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on his helmet, and he pushed the goggles up and took off his helmet. He knelt and let his focus and calm settle deeply, preparing for the second phase, random sparring against the machine, in which it would try to break his concentration. When he felt empty and clear, he reached for the helmet.
    He had just touched it when a cord dropped around his neck and tightened, digging into his windpipe and squeezing his carotids so that the dark poured in from all sides toward the center of Jak’s field of vision.
    His concentration was singingon today, and although this attack called for action, it did not matter. No start or twitch disturbed his focus. Ignoring the cord for an instant, he reached behind, found pant cuffs, gripped and arched, and backflipped out of his kneeling position, hard work even in the .2 gravity. As they flipped through the air and Jak gained slack in the cord, his attacker tried to put knees against the small of Jak’s back, to maintain leverage.
    Jak used that motion to twist away, escaping toward the attacker’s feet. He slammed the back of his head into his opponent’s crotch as he pulled him over his head. The grip on the cord relaxed for an instant, and Jak got another grip, on his opponent’s armpits, and pulled him forward and off as if he were fighting his way out of a frenzied sweater.
    The attacker lost one end of the cord, and though it dragged and burned, it flew off Jak’s neck. He avoided gasping, and instead expelled his trapped air in a ki-ai! as he kicked where the attacker’s head should have been, trying to fly backward to get a moment for a good breath. But as Jak kicked, the attacker’s foot supped up the inside of Jak’s thigh, using it to guide in until the ball of the opponent’s foot slammed into Jak’s armored cup.
    A bell rang.
    Jak went limp for an instant, calmed himself, took that long-delayed breath, then stood and bowed. “So now it’s 2030 to 1489 overall.”
    Sib laughed. “Still obsessed with the score, eh? But most of my wins happened when you were twelve years old and just starting to do this.” He held up his hand and spoke into his purse. “What’s the score between Jak and me over the last two years, and what do the stats look like in general?”
    “477 to 434 across the last two years,” the purse said. “Across the last year, 231 to 226. It is projected that within one year, at present rates of change, Jak Jinnaka will surpass you in probability of success. In about eleven years at present rates of change, Jak will surpass you overall.”
    ‘Thank you, off,” Sib said. “You see, Jak? All a matter of patience. Now we need to get you fed fast enough so you’ll have time to get all prettied up for your concert. Let me just okay the food delivery and they should be ready to vac it over. As it happens, I noticed that you went to the Old China Cafe for your
     
    after-school meal, so rather than Chinese I’m having Lunar Greek delivered—baked hamster with bechamel on glutles, with mango pastry for dessert—if you can manage to force that down.”
    It was Jak’s favorite takeout, and they both knew it. “I guess I’ll have to. Wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
    They had all agreed to meet up at the Genorma Ferry Station, to catch the gripliner over to Centrifuge together; the four of them would take a private compartment together. Jak was the first to arrive, which was typical. He waited in the vast, echoing lobby. Most of the time gripliners ran nearly empty; there were just a few peak-time trips that filled up. Thus most of the time the big space wasn’t needed for arriving or departing crowds, and it merely looked like a very large and unattractive abandoned shopping mall with an unusual ceiling display. In the great vaulted ceiling, divided into thousands of meter-wide windows, the eight cables that connected Genorma Station on the Hive with Amroneg Station on the Ring formed silvery lines cutting through the stars; the cables ran