Not For Glory by Joel Rosenberg Page B

Tetsuki?"
    "Always, Adoni, always."
    Outside, in the real world, it would have mattered that something I had said, or something that Pinhas had said or done, had told the others what my orders were.
    But here, it didn't matter.
    It was suddenly all a joke. It didn't matter. Nothing matters, and everything matters.
    I threw back my head and laughed.
    The times in the dojo are good ones, I think.

    I slept with only Suki that night; Rachel had creche duty.
    In the morning, I rose and dressed.
    The family creche is one corridor over and two levels down from our apartment. It took me only a few minutes to walk over, bag slung over my shoulder.
    Rachel's eyes were puffy with white-night sleepiness as she sat at the desk outside the four-year-olds' creche. She rose and clung to me.
    "I'll miss you," she said.
    "As will I, you," I said, perhaps too formally, holding her tightly. I think we've been together too long; we were married when I was just sixteen; she was fourteen. Eighteen years is a long time. Too long to really be strangers, too little time for us to ever get to really know each other. I know every inch of Rachel's body, but I really don't know her. And she really doesn't know me.
    I think she's better for that; just as well she doesn't know me.
    "You've already seen Shlomo?"
    "Not yet."
    "Well, I don't want you in there. We've had a rough night; she's—"
    "I won't disturb anything."
    "No."
    You can't pull rank on your wife.
    I kissed her goodbye, long and hard. As she pulled away from me, she looked at me curiously. "This is just routine, isn't it?"
    I nodded, lying. Rachel has never quite worked out what I do, and I didn't want to worry her. "Just part of a negotiating team, that's all. Maybe a side trip or two, but nothing heavy."
    "Well, good." She tsked. "You be careful, then. I don't like the way you keep being around when there's shooting."
    I stopped at the two-year-olds' creche and bullied sleepy-eyed cousin Sarai into letting me in.
    "I won't disturb them, I promise," I said, as I set down my bag and slipped off my shoes.
    She didn't say anything; she just glared at me.
    I opened the door.
    The Arts have some minor applications; I shut the door behind me, and became Silence.
    That's the real secret. It isn't the technique, although that's where you have to start: weight always balanced easily on the balls of the feet, each foot lifted and set down, under control, not merely allowing yourself to stagger through life, the way most people do.
    No, it's not just technique. It's the becoming. All the Art is, is becoming. Silence is one of the easier things to become; it doesn't trouble you later.
    I drifted through the room until I was at Shlomo's crib.
    He slept easily, his little knees pulled up underneath him, one chubby arm outflung, the other tucked in closely. I put my hand lightly to the back of his head, and wondered, for the thousandth time, why it is that God makes my children of such special stuff, why the hair on the back of my children's heads is always softer, finer than that He uses for the rest of his Creation.
    I love you, little one, I mouthed.
    There was a time in my people's history, when a son might inherit a civilian profession from his father. In one line of my family, there was an unbroken string of six generations of male doctors—real physicians, not just medicians; in another, a hundred years of rabbis.
    All I have to leave to you is my profession. You can become a butcher like your father.

    They were all waiting for me at the 'port. Dov, Zev, the Sergeant, and his oldsters, now in khakis that had no trace of honorable retirement pins, were over on one side of the room, Alon and his half-dozen assorted staff negotiation officers on the other.
    At my arrival, Alon nodded and opened a cabinet at the far wall, bringing out a tray of shot glasses and a mottled stone bottle, complete with ceramic cork.
    He squealed the cork out of the bottle and poured each of us a glass. "Gentlemen," he