“Welcome to reality, Katie,” Sam said. “It’s not fair. It doesn’t make sense in truth in any manner that mere mortal minds can grasp. Only most people manage to delude themselves otherwise. They’d go crazy otherwise. Most people stay on a beaten path their parents laid out for them. Usually nothing bad happens to them. If it does, it’s inexplicable bad luck. They’re happy believing simple incomplete fairly tales about how the world really works.”
“Gee, Sam, you know how to cheer a girl up,” Katie replied with exasperation. Exasperation tinged with some amusement. That was good. Progress of a sort. “Cynical much?” she finished.
“It’s a big world out there. There’s a lot happening,” Sam said. He wasn’t giving in on this. It was unfortunate, but Katie needed to finish growing up and fast. “Too much for any one person to keep track of, let alone fully understand. So everybody prioritizes. And we miss some things and oversimplify others. It’s unavoidable, but not anything worth dwelling on. It’s just a fact like gravity.”
“Gravity’s a lot simpler,” Katie observed.
“You think so?” Sam asked. “To a poor Earth boy, gravity out here seems pretty complicated. Most Earth people never have to figure the difference between mass and weight. Gravity on a planet always has the same force and comes from the same direction. It isn’t always changing on you. It’s not different from your head to your feet and doesn’t make your head spin.”
“So it’s great to be a dirt hugging Earth boy, I guess,” Katie replied.
“You think so?” Sam asked. “When was the last time you had to worry about a weather forecast?”
“Ah, never?” Katie answered. “Your point?”
“Your friend Calvin in all probability will never need to worry about the weather because he’s going to stay on Ceres and ships working out of her,” Sam said. “You Katie on the other hand want to go to the Space Force Academy, which for reasons has part of its campus down on Earth’s surface. You will gain an intense familiarity with all sorts of weather. Cold weather, dry weather, rainy weather, heavy winds but a lack of breezes when you could use one. You’ll doubtless discover a new interest in weather forecasts. That’s my prediction.”
Katie grinned at Sam. “You think I’m going to make it,” she said.
“I’d give you odds despite your own flaws and the Commander’s issues too,” Sam replied.
Katie nodded at that, then frowned. “About Calvin,” she said, “his family’s offering me a room to stay in. He messaged me. He says it’d be a lot safer there than in the student dorms. What do you think?”
“I think he’s right,” Sam said. “Not just him but his whole family. He didn’t make that offer without their full support. I also think you’re right to be wary of owing him for their help.”
“Is that why I don’t feel that good about the idea?” Katie asked.
“I think so,” Sam said. “Some people are lacking in the basic hard wiring to understand other people or read their emotions. I don’t think you’re one of those people. You only need some practice using what you have. So you can sense if you take this favor, which is a good idea, you’ll owe the Cromwells though I’m sure they’ll never be so crass as to say so. Reciprocity. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. People assume it without thinking about it explicitly. But boy, they’ll get upset if you take and never give back.”
“Wow,” Katie said. “That clarifies it beautifully and still doesn’t leave me any closer to a decision.”
“Some choices are plain hard,” Sam said. “Worse case you get no good ones and have chose between the bad ones and the horrible ones.”
Katie smiled shaking her head. “You really are the cheerful one. It’s helping.”
“Facing up to things. Having a sense of humor about it. It can do that,” Sam replied.
“So I haven’t heard from the Commander yet,” Katie said. “I expect I will sometime today. If I don’t, I’ll call him first thing tomorrow. I don’t figure he’ll refuse to endorse me because he messed up his test and somebody else decided they needed to kill me. He knows that’d be too unfair. Don’t think he’s going to be too happy either. Figure he’ll have something else for me. Any thoughts?”
“We both know you’ll take anything he gives you as a challenge and barge ahead full steam,” Sam said. “Might be the best thing, but this is getting serious.”
“It was always serious to me,” Katie interjected in a flat tone.
“There are degrees,” Sam replied evenly. “Wreck the rest of my life is a touch different from having no more life. Also this is bigger than just you. Katie, you can be a bit much at times but not to the degree that anybody would actually try to kill you over it. I’m sure Chief Dingle has already asked you but you have to figure out why. Something you’ve seen or been close to that’s that important.”
Katie shook her head. “I don’t know what it could be,” she said. “Lost sleep thinking about it. I have no idea.”
“Maybe someone just wanted you off the processing line,” Sam said. “We can hope, but I wouldn’t bet on it. If you don’t take the Cromwell’s offer you have to find some other way of protecting yourself from future attacks. Any deal you strike with Commander Tretyak has to take that into account. You hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” Katie replied.
“Good. That enough?”
“Yep, guess I’ve got an appointment to make,” Katie said standing to leave.
“Stay safe,” Sam said by way of good bye.
“I will.”
Sam smiled.
8: Katie's New Mission
Katie had to admit the Commander wasn't wasting any time. The Commander must be giving Katie priority over everything else on his plate.
She'd called him as soon as she'd finished talking to Sam. The Commander had answered immediately and in person. Almost like he'd been waiting for her to call. He'd scheduled a face-to-face meeting for only an hour later.
Katie hadn't taken that long to clean up, dress presentably, and make her way to the Admin ring. Katie no longer felt comfortable in the student dorm ring that'd been her home away from home whenever she'd been on Ceres before.
Katie had welcomed the fact it was full of transients who didn't pay much attention to each other before. She liked to be left alone to do as she pleased. Only now it felt like nobody was looking out for her either.
And so she'd reached the Admin ring some tens of minutes early and was killing time in a small parklet not too far from the Commander's office. She was sitting on a square set of faux stone benches that surrounded a small tree with white papery bark. One of only five trees to be found on Ceres. Katie imagined that if she got to the Academy, she'd be seeing a lot more trees. Experiencing a lot more weather too, if what Sam said was true. She imagined it was.
Katie had decided she needed to go to the Academy as a kind of intellectual necessity as required by her plans for her life. She was starting to get emotionally excited about it.
Something moved under a nearby bush. A bush carefully situated in its own planter with the earth around it covered up with an air and moisture permeable fabric. The denizens of a space habitat weren't the sort of people to be comfortable with open containers of dirt.
Planets were apparently full of open expanses of uncovered dirt. With luck, she'd be getting to see some of that.
In the meantime, the parklet which was a static tableau of carefully groomed plant life was showing signs of unexpected movement. Katie peered at the bush, trying to see what it was.
A pair of small green eyes appeared. The eyes had vertical slits for pupils. They were situated in a small furry face with whiskers. Small, sharp tipped ears protruded from a little head. It was a cat. A black kitten.
Katie had seen plenty of pictures of cats, kittens in particular, the network was full of them. They did seem cute. People back on Earth loved to keep them as pets.
Katie had never seen a live cat before.
The creature
in question was growing bolder. Its head was now full visible and a tiny furry four legged body was following behind.
Looked like the reports that kittens were much more prone to curiosity than prudence were true. It was insufferably cute. So alive and full of active, fascinated intelligence. The pictures hadn't done kittens justice. Katie felt privileged to be the current object of that curiosity.
Katie held out a hand and made tsking noises.
The kitten perked up and scooted over, jumping into Katie's lap. She managed to suppress a startled jump.
The little thing sat there, warm and furry, looking up at Katie expectantly.
Katie had read cats liked to be scratched behind the ears. Carefully, she tried it.
That worked, the kitten purred. Katie had heard of purring. Even listened to audio recordings of it. She'd never experienced the feeling of something sitting in her lap purring. It was nice.
"Oh, you found Blackie," a young girl's voice exclaimed. Katie looked up to see a young girl. Impossibly dolled up in a frilly dress. Spacers generally didn't find dresses were practical wear. The young girl also had the stout build of the Earth born.
Most likely the child belonged to a couple doing a temporary two-year tour of service with one of the many Earth agencies with outposts on Ceres.
"More like he found me," Katie said. "He's very cute."
"He's the bestest," the girl agreed. "But he's bad too. He wasn't supposed to get out. We're not supposed to leave home, but I peeked outside and he ran out through my legs." The girl paused for breath after this speech.
Kate gathered Blackie carefully in her hands. He gave a little meow of protest. She handed him to the little girl. "Here you'd better get him home before anyone notices."
"Yes, ma'am," the little girl said taking the kitten and walking off with determined steps muttering placating endearments to it. The little girl had got maybe three meters before turning and yelling back. "I'm Lily. Come visit anytime." With that, she rushed off.
Katie watched with bemusement before remembering she had somewhere to be herself.
* * *
Katie saw that the Commander had the tea service out again. He glanced up and waved her over to it.
"Sorry, I have to finish up here," he said. "I didn't think it'd take so long. There are always more fiddly details to look up and sort out in Space Force paperwork than you expect. Something I imagine you'll find out yourself."
Katie fought to keep from expressing her glee. The Commander was assuming she'd become a member of the Space Force. Was he about to tell her he was giving her the endorsement she'd jumped through so many hoops for?
It was all she wanted. His endorsement and an end to her accumulating reputation as a spoiled, oddball trouble magnet. Katie wanted to move onto becoming a good regular dependable Space Force officer. First stop on that journey being a solid non-problematic, but promising officer candidate.
She sat down and tried to appear composed. Katie refrained from helping herself to some tea. She was patient as the Commander hurried determinedly through some set of screens, his head swinging back and forth looking at various documents and his hands occasionally pecking out or rattling out some entry.
Finally, the Commander sighed and stabbed a key on his keyboard with a determined, gleeful flourish. "Yes, done," he exclaimed.
Making his way over to the little tea table, he shook his head ruefully. "You'll find most of your fights in the Space Force are with red tape," he said as he sat down.
Instead of getting right to it, he insisted on serving both of them tea.
"When settling important matters it's essential to have a calm untroubled mind," he claimed.
Katie fighting impatience knew this was going to be an up hill battle for her. Oh well, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This was a more positive and pleasant version of the Commander, but a rather disconcerting one too.
"So," the Commander said, "I don't think it's an overstatement to say your latest trial didn't work out as planned."
Katie readied herself to reply. It was hardly her fault.
The Commander stopped her with a flat raised palm. "I know it wasn't your fault," he said. "In fact, I messed up badly. Something I assure you Chief Dingle explained to me at length." He smiled at her. Ingratiatingly. Very disconcerting. "Between you, me, and that bulkhead, at heated length," he said.
"Yes, sir," Katie said. She had no idea how to reply to that. Katie wanted her endorsement and to be gone.
"That said, the way it turned out was a deeply concerning surprise," he said. "Again, in no way your fault. I can see that now. You've been pinned with a reputation as smart and nosy. You don't have to do anything at all for people to react to that."
"I'm starting to figure that out myself, sir," Katie agreed. "I'm beginning to realize that being smart is great, but experience is valuable too. I think I have to work on letting one inform the other."
The Commander smiled. His eyes crinkled up at the corners. Looked genuine to Katie. "That's great. Great, you're learning humility too," he said. "It's unfair to a degree that you have to be figuring all this out as young as you are. If you were a couple of years older, it'd all be much easier. The downside of your excelling academically, I'm afraid."
"Yes, sir," Katie said. She paused. "It's going to be hard throttling back over doing it on the things I'm good at. It's fun being good at things. Didn't realize it made me so annoying and obnoxious. I didn't realize it was unbalancing me either. I can see I'm going to have to work on that."
The Commander nodded. Katie's analysis pleased him. "Well, I think, going by the reports I got back from your supervisors, that you're not doing too badly at that. They were all quite glowing."
"They were?"
"Indeed," the Commander replied. "I dare say you weren't overwhelmed by a feeling of warm acceptance down there. Most of the workers on the line would rather be somewhere else. They tend to dour, grumpy, and skeptical of outsiders."
"They did seem that way, sir," Katie admitted. "But if you did your job like you were told and didn't make a fuss, they were good with that. Not happy or content really, but grudgingly accepting."
"Reminds me of some senior NCOs I've encountered," the Commander said. "They've spent their careers cleaning up after junior officers. They're never over enthusiastic about some new baby officer that's wet behind the ears. If you can somehow manage not to make messes for them to clean up they're quite pleased. Grudging acceptance is the height of their praise."
"Sir," Katie said. "Hope it's not out of place to say it, but that's kind of sad."
This time the Commander's smile seemed sad, wistful really. "I've no wish to crush youthful enthusiasm," he said, "but a life of plugging away to keep things running and not getting much recognition for it isn't uncommon. There are worse fates. It's not nice to say so, but there are plenty of people who don't make any clear net contribution to society at all. World's sufficiently complicated that it's not always easy to tell who's who. That's without getting to the people who are looters and destroyers of what others work hard to build."
"That's kind of depressing, sir," Katie said. "I'd like to think that everybody can make a contribution in their own way if given a chance."
The Commander nodded and took a sip of tea before answering. Composing his thoughts, Katie imagined. "A positive attitude," he finally decided. "That's good thing it gets things done. Not necessarily realistic, but it gets things done. People like to live up to expectations if they can. Most people anyhow, brings us around to the fact that there are bad people."
"Sir?"
"Murder is widely considered a bad thing, Miss Kincaid," the Commander said, smiling thinly. "Your being on the line flushed out the fact that there's bad people down there doing something they don't want the rest of us to know about."
"That's not a bad thing, is it sir?" Katie asked. "Not fair to shoot the messenger, is it? Not even practical long term if what I've read about his
tory is true."
Another genuine smile. "Not many young people read much history these days," the Commander said. "Miss Ping wasn't a once off for you?"
"No sir, my parents bought me a whole pile of out of copyright old histories to read as recreation. I love them. I'm afraid maybe I've got too much of my idea about what other people are like from them. World has changed, I guess."
The Commander paused to sip yet more tea before replying. Katie followed suit. Seem awkward otherwise.
"Space travel, industrialization, modern communications, and a scientific understanding of how the world works have meant a lot of changes," he said. He spoke in a manner that made it clear he was choosing his words carefully. "Changes to the options people have and the sort of interconnections they can make. Not changes to what people are like themselves. People are still people. So I think allowing for the changes the old histories still have a lot to tell us. I regret more people don't see that."
"Yes, sir," Katie said. "Do they teach a lot of history at the Academy?" she asked, hoping to turn to the topic of his endorsing her application to the place.
Another smile. It truly was throwing her off her stride. Had she been that transparent?
"Not as much as you'd expect," he replied. "Junior officers are apprentice cogs in the bureaucratic machine that the Space Force happens to be. Encouraging them to worry about things above their pay grade is not on the agenda. They're expected to have received a decent historical education in secondary school, which is why I had you take Miss Ping's course. Later on if they appear suitable to higher command, they take in depth specialized courses with a high historical component."
"But not as cadets or junior officers?" Katie asked.
"No, regrettably not," the Commander answered. "I'm enjoying this conversion, but I do have duties, and I can see you're growing impatient." He smiled his disturbing smile again, looking at her with a twinkle in his eye.
Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Page 11
