Chapter 7
“It’s actually a tougher grade than what you’ll face in Athens,” Abner said.
Looking up at the mountainside, at a jumbled rise of boulders and concrete steps, of handholds and narrow jogging tracks carved at a thirty percent incline, Jillian found his words easy to believe. “At least my attention isn’t split.”
She inhaled as Abner sealed a side edge of her feedback suit. Two layers of green and white nylon net sandwiched a thin layer of sensors. These would measure blood pressure, skin temperature, heartbeat, galvanic skin response, and other standard physiological indicators. In addition, Abner had arranged a full kinesthetic readout. By the time the day’s workout was over, they would know everything there was to know about her technique and physical fitness.
The fellrun track was built into the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Most of the obstacles were natural, but the terrain had been modified. As her vital signs were relayed to Abner’s computer, he would select routes of greater or lesser difficulty, depending on what he needed to discover. Beacons planted in the rocks would guide her.
Abner flexed Jillian’s ankles, then her knees, then tested her hip flexors. Spine. Rotator cuffs. Wrists and fingers.
The sun was a few minutes past its zenith, and the wind whistling through the Rockies was stimulating, would begin to cool in an hour or so. Jillian’s feedback suit would maintain thermal equilibrium, so her shivering was caused less by wind chill than adrenaline.
Abner checked her every movement like a Grand Prix mechanic tuning the engine of a racing Ferrari.
“Fluid?”
She twisted her mouth a half an inch, found the nipple taped to the corner of her mouth. A slight pull got the flow going, pulling electrolyte fluid from the tube hugging her jawhine. Her slender backpack held power for the sensors and a minipump for three pints of solution.
“Fine, Abner.”
“This will be a two-hour trial,” he said.
Abner’s single-seat sled hummed above its magnetic rail. The sled was built like a low-slung wheelchair with a blue fiberglass cowling to protect him from weather. His feet stretched out into the nose.
He tested its balance almost unconsciously: lean too far to either side, and it slowed to a crawl. Ride it like a bicycle and the hovercraft could zip along the buried rail at forty miles an hour at the level, and ten miles an hour at a forty percent grade. Its rail wove up into the foothills, splitting and splitting again, weaving in a serpentine progression that allowed him to stay within sight of Jillian no matter what path she took.
“Are you reading me?” He adjusted the sound on his transmitter. Jillian touched her ear, and then her throat mike. “Fine.”
“All right, mark.”
Jillian exhaled, and started up the incline. One part of her concentration was on the immediate physical work at hand, the other was listening for Abner’s voice.
“Jillian-slow down. Feel your way into the terrain. Don’t just use your eyes. Feel it. What kind of dirt is under your feet? Will it sustain a sprint? What kind of tread will maximize traction? Brush the rocks when you pass them, get a feel for texture.”
She had found a steady pace. Thirty yards ahead, the path split. She could try a cliff face, and shave minutes off (risking early exhaustion and possible injury), or she could go around through uncertain terrain.
“Which is it going to be?” Abner said clearly. She searched the rocks, but his single-seater was nowhere in sight.
“Don’t know… not sure.”
“Trust your instinct.”
“I say feel the territory out. Take the long way.”
“Good girl. Time enough for heroics later.” The sled came gliding around a corner, coasting up a vertical rock face for a moment, and then dipped back down along the rail. Looked like fun.
“Concentrate, dear.”
“Changed my mind,” she said suddenly. “I recognize this formation from the aerials. All right, I’m going over.”
Jillian hit the incline, dug her toes into the fractured gray rock, and began to climb. She felt as loose and light as a monkey.
“Too much tension in the left shoulder, Jill. Slow down. Work for it.”
She looked around, glaring, saw Abner hovering just behind her, sled buzzing at the rail. As she braced herself and began to climb, he shadowed her, never more than ten meters away, scanning his readouts, fixedly studying her form.
The grade escalated to a sheet of granite at an eighty percent grade which rose almost a hundred feet. She skirted around the bottom until it met another wall, braced herself, and began to climb. Her fingers sought crevices and cracks. When the opportunity came she wormed her way into a narrow defile, getting her back and stomach into the effort. She winced as stone spurs pushed at her spine through the nylon suit. It was press, push, and release, rest for a moment, press, push…
There are moments in climbing when you must risk, when you must accept eight or twelve or twenty feet of continuous, bone-cracking stress to make it to the next resting place. She found a kind of rhythm in her pain, pushed up and up without concern for anything but the need for continual movement, taking herself to the absolute limit and then pushing beyond it.
Abner hovered over her shoulder, sliding up next to her, silent but vigilant.
She paused between slabs of rock, using breath and muscle expansion to wedge herself tight. She sipped from the cheek nipple, and let her gaze wander down. Below her and off to the distance was a maze of domes and dorms, the Rocky Mountain Sports Research Center. Purplish mountain shadows were creeping toward the red-gold buildings.
Thirty feet above her was flat ground. She could make every movement in these last feet long and slow, stretching her tired muscles. Then when she hit the tip, she would be ready to sprint.
This was a piece of cake. She could take gold. She could! And without modification.
Water swirled around Jillian’s legs. It was turbulent and a little foamy, warmed to a few degrees below her own skin temperature. It felt heavenly, or would have if she hadn’t been about to suffer.
She sat on a shallow metal seat in the tank, completely enmeshed in a thin exoskeleton, a mesh of wire and plastic braces which extended from her feet to the crown of her head. It was inactive now, completely unresistant as she slipped her face mask into place.
Abner helped her, adjusting her air line.
“Air flow?” Air from the recycler on her back was reassuringly cool.
“Now relax,” he said softly, and she slipped into the water.
She hung there in a cocoon of warmth, watching Abner at the side of the Plexiglas tank. The exoskeleton was completely self-contained, all of its servos linked in waterproof pods at elbows, knees, hips, and shoulders. She was neutrally buoyant, floating in the center of a three-thousand-gallon tank.
“We’ll begin the program now. I’ve integrated Beverly’s data into my own banks, so I know your strength curve on every muscle group. Your muscles should reach proper relaxation in another three minutes. Just breathe deeply.”
Jillian did as she was told, closed her eyes and thought of blackness. She searched for hidden nuggets of tension, failed to find them.
“Right side,” Abner said. “Spinal flexor, base. Relax, Jillian.”
Abner touched a button, and she felt the muscle relax as he electronically manipulated the nerve endings. A touch of bliss. Total surrender, she could have remained in that space forever. Then suddenly it ended, and she cursed to herself.
At least, she thought it had been to herself. “Not nice,” Abner said merrily. “Find the spot yourself. If you can’t learn to do it yourself, we’re wasting our time.”
She sank more deeply into her body, searching for tension. There the little bastard was, a tiny knot at the
