A Plague of Demons

13

The insertion of the hair-fine electrodes took three hours-three uncomfortable hours of probing in sensitive flesh with sharp-pointed metal, alternated with tingling shocks that made obscure muscles jump and quiver. At the end of it, Bailey touched the coin-sized plastic disk nestled against the base of his skull and winced.

"That's the easy part," Goldblatt said cheerfully. "Now we start the hard work. You know, it's funny," he rambled on as he strapped his victim in position. "They invented this device to take the will power out of physical training. What they forgot was it still takes will power to climb in under the straps, knowing what's coming."

"If you scare me to death, you don't collect," Bailey said. "Those cards are no good without my prints."

Goldblatt grinned. "Ready?" he asked. "Here we go."

Bailey felt his right thigh twitch. He yelled as a full-fledged cramp locked to the rectus femoris-the name popped into his mind-like a red-hot clamp. The limb strained against the straps, quivering.

"… four seconds, five seconds, six seconds," Goldblatt counted off. Abruptly the pressure was gone. The pain receded.

"Hey," Bailey started-and yelled as his left leg jerked against the restraint. Six more endless seconds passed. Bailey lay gasping as a lever moved, flexing his knee to a new position.

"Cry all you want to," Goldblatt said cheerfully. "This baby works over three hundred separate muscles, max contraction, three positions. How you like it, hah? Ready to get some sense now and settle for a toner like I said to begin with?"

Bailey gritted his teeth against the rubber bite protector and endured another spasm.

"Whatever you say, my friend," Goldblatt sighed. "Here we go again…"

14

"Only two and a half hours?" Bailey inquired weakly. "It seemed like two years."

"You build muscle by tearing down muscle," the trainer said. "You just tore down a couple billion cells-and that hurts. But the body's a fast worker. She rebuilds-and then we tear down again. So she works faster. But she hurts. She hurts all the time. For a week. For a month. Max job? Make that three months."

"That's cutting it fine," Bailey said. "Can't you rush it any?"

"Sure-if you want to sleep in the tank," Goldblatt said sardonically.

"If that's what it takes."

"Are you serious? But I don't need to ask, do I? You're a man that's driven, if I ever saw one. What is it that's eating at you, young fellow? You've got a lot of life ahead of you. Slow down-"

"I can't," Bailey said. "Let's get started on what comes next."

In the third week Bailey, out of the tank for his alter-hourly session in the treadcage, paused to look at himself in the mirror. His face was gaunt, knobbed below the jawline with unfamiliar lumps of muscle; his neck was awkwardly corded; his shoulders swelled in sinewy striations above a chest which seemed to belong to someone else.

"I look wrong," he said. "Misshapen. No symmetry. Out of balance."

"Sure, sure. What do you expect, to start with? Some sectors respond quicker, some were in better shape. Don't worry. First we go for tone, then bulk, then definition, then balance. You're doing swell. We start coordination and dynamics next. Another sixty days and you'll look like you were born under that blue tag." He rubbed a hand over his head, eyeing Bailey. "If it wasn't so crazy, I'd think maybe that's the way you were thinking," he said.

"Don't think about it, Hy," Bailey said. "Just keep the pressure on."