He was very limber for somebody with that much muscle, she noticed. She was curious to see if he was going to work the bag, or that was just a place where he loosened up.
It didn’t take long to satisfy her wonder.
The man stood in front of the bag, and started slapping it. Open-handed, first with the palms, then with the backs of his hands, he developed a rhythm-palm right, backhand right, palm left, backhand left, over and over, until the sound of the strikes sounded like somebody working a speed bag, wapata, wapata, wapata, wapata.
After a couple of minutes, with a sheen of sweat beaded on his head and body, he switched to elbows, and the rhythm was slower, but similar. Right horizontal elbow inward, then back, followed by the left, bap-bap!
Toni kept pumping, watching the man in the mirrors rather than looking right at him.
He switched from elbows to punches, using hammer fists in the same pattern. Then he went to his knees, and
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|then to a series of instep-then-heel kicks. Right, left, right, eft.
He was working really hard. Most people didn’t realize ow difficult it was to strike a heavy bag like that-it iitook a lot more energy than riding a bike or walking on |a treadmill, a lot more. And not wearing bag gloves was rd on the hands, too.
e tinier on Toni’s bike cheeped. She looked down at The black man had been working the bag for twenty ninutes, and while he was sweating profusely, he didn’t ok particularly tired.
The guy was in incredible shape. And though she ‘couldn’t tell from the strikes what his art was, he was obviously deep into some fighting discipline. He moved in balance the whole time, and his hits, while fast, were also powerful. Interesting.
She warmed down on the bike for another minute, gradually slowing her pedaling. She stepped off the bike, wiped her face with the towel, finished off her water, then started for the exit.
The black man stepped back, threw a hard sidekick at
idle bag, and lifted it a foot into the air, to drop back on
its nylon strap hard enough to shake die mirrors. He
reached for his towel, wiped his face and head, slipped
his feet into his sandals, and walked away.
He was a few feet behind Toni when she stepped into the hall.
“You a dancer?” he said. He had an accent, sounded like Spanish or Portuguese, maybe.
Toni looked at the man. Was he hitting on her? In her guise of divorced secretary, she would probably be receptive to such things. He was a strong, good-looking man. Then again, she was supposedly from the South and might have a racial prejudice, so perhaps she ought to seem a little timid. If he worked here, maybe she could find out some things from him.
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“No,” she said. “Not really.”
“You have the legs,” he said. He nodded at her.
Toni gave him what she thought would pass for an embarrassed smile. “Well, I try to keep in shape. Are you a boxer?”
He shrugged. “Kind of.”
He moved up next to her as they walked. “Your first visit to the ship?”
“Yes. You’ve been here before?”
“Oh, yeah. I work here.”
“Really? What do you do?”
“I’m with Security,” he said.
No surprise, but Toni raised her eyebrows. “How exciting.”
He shrugged again. “Pretty dull, mostly. You maybe want to get a drink later?”
Toni pretended to be more nervous than she felt. “Uh, well, maybe.”
He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “I don’t bite, Missy. My name is Roberto Santos.” He put out his hand.
“I’m Mary Johnson.” She took his hand. It was damp, but warm, and she could feel the power in his grip, even though he throttled it way back. “From Falls Church, Virginia.”
“It is my pleasure to meet you,” he said. He released her hand. “That drink?”
“Oh. Okay. I want to shower and change. Can I meet you somewhere?”
He smiled again. “How about the Lady Luck, that’s the little bar next to the dining room outside the main casino. In an hour?”
“That would be fine,” she said.
After he had gone on his way, Toni felt her heartbeat start to slow. It had been a long time since she had been in the field working a contact. That he was such a primal, physical man added something to her nervousness. This man was dangerous. No question of that.
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i the CyberNation Train Veor Halbertgtadt, Germany
Jay sneaked onto the train, he kept it simple. This to Keller, he wanted to be sure he wasn’t distracted historical details or esoteric odors in a complex see- rio-Keller was, he had shown, too good to shrug off. the train was just a train, the era was the present and il-time, and Jay’s plan was to get in and out without praising a ruckus. He hadn’t come to slap Keller’s face with |;a glove and challenge him to a duel, only to find out Whether he was here or not. gj The duel would come later. On Jay’s terms.
Not that even this much was easy. He made his way J through the baggage car with his utmost stealth, stopping J “frequently to look and to listen. Cracking any of sCyberNation’s secure services would be extremely diffi- ; cult, if not impossible. These were people who prided themselves on their ability to program and weave, and any |j:hinks in their armor would be microscopically small. But the train ran on public tracks, and it had a connection to ; the railway system’s computers, which were a lot easier pj|o rascal. Jay wasn’t hurting anything, he wasn’t going to ; ‘even peek at the rail system’s files, he was just riding their |