the table. It was, like his previous one, spun-carbon fiber—light, but very strong. He unsnapped the six latches that held it shut.
Inside was a cedar-topped classical, with a Gilbert-style bridge and tuners, the fretboard made of what looked like rosewood instead of ebony. Mourn carefully removed the instrument from the case.
The sides and back were a rich, striated, beautifully patterned brown.
“The wood is something called claro walnut,” she said. “Not exactly the same as black walnut, but in the same family.”
He nodded. Inside, the maker’s label was old and somewhat faded, the script ornate, but legible: Jason Pickard. The serial number was “2,” and the date “2003.”
Lord. So old.
Mourn strummed an open D-chord. The deepness of the basses and the resonance of the box filled the cube. It was tuned down a full step, and the high string was a hair flat. He adjusted it, belled the twelfth string harmonic, wow—!
“It’s tuned down a full step,” Cayne said. “And that just exhausted my entire knowledge of the thing. The guy I got it from didn’t know anything else about it.”
He played a scale. A wonderful instrument, almost in the same class with the murdered Bogdanovich. Almost.
He smiled at her. “This is the best present anybody ever gave me. Thank you.” Then the smile faded. “You can’t afford something like this,” he said.
She shrugged.
“Cayne . . .”
“I sold my camera,” she said.
He stared at her as if she had just levitated on her own. “What?”
“I’ve stored all the footage I’ll ever need,” she said. “Not that it matters—I’m not going to produce the documentary anyhow.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Because there are bigger things going on here, Lazlo. You know it, I know it. Something more important than an entcom show on Flexers. I can get a new camera if I ever need one, you can find those anywhere. But this guitar? There’s only one of them just like it, and you need it.”
He nodded. “You can’t know how much this means to me.”
“Yeah, I can. I—I love you, you know?”
He smiled. “Yeah. I know. I love you, too.”
Her face became radiant.
“What, you didn’t think I was going to say it?”
“Well, I couldn’t be sure,” she said. “I mean, I
knew
it, but it’s nice to hear. Sometimes men can be dense. You more than most.”
He laughed.
“So, what now?”
He nodded. “I think maybe I’ll open that school. But it needs to be about more than just teaching people how to fight. It needs to be about teaching them why to fight—and who.”
“You think?”
“Your idea. I’ve got a little money, enough to get started somewhere. We develop a curriculum, hope we can attract the right kind of students.”
“Who would be . . . ?”
“Those with a lot of patience. I’m guessing we won’t be ready to go out and change the galaxy for a while. I don’t think I’ll live to see the day, but maybe I can teach somebody who might, or who can then teach somebody else who might. Got to start somewhere.”
“Big step.”
“Just a first step. Not that big.”
There was a knock at the door.
“We expecting anybody?” she asked.
“I think maybe so.”
It was Shaw and the woman who’d had the gun. Shaw didn’t look all that much worse for wear, given the fight they’d had.
“Mourn. This is Luna Azul.”
“Shaw. F. Azul. Come in. This is Cayne Sola.”
Shaw and Azul entered. The two women inspected each other briefly.
Cayne was leery. “Mourn, I have to point out that this guy tried to stomp you yesterday—and his girlfriend here pointed a gun at you.”
“I recall. That was yesterday. Things aren’t the same today.”
“I need you to teach me your system,” Shaw said. “I had a cheat that should have let me win against any normal fighter, and you beat me even so. If I’d had what you know, I wouldn’t have needed the drug.”
“Maybe,” Mourn said. “No guarantee that’s so.”
“But I know it’s true,” Shaw said. “I have to learn it.”
“And if you do, you’ll try again?”
Shaw shook his head negatively. “I don’t think so. I realized something. I wanted to have the skill to be the best, and I couldn’t get it, which is why I developed the chem. But you
have
the ability. That’s what I want. It doesn’t matter if I get the title, as long as I know I
could
win it fairly if I wanted. If I
knew
. . .”
“I understand.”
“Lazlo . . .”
He turned to Cayne. “We’re looking for students, right? Why not M. Shaw? And what about you, F. Azul?”
“I go where he goes.”
Cayne said, “But can you trust him?”
“He gave me the ninety-seventh step, the last one I needed to complete the art. I don’t think I would have gotten it against anybody else. He has something we need.”
“What?”
“What we talked about. Going down a road other than the one we’re on.
Doing
something.”
Shaw looked at her. “I can lube a few gears,” he said. “I have a fair amount of money. It comes in handy.”
“For what?”
“Anything you want. As long as Mourn will show me his art, I’ll fund whatever he wants. I can buy a country and make him king.”
Mourn laughed. “Could be a whole new game. We could put together a place where we can educate people, teach them the things they’ll need to know to get the galaxy’s wheels out of the mud and onto dry ground. Isn’t that what you wanted, Cayne?”
“Maybe. You think we can do it?”
“Who can say? Worst that can happen is we die trying.”
She was silent. “What the hell,” she said. She looked at Azul.
Azul said, “I, uh, know a few tricks that might come in handy. We can probably keep these two on track.”
Mourn felt a sense of something in the air, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it felt
right,
whatever it was. What the hell. Might as well give it a shot.

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