Ileck stood at the edge of the pool. 'Get out. Try from the other side.'
Soaking wet, I heaved myself out of the water and trudged around to the other pedestal, the pack spewing water down the back of the singlesuit's legs, my feet squushing in the wet boots.
Ileck waited until I reached the top of the pedestal, where the smooth and narrow surface of the beam stretched before me and across the black waters below. Water oozed down my back as blackness closed around me, and the beam glimmered before me.
The first step was easy enough, for there was silence before the roaring of thunder, and the rush of surf segued into some sort of massive chorus supported by hundreds of instruments with explosions in the background. I took a second step, then a third, against the pressure of the music, ignoring the cubes that flashed at my face.
The scent of lilacs, impossibly powerful, smothered me, nearly gagged me, and I found myself tottering on the beam once more. I did straighten, just in time to hold against another gentle but unseen cold pressure accompanying a spearlike blade that knifed upward from below, seeming out of the black depths beneath me. The wince that my body gave was enough to unbalance me into the water.
As I struggled to the black-tiled edge of the pool and slowly extricated myself, Ileck laughed. 'Never met a male needle jockey yet who didn't flinch at a thrust to the groin. The first time, anyway.'
Not for the first time, I wondered about my reconsideration of being a needle ship pilot. They called what I was undergoing basic orientation and indoctrination. I decided not to think about what came next. Back to the first pedestal I walked, the boots heavier than ever.
Ileck waited until I stood before the beam once more.
When the blackness again swept across the pool and me, trumpets blasted so loudly they shivered my eardrums and spine. With the trumpets came the odor of sweet roses, and jagged-edged peaks seemed to march down from above, as if to crush me.
Heat and cold pressed from one side, then the other, but I edged along the beam until I reached the other side. Despite the damp singlesuit and waterlogged boots, sweat was flowing down my face, salty in my eyes, by the time I stood on the pedestal.
Light flooded across the pool area, so bright that my eyes watered. I stood very still on the pedestal. My knees were quivering.
'You made it.' Ileck sounded as though my crossing were to be expected.
'For analogues, some of those felt and smelled rather more substantive than symbolic'
'They're supposed to, Tyndel. Being a needle pilot isn't sweet pastries, flowers, and music'
'I've gotten that idea.' I tried not to grin, since Heck's training seemed based on flowers, music, and geometric shapes with a definite kick.
'You need to start moving faster and more smoothly. You can't crawl with a ship on your back. Not in overspace.'
'How much more do you plan to put me through?'
'You're coming along well. Not spectacularly, but well.' Ileck lifted his well-muscled shoulders. 'Don't ask me to predict. You still have trouble screening out certain emotional keys in the music, and that could be a problem.'
'Why?'
'Because a Web pilot is the ship. Without emotion, you can't employ full-body intelligence, but you have to harness emotion, not be harnessed by it.' His lips closed firmly. 'Tomorrow.'
As I left the black deck and the dark water behind, I wondered how many tomorrows I had yet to face with the physical trainer, how much more he wanted from me.
With the rest of the late afternoon mine, after I cleaned up and changed back into my clothing, I walked eastward to the edge of the marsh that stretched beyond the petmacrete transporter strip toward the ocean, farther to the east. The marsh wasn't Deep Lake or the Greening River or the Summer Sound at Mettersfel. The grasses were showing faint traces of brown, and the warm sun on my back was balanced by the cooler breeze on my face.
Why was I here? Because too many people gave too much for you to give up? I nodded to myself. Even with the knowledge that the Rykashans needed me, I still had trouble accepting the idea that I owed society. I had far less trouble believing I owed Foerga, or Fersonne, Sanselle, even Gerbriik and Cerrelle.
Except I had yet to hear from the red-haired Cerrelle, and that nagged at me. If she didn't return the link in another week, I'd try once more. Why?
Did I want to pursue that?
Because she tried to be honest with you without being nasty, and you need honesty more than you want to admit? Because you feel guilty because she reminded you of Foerga?
I turned and strolled slowly into the setting sun, back toward my temporary quarters. Then, I'd learned all quarters were temporary.
Heck's comments about intelligence and emotion piqued my interest, and I wasn't sure I wanted to think too much about Cerrelle - not yet. So after I ate, I settled in front of the screen and began to access what I could.
... emotion ... strong feelings based upon/arising from sensio-cerebral reaction or stimulus ...
There was more, but the majority dealt with the cellular and glandular mechanics that created the transformation from the stimulus to physical reality.
Only one small paragraph grappled with what Ileck had suggested.
... measurements on the hormonal, electro-cellular, muscular, and brain wave functions have confirmed a clear, but nonlinear link between strength of emotional reactions to spacio-symbolic-abstract intelligence... development of either emotional reactivity or intelligence remains an intertwined function involving both genetic predilections and environment (see 'nurture versus nature') ...
The 'nurture versus nature' section confirmed what had been known from the time of the ancients, that separation of the influence of environment and genetically based development was impossible in a practical and meaningful sense, and varied greatly from individual to individual and from environment to environment.
What about emotional reactions and reflexes? I tried the search functions again but came up with nothing.
In the end, I went back to reading the supplemental materials on Andra's list, wondering if Cerrelle would ever return my link effort. Then, I supposed she had no real reason to do so, not with the way I had behaved.
I concentrated on the words and phrases on the screen, just those words and phrases.
52
The most absolute lie is the presentation of an irrefutable fact based on unassailable numbers.
Outside my window, left ajar for the cool air of the fall evening to seep in with the scents of leaves about to turn and the dampness of the not-too-distant marsh, insects chirped. Small creatures rustled through the brush to the rear of the quarters, all sounds I could not have heard five years earlier. Senses that were far better than those I had been born with were far easier to accept than the social structure that accompanied them, but I continued to struggle with both.
I sat at the console, eyes closed, yawning. I rubbed my forehead. The days continued to rush by, and my sessions with Andra had been spread out to every other day, while Heck's training was increasing until it filled most of the daylight hours. That effort left me exhausted. The more I could do, the more he demanded. I was swimming over three thousand meters a day, half of it at sprint speeds, and lifting multiples of weights that would have had me confined in a demon cage in Dorcha. I continued to get soaked in the black pool by the assaults of ever more sophisticated sensory illusions and pressures, partly because Ileck insisted on my working up to running and stopping and other gymnasticlike maneuvers with the heavy pack on my back. The boosted shocks of hitting the black water were also stronger - much stronger.