gives the best results for the embeddee in terms of feedback and response. It helps to sustain the reposition too."
Underwood was clipping lines and tubes from the tank array to some of the drains and introducers she had connected to Falk's skin. He winced slightly as she pushed a trocar into a cannula.
"Let's go," said Apfel, steadying his arm. There was a sort of cage frame to hold on to. An electric motor started. Falk felt himself beginning to sink into the tank, felt the pleasant warmth of the fluid swallow his legs. The motor stopped when he was waist-deep, and Ayoob fitted him with ear plugs, a face mask and, last of all, blackout goggles.
The final thing he saw was Ayoob grinning and giving him a thumbs-up.
The final thing he heard, after the muffled noise of the motor restarting, and the lap of the warm tank water climbing up his chest, was the clunk of the hatch closing overhead.
ELEVEN
There was a clunk as the hatch opened, and light flooded in.
Heel on the step-rung, he jumped down out of the Fargo. Grit-dust underfoot. The dawn sky over Camp Lasky was the proud blue of a corporate logo. The camp was catching the sunrise, side walls washed luminous white. The floods were off. The compound was buzzing with personnel dismounting rollers. He was already inside the gate.
He walked in through the assembly area. He didn't know where he was going, but that didn't seem to matter. His feet did. He walked with confidence, a swagger. His head was muzzy, like the greyscale hours that follow a migraine, but he hadn't felt so lithe, so physically able, in years. It was like idling in a high-performance vehicle. He knew, he just knew, how rapidly things would accelerate if he gunned the throttle.
But something was off. He tried to work out what was disconcerting him. Something sat badly, ill at ease. Other troopers grinned and fist-bumped him as he walked in. He knew their names. He knew who he could banter with and who to steer around. He knew exactly how to needle some of them: the right words, names, references. Playful, mostly, sometimes the snap of rivalry, sometimes a verbal cuff to keep someone in their place. He thought he saw Selton, but she was heading somewhere.
Even so, he felt he should avoid her.
He stopped and dropped down to adjust the laces of his left boot. Into view: combat boots; a leg, kneeling, brought up to his chin, wearing tundra-pattern kit; strong, subtle hands, tanned from outdoor work, from dusty sunlight. He re-laid the tongue of the boot, re-laced, tied off. He realised he didn't know he could work that knot and lacing pattern.
SOMD personnel were queuing up out through the dust screens of the stores block. He'd take his turn, but he had little desire to loiter in line. He crossed a patch of sunlight into the wash house. Restroom stalls down one wall, brickbond tiled floor, the shower block opposite. There was a humid smell of bodies, of cheap soap, the locker-room funk of a forgotten sock or vest baking behind a heating pipe. He said hello to the two troopers heading out as he came in, swinging fieldpacks onto their shoulders.
Then he was alone. He took off his glares and went over to the sinks. Above the stainless-steel bowls, a long, slightly foggy mirror had been riveted to the cinderblock wall.
He looked back at himself. The clean, pressed tundrapattern reg shirt, the digital brooch and the stitch-label tag over the left breast pocket, both stating the same name, the cuff-cut short sleeves revealing corded arms, muscles bunched as he leaned forward on the edge of the sink in examination. Dirty-blond hair, high and tight, like straw stubble. A face that was familiarly unfamiliar, handsome and strong the way a good piece of furniture or a landscape is handsome and strong. Blue eyes, blue as an Eighty-Six sky, a corporate logo. Blue eyes that looked into foggy glass and saw through to somewhere else entirely. A wry
Underwood was clipping lines and tubes from the tank array to some of the drains and introducers she had connected to Falk's skin. He winced slightly as she pushed a trocar into a cannula.
"Let's go," said Apfel, steadying his arm. There was a sort of cage frame to hold on to. An electric motor started. Falk felt himself beginning to sink into the tank, felt the pleasant warmth of the fluid swallow his legs. The motor stopped when he was waist-deep, and Ayoob fitted him with ear plugs, a face mask and, last of all, blackout goggles.
The final thing he saw was Ayoob grinning and giving him a thumbs-up.
The final thing he heard, after the muffled noise of the motor restarting, and the lap of the warm tank water climbing up his chest, was the clunk of the hatch closing overhead.
ELEVEN
There was a clunk as the hatch opened, and light flooded in.
Heel on the step-rung, he jumped down out of the Fargo. Grit-dust underfoot. The dawn sky over Camp Lasky was the proud blue of a corporate logo. The camp was catching the sunrise, side walls washed luminous white. The floods were off. The compound was buzzing with personnel dismounting rollers. He was already inside the gate.
He walked in through the assembly area. He didn't know where he was going, but that didn't seem to matter. His feet did. He walked with confidence, a swagger. His head was muzzy, like the greyscale hours that follow a migraine, but he hadn't felt so lithe, so physically able, in years. It was like idling in a high-performance vehicle. He knew, he just knew, how rapidly things would accelerate if he gunned the throttle.
But something was off. He tried to work out what was disconcerting him. Something sat badly, ill at ease. Other troopers grinned and fist-bumped him as he walked in. He knew their names. He knew who he could banter with and who to steer around. He knew exactly how to needle some of them: the right words, names, references. Playful, mostly, sometimes the snap of rivalry, sometimes a verbal cuff to keep someone in their place. He thought he saw Selton, but she was heading somewhere.
Even so, he felt he should avoid her.
He stopped and dropped down to adjust the laces of his left boot. Into view: combat boots; a leg, kneeling, brought up to his chin, wearing tundra-pattern kit; strong, subtle hands, tanned from outdoor work, from dusty sunlight. He re-laid the tongue of the boot, re-laced, tied off. He realised he didn't know he could work that knot and lacing pattern.
SOMD personnel were queuing up out through the dust screens of the stores block. He'd take his turn, but he had little desire to loiter in line. He crossed a patch of sunlight into the wash house. Restroom stalls down one wall, brickbond tiled floor, the shower block opposite. There was a humid smell of bodies, of cheap soap, the locker-room funk of a forgotten sock or vest baking behind a heating pipe. He said hello to the two troopers heading out as he came in, swinging fieldpacks onto their shoulders.
Then he was alone. He took off his glares and went over to the sinks. Above the stainless-steel bowls, a long, slightly foggy mirror had been riveted to the cinderblock wall.
He looked back at himself. The clean, pressed tundrapattern reg shirt, the digital brooch and the stitch-label tag over the left breast pocket, both stating the same name, the cuff-cut short sleeves revealing corded arms, muscles bunched as he leaned forward on the edge of the sink in examination. Dirty-blond hair, high and tight, like straw stubble. A face that was familiarly unfamiliar, handsome and strong the way a good piece of furniture or a landscape is handsome and strong. Blue eyes, blue as an Eighty-Six sky, a corporate logo. Blue eyes that looked into foggy glass and saw through to somewhere else entirely. A wry
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