This was then wrapped tightly with layers of duct tape.
What you did with this was to punch it, or hold it in one hand to bang
it against your forearms or elbows or shins, to help get them used to
being hit.
Balur Silat was a blend of coconut oil and different roots and herbs, a
concoction that took about a month to make. You ground the herbs up,
cooked and mixed them together, put the resulting goop into a dark
glass bottle, and stored it in a dark cool place for months, or even
years, to age.
After a bruising session of bone-to-bone contact during a workout,
battered shins and forearms were common.
Like the Chinese herbal remedy Dit da jow, or 'iron hit wine,' the
classic Indonesian preparation was said to be a great help. Literally,
balur means 'to crystallize' or 'to harden.' The stuff was solid at
room temperature and had to be heated slightly to liquefy. The
liniment thus created was used to help speed healing of bruises, and to
help to condition and toughen the skin. There were practitioners of
some fighting arts who had shins so hard and impervious to impact they
could break baseball bats over them without apparent harm or pain. Toni
had seen a picture of an old Serak stylist who could do that once, and
she had no desire to have her shins scar and knot and wind up looking
like his; still, a certain amount of conditioning was a good idea, and
Balur Silat was a help, though finding the authentic stuff wasn't
easy--every other guru out there had his or her own recipe, and some
were better than others. She was pretty sure that Carl Stewart's stuff
would be decent.
She hefted the bottle. If it would work on bruised egos, the maker
could name his price and retire rich in a few days. She smiled again,
and went back to her packing.
Thursday, June 9th Gakona, Alaska
Morrison had given Ventura the tour of the facility, but the man hadn't
seemed too awed or even interested by anything, other than the main
power generators. Those were fairly impressive. The power building,
more than twenty thousand square feet of it, was constructed originally
to house a huge coal-fired steam generator that was to run an Air Force
Over the Horizon Backscatter Radar installation originally sited here.
At the termination of the OTH-B program and the shift to HAARP, the
steam generation gear was hauled off, and the backup diesel generators
were used instead. They had plenty of power to operate the transmitter
and the ISR. Originally, HAARP had been tapped into the local power
grid for lights and heating and like that, but interruptions during
really bad weather were sometimes a problem--nobody much enjoyed
sitting in the cold and dark even if the transmitter still worked, so
the local grid was eventually switched over to their own generators.
Power-wise, they were self-sufficient--as long as the monster fuel tank
was kept filled.
Morrison could understand why Ventura wasn't all that impressed--a lot
of the older buildings that were supposed to have been temporary were
still there, and they weren't anything to write home about. These were
no more than trailers with cheap wood paneling and external conduits
