Lunch was whatever, usually in London, without jumping. Sure it was evening there, but if you want a particular type of food and you can't find it in London, you aren't trying very hard. Well, except Mexican, perhaps. I ate Paki, Indian, Chinese, and the occasional bit of fish and chips.

There was a library branch not too far from the dojo where I'd do my homeschooling workbooks. I was still working through the French science series and the Spanish math so the ladies who worked there kept coming up to try out their "Bonjour, mon ami" and "iComo esta?". They were a bit disappointed when they found out I wasn't so foreign, but they were always good for a pointer or two when I got stuck on a bit of math or a bit of chemistry.

Reference librarians, they explained, lived to answer questions. And I was a nice change from the kids who wanted them to tell them "where the reports are kept" or came to snog in the stairwell or score some weed back by the toilet.

Dinner might be anywhere. Morning in p.h.u.ket, something in San Diego. Not London, thoughgetting past midnight in London.

Sometimes I'd just jump my dingy down to Bahia Chacacual, a bay twenty miles west of La Crucecita, and I'd skindive for my supper, lobster or fish, cooked on the beach with limes and peppers.

Then home to Hole and hearth and up again, pick up my laundry and repeat as needed.

After six months, Sensei Patel said I could come to evening adult cla.s.ses. They tested me for nikkyu, low brown belt, after that and I pa.s.sed, barely.

Didn't really like forms, the kata. Didn't see the point, so I didn't practice them as much as I should.

"Well, then," said Sensei Patel when I expressed this opinion, "you're a right git, aren'tcha?"

He sat me down on the floor and said, "Watch."

He did the first two steps of Heian Shodan, a lower block and a stepping midlevel punch. He paused between the block and the punch. "That's how you do it. Now, come here and attack me. Front kick."

I got up and did my best kick. He blocked it to the side with the lower block and the knuckles of his fist brushed my nose and I fell backward, overbalanced. Hadn't even seen him step in but he had. For the barest second, I wondered if he'd jumped.

"How do you think I learned that? Made it mine? It wasn't from sparring. Nowwatch." He did the whole kata, but this time there was a different rhythm and intensity to it. Blockpunch, blockblockpunch. He didn't even move that fast but everything flowed from one to the other.

"You want to spar better, you get on with your katas, eh?" He tapped me on the forehead. "Use a little imagination. You think you're out here by yourself but that's not what it's about. Enemies surround you. Start acting like it."

Ouch.

Every couple of months I'd give Sam a call, using a pay phone. I'd talk in Spanish and ask for Carlotta or Rosa or any of a bunch of different names. If he said tienes el numero incorrecto and hung up, we'd meet the next day down the road from the Texaco, on a rise where you could see for miles. If he said, "No la conozco," I'd have to postponehe couldn't make it the next day or he felt like it wasn't safe.

But this time it was okay and Consuelo and he sat on their folding chairs and I perched on the tailgate and we ate a nice curry and spoke in Spanish.

"Alejandra is coming home," Consuelo said. "She said to tell you she misses the chupulinesP She smiled briefly but she was clearly worried.

"Is the bellman from the Villa Blanca still around?" "Oh, yes. Mateo buys drinks in the bars for my relatives. He's been letting Rodrigo use his car in the afternoon to drive around the girls."

"jEstupido! Did no one tell him?" I wanted to go slap Rodrigo around. This stung. I thought he was my friend.

Sam shrugged. "Tell him what? Anything Rodrigo knows Mateo can find out from anyone. Someone tells Rodrigo don't talk to Mateo and suddenly Rodrigo does have a secret. Leave well enough alone. It won't last. Rodrigo's mother is forbidding ithe doesn't have his licenseand she told him she'll have cousin Paco arrest him if he doesn't listen."

"He never listens," I said. "What about Alejandra? I'm worried."

Consuelo sighed. "She misses her family. And she broke up with her boyfriend, the Dominican."

"I could"

"What?" Sam said. "You could show up and give them a reason to bother her?"

I dropped off the tailgate and kicked a rock. It flew over the edge of the hilltop, then crashed through the mesquite and cholla. My big toe throbbed and I tried not to limp as I stepped back to the tailgate.

"Right. What about you guys? You think this is safe?" I waved my hand around at the empty hillside. The highway was seven miles south of us and the dirt road running out to the hilltop was clearly visible and empty, a thin straight line that didn't bend until it hit the bottom of the ridge.

Sam shrugged. "As safe as it gets without no contact."

Consuelo shook her finger at me. "You are not a jaguar to live alone and solitary. It is unhealthy." She reached out and plucked at a hole in my jeans. "More like a coyote. But even coyotes keep together, eh?"

"Okay. I'll go howl at the moon. Maybe go through the trash cans."

Sam tapped his plastic fork against the Styrofoam container. "This didn't come from any trash can. Where did it come from?"

"Huh? Oh, Cafe Naz in the East End." At his blank look I added, "London."

"Ah." He mouth worked for a moment but nothing came out. Finally he said, "Not bad. Not bad at all." He poked a finger toward my upper torso. "You look healthy. Whatcha doing for exercise?"

"Karate. A dojo in well, maybe I shouldn't say where."

"Right. Not if you go there regular. And income? You got enough money?"

I looked away. "No worries. Don't have to worry about the rent. I'm saying my prayers and washing behind my ears and brushing my teeth, Papa." Teeth. I didn't want any more Xrays compared if I could help it. "I'm even doing my lessons. I'm up to Second Form, uh, tenth grade in the science and I'm starting precalculus."

"What is that, four grade levels ahead?"

I shrugged. "Whatever." I tried to be indifferent but it was nice to have someone make a fuss. Quite nice.

It made me afraid for them.

I waited thirty minutes after they left, watching the dust trail of the pickup all the way to the highway before I jumped away to the Hole.

Jumped to Embankment Station at the curvy underground part, not the aboveground platform, in a nook, behind a crowd of tourists, and someone started screaming.

Someone was shouting, "MOVE! MOVE YOUR b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.s!" The two women tourists in front of me were holding their hands above their head, cameras dangling, and one of them was screaming. Over their shoulder I saw someone running up the platform holding a big, oddly shaped gun one I'd seen before.

He fired and something smacked into the wall on both sides of my nook and suddenly the two women tourists were thrown into me. I heard the breath leave their lungs and they stopped screaming, but they were spasming and I smelled ozone. I wasn't pinnedthough the women were jammed across the opening of the nook there was still room behind meand I jumped.

"Wait!" I yelled. I don't know why or to whom, but the sound echoed in the wash of the Empty Quarter. I jumped immediately to Charing Cross platform and stepped onto the northern train heading back toward the Thames and Embankment Station.

n.o.body screamed and n.o.body shot at me but my eyes were wide open.

It took maybe three minutes for the train to reach the other station, but he was gone. There were transport police on the platform. They'd gotten the women out of the nook and seated on a bench. The cable was still there, taut between two areas of broken blue tile, so I guess they wiggled back into the nook and ducked under it. I didn't get off the train and as it left, we pa.s.sed more transport police in the tunnel itself, flashlights waving as they searched.

I got off at Waterloo and took the Jubilee line back to GreenPark, then took the Piccadilly line over to Knightsbridge. I wasn't even late for cla.s.s, though it seemed as if I should be.

The next one was closer.

Elephant and Castle Tube stop and he was more careful than the last guy. He followed me and didn't attack until we were in the twisty stair up to street level. He was firing up the stairs and I heard something mechanical click right before he shot, so I was bending forward and looking back. The cable tore overhead and tangled in the handrail above me and I was standing in desert sand before the next one arrived.

Right, then.

The first one was clearly not just coincidence. They were watching the Tube stations.

I jumped back into London, on the other side of the Thames, to South Kensington Station. It was only one stop away from Knightsbridge but I didn't get on the train. I wandered between platformsthere are three different lines at that stationkeeping my eye on everyone else. It was busy but when I stayed on the Piccadilly platform through three different train arrivals, the faces had all recycled.

I took the stairs up to the eastbound platform then took the pa.s.sage under Cromwell Road over to the Natural History Museum. I spent an hour there, wandering back and forth between the whales and the dinosaurs, checking everybody who came near. All random faces. Finally, I walked up Brompton Avenue to Knightsbridge, picked up my laundry and a bite of falafel, and hopped a crosscity westbound bus.

The falafel was fresh, warm, crisp, and it sat in my stomach like a dead weight. How many of them were there? How many stations could they watch? Were they going to force me out of London like they'd forced me out of San Diego and Huatulco?

What the h.e.l.l do they want?

Somewhere past Ealing Common, when the bus was mostly empty, I jumped back to my Hole.

I got my hair bleached. Bought a reversible jacket and three hats. Bought some darkframed gla.s.ses with clear gla.s.s. Still used the subway, but I was very, very careful. Never jumped to a station. Never left from a station. Tried to choose a new arrival point every single day, but never near my departure point for that day.

I definitely stopped jumping into the cinemas without paying.

I pa.s.sed my ikkyu, upper brown belt, test. Sensei Patel said my kata didn't suck nearly so bad now. I'd actually tagged Sensei Martin in the ribs with a front kick during the sparring test.

And I made a friend.

Chapter Seven.

Punches and Pimples Henry Langsford was an uppercla.s.s twit with a sense of humor. We'd tested for ikkyu together and he always gave me a hard time about the Americanisms in my language and my accent. His father was a second secretary at the British emba.s.sy in Amman so Henry was at a boarding school in London. "But all they have at school is boxing. I do that, too, but I've received dispensation for this."

He was long and thin, pushing sixtwo, even though he was my age. He could reach me with a kick long before I could strike him, but I was faster. But the boxing was something. I tried to stay away from his hands. I'd go outside for a kidney or sweep his foot, midkick.

Henry suggested a cuppa. "Won't be in trouble until half past nine and 'tis only seven stops up the Piccadilly line. You for it?"

I had a dozen excuses on my tongue. Instead I said, "Why not?"

We hit Expres...o...b..r on the north side of Beauchamp Place . He got tea, I took a doubleshot latte loaded with sugar.

"No wonder you're so short. Stunted your growth, you did, with that caffeine. How do you sleep?"

It was actually midday still, for me, but I said, "Maybe that's why I'm faster than you."

We walked back to Brompton Road and into Hyde Park and wandered a bit, tending east.

We talked about travel, places we'd lived. We'd both been to Thailand, both been to Spain, but him in the south, Cadiz and Seville, and me in the north, Barcelona and Zaragoza. I talked about the "colonies" and Mexico. He talked about Kenya and Norway and family vacations in Normandy. That led to speaking in French and he was ohsosuperior about his accentmy CountyDurham origins corrupted the purity of my p.r.o.nunciation, but my vocabulary was bigger.

"Et oil est votre maison, mon pet.i.t ami?"

"Little? I'm not ducking through doorways. And I lives in an 'ole in the ground."

"What? Like a Hobbit?"

"Very like an 'obbit."

"A bas.e.m.e.nt flat?"

"You could say that. On the west side." Of America.

He considered this. "Your feet are a bit hairy."

"So, your home would be in Rivendell, eh?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Elves." He chuckled and looked at his watch. "Oi. b.u.g.g.e.r meI'm going to be talking to the Head if I don't get a move on."

We were close to Hyde Park Corner Station and he dashed for it, his long legs flashing. "Kick you in cla.s.s," he called over his shoulder.

"In your dreams!"

A cuppa after became a regular thing, and when I turned sixteen the dojo went up to Birmingham to partic.i.p.ate in a tournament. Henry and I roomed together, under the supervision of Sensei Patel.

"You never talk about your folks," Henry asked, on the train up.

It came out of left field, that, and surprised me. I blinked. "b.u.g.g.e.r, something in me eye." After a deep breath I said, "Whatcha want to know? Dad teaches computers. Mum teaches kids their Voltaire and Beaumarchais and Diderot, in the original. Awfully boring if you ask me, but they're all right." I was tired; I woke and slept on PacificCoast time and here I was floundering around at 9.00 a.m., Greenwich zero. It felt like two in the b.l.o.o.d.y morning.

"Seems like they're pretty handy with the ready," Henry said. "Dad's always on about the fees at the dojo, but in that proud sort of way. Nothing but the best for mine, don'tcha know. You don't seem to have any problem."

I shook my head. "Well, that's not their moneythat's me own."

"Rich grandmother?"

"Distant uncle." Uncle Truck. Armored T. Truck.

I was eliminated in the second round of brown belt k.u.mite by a collegeaged brown belt from Coventry, and then Sensei Patel and another instructor protested.

"What?" I said, as Sensei walked past me to the judges' table. "He beat me fair and square!" He'd scored to my face with a lightningfast roundhouse kick.

The judges listened to Sensei Patel, then called my opponent over. There were some heated words and then the referee came back on the floor and announced I'd won, by forfeit.

My opponent gave me a murderous look and left.

Sensei Patel explained. "Saw Mr. Wickes, there, take his shodan test five years ago. I've seen it before in these big regional tourneys. People dropping a belt level so they have a better chance of placing. Like a thirdyear college student retaking his Alevels. What's the point?"

Huh.

I made it through two more rounds and then was eliminated by a kid from Paddington who didn't even block my attacks. He'd just strike at the same time, leaning this way or that to avoid my hand or foot. Three quick points and out.