Katie had made herself go to lunch. That’d been a mistake. Most of the people there just looked right through her. She wished Billy Boucher and his hangers on had done that.
“You’ll be lucky if anyone lets you clean their toilets after that stunt,” he'd said among other things. It'd had the extra sting of hard to swallow truth. The world was surely going to hell in a hand basket if Billy was making sense.
Katie had shoveled her food into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed despite having no appetite, and ignored him. It hadn't seemed to discourage him. He knew he’d made his point. Having done so, he’d rubbed salt into her wounds by talking about their new jobs with his followers. Seemed his Dad had hired Billy and his whole crew to work in his warehouses. How nice for Billy.
Billy was a success and Katie was disgraced. Sure didn’t seem fair to Katie. Wasn’t much she could do about it. Mechanically, she returned her dirty dishes to the scullery and went on her way. Back to her empty little room where she could mope in undisturbed peace.
And here she was, sitting on her bed, not lying in it, and that was progress. Hey, progress!
She had to get the brain cells moving. Assess, plan, and act. Do something.
There’d been messages waiting for when she’d returned. Most were the ugly things she could have expected. Some simply told her in dignified language people like her weren’t needed and weren’t wanted on Ceres or in the Belt generally. Some expressed the same sentiment in much more obscene and insulting language.
The worst one was from Miss Ping. It hadn’t been insulting. It hadn’t suggested she slink off. No, it’d been dryly reasonable. Miss Ping had said she hoped what she’d heard wasn’t true.
Katie believed Miss Ping tried hard to be fair, however harsh she was, if Miss Ping doubted her she didn’t have much chance with more emotional, less fair people.
It really didn’t look good.
Katie was tempted to open a link to her parents. Only she knew they were stretched thin doing one in two watches. They didn’t need the extra burden. Also, they’d be less than useful anyways. Katie’s parents had never worried about their reputations and wouldn’t understand the problem. They’d believe Katie’s side of the story, but would have no useful advice. Her parents would say just ignore it, we know the truth. They’d not understand that wasn’t enough.
So she guessed that left Sam and Calvin.
Katie had no idea what to make of it or what to do.
Maybe they would.
Couldn’t hurt.
Get her out of her room, too.
Wasn’t like there was anything more the Commander could do to her.
* * *
Calvin was buying Katie a burger again.
Fries too, and he’d gone so far as to splurge on a chocolate milk shake from real re-constituted milk. The expenditure was not getting great returns. Neither of them were happy. It was fascinating in a macabre way.
Calvin had never seen Katie either discouraged or listless before. He was seeing both now. All things Katie interested Calvin. Calvin never tired of Katie or trying to figure out what made Katie tick. Seeing her so down in the dumps held a certain interest. The sort of interest a vivisection or one of those train wrecks in old videos held. It was like opening the cold storage and finding a new colorful sort of mold had developed on what you’d been planning to eat for dinner.
As novel as Katie’s actual mood was what was causing it wasn’t.
Part of it was she was realizing how much having a bad reputation hurt. She’d never worried about that before.
Calvin had no doubt she’d noticed everyone else in the dinner looking right through her. That they spoke to her only when necessary and with short clipped words when they had to. That they looked at Calvin with pity.
Katie could be pretty oblivious to the people around her and their moods, but she wasn’t that oblivious. She had to be feeling it, even though Calvin was sure she’d deny it if asked. Not that she was dishonest, only that she had a strong tendency to believe what she wanted to. What she wanted to believe tended to be what she thought would get the job done. Whatever the current job at hand might be.
His girl had her flaws.
Besides that of not really being his girl.
Katie finished her methodical chewing of the latest bite she’d taken of her burgers. She swallowed. She gave Calvin a rictus of a smile. It was hideous. Calvin decided to bite the bullet.
“Katie,” he said, “I know you’re not used to being depressed. I know you’re unhappy and you’re not used to that either. I’m sorry, but most of the rest of us get used to not winning all the time. It happens. You pick up the pieces and figure out how to go on.”
“Commander Tretyak isn’t going to give me his endorsement,” Katie answered. She spoke in a flat tone and spaced out her words as if she thought Calvin wasn’t understanding. As if he was stupid or hard of hearing. “Without it, particularly after what happened with the Sand Piper there’s no way I’m getting into the Academy. Isn’t that clear?”
Calvin crushed a flash of annoyance. She was under a lot of strain. “It is,” he said, “also he doesn’t want to see you again, let alone given you more chances to change his mind. Rumor is he told you he would have had confined you to your room if he had the power. Suggested you stay there anyways.”
“I don’t know how rumor figures these things out, we were the only ones in the room,” Katie said. “He must have blabbed to someone. That’s right, though. Not just ‘no’ but ‘no’ with ice cream and a cherry on top like Sam would say.”
“I think that refers to ice cream sundaes, which are supposed to be really special. They have them here if you’d like me to buy you one. It’d be bound to make you feel better.”
Katie gave a very slight, but real smile. She shook her head. “Thanks, Calvin, for putting up with me. You’re a real friend. You’re already doing too much. I’d feel bad taking advantage of you even more. Still, you have to admit it’s bad.”
Calvin nodded. “It is,” he said, “and I’m not sure you’re adequately taking the damage to your reputation into account either. It’s not just accusing the Sand Piper crew of smuggling either. Somebody has been working hard to blacken your reputation since at least that fight with Billy. It’s working too. You’re going to have to start to fight it, but, yeah, it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to take time. If you don’t, you’re going to find out you can’t do business here and you’ll have to leave Ceres and the Belt, eventually.”
Katie grimaced. “Guess I should think about that,” she said. “Seems far in the future and I’ve got enough disasters for one day already. I feel tired and unfocused when I try to tackle the problem. It’s like a hard surface my mind skitters off of. Like I can’t get any purchase on it. It’s not like any other problem I’ve ever had.”
Calvin reached across the table and laid a hand on one of Katie’s. Looked at her directly. “It’s going to be hard. I won’t tell you different,” he said, “but you’re only fifteen. You’ve got time. Lot’s of it. As well as a ton of talent and plenty of brains. You’ve hit a single dead end. What you’ve got to do is stop pounding your head against the wall at the end of it. Even your head isn’t harder than the proverbial brick wall.” He grinned at her. He willed her to lighten up and see a little humor in the situation. Humor was a great curative his Dad had always said. His parents had always preferred gentle teasing and mild sarcasm to direct harsh reprimands.
Katie did indeed produce a smile, but it was a thin one, and her eyes were dead and implacable. “You want me to give up.”
“No,” Calvin said, he was afraid not in entire truth. “I want you to give yourself a rest. I want you to take a step back and reassess your goals both immediate and longer term. You might need to choose a new direction, but that doesn’t mean your life is over. It’s bad, but you can fix it given time if you’re willing to try.”
“Yeah, so you think going to the Academy is a lost cause,” she s
aid. “You figure everyone thinks I’m a demented loose cannon of con-artist now too. I really don’t have a lot to lose right now, do I?”
Calvin didn’t know what to say. Nothing he said was helping. “You have your whole life in front of you,” he finally ventured.
Katie smiled wider and thinner and nodded. Who knew a nod could be so grim, or so determined. What was she thinking?
“What?” he asked.
“Only got a couple of months at most before it’s Fall back in Earth’s northern hemisphere,” she said.
Calvin interrupted. “Again. I’m sorry, but someone has to say it. You have to be reasonable. There’s no reasonable way you can straighten things out in time to get into the Academy this year. You have to pick some more reasonable goal, at least for the short term. There’ll be other years.”
“Not likely I’ll get another invitation in those other years,” she said. “Not after this mess.”
“Don’t do anything desperate that you’ll regret,” he said.
“You say you think this gets back to Billy,” she asked.
“It could be just coincidence,” Calvin said, “but it was about then it started to seem like someone was grinding an ax, not just passing juicy gossip along.”
“Not like Billy to be clever or patient for that matter,” Katie mused.
“Mr. Boucher dotes on Billy,” Calvin said. “Guess that’s why Billy’s such a spoiled jerk. I’ve heard rumors Mr. Boucher can be a little dirty if he doesn’t get his way. Sneaky, but things tend to go wrong for you if you cross him. Nothing anyone can prove. Hard to believe, but I guess he could be behind it. Not that it matters. We can’t prove it and our word against his means we lose.”
“Yeah, but it makes sense,” Katie said. “That’s been the worst thing for me about all this. I can deal with things that make sense, but none of this does. Not to me.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me either,” Calvin replied. “I mean, think about what happened on the line. Why would any one try to kill you for getting in a fight with their kid? I mean, he could have simply reported you to the police. You did give Billy a good thumping and even if they stuck to the truth, Billy and his buddies, and some expensive lawyer hired by his Dad, could have made you look real bad. Me too. Still owe you for not letting them beat the crap out of me. Always will.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Katie said, as if that explained it all. “Even if you hadn’t been a good friend.”
Calvin wasn’t sure whether to be happy Katie still saw things in such black and white terms or not. “Thanks anyways,” he said.
Katie stared through the diner and people around them. What she saw in the distance Calvin didn’t know. “And you know I don’t know how smuggling by the Sand Piper could be connected to Billy and Guy Boucher?”
“I’d guess they’re not,” Calvin suggested.
“See, Calvin, I don’t think I’m that big of a trouble magnet,” Katie said. “I think it’s an unlikely coincidence that I should land in two such big pieces of trouble in such a short period of time. I believe it makes sense to assume that the simplest explanation is that they’re parts of the same mess. Only we haven’t figured out the connection yet.”
“Katie, I’m not sure how you could do it, but please don’t do something desperate that’s going to land you in any worse trouble.”
Katie patted his hand. Gobbling the last remnants of her meal she jumped up.
“Thanks, Calvin,” she said. “I mean, turns out I’m even deeper shit than I thought, but I think I’m starting to figure it out. Gotta go.”
Katie all but ran out of the diner.
Calvin was left with the bill and a nasty feeling.
* * *
Sam was chipping coral off of a water valve when Katie arrived in his shop shortly after lunch.
It was an interesting job. You don’t encounter much in the way of sea life in space normally. Or seafood, which was one reason the Braga’s high end seafood restaurant, “The Port”, had such cachet.
Only Mary Braga, the woman who’d spend her life raising large white fleshed ground fish on an asteroid, had been getting old for some time. She’d been forgetting things for most of that time. Finally, the younger Bragas had noticed. Rather too late in Sam’s mind. She’d been forgetting regular maintenance for some time from what he could see, she’d also forgotten to pass on her vital knowledge, acquired by years of patient hands on trial and error, of how to grow cod and other prized fish in smallish tanks in space. Right now the Bragas were panicking with the realization that the secret sauce of their successful business might have slipped through their fingers.
Sometimes you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone.
Sort of like the invincible self confidence and can-do attitude Katie had always displayed before.
The girl entering his machine shop right now was not the old Katie. This new and not improved Katie was slightly hunched over, not at all bouncy, and had a generally defensive and grimly unhappy air about her. Some of the old determination remained, but Sam worried about what it’d end up being directed at. Or who.
At least she wasn’t huddled in her room feeling sorry for herself. Sam wouldn’t have blamed her one bit. She was, after all, a young girl who’d been left to deal with crushing developments all on her own. Well, with limited help from himself and the Cromwell boy, but there was only so much they could properly do.
Sam could give advice. If she was here, it was for advice and she’d at least listen to it.
“What’s that?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen encrustation like that.”
“Hello to you too, Katie,” he answered. “I’m doing fine, thank you. How are you?”
Katie fought it, but she smiled. “I’ve been better, but I’m coping,” she said. “So are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”
Sam lifted the valve and displayed it, and the stony life coating it to her. “This is coral. Probably the only coral any closer than Earth herself. Came from one of Mary Braga’s fish tanks.”
“Wow, she sort of let it go, didn’t she?”
“She’s old,” Sam answered. “Your energy seeps away. Then your memory starts to go. You get creaky. Sometimes you can stop caring. Your future is all behind you and there’s not much to look forward to.”
“I was already depressed.”
“You’re still young,” Sam said. “You have no idea what a blessing that is. Some people will say that youth is wasted on the young. That’s going too far, but it’s true youngsters like yourself don’t appreciate what you’ve got.”
“Gee, I feel so lucky.”
“You should,” Sam said. “You have good health and abundant energy. You have years of it in front of you. Almost infinite possibilities are open to you. You haven’t made most of your choices or most of your mistakes yet.”
“Somehow I feel like I’ve made a good start on the mistakes front,” Katie said. “I’m not so sure about all those possibilities either.”
“Look, you aren’t perfect,” Sam said. “You’ve had some setbacks. Right now your reputation is in the gutter because people think you falsely accused innocent people of a serious crime.”
“I didn’t do that,” Katie said. “I don’t blame people for being mad at me for what they think I did, but, Sam, you have to believe me, I know the Sand Piper was smuggling. I don’t know how they hid the evidence. I don’t even know how they knew they had to. But they did. And they were smuggling. It’s the simple truth.”
“I believe you,” Sam said, “but I know you better than anyone else I suspect. I suspect even your parents look at you and just see their little girl and not the very upright young woman you are. Given what they know, you can’t blame people for thinking what they do.”
“I don’t really,” Katie said, “but you know that doesn’t help. It only makes me feel worse.”
“Do you really believe in your own mind that you did anything wrong or even made any s
erious mistakes,” Sam asked.
Katie hesitated like she didn’t want to say what she was about to. “No,” she said, “no, I don’t. Only the way it’s worked out and from what everyone else thinks I must have, mustn’t I have? Only, I don’t see it. Which really doesn’t help. How can you fix a problem you don’t see?”
“And you’re not used to self doubt,” Sam observed.
Katie blushed. Would miracles never cease? “I guess it’s something new for me,” she said.
Sam grinned. “Take my word for it. It is,” he said.
“I’m here for advice and any information you might have,” she replied with an attempt at being serious, “but I was also hoping you’d try and cheer me up a little.”
“Oh, you can’t handle the information that you’re less than perfect?” Sam answered. “Oh, poor Katie!”
Katie tried to look angry, but it was clear she enjoyed the teasing. “Do you have any useful observations?” she asked.
“It’s going to take time, lots of time, and hard work to get your reputation back here on Ceres,” Sam said. “On the other hand, you know in your heart of hearts you’re not actually guilty. Bad luck happens. It’s not so much you made some serious mistakes. That can happen too, but not in this case, I think. No, you somehow managed to stumble on to something that’s landed you in the sights of someone nasty and powerful. You’ve gone stepped on someone’s toes. Now they have it out for you.”
Katie frowned. “Emotionally,” she said, stretching out the words, thinking in the pauses between syllables, “that’s reassuring. Only practically if I’d made mistakes than I could have fixed those mistakes. Bruised ego, but solved problem. If I’ve offended someone. Someone, but I don’t know who or why. Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, first you have to accept the enemy has a vote, and be realistic,” Sam said. “The ball’s not in your court. You have to be careful and patient. Means you’re not going to the Academy this year. There’s not enough time to turn things around and make it to Earth for the northern hemisphere Fall. Accept that and move on. Behave like a responsible, honest person and people will see that and adjust their view of you over time. You’re going to be a minor for another two years. Nobody is going to hold you fully responsible until you hit your majority. With luck, whoever attacked you has what they wanted and will leave you alone from now on. Don’t assume that, be careful and alert. If they attack again, that’ll tell you something you can use to fight back.”
Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Page 16
