She nodded. “Interesting,” she said. “But you said there were two differences. Target area is one. What’s the other?”
He grinned. “Rules,” he said. “Specifically, something called right-of-way. In épée, whoever hits first wins the touch — and bouts used to be to one touch only, just like real duels. In foil, if your opponent has right-of-way, defined as his elbow straight or in the process of coming straight, and his point on line with your target or in the process of coming on line, then you have to respond to his attack before you can claim right-of-way and make an attack of your own. You can parry it, or evade it, or retreat out of distance, or do something to make him break the definition of right-of-way — pumping his arm, for example, so his elbow is no longer straight or coming straight. If you do that, you can counterattack and, if you both hit each other, you win the point. If you don’t deal with his attack first, however, and simply counter into it, you would lose the touch if you both hit.”
“And épée?”
He replaced the foil and brought out an épée. “This is the closest to a ‘real’ weapon in Western fencing. Note how much heavier the blade is than the foil. That’s to make it more like the rapier, which it’s modeled on. A larger bell guard protects the hand and wrist because, unlike foil, those are valid touches. Also, it takes a heavier touch to score — seven hundred fifty grams instead of five hundred to depress the point. No rules. Whoever touches his opponent first wins the point. If you both hit within a twentieth of a second, you both lose a touch. Used to be, back when a bout only had one touch, you could both lose the bout on a double touch.”
He paused. “The épée is my weapon of choice, by the way.”
“Mine’s a handgun,” she said with a smile, “but to each his own, I guess.”
He grinned. “The last weapon is the saber, and it’s not much like the other two. Patterned after the cavalry saber, it’s an edge weapon. You can use the point, and do, sometimes, in a bout, but mostly for a change of pace or a surprise move. Historically, the valid parts of the blade were the entire front edge and the top third of the back edge. The flat of the blade was not legal, and hitting your opponent with that did not score a touch. That changed a couple of decades ago when they electrified the saber, and now the entire blade is valid. Personally, I prefer the old way.”
He pulled a saber out and made a couple of quick cuts with it, whipping the air. “It has essentially the same right-of-way rules as foil but, since it’s designed to replicate a cavalry weapon, and assumes that the combatants are on horseback, the target area is everything from the waist up.”
“Wouldn’t do much good to hit your opponent in the thigh if he’s riding a horse.”
“Exactly,” he said. “He might die later, of infection, but that wouldn’t stop him from taking your head off with his counterattack.”
She touched his saber, then looked over at the foil and épée he’d pulled out. “So,” she said, “feel like giving a girl some lessons?”
He smiled. “Absolutely.”
There was nothing he had to do at the office he couldn’t do from his home system, and Jay was rattled enough by his meeting with Kent that he wanted to go home. More than that, he needed to go home.
When he got there Saji was sitting seiza on the floor, just finishing her meditation. She looked up at him and smiled.
“How’s the boy?” Jay asked. He was still shaken, both from being spotted when he had been sure he’d been invisible, and from the idea of being “disappeared.” That somebody could do that. That they would.
“Fine,” Saji said. “Been alert, smiling, perky all day. No fever, ate like a pig. Sleeping like a rock at the moment.”
That was what he wanted to hear, of course, but the serpent was in the garden, and things were never going to be the same. Before, he had known it intellectually, but now, he knew it in his souclass="underline" His son would always be at risk. Worse, past a certain point of prevention and basic first aid, there was nothing Jay could do about that. It was an awful feeling.
The baby monitor on the coffee table was quiet, the viewscreen showing Mark asleep in his crib, so everything was all right, but…
Jay smiled. “I’m going to go check on him.”
He walked down the hall and crept into Mark’s room. There he was, an angel, out like a light. Jay leaned down and made sure he was breathing. The boy had that healthy, clean-baby smell. Later, when they went to bed, Mark would sleep with them. If he woke up in the middle of the night, they’d both be with him. They had been doing that since he’d been born.
The thought of something happening to his son, or that he wouldn’t be here to see him grow up? Bad juju.
Jay moved quietly out of the room and back to where Saji now sat on the couch. He sat next to her.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’m fine. It was unexpected, all that happened, but it brought home what I already believed.”
“Which is?”
“The Four Noble Truths,” she said.
Jay shook his head. He knew what those were, at least: There is suffering in the world. The cause of that suffering is attachment to things that will all ultimately pass. There is a way to stop this suffering. The way to that attainment lies in the Eightfold Path. Simple. Not easy, but simple.
Part of what had drawn him to Saji in the first place was her Buddhist philosophy. It wasn’t really a religion, in that the existence of a God wasn’t necessary to the precepts. You could believe in a deity or not, but Buddhism was about morality and ethics in the here and now, not whatever afterlife there might be. But this was their son!
“Saji—”
She cut him off, gently. “I know what you’re going to say. This is Mark, our baby, our child. How can we not be attached to him?”
“Took the words right out of my mouth.”
“Nonattachment does not mean that we don’t love and cherish Mark as much as humanly possible. I would step in front of a bus to save him, and I know you would, too. But unless we can let go of that craving, that clinging, we’ll always be in fear for our son. All things must pass.”
Jay shook his head again. “With any luck, we’ll pass before he does. That’s how it is supposed to work.”
She reached out and took his hand. “But sometimes it doesn’t work that way. What if Mark had died?”
“I don’t want to go there.” That thought on top of the rest of his day made him feel ill.
“Nor do I,” she said. “I was never so terrified in my life as when I saw our baby convulsing and I thought he might leave. And he didn’t go. But it is possible. And if that moment had come — if it comes within our lifetimes…”
“No,” Jay said. “I couldn’t deal with it.”
“You could. You would have to. You wouldn’t be the first parent who had to deal with it.”
“And you believe the Eightfold Path will provide the tools.”
“Yes.”
Jay stared into space. He had learned those ideas from her, too. They weren’t complicated — the parade of rights, he thought of them: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration. They were supposed to help you develop in turn a blend of wisdom, conduct, and spiritual development. Not as simple as “Just do it” in application, of course. There were all kinds of exercises — meditation, not harming people or animals, not drinking or screwing around, and dozens of others. Over time, you would develop a strength that would shield you from desire and attachment, and thus free you from suffering. The idea was that you hurt because you don’t get what you want. If you don’t want anything that bad, it doesn’t hurt if you don’t get it.