by Dave Smeds
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 dans 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 a
n 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.
One thing would have made it better. I had still quailed at the moment of attack. But for the first time, I looked forward to what Mr. Callahan might have up those white cotton sleeves. He had already turned to the next set of freestyle partners, seemingly absorbed in them, but I knew he had a plan just for me.
o0o
For the next six months, the grandmaster let me spar nearly every class in the modified way he’d introduced. I was always the defender. A sense of anticipation mounted among the dojo regulars. They knew, as I did, that sooner or later I’d be set free.
That moment came in a way I never expected. It was an ordinary workout in every other respect, until Mr. Callahan called me to the center of the room . . .
And stood across from me.
“Tonight, you will spar normally. Jiyu kumite.”
All the moisture vanished from my mouth. The grandmaster. The ju dan. The hanshi. He had not sparred one of his own students in years. He saved his sorcery for tournament opponents. Outsiders. Enemies.
I stared him straight in the eyes and tried not to soil my gi pants.
Keith handled the commands. As he shouted, I sprang into the most defensive position I knew.
I didn’t even see most of the techniques Callahan threw at me. Fists, feet, elbows flew all around me. Abruptly I was in my wheelchair at home. My vr deck cheerfully informed me that the match had lasted fifteen seconds. It had seemed like one.
I rematerialized at the dojo. Callahan nodded and said, “Again.”
Shaking, I took my place. We engaged. And this time, something awakened in me, something that had been developing for a long time. Call it the state of mind a doe calls up to defend her fawn against a mountain lion. My rising block redirected the fist racing toward my face. My body twisted away from the kick arcing toward my belly. I lifted my leg out of the way of sensei’s stomp at my kneejoint.
He took me out with a roundhouse kick to my head. I hadn’t lasted any longer than before. But everything had been clearer. I’d seen what most of the techniques coming at me were.
I rematerialized. “Again,” said Mr. Callahan.
Oh, God, I thought. He charged. I retreated as fast as I could, frantically defending myself.
And this time, in the midst of all the yielding, pumped up with fright, I saw a brief opening.
I struck. My fist tapped sensei’s chin. Not as strongly as I might have liked, but enough to make him blink, enough that jawbone kissed my knuckles.
A few moments later he killed me again. I’d lasted twenty-three seconds.
But I’d gotten a punch in on him. A punch on him. When I logged back on, I found him smiling at me. A drop of blood hung from his split lip.
“Perhaps we’ll have the chance to spar again one day,” he said, and gestured for me to return to my place.
o0o
The next three months — during which I sparred every class — confirmed what had ignited that night. I had a new ability. Though I still couldn’t leap in undaunted as I had before Mongo, I now knew how to wait, letting my opponent commit to his movement, and on a good night, when I was sharp, I could turn the tables on any number of players. It was not as easy as bowling them over with an unbridled attack, but it gave me a goal to reach for, virgin territory to explore. As Fearless, I’d never have been able to score a hit on the grandmaster. Only someone capable of being truly intimidated could ever be a master of defense.
I’d just finished an invigorating workout and was staying late, polishing a little kata to wind down, when a voice from the foyer startled me.
“Did you enjoy yourself tonight?”
I jumped and turned around. Mr. Callahan strode onto the floor.
“Yes,” I replied, trying to seem as casual as he. “Yes, I enjoyed myself a great deal.”
His lips curved into a Mona Lisa pose. “I’ve heard you’ve signed up for the Riverside Invitationals.”
“Just C level,” I replied. “To test my wings. It’s a start.”
“Yes. It is. How do you feel about it?”
“I . . .” I coughed. “It’s never going to go away, is it? I’m going to flinch for the rest of my martial arts career.”
“Possibly.” He scratched his chin. “Does it matter?”
Not the way it had. The bitterness was leaching out, the sense of being a victim was fading. But . . .
“I still want to win,” I said. “When I was Fearless, I knew I’d make it to the top. I don’t know if the new me ever will.”
He smiled fully. Turning to the mirror, he pointed at the reflection of my lean, perpetually healthy surrogate. “You’ve got fifty, sixty, maybe seventy years left. Who can say what you’ll be able to do in all that time?”
His arm dropped to his side. Though the move was graceful, it seemed to carry the weight of eight decades. How many obstacles, how many disappointments, I wondered, had this man weathered on the way to becoming a karate megastar? I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be in his league. At the moment, though, that wasn’t as important as this: Thomas Callahan was envious of me. The obstacles I faced might be too much for me, but then again, they might not. I had hope. He, no matter how well his brain and spinal cord had been preserved to this point, was up against a handicap that no amount of resistance could conquer.
“Guess I’ll just have to try,” I said. I understood now that my attempt mattered as much to him as it did to me.
He nodded. “Think of it,” he said softly, “as a challenge.”
Return to Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION TO “A RAVEN ON MY SHOULDER”
Two specific impulses drew me to write this novelette. First, and more generally, I hungered to do a far-future, outer space piece, the sort of thing I had once thrived upon as a reader, as when in my younger days I devoured pulp-magazine classics like E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series and the exploits of Captain Future by Edmond Hamilton, and when as an adult I took in Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish novels, David Brin’s Uplift sequence, and individual books by the likes of Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, and Samuel Delany. It felt like the time was ripe to make my own attempt to plow that ground. In the Short Fiction Reviews topic on the lamented GEnie electronic bulletin board, I had read messages by Gardner Dozois bemoaning the over-emphasis in the Asimov’s SF submission pile of near-future Earth settings, as if, to the current crop of writers, the era when humankind can travel to distant parts of the galaxy is too remote to address. Vernor Vinge and other exceptions abound, but in some ways I have to agree with Gardner’s assessment. Modern sf writers have in great numbers conceded the outer void to the space opera crowd and the media tie-in franchises, eschewing the milieu as a canvas for non-formula work, especially at short lengths. Perhaps it has finally sunk in just how vast the galaxy is, and how silly a fantasy hyperdrives and warp engines and jumpgates are. It could be that when it comes to humans living on worlds outside our solar system, we really can’t get there from here by any means that our species would accept as a viable method. Though science fiction is supposed to be about flights of imagination, it’s also supposed to be about situations that might somehow come to pass, given what we think we know to be true about the universe. It’s annoying not to be able to do what Asimov did in a more naïve age and paint the galaxy as a latter-day Roman Empire, with the distant provinces no more than a few months’ journey away. Easier to avoid the frustration. I’m as guilty as other writers when I prefer to sidestep the challenge and either write fantasy of one sort or another, or science fiction set close to right here, right now. With “A Raven on My Shoulder,” I wanted to make up for that laziness.
Once I set the task for myself, however, I did not wish to de
pend upon the crutch of faster-than-light travel. I knew I wanted to be more strict than that. Right away that determined what sort of story I would concoct. If my characters were going to have to travel at speeds far slower than c, I couldn’t have them whizzing about from place to place. Once they got somewhere, they needed to stay put. So I knew from the git-go that that my tale would concern a colony world, and that the planet and its location, environment, and other characteristics would be an integral part of the tale.
The second guidepost I can date with precision. I came to it at the 1994 Nebula Award banquet in Eugene, Oregon. Keynote speaker Eric Drexler, of nanotechnology fame, devoted much of his talk to wishing aloud that science fiction writers could incorporate more of the real-science visions that were tantalizing himself and his colleagues. (In many ways the same sermon I heard routinely from Bob Fleming, the very person who had introduced me to Drexler’s seminal work, Engines of Creation.) Among his examples, Drexler pointed out that long before we would have any real hope of physically journeying to the far parts of the galaxy and meeting sentient, technology-wielding aliens, we would be able to see them. Or at least, see evidence of their civilizations.
Drexler described a series of satellites strung in a circle around Sol out, say, a bit beyond the orbit of Neptune. Meaning that the diameter of that circle would be on the order of two billion miles. By coordinating the signals received by those satellites, they could serve as a huge interferometric lens, a telescope to outstrip all telescopes.
We don’t have to wonder if it would be possible to build it. In the past twenty years since that 1994 awards banquet, interferometric arrays have become something of a “thing” in deep-space astronomy. Even back then, as Drexler pointed out, the sort of array he was describing required no new major scientific discoveries. The project is more along the lines of an “engineering challenge.” The great roadblock continues to be funding and the will of society. When it becomes cheap enough to build that lens, and enough people want it built, the concept will become a reality.
