by Baen Books
"Now close your eyes." Once he had done so, Sensei said, "Now, without opening your eyes, tell me how many hairs are visible on the first joint of your index finger."
"What? Um…I dunno. Twenty?"
"Seventeen," Sensei said. "Look and count."
Xavier did. Seventeen. "You've got good eyes."
"My eyes are little, if any, better than yours," Sensei answered. "What I have are trained perceptions. This is the first—and to many students of Tor, one of the hardest—exercises in training those perceptions. It is called Hand Center, and in it you will look at your hand and practice visualizing your hand until you can visualize it in perfect detail in any position, so that were a photograph taken from your memory and compared to the hand before you, there would be no visible difference."
Xavier glanced at Sensei doubtfully. "Well…okay, but what's the point?"
"There are two major points to this exercise, Xavier," the white-haired old man answered. "First, a test of discipline. If you can manage that level of focus and dedication, you will find that other similar tasks of focus become far easier, and will have proved—to yourself as well as to me—that you are capable of the immense feats of personal focus that will be required to achieve your goals.
"Second, to understand such perspectives with pure accuracy gives you a view of the reality that surrounds you that few others will ever have; you will be able to visualize not merely your hand, but eventually your body and surroundings, with a detail and accuracy that will seem to others to be supernatural. Counting the hairs on someone else's hand that you have seen at close range many times will seem utter child's play to you." He grinned. "But you will be cursing the tedium of this meditation for a long time before you unlock its secrets."
Studying my own hand until I have it memorized—at that level of detail? Yeah, you're right there. But he had no doubt that this strange old man knew exactly what he was teaching, so…did Xavier have any choice? "All right," he said, and settled himself down more comfortably. "I guess I'd better get started."
Chapter 5.
Xavier opened his eyes. His hand stood out against the light, exactly where it had to be to block the pinpoint-bright lights he'd set out, one light with each of his five fingertips. The shining light picked out exactly the number of hairs he had imagined, standing up in exactly the way he had been sure they would.
With a whoop of joy, he leapt up. "I did it!"
Sensei stuck his head into the room. "Did what?"
"I think I've got it! Hand Center! I mean, I really think I do!"
Sensei's eyebrows rose. "Really? If so, that's…astonishingly fast. Gratifying, but still…let us test that."
Xavier closed his eyes as directed and felt Sensei take his hand. "Now, I am going to move your hand in various ways and ask questions about what you would see."
"All right."
He felt his fingers being gently repositioned. "Now?"
He laughed. "I'm giving the classic peace sign—first and second fingers forming a V. The way you're holding my hand, I can see the back of my hand."
"How many creases are visible on the first joint of your pinky finger?"
"The way you're holding it? None. I can't see the pinky from that angle, it's folded down."
"Describe the creases on your index finger."
"Well, first there's the main crease at the center of the first joint . . . " he went on to describe the multiple creases in detail.
The test went on for several more poses, and then Sensei dropped his hand. "Open your eyes."
Xavier looked up, to see Sensei's own eyes shining with pride. "You have indeed mastered the Hand Center, Xavier—one of the most challenging tasks in the basis of Tor—and done so at amazing speed. You have leapfrogged many of the other disciplines which are usually taught. This will weaken your knowledge of the entire art, yes, but we will backfill part of that later, and this allows you to progress onward."
"So what are the other disciplines?"
"In the standard order, they are Fast Center, White Vision, Heart Center, Red Vision, Hand Center, Clear Vision, Deep Center, Wind Vision, High Center, Water Vision, Mind Center, Flame Vision, Body Center, Dark Vision, Tor Center, and the Final Vision, also called The Space As I."
"And how many of these are you teaching me before, well, you think I'm ready?"
"By the time we are done you will have learned, in addition to Hand Center, White Vision, High Center, Body Center, and specific techniques which will have given you pieces of others. Some of what I hope you will learn will be exceedingly advanced, normally not learned by any who have not dedicated, quite literally, decades—or centuries—to the art. But I know teaching techniques which, I believe, will allow you to gain these skills far more swiftly."
Xavier didn't like the word "centuries" in there, even if it was followed by Sensei "believing" that he could learn more quickly. But again, he didn't have much choice. And mysterious old master was mysterious, so he probably wouldn't get much out of asking something like "how long will this take?"
But he really did want to know something to, well, look forward to, and the thought of how much time was implied by Sensei…"I know how long it took me to learn what I learned under Shihan. I don't have years—I can't stay away that long!"
"You have more time than you think," Sensei answered. "And for the techniques you will need, you must take the time, or your quest is doomed to failure."
"O…kay," he said reluctantly. "But…look, Sensei, I hope this isn't being rude, but I'd like to see what I'm working towards. What are these techniques you said would . . . " he thought back to one of Sensei's earlier speeches, "…would let me go unnoticed, pass through whatever may bar my path, and strike down things that can't be hurt by ordinary weapons?"
Sensei chuckled. "I suppose a demonstration of the goals would not hurt—although I warn you that you may doubt your senses at first." Sensei stood—and disappeared.
Xavier sat staring openmouthed at empty air for a minute, then looked around with, he suspected, a goggle-eyed expression like a hungry goldfish. "Wh…where? How'd you do that? Where are you?"
From behind him, Sensei spoke. "Here, Xavier."
"Aaaagh!" The shout wasn't very coherent, but the total shock of having someone appear behind him without warning was, Xavier thought, a reasonable excuse for that. "What…what did you just do?"
He shook his head. "The answer to that question would mean little without more training. Now, try to strike me."
Xavier straightened up and got into the parallel-arm stance that Sensei had taught him. "Any way I want?"
"Any technique at all."
By now Xavier was sure there wasn't anything Sensei couldn't block, and Xavier felt fully healed. So he did a sudden leap-kick that would strike the old man in the head, if he permitted it.
Instead, to Xavier's utter shock, his foot passed right through Sensei's head, throwing off Xavier's balance and landing so much that he collapsed in a heap on the ground. "What the hell?"
Just to confirm the impossibility, he rolled to his feet and directed more kicks and punches towards his master. They passed through the apparently solid Sensei as though there was nothing but air there—until Sensei raised a hand and caught Xavier's fist effortlessly.
That last bit proved that this wasn't an illusion. For a minute I was wondering if it was some trick with light, holograms or something. But he changed from ghost to solid in the space of less than a heartbeat. "Jesus."
"And the final technique you asked about . . . " Sensei whirled and struck one of the sandbags nearby with a shout in some language Xavier didn't know.
There was a flash of white light and the sandbag hurtled away, impacting with the far wall so hard that Xavier felt it through his feet; Xavier knew his eyes were bugging out of his head.
What? I mean…WHAT? That's…that's some anime video-game finishing move crap there! That can't happen in real life.
But the same was true of people sudde
nly turning invisible or intangible. He found himself staring speechlessly at Sensei.
"Are you satisfied, Xavier?" The smile showed that Sensei understood full well how utterly gobsmacked Xavier was feeling.
"Uh…I . . . . Yes! Yes. But…I'm going to be able to do that?" A part of him didn't believe…but a part was rising up with incredulous joy, bouncing up and down like a child given the gift of a dream.
"I think you shall, yes. It will be as hard as you think, and harder, to learn, but I will teach you, and if you try as hard as you have already been…these skills will be yours."
The excitement was shifting, merging with a solemnity that he didn't understand at first. But then he did. "It's going to be that bad? The things I go against?"
"Yes," Sensei said gravely.
"And you can't help against them directly?"
"No. I have other requirements and commitments, which I am delaying as much as possible to teach you. Once I am done, I must leave, and swiftly."
Xavier took a deep breath and nodded. "Well…it's my job anyway. And with great power and all that."
"Indeed. You understand the responsibility?"
He thought, and the temptations of the powers he'd been shown were suddenly clear. "Ew. Yes. Yes, I do. There's a lot of skeevy things I could do with those. But I promise I won't!"
Sensei nodded. "Good enough for now. As time goes on, I will hope you continue to think on these things, for you will be confronting things that threaten far more than just you and your family…and you will be in a position to cause just as much harm as they." He turned. "Then come. With your mastery of Hand Center, we'll have something of a little celebration…and then back to work."
Xavier bowed and followed Sensei, who he'd already learned was an insanely good cook in addition to his other talents. I'm gonna miss that part of this too. None of that "live on rice and pure thoughts" here.
But I'll have to cultivate the pure thoughts anyway. Because he's right about what I could do wrong with those powers.
I want to be the hero. And I will be. I promise myself. I promise Sensei. And most of all, I promise Michael.
Chapter 6.
"You are a natural with the vya-shadu," Sensei said, parrying Xavier's twin-sword blow with one blade. "You progress swiftly. Very swiftly."
Xavier continued his assault, but managed a grin. Sensei is always precise with his compliments…or chastisements. So when he says something like that . . . "Thank you, Sensei. But I have a feeling that even being a natural won't let me beat you any time soon."
A flash of a smile as white as the hair. "No, I admit I would expect that you would have to devote considerably more time to the art before you reach that level."
After a few more practice runs, Sensei had him put the katanalike swords that he called vya-shadu away. "We shall train much more with those, and there are a number of other techniques to learn. But you have mastered the Centers and Visions needed, and you have practiced them enough to begin on the advanced techniques you need to learn."
At Xavier's eager glance, he smiled again. "Yes, it is time to see if you can learn to cloak yourself from sight, shield yourself from the touch of others by remaining somehow both there and elsewhere. The technique was called Hirlana by those who knew of it, long ago."
"So the same technique allows you to be invisible and untouchable?"
"The two are very closely related, but not identical." Sensei led him to the center of the room, close to the column. "Perhaps better to say that there is one technique which gives you both, but that it takes more discipline and practice to learn to separate them—to be visible yet intangible, or tangible yet invisible. Of the three possibilities, the latter—invisible yet tangible—is the hardest."
Xavier stopped where Sensei indicated. "Now what, Sensei?"
"First, bring yourself through Hand Center, White Vision, High Center, and Body Center."
Xavier closed his eyes and focused, first visualizing his hand, then letting that dissolve to pure nothingness (and boy, had that been a hard exercise, visualizing pure white nothing), emerging into the perception of all around him from above, and then descending into pure and focused awareness of his entire body—the rise and fall of his chest, the shift of his clothing at his every move, the tiny movement of his hair in the faint breezes that moved through the training area, the precise pose of his body with the angles of arms and legs and hands and feet.
"Very good. Now you are prepared. First you must bring together the High Center and Body Center: perceive both yourself and the space in which you exist, in all detail."
Wow, you don't ask much, do you? But he only thought that, didn't say it. Not that he'd get in much trouble for doing so—Sensei wasn’t the kind of guy who'd hit you for making a mistake, or even yell. But he'd be disappointed, and Xavier didn't want to disappoint him.
Keeping his own body in mind, he built up his mental model of the world around him, moving out from the floor at his feet to Sensei himself, only a few feet away, and then the great Column with its multiplicity of sharp projections behind him, and then the workout equipment . . .
For a moment, he realized just what he was doing, and it awed him. I can visualize all of that?
And immediately the dual center collapsed.
"Oops."
Sensei shook his head. "If you become too aware of the process—too focused on how difficult or impressive or impossible the feat is—you will find even the simpler acts beyond you."
"Sorry." He guessed what threw me off. Sometimes Sensei is scary that way. "Okay, trying again."
This time he managed to keep his introspection focused and not derail himself. It wasn't easy. But finally he was standing before Sensei, visualizing himself and Sensei and the entire room around them. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked at Sensei. "Okay, I'm ready."
Only then did it register to him that he was, indeed, looking straight at Sensei, who was in precisely the pose he'd visualized . . .
. . . but not the pose that Sensei had been in when Xavier closed his eyes.
"Holy crap!"
Of course, with that startlement, the visualization crashed down, but he was too excited to care. "What…what did I just do? Sensei, I didn't hear you move—I don't think I did—and even if I did, that wouldn't have told me you had your chin cradled in your one hand, and—"
"And now you begin to realize the actual power of the visualizations and sense training, yes," Sensei said. "Properly done, with the right training and preparation, you do not merely visualize the world around you; you perceive the world and incorporate it into your vision."
"So…if I do this right, I could find my way around in total darkness?"
"Walk through a cavern without the aid of light, find stepping stones across a lightless river, yes, or see a blow coming from behind you when an assassin seeks your end. In fact, now that you have learned this capability, you and I will be doing many of our training sessions in total darkness."
"Wow." The word wasn't adequate, but Xavier wasn't sure he knew any words that were adequate. After a minute he shook his head. "Wow," he said again. "But…okay, back to work."
A third time he brought himself to the dual center, and managed to maintain it even as he perceived Sensei walking around him. "Very good, Xavier. But now I have a real challenge for you."
"The others weren't challenges?" It was really hard to talk and maintain the dual center, but he wasn't going to let it go now.
"Oh, there was some challenge, indeed. But this will be of an entirely different order.
"Maintaining the rest of your vision, I want you to remove yourself from the visualization."
Xavier considered that. "Ohhh. I think I get it. Since my visualization shows the world as it really is, if I can remove myself from my own visualization, my own perceptions, I'm saying to the world 'I'm not here, ignore me.'"
For a moment, Sensei was silent. When he spoke, there was a note of mingled surprise and gratification in his
voice. "You have it almost exactly, Xavier…and I have never before had a student, knowing so little of Tor, make that leap of deduction."
The surge of pride almost unbalanced his focus, but he held on. That didn't prevent a huge grin from spreading over his face. "Well, my friends and I watched a lot of cheesy anime and wuxia films, and that kinda sounded like something they'd say."
"For whatever reason you may have thought of it, I remain impressed. Now, let us see you do it."
That was, of course, the problem. He knew he was standing there. Now that he knew that his visualization wasn't just a static construct but an actual perception of the actual state of things around him, he could feel himself in that visualization.
He tried to ignore himself, but all that did was show the wrinkling of his forehead, and knock him out of the dual center again. Xavier refocused and tried again…and once more got knocked out of focus.
Dinnertime came, and nighttime, and a day or two passed, and still he wasn't getting it. He lost track of the number of times that he almost felt he had succeeded, and then ended up with nothing but a headache for his trouble; more than days had passed, weeks maybe, longer? Finally, he came to the conclusion that it all boiled down to one simple question:
How could he not visualize something he could see? And something that he did see with Body Center, as completely as he was now seeing everything around him with High Center?
Well, the easiest way to remove him from that picture to just visualize the area around him. But that was High Center. If it was that simple, he'd already have been invisible. So why didn't that work?
"Because," he told himself, "High Center is centered on ME, and assumes me as the viewpoint. Body Center has some other viewpoint—in my case, I chose something at a sort of security-camera angle viewpoint—focused on me. It's all about me.
"So . . . " he continued muttering to himself, "I have to have Body Center focused on something that isn't there?"