"Steven Gould - Jumper 03 - Griffin's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

sand and I could jump anywhere in it but not leave it, while he fired shot after shot.
Once he hit a patch of jump rot where I'd been and the paintball exploded, coming back
out as high–velocity pieces of plastic film and a mist of spray paint. Another time, I jumped
late and the paintball came with me, tumbling through the brush at right angles to its original
path, but missing me.
 Dad was perplexed. "Wow, I don't think I've ever seen it do that before." Dad had this
theory that the jump rot was like, well, like the wake of a ship, the disruption of the water
when a vessel passes through. It's like the turbulence or maybe even a hole I leave behind.
When I jump in a hurry, sloppily, there's more of it and I carry more crap with me. When
I'm focused, if there is jump rot, it's tiny, and fades away almost instantly.
We continued. When Dad said, "Enough," I had one more paint mark on my right shoulder
blade, but he'd gone through seventy paintball rounds. He let me shoot a dozen rounds at a
boulder, enough to finish off the last of the Co2 cartridge, and then we went home.
He never said anything about my swearing and I never said anything about him shooting me
in the leg. Call it even.
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I had karate class.
Mum had a doctorate in French literature but she didn't work. She was homeschooling me.
She said that I just got too bored in the public education system, but I heard them talking once,
when they thought I was asleep.
Dad said, "What can we do about it? He's too young to hold a secret this big all the time.
It's not fair to him and it's too dangerous. Maybe later, when he's older."
Mum said, "He's not a kid. No kid ever talked like that– he's a miniature adult. He needs to
run up against kid logic and skin his knees where we're not there to pick him up. He needs to
make friends."
The compromise was karate class. The homeschooling curriculum required a physical
education equivalent so I had to do something.
I think Dad went for it because of the discipline and because he thought, from the class he
watched, that the kids never talked to each other. Well, we weren't supposed to talk during
class but it was an after–school program at the elementary school two blocks away–all
form–one kids. Of course there was talking.
I liked our instructor, Sensei Torres. He didn't play favorites and he was very gentle and he
was very careful to keep Paully MacLand in check.
Paully was in fifth grade for the second time and he was almost as tall as Sensei Torres.
He'd been doing the karate program since first grade and had a green belt.
And he was mean.
We were doing two–step kumite partner practice. One person would attack with a punch
and the other would block and counterpunch. I was working with Paully and he wasn't
interested in the exercise. He was interested in hurting.
There was a definite no–contact rule. If you kicked or punched you had to stop short of
hitting anybody. It was a firm rule and anyone who broke it had to sit out and could get
dropped from the class if he kept doing it. Paully knew that. One of the kids told me Paully
was kicked out of the class back in fourth grade for repeated offenses and was only allowed
back the next year.
What Paully did instead was turn his blocks into strikes. He'd block so hard, it hurt–it left
bruises. Like, perhaps, a paintball round in the thigh, point–blank.
I didn't swear this time, though. I gritted my teeth instead and kept going. To hit so hard,
Paully was drawing back, cocking before the block, which required he start almost before I
actually punched. Next time it was my turn, I broke my rhythm, stepping in, but delaying the
punch slightly. He blocked and missed my arm entirely. My punch stopped just short of his
nose.