Breathe, he told himself. You must be breathing when they come. You must be breathing and you must walk out and you must smile at them. There must be nothing they will notice. Right away, at least. The beard and clothes will help some. They'll be so busy gaping at them that they will miss a little thing. But not breathing. They might notice if you weren't breathing.
Carefully, he pulled in a breath of air, felt the sting of it run along his nostrils and gush inside his throat, felt the fire of it when it reached his lungs.
Another breath and another one and the air had scent and life and a strange exhilaration. The blood throbbed in his throat and beat against his temples and he held his fingers to one wrist and felt it pulsing there.
Sickness came, a brief, stomach-retching sickness that he fought against, holding his body rigid, remembering all the things that he must do.
The power of will, he told himself, the power of mind…the power that no man uses to its full capacity. The will to tell a body the things that it must do, the power to start an engine turning after years of doing nothing.
One breath and then another. And the heart is beating now, steadier, steadier, throbbing like a pump.
Be quiet, stomach.
Get going, liver.
Keep on pumping, heart.
It isn't as if you were old and rusted, for you never were. The other system took care that you were kept in shape, that you were ready at an instant's notice on a stand-by basis.