“Them cigarettes are going to kill you, Gunny, if I don’t beat them to it!” Howard said.
“Let’s shoot. We can pretend the targets are Gunny.”
“I heard that. Sirs.”
3
With Marissa Lowe seated next to him on the bleachers watching the fencers, Thorn was about as happy as he figured a man could get. A beautiful woman who loved him and was willing to marry him, a warm seat watching a bunch of top competitors fencing with foils, epees, and sabers, and no place else he had to be. Life was good.
“When is Jamal supposed to come up?” Marissa asked.
“Pretty soon,” Thorn said. “Ah, there he is now—over there.” He pointed.
“He’s black,” she said.
“So are you, last time I looked.”
“You didn’t mention that before.”
“You didn’t know you were black?”
“I
“Okay, okay, I didn’t want you overcome with adoration.”
He smiled, but she punched him in the shoulder anyhow.
“Ow. You CIA types are all brute force and violence, aren’t you?”
“With a word in the right ear, I can have you knee-capped, Tommy.”
He laughed. Funny. Smart. Beautiful. Couldn’t get much better than that, could it? She even liked fencing, though she had just started learning herself.
“Jamal is warming up. His match’ll start in a couple minutes.”
“This is a good thing you’re doing here, Tommy.”
He shrugged. Jamal had real talent. He was good with a foil, but outstanding with an epee, and for an inner- city D.C. kid who came to the sport at the ripe old age of twelve, only four years at it, without access to world-class teachers, that was pretty amazing.
Thorn had made a lot of money with some of the software his companies had developed before he went to work for Net Force. Sponsoring a few poor kid fencers around the country so they could get good teachers and gear, and covering their travel to tournaments? That wasn’t much. He’d grown up poor on the rez himself; he knew what it cost just to learn to fence, to say nothing of what it took to compete at a high level. He’d been sent across country a couple of times with money raised from bake sales and car washes. This was the least he could do to pay that back.
Jamal walked toward the piste, the metal mesh-covered strip laid out on the floor.
“Here he goes. Watch.”
Some of this Thorn still hadn’t gotten used to. In his day, all the equipment was pretty much the same as it had been for decades: a blade, connected to a body cord running up your sleeve and down your back, plugging into a floor reel you had to watch out for on fleches or quick retreats, which in turn connected to the scoring box. These days, though, everything was pretty much wireless—well, almost. The body cord still ran up the sleeve and down the back, but now it plugged into a little box each fencer wore at the small of his or her back.
Used to be one of your teammates helped hook you up, spoke some encouraging words in your ear, maybe rubbed your shoulders before you fenced. These days you were more like a Christian sent out to face the lions—on your own. . . .
Jamal stepped up to the en garde line. His opponent, another youth of about the same age, did likewise. The director, a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, told them, in French, to salute, don their masks, and come to guard.
Jamal brought his epee up to his chin, saluted his opponent, the director, and the scorers. He also gave a quick flick toward the spectators before pulling his helmet into place.
Both fencers nodded.
“Watch this,” Thorn said.
There were a lot of ways to approach epee: fast and furious, slow and cautious, subtle, strong, leverage, speed. Jamal, like most fencers, could use a variety of techniques and styles, but he preferred slow and cautious. He excelled at capitalizing on his opponents’ mistakes—and he was very, very good at helping them to make mistakes.
So far, throughout the previous bouts, he had been very slow to strike. Now, however, as soon as the director gave the command, he closed the distance as fast as he could, his tip licking out and around his opponent’s blade and landing solidly in the middle of his mask.
“What happened?” Marissa asked.
Thorn chuckled. “Took him by surprise,” he said.
“I could see that. But how?”
Thorn smiled. “Set him up. Most fencing matches are pools—round-robin in the early going—and all fencers watch their upcoming opponents, sizing them up as they face the other people in their pool. Jamal simply changed his tactics here. He knew that this guy had him pegged as a counterpuncher and would be looking for him to once again be cautious, to wait until he had a sense of his opponent before really taking the attack to him. So he did what any good fencer would do: He crossed him up, setting up an expectation in his opponent and then using that to his own advantage.”
Marissa frowned. “Seems kind of dangerous, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Seems like the other guy could do the same thing.”
Thorn grinned. “Exactly. And that’s what makes it so fun.”
On the strip, the director had awarded the touch to Jamal and resumed the fencing. At his command to begin, Jamal once again took the attack to his opponent. He took two rapid steps forward, his blade already engaging his opponent’s, pressed once, twice, and a third time, inside, outside, and back to the inside, then released the blade with a spank.
His tip shot toward his opponent’s inside wrist in a feint, then darted down toward his foot in another feint. As his opponent thrust toward his head, Jamal brought his blade back up, meeting his opponent’s in a partial bind. Deflecting it to the side and ending up striking the wrist.
Touche, Jamal.
“Nice touch,” Thorn said.
Beside him, Marissa smiled. “Hey, I could see that one!”
Thorn laughed. “Yep, that was style over speed all the way.”
“So,” Marissa said, “you want to predict this next touch?”
“Aw, this one’s easy. Jamal will revert to form. His opponent started out expecting him to be cautious and he scored two quick touches by surprising him. Now his opponent will be looking for another quick attack. Jamal will take advantage of that. Watch.”
The director signaled the touch, reset the fencers on their guard lines, and again gave the command to fence. Once again, Jamal rushed forward, but this time his whole advance was a feint. His tip circled his opponent’s, darting in as though he were setting up for another mask shot.
His opponent thrust forward, expecting Jamal to continue pressing and aiming to strike his forearm as he came in, but this time Jamal pulled up, his blade pressing up and out in another bind.
His opponent’s tip brushed harmlessly past the outer edge of his sleeve, while Jamal’s tip circled completely
