'That's enough for today. Tomorrow, we'll start with the first of multiple locations and other stimuli.'
Other stimuli? I had the feeling I was going to like Alicia's training even less than I had Heck's.
'Remember, after this week, you're still required to go back to your physical workouts. Ileck won't be there to push you, but I'll know if you haven't been doing them, and it will show up here.'
Of that, I had no doubts. I unstrapped the harness, also damp, and stood up.
'I'd suggest a slow walk up the ramp until you dry out and then a long gentle walk away from people. It helps.'
I was sweating and stunk of apprehension, strain, and probably fear, even if I didn't quite know why - except that somehow I did know that all this had to do with my own future survival, symbolic analogue training that it was.
The analogues represented danger. That, there was no doubt about at all. Not to me.
Alicia's parting words were, 'Drink plenty of liquids, too.'
Walking slowly up the circular ramp, I couldn't help reflecting on Cerrelle's hidden help again. I doubted that I would have taken Alicia so seriously had Cerrelle not staged the demonstration by Tomas and Alicia years earlier. I would have liked to have thought otherwise, but I knew better.
Again ... I owed Cerrelle.
61
Movement is illusion; so is stasis.
For each of the next four days, after my medical scan, Alicia had demanded greater and greater accuracy in pinpointing the locations of projected objects in the pitch-black spherical operations exercise room. Then she had added the requirement for vertical coordinates, after I had finished my last checkup, when doctor Fionya had pronounced me fit for whatever awaited me.
I knew something else was coming when I walked into the operations training room.
The almost-petite Alicia smiled. 'Go ahead and sit down, Tyndel.' With her words, the room dimmed into the gloom that befitted an ancient windowless casern rather than a technologically sophisticated culture. I could sense the energy flows from her to the controls, the same sort of linkage that
I was gaining with the console and even with the console in my room.
After fastening the harness, I waited in the chair that simulated a pilot's seat, although I knew that it didn't, not from my own pair of needle ship trips.
Alicia was a luminous icon in the dusky blackness. 'Today, we'll add moving coordinates. You have to judge where and how fast whatever is projected will intersect your zero reference line. You have to give the location and judge how long before the intersection with you or the zero line.'
'Either?'
'There are some things in overspace that you wouldn't wish to put a ship through, but what you can do to avoid them depends on how much time you have.'
She winked out, and the chair rose. I swallowed, trying to relax, to accept all the sensory inputs my rebuilt and neurally-upgraded body could gather.
A black spearlike object arched slowly toward me.
Eighty-one, plus thirty-nine, one point three.
A wall appeared dead ahead, not moving at all but apparently growing in size.
Zero . . .
Then it accelerated. Point two, I added quickly.
'Dead-on objects are deceptive! Alicia's comment didn't stop her or the system from creating a pyramid right in front of me.
'Oooo ...' The jolt that went through me was worse than what Ileck had used in the black waters of the pool.
'You just lost your ship and your life, Tyndel.'
Ignoring the irritation in her voice and my jangled synapses, I tried to use every sense I could muster to pinpoint the veridian cube speeding up behind me.
One seventy-nine, zero, point five.
'Better.'
Another disk swelled - red, turning, white-hot enough to feel as though it blistered my face.
Three forty-four, minus twenty, one point three.
A cluster of orange-shaped globules angled up, accelerating as they neared me, accompanied by the frigid cold of space, and the cacophonous rush of a pipe organ march, one too fast for any organ to have ever played.
Forty-three, minus twenty, point two.
The objects kept coming, but, in time, the lights returned, and so did Alicia. 'That's all for today.'
Again, I found myself soaking wet as I unstrapped the harness. Alicia hadn't created the tension. I had, unable to ignore the importance of what I was attempting to master, knowing that Alicia's training was far more than a series of rote exercises.
'How long for these?'
'Once you've established accuracy in predicting the future locations of moving objects, we'll start your reaction training. Actual velocity varies so much in overspace that even trying to measure it is useless. All you care about is the relative motions and the maneuvering time you have to avoid collisions. You'll understand better when you get into a Web bug.' She stepped back, then turned again to face me. 'I forgot to tell you. Tomas will be waiting for you in the gymnasium at fifteen hundred, after your workout. You'll need his training as well.'
An odd phrasing, but I let it pass. By the time I stood, she was gone, as always, as silently as though she had never been there.
When I left the operations building, a cold drizzle was falling from the thick gray clouds that had moved in from the Northern Ocean. Air and rain were enough above freezing to start melting the ten centimeters of snow that had fallen earlier in the week, and rivulets flowed at the edges of the raised and nanite-heated path. A faint smell of leaves moldering tinged the odor of the cold rain.
Two men in the maroon of land maintenance passed, and I extended my hearing as they retreated behind me.
'... see that candidate's still here ...'
'... seen him swim? Or in the weight room?'
'What do they do ... need so much training?'
'Don't know, but don't think I want to.'
'Not for me ...'
'... you'd want the women, Jorj.'
'Not at that price.'
A half smile appeared on my lips, then vanished. Some people weren't that jealous, unlike those I'd experienced in the lounges with Aleyaisha. The damp cold felt almost welcome by the time I reached the changing rooms of the gymnasium.
The swimming was welcome after running and weight work, especially after working in the pseudo-pilot's chair. All the exercise, strenuous as it was, gave me a sense of well-being and worked out the tensions from all the motion recognition and perceptual training - or perceptual symbolic analogue training.
Once done with the swimming, I made my way back to the gymnasium. There Tomas of the mahogany-red hair was amusing himself with tumbling passes on the pads in the gymnasium - except he seemed to be juggling a pair of razor-sharp blades as he flipped and twisted and finally ended up on his feet - where he threw both fulgent missiles in succession into a small target on the wall. Both were near dead-center.
'Very impressive,' I said.
'It's meant to be.' He smiled, white teeth contrasting with his olive complexion. His eyes were a light brown, washed
out in a way that said he had seen far more than his youthful appearance suggested. 'It's also amusing and a challenge to add more elements.'
'Alicia sent me. She said you have more training for me. She wasn't very specific.'
'You don't need what I'm going to teach you to pilot a needle boat. You'll need it to remain one. You need total conditioning. You can't maintain it on a weightless orbit station. That means you go planetside whenever you reach a destination and have a layover. Some locals are less than accepting of effete earthers, even Rykashans - after all, they're nanite modified as well, and there can't ever be a successful challenge of a Web pilot. Ever.' Tomas smiled placidly. 'With the modifications to your system, you should be able to avoid most difficulties. My training is designed to ensure other situations shouldn't be a problem.'