John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

The door opened. Debbie slumped like a collapsing sandbag. Michael Amandasson ordered, “Slave, come with me.”

Debbie wailed, “Please don’t tie me up with the horses again, I’ll try to be better!”

“We’re not going to do that—”

“Please, not in the kennel with the dogs!”

Michael Amandasson laughed. “You’re coming to my private cabin. I have a one-fourth share in the ransom and I’m gonna celebrate.”

Debbie stood up, snuffling, wiping her face, catching her balance on Bambi Castro’s shoulder. Bambi covered Debbie’s hand with her own, gave her a brief consoling hug, and squeezed QSL QTH — I have received your position .

After they had sparred with fists and feet, taken wooden knives away from each other, slammed each other into the mats, and tried to hit each other with sticks, Mr. Samson (“Call me sensei and I’ll kick your butt, call me Master and I’ll make you shine my shoes”) seemed satisfied. “Well, yeah, you definitely have enough prior training for my advanced class. What do you think, Steve?”

Steve Ecco, a short, muscular man, perhaps thirty years old, with sandy blond hair and a Wyatt Earp mustache, nodded. “Good with me too. Where’d you learn?”

Arnie Yang explained, “Well, Dad pushed me to do all this martial arts stuff, so I did, like I did classical guitar, AP math, Junior Achievement, and all the rest. I was a total GOAT.”

Ecco raised an eyebrow. “The only goats we had in Oklahoma were next to the doublewides of the goat-ropers.”

Arnie laughed. “Yeah, different cultures. Grossly Overachieving Asian Teenager. One of those Asian kids who was pushed and pushed and pushed. I hated it in high school—if you’re an Asian kid who does martial arts, every moron in the world is yelling ‘hee-yah!’ and jumping at you. But when I got to college, I learned the stress relief value of beating on your fellow human beings, and just kind of stayed with it after college. Nowadays it almost seems easier to practice than not.”

Samson nodded. “Good answer. We get too many people here, even now, who want to be either a crime-fighting macho superhero who rips human hearts out with his bare hands, or a Jedi Peacenik Levitation Master who just floats bad people away in harmony with their spiritual nature.”

“I’ve met a few of both kinds, myself. I hope I’m old enough to be over the romanticism of violence. You know, less than a week ago I shot some people, and a good friend was killed beside me. I know I have a Ph.D. and I use big words, but I hope you can overlook those character defects.”

“You’ll do fine here,” Samson said. He was tall, stout but not fat, with thick, straight, iron-gray hair, an eagle-beak of a nose, crooked teeth, and a receding chin, so that he looked like a large muskrat who had borrowed a Senate candidate’s toupee.

“Be nice to have another guy in the class who knows something,” Ecco added. “The advanced class’ll be coming in in a couple minutes, get some water now if you’re gonna need it.”

After a brisk workout and some fussing with people’s grips in jujitsu, Samson called Jason up for sparring. As they stepped into striking range, Samson sped up and kept coming, swinging slowly and carefully but pushing Jason steadily back until his foot crossed the painted line. “Okay, I ran you out of bounds. In a big room I’d have you cornered, and be beating on you or waiting for my friends to bring around a weapon. What did you do?”

“He didn’t get off the line.” It sounded more like lann , delivered in a flat twang of complete boredom.

“Steve, I didn’t ask you,” Samson said, not taking his eyes off Jason.

“Just wanted to save time.” Sounded more like tamm , Arnie thought. Now that was weird. He’d have thought he had as little prejudice as any coastal American could, but something about Steve’s flat, hard-edged delivery was like a sanding wheel skipping over a brick wall. Probably meant to be. He wants to fight—

“I guess I could’ve moved to the side,” Jason said.

“You guessed right,” Samson said.

“Let us show you,” Ecco said. “Doctor Yang, you and me are the demo team here.” Arnie stood, and Ecco said, “All right, touch is as good as a strike, take it easy, this is a demo, not a match. Now come after me, Doctor Yang—”

“In here I better be Arnie.”

“Arnie, then. First time I’ll just go back or forward, one straight track, you come at me any way you like.”

Ecco was fast and proficient, but since Arnie could just keep alternating flanks, he quickly drove him out of bounds.

“Now,” Ecco said, “This time I move off the line. See what you can do.”

Arnie had barely kicked once before he was surrounded by a blur of Ecco’s hands, feet, elbows, and everything else; he was able to stay in the space, and use his hands and forearms to block most of the fast-but-gently-controlled jabs, crosses, spear-hands, and thrust-kicks, but that was all, and in a real fight he’d have been knocked flat.

“ Ya-me! ” Ecco said, the call to end action. They bowed. “Y’all see, everyone? Arnie’s good, but I’m real good. But if I stay on that line, he can beat my ass into the ground.”

Hah. Now I get it. Steve Ecco needs to establish a pecking order, when a new guy comes in with skills. Well, no prob. He’s definitely a bigger pecker than I am.

After practice, Samson and Ecco stopped him. “Going to come back?” Ecco asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it. That was fun. And I have to get good enough to not look so lame out there.”

“Good answer,” Ecco said. “I don’t suppose that besides being a pretty good fighter and a damned good sport, the Perfessor happens to drink beer?”

“I do. I also listen to country music, and if I had the nerve, I’d chase waitresses.”

“Well, then, let’s stop by Dell’s Brew, pour you some courage, and work on some technique.”

“You talked me into it.” Arnie had planned to walk home the long way by himself, in hopes that Aaron would reappear, so that he could try out his carefully written, memorized questions. But the international association of lonely sad guys is obviously holding a chapter meeting, and I wouldn’t miss that. He felt happier and less lonely than he had in a long time.

The sun had already set and the twilight was dimming rapidly; Helen Chelseasdaughter asked, “Will they have light enough to unload all the cargo and still take off again? I don’t want children to see technology.”

“Their last radio message was that they were delayed but plan to complete on schedule. I’m guessing—there.” He’d heard the sputtering, farting roar of the DC-3’s motors, running rough due to crappy biofuel and lye-spray getting through the air cleaners. “Here they come. If you don’t want the kids to see—”

“Children out of here, now!” Helen Chelseasdaughter shouted. Two young women urged a dozen children to come with them over the hill. One stubborn girl and two boys threw tantrums, insisting on seeing the airplane, and were dragged off.

Bambi said, “It’s close to dark. I’d like to take off as soon as the other plane is off the road. Would it be all right for me to taxi over there”—she pointed north of the gate—“out of his way but ready to go as soon as he lands and you see the ransom?”

The gray-haired tribal nodded. “Yes, I want all the machines gone as soon as possible.”