He lowered his shoes to the rim, getting the feel of its grip into the backboard. If you know the feel of objects, the feel of their mass, their movement and their strength, you could use that as your strength. That was the secret of force. To not fight it. And to not fight it was the best way to fight people when you had to.

Remo stood up on the rim and gathered the where of the floor into his balance. He should have changed the height of the hoop, because sooner or later he would be performing muscle memory instead of proper use of balance and judgment. When he had first learned the exercise he watched a cat for a day and a half. He had been told to become the cat. He had answered that he would prefer to become a rabbit so he could get laid, and how long was this dingaling training going to go on?

"Until you are dead," he was told.

"You mean fifty years."

"It might be fifty seconds, if you are not good enough," said the Korean instructor. "Watch the cat."

And Remo had watched the cat and for a few moments thought, really thought, he could become the cat.

Now Remo Williams indulged his own private little joke which signalled the start of the exercise.

"Meow," he whispered in the silent, dark gym.

He stood on the rim, straight up, and then his body fell forward, shoes gripping the rim by pressure, head going forward, shoes flipping up, rim adding force, body heading straight down, hair and head aiming straight at the floor-like a dark knife dropping into a dark sea.

His hair touched the varnish of the floor and triggered a body trunk flip, the dark form in the blackened gym spinning in space, the sneakers coming around quick-rocket fast-arching and down steady standing on the wooden floor.