Katie Kincaid Candidate: Katie Kincaid One Page 7

  The Commander didn't have the heart to tell Guy Billy was managing to do that on his own. A single father with one son couldn't be expected to be completely objective. "I do have some doubt about her ability to work with others," he admitted.

  "Bet she wouldn't last a day down on the processing line," Guy said.

  "Maybe not," the Commander said, "but let's talk about more pleasant things."

  As it turned out Guy had some interesting, if unlikely, theories about what the Star Rats were up to in the system.

  Commander Tretyak managed to mostly forget about the Kincaid girl until he was back in his office looking at her file once again.

  After what Guy had said, he couldn't bring himself to endorse her application. On the other hand he owed her a fair chance. Maybe Guy had supplied the answer to the problem he'd created. It was a good question; could Kincaid last a day or a couple of weeks on the processing line? Being good with academics wouldn't help her there. If she couldn't could she actually be expected to succeed at the Academy? It'd show a lack of commitment or inability to get along with others.

  Kincaid's original task should have lasted six weeks. Arguably, she still owed him five weeks.

  He was going to have to have another talk with her.

  One way or the other, he was going to find out what she was made of.

  5: Kate Goes to Work

  Calvin had gotten to the fast-food outlet early. Bob's Burgers wasn't one of the chains, but rather a generic rip-off. Katie had called him this morning and offered to buy him lunch. Said it wasn't much, but she owed him still for all his help preparing for Miss Ping's Modern History course.

  Katie had said she'd been allowed to test out of the course entirely. Calvin was astonished by that. He'd known Katie was extraordinarily smart. Also that she had an almost superhuman memory. She'd once claimed it was a bunch of tricks anyone could learn. Calvin thought that was rather optimistic.

  Beyond simple astonishment, his feelings were very mixed.

  Anything that made Katie happy made him happy too. At least to some extent.

  Things that increased the chance she'd be going away in a couple of months, they didn't make him happy.

  Of course, Ping passing her ticked off both boxes. Hence the mixed feelings.

  "Hey gloomy, why the sad face?" the object of his confusion said while dropping into the seat opposite him. "Order yet?"

  "Your going away is starting to seem real," Calvin answered. Honesty is the best policy. "I'm going to miss you."

  Katie frowned slightly. "I'll miss you too," she said. "Not that I'm sure it's going to happen yet. I was hoping to hear from Commander Tretyak this morning. Miss Ping said she was sending over the file last night and it should have been on his desk this morning. If he was going to endorse me for certain I think I would have heard by now."

  Calvin tried not to grin in relief. He rubbed a hand over his face to hide any traitorous expression it might be showing. "That must be disappointing," he said. It couldn't hurt to be sympathetic.

  "It is," Katie said. "Doesn't change the fact you helped me a lot, and I wanted to say thanks. I was so buried in work I don't think I took the time to do that properly earlier. Also, I'm kind of baffled how it all went and I could use a sounding board. You're always willing to listen. I appreciate that."

  "Anytime," Calvin said, "though I'm not sure how much help I can be. Honestly, I'm not even sure going to the Academy is a good idea for you."

  "Well, the Commander has his doubts that's for sure," Katie said. "Miss Ping says she thinks I'm capable of handling it but she didn't seem to think it was the best thing I could do with my life either."

  It was a day full of surprises. Calvin had never expected to find himself grateful to Miss Ping. "Did you ever think the Commander and Miss Ping might be right?" he asked.

  "Well, Commander Tretyak seems to have gotten the idea somewhere I'm some sort of monstrous about to explode loose cannon," Katie said.

  "Both loose and about to explode?" Calvin asked, bemused. His emotional turmoil lost in amusement over this exaggerated concern.

  "Yeah, crazy, eh?" Katie said. "I think I'm bringing him around to a less paranoid point of view."

  "So what's the problem?"

  "Both Miss Ping and the Commander used this word 'fit' ," Katie said. "They seemed to think I wouldn't fit in with the people in the Space Force and the Academy. That even if I jumped through all the formal hurdles, I wouldn't be happy. Though what my happiness has to do with anything I don't know."

  "You don't think happiness is something important when planning your life?" Calvin asked. "I mean you don't want to be unhappy do you?"

  "I suppose it'd be nice," Katie replied. She seemed genuinely baffled by the discussion. "I mean if I was too unhappy and depressed I'd be less effective, wouldn't I?"

  "I think maybe if you're not happy you have to think you've made bad life choices," Calvin said. "And if you're to be happy, a familiar culture where you understand people and they understand you, and you have family and friends is important. I think Ping and the Commander have a point."

  "You do?"

  "Yeah, I mean the Space Force is a bunch of bureaucrats mostly from rich Earth families, right?" he said. "That's not you."

  "Maybe but I think it's obvious that being happy is not the point of life no matter what you or anybody else including the old American constitution says."

  "Wow, way to take on the world, Katie," Calvin said trying to diffuse her obvious annoyance.

  "If having a happy life was the only important thing, why not cut to the chase and just take an overdose of some happy juice," Katie said. "Game over, you're deliriously happy for the rest of your life. Makes no sense."

  "Okay what is the point of life? What do you want to do with your life?" he asked, fearing the answer.

  "I want to make a difference," Katie said. "Maybe getting filthy rich, or inventing something, or making a scientific breakthrough might do that, but they're not what I want to do. They're not what I think will be important. We're going to the stars sometime in our lifetimes, Calvin, and the Space Force is going to be in the forefront of that effort. What they do or don't do will seal the fate of our species. I want to be there."

  Calvin was sure Katie was sane. Her ideas he wasn't so sure of. Wouldn't help his case to say so.

  "Not sure I agree that makes sense," he said, "but not going to argue with it. Let's order."

  "Cheeseburgers and fries make everything better," Katie agreed.

  * * *

  Sam had already planned a couple of hours this afternoon in the military exercise facility before Katie had called him out of the blue. He hadn't seen anything of her for over a week. That was unusual, but he knew it was because of the history course Tretyak had her taking as some sort of trial.

  It exasperated Sam. He hadn't been patient as a young man, but thought he'd learned it in middle age. Maybe not so much. Sam understood the Commander's reservations about Katie. He also thought it was clear that whatever her flaws, she was a superior candidate and Tretyak ought to bite the bullet. He should stop delaying and simply endorse the girl's application.

  Sam had figured that after Katie had passed the course in a few weeks, the Commander would break down and do just that. Only somehow Katie had managed to break the system, and the Commander wasn't comfortable with that.

  He'd been looking forward to his time in the exercise facility. Sam followed a physically tough and challenging regime. Mentally, it was restful. The tasks might be hard, but they were mostly straightforward. What complications there were, were narrowly technical. Usually, it was emotionally and intellectually restful. A great way to work off stress, in fact. Usually.

  Only today he found himself counseling an uncharacteristically angst ridden young woman. Trying to tell her how to deal with an unreasonable and obstructive bureaucracy. He was being forced to give advice to someone without the experience to understand or accept it. Advice about how to deal r
ationally with a fundamentally irrational reality. Great. Sam wondered what sins he'd committed in an earlier life to deserve it.

  At least, he'd had no problems getting Katie to meet him in the gym. He'd sponsored her membership in the training facility years ago. He'd learned a long time ago that the way to keep young people with excess energy and drive out of trouble was to keep them busy with physically challenging tasks. Tasks that kept them too tired to go looking for it.

  "You're doing great, Katie," he yelled up at the young woman. Katie was tackling the gym's most difficult climbing wall. Its handholds were limited in number and not the easiest to use. The gravity was also somewhat greater than a standard Gee. This facility was designed to support a much larger military contingent than was currently stationed on Ceres. Sam and Katie had the place to themselves.

  "I wish it was as easy to figure out what the Commander wanted," she yelled back. Sam almost smiled. The girl was single minded. Hanging on for dear life and she still wasn't going to forget why she was here.

  "Remember three point hold," he yelled back. "Safety gear is good, but you still don't want to fall."

  "I'm not a beginner," she returned.

  "Maybe you're not focused either," Sam yelled back.

  Katie found and stretched for a new hand hold. Shifted her weight to it. "I'm not going to be distracted," she hollered down.

  "Different strokes for different people," he yelled back.

  "What's that mean?"

  "Something from an old sitcom," he yelled. "Means different things work for different people. With them, too. You're not taking this climbing wall like it was a zero Gee access on a ship or in microgravity outside the rings here on Ceres, are you?"

  "Of course not," she yelled, taking a breath. Even just resting on the climbing holds took constant physical exertion. "That'd be silly."

  "Well, so is always taking the same approach with different people," Sam answered.

  Katie didn't answer immediately. She moved several holds closer to the top of the wall. "That's clear, but people make no sense," she eventually yelled back down to him. "Moving under different accelerations has different rules, but they're fixed for each one. They make sense. There's no fixed rules for people."

  It was Sam's turn to take his time answering. Katie moved a couple more times and a little higher as well as a little sidewards. "People are too complicated for fixed rules," he yelled. "You've got to figure them out case by case."

  Katie finished her climb and repelled back down to the deck beside Sam. She took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of one hand. "How so?" she asked.

  "You've heard the joke about the physicist postulating a spherical cow in a frictionless vacuum?" Sam asked. "What do you think it means?"

  "That some people are lazy about getting all the facts and including them in their calculations?" Katie suggested.

  Sam gave her a hard look. They both knew she was being difficult. "You want advice?"

  "Okay," Katie conceded. "Means sometimes even in the hard sciences that including every factor into a calculation is too complicated. As a first cut, to save time, or because the full calculation is error prone or outright impossible to do with full accuracy, it's necessary to simplify."

  "See, that wasn't that hard was it?"

  Katie grimaced. "I'm not sure how useful the observation is. People are always telling me I'm over simplifying."

  "Sometimes people don't want to admit what's obviously true," Sam said. "They often have reasons."

  "Ones that make sense?"

  "Sometimes," Sam said. "You're used to dealing with your parents and technical problems, mostly. Other people mostly deal with other people."

  "It's like you were telling me about poker versus chess," Katie said. "They're not going to put all their cards on the table."

  "Exactly," Sam said. Katie was a hard sell, but it wasn't impossible to get through to her. "You know how it is with the pop up target range here?"

  "Never can be quite sure what it's going to do," Katie said. "Sometimes it falls into a pattern, but never for long."

  "Because it's trying to fool you," Sam said. "It doesn't want to be predictable. Real world people and groups of them are like that. You can't really be sure what will happen. You simply have to try and see what patterns you can, but be ready for anything."

  Katie frowned as she removed and stored her climbing gear. Sam followed her, waiting for her reply. It was almost plaintive when it came. "Aren't we all rational creatures trying to work together?" she said.

  "Ideally perhaps," Sam agreed after a pause. "But there's a lot of detail and a lot of history, it's not so simple. In fact, smarter people than me say it's complex. I've read they've even worked out math for it."

  "I'd like to see that math," Katie said.

  "Be nice if there was a couple more hours in the day, too," Sam said.

  Katie grinned. This was something she understood. "Yeah," she agreed.

  "Look, young Miss Kincaid, me dear," Sam said in an exaggerated Irish accent. He wanted to lighten the mood. Sam also wanted her to pay attention. "You have to think of societies as heavy things in zero Gee with a lot of momentum."

  "That's redundant," Katie observed.

  "Indeed," Sam agreed. Not to be deflected, he continued. "Lot of momentum. Hard to get started moving. Hard to stop. Sometimes it's best not to try too hard and build up too much momentum. Can't stop thing. Thing crushes other things. You follow, me dear?"

  Sam could tell Katie didn't like the medicine, despite all the sugar he'd put on it. "Maybe," she said, "but I've got some heavy stuff I want to move and I want to move it some distance."

  "Best you be careful doing it then, Katie," Sam said solemnly.

  * * *

  Morning of the second day after she'd tested out of Miss Ping's course and Katie found herself outside of Commander Yuri Tretyak's office once again.

  Katie sure hoped she wasn't going to be making a habit of this.

  It was better than the Commander refusing outright to endorse her Academy application. She didn't know for a fact that wasn't why he'd called her in again.

  The purpose of this meeting might only be to explain why he couldn't bring himself to endorse her. That despite her having passed Miss Ping's course. And despite what she was sure was a fairly positive covering letter from Miss Ping.

  Katie didn't think so.

  Katie was also darned sure he wasn't going to explain how he was endorsing her despite some reservations. Only thing more unlikely than that was a profuse apology for not seeing what a wonderful candidate she was from the start. That wasn't going to happen. She wasn't good at reading people, but she wasn't that bad at it.

  So she figured the Commander was going to try to thread the needle again. Have his cake and eat it too. Meant her fate was on a knife's edge again.

  Well, she was trying to learn courage and how to handle stress. Perhaps in her heart, not to his face to be certain, she ought to thank the Commander for providing the practice.

  Thing to do was have a clear goal. Not to be distracted. To push on as best as she could and not get discouraged.

  Katie wanted to convince the Commander to give her his endorsement.

  She'd jump through any hoops he asked her to. She'd do it cheerfully. Katie would do it in the way he wanted, with the form he wanted.

  Katie took a breath and knocked.

  This time there were no delays, but no tea either.

  The Commander motioned at her to sit in the chair in front of his desk.

  "So, Miss Kincaid," he said as soon as she was seated. "You appear to have impressed Miss Ping. I didn't know that was possible."

  "Does that mean you'll endorse my application to the Academy, sir?" Katie asked.

  The Commander leaned back, took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew out a long sigh of air. Quite the production for such a normally staid man. "Not automatically," he said.

  "I did as yo
u asked, sir," she said. "Excelled at it according to Miss Ping. Wouldn't it be only fair to keep your word?"

  The Commander looked at her with narrowed eyes. "Perhaps," he said, "but honestly you didn't exactly finish the task I gave you. I wanted to see how you'd behave over a six-week period under stress. In particular, how you'd interact with your classmates and Miss Ping. Not your fault maybe, but that's not what I got is it?"

  "No, sir," Katie agreed. "But Miss Ping told me what she planned to say in her letter to you. She said she thought I could handle the Academy, didn't she?"

  "She did," the Commander admitted. "That has caused me to reassess my opinion of your social skills in fact. I was afraid you'd be socially inept due to insufficient experience with people. You're apparently a quicker study than I'd have thought."

  "That's good isn't it, sir?"

  "Maybe, maybe not," the Commander answered. "It's possible that you've learned to manipulate your teachers effectively during your stays here on Ceres. I'm curious if that extends to getting along with peers in a non-academic setting."

  "Isn't that moving the goalposts, sir?"

  "Perhaps I could have been clearer about what I was looking for," the Commander allowed. "On the other hand I don't believe you've been entirely open with me either. Do you know anything about how Billy Boucher ended up in med bay a couple of weeks ago?"

  Katie colored. This was bad. Somehow even worse it was embarrassing. "I do, sir," she said reluctantly. "Only, sir, I don't think Billy will be willing to tell the truth about it and it'd be my word and that of a friend against his and that of even more of his friends. If you insist, I'll waive my rights as a juvenile and submit to a biometrically monitored interrogation. And, sir, I won't look great, but it'll destroy Billy and his Dad. It'll be a everybody loses thing. Please, don't insist on pursuing this."

  The Commander stared at her hard. "If either of you was a year or two older, I'd insist," he said. "As it is, it's hard to tell the difference between schoolyard squabbles and junior criminality. I have heard the rumors about Billy's bullying. I suspect you overreacted to it. I don't like letting it go, but you do have more to lose than he does. I'll accede to your wishes against my better judgment. You do understand how it casts a shadow over you and your suitability as an Academy candidate, don't you?"