Point of Impact

Guru had told her. Yeah, she could do it, and yeah, it was better than nothing, but it was like taking a shower with a raincoat on. You couldn’t really feel the water.

She stood, moved the coffee table out of the way, and did a little stretching, nothing major, just to limber up her back and hips some. The doctor hadn’t said she couldn’t stretch, just nothing heavy-duty, right?

The elastic of her stretch pants cut into her belly as she sat and bent over to touch her toes. Damn, she hated this, being fat!

After five minutes or so of loosening up, she felt better. Okay, so she could do a few djurus with the footwork, the langkas, if she went real slow, right? No sudden moves, no real effort, it wouldn’t be any more stressful than walking if she was careful, right?

For about ten minutes, she practiced, moving slowly, no power, just doing the first eight djurus. She skipped the forms where she had to drop into a squat, number five and number seven, and she felt fine.

Then, of course, she had to go pee, something that happened five times an hour, it seemed.

When she finished and started to leave the bathroom, she looked into the toilet.

The bowl had blood in it, as did the tissue she had just used.

Fear grabbed her in an icy hand.

She ran to call the doctor.

Austin, Texas

Tad drove the rental car, Bobby riding shotgun and giving him directions.

“Okay, stay on I-35 going south until we cross Lake Whatchamacallit, and look for a sign says Texas State School for the Deaf. We have to find Big Stacy Park — as opposed to Little Stacy Park, which is just up the road a piece — then Sunset Lane, then we turn onto — you piece of Chinese shit!”

This last part was accompanied by Bobby slapping the little GPS unit built into the car’s dashboard.

“What?”

“The sucker glitched, the map disappeared!” Bobby hammered the malfunctioning GPS unit again. “Come on!”

“I don’t see why we had to come here in person,” Tad said. “We could have called or done this by e-mail over the web.”

“No, we couldn’t have. The feds can monitor phones and e-mail, even encrypted stuff. They were able to do it for years before the public even realized they could and already were. Besides, this guy wants an insurance policy. He wants to see our faces. He’ll know the name, and he can use that, but we could change our identities.”

“We could change our faces, too.”

Bobby hit the GPS again. “Ah, there it is. I got the map again.” He looked at Tad. “Yeah, we could, and he’ll know that. But the thing is, he wants us to come to him with our hat in our hand and say please. Then he dazzles us with his techno-wizardry, and we owe him big-time and forever. It’s an ego thing. Besides, as long as we’re in business, he’ll have something on us, doesn’t matter what our names are or what we look like. We have the market cornered on Thor’s Hammer, remember? Whoever is selling it is gonna be us, no matter what we call ourselves.”

“Yeah. I have to say, though, this might be out of the frying pan and into the fire, man. Even if it works, we’re trading one problem for another one.”

“I don’t think so,” Bobby said.

Tad said, “There’s the lake, up ahead.”

“Okay, watch for the deaf sign, should be just after we cross over that.”

“I’m watching. Back to this maybe biz. The guy will have something to trade if he ever gets busted. You think he wouldn’t give us up to save his own ass?”

“Don’t think that for a second. I’d give him up, if positions were reversed.”

“Jeez, Bobby—”

“C’mon, Tad, think a little bit past the end of your nose. The clock is running at the cop shop. This computer dick-wad can get into the gym’s computer and the police system and make my name go away. He does that before they get to me, we’re clear.”

“If the cops didn’t just get a hardcopy.”

“They didn’t. Steve told me they downloaded his membership files into their system over the wire. Nobody uses hardcopy for this kind of stuff anymore. I didn’t even fill out a treeware registration form when I signed up; I just logged it all into a keyboard at the gym.

“So the immediate threat, the law, is taken care of. Mr. Computer Geek is a potential problem, but that’s down the line. He isn’t going to run to the cops and turn us in now, not if he wants help from mighty Thor to keep wearing blisters on his wang with his lady friend. You see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, but—”

Bobby cut him off. “You know about Occam’s Razor?”

“No. You not gonna tell me another fucking story, are you?”

Bobby laughed. “No. It’s a way of looking at problems. A rule that basically says, don’t get complicated when simple will do the job. The simple thing here is, if the cops don’t know about me, they can’t come looking for me.”

“Okay, I can see that. You buy some time, get out from under the immediate threat. But you still got the potential thing later.”

“Well, if you just let it hang out there, yeah. But this computer guy could, you know, have an accident. He could slip in the bathtub and dash his brains out or get hit by a bus crossing the street or maybe an allergic reaction to shellfish, and just up and die. There are certain chemicals that can kill somebody and make it look just like anaphylactic shock. And hey, stuff like that happens all the time, right? Cops would investigate, but if it was an accident, that would be the end of it, right?” Bobby grinned, that all-his-shiny-teeth smile that showed he was really amused.

Tad got it, finally. He nodded. “Oh. Oh, yeah. I see what you mean.”

“There’s hope for you yet, Tad m’boy — there, there’s the sign, pull off at that next exit!”

Tad nodded. Bobby was almost always a step ahead of the game, even when things got creaky. Push him out a window, and he would land on his feet every time. He had it under control. It felt good to know that.

25

Washington, D.C.

Jay sat seiza and tried, like the old joke about the hot dog vendor and the Zen master, to make himself one with everything.

He was having some problems with it. First, the sitting-on-your-heels position was very uncomfortable. They might do it in Japan, where everybody was used to it, but in America, you didn’t normally sit that way, or knotted up in a lotus pose, or even on the floor — not without a cushion or pillow to flop on.

Second, while he was supposed to be concentrating on his breath, just sitting back and watching it come and go without trying to control it or count it or anything, that was almost impossible to pull off. As soon as he became aware of his breathing, he kept trying to slow it and keep it even and all, and that was a no-no. And counting just came naturally for him, it was automatic. So he had to make a conscious effort not to count, and that was a no-no. Don’t count, and don’t think about not counting.

Third, you weren’t supposed to think of anything at all, and if a thought came up, you were supposed to gently move it away and get back to nothing but breathing. Thoughts were products of the monkey brain, Saji had told him, and had to be quieted to achieve peace and harmony with one’s inner self.

Yeah, well, in his case, the brain was more like a whole troop of howler monkeys all hooting and dancing through the trees, and quieting that jabbering bunch was a tall order.

His knee hurt. That last inhalation turned into a sigh at the end. The thoughts about work, dinner, Saji, and