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THIRTY-SIX

Kawashita sat in the tiny rock garden, eyes closed, listening to the water splashing across the narrow streambed. Earlier in the morning he had exercised in the sandpit behind the house, swinging the silver rods, ripples forming in his tightened cheeks with the intensity of his concentration. Now he was doing in his head what he had done with his body. His thoughts shot at different targets, abstractions, conundrums, child's puzzles. He made up a few simple poems. Just as promptly, he forgot them.

That was the first stage. He then put all these aside and lulled his body into sleep with prana-yama, breath control. When the hands and feet were pleasantly buzzing with the total relaxation of sleep, he thought of sexual pleasure. The body's breathing increased rapidly, but it remained asleep. The past few days he had done this again and again, and found no sign of what he was looking for. Hatred didn't find much purchase in a purely sexual response. On the other hand, he could not concentrate long on violent impulses without waking himself up. He had to approach the issue at an angle, keeping the immediate impulse behind the screen.

It wasn't his purpose to meditate into a state of samadhi. He was purposefully keeping his ego alert, to let himself explore certain parts of his mind hidden by wakefulness. They could be called up by thinking of certain functions. When he thought of duty and discipline, the muscles in his neck and upper back tightened. There was literally a stiff neck involved. If he thought of Anna in a nonsexual context, the top of his head grew warm—a peaceful response—and he felt a pressure behind his eyes, which was ambiguous.

Then, still calm, body asleep, he asked himself particular questions and sought out their answers by pure body response. Where had Masa's dagger nicked him on the last night of the world? On the inside of the elbow. It ached briefly. He put the pain aside. Where had he landed when he'd fallen from a rock pile as a boy? His right rib cage chafed and ached. He continued until he'd mapped most of his body's memory of past injuries.

The exercises were all preparatory to assembling and posing a final series of questions, each very complex. He was trying to know himself thoroughly before he embarked on the final stage.

He'd had enough for one day. He concentrated on a point, drifted onto a higher level of uninvolved awareness, then let himself down at a chosen signal—the vibration of a toe.

After plucking a few vegetables from the garden, he went into the kitchen and prepared lunch for Anna and himself. When she didn't arrive, he ate his portion, placed hers in a holding unit, and went to find her. The dome monitor couldn't place her, so he went to the air lock. The lock light was on. He picked up a radio and held the signal button down.

"Hello," she answered. "Get a unit and come outside. I want you to take a look at this."

He slipped on a shoulder pack and cycled through the lock. The finder on the radio pointed his direction for him. He put on glasses and saw her standing on the plain beside the Waunter probe.

When he merged his field with hers near the small vehicle, she said, "It's been looking at us. At the dome, at least. See this little diode? It glows when the probe is storing up data. Why is it still looking at us?"

"Maybe it's just started. We're only majority owners, remember. The Waunters have a right to orbit and land."

"Of course. They're spying on us. We haven't looked at the recorders recently, and I haven't been paying much attention to the night sky. I'm not sure it's polite to orbit without telling us."

"Hardly a matter of etiquette," Kawashita said. "Let's go look at the recorders."

"I feel like pulling a muff over the thing," Anna said. "But no sense looking for trouble."

"When they want to talk, they'll call. Let's go back to the dome."

 

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Framed