SECRET RADIO blog

As they pulled onto the main campus of REACH RESEARCH, Anne's eyes widened. "This is a big place," she said softly. She turned and gazed out the window on her side as Carrie drove, looking across the grounds, like a child would do. Carrie drove into the senior staff lot and pulled up. She had not yet discussed with Anne the purpose of her visit, and she saw the young woman gaze at the impressive building and readjust her own evaluation of Carrie and Carrie's interest in the martial arts. But Anne asked nothing and obediently followed her host into the building and up to Carrie's office.

Carrie buzzed Rolande, but there was no answer. It was nearly nine, and she knew he was in.

"He must be in his lab," she said. "Would you like to come downstairs?"

"Yes," Anne said.

The girl gazed all around the lab as they entered, and her eyes quickly found Rolande. He was just scribbling a note about the output of one of the LUMINEX machines. Rolande looked back at her, and Anne gave a slight start at his gaze. It was the first time that Carrie saw her show surprise. Anne's demeanor instantly changed. Carrie was puzzled.

"This is Dr. Rolande," Carrie said gently. Anne's youthful brown eyes flicked to her, and Carrie realized that Anne had instantly reclassified her as well. Anne, she suddenly realized, was ill at ease, perhaps even frightened.

Rolande did not take his eyes off of Anne, either, but he said in a gentle, kindly voice, "Good morning Carrie. Who is our guest?"

"This is Anne Thomson," Carrie said. "She wrote the book that the Director mentioned, The Fighting Dead."

He came around the bench and equipment and offered his hand to the young woman. "How do you do? People just call me Rolande."

"It's a pleasure to meet you sir," Anne said. Her voice was chastened, and Carrie knew that her guest clearly was suddenly nervous. But Rolande smiled and offered her a lab stool. "Come and sit down, young lady. We are sorry that we could not find a copy of your book. We are in tremendous need of your expertise."

"I'll help you if I can," she told him. Her voice became more steady. She sat on the stool and looked at him expectantly, waiting for whatever he asked. Then she cast her eyes on Carrie. And Carrie suddenly comprehended how the environment had changed for Anne.

Yes, Carrie thought, this was further evidence of Anne's repression of a traumatic event. There was a part of her that was exactly as old as she had been on the day of the accident. And this child was suddenly very evident as Anne sat on a stool between Carrie herself and Rolande. The introduction of the tall and silver haired Rolande had transformed both of them into parental figures. Both of them older than Anne, both in charge in this place, both requiring her to answer their questions. At the signal of a male and female couple in authority, that repressed part of Anne had instantly taken over. Carrie suddenly wished that she had expressed greater warmth towards the girl. For this was a very different Anne from the mysterious, reserved master in the storage garage.

She realized with a start that if Anne had regressed eight years, then--emotionally at least---she was the same age as that. The eight years difference had vanished. The thought almost staggered her, but she didn't know why. Twelve years ago she had made her own horrible decision. And eight years ago Anne had lost her family and stayed at the age of 12. But the two events were not related. And Anne was not that. The baby would have been 12 this past October, but Anne being 12 was only an accident, a tragedy, in fact.

Rolande was oblivious of this transformation in Anne or the sudden pensiveness in his colleague. "I'm familiar with the idea of reckoning one's self to be dead in order to fight without fear," he told Anne. "Is that what you wrote about?"

She nodded. "I won the World Games medal when I was 18, so people wanted to know how I trained. So I wrote the book. But it became a sort of fad in martial arts circles in the US. People got the idea that they could repeat it to themselves over and over again that they were dead and then do anything they willed to do. Especially breaking concrete. Because that was one of the things I demonstrated." She shook her head. "They didn't realize that I had spent every waking moment training in the things I was explaining. Being dead means being dead all the time. They thought they could have normal lives and use my concepts as a sort of adjunct. But it doesn't work that way." She shook her head. "Death is the most total thing there is."

"And your theory is that being dead removes fear?" he asked.

"Yes."

He nodded. "Fear automatically tenses retraction muscles. Remove fear, and you free up propelling muscles to work without any opposition."

"Yes, exactly. It will also increase accuracy and remove a lot of the stress from training. A person can actually train longer and more effectively."

He suddenly unbuttoned his jacket and pulled it off. "Well! Would you like to put your theories to the test?"

Anne's face remained quiet, though another expression flickered across the brown eyes---perhaps uncertainty. "Do you want me to fight you?" she asked. Her voice was calm. But the eyes again flickered with uncertainty.

"Just a trial run. No more than light contact." His attitude was breezy. He loosened his tie and slipped it off. "I wouldn't hurt anybody."

"Yes, I will fight," she said. She stood up from the stool but did not remove the jacket.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Carrie said. "What if something breaks here in the lab?" But she had her eyes fixed on Anne. She stepped forward, but Rolande shot her a glance of annoyance. "We've got plenty of room right here." His expression told her that he knew what he was doing. Or he thought he did.

There was a small cleared area in front of the double doors, though it was not as roomy as a boxing ring. Carrie unwillingly backed up to the worktable. Rolande circled partway around Anne, but Anne remained standing, head down, as though listening. The scientist came in as though to attack and then darted back out, but she did not move at all, knowing full well it was a feint.

He came in again, and Carrie thought that the girl was simply not going to resist him, but---incredibly---as his long arm shot straight into her midsection, Anne simply folded around it, almost collapsing on top of it, snaking around Rolande's body. Her knee rammed him in the midsection, a solid thump, but even Carrie could see that it could have been much harder.

It startled Rolande, but as he skipped back to get out of the way, her hips turned, making her follow in the same direction, and her long leg shot up, tracing the route of his movement. His strong arms caught the kick to his chest, and with the same fluidity, Anne Thomson flipped sideways in the air, using her hips as the fulcrum, and rolled like a log. Her other leg neatly bumped off his chin, another controlled blow that startled him. He dropped the leg he had captured. She landed on her feet and turned to face him.

In the instant that they were separated from each other, Carrie saw Anne's face. There was no fear. In fact, the eyes were expressionless, the face perfectly still, the features neither hard nor soft. If anything, she still seemed to be listening. And yet Carrie suddenly knew that the young girl did not want to fight Rolande, not even in practice, not even to prove her theories. Anne didn't care who believed her theories.

She had retreated from all life to be alone for some reason, safe in a world of her training. She'd fought competitively because somebody, somewhere along the way, had told her to fight, and it had helped her repress her shock and grief. And she had written her book because somebody else had told her to write a book. And now, she had come with Carrie to this place because Carrie had asked her to come. And here was Rolande, making her prove herself. The scrape in her midsection twitched.

Rolande came in with more caution, and Carrie saw that he meant to capture his young opponent in some type of trapping strategy. Anne again waited for him, moved around him as he closed with her, and became his shadow. Her open hands tapped him a few times---jaw, side of head, never hurting him, but at last he had her. She came between his hands. His right hand seized her arm in the indentation of her bicep, and Carrie saw the flicker in her eyes as the arm instantly went numb. Anne stepped directly into the path of his other hand, which lightly tapped the side of her neck, stunning her.

The scrape exploded with a painless rush of heat all through her. "Stop it!" Carrie shouted. Before she knew it, she was between them. "Stop it!" And she caught Anne, who was dazed by the tap at the nerves on her neck. Eyes blazing, she turned to Rolande. "How dare you do this to a guest! Why don't you let her alone!" For a moment she was truly furious with him. "Leave her alone!" She pushed Anne back, away from him. For a moment, with that same twisting pain, she could see again the hunger that had flashed across Anne's eyes, the gentle surprise she had felt at the fragrance of the cinnamon rolls. She was nothing but a child, impoverished and starving. The scrape down in her own midsection twisted again.

"I'm all right," Anne said instantly. She rested her arms on Carrie's shoulders. "I'm all right, Carrie. He hasn't hurt me."

Indeed, Carrie was more shaken than her new protégé. She caught her breath and suddenly felt her eyes burn with tears. They horrified her. Carrie, in fact, was trembling. Anne's voice was suddenly kind. "You don't like fighting, Carrie?" she asked. "He wouldn't have hurt me."

Rolande, humiliated by Carrie's reaction and Anne's apparent understanding of it, was at a loss. At last he said, almost in a whisper, "I beg your pardon, Miss Thomson. I did not mean to upset you. Or my colleague."

"You won fair and square, Rolande," Anne said, stepping back from Carrie. The statement, Carrie knew, was not entirely true. Anne had pulled everything she had thrown to a mere tap. Perhaps if she had been hitting hard she still would not have defeated the former judo champion. But perhaps she would have.

"Let me bring you tea," he said. "Carrie, I apologize." He walked away, and Carrie brought herself under control. But part of her was deeply shaken.

"I'm sorry," Carrie whispered. But Anne touched her shoulder, quieting her.

Anne was not angry. But she now took control of the situation. She addressed Rolande as though he were in authority over Carrie. "You sent this woman after me to bring me here," she said calmly to Rolande. "Now tell me why. What do you want?"

Carrie wanted to protest this assessment, but the situation was bad enough. And she had no energy. She felt drained.

Rolande turned on the water at the sink. "We have reason to believe that a band of criminals may have taken your training method and applied it to their own uses. They have turned themselves into a band of killers, and their favored weapon is a sling that they can turn into a garrote or whip. They killed several people quite openly when they assaulted a bank. And they may be linked to a series of ritual killings. The police took one of them into custody."

Carrie added her voice: "We want to understand how law enforcement can defeat this mental conditioning that these men have used. And we must find out if their beliefs would give them motives to participate in any type of ritual killings. We have to know why they would kill people."

"Nothing I believe or teach advocates ritual killing," Anne said quickly. "It's not a religion. If you want to know what is driving these men, question the prisoner in custody."

"He's been released on bail," Rolande said.

She shook her head. "Then I don't see how I can help you. I told you, my book is out of print. And I don't associate with bands of people. Not any people. Killers or otherwise. The dead abide alone."

"You're not familiar with a sling type weapon?" he asked.

"No. It's nothing I've trained with. Nor have I ever taught it."

"But the mental conditioning," Carrie said. "Anne, it seems to me that if somebody injured you in a fight, you might be able to over ride the pain and keep fighting."

"Certainly." The eyes turned to her, now slightly impatient. "Overcoming pain is the art and way of death."

"So you might understand how these men have acquired these skills. Where they come from. Who taught them. Why they would participate in ritual killing. You might pick up indicators from them that other people would miss."

Anne hesitated. She looked at Carrie, and the large brown eyes were now serious and yet searching. Those eyes saw Carrie's own guilt and remorse. This was not the 12 year old girl. This was the martial arts master. At last Anne said, "As for their mental conditioning, I would have to talk to the one they had in custody to see how he has trained his mind. Then I could tell you more. Otherwise, there is nothing I could say, and your time is being wasted."

"Perhaps we could take you with us to interview him," Rolande told her. He was still at the sink. "Maybe we could meet with him ourselves."

"I don't know that I stand to gain either skill or knowledge by helping you," Anne said. "These affairs are part of what the living do. And I do not participate in the affairs of the living." She was sticking to her training here, now fully a martial arts master, and the little girl was gone, suppressed.

"Now look here---" Rolande began, but Carrie spoke: “Let Anne do as she thinks best.” Her voice was brittle. She touched Anne's wrist, a mistake, for Carrie was still trembling.

"Shall I take you back? Is that what you want?" Carrie asked.

"Yes, thank you." Anne turned to Dr. Rolande. "Thank you for the fight, sir. Goodbye."

Rolande was embarrassed at having offended Carrie, but as she opened the lab door to go, he shot her a look of confused impatience. She wouldn’t look at him. Then she followed Anne out.