by Dave Smeds
Later, I bounce from seat to seat, pushing off with feet, toes, elbows, knees, fingers, hands. Never has Newton’s Third Law seemed more real. Even breathing, I remind myself for the thousandth time, can be a source of propulsion.
Just remember the rules, I say silently. The karate technique will take care of itself.
It seems like only a few moments later that I am hearing my students offer words of encouragement. My name has been called. I push off for the sphere. Eunice Hershey is arriving from another direction. Once more, the referee ties the red ribbon to my belt. We are inside the sphere, waiting for the command.
I glance into her eyes. She is intimidated. I haven’t failed to make the quarter finals in ten years, back on Earth. Somewhere in the distance the referee shouts.
She takes the offensive. I stay at my side of the sphere. She is leaving me an opening to the ribs just beneath her elbow. My foot takes advantage of it.
Time is moving very strangely. It seems like an hour before the whistles blow, the flags wave, the referee calls the score.
“Yoko geri, chu dan. One half-point, red.”
More intimidation. I begin to smile. The old feeling is back. I have the mind set that has carried me through so many matches. Eunice sees it.
She tries a less direct approach this time. Off to my left, then across in front of me. Her foot licks out as she passes. Not close enough for a point; I don’t block. She continues past. I launch off. We cross twice at the center of the sphere, engaging tentatively. I land again, this time on the velcro. I stop, and turn. I know she will be off to my right.
She is not.
I feel a wind brush my temple. My block is almost in time.
The whistles blow.
I tread the velcro back to my starting position, listening to it go scritch, scritch, scritch, feeling it tug at my feet.
“Ura uchi, jo dan,” the referee announces. “One half-point, white. One half-point, red. Continue.”
Eunice seems surprised, as if uncertain she had really made the score. She shouldn’t be; it was a clean technique.
She takes to the air again. I decide to move the slow way, walking the velcro. I must wait for the right opening, the one sure to be worth the point. There are no second chances at this stage. There. She is open to her face. I strike.
And miss. Not by much, but wide enough not to tempt the judges. I continue to the other side of the sphere. She is charging me again. I block her with my left leg, shoving her back across the sphere. When she returns, I am ready.
No. Her knee is in the way. I halt my technique.
I misjudge how limber she is. Her leg twists impossibly far, bringing her body with it. She makes contact with my side.
The maneuver has left a broad opening, which I take, but the whistles are already echoing.
The referee must be announcing the score, but I don’t hear it. I offer Eunice my congratulations, and precede her out of the sphere. The red ribbon is removed, and I am soon in the midst of my strangely quiet group of students.
“Your strike was much better than her kick,” Sally blurts.
“But it was after her kick,” I reply calmly.
They offer more condolences, which I barely hear, and some part of me shuttles words back in their direction. Presently Sally is due to perform another kata, and I insist that they go on without me.
What the hell. I have enough trophies already. I spot Joe, still in his perch, and float over his way.
“Close match,” he says. I decide he means mine, not the one going on in the sphere right now. We watch that one, and the next, which features a woman player. She loses.
“What do you say we get a beer?” I ask. The only alcohol available is outside the stadium, in the space station proper, where there’s gravity, and an old man can tell up from down.
“Sounds good to me.”
We unstrap and head for the exits, gliding like a pair of pterodactyls.
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INTRODUCTION TO “A MARATHON RUNNER IN THE HUMAN RACE”
I think of this as the third of my “nanotech” stories because I wrote it after “Suicidal Tendencies” and “Reef Apes,” but you could say it’s the first, because it takes place before the end of the 21st Century, at a point where it has only recently become possible to use nanotechnology to roll back the clock and make the old young again. The other two stories are set further down the line.
What this story brings to my mind is what Theodore Sturgeon once called the space between the lines. That is, whenever I look back on it, what I remember first and foremost is not the particulars of the story, but where I was, what I was doing, and who I was with during its creation. Most of all, I think of a beloved workshop.
From late 1988 until the summer of 1993, I belonged to a monthly writers’ group known as the Melville Nine. The number was an inside joke; there never were nine of us. We aimed for ten and went as high as fourteen. “Melville” was chosen both for its literary connotations and from where we gathered, on Melville Circle in Richmond, CA, at the late Janet Berliner’s elegant fourth-floor condo on the shore of San Francisco Bay. Its members, mostly professional writers, at various times included Joel Richards, James P. Killus, Risa Aratyr, Ron Montana, Lisa Mason, Martha Soukup, Grania Davis, Lisa Swallow, Marina Fitch, P.D. Cacek, and Lori Ann White.
I never missed a meeting. Workshopping is my bread and butter. I’ve been part of some that did me no good, and my non-sf college fiction-writing classes may even have set me back, but by and large, I can think of no better way to improve one’s craft than to present one’s work to a cadre of trusted colleagues and listen with an open mind to their critiques. From those colleagues, I get brainstorming, refinements, confirmation, inspiration. Sometimes a draft would change radically as a result of this feedback. Other times the influence was modest but still valuable — “Marathon Runner” is in that camp. I still recall the smile from Janis Lonnquist, one of our amateur members who has since sold many teleplays, that told me my character had the appeal I intended. I vividly recall brand-new member Risa Aratyr — also an amateur then but who had already completed her novel Hunter of the Light (HarperPrism, 1995) — wanting me to do more with the nanotech possibilities. Being new to the group, she was unaware I had already done most of what she suggested in “Suicidal Tendencies” and “Reef Apes.”
After May, 1993, Janet left the Bay Area. A fragment of the group went on without her, calling ourselves the Will Write For Food workshop, but the tide had turned. We never settled on a permanent venue. A variety of circumstances quickly reduced our roster. Ultimately the monthly meetings became six times or four or even once per year until they petered out altogether in 2005. I still participate in workshops here and there when I can, but it’s not the same. When I was in the midst of a Melville Nine meeting, I was a man at home.
A MARATHON RUNNER IN THE HUMAN RACE
Autumn leaves floated onto the patio. Neil Corbin counted them: Three from the maple, six from the ornamental plum. Another shifting of the seasons — what did he care?
He keened his ears for the familiar chorus of shuffling shoes or the clicking of Joe and Al’s daily game of dominoes. But not a person stirred, and none were visible save crazy Anne over in the shade of the umbrella table. Were it not for the birdsong in the trees, Neil would have sworn his deafness had never been cured.
A car turned into the driveway — another source of silence but for the low moan of tires on concrete. The vehicle stopped mere yards from Neil’s chair. A muscular, casually dressed young man emerged.
“Sorry I’m late, Gramps. Are you ready?”
Neil accepted his grandson’s help in rising. “You’re looking good,” the old man said.
“You will, too, Gramps. Come on. The clinic’s expecting you.”
Neil removed his elbow from the young man’s grip. “I only move at one speed, Matthew. You know that.” He padded toward the car, wobbling but making steady progress.
&n
bsp; Matthew rolled his eyes, piled the luggage in the trunk, and went to the driver’s side.
“You forgot the trophy,” Neil said.
The item lay beside the chair where Neil had been sitting. Grumbling, Matthew retrieved it, placing it in his grandfather’s lap rather than waste time reopening the trunk.
Neil’s hands closed over the statuette above the bronze plate that bore his name. His hands automatically stroked the contours of the running figure, but his attention wandered elsewhere, soaking in one last view of the place that had been his home for so long. His glance tracked to the empty, dusty windows of the far wing. His room had been the third from the end, just over the sign reading “Shadyhome Retirement Community.”
The once-immaculate grounds bore the first small signs of neglect. The grape vine he had planted when he came to live there hung lush with fruit in the arbor by the fish pond, its trunk almost as fat as a tree. He’d never seen so many grapes on it, ripe and ready. His fellow residents always ate them too quickly.
“You must be almost the last guy to move out,” Matthew commented. “I think you’d have stayed there if the place weren’t shutting down.”
“Could be,” Neil said. He sighed. “Let’s go.”
Traffic seemed to part magically in front of them, quiet except for the wind of passage and an occasional cranked up music system. Matthew, as if sensing Neil’s lack of interest in conversation, kept himself busy manually guiding the car, though the navigation menu prompted him as to what speed to travel, and when to change lanes, in order to maintain the symphony of cross-town transit.
Matthew really was looking good. He held the steering wheel with a teenage grace and ease. Neil lifted his own palm, stared at the creases, and after a slight pause, pulled down the visor to look in its tiny mirror.
Moles and liver spots disfigured his bald head. The translucent pallor of his complexion was relieved only by the rosette stain of burst capillaries. Wrinkles — no, crevasses — lined a face rendered gnomelike by passing decades.
He lifted up the visor, and turned back to the scenery. He blinked in surprise. They were arriving at their destination. Miles had vanished, lost to the mirror.
“Dr. Rosen said to have him paged from the lobby,” Matthew reminded him — Neil hated it when young folks imagined he had no memory capacity. “Do you want me to go in with you?”
“No. I can manage on my own.”
Matthew chuckled. “I’ll pick you up here tomorrow at 10:00 sharp.”
“You’ll be late,” Neil said. He hobbled into the clinic as resolutely as his one-hundred-twenty-year-old legs could carry him.
o0o
In the morning Matthew was on time, of course, tardiness cured by the deliberate skepticism. The young man was leaning against the car as Neil stepped out the door ahead of Dr. Rosen and strode briskly down the walkway.
Matthew’s eyes telescoped outward like a cartoon character. “Gramps?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Neil answered, voice firm and deep. “You tell me.”
Matthew grinned and opened the car door. “Looks like they got every molecule in the right place.” He slapped his grandfather on the back, a firm tap that, only a day earlier, would have caused a stagger. “Come on. You’ll want to get home and see your new room.”
“I can’t wait,” Neil said, deadpan.
Neil slid gracefully into his seat, and had his door closed before Matthew could assist. Through the open window poured the aromas of heavy dew and mulch from the flower beds along the walkway. He sucked in a deep breath. When had his nose ever been able to detect scents so well?
Matthew stepped away to speak to Dr. Rosen. They kept their voices so low that Neil knew they were talking about him. Irritated, Neil deliberately turned away.
A woman was sitting on a bench about twenty yards in front of the car. The morning sun haloed her reddish curls, giving her oval, smooth features an angelic peace, like a Renaissance madonna, but with northern European coloring.
Neil made eye contact. She blushed, and turned her gaze to the avenue, as if expecting someone.
Slowly, belatedly, Neil thought to smile, but it was too late. Matthew climbed in and the vehicle pulled away.
“You really were a runner,” Matthew said, gesturing at Neil’s body. His jovial tone seemed forced. No doubt his mind was still on whatever Dr. Rosen had told him.
The sawdust scent of the track welled up in Neil’s mind. Hurdles skimmed his calves. Competitors hovered in the corner of his eyes, not quite keeping pace with his long, sure leaps and strides. The ribbon parted as his chest struck it.
“I broke a track and field record or two.” Neil waved his hand dismissively. “Just school records, you know. I had one good season in sprints and hurdles.”
“I thought your event was the marathon.”
“That came later.”
Neil was jiggling his right leg, and tightening his fists just to gauge their strength. Matthew kept looking at him with a cat-with-a-canary grin.
“What’s so funny?” Neil demanded.
“Those hormones are pumping now, Gramps. You’re feeling what I felt, two months ago.”
Neil pursed his lips. “Maybe,” he said, temporarily closing the subject.
o0o
Boxes of Neil’s possessions, full of a century’s worth of packrat accumulations, lay stacked willy-nilly all over the guest bedroom of Matthew’s apartment. Neil clicked his tongue, estimated the capacity of the empty shelves, and tried to imagine his collection of photographs and prints against the robin’s egg blue of the walls. He’d forgotten the magnitude of moving into a new place.
Neil began by shifting aside boxes in order to unroll his treasured Afghan carpet. As he did, his hand skimmed the edge of a flap, slicing his skin open.
Wincing, Neil rushed to the bathroom to wash and bandage the paper-cut. With his injured hand over the sink and the other on the faucet handle, he paused. The ribbon of blood along his wrist and forearm reversed its flow, defying gravity to return to the vessels from which it had sprung. That done, the slice closed, weaving together with an itchiness that made Neil feel as if ants were suturing him up with minuscule needles and thread.
Not ants. They were called nanodocs. Within three minutes they had completed their job. Neil ran his finger along unblemished, unscarred flesh. He shuddered. Next thing he knew, the Feynman Institute would come up with a means to revive the dead.
Perhaps they had. Lifting his glance to the mirror, he stared at a man from a previous century. The athletic lines of his reflection matched those in the track team photo from his senior year of college. The thick, brown hair was the same glorious mop his June Cleaver mother hounded him to cut, all the while editorializing about the corrupting influence of Those Beatles Fellows.
The last time he’d looked like this, he’d been twenty-three years old.
Even his perspiration evoked an earlier time, when exertion brought out a crisp, pheromonal incense, not the reek of ancient glands. Neil tensed his neck. The muscles bulged, taut and corded — no more sagging jowls. He tugged off his shirt, and tapped his firm, lightly rippled abdomen.
This was how he’d been before he’d developed that annoying tire around his waist. Before he’d become a father. Before all those years at a desk job. Neil Corbin — lean, mean track star.
Except he was even better this time around. As requested, the nose he’d had surgically straightened at age thirty-nine was still straight; the appendectomy scar, from age seventeen, was gone as if it had never existed. The promise of nanotechnology had blossomed. A year ago, nano-assemblers, despite all their useful applications, could only augment other types of medical care. Now they coursed, self-guided, through every cell of Neil’s body, reining in free radicals, disassembling invasive microbes, healing damage as it occurred.
And, of course, restoring youth. Permanently.
Neil turned this way and that in the mirror, unable to resist the visual feast, the sensua
l kiss of fabric against hard muscle and supple skin. Was this him?
An unfamiliar sensation started low in his torso, grew stronger, and finally demanded attention. He opened his fly and there it was, a physiological event as effortless as breathing or blinking. His groin hummed like a violin string drawn tight over the bridge, its music amplified by the sweet ache from his bladder.
“Incredible,” Neil murmured.
He hadn’t had erections for thirty years, yet this was already the fourth in half a day. He made no attempt to produce them; they just happened, as they had every day of his adolescence.
This wasn’t like the inoculation with the Ponce de Leon Vaccine, which had halted his aging sixteen years ago, but kept him looking and feeling no better off than a healthy one-hundred-four-year-old. The mass media hoopla of the last six months came back to him like some sort of electronic echo, but the dreamlike impossibility of the reports was gone. He’d followed the lead already taken by three-quarters of the world’s population. He was young again.
Then why did it still feel as if his soul hung poised over the abyss of death? He turned away from the mirror, no longer able to look.
His body seemed oblivious to any anxiety his mind could muster. He could have used his penis as a towel rack.
He shook his head slowly. “What,” he asked his erection, “am I supposed to do with you?”
o0o
Mild Indian summer radiance stretched down the canyons of downtown buildings as Neil and Matthew joined the flow of pedestrians. Young face after young face ambled by, nearly all on attractive, physically-fit bodies. A few children played, a few middle-aged types promenaded, trying to look distinguished; otherwise, everyone seemed to be in their late teens to early thirties.
A month after his visit to the clinic, Neil had almost grown used to the absence of sagging flesh and rheumy eyes around him, despite all the decades spent in retirement communities, hospitals, and other abodes of the elderly. It reminded him of college — another equally unreal part of his adult life.
