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By Root 620 0

and like all the others, she was (it seemed to Kathryn) faintly condescending. Kathryn had wanted to attend the Institute. Each state had such a school geared for a pre-Starfleet Academy curriculum, and created to channel the best and the brightest right to San Francisco. Kathryn could easily have qualified, but her parents had instead chosen The Meadows for her and Phoebe. They believed the Institute provided too narrow a curriculum for young people, and preferred the more liberal, wide-ranging philosophy of The Meadows, which emphasized creative experiences and physical conditioning along with academics. Its goal was to produced well-rounded young people, rather than superstars of select disciplines. Kathryn would have been much happier at the Institute. She wouldn't have had to take such pointless, traditional studies as piano, ballet, and cooking. Cooking, for heaven's sake! Who would ever need to know how to cook? She could have concentrated on mathematics instead. She and her six teammates stepped off the pad; the uniformed, female cadet barely inclined her head toward them. Students from The Meadows were considered somewhat odd, generally undisciplined, and most definitely inferior. Kathryn made an inner decision to return to the transport site victorious, and make sure the condescending cadet knew it.

The seven team members carried their tennis bags toward the Institute's beautifully landscaped courts. The school was an immaculately groomed facility, with rich green lawns and precisely planted shrubbery surrounding low, sleek classrooms. Kathryn always felt ambivalent about being on the grounds; on the one hand she loved the ordered neatness of the place and felt comfortable thereas though she belonged-but this was offset by resentment that she wasn't a permanent student there, and had to endure the cluttered atmosphere of The Meadows, whose sprawling grounds lacked both symmetry and organization.

Heat waves rose from the ground, and billowing white clouds hung heavily in the sky. The air was damp and close; it would rain before nightfall. These weren't optimum conditions for playing a grueling tennis match, and Kathryn had no doubt that today's would be grueling.

She had played her rival before. Her name was Shalarik, a Vulcan exchange student whose imperturbable demeanor on the court was unsettling. But she was attackable, and if she was broken early, her tightly controlled emo- tions became an obstacle, because she was unable to use her feelings to generate momentum.

Kathryn's advantages lay in her head. She could analyze an opponent's game with mathematical precision, then devise countermeasures to thwart and frustrate the adversary on the other side of the net. That tactical capacity was what had made tennis tolerable, and gradually turned it into a challenge that she had determined to conquer. Her backhand was the first stroke to solidify, and it became a formidable weapon. She loved the feel of it, the coiling of her body, knees bent deeply, the drive forward as she uncoiled and whacked the stuffing out of the ball. It gave her an intoxicating sense of power. Two years later, she was captain of the team.

Strategy was key today. If she could keep pressure on Shalarik, hitting deep to the baseline, punishing her with the powerful backhand, trying to force a short ball so she could come to the net, she could win. And at least she would greet Daddy tonight with a victory to report.

Four hours later she was crawling through a muddy field, sobbing uncontrollably, soaked to the skin from a pounding thunderstorm. Wind whipped at her, driving stinging rain into her face, and her throat ached from the harsh sobs that racked her.

It had been humiliating.

From the beginning of her match, nothing had gone right. She was unfocused and erratic. Her stamina was low (probably as a result of her two-mile run through the herb fields) and she tired early. Shalarik's controlled, precise shots were unerring: she kept Kathryn off balance all afternoon. No strategy Kathryn tried was successful,