The Ramal Extraction by Steve Perry

Author:Steve Perry [Perry, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101618820
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-12-24T05:00:00+00:00

After she was gone, Gramps came in. “How’d she take it?”

“I’m still alive. There was a moment when I wondered if I might not continue to be.”

Gramps chuckled.

Jo stood on her right foot, her left tucked against her supporting leg just above the knee, her eyes shut.

“Five minutes,” Formentara said. “That’s enough. Try the hop.”

Jo nodded. She bent her supporting knee slightly, pushed off and lifted a few centimeters above the floor. In the air, she switched feet, put her left down, landed in balance, brought her right foot to rest on the left leg.

All with her eyes still closed.

Not even a wobble.

“Wow!” she said.

“You think?” Formentara laughed. Zhe was pleased, Jo could tell, and why wouldn’t zhe be? This was a big deal, this new aug.

SPK, Formentara called it.

Somatic Proprioceptive Kinetics.

Anybody with even moderate physicality could stand on one foot for a few minutes. But close their eyes? A fit, trained person of twenty-five might manage forty or fifty seconds. The older you got, the less you could do. At her age, thirty seconds would be unusually good. A woman of sixty? The average was seven seconds; at seventy? Four seconds.

Jo had done five minutes, and not a tremble. That was amazing. As was the in-air switch. Her balance was perfect, and she felt it.

Not that there was a lot of call for standing on one foot in the dark, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Jo was aware of her entire body, what was where, how gravity worked on it, and what she could do. She could freeze in midstep, knew exactly how much space was between her and the walls, the ceiling, Formentara, and every stick of furniture in the room, even with her vision off-line.

It was a real sixth sense. In a hand-to-hand situation, having that much of a center would be a real advantage.

“Open your eyes.”

Jo obeyed. “I could get a job walking a high wire in a traveling circus,” she said.

“Walking? You should be able to run on a wire at full speed and do a tumbling run, with the aug lit. Shut it off for a second.”

Jo did. “Whoa! I feel as if I’m going to fall over.”

“That will pass.”

In a couple of seconds, the sensation ebbed. “I still feel like a cow trying to balance on stilts. Like the first time I came out of the O/O and felt as if I were going blind and deaf.”

“That’s the price.”

Jo nodded. She knew. That was part of the reason that augmented folk tended to have shorter lives. The enhanced senses, the superhuman abilities, they were addictive, a seductive, nearly irresistible drug. Once they were lit, you didn’t want to extinguish them. If you didn’t have the discipline to flip the off switch, you’d burn yourself out, even if the balance in your system was as well regulated as Formentara could make it.

“This is terrific,” Jo said. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, keep it to yourself. When we get back to civilization, I’ll probably

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