“So, what happens with you now, Nick?”
He smiles and holds tighter to the top of his stick. “Do you know, Shana, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you inquire into another person’s future?”
“Yeah, well.”
“Well what?” he says, twisting on the log to look at me, and even though he’s half blind, I swear he can see deeper than people with all their sight.
“Well,” I snap back, “answer my question! What happens with you now?”
He says cheerfully, “I go on living until something else wears out that medicine can’t fix, and then I die.”
“That’s a hell of an attitude!” I say.
“It’s exactly the right attitude. But for me, not for you. What happens next with you, Shana Walders?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“You mean that now you have what you wanted, acceptance into the army, there’s nothing more to anticipate?”
I don’t say nothing, just stare at the mountains. But Nick goes on needling.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a precious natural resource? You’ve exploited that all your life, haven’t you? Don’t stop now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Now I’m getting mad. What business is this of his? It’s my life.
He says, “Have you thought about Officer Candidate School?”
I hoot. “Me? Come on, Nick! I barely got through high school! Besides, I don’t want to be in charge of enforcing no fucking rules—I’m the one who breaks them!”
“Are you sure?” he says softly. “Are you really sure that’s who you want to go being, Shana?”
And I don’t have no answer. Georgia and Jennie, fighting over a stupid hairbrush like it’s the center of the world … Teela and Dreamie, hassling rucky-fuckies for cheap thrills … the stewdees in Company B, thrilled over one more night of getting drunk and reconfigured and in trouble …
Nick says, “OCS would take you, even with your grades and your record. You’re a hero at the moment, although I think you’re smart enough to know that won’t last. More to the point, the pool of candidates has shrunk alarmingly as the learning-disability curves have risen. You’re healthy and you’re smart, despite having spent a lifetime acting otherwise. They’d take you. You could be Lieutenant Walders.”
Lieutenant Walders. With a real career. Real decisions and real choices and real challenges … I stand up so fast that the log rolls a little and Nick wobbles on it.
“Sorry, Nick. But we better get back.”
“Certainly,” he says. I help him up. A few slow steps in silence and then he says, “Think about it, Shana.”
“Watch that branch, Nick. Don’t trip.”
“I’d write you a recommendation. You could do it, you know.”
Lieutenant Walders.
I say, before I know I’m going to, “Is Laurie really okay with the baby? With that baby?”
“Laurie has scaled down her expectations. But yours need raising, Shana. Remember, anything we think we know about ourselves is very likely to be wrong.” Suddenly Nick sounds like he’s talking to himself instead of me, and anyway I’m already sick of the conversation. Life should be for living, not talking about. That’s the trouble with people like Nick: talk and think and wallow in stuff. Instead of getting on with it.
Lieutenant Walders.
We hobble another ten yards, the leaves blowing in glorious colors and the air smelling like God just jumped out of bed and made the world this morning. A rabbit runs in front of us. Maggie opens the cabin door and comes out on the porch, hands on her hips, watching Nick with her face all soft. From behind her comes delicious smells of cooking, meat and apples and baking bread.
I say, “Nick…”
“You can ask your sergeant for an OCS application,” he says. “Or access it online. And on your next leave, I’ll help you with it.”
“Yeah?” I squeeze his arm. For an old guy, he’s always been all right.
“‘How fares the child,’” he murmurs.
“What?”
“Nothing. Walk faster, Shana. Maggie’s waiting.”
“She don’t like me being here.”
“‘Doesn’t like,’” he says. Oh, God—now it starts. Correct grammar and correct manners and studying books. Officers don’t sound like stewdees, and they don’t act like it neither. Lieutenant Walders is going to have to become somebody better than I been. Is going to have to live up to challenges, and work hard, and all that shit. Raise my expectations, like Nick says. And I got a lifetime to do it in.
Suddenly, despite Maggie scowling at me from the porch, I feel really, really fine. The sun shines, and the wind blows, and I don’t even care what chemicals it’s blowing into my endocrines. We can fix it all. We always have.
I laugh, and Nick and I go inside to dinner.
Also by Nancy Kress
NOVELS
The Prince of Morning Bells
The Golden Grove
An Alien Light
Brain Rose
Beggars in Spain
Beggars and Choosers
Oaths and Miracles
Beggars Ride
STORY COLLECTIONS
Trinity and Other Stories
The Aliens of Earth
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
MAXIMUM LIGHT
Copyright © 1998 by Nancy Kress
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor Books on the World Wide Web:
http://www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kress, Nancy.
Maximum light / Nancy Kress.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-86535-X (acid-free paper)
I. Title.
PS3561.R46M39 1998
813'.54—dc21
97-29850
CIP
First Edition: January 1998
eISBN 9781466826649
First eBook edition: August 2012