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MARTIAL ARTISTS

Part I

His name was Ranma Saotome.  It was his third - and according to the 
rules, final day at the remote mining colony known as Dianymede Site 
782-A.  The last two days had been wasted, searching for an enemy who 
had chosen to remain unseen.  But that morning four Gold Team Martial 
Artists came after him, and he'd killed them all.  He needed one more 
for a perfect score.  It didn't look good; the transport was nearly 
ready for boarding.

There were two others waiting with him in what would someday be a lounge 
and restraurant.  It already bore the name Voyager's Retreat, etched 
into the stone archway in foot-high script.  At present it was a 
rough-hewn alcove, a dent in 30 million tons of rock wall.  Three 
bolted-in chairs were the only creature comforts available.  They were 
gyro-suspended and padded to the softness of air, warm and smooth as 
flesh; a sensuous respite, courtesy of the inventive geniuses at 
pProLab.  Each chair offered a pull-down helmet to dampen the jarring 
tthrum-and-shriek of construction machinery.  Ranma appreciated the 
seat, and ignored the helmet.  It wasn't a bad effort at 
accommodation-actually quite good, considering that just three days ago 
the Retreat hadn't been there at all.


The primary irrtant was the lack of filter-masks--available in most 
places by dispenser.  The air here glittered with rock dust that rose up 
in choking clouds each time someone walked past the archway.  Just down 
the corridor he'd passed and enterprising group, no doubt off-duty 
miners, doing a brisk trade in full-suit rentals.  He'd considered it, 
but the suits were a damned nuisance.  Aside from severely limiting 
peripheral vision, which was dangerous for his work,  they made reading 
nearly impossible.

Someone had left a book there, one he was famliar with.  It was Volume 
III of Calley's Introduction to her History of the Worlds.  This was a 
new edition, which featured an expanded sectioin on the "oddest of the 
odd," the planet Eusebeus.  Thumbing through the tome, lingering on the 
holo-plates that were new to him, Ranma passed the time pleasantly while 
he kept his senses focoused on the entranceway.

Somewhere beyond that stone arch was Grade 2 Expert Martial Artist 
Tatewaki Kuno, the leader--and only surviving member--of this particular 
Gold Team.  The game was still on, then, until either Ranma or Kuno was 
dead, or until the transport left the ground.  Kuno was sure to come 
after him.  Killing Ranma would guarantee him a chance for advancement 
to Grade 1.  Kuno was ambitious.  He would do everything in his power to 
kill Ranma.  Damn him, he'd better.  Whoa! he thought.  Unwrap. Relax.  
He isolated the impatience in his mind and mentally walked away from it, 
concentrating on the book.  Senses drilled by thirty years as a 
professional monitored all movement and conditions around him.

Calley was a good writer.  Whas she said about Eusebeus was more 
interesting than being there.  He'd visited the plante years ago, 
decades after the last colonists had given up and moved on.  The whole 
world was dead sand, except for one spot.  Now only scientists and 
tourists visited the world that refused to be terraformed.  Nothing--not 
the atmosphere, not the soil, nothing--did what it was supposed to do on 
Eusebeus.  Someday somebody was going to figure out why, and streak to 
the top of the theory trade.  And good luck.  Getting to the top was 
easy, compared to the ordeal of staying there.  At least scientists only 
butchered one another in the professional sense.

The main attraction on Eusebeaus were the plants.  In the equalotial 
zone grew three mountain-sized plants that stirred in the dead air and 
never stopped humming.  They measured over a mile high, three at the 
base, and nobody yet had explained what they were, how they got to be 
there, or how they could surivive in the arid hell of equatorial 
Eusebeus.  Calley got it just right:  "The enigma of Eusebeus, whatever 
time may reveal it to be, now stands as a thriving monument to the 
youthful ignorance of humankind."

He stopped reading at the sound of someone approaching the alcove from 
the corridor.  This one was coming in.  A quick flex of practiced 
muscles brought the dagger springing hilt-first up into his palm.  He 
yawned, scratched at his neck, and was ready to throw.  An old man 
walked through the stone archway as though the quarter-gravity were too 
much for him.  Ranma finished yhe yawn and slid the dagger back home.  
Damn Kuno.  He looked again at the old man and stood to offer him the 
chair.

"Thank you, young son."  The man settled himself comfortably and looked 
up at his benefactor.  "The Blessed Heir will repay your kindness."

Ranma nodded politely and began to move off.  Every few minutes while 
waiting he'd gone out into the corridor to be seen, offering himself as 
a target, hoping to be attacked.  So far it had been a waste of Time.  
Kuno was apparently doing the sensible thing, hiding.  There was not 
time to go and look for him; too bad.  It bothered Ranma to leave this 
detail unfinished.  But there wouldn't be another transport for fifteen 
days.  If he missed this one, he'd forfeit the next arena.  Five more of 
the Gold Team were already there and waiting.  Corpses, although they 
didn't know it yet.  The hell with Kuno.

"You are troubled, young son," the old man called after him.  Ranma 
continued walking.  The old man raised his voice.  "Your hands," he 
said.  "They touch lives, and souls pass through them."

Ranma stopped and turned.  He was intrigued by the unusual, but 
accurate, description of his trade.  He wondered if the old man 
recognized him, or if the reference was one of the obscure riddles Monks 
of the Heir were known for.  The name Ranma Saotome was known on most of 
the fifteen hundred worlds of the Great Domain.  But few, if asked to 
spot the Master Martial Artist in a crowd, would be able to pick him 
out.  He liked it that way.

In his professions, anonymity was sometimes the only safety.  Younger 
Martial Artists worked too hard at destroying that sanctuary before they 
came to need it.

The seated man said, "I am Paragonus Veritas, which is a flawed 
expression for Model of Truth. And therefore the name is accurate."

Ranma was amused.  "Accurate?  Does that mean that you're a model of 
truth, or that you're flawed?"

"Yes," Veritas said.  "That is precisely what it means."  The monk's 
voice carried humor, and his smile filled his face.  "Your question 
demonstrates training in the subtleties of discourse, young son.  You 
were raised in a monastery?"

"I was not." Though dealing with the likes of Nabiki....he said to 
himself.

The monk seemed disappointed.  The smile left his face.  But an instant 
later he looked bemused, detached, and interested, as before.  Ranma 
recofnized the facial expression as reflexive; professional, from many 
decades of practice.  How m any decades?  He suddenly realized, looking 
at the ancient monk, that he'd never seen a human being as old the as 
Happosai nor the old ghoul.  The man's skin looked like yellow parchment 
on which had been etched the tales of ten lives.

As if sensing the question, Veritas said, "I was born on Earth in the 
year 2090.  I am two hundred thiry years old."

Ranma believed the priest.  He'd seen things more strange than a man 
who'd outlived a normal life span by eighty years.  He accepted the old 
monk's statement the way he accepted the existance of the plants on 
Eusebeus; such things simply are.

Half an hour remained before the transport would be ready for boarding.  
He looked forward to stretching out in the cabin, relaxing, pehaps even 
the rare luxury of a hot bath in transit.  Why not? The Martial Arts 
Union was paying for the Tour.  Ranma tried to picture the expression on 
Colonel Pritcher's face when the bills finally reached him at the Tendo 
Academy.  His former mentor pwould either laugh or explode in rage.  The 
old warrior was unpredictable.  That, and consummate skill, had kept him 
alive through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of battles.

In the meantime, the Master Martial Artist decided that there were worse 
ways to wait than by passing the time with an ancient Monk of the Heir.

"I've touched many lives, monk.  Not all of them had soulds."  Certainly 
not the four he'd killed that morning.  Along with Kuno, they'd killed 
the five Blue Team Duelist set against them at their last testing arena, 
on Basalt Site 465-F.  Nothing wrong with that; that was the game.  But 
they'd also killed six innocents.  And when Basalt's Peacekeepers had 
them cornered, they took more innocents as hostages.  Seventy of them, 
in a Family compound--men, women, and children.  Kuno and his Team were 
given the scouter and the money they'd demanded, and they escaped 
without interference.  But what they'd left behind was a scene from 
Dante's Inferno.  The holo-images were still fresh in his mind.

The seventy hostages had been gagged to stifle their screams, then 
gutted and thrown into a pit.  When the holographers arrived, most of 
the innocents were still alive and burning from barrels of acid dumped 
on them.  One poor sould volunteered to gas the moaning wretches and end 
their agony; his wife and child were in that pit.  The young man cried 
the entire time, and when all of them were safely dead he activated a 
rock shredder and walked into it.  A number of miners had been close 
enough to stop the man.  But they'd understood, as Ranma had when he saw 
the holo, that to interfere would have been an act of ultimate cruelty.

"There are three souls, young son," the old monk said.  "There is the 
one that each of us imagines, the one that each of us has, and finally 
the one that each of us may someday share."  Veritas assumed another 
professional facial expression: kindly sincerity.

Ranma's reply was interrupted by a grunting sound from behind him.  he 
spun hard to the right as a cicular cleaving blade flew past within 
inches of his left arm, and split Paragonus Veritas from face to groin.  
In a fraction of a scond the Master Martial Artist had jumped to his 
left and crouched low, turning to face the direction from which the 
attack had come.  He spotted his prey immediately.

In there moment of eye contact Ranma saw Kuno's terror; he was a dead 
man now, and they both knew it.  The sleek haird Kendoist turned and 
loped away through the stone archway.  Ranma exhaled forcefully to lower 
his center of gravity and launced himself like a missile.  He caught the 
edge of the archway with his outstrectched hands and used it to brake, 
then launched himself again.  He caught Kuno in a running dive and the 
two skidded ten yards through a cluster of people who jumped away so 
hard a few of them became airborne.

By the time they stopped, Ranma had the grip he wanted, and the matter 
was settled.  Kuno's skill and stength were now irrelevant.  Ranma's 
grip could not be broken.  And he would not release Kuno to regrapple, 
as he would in an exhibition fight.  This wasn't an exhibition.  It 
wasn't even a fight.  This was a kill.

Ranma pushed his thumb a full inch into the back of the doomed man's 
neck, then applied pressure against a vertebra.  Intrusion Techniques 
such as this had been developed by Martial Artists to cause maximum 
damage and shock, shattering an opponent's ability to resist the attack 
to come.  This particular move was fatal, as often as not.  At the lease 
it induced paralysis and crippling pain.  But always, it achieved its 
objective.  That was all that mattered now.

Kuno gasped.  His torso spasmed and his head snapped backward.

"Curse you, vile Saotome!!" Kuno hiss through clenched teeth.  Ranma was 
of no mind to hear empty threats or noble last sentiments from a fallen 
adversary; no respect was due this man.  The strained words were choked 
off with a nerve-pinch that sent a jolt of agaony through Kuno.  An 
instant later Ranma's knife slid easily up through soft tissue, stopping 
just short of the brain.  The razor-sharp blade sliced down, forward, 
and out.  Kuno's opened neck spewed like a volcano.  Ranma jumped to his 
feet and left his prey kicking and gurgling his life away.  If this man 
had a soul, Ranma didn't want it staining his fingers.

After a quick look around, the Master Martial Artist knelt and wiped his 
hands, and then the knife blade, on Kuno's tunic.  He would definitely 
had that bath aboard the transport.  Ranma stood and kicked the dying 
body away.  The former prize-fight champion of elevel worlds gave a 
weak, final scream and relaxed, dead.

A small crowd had gathered.  Ranma studied the silent faces, his own 
expression blank.  He was looking for a gesture or an expression that 
would reveal an accomplice.  Only five Golds were supposed to be here, 
but Kuno had had no more regard for Martial Artist traditions than he'd 
had for those seventy innocents.  Elven people stood watching Ranma, 
none closer tha fifteen feet.  Their faces registered shock, fear, 
disgust, morbid excitement.  The usual.  Ranma turned his back on them 
and pushed the dagger firmly back into the wrist-sheath.  He sat 
cross-legged on the floor and waited.

A peacekeeper arrived and spent ten minutes with him.  When the poper 
forms had been signed and witnessed, Ranma gave her money for the old 
monk's funeral.  He felt the same rage and remorse he always experienced 
at the death of an innocent.  It was some comfort--not much, but 
some--that the man was old and had passed a normal number of years 
alive.  But who knew?  Maybe Paragonus Veritas had been destined to set 
a record of some sort.  Maybe Ranma had interfered with that destiny.  
There were no answeres--or perhaps too many answers--to such questions.  
If there was any consolation at all, it was that members of the Heir 
culr looked forward to death.   They called it Claiming the Inheritance.

An hour later Ranma was aboard the hyperspace transport, bathed and in 
fresh clothes.  He sat back in his small cabin with a worn copy of 
Toilus and Criseyde, a gift from Ukyou, and let his mind begin 
automatically the familiar gymnastics of reading Chaucer.  It had been a 
good day.  Five authorized targets, five registered kills; perfect.  He 
thought briefly of his next stop.  It would be the last for him; his 
second Elimination Tour as Master of the trade would be complete.  Then 
on to Tendo Academy, for a long-overdue reunion with Colonel and Maggie 
Pritcher, and for the quadrennial Tournaments.

Maybe Ukyou would change her mind and go there with him.  He'd always 
wanted to show her the best of the Martial Arts Schools.  It would be a 
welcome break in routine, for both of them.  And she really should meet 
mom and the Colonel before the wedding.

A few minutes he closed the book and drefted into a contented sleep.

To be continued...

Well how do you like it?

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