Harmony sometimes accompanies me in the other machine so I have someone to race. She pushes me hard, and sometimes I wonder if she's trying to break me. I don't let her. "If you're not vomiting during a work- out, you're not trying," she says The days are excruciating. My body is a misery of aches from the arches of my feet to the back of my neck. Mickey's Pinks massage me every day. There is no better pleasure in the world, but three days after beginning my training with Harmony, I wake up vomiting in my bed. I shiver and shake and hear cursing "There's a science to this, you wicked little witch," Mickey is shouting. "He will be a work of art, but not if you pour water on the paint before it's set. Do not ruin him!" "He must be perfect," Harmony says. "Dancer, if he is weak in any way, the other children will butcher him like a freshmade drillBoy." "You are butchering him!" Mickey whines. "You are ruining him! His body cannot handle the muscle breakdown.' "He has not objected to the treat- ment," Harmony reminds him.
"Because he does not know he can ob- ject!" Mickey says. "Dancer, she has no understanding of the biomechanics in- volved in this. Do not let her ruin my boy." "He is not your boy!" Harmony sneers Mickey's voice becomes softer. "Dancer, Darrow is like a stallion, one of the old stallions of Earth. Beautiful beasts that will run as hard as you push them. They will run. And run. And run Until they don't. Until their hearts ex- plode." There is silence for a moment, then Dancer's voice. "Ares once told me that it is the hottest fire that forms the sternest steel. Keep pushing the boy." I resent two of my teachers after over- hearing their words: Mickey for think- ing me weak; Dancer for thinking me his tool. Only Harmony doesn't anger me. Her voice, her eyes, seethe with an anger I feel in my own soul. She may have Dancer now, but she lost someone. The unscarred part of her face tells me that. She is no schemer like Dancer or his master, Ares. She is like me- -brim- ming with a rage that makes all else so inconsequential. That night I cry.
Over the next days, they feed me drugs to expedite the protein synthe- sis and muscle regeneration. After my muscle tissue has recovered from the initial trauma, they train me harder than before, even Mickey- though his eyes are underlined with dark rings and his thin face is sallow, he does not ob- ject. He has grown distant these last weeks, no longer telling me stories- as though he fears what he has created, now that I'm taking fuller shape Harmony and I speak very little to one another, but there is a subtle shift in our relationship, some sort of pri- mal understanding that we are the same sort of creature. But as my body grows stronger, Harmony can no longer keep up even though she is a hardened woman of the mines. That is after only two weeks. The distance between our capabilities continues to grow. After another month, she is like a child to me. Even then I do not plateau My body begins to change. I thicken My muscles become strong and corded in the concentraction machine, which I now supplement with weight workouts in highGrav. Gradually, strength builds My shoulders grow broader, rounded; I see tendons emerge in my forearms;