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Cletus looked at him.
"Do you see how it all hangs together?" Cletus asked him.
"Think so," said Eachan. "But remember, I've been living with you for the last
half year and I know most of the patterns in that manual of yours already."
He reached for the decanter behind the glasses ranked on the small table
beside his chair and thoughtfully poured himself a small amount of whiskey.
"Shouldn't expect too much too soon," he said, sipping at it. "Any military
man's bound to be a bit conservative. In the nature of us. But they'll come
through, Cletus. It's beginning to be more than just a name with us here, this
business of being Dorsais."
He turned out to be correct. By the time the officers' training program got
under way a week later, all of those who had sat in the living room with
Cletus that night knew their manuals by heart if not yet quite by instinct.
Cletus divided the officers to be trained among the six of them, in groups of
roughly ten each, and training began.
Cletus took the class that he had labeled simply "Relaxation," the course that
would train these officers to tap that extra source of energy he had
demonstrated to them all at the Foralie stadium after running himself to the
normal exhaustion point. His first class consisted of the six from the living
room.
Eachan was among them, although he already had more than a faint grasp of the
technique involved.
Cletus had been privately tutoring both him and Melissa in it for the past
couple of months, and both had become noticeably capable with it. However, it
was Eachan's suggestion and Cletus found it a good one that his inclusion in
the class would be an example to the others that someone besides Cletus could
achieve unusual physiological results.
Cletus began his class just before lunch, after they had completed the full
day's physical training schedule, consisting of jungle gym, run and swim. They
were physically unwound by the exercise, and more than a little empty because
of the long hours since breakfast. In short, they were in a condition of
maximum receptivity.
Cletus lined them up behind a long steel bar supported between two posts at
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about shoulder height off the ground.
"All right," he said to them. "Now I want you all to stand on your right legs.
You can reach out and touch the bar in front of you with your fingertips to
help keep your balance, but take your left feet off the ground and keep them
off until I tell you you can put them down again."
They complied. Their pose was a little on the ridiculous side, and there were
a few smiles at first, but these faded as the legs on which they stood began
to tire. About the time when bearing all their weight
upon the muscle of one leg was beginning to become actively painful, Cletus
ordered them to switch legs and kept them standing with all their weight on
their left legs until the muscles of calf and thigh began to tremble under
their full body weight. Then he switched them back to the right leg, and then
again to the left, shortening the intervals each time as the leg muscles
became exhausted more quickly. Very shortly they stood before him on legs as
uncertain as those of men who had been bedridden for a period of weeks.
"All right, now," Cletus said then, cheerfully, "I want you all up in a
handstand, the palms of your hands on the ground, your arms fully extended.
You can balance yourselves this time by letting your legs rest against the
bar."
They obeyed. Once they were all up, Cletus gave them a further order.
"Now," he said, "one hand off the ground. Do your handstand on one arm only."
When they were upside down, he went through the same process he had when they
had been right side up. Only it took their arms a fraction of the time it had
taken their legs to tire. Very shortly he released them from their exercise,
and they all tumbled to the ground, virtually incapacitated in all their
limbs.
"On your backs," ordered Cletus. "Legs straight out, arms at your sides but
you don't have to lie at attention. Just straighten out on your back
comfortably. Eyes on the sky."
They obeyed.
"Now," said Cletus, pacing slowly up and down before them, "I want you just to
lie there and relax while I talk to you. Watch the sky & " It was one of those
high, bright blue skies with a few clouds drifting lazily across it.
"Concentrate on the feeling in your arms and legs, now that they've been
relieved from the load of supporting your bodies against the force of gravity.
Be conscious of the fact that now it's the ground supporting you and them and
be grateful for it. Feel how heavy and limp your arms and legs are, now that
they've given up the work of bearing weight, and are themselves being borne by
the surface of the ground. Tell yourself not out loud in your own words how
limp and heavy they are.
Keep telling yourself that and watching the sky. Feel how heavy and relaxed
your body is, with its weight being supported by the ground beneath your back.
Feel the relaxation in your neck, in the muscles of your jaw, in your face,
even in your scalp. Tell yourself how relaxed and heavy all these parts of you
are and keep watching the sky. I'll be going on talking, but pay no attention
to me. Just give all your attention to what you're telling yourself and what
you're feeling and how the sky looks & "
He continued to pace up and down talking. After a while, the arm- and
leg-weary men, soothed by their relaxed position and the slow movement of the
clouds, lulled by the steady, pleasant, monotonous sound of his voice, ceased
in fact to pay any attention to the sense of his words. He was merely talking.
To Arvid, at one end of the line, Cletus' voice seemed to have gone off and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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