The Super Olympian- Mystic Warrior

by Laer Carroll

  "No, I won't. My feet are very tough."

  "Nevertheless. Go back and wait for us."

  "Do you really think Anna Prince made a mistake assigning me to this group? That she does not know what I can and cannot do? I am finishing this run with everyone else. If you disagree, take it up with the Boss."

  With that she took off after the other runners.

  The run lasted for ten miles, five out and five back. Sasha guessed from the state of the path the instructor took that he had planned to do two out and two back, but had lengthened the run to teach her a lesson.

  A hundred yards from the classroom Sasha lengthened her stride and flew ahead of everyone else, breathing easily. The "Xulu warrior" was almost the only runner not having trouble by this time.

  Inside Sasha took her skirt to the women's rest room and washed her dusty feet with soap, then donned her skirt. When the rest of the class filed into the classroom, most of them having taken a water-or-whatever and bathroom break, she was sipping coffee in her seat, her bare feet—clearly undamaged—propped up on the table's edge.

  The thin black woman plopped down beside her with a steaming cup with the tab of a teabag dangling from one side. She held out a hand. Sasha shook it.

  "I'm Oseye." She pronounced it o-SAY-yay, with a British accent. "Good show."

  "Sasha."

  "Yeah, I know. I figured out who you were at about mile two. I'm a bit stupid."

  "Pull the other one."

  "What? Oh, that American idiom. You know, I could never figure that one."

  Sasha pursed her lips in wry agreement and began to find out more about her new friend.

  By the end of the week Sasha had eased much of the stranger-anger. Much was still there, but she was confident of further progress to come.

  Partly this was because she was no longer a stranger, an unknown quantity. And what was known was at least interesting and at most impressive. She had worked as an athlete since childhood and succeeded at becoming an Olympic medalist. All these people, though blessed genetically, had worked hard and long to maximize their abilities—as she had. Most had killed—as she had. Most had improbable but true exploits to their credit—and surviving a thousand-foot fall was an impressive exploit.

  She was also interested in them, always an attractive quality in a person, and through her secret biological improvements of them made them happier, healthier and more stable. That she was beautiful helped her with most of the men. That she was a fashion icon helped her with most of the women.

  The first week was mostly book learning, about the capabilities of the flight and surveillance equipment. The second week began actual piloting efforts, first in sense-surround simulators then in actual flights.

  The middle of the second week Oseye invited Sasha to work out with her in the well-equipped gym not far from Bluebird Security HQ. It was quite large, as yet being used only to a quarter or a third of its full capacity because Bluebird was still growing its personnel on the West Coast.

  After they had warmed up with moderate exercise they practiced hand-to-hand combat. Sasha was clearly superior when they grappled, because of her expertise in Judo and her lately acquired Aikido, an art intended to be a better Judo. Oseye was the better when it came to punching and kicking techniques taken from karate, kung fu, and the like. Or at least she was better as long as Sasha kept herself within normal human limits.

  Out of the second week also came a significant design change. The bat plane was changed to a two-seat vehicle using the air-ski designs. The front seat carried the pilot, the back seat the surveillance or UAV or weapons controller. The change was because doing both "front-seat" and "back-seat" functions well had proved to be beyond all but Sasha and two other testers, and only Sasha could do them both very well.

  The third week brought more difficult and dangerous simulator tests, then real flight testing, first robotic tests which tested the vehicles to destruction. Then human pilots took over. Despite all the previous efforts this also led to the destruction of a vehicle. The two testers survived only by bailing out. This proved to be a near-disastrous test of the ejection mechanism. Only Sasha's secret biological help, hidden in quick first-aid work by her, saved one tester's life and the second tester's legs.

  On the fourth week there were more flights. Most of these were for further training. The Friday of that week all the class graduated from the flight-school part of the effort. Half those left to prepare operational units to receive bat planes and become the commanders and pilot-trainers for those units.

  Anna Prince attended the brief after-lunch graduation ceremony and gave a short and very-well-received speech.

  Sasha saw Prince at a fund-raising gala a weekend later as part of the routine which all top-tier models needed to do to keep in the public's eyes.

  "Hi, Sasha," said Prince, giving her a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. Sasha returned the courtesy, as always a bit intrigued when Prince's skin was impervious to her biological probes. Yet the woman's flesh felt warm and yielding to her touch.

  "Hello, Anna. I didn't get a chance to ask you last week. How was your Christmas?"

  "Great! I loved it!" And she seemed entirely sincere, even to Sasha's hyper-aware reading of body and voice language. Prince was well-known for bringing presents to and sponsoring parties for ill orphans at hospitals which took them. She seemed to delight in the company of children, a strange quality in a super-efficient businesswoman.

  "What's keeping you on the West Coast?" Sasha took a sip of her wine. Alcohol was just fuel to her body and effected her otherwise not at all. But she was learning to enjoy the many subtle flavors even the crudest wines had.

  "Business. And I gave Adrian a lift back from his holiday." The colonel's home was on Long Island and his wife worked there. Most of their children were within a hundred miles or so. So most Christmases were spent there. However, he was instrumental in running the West Coast Bluebird operation and spent a good many weeks there.

  They chatted a few minutes about Sasha's family and her recent experiences in the bat-plane project.

  "How would you like to extend your stay on the project? You've turned out to be their best test pilot."

  "The next session starts to get into some really interesting stuff. But it's six weeks long and I'm having to work weekends to keep up my modeling career."

  "Take a day or two mid-week the way you did on the air ski project. Your contract already specifies that. I'm surprised you haven't been taking advantage of it.

  "Which brings me to a related subject. I'd like to swap your air car to a newer model and contract you to show it off."

  "What's different about it?"

  "A lot of little things mostly safety related. A much-higher capacity superbattery. And a smarter autopilot and other controls. But biggest is that they've come up with a much cheaper version of the bat-plane's variable-color skin. Controlled by the driver rather than a stealth system. It can be white or silver, say, for everyday driving. Or red for special occasions. And so on."

  "Luxury air cars aren't that new a news story any more. Aren't you getting into diminishing returns on it?"

  Anna Prince smiled. "Oh, our PR people have come up with a few ways to freshen things up. They'll contact you soon with details."

  Sasha laughed at the one of the ways but went along with it. That was to appear at events with a rising action-adventure movie star. Prince Enterprises had a landing pad at his home put in and directed Sasha to land on the pad.

  The star's home was atop the Hollywood Hills dividing Hollywood and West L.A. to the south from the San Fernando Valley to the north. On her approach the Saturday night of their first "date" she had a view of both glittering lowlands, one to her right and one to her left. She enjoyed both sights but kept most of her attention on the auto pilot's actions. When first landing at a new location in the air car's electronic memory the robot did not always get it just right.

  As the car began to descend Sasha could tell they we
re in the right area. Only one of the luxury residences coming up to her had the quadrisected circle of a landing pad. It and the area around the circle were lit, not brightly enough to destroy the dark adaptation of an ordinary human, but still enough to view the pad quite clearly.

  At 200 feet above the location powerful search lights at each of the four corners of the car came on, directed down and to the sides. A man standing off to one side of the landing pad lifted a hand to shield his eyes.

  The autopilot locked on to the target below and blinked the yellow target on the dashboard's belly display rapidly a few times to let her know of the lock. Then the yellow figure faded away as the image of the landing pad expanded.

  The rate of descent continued to slow as the pad came up, then slowed still more as the autopilot's bottom radar measured the car's vertical height to the fraction of an inch. There was hardly a bump as the wheels swung down and locked into place and the craft eased its weight fully onto the wheels.

  Sasha twisted the control key to Off, released her safety harness, and slid the door open. As she did so the man approached and extended a hand to help her out of the car.

  "Hello, Mr. Crewe. Thanks." She put just enough weight on his hand to give him the illusion of helping.

  "It's good to see you again." He deftly slid his other hand beneath her arm as he turned so that they were side by side and arm in arm. Very smooth man, she thought appreciatively. And of course he had the requisite handsome profile, as she saw when she looked up his six foot plus inches.

  The flesh-to-flesh contact was enough to tell her, besides all the usual dozens of biological facts, that he was indeed genuinely if mildly happy to see her.

  She flicked the key remote to close and lock the car door behind them as they ambled toward open doors to the large two-story house before them. Off to one side was an outdoor tennis court and to the other side a swimming pool. She spared the latter just enough of a glance to see that the pool and the chairs beside it had a good view of Hollywood and West L.A. On a clear day a distant sliver of the Pacific might just be visible.

  "It's good to see you too," Sasha said, stowing the key inside her small clutch purse.

  "I hope you don't mind that I invited someone to join us at our 'intimate' dinner."

  "No, of course not. Have I met them before?" She had met him at the premiere of his last film and several other cast mates and crew.

  "No. She's my sister. I'll warn you now before she can hear us. She's a big fan of yours. She said she'd kill me if I didn't introduce her to you."

  "I really don't have a lot of adoring fans. But I think I can pretend not to notice if she's too adoring."

  He steered her down one corridor open to a big patio lawn on one side, then turned a corner to go deeper into the house. It was a lovely example of California Spanish Colonial, with the usual faux adobe sides and red-shingled roof.

  Or maybe not so faux...

  "Is this the original architecture?"

  "It is indeed. It was in sad shape when I bought it and the contractor I got wanted to tear it down and put up fake. I had to dismiss him and get someone else who could restore it."

  By then they were turning another corner. This corridor was short and led through large open double doors to a dining room. Wonderful smells had been teasing her nose for minutes now, and here she found the source: a dining room and an adjoining kitchen.

  Sasha took in the scene within the room in one comprehensive slightly time-slowed glance. It was large enough to seat a dozen people at a table which doubtless expanded to that size, but now would seat six. There were only two chairs and place settings, placed opposite each other near one end. Small paintings of rural Mexican or Californian scenes were on each wall. A modest chandelier with electric candles lit the table, helped by discreet spot lighting about the room.

  Turning from tweaking a silverware setting was a young woman resembling Daniel Crewe. She was dressed in what was almost a maid's costume, if brown was the dominant color, with a white lacy apron. She was a symphony in brown herself, long curly brown hair agleam in the subdued light, lightly tanned skin, and large brown eyes seeming black in this light to any eyes except Sasha's extrahuman ones.

  "Ms. Canaro, this is my sister, Danielle."

  Sasha glided forward and extended her hand. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Crewe."

  "I—yes. Likewise." The girl's eyes—at this instant Sasha could only think of her as a girl—were wide with awe or other emotion, too mixed even for Sasha's biochemical senses to separate when her hand was grasped.

  Daniel was at their sides and putting an arm around his sister's waist, turning so that the two were side by side.

  "We're twins. Could you tell?"

  He was a brawny six two and she perhaps five four or six and slender. Yet the resemblance was obvious as the two gazed at the shapechanger.

  "Side by side, of course I can."

  Danielle shrugged his embrace away and said, holding up a small digital camera from an apron pocket, "Could I get some photos? I'm supposed to get some photos!"

  Her brother said, "Prince PR commissioned her to take photographs of our dinner. It is OK, isn't it?"

  "Of course. I expected it."

  With that there was a flurry of activity. Sasha quickly realized that this young woman was an expert photographer. She had worked with many of different ages, styles, and sexes of pros and knew the details well from the perspective of one being photographed.

  There were shots of the actor and the model together and separately, standing and sitting at the table, at one point leaning toward each other over their plates, their faces close and smiling adoringly.

  Then Danielle put the camera away. "I need to get a few more of you sitting on a couch in the living room, watching TV together. But I'm sure you're hungry, Sasha. Let me get your food and I'll leave you alone."

  Sasha snagged the girl as she made to hurry into the kitchen.

  "No way. You are eating with us. Bring back a place setting for yourself."

  "But... But..."

  "You sound like a motorboat." One of Gia's favorite rejoinders. "Now, get!"

  Danielle got.

  Sasha turned to look at Daniel. He looked goofy, his smile was so wide, not at all like the deadly half-criminal, half-hero of his on-screen persona.

  "And you! Get a chair for her."

  "Yes, ma'am!" He threw her a snappy salute and got also.

  Sasha had the actor sit at the head of the table and placed herself at his left hand. Though Danielle turned bossy herself for a moment when she found that Sasha had claimed the near-kitchen spot. That was hers, she said, because she WAS serving and Sasha was not going to help serve and chance staining her beautiful dress.

  The model-for-tonight readily agreed. Her outfit (to Danielle's amazement and delight) was a white and rose confection by her sister Silvana. It perfectly complemented Sasha's athleticism, turning it into elfin slenderness and grace.

  "A genuine Canaro!" apparently had begun to arouse some cachet in the world of the obsessive fashionista, which Danielle certainly was. The shapechanger was happy to hear it. She loved Silvana so much she did not trust her own judgment of fashion matters, which she knew in any case was sadly lacking.

  She enjoyed the dinner very much, only partly because Danielle was an epicure and a sous-chef at a famous Sunset Drive restaurant. (Apparently "sous-chef" was a biggish deal. Daniel said it with pride, Danielle with suitable modesty.)

  Another reason was that, unlike most men she knew on a date (or in this case "date"), the actor much more often spoke of his sister and her accomplishments. This was also the pattern with Danielle, who bragged on her brother. Some of that was because the two had no other siblings and had been raised in turns by their mother and father, being swapped between the estranged parents every other year for much of their childhood.

  It was at least a half hour later than scheduled before Sasha and Daniel somewhat reluctantly rose into the night in her a
ir car. Well airborne, the car's radar showing no other craft anywhere near, Sasha said, "Are you sure she'll be OK alone? "

  "Certain," he said, peering down and around at the glittering metropolis falling away before them and beginning to drift backwards below as the vehicle advanced toward it. "Dannie long ago got bored with the Hollywood scene. She says, and I know she feels, that she's grateful she never became an actress for real."

  He had been a high school history teacher when he went with Danielle to an audition. He was offered a bit part that day, which he reluctantly accepted with "Dannie's" enthusiastic support. Cruz, their father's last name, was quickly changed to Crewe when he began to get enough work to get an agent.

  "So you speak Spanish? I didn't pick up on that and I'm usually good at accents."

  "May I point out," he said with a flash of his famous smile in her direction, "that you don't 'have an accent' either, little Argentina girl?"

  In only a few minutes Hollywood was floating near and up to them. As usual the air car received attention, even more perhaps when watchers below realized that it was colored a brilliant sky blue with a silken sheen. "Glitter Red" had become almost the trademark color for celebrity air cars, thanks to the publicity campaign of which she had become a part.

  As always there was a gauntlet of "photojournalists" to traverse on the red carpet into the famous Hollywood theatre they were entering, to attend the premiere of an actress friend of Daniel's in her first "serious" role. Then they had to pose before a similar "red aisle" positioned in front of a backdrop splattered with entertainment-industry corporate logos. It was a full hour (unusually short because they were late, Daniel said) before they got to see the actual movie. Then there was another hour to schmooze and offer (in her case heartfelt) congratulations to the actress and her agent and the film's director.

  It was midnight before Hollywood fell away below them and the air car turned toward his home. The newspapers and newsblogs would soon be full of the story that the newly famous "couple" had snuck out early for some alone time. Given her famous roaming in her air car, several stories would surely have them whisking away to some secluded and luxurious beach resort. The multi-hundred mile-per-hour speed of the air car was part of its appeal to the rich and richer.