He is tall and lanky, with arms like an ape, an ideal body for null gravity karate. As soon as we hear the command to start he launches from his side of the sphere. I see his fist heading for my face.
He is squinting, body tense, gathering all his energy into the movement. I exhale sharply, the action moving my head backward. I don’t block as much as push, one hand diverting his strike, the other pressing his shoulder. The technique sends him gliding back across the combat area, and presses me more firmly against the plexiglas under my feet. I sink into a squat and leapfrog toward him.
We meet at the center. His arms are everywhere. In seconds we are in a hopeless tangle. I place one good strike to the ribs, but the judges miss it. Without fully intending it, we push away from each other once again. I get two hands on the velcro and stop my motion.
He is about one hundred twenty degrees to my left, with both feet on the velcro, ready to leap again. I see a gleam of triumph in his eyes as he realizes I will have to flip over in order to get my feet “underneath” me. He takes off.
I push off with my hands and cock my leg. The ball of my foot catches him perfectly in the midsection. He grunts in surprise. At least three of the judges give me the whistle and flag.
We settle back to our starting places and face each other.
“Yoko geri, chu dan,” the referee announces over the p.a. system. “One half-point, red.” I am the red contestant.
I have the scope of my opponent’s technique now. It was a mistake to let him make the first move. As the next round begins, I plunge straight in before he can get started. A simple reverse punch gives me the score.
“Seiken zuki, jo dan. Two half-points, red. Winner.”
We bow to each other and I, following tournament courtesy, let him open the hatch and exit the sphere first. I pause in the opening and let the referee remove the red ribbon from my belt, while I strip the velcro bands off my hands and feet. The next two contestants are sailing over from the staging area.
“Nice work, champ,” says one of the statisticians as I land at the edge of the part of the bleachers reserved for contestants. I thank him, grab a squeeze bottle of Gatorade from a vendor, and float up into the seats, where some of my students have collected.
“Way to go, Aaron,” one of them says; I’m not sure just who. I strap down, feeling the sweat bead and evaporate on my skin. I wait for it to trickle down the sides of my face and torso, but it never does.
No, I think. It was not nice work.
I smell the familiar odor of perspiring bodies and the laundry scent of freshly washed karate gis. The speakers boom with a mixture of English and Japanese, overlapping the beehive hum of the spectators’ voices. My heartbeat is fast with adrenaline rush, pulling me into a hypnotic state where time seems distorted and it is almost impossible to carry on a normal conversation. I cling to the feelings. This is no different from any other tournament, I tell myself. I always start slow; I always rally in time.
The air, it strikes me, is too filtered. They forgot the dirt. They have deliberately added the essence of grass, trees, and animals to the ventilation systems, but they’ve left out the pollution. I practice controlled breathing, and settle in to watch the matches.
My vantage point isn’t one of the best; those have been reserved for the “corner” judges, the referee, and the cameras. The folks back Earthside are getting a better view. It doesn’t matter. There will be plenty of time to play it back in weeks to come, and analyze what should or shouldn’t have happened. What matters now is an all too elusive state of mind.
I suppose it was inevitable that karate would move into high orbit. In many ways, it is a natural null sport. Once the dancers and racquetball players pioneered the concept, martial arts couldn’t be far behind. It is one of those athletic activities that can take advantage of the ability to move in three dimensions, and it doesn’t require the huge venues necessary for traditional spectator sports like baseball and football, games which will have to wait until orbital stations can afford to devote large cubic area to such pastimes.
The spheres in which the kumite matches are being performed are eighteen feet in diameter, transparent, and banded along the equator and two meridians by twelve-inch wide strips of clear velcro. The strips divide the sphere into eight equal sections. Only the contestants themselves remain within the shell; the judging personnel are positioned immediately outside, one judge over each half hemisphere. The referee, as on planetside, is able to move as he sees fit in order to best watch the action.
The current referee, a thin, effeminate Japanese, isn’t moving much at all. He has that pallid shade in his complexion I’ve come to associate with space adaptation syndrome. Like many of the officials, he’s spent less time training in zero gravity than we contestants have.
The p.a. system crackles, announcing the match and its participants. One is Joe Alexander, a Shotokan stylist, a heavyweight with a United States national championship to his credit. He faces a tall, thin Swedish player, a weight combination that wouldn’t occur on Earth. Here the criterion is height.
Joe is designated as the white player. The Swede is red. “Hajime!” the referee shouts, and the match begins.
Joe thrusts off, a mountain of mass hurtling toward his opponent. The Swede wisely springs sideways, aiming a blade-of-foot kick at Joe’s side, but failing to land it. They both miss the velcro and bounce off the sphere again, colliding in a techniqueless jumble that makes me wince. They shouldn’t try to thrust; they should use snapping moves. Joe’s foot automatically reaches beneath him, trying to find the ground, to gain the connection that will allow him to use his size effectively. But the collision has stolen both players’ momentum, leaving them stranded at the center of the combat area, where Joe’s size only means that much more target area for the Swede to take advantage of. Which he does.
“Seiken zuki, chu dan,” the referee announces. “Half-point, red.”
Joe opens the second engagement with a pile driver kick to the stomach. The Swede flies across the sphere, bouncing three times before he finds the velcro. The referee’s whistle blares.
“Excessive contact. One warning, white,” the referee calls, as the Swede struggles to catch his breath.
That is the thing about null gravity matches; it is easy to tell when the impact has been too hard. We are using a modified version of World Union of Karate Organizations rules. This is supposed to be refined. No gloves, no full contact, no blood. Joe comes from a different tradition.
“It’s the Hulk,” says Mikey, my highest ranked black belt student. The others laugh.
I almost ask them to knock it off, but they stop after the first comment. Joe doesn’t deserve the mockery. He is a good, ethical player. I suspect he is as dissatisfied with his performance as was the referee.
In fact, his thunder seems to be completely stolen. He loses the second half-point in less than ten seconds.
“He looks like a whale,” Mikey comments, as Joe sails toward the viewing area. I watch him climb into a seat and strap in, stone faced. This is only the first round. Joe can still place in the consolation matches. He will face at least one more opponent. But he will lose that match, too, as long as he remains in his present mood.
I notice the hair on my chest is sticking straight out between the lapels of my gi, and I brush it flat. I have long since given up on the hair on my scalp, adopting the crew cut so common here at the space station, even among the women.
Not a whale, I reflect. A dinosaur. Joe is from an age when power could win you matches. Any master, myself included, emphasizes the importance of speed, coordination, flexibility, and quick thinking, but until the arrival of the null gravity event, simple strength and size had won many karate tournaments. Joe is a fine player, but he has never had to vary his repertoire. He is adapted to a different environment.
We all are, I tell myself, vaguely paying attention to the continuing matches. We are like rock musicians suddenly called upon to prepare a classic symphony; some may have the talent to excel at both the old art and the new, others may not. In my mind is the acrid smell of vomit, the dizziness, the frustrating urge to figure out which way is down: memories of my first week here. Some of the group brought up from Earth for the competition hadn’t made it through those first few days; I had lost my best pupil. Some, of course, had never made it up the gravity well in the first place: bad blood pressure, lack of financial sponsor, inability to devote three months of one’s life to a single sports event. Over the last few weeks, I have seen lips pursed in determination, individuals stretching their practice sessions in zero gravity right up to the eight hours permitted per day, and here and there, wild elation at a freedom impossible to the planetbound. We are part of a great experiment. Those who succeed will be the new breed of karateka; the others will be fossils. In many ways it might have been kinder for Joe to have been one of the ones eliminated early.
“Huh?” I ask, abruptly aware that someone is tapping me on the shoulder.
“Sally’s coming up for her kata,” Mikey says. “Want to watch?”
“Of course,” I answer. I unbuckle and accompany the majority of my students to the other side of the arena.
Unlike sparring, forms are performed inside cubes, a design which complements their symmetrical nature. The only velcro is a small square on the “bottom” side, from which the player begins, and hopefully, finishes each kata. As I strap into a seat, a Shorin-ryu stylist dances carefully from one wall to another, executing a block and strike combination to different directions, a lower kata, unsophisticated if not for the unique venue. Unlike some, it closely resembles the earthbound variation.
He starts well. He stays oriented, keeps control over his momentum. It is his karate technique that suffers. His entire body lands in the right places, but his blocks are incomplete and his strikes slow. He misses the velcro at the finale.
“Three point five,” the head judge announces. Average for his level.
I spot Sally at the staging area, and kick over to her. Her glance reminds me a little of a deer as it stares into oncoming headlights.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Just do it the way you’ve done it all week.”
She tugs her belt, tightening the knot. Weightlessness perversely unties everyone’s belt several times a day, unless they’re as old and frayed as mine. The committee has already voted to replace them with velcro-secured ones. “Yes, sensei.”
“What’s this ‘sensei’ shit?”
“Yes, Aaron.”
“Kick ass, girl. Show them what a Goju player can do.” The sentence is hardly out of my mouth when her name is announced over the loudspeaker.
She crosses her fingers once, gives me her pert, nineteen-year-old smile once again, and launches toward the cube.
I observe her gracefully sliding through the trap door to take her place on the velcro patch, and feel like a father with only one child left at home. Sally is the single one of my students who has survived the morning’s qualification rounds. I’m a bit startled by the feeling. Ordinarily watching that body of hers move brings on much more corrupt emotions. Must be getting old, I muse. Pushing the big three-five. My own instructor retired from tournament play at twenty-five.
She places the soles of her feet on the velcro and stands straight, hands at sides, gi precisely arranged, hair tied back in a neat bun. The commander announces kata seinchin, and gives her the cue to start.
Gradually she unfolds into the first posture of the kata, and proceeds with the opening set of slow, isotonic movements. She must try to maintain her position just above the floor. If she floats too high, she’ll be unable to kick off in order to begin the fast sections of the form. I picture all too well the times during training when even I ended up rotating helplessly in the middle of the enclosure.
She hovers perfectly. I watch her hands: clenching for double downward block, opening for the upward block, tensing for the finger strike. The hardest part is breath control. If she exhales or inhales too profoundly, it will send her traveling in directions she’s not supposed to go.
Then she kicks, zooming straight “up,” then back down to land on the velcro so smoothly that it holds her once more. She rotates slightly, blocking with tension, then pushes off toward a corner, performing a lower block in midair, and bouncing back to the opposite corner, blocking again. She catches herself against the sides of the cube, canceling her momentum. She stays there, executing another slow block, then kicks off to perform the same set of movements to another two corners.
She’s good. She’s on a streak. Furthermore, seinchin is the most spectacular null gravity kata, if done with the precision that she is exhibiting. I feel a smile creeping across my lips. The judges’ gazes are rapt.
She lands in cat stance dead center on the velcro, and finishes the last block in an almost leisurely fashion. She knows how well she’s done.
“Hot damn,” Mikey says. We wait. I wipe the slickness off my palms.
“Five point zero,” we hear come out of the speakers. It’s the highest score so far in Sally’s class.
She shoots through the trap door like an acrobat, pivoting on one finger, and glides across the gap to the bleachers, a great big grin on her face. Then she has her arms around me, pinning me to my seat.
“Congratulations,” I say.
“Oh, I’m so glad you talked me into coming here.” Sally gave up a semester of college to make the trip. She waves her arms in a little dance, forgetting where she is, and I have to catch her toes and reel her back in.
“Hold on. The competition isn’t over yet.”
“I don’t care. I never thought I’d get a five today.”
Some time later, I leave her in the company of the others and wander back to the kumite area. I have a bye for the second round, so I have some time.
Sally is the new breed, I tell myself. She’s learned the music. Whenever the next karate tournament in high orbit is held, she’ll be one of the veterans there. I allow myself a spoonful of pride.
I check the scoreboard. Some of the second round has been completed, and I see that my next opponent will be another Goju player named Eunice Hershey. She is the first woman I have faced during the tournament; there aren’t many in my height class. That there are any at all is a bit unusual. I can still see old Master Kawamoto’s face turning purple at the thought of combining males and females in kumite matches.
Joe is off sitting by himself. He has, I note, lost the first round of the consolation series, and is now out of the tournament altogether.
I pass part of the time practicing small, null gravity maneuvers in the bleachers. I hook a finger around the grip at the top of a seat, letting my body float. I spin counterclockwise, then clockwise, flip forward, then backward. I fix my eyes on my fingers as they twist and grip at the plastic. That’s the secret of keeping one’s orientation, not to mention keeping one’s dinner down: find a stable point and focus on it.
Later, I bounce from seat to seat, pushing off with feet, toes, elbows, knees, fingers, hands. Never has Newton’s Third Law seemed more real. Even breathing, I remind myself for the thousandth time, can be a source of propulsion.
Just remember the rules, I say silently. The karate technique will take care of itself.
It seems like only a few moments later that I am hearing my students offer words of encouragement. My name has been called. I push off for the sphere. Eunice Hershey is arriving from another direction. Once more, the referee ties the red ribbon to my belt. We are inside the sphere, waiting for the command.
I glance into her eyes. She is intimidated. I haven’t failed to make the quarter finals in ten years, back on Earth. Somewhere in the distance the referee shouts.
She takes the offensive. I stay at my side of the sphere. She is leaving me an opening to the ribs just beneath her elbow. My foot takes advantage of it.
Time is moving very strangely. It seems like an hour before the whistles blow, the flags wave, the referee calls the score.
“Yoko geri, chu dan. One half-point, red.”
More intimidation. I begin to smile. The old feeling is back. I have the mind set that has carried me through so many matches. Eunice sees it.
She tries a less direct approach this time. Off to my left, then across in front of me. Her foot licks out as she passes. Not close enough for a point; I don’t block. She continues past. I launch off. We cross twice at the center of the sphere, engaging tentatively. I land again, this time on the velcro. I stop, and turn. I know she will be off to my right.
She is not.
I feel a wind brush my temple. My block is almost in time.
The whistles blow.
I tread the velcro back to my starting position, listening to it go scritch, scritch, scritch, feeling it tug at my feet.
“Ura uchi, jo dan,” the referee announces. “One half-point, white. One half-point, red. Continue.”
Eunice seems surprised, as if uncertain she had really made the score. She shouldn’t be; it was a clean technique.
She takes to the air again. I decide to move the slow way, walking the velcro. I must wait for the right opening, the one sure to be worth the point. There are no second chances at this stage. There. She is open to her face. I strike.
And miss. Not by much, but wide enough not to tempt the judges. I continue to the other side of the sphere. She is charging me again. I block her with my left leg, shoving her back across the sphere. When she returns, I am ready.
No. Her knee is in the way. I halt my technique.
I misjudge how limber she is. Her leg twists impossibly far, bringing her body with it. She makes contact with my side.
The maneuver has left a broad opening, which I take, but the whistles are already echoing.
The referee must be announcing the score, but I don’t hear it. I offer Eunice my congratulations, and precede her out of the sphere. The red ribbon is removed, and I am soon in the midst of my strangely quiet group of students.
“Your strike was much better than her kick,” Sally blurts.
“But it was after her kick,” I reply calmly.
They offer more condolences, which I barely hear, and some part of me shuttles words back in their direction. Presently Sally is due to perform another kata, and I insist that they go on without me.
What the hell. I have enough trophies already. I spot Joe, still in his perch, and float over his way.
“Close match,” he says. I decide he means mine, not the one going on in the sphere right now. We watch that one, and the next, which features a woman player. She loses.
“What do you say we get a beer?” I ask. The only alcohol available is outside the stadium, in the space station proper, where there’s gravity, and an old man can tell up from down.
“Sounds good to me.”
We unstrap and head for the exits, gliding like a pair of pterodactyls.