The Musashi Flex (15 page)

“Supposedly, he killed his first man in a duel when he was thirteen, using a stick.”

“Thirteen. Lord.”

“As I said, the times were violent. The
samurai
were soldiers, and wars and personal fights were common.”

She nodded again. Made the keep-it-rolling sign at him.

He smiled. “Musashi was, according to various historians, a big, strong thug who would as soon cut a man down as look at him. He enjoyed hard drink and the company of whores, and was not fond of bathing—but he was also an accomplished artist, sculptor, poet, and a writer, all of which were considered appropriate behavior for soldiers in those times. A man who was able to lop your head off with a sword could also arrange flowers and recite haiku—a rigorous kind of poetry—as well as he could kill. Surviving examples of Musashi’s art can be found in the Imperial Museum in Tokyo, and some of it is strikingly beautiful. Wood carvings, iron sword guards, ink drawings.

“The short version of his life is that he was a wanderer, and by the time he was thirty, he had killed sixty men in single combat. If he did not create it, he certainly perfected the use of the two-sword method, using a long sword in one hand and a shorter one in the other, and moving both constantly. Toward the end of his career, he was such an adept that he would face sword fighters with only a wooden blade, to even the odds, and he was still unbeatable.

“Eventually, he retired to a cave where he wrote
A Book of Five Rings,
a treatise on strategy and tactics of
kendo,
which is what they called swordplay there in those days. For hundreds of years, this was the most respected work about the subject, and it is still germane today.”

“Interesting,” she said.

“My first visit to Earth, I went to the shrine at Reigendo, the cave where Musashi spent his final two years. He was only sixty T.S. or so when he died—but given the facts that he was a duelist and living in a time when fatal diseases were common and the average life expectancy was well under forty, that was a ripe old age.

“Any of this useful?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, this could all show up as an animation, easy to whip out a nice-looking CGI: ‘Musashi, the greatest swordsman who ever lived . . .’ I can get a picture, the VR actor will look exactly like him.”

Mourn smiled at her enthusiasm. “Of course, he
wasn’t
the greatest swordsman who ever lived, though he was certainly among them—there were a couple of others even in the same historical period and the same area who fought more duels—but Musashi is the one history remembers because of the book he wrote. In reality, he lost several practice fights to other swordsmen using wooden implements, and once to a man who was an adept with a spear. Several of his wins were surprise attacks, which was considered a legitimate tactic. If a man allowed you to sneak up on him, then that was his problem. Those tales were omitted from the registers. Nobody wants their hero to have any flaws. A man who never lost is more impressive than a man who lost a few times—or stabbed several of his unwary foes in the back from ambush.”

He paused again. Ahead, a jungle primate hooted, its voice either computer-generated or recorded from some animal that was probably long dead.

“The best fighting men were often anonymous by choice—it was safer that way. When you were the man to beat, people came looking for you. If nobody knew who you were, you didn’t have to sleep with one eye open all the time. Some killers were in the game for money and not for fame, though one often generated the other.

“Musashi had good press, much of which he generated himself. There were—and still are—a lot of people willing to buy a meal or drinks or offer you a place to sleep if you are a well-known bad man. A big enough reputation can be lived upon.”

“You would know that,” she said.

“Celebrity has its uses.”

“So the patron saint of the Flexers is an appropriate one.”

“Yes. Like him, at the top levels, somebody is always watching. Being as anonymous as you can is safer. But I like you. And I expect I’ll be retiring in the not-too-distant future—it’s a younger person’s game, really. So if I am outed on galactic entcom, it won’t be all that detrimental. Maybe even to my benefit. Famous ex-players get as much attention as some of the current ones, and your documentary will make me famous, won’t it?”

“God, I hope so.”

He smiled. Bare-naked ambition could be ugly, but on her, it looked, well, kind of cute.

“So, yes, I’ll help you.”

Her smile was radiant. “Great!”

 
Shaw waited a few days, to make sure he was physically recovered—it was very tiring to fly on Reflex—then tried it again. It worked the same way as it had before, so he lost no time in getting into the game. He called himself and activated his membership.

He smiled at the image of calling himself. Practically speaking, for any ranking below the Top Hundred, you could always find somebody who’d sell their identity, if you were willing to pay enough for it. There were professional placeholders, men or women who joined the Flex, worked their way into the low two hundreds, say, then sold that position to anybody looking to avoid taking the long road to get that far. A lot of the placeholders were named “Johnson,” or “Wu,” or “Muhammed,” to make it simple. But he didn’t have to do that. Years ago, when it looked as if it might be a while before he was ready to go play with the big boys, Shaw had sponsored several promising players who could work their way up the lists. He paid all living expenses, medical, and a generous allowance over that, with the stipulation that they compete under the name “Shaw,” and that one day, he might want the name. He owned five officially registered Shaws at the moment, and the highest ranked among them was at 110th place. Not as high as he would like, but still, it would only take him a score or maybe two dozen fights to get to a match with the top dog. Something he could easily manage in a few months or less, even at galactic travel speeds.

Just think. A couple months from now, he would be
Primero,
the best fighter in the known galaxy!

And he could do it
legally,
because many drugs were acceptable adjuncts to matches. Everybody had access to them, so what one could have, another could get; therefore, there was a balance. If you chose not to use steroids or endorphins, that was your pick. There were a couple that were banned, but Reflex wouldn’t be among them, because nobody would know about it but him—until it would be too late to do anything about it.

Shaw would have the monopoly, and nobody would even know what it was or that it even
existed
until he was on top. Would the matches be fair? Not really, but under the rules,
technically,
they would be. That was the beauty of it. When they asked, “Was it a fair match?” you could think of the technical truth and answer “Yes,” because you were using a drug,
but it wasn’t banned!
and not have it be a lie.

Even if they asked straight out:
Are you using any prohibited substances?
he could deny it. That was the beauty of it.

They couldn’t forbid it if they had never considered that it even existed.

Eventually, they would figure it out, and eventually, put Reflex on the proscribed list, because everybody would have to use it to be competitive, but until then, there would be a window. Shaw would climb in, steal the title, and climb out before it was closed. He didn’t have to stay on top forever, that wasn’t the point.

He had fully intended to take another dose and deal with Baba Ngumi, and to extract a certain vengeance on the old bastard, but Baba hadn’t shown up for his lesson yesterday, and all attempts to locate him, which included a tame police force and the best private operatives, came up empty—it was as if the old man had vanished. Such a thing was not possible in a civilized society, but for all his effort to find his teacher, Baba might as well have turned into smoke in a high wind.

It seemed awfully coincidental to Shaw that Baba would have departed just at the moment when his life was about to become forfeit. Maybe the old man had some kind of precognition, as Shaw himself had. Couldn’t discount that.

Well. No matter. He didn’t have to worry about Baba. He had enough training. Coupled with his artificially enhanced supernatural speed? He would be unbeatable.

“Sir,” came his secretary’s voice. “M. Newman Randall is here to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment.”

Shaw’s joy soured. Randall. What did he want? “Send him in.”

Shaw’s smile didn’t get above his lips, something that Randall, who had certainly had face-dance training, would have seen. He could have thought of something amusing and faked it, but it wasn’t worth the trouble.

They exchanged the usual mutterings, then Randall got to it: “So I understand that you have achieved success on your Reflex project.”

Fuck!
How could he know that? The man’s spy was
dead
!

He didn’t need to be a face reader to know that Randall’s expression was genuine. He was amused, no question.

“Hardly,” Shaw said. “We haven’t even begun clinical trials on human subjects yet.”

“That’s not what I understand.”

“Oh, yes, we had a volunteer take the compound and it seemed to work without immediate side effects, but it is far too early to tell if that will hold for a larger sample over time.”

“Your . . .
volunteer
must have been pretty confident to risk his life.”

“Let’s not beat around the bush here, my friend. You have the chemical, it works, and we want it.”

“Or else?”

“Ellis, Ellis. No need to be confrontational. We are reasonable men, aren’t we?” He glanced at his ring chrono. “Ah, but look at the time. I just dropped round on my way to see the Confed Sector General, who is, as I am sure you know, staying at the Musali Game Preserve for a bit of a vacation before he spaces on to wherever he is off to next.”

He looked Shaw right in the eyes. “He is expecting me, but I told him I had to stop by and see you first.”

Shaw repressed a sigh and understood exactly what it was Randall was trying to tell him with that remark: If he didn’t make it to the CSG’s, they would come here looking. And he suspected—maybe knew—what had happened to his spy.

Well . . . shit.

Even so, Shaw was tempted. Kill the man, drop the body into one of the industrial-grade radioactive-leachers they had in the lab, grind him into atoms, even a DNA match would be impossible, somebody got that far. But—no. Not yet. He needed to find out how the man was getting his information. Then he would kill him.

“Give him my regards,” Shaw said, smiling and meaning it this time. Let Randall chew on that and wonder what it meant.

“I certainly will. Oh. Say hello to that old gentleman martial arts teacher for me, would you? A delightful fellow.”

Shaw’s smile froze. Baba? It immediately made a certain kind of sense. Baba could come and go as he pleased, and—shit! Baba was the spy! The devious bastard! Somehow, he had figured out things he shouldn’t, but it made sense. It had never crossed Shaw’s mind that Baba . . .

Shaw was outraged; even though he had planned to kill the man, it really pissed him off.

And Randall saw that, too.

“One experiment does not a trial make, Newman. Even with all the Confederation can do to pave the road, there still need to be tests, and they will take time. Otherwise, our liability would be insupportable.”

“Of course, old friend, I understand. We merely want to make sure the process begins as quickly as possible. That it might take a few months to get to the point where our own medicos are given a supply for testing is not unreasonable.”

“It could take a year or two,” Shaw tried.

“Oh, I don’t think it will. I would guess three or four months. You know it works, and you must be very confident that it has no major side effects.”

Shaw said nothing. He knew. No doubt of it. Had he guessed why Shaw had developed it? If so, had he
told
anyone? The CSG was expecting Randall
now,
but in a week or a month, six months, maybe something unfortunate might happen to him.

The PR stood. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, still smiling. And meaning it.

The asshole . . .

After Randall was gone, Shaw considered the situation. All was not lost, of course. He would still have a jump on the competition with his chemical crutch. Once it got into widespread military use, there’d be a black market, of course, and it would start showing up in the Flex, it would have to, eventually. The question was, could he get to the top before it did? He didn’t plan to stay in the game once he won. He’d retire.

If he could do it before the Confed tripped him up.

That was worth another real smile of his own. Yes, indeed, it was . . .

A week later, when they were almost to Ago’s Moon, in Faust, Mourn went to work the weights. Sola tagged along to watch.

The place was one of the smaller gyms, out of the way, and empty, save for them. It was early in the ship’s day cycle, and this far into the voyage, most passengers had probably made the transition to ship time and were still asleep. She asked the question she’d obviously been considering.