"How long?" Bailey repeated the question.
"Second, what we got to work with," Goldblatt continued, unruffled. He rubbed his hands together. "Frankly, my friend, you offer a man a challenge." He frowned happily at Bailey's bare ribs, reached out to squeeze his thin arm above the elbow. "You look like about what we call a three: minimum normal range, about point 4 musculature, probably no better'n a five vascular rating, same for osteo-"
"I understand it's a fast process," Bailey said. "Can you do it in a week?"
The trainer's mouth snapped open. He wagged his head in wonderment. "The ideas some people got," he said. "Forget it, mister. A week? In a week maybe you can see the first results. What you think a Maxpo is, some kind of magic trick? It's pain! Pain that will burn your heart out. Not every man can take it; not even most men. And frankly, you don't look to me like one of the tough ones. Maybe better we talk a standard toning course, two weeks and you feel like a new man-"
"Maxpo or nothing," Bailey said. "And in minimum time."
"You know how it works, mister?" Goldblatt turned to the tank, poked a button. The top slid back, exposing a padded interior of complex shape, fitted with numerous wide web straps with polished buckles.
"The principle," Bailey responded instantly, "is that of selective electronically triggered isometric and isotonic contraction, coupled with appropriately neuro-synaptic stimulation and coordinated internal physiochemical environmental control. The basal somatic rhythms are encoded, brought into a phased relationship, and-"
"You know plenty fancy words, bub, I'll give you that," Goldblatt said wonderingly. "But what it works out to is I put a micro-filament tap into your spinal cord, right where it leaves the skull. We use the trial-and-error method for coding the motor nerves. It hurts. When I finish, all I have to do is push a button and the muscle it's wired to contracts-max contraction, more than you could trigger with the voluntary nervous system. Once I've got you wired, I slap you in the frame and strap you up rigid. The frame is articulated, so you get isotonic work along with the 'metrics. Then I work you over like one of them guys in a torture chamber, know what I mean? You'll come out of it screaming for mercy, every muscle in your body yelling for help. You'll turn black and blue all over. This goes on for a week. Then it gets worse." He shook his head. "Like I said, not many fellows can take it."
"How long?"
"Give yourself a break, mister. A few times a year I sell a tank job, not a max but just whatever somebody needs, like a demo player is slowing down, he needs toning up fast; or some of these specialty show people, after a long layoff. And even at that-"
"How many hours a day do I spend inside?"
"A day?" Goldblatt barked. "You work day and night-that's if you're talking minimum time. But that's for lab cases, theory stuff-"
"We'll test the theory."
"You must be in some kind of hurry, mister."
"That's right. And we're wasting time."
Goldblatt nodded heavily. "It's your bones that'll get bent, my friend, not mine. All right, strip down and I'll run you across the 'tab monitor and see what we got to work with."
13
The insertion of the hair-fine electrodes took three hours-three uncomfortable hours of probing in sensitive flesh with sharp-pointed metal, alternated with tingling shocks that made obscure muscles jump and quiver. At the end of it, Bailey touched the coin-sized plastic disk nestled against the base of his skull and winced.
"That's the easy part," Goldblatt said cheerfully. "Now we start the hard work. You know, it's funny," he rambled on as he strapped his victim in position. "They invented this device to take the will power out of physical training. What they forgot was it still takes will power to climb in under the straps, knowing what's coming."
"If you scare me to death, you don't collect," Bailey said. "Those cards are no good without my prints."
Goldblatt grinned. "Ready?" he asked. "Here we go."
Bailey felt his right thigh twitch. He yelled as a full-fledged cramp locked to the rectus femoris-the name popped into his mind-like a red-hot clamp. The limb strained against the straps, quivering.
"… four seconds, five seconds, six seconds," Goldblatt counted off. Abruptly the pressure was gone. The pain receded.
"Hey," Bailey started-and yelled as his left leg jerked against the restraint. Six more endless seconds passed. Bailey lay gasping as a lever moved, flexing his knee to a new position.
"Cry all you want to," Goldblatt said cheerfully. "This baby works over three hundred separate muscles, max contraction, three positions. How you like it, hah? Ready to get some sense now and settle for a toner like I said to begin with?"
Bailey gritted his teeth against the rubber bite protector and endured another spasm.
"Whatever you say, my friend," Goldblatt sighed. "Here we go again…"
14
"Only two and a half hours?" Bailey inquired weakly. "It seemed like two years."
"You build muscle by tearing down muscle," the trainer said. "You just tore down a couple billion cells-and that hurts. But the body's a fast worker. She rebuilds-and then we tear down again. So she works faster. But she hurts. She hurts all the time. For a week. For a month. Max job? Make that three months."
"That's cutting it fine," Bailey said. "Can't you rush it any?"
"Sure-if you want to sleep in the tank," Goldblatt said sardonically.
"If that's what it takes."
"Are you serious? But I don't need to ask, do I? You're a man that's driven, if I ever saw one. What is it that's eating at you, young fellow? You've got a lot of life ahead of you. Slow down-"
"I can't," Bailey said. "Let's get started on what comes next."
In the third week Bailey, out of the tank for his alter-hourly session in the treadcage, paused to look at himself in the mirror. His face was gaunt, knobbed below the jawline with unfamiliar lumps of muscle; his neck was awkwardly corded; his shoulders swelled in sinewy striations above a chest which seemed to belong to someone else.
"I look wrong," he said. "Misshapen. No symmetry. Out of balance."
"Sure, sure. What do you expect, to start with? Some sectors respond quicker, some were in better shape. Don't worry. First we go for tone, then bulk, then definition, then balance. You're doing swell. We start coordination and dynamics next. Another sixty days and you'll look like you were born under that blue tag." He rubbed a hand over his head, eyeing Bailey. "If it wasn't so crazy, I'd think maybe that's the way you were thinking," he said.
"Don't think about it, Hy," Bailey said. "Just keep the pressure on."
15
On the eighty-fifth day, Hy Goldblatt looked at William Bailey and wagged his head in exaggerated wonder.
"If I didn't see it myself, I would never of believed it was the same man."
Bailey turned this way and that, studying himself in the wall mirror. He walked a few steps, noting the automatic grace of his movements, the poise of his stance, the unconscious arrogance of his posture, the way he held his head.
"It'll do, Hy," he said. "Thanks for everything."
"Where you going now? Why not stay on, help out in the gym? Look, I need an assistant-"
"Pressing business," Bailey said. "What do you know about the Apollo Club?"