/ Chapter 13 – Trans Univex /
Athena walked with her mother and gave her one of her sweet, innocent smiles. "Caroline, is there any news about Plus Ultra recently? I'm perhaps a little behind on staying current."
"I've already told you that I'm not to share what the meeting is about," Caroline said. She grinned. "And your methods of trying to wheedle information out of me are getting less subtle."
Athena frowned. "I'm displeased when information is withheld. It's not an efficient way to accomplish goals."
They were walking along the main city square and curiosity filled Athena's mind. She'd been called to meet with Nathan Sulzer, the Governor of Tomorrowland and the head of Plus Ultra. Traditionally the same person held both titles, though normally the holder was just referred to as Governor. Caroline was to accompany her, which was fairly usual when she met with officials, since they often had questions about Athena's capabilities. Of course, she could answer these sort of questions herself, but for some reason humans liked to have Caroline confirm her opinion.
She was excited about the novelty of an unexpected meeting, yet also very annoyed. Her mother knew what the meeting was about, but would not share any details with her.
"The Governor specifically asked me not to tell you and you'll find out soon enough," Caroline said. "He wants to lay out the discussion his own way, without you having preconceived ideas and speculation."
"He told you, however," Athena countered.
"Yes, to gauge the merit of his idea. And I answered his questions," Caroline said.
Athena disliked going into things blind, particularly when it wasn't necessary and her mother could easily fill her in. She'd had meetings with the full council when Sulzer was present, but she'd never met with him personally, with or without Caroline. And she was extremely curious what it was about.
They reached the main City Hall building and walked up the main steps. "It would be helpful if you could at least give me some general parameters of what the discussion is about. You don't have to give specifics," Athena said.
"Asking the question in yet another way will not change things," Caroline said, her expression somewhere between amused and annoyed, as though she couldn't make up her mind which way to be. "I will say this, however: I better not hear any of your complaints about human impatience for a while."
They took the lift up to the top floor of the tower complex. The Tomorrowland City Hall was a set of five curvy towers that intertwined around each other in a complex pattern, finally merging at the top into a single spire that shot into the sky. The top level was the Governor's offices. City Hall was considered the top architectural achievement of the city. Its ambition was challenging even by Tomorrowland standards, and had only been possible through automated construction. The elevator lifts were particularly challenging, needing to move through shafts that followed the curve of the building while staying level.
At last they reached the Governor's office door, though Athena was tempted to try one last-ditch attempt with her mother to get some kind of hint, but it seemed apparent Caroline wasn't going to give in this time.
The door slid up and they entered the outer office, where Mrs. Harris, Sulzer's secretary sat at her desk. She smiled at them and said, "Right on time. Go on in, he's ready for you."
Caroline thanked her and they continued walking to Sulzer's office, whose door slid up for them and closed behind them as they entered.
Nathan Sulzer was a small, gnome-like man in his 60s, with a shock of white hair that seemingly couldn't be tamed. He'd held the office for the last decade and was widely considered among the best Governors that Tomorrowland and Plus Ultra ever had. He was considered a "second generation" recruit, one of those who came after the initial large recruiting initiative by the four founders. He was old enough to have known everyone, but had the benefit of watching their triumphs and mistakes and learning from them.
He rose from his desk, smiling. "Ah, welcome ladies," he said. "Let's move to the conference table."
They sat at a dark reddish table made from native wood, displaying an interesting spiral pattern. The particular tree had a bark that grew continuously in a pattern of wrapping around the tree throughout its life, producing the distinctive grain. The table ran along a large window with a spectacular view of Tomorrowland, with the space port in the background. Beyond that was the city wall and the outer forest, with a river snaking through the forest feeding into a lake far in the distance.
"So, Athena, I'm sure you're curious what this meeting is about," he said.
"You might say that," Caroline said, rolling her eyes. "I should've just made up something to keep her occupied."
Athena ignored her mother's complaint. "Yes, sir. I'm quite eager to learn the subject."
"The council and I believe we need to bring you in on some greater issues we face, other than just the ongoing need for recruiting worthy people," he said.
"All right," Athena said. "How can I help?"
"Of course you're familiar with Trans Univex," Sulzer said. "But perhaps you can summarize what you know so we can save time."
"Trans Univex is an organization founded around the same time as Plus Ultra by members of the wealthy Rousceld family, in approximately 1890," Athena began crisply. "The family was also concerned about the direction the world was taking, similar to the Plus Ultra founders. They considered joining Plus Ultra, but ultimately decided to take a different road. They are suspicious of freely available science and technology and believe it often brings more problems, which I believe was one of the core reasons they rejected Plus Ultra. Their focus is primarily political, believing they can influence the direction of the world. I don't have much current information on them."
Sulzer nodded. "That's about what I would expect you to know. It's been very difficult to get information; Trans Univex is extremely secretive and difficult to infiltrate. But a little over a decade ago, the leader of Trans Univex, Alphonse Mayer de Rousceld, believed it was time for a more aggressive approach. He was frustrated by the tension among the nuclear powers, as well as the Korean War. Of course, we are often frustrated by the same things, so we sympathize on that basis."
"Did he have a plan to solve these problems?" Athena asked.
"Indeed he did," Sulzer said. "In fact, he had a very ambitious plan to use their vast resources and political connections to implement a plan to solve these problems once and for all – or at least his vision of solving them. In a nutshell, Trans Univex wants to bring the world under their control, a single government run by their organization. Of course, whether the world wants to be under their government is not relevant in their view. They figure that the world needs control, whether the world wants it or not."
"Do they have the power to do this?" Athena said.
"Well, that's among our questions. They believe they do, and they are certainly not fools."
"I know they are quite powerful," Athena said. "But it seems difficult to believe they would have the power to conquer the entire world."
"If the plan was an aggressive assault, then yes, they would fail," Sulzer said. "But the plan is more subtle and frankly frightening than that. It's taken us quite a long time to put together the bits and pieces, but we believe we have a fairly complete picture. They want to destabilize the major governments of the world and goad them into chaos. If they can get enough of the world to collapse at once, they can come in with their vast resources and bring back order. If people are terrified and starving, they'll welcome anyone who comes with food and protects them."
Athena considered this, then nodded. "Historically, major changes in civilizations have come through uprisings by the people when their governments begin to fail."
"Exactly so," he said approvingly. "One area we know they're influencing is Vietnam. The war would have happened with or without Trans Univex, but we believe they have been subtly influencing it to continue, as well as generating considerable propaganda within the United States, creating much social disorder. Meanwhile, they are doing the same thing within the Soviet Union, encouraging more and more anger and paranoia toward the Americans."
"How do you see my role in this?" asked Athena.
"We believe it's time to take our fight directly to Trans Univex. We want you to start researching among their members, looking for people that are high enough to be significant, but also knowledgeable enough to know what's going on, and possibly be uncomfortable with it. In other words, we want to change your focus to recruiting members of Trans Univex to join Plus Ultra instead. Over time, we hope the talent drain will make it difficult for them to implement their plans."
"Recruiting against a specific organization is different than my past missions and requires some care," Athena noted. "I'm much less likely to be noticed when I'm recruiting individuals with no ties to each other. A common connection raises the possibility of patterns being noticed."
"Indeed; we thought of that as well," Sulzer said. "The tricky part about this is maintaining a low enough profile to avoid notice, though it seems likely they'll eventually figure out their people are disappearing. But we hope to give enough cover stories and keep the level of recruitment low enough to stave that off as long as possible."
"It's a difficult problem," Athena said. "I'll attempt to map personal contacts among recruits and minimize the connections. But I agree, it seems inevitable they'll notice eventually."
"Yes. But we can't just sit by and hope their plan fails," Sulzer said. "The stakes have grown much higher. Athena, we believe they have accepted the need for huge losses of life to achieve their goals, up to and including nuclear war. The odd thing here is – and I believe it's worth keeping this in mind – they believe they're doing this for the right reasons. We believe their primary motivation is not some Hitler-style power grab. Alphonse Mayer de Rousceld is not a madman, and that makes him far more dangerous. He's a man tired of the world constantly at war and he believes through one final bloodletting, he can eliminate it once and for all. That his family will run things, of course, is a bonus."
"Can we stop him?" Athena asked simply and matter-of-factly.
Sulzer smiled grimly. "That's what I like about you, Athena. You aren't afraid to ask the bottom line, uncomfortable question. And my truthful answer is: I don't know. And that frightens me."
The Tomorrowland Health Club was a publically accessible recreation facility located near the middle of the city, where citizens could visit for exercise, sports or other activities since public health was a primary focus of the Tomorrowland society. Athena and Caroline walked through the front entrance, over which was a sign with a motto: "Physical Health Governs All Achievement."
They walked through the lobby, which opened into an open-roofed interior area where many people were sitting at tables, talking or enjoying a break. They continued to the back of the facility, finally reaching a large room marked Charles Atlas Gymnasium. As they entered the room, Caroline spied a large Japanese man across the room, doing some stretches on a soft mat. He was tall and very muscular.
"Hello, Hikaru," Caroline called.
The man smiled and got to his feet. "Caroline! I've been looking forward to this. I've never seen your protégé, though I've heard much about her. At least, what's publicly known."
"Athena, this is Mr. Hirano," Caroline said.
"Hello, Mr. Hirano," Athena said to him. "I'm pleased to meet you."
Hikaru smiled at her. "Hello, Athena." He examined her more closely, then asked Caroline, "She's really a machine? She's very convincing."
"Yes, I assure you I am," Athena answered. "But thank you."
He chuckled. "I apologize for speaking about you as if you weren't here. That was rude of me."
Athena smiled. "No apology needed; I'm used to it."
"So what's our goal today, Athena?" Hikaru asked.
"Caroline felt that I should learn self-defense, should the need arise when I'm out in the field. I can improvise when I need to, but it seemed prudent to have a more formal study so that I could dispatch enemies more efficiently. I studied a series of books related to Karate, Judo and Taekwondo. However, somewhat like humans, I need practice to integrate the patterns into my coordination memory and improve precision."
Hikaru raised an eyebrow. "You're a very impressive machine. One second, Athena, I need to ask Caroline something directly about you, if you don't mind."
He turned to Caroline. "She's a tiny thing. Are you sure I won't break her? I've tried sparring with the Faustus units and they're not the most durable machines, not to mention being pretty crude when it came to actually doing some moves."
"Don't worry about that," Caroline chuckled. "Athena is much different. You could beat her with a baseball bat and it wouldn't hurt her."
Hikaru looked at Athena with a new respect. "Well, let's hope it won't come to that."
"If it's all right with you, I'll just go sit over there and watch. Athena will handle things," Caroline said.
As she walked away, Hikaru turned to Athena. "All right, Athena. Let's see your stance."
Athena dropped into a standard karate stance.
"Excellent!" he said. "That's a textbook stance, not surprisingly. All right, throw me a standard straight punch."
Athena threw a punch, moving far faster than any human could possibly move. Hikaru's jaw dropped, then he swallowed. "Okay. Well, there's no doubt you're a machine now. But it was little faster than I can easily see. Could you show me slower?"
"All right," Athena said. She repeated the move smoothly in slow motion, taking about a second to complete.
Hikaru watched with a professional eye. "Almost perfect, but just change the timing of your hip rotation a little. Do it again and let me guide your arm as you rotate."
They ran through a number of moves, moving through various punches and moving on to kicks, blocks, sweeps and other moves. Athena usually needed some amount of adjustment, but it only took two or three tries to nail down how it was supposed to look.
"Excellent again," Hikaru said approvingly. "Good thing humans aren't like you, or you'd put teachers out of business."
Athena smiled at him. "Thank you, Mr. Hirano. You're a very good teacher."
"Thank you, and you're quite the charmer," he said, laughing. "Well, the next step would normally be sparring. But I'm more concerned about me than you at this point. Those kicks you did were… frightening, to be honest."
"Oh, don't worry about that," Athena assured him. "I'll restrict my power and speed to human normal. I have extremely precise control over my coordination, and my morality interface wouldn't allow me to desire to injure you."
"All right, that's good to know," he said, grinning. "I'm glad you're not like the repair robots. Those things look like they could rip my arms off."
"Oh, I would never do that," said Athena matter-of-factly. "I would only use that amount of power fighting against another machine. That level would be overkill against humans."
As Hikaru's grin slipped a little, Athena continued. "I should say, however, sparring will be where I'll need the most practice. I need to learn to recognize your moves and develop patterns to decide quickly on the proper response. It's possible I might hit you hard unintentionally. But as I said, I'll be careful, and I'll never use so much power that it could severely injure you."
"All right, I trust you… I think. Maybe we could take it slow at first."
"Absolutely. I shall slow myself to 50% human normal."
"Wait, are you using 'little girl' human normal or 'best human ever' human normal?" he asked.
"I watched some films of karate tournaments that we had on file," Athena answered. "I based my sparring speed on that."
"For all I know, you might have watched the World Championships. But anyway, 50% sounds like a good place to start. Okay, I'll stop being a coward. Let's run through some standard blocks."
It turned out that 50% of whatever Athena watched was approximately the speed of a reasonably good human, which worked out well. They ran through some basic blocks and moves, Athena looking absurdly small compared to the huge, tall man.
"You're right, you'll need more practice at this," Hikaru said. "Your moves are perfect, but you're not quite getting into the position you need or responding fast enough. To be honest, that makes me feel better as a human," he finished, laughing.
"Can we do this several times a week, Mr. Hirano?" Athena asked.
"Definitely," he said. "In fact, I think I'll get as much or more out of it than you will. To get better, I need sparring partners better than me, and it's clear that it won't take you long to exceed human skill. It's amazing that you can dial-in to match whatever I can do."
"Thank you," Athena said, smiling prettily at him. "I'm grateful for your assistance and glad that I can help you as well."
Hikaru shook his head. "I suspect you're pretty good at recruiting with that charm and smile. Say, why don't we try something fun here at the end, and I'm curious."
"Of course," Athena replied. "What would you like me to do?"
"Can you do a jump-kick?"
"Yes. I have studied 36 jump kick styles. You haven't reviewed my coordination, so you should probably stand back, just in case. Shall I do a basic standing jump side-kick?"
"Sure, works for me," he said.
"How high should I jump?" Athena asked. "The books are not very specific on that."
Hikaru looked amused. "I've never heard that question before. How high can you jump?"
"Without using reserve power and just using nominal power as I probably would in a typical fight, I can jump approximately twenty-five feet straight up from a standing start," she said.
He stared at Athena. "You're more frightening by the minute, but I would say that's excessive for a jump kick. In general, you should match the height to your target. But right now, how about four feet? That probably puts you in the league of some of the best humans."
Hikaru backed away and gave her a "when you're ready" gesture. Athena jumped up and executed a nearly perfect jump kick. Hikaru laughed, clapping his hands with delight. "I love you! I think I could watch you do jump kicks all day. Hey! Let's try something else."
He walked over and grabbed a volleyball. "If I throw this up, could you kick it while in the air?"
"I think so," Athena replied. "I'm not sure I could aim the ball accurately, however. At least, not this early in our training."
"Are you making a joke? Or are you serious? I'll be impressed either way," he said with a grin.
Athena paused, appearing to need some time to understand his question. "I'm afraid that humor is one of my limitations. I rarely make jokes myself, unless unintentionally. I hope to improve this in the future, but it's very difficult to understand."
"Well, I suppose it's reassuring you have some limitations," he said. "No offense intended, of course."
"I have many limitations," Athena agreed. "Being offended is also one of them."
"Ha! Well, that was funny, even if it was unintentional," he said. "All right, I'll throw up the ball and you kick it in the air. Don't worry about aiming it."
He backed up and threw the ball toward Athena. He accidentally threw it a little high, but Athena jumped six feet in the air and kicked it, though she slightly mistimed the kick and caught the edge of the ball rather than a clean hit.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hirano. I'm certain I'll improve with practice," she said.
Hikaru laughed delightedly. "She is just wonderful," he called over to Caroline. "I'll take a dozen of her."
Author's Note: Did you know Athena loves reviews? Not as much as recruiting, but it's close. :)
The official story site is at www. frankandathena .com for discussions of the story! - T.K.