Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book One)

Chapter Four

The following morning my training began in earnest. At eight o'clock sharp I walked into the room indicated by Elena to be the martial-arts studio. I'd never taken any sort of self-defense course before, and I was nervous, but the instructor—an Israeli woman named Davnah—quickly put me at ease.

"In two weeks we won't be able to do much more than develop your situational awareness," she explained. "But even a little training is better than none. Dangerous situations unfold in seconds, not minutes. If you can block a single blow, or notice someone approaching you in a threatening way, you may gain enough time to cry out for help or reach for a weapon. Of course, if someone means you real harm, you probably won't do more than slow them down. And we don't know anything about the physical capabilities of the Vardeshi. All we know is that their size and proportions are roughly equal to ours."

"I'll bet they're stronger than they look," I muttered.

Davnah put me through twenty minutes of conditioning and then modeled some basic punches and kicks on a punching bag. I imitated her moves as best I could. Next she demonstrated, with slow and exaggerated gestures, how to escape from an assailant who grabbed one around the neck from behind. This was more challenging still. My movements were too cautious, and my hands kept slipping, or my intended blows missed their targets.

After a few minutes, Davnah excused herself and stepped out into the hallway. When she came back in, she was followed by two burly young men in workout attire. "All right," she said. "Let's try again. Blindfolded, this time."

Something about the blindfold and the presence of masculine attackers transformed the exercise. My heart was racing, and I was sweating, and the men—while not unnecessarily rough—weren't overly gentle either. I knew I'd have bruises tomorrow. I didn't care. The shock of strange male hands closing around my throat heightened my concentration. I began to react more aggressively to the attacks. Eventually I succeeded in breaking their grip, although not consistently. When Davnah finally removed my blindfold, I read the satisfaction in her face.

From self-defense I moved on to medical training. It was from the instructor, a young doctor named Anton whose blond good looks rivaled those of Saresh, that I learned the first concrete facts about the ship that was to be my home for the next year.

"The Vardeshi have provided us with some basic information about the environment of their home planet," Anton told me. "Their shipboard environment is engineered to match that of their home as accurately as possible. Luckily for us, their planet is a remarkably close match with Earth. But there are a few things you need to be prepared for. Their sun is a little brighter and bluer than ours, so you're going to have to gauge your comfort level with their shipboard lights. You can dim the lights in your cabin, but you may need to keep a pair of sunglasses on hand for when you're moving around the ship.

"Also, their gravity is two percent higher, so your workouts are always going to feel like you're sweating off a couple pounds of holiday weight. The oxygen is a trace lower, but it's within the range of what's safe for humans. Over the long term, even such a slight difference may become a concern, so we'll be sending you with a couple of different devices to manage your oxygen intake. One is a battery-powered oxygenator to install in your cabin. That will pump a little extra O2 into your air so that your levels can regulate while you sleep. The other is a pocket-size handheld dispenser. It looks just like a standard asthma inhaler. You'll carry it around with you at all times and take a puff anytime you feel light-headed. We'll send you with a couple dozen of those. Each one is good for about a month." He had both pieces of tech with him, and he demonstrated their use.

"So far we're looking at pretty minor changes to the conditions your body expects. Adjusting to the length of the Vardeshi day will be a bit more difficult. The Vardeshi clock has twenty-seven hours, each one just a little shorter than an Earth hour, so it works out to essentially a twenty-six-hour day. You're going to have to work to adapt, and your body is going to fight you. My advice is to treat it like jet lag: get on their schedule the minute you go aboard, and don't let yourself sleep at odd hours until you're pretty well acclimated. That being said, you should aim for an early bedtime in general. I'd like to see you getting nine or ten hours of sleep a night. You're going to feel tired in ways you can't even imagine yet. Remember, your body will be working overtime to adjust to all of these changes, on top of all the conscious work you'll be doing in assimilating to an alien culture. As of now, every fourth day on your calendar is marked as a rest day—work is off-limits. You'll gauge whether that's enough or too much time as you go through the year.