The Lesson of the Body
Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving.
- THE GATELESS GATE
It will never end, thought Visella as she fell heavily on the bed. It was the wee hours of the morning. Every muscle was aching, her head on fire. These sessions will kill me. Her body had spent so much time exerting itself, it was not adapting quickly to relaxation. Her palms were facing down but her brain registered them as being face up. Her feet twitched. Yet she could use the three hours of sleep the night still held for her. If I could only get a massage.
What had master Reta called it? The dojo of the mind. But the pain was all physical. She recollected the event.
"Again!" he had told Visella while she was shaking away the pain to rise up from the wooden floor of the dojo that had smelled of her sweat. The master, far from breathless from the latest skirmish, had looked her in the eyes and remarked: "What's speed? Body and mind. Body and mind. Reactions start at the surface, in your fingertips. Instantaneously. A miracle? No, it is training. The dojo of the mind. Again!"
"How is this training supposed to help me govern a continent?" she had sneered, dodging the sudden swing of the bamboo cane that kept coming for her from the left and right and above and below. Yes, how is that? "Where there are questions, there is mind! Thought will slow you down!" And on and on he had kept attacking, feinting, and blocking Visella's attempts to break through his guard, to no avail. The master had stopped the cane an inch from Visella's temple.
And there was the drink, too. "Dojo tea," Master Reta had called; but her body recognized it for a new substance. Tame to the body, until activated. She had drank the tea, blissfully unaware. Her senses did not find anything else but the usual compounds.
"What is in the tea, master?" Visella had asked while aiming to gain as much time as possible to catch her breath.
"Immanence," was his reply. "Now get to work, chop chop."
Outside the dojo it had been pitch dark. Hardwood floors and paper-thin dividers like a dojo of old. "Do not think we are teaching you combat," the master had said. "This is master Reta's school for civil officers!"
All clear, master. Back in the present, her body finally capitulated and was fast asleep. But in a curious feeling of disassociation, her mind continued to burn. She saw flashes of light on the back of her eyelids.
It's all Arbatar's fault.. Damn her!
The panel had slid open, revealing the inner courtyard, a fountain, half a dozen cherry trees whose artly modeled branches spoke of years of care and attention. Sapient Arbatar Sorgo had entered dressed in the formal gray suit of a Sage. Evidently, she had only stopped by on her way to other government duties, and greeted the trainer with a slight bow: "Reverend Mother, this is our distinguished Master Reta. I entrust you to him. You ask how to govern a continent. The answer, as you know, is to govern yourself first."
Whatever was mixed with the dojo tea had activated immediately with physical activity. Her nerves burned. The nightly sessions seemed endless. The first time she had stumbled out of the dojo, and so the second and third. But over the course of many days, a new vigor had started to build. Plenary sessions with the other Five running loops around her, nightly sessions to break her body. Again and again and again.
"Again!" she heard now the Master's bark shaking through her body. Let me sleep, Master. In her delirium, she saw him float in front of her closed eyes. "Back to the floor. Dodge both canes," he said, his ethereal body adding a second short stick held upside down in the style of a wakizashi. Visella could not tell memory from actuality. Am I in bed? She had waited for the man to swing the long stick, had she? Raised her leg at chest level against the Master, starting to kick lightning fast...
... and once again she had blanked out and found herself on the floor, the calf of her other leg exploding with pain. It had taken a moment for her brain to register how the short cane had deflected her kick while the long one had struck her supporting leg. All her eyes had seen was a blur. In her hallucination she was up again, breathing hard.
Her nerves kept pulsating.
Her memory was now revisiting new fight scenes, him with canes, then her. Before her eyes could register any movement, the master had taken hold of the end of the stick she had held, pirouetted forward to lay a hand directly under Visella's neck, and sent her crashing on the floor six paces away. "Hai, master! Enough!"
Now in her dreams, Visella chose to confront her Master directly.
"What is the value of this lesson, as taught by an android?" she asked.
"Aah, but I am human like you! We are done with the warm-up. Let's do real work."
Visella had stumbled. Real work?
"Now you see, even the androids can learn something from a human trainer. Better, our organic muscles and nerves can adapt, while theirs stay as designed. The tea you consumed contains chemical compounds that activate under duress. You must have felt it."
And I still feel it, she reminded herself.
Something had awakened in her bloodstream, and did not want to stop. Bene Gesserit senses had magnified the sensation a hundred-fold. Her nervous system was alive, sinuous and incredibly fine, like a vine extending branches to twigs to sprigs to needles deep into her flesh. She could touch every single minuscule termination.
What session had that been? Number thirty?
"Now, we will train every muscle of your body. Very tedious. But not new to you. A simple exercise. Extend your hand out, take it back to avoid my stick. I will go faster and faster. Go now... caught you. Go now... caught you. Again!"
Visella's hands were still livid from the hits.
Oh, it was this last lesson.
"Your mind requires a state of flow. It starts at your fingertips. The nerve ends sense before your brain does. The hand and the arm retract faster than your awareness."
"Is this how the Honored Matres fight, Master?"
"I know them not. Combat, by the way, is not the point. We are retraining your nervous system for speed. Neuroplasticity peaks when nerve-tea is activated. This is what our governors achieve, Reverend Mother."
"Physical training to prepare for politics?"
"To prepare for superior decision-making. Again!"
My hands, excoriated.
"Reverend Mother, you are attaching yourself to the idea of accelerating your muscles. That's not the correct approach. You are trying to tell your nerves to be responsive. That is not the correct approach."
"I see the cane but my body is a long time coming!" she had replied.
"The correct approach is to re-evaluate your sense of time. As long as you feel you can perceive time, then your conscious mind is bound to feel it, see it move. Your instinctual brain will grasp velocity much faster without the intrusion of consciousness. Stand up! Repeat! Better this time! Do your muscles ache? They are developing new shortcuts."
These shortcuts won't let me sleep, Master.
"Before you go, some tips for later. Movement at speed will confuse your mind, because your vestibular system is slow to catch up. Feel your muscles, rely on proprioception alone. Your calorie burn will jump; remain sensitive to your blood sugar levels. As you advance, you will need to account for air friction. Find the path of least resistance."
That was the night she had just spent training, she knew. She had been laying on the wooden floor, panting. Master, how come my body is reacting so quickly? Her internal chemistry was working to harden the new behaviors. New finer nerves were branching into her flesh.
Her sleepless mind was dashing erratically.
Martial training to speed up body movements? But what is the connection to government?
A loud noise intruded into her catalepsy. She opened her eyes: it was already dawn.
It took a few seconds to realize it was Arbatar calling through the house system. The link was established before she could move. "I trust your first cycle of lessons went well, Visella."
"Master Reta is keen on bruising his pupils," she whispered, not knowing where the microphone was in the room.
"Quite so. It is a brand new day. Are you sitting in a comfortable position?"
"I can't quite get up. Too tired to move. Hard to speak."
"Good. Stay there. Now, Reverend Mother, I wanted to have you do this before the effect of the nerve-tea dissipated," she continued after a pause, "would you do this for me? Go ahead and recall your briefings."
Visella breathed in, sought the knowledge in her head, and... vertigo took over. A vast network of particles shone suspended inside her mind, every detail in focus. She observed... millions of golden leaves falling from a tree, each and every one frozen in space, unobstructed by the others. It was all there, perfectly organized. She savored it for a moment.
Perfect recall.
"Is that how you have trained, Arbatar?" she ventured, still not daring to move an inch of her body.
"Me? Oh, surely not. We only thought this would be an enticing approach for you. I am not much for combat."
"There are other ways? You tell me now after a month of harrowing?"
"Androids do not sweat. I am not saying our process isn't painful," she added quickly,
"But Master Reta said..."
"Of course we have sent him many students, many androids... so that we can help him become a better master."
"And... are there other ways for humans?"
"There are. Painting. Scuba diving. Making tea."
"I would have rather dived my way through!"
"But so very few humans, Visella, are able to learn like you, straight from the center of your pain."