Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [51]
Spirit soon found to her dismay that these were no ordinary treadmills. Oh no. These were state-of-the-art machines that could raise and lower their beds, and in the next five minutes she found herself struggling up a “hill” that never ended.
Then the thing went flat again, but her ordeal wasn’t over. It suddenly sped up, and she was forced into a sprint for thirty seconds. Then it slowed down. Then it sped up. A few more repetitions of that, and it turned into a hill again.
Finally, the treadmill slowed from a sprint to a jog, then a jog to a walk, and then stopped. Spirit bent over, sweating and panting. When she caught her breath and looked up again, she saw everyone else had finished their workouts, too.
“Treadmills!” Mr. Wallis barked. “You’re on machines one and two. One and two, move to three and four. Three and four, move to the treadmills. Move it, ladies!”
With a deep sense of apprehension, Spirit took over one of the two designated machines. Sure enough, there was a workout already programmed into it; “all” she had to do was follow it.
“Is this usual?” Elizabeth panted, as Wallis went over to survey the students on the second set of machines.
“No, at least, not from what I know,” Spirit replied. “It’s something they announced for this semester after Halloween.” And I was too busy with trying to make it through my first semester and survive the Wild Hunt to think about it at the time. I wasn’t even sure I’d be alive to worry about Winter Term classes. “Everyone has it, too, you don’t get a choice like you do with the other PE classes.” That was new, too; almost everything else here at least gave you the illusion that you had some control over what you were taking.
“What are they trying to accomplish with this?” Elizabeth muttered, sounding as if she was talking to herself more than to Spirit.
“What do you think? You got the ‘welcome to Oakhurst’ talk,” Spirit replied, straining against the machine. “Those enemies out there, that war that Doctor Ambrosius keeps talking about. This is to get us ready to face it.”
“Damn right it is, and don’t you forget it, ladies,” Mr. Wallis snapped, coming over to see what they were doing. “Put some back into it, White. There are old ladies in nursing homes that can do better than you are.”
He stood over them, making occasional feints at the controls, as if he was thinking of making the program harder than it already was. Elizabeth looked in despair; Spirit just forged grimly on. Her hair was so sweat-soaked now that it was plastered to her scalp, and every time she licked her lips she tasted salt.
Mr. Wallis moved on in a regular circuit, barking at them like a drill sergeant, hammering them with insults. At least after the switch to the next set of machines, he did let them have bottles of water.
By the time they got to the showers, which Spirit sorely needed, she ached all over and felt as limp as overcooked spaghetti. She had the feeling she was really, really going to hate this class.
At least the new schedule gave her a decent amount of time for that shower.
* * *
The class following the conditioning class was the undemanding literature class—undemanding because this semester was covering books she’d already read in her homeschooling studies. She was able to just coast through that one. Mr. Krandal was not exactly the most inspiring teacher in the world, either—he could make Lord of the Rings boring—so it was a good thing she had, really. What he was doing to Madame Bovary should have been a crime, and she wasn’t looking forward to his nitpicky tests. The one on Silas Marner had been … well, one of the questions had been “What did Silas go looking for when the baby crawled in through the open door.” I mean, come on, Spirit thought resentfully,