“Perhaps if green new members could be counted on to listen, it wouldn’t be necessary,” her grandmother retorted.
“Sorry.”
“Good, listen. The world is what it is and for the most part it’s going to do what it’s going to do without reference to your feelings on the matter, your interests, or even your continued existence.”
This struck Katie as being altogether too fatalistic. Katie knew better than to say so. “Okay,” she said.
Katie’s grandmother smiled. A thin, cool, knowing expression. Katie had the uncomfortable feeling her grandmother could read her mind and knew exactly what Katie hadn’t said. “We’re all very small and don’t matter much at all when it comes to the wider world,” her grandmother said, answering the question Katie hadn’t asked.
Katie grunted a non-committal acknowledgment. If her grandmother was going to insist on reading her mind, why waste words?
“Worse, the world thinks it owns us and can’t be depended on to leave us alone to live our little lives how we want,” her grandmother continued.
Katie nodded. “Amen.”
The twitch her grandmother’s lips gave at that hinted at a more than usual warmth. Amusement even. “Best get used to that, girl,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have to apply a lot of leverage at exactly the right spot if you’re to have any hope of making any difference. You don’t stand in front of an onrushing train and try to make it stop by holding your hand out. It’ll just run you over.”
“So you just stand to one side and let it rush on by?” Katie asked.
“Sometimes. It’s not a perfect metaphor,” her grandmother replied. “Still, you have to understand that there are a lot of things you can’t do anything about. Often if you try to, you’ll be crushed. More often, your efforts will only be an exercise in futility. If you can’t accept that you’re doomed to despair and frustration.”
Katie squinted at her grandmother. Katie was a Belter. The fact her grandmother had been a high muckity-muck, an Admiral, didn’t impress her. Her grandmother herself did. Her grandmother was much like Katie’s mother, only more focused, distilled, and given an edge. She was a sharp old bird with no time for nonsense. All the same, Katie didn’t take well to being told to just accept things that weren’t right. “One thing is for sure,” Katie said, “if you don’t try you’re not going to succeed.”
“True,” her grandmother agreed to Katie’s surprise. “Another thing you’ll learn with experience that’s true for sure is that it’ll take more effort and longer than you expected. You’ll have unexpected surprises along the way. Most of them won’t be to the upside. If you want to succeed in your efforts, you have to limit what you try to do. You have to pick your battles.”
Katie frowned. It did seem like a plausible point. “I suppose so,” she said. “When you put it like that, it seems obvious.”
“Kind of you to say so.”
“All the same and with all due respect, ma’am, I’m not sure it doesn't beg the question,” Katie went on. She was going to worry at this point as throughly as Tom or Jerry ever worried a bone. “How do you decide which battles to pick?”
“That’s the sixty-four dollar question, isn’t it?” her grandmother replied. “You pick battles you can win. You pick ones that will get you closer to your goals if you win. Sometimes you have to fight to simply avoid being pushed further away from them.”
Katie had to admit that made sense, however lacking in details it was. It sounded a lot like what had been touched on in a recent data modeling and machine learning module that had somehow snuck into her math classes. For the life of her she couldn’t remember if that was a formal part of the course and would be tested on, or some sort of aside on the instructor’s part. It was all a blur. “Only war isn’t all battles, is it?” she said, following the tangent this suggested.
Her grandmother graced her with a genuine if not wide smile. “No, it’s not,” she said.
“I think I might like a good clear battle I could hope to win,” Katie said. “Even if it came at the cost of maybe losing everything.”
“Patience is a virtue,” came the dry reply.
Katie snorted. Both true and not very useful. A lot of this discussion was like that. Her grandmother was making her show her work in solving this problem. “It feels like I’m drowning in mud or oatmeal.” Both mud and oatmeal were relatively new to Katie, and she wasn’t sure she much liked either of them. “Every day is a slog. It’s hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I can’t see where I’m going, let alone if I’m getting any closer to it.”
“You’re having trouble fitting in. Everyone else seems to know a multitude of things you don’t.”
Katie grinned wide in relief. She almost wanted to cry. It had seemed like nobody else had understood how she felt. Even with Colleen or Susan, who she knew were trying hard to be sympathetic, when she mentioned how hard she was finding it, it seemed like they thought she was whining. “Wow. Yeah. It’s great to have someone that understands.”
“I hope you remember that when your classmates finally leave the Space Force officer caste bubble a few years from now.”
“What? I can’t believe they’ll have the same problem.”
“Believe it. The Space Force is spread thin and fairly early on the main job of officers becomes dealing with people outside of it. The senior NCOs do a fairly good job of running things internally on a day-to-day basis.”
Katie shook her head. “Wow. I never thought I’d get tired of learning. Does it ever stop?”
“No. Not if you’re paying attention,” her grandmother replied. “As for fitting in, it’ll slowly get better as you learn all sorts of little things all your colleagues take for granted, but you’ll never entirely fit in. It’s just not in your nature, Katie. I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn to deal with it.”
“So I’m a day late and a dollar short for the rest of eternity,” Katie said, unable to keep bitter disappointment out of her voice.
“Maybe a minute or two late and some pennies short, dear,” her grandmother said without sympathy. “More importantly, it’s not just you. Your classmates and superiors will also continue to have doubts about whether you actually belong in the Space Force. For some years to come, even after you get your commission. I’ve little doubt you’ll be called to account for yourself on occasion in ways your classmates won’t.”
“It’s not fair,” Katie said. A blunt statement of the truth as far as she was concerned.
“Sometimes it won’t be. Sometimes, I’m sure, you’ll have done things meriting review,” her grandmother opined in a disinterested tone. She could have been talking about the outcome of some athletic competition she wasn’t particularly interested in.
“I try hard to be fair to everyone else.”
“As you should,” her grandmother said implacably. “People, hell even monkeys, resent it if they think you’re being unfair to them. Good people management requires an appearance of fairness. You shouldn’t expect it yourself. You should keep a tight lid on your resentment of that. It’s natural. It’s not useful.”
“Then why bother with it at all? Why are we hard wired that way?”
“In small bands, where all the individuals know each other and what to expect, it works,” her grandmother said. “Only once we built cities and civilizations we gave that up.”
“We’ve had cities a long time,” Katie said slowly, trying to digest that nugget of information. Katie had thought Miss Ping making her study the century or two before space travel had been going overboard. Thousands of years it’d been, hadn’t it? Thousands of years of details without much relevance to a modern girl who lived in a spaceship, she’d have thought. Seemed her grandmother didn’t agree. Yet another big, complicated topic Katie knew nothing about. She’d once thought she could learn everything of any importance. She longed to have those days of innocence back.
“Ten thousand y
ears; give or take a few thousand depending on what you want to call a city,” her grandmother agreed. A girl with a very active imagination might have caught a hint of sympathy. “Don’t worry nobody’s going to test you on deep history,” the old lady continued. “It’s a personal interest of mine, but it’s not a popular one anymore. Humanity is facing a critical juncture in the next few years, next year, or the next century I’m not sure, but I think you sense it too.”
“Everyone wants to forget the Space Rats are here,” Katie said. “And that it means there’s a wider galaxy of other intelligent beings. But they are out there and we should be getting ready to meet them.”
“Yes, dear. I agree completely.”
“You’re saying I’m not the only one feeling overwhelmed, but a lot of other people are sticking their heads in the sand.”
“As you’re discovering, it can very hard to deal with some issues. Emotionally hard. Sometimes ignoring problems until they go away works.”
“Or become urgent,” Katie said in disgust. “That sort of thing will get you killed in space.”
“And how many of us grow up in space?”
“Very few,” Katie admitted. “Even in the Belt, most of us kids spent a lot of time on Ceres. You could pretend you were in a city on Earth there if you wanted to.”
“Exactly. The whole species is outside its comfort zone and you want me to feel sorry for one little girl with more advantages than most?”
Katie winced. She had hoped for a little sympathy for sure. She was only human. Katie hadn’t thought she was asking her grandmother to feel sorry for her. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she asserted. “I could use a little understanding and help.”
“Which is why we’re talking.”
Katie nodded and thought about the conversation so far. “So if I want to make a difference in the world I have to face up to the fact that I can never be comfortable or sure of anything then. That there will always be things that matter that I don’t know. That I’ll make mistakes because of that.”
“That or drift along blind with the rest of the crowd,” her grandmother confirmed.
“I can see that, but it’s pretty bleak and depressing,” Katie said.
Her grandmother looked at her hard. As if she was evaluating her worth. “I think you can handle it.”
“Thank you,” Katie answered. “Wish I was that sure of it.”
“You’re not alone, Katie,” her grandmother said. “I can’t pull strings for you. It’d be counter productive. All I can actively do is give you advice. I can’t promise it’s good advice, let alone make you follow it. I’m doing my best. My reputation may help you at times. Other times it will hurt you. People including some of your superiors will think being my granddaughter has given you an unfair advantage.”
Katie snorted. She thought they both knew that wasn’t true.
“I haven’t pulled strings for you true and I’m not going to,” her grandmother plowed on. “Whoever arranged to have you invited to the Academy two years before you could hope to be at least a little ready wasn’t doing us any favors. However, my reputation does mean no one is going to wreck your career or be willing to be seen to be doing you any injustice without being very careful to dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s. Whatever happens, you’re going to get your day in court.”
Katie shivered. The idea of being brought to trial for who she was and what she had done when she was so unsure and blundering about the way she was did not appeal to her. “Okay, guess that’s good,” she managed.
“Don’t crack, girl,” the Ex-admiral ordered. “Don’t cry. Don’t beg. Don’t make excuses. Reach into that deep well of stubbornness you have and stand your ground. Whatever those judging you think, if you seem confident, like you know what you’re doing, and determined they’re going to be very reluctant to end your career.”
“No guarantees, though?”
“None.”
“I’m never going to completely fit in. I’m never going to be able to completely relax,” Katie said.
“That’s right.”
“It’s never going to end.”
“Don’t expect you’ll live forever.”
Katie half giggled. Humor did help. She persisted with the grim litany. “There’s never going to be a point where it couldn’t all go down the drain.”
“Never. Safety is an illusion.”
“That wasn’t mentioned in my manuals,” Katie ventured.
Her grandmother emitted a dry chuckle.
* * *
Colleen was glad her roommate was in a better mood.
After the preparatory BOTC course during what should have been their March break, Katie had been both twitchy and sullen. Very reserved, which should have been an improvement over her usual boisterous over enthusiasm, but wasn’t.
They were in their room studying. Colleen was finding that even in French and Physics, not her best topics, that she had a sure grasp of the material. Her “study” was essentially reaffirming that fact. Academically she was going to be at, or near, the top of the class. Which was nice, it should make up for her rather squishy performance in sports and leadership wise.
It made her happy. A good feeling after a long, grim year. Before Easter it hadn’t completely compensated for the aura of depression Katie had been giving off. Before Easter and after the BOTC preparatory week to be exact. So having Katie back to feeling at least copacetic was a blessed relief.
It was far too late to request a change of roommates, so Colleen was stuck dealing with Katie as best as she could. Besides, she’d come to like Katie and did hope it’d all work out for her in the end. Still, the Katie conundrum was a problem that Colleen wasn’t certain had a solution. No reason not to try, though. Better bite the bullet.
“You had a good time at the Admiral’s?” she called across the room.
Katie looked up. Not disturbed. Apparently relieved to be given a reprieve from trying to make sense of whatever point of grammar she’d been studying. “Yeah. I guess I needed a break,” she said. “Got to play with her dogs. She gave me a pep talk.”
“A pep talk?”
“Colleen, I was looking forward to proving what I could do on the BOTC prep course,” Katie said.
“I know.”
“I botched it completely. Right out of the gate.” Katie shook her head at how badly she’d done. Maybe how stunned and surprised she was by that.
Colleen didn’t intend to open up that vein of existential angst. She smiled and tried to sound reassuring. “It was intended as a familiarization, not a test,” she said. “Don’t sweat it so much.”
“Doesn’t help, does it?” Katie said, looking at Colleen with a disconcerting, puppy dog like earnestness.
Colleen suppressed a flinch. She’d had to take her older brother Andrew’s dog, Rover, to the vet’s to be put down. Andrew had been away at school. Rover had given her a look like that. Wasn’t a favorite memory. “Nope. It doesn’t. Accentuate the positive,” she replied.
“Yeah. Don’t dwell on negatives in the past. You can’t control everything. My grandmother said something like that,” Katie said, frowning down at the beds in between them.
Colleen couldn’t begin to imagine a positive up beat pep talk from the infamous Admiral Schlossberg, but she’d take her wins where she could find them. “She’s right, you know,” she said. “There are a lot of things, most things, that you don’t control and aren’t responsible for. You have to try to work with them if you can. Around them if you can’t.”
Katie looked up at Colleen and nodded slowly, her face brightening. “Just so,” she said. “Exactly.” For all the world as if Colleen had just explained the answer to a difficult and knotty problem to her. “She said you have to pick your battles. That you can’t win them all.”
Colleen grinned at Katie. “Amen.” A Katie, that first didn’t think she was responsible for evaluating and fixing everything around her, and second didn't go into a deep dep
ression when she found she couldn’t, would be so much easier to live with.
Katie sighed. “It was as if she’d lifted a weight off of my shoulders,” she said. “Only she didn’t stop there.”
“No?”
Katie shook her head. “Nope.” She scrunched up her face and looked through Colleen. “In so many words she agreed that sometimes you can’t just go along, accept things as they are, to get along. Sure, you have to pick fights that are winnable and matter, but that doesn’t mean you can avoid them entirely.”
“Well, I don’t think you’ve got it in you anyway,” Colleen opined a bit more sharply than she’d intended to.
Katie gave a small hard smile, one accented by a glint in her eye. So Katie wasn’t so depressed anymore. She was back to being an earlier sort of problem. “Look, I might learn how to fit with the rest of you better, but I’m still never going to entirely belong. Had the wrong sort of childhood. I’m catching up academically. Thanks for the help with the math, by the way. I’m not actively embarrassing myself at basketball anymore. Still, besides you and Susan, most of the rest of the cadets in our class are strangers to me. I don’t know them. I don’t fit in. I’ve no idea how to inspire, or organize, or lead them, and we both know that’s going to be a problem.”
Colleen dearly wished she could disagree. Colleen wasn’t assertive enough to be a good leader, but she did understand her fellow cadets. They understood her in turn and knew that. It wasn’t that hard for her to figure out what it took to motivate them, or to communicate a plan to them. Katie didn’t lack in assertiveness, but she was like an alien to her fellow cadets. An alien prone to causing fusses and problems. Mostly they tolerated Katie, some of them actively resented her. “Yeah,” she admitted, “but problems can be solved. You have to keep trying.”
Katie Kincaid Space Cadet Page 14