Barbary (8 page)

“Okay. But keep quiet or Yoshi’ll hear us.”

Mickey sauntered out of his hiding place, looked at them
both in disdain, and jumped off the bunk.

“Are you okay?” Barbary asked.

“I think so, yeah. I might have a bump. Boy, was that dumb.
Running yourself into a ceiling is real kid stuff.”

Barbary climbed down from the bunk, picked Mickey up, and
cradled him in her arms. “That was close, Mick,” she said.

Heather jumped down beside her. “We better at least pretend
to sleep,” she said.

“Yeah, okay.”

Heather gestured toward the top bunk. “You better take that
one. It’ll be safer.”

“Are you sure that’s okay with you?”

“Uh-huh,” Heather said. “But be careful not to sit up too
fast.”

“Right.” Barbary nodded.

The floor twisted beneath her. She staggered, flung one hand
out to catch herself, and clutched Mick to her with the other arm. He hissed in
protest and tried to jump free.

“Barbary! What’s wrong?”

Barbary kept hold of the edge of the bunk, but let Mick
loose.

“You mean… you didn’t feel anything?”

“No,” Heather said. “Feel what?”

“The floor…” She stopped. Maybe she had something wrong with
her, and if anyone found out

Heather laughed. “I know!”

Barbary scowled. “What?”

“You nodded — didn’t you?”

“I guess so. What’s so bad about that?”

“Nothing — except that up here you have to get out of the
habit of nodding or shaking your head.”

“Why?”

“Because the spin of the station affects your inner ear.
That makes you feel like the floor is twisting or tilting, depending on which
you’re doing and what way you’re facing. Go ahead — try it.”

“Well ... okay.” She shook her head. The floor tilted up and
back. Barbary stopped.

“Now turn this way” — Heather moved her a quarter turn —
“and shake your head again.”

This time it felt as if the floor were tilting from side to
side.

“And if you turn around this way —”

“I don’t like this very much.” Barbary grabbed hold of the
bunk support.

“But — oh. Oh, gee, Barbary, I didn’t realize — here, sit
down.”

Barbary sat still, letting her equilibrium return. She tried
to listen to Heather’s explanation, but it was too much for her to take in all
at once.

“You get so you don’t notice it after a while,” Heather
said. “But by then most people have already trained themselves out of nodding
or shaking their heads.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Barbary said.

“Don’t worry — you’ll be an old hand in no time.”

Mick jumped to the top bunk and curled up on Barbary’s
pillow.

“I think he’s trying to tell us something,” Heather said.

“Yeah,” Barbary said. This time she did not nod.

When they had both lain down, and Mickey was purring beside
Barbary, kneading her arm with his paws, Heather said, “Are you all settled?”

“Yeah.”

“Lights out,” Heather said.

The lights dimmed and went out.

A very long, very narrow triangle of light fell across the
floor. It came from the other room, through a crack where the door did not
quite meet the wall.

Barbary had thought she was too nervous to sleep, but in the
darkness and in the half-gravity ease of her bed, exhaustion began to take her
over.

“Barbary?” Heather whispered.

Pulling herself partway out of a doze, Barbary answered.
“Yeah?”

“Don’t misunderstand — it’s neat that you brought Mickey.
But… how come you risked it?”

“I wanted to chase him away, but I couldn’t. Then after we
made friends, they wanted me to take him to the animal shelter so they could
kill him.”

“Oh,” Heather said. “Oh. I’m glad you brought him.”

I wonder how long I’m going to get away with it, though,
Barbary thought.

“Heather?”

“Uh-huh?”

“How come you live here? In low gravity?”

Heather was silent, and Barbary thought she must have asked
her something very rude. But you asked me a personal question, Barbary thought.
Don’t I get a turn?

“Well,” Heather said, “I have to. There’s something wrong
with my heart. I’m only allowed to go into one g a couple of hours a day.”

“Oh,” Barbary said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. I don’t care. I like it here. I don’t
know why people want to stay at one g anyway.”

She probably knew better than Barbary, who only knew what
the instruction book said. If people did not stay used to regular gravity, then
after a long time in space it would be too hard for them to go back to earth.

As she drifted off to sleep, Barbary thought, But I don’t
want to go back to earth. I want to live in space, where there isn’t any
gravity.

o0o

Barbary flung her arm across her eyes to block out the
sunlight —

There was no sunlight. She woke abruptly.

“Come on, kids,” Yoshi said. “Dinnertime.”

“Okay,” Heather said. “Just a minute.”

Barbary reached for Mickey. He was gone. She froze.

Yoshi had only made the lights go on; he had not come into
the room or even opened the door very far. He closed it again.

“Heather!” Barbary whispered. “Mick’s gone!” She flung off
her blanket and searched her bunk and the bookcase, but the cat had
disappeared.

“I’ll get up in a minute.”

The covers rustled as Heather turned over.

“Mick’s gone!” She jumped off her bunk, but he was not
curled up on a desk or a chair or in a corner or anywhere.

Heather sat up. “Did you look under the bed?”

Barbary knelt and lifted the edge of the comforter, then
scowled at Heather in disgust.

“There isn’t any ‘under,’ under the bed!” It was all
drawers. “Will you wake up?”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

She flopped back down and pulled the comforter over her
head. Barbary realized that Heather could carry on a conversation while she was
still almost asleep.

“Heather!”

Heather yelped and flung aside the quilt.

“Jeez,” Barbary said, “you don’t need to be that way about
it.”

“I just found Mickey.”

Mick curled sleeping in the middle of her bunk. He raised
his head, yawned widely, his whiskers bristling, his tongue curling, put his
head down again, and went back to sleep.

“Mick!” Barbary said. “You scared me to death.” Mickey made
no reply. “I thought he got out.”

“Oh, he couldn’t,” Heather said. “Come on, let’s get ready
for dinner. I’m starved.”

“Do we have to go?”

Heather glanced from Barbary to Mickey, and back again. “I
know how you feel. I really do. But it’ll look kind of strange if we don’t go
eat.”

“I guess,” Barbary said.

“And nobody will be here to find him.”

Barbary chewed her thumbnail.

“Okay?” Heather said.

“Yeah,” Barbary said, unconvinced.

o0o

The cafeteria on the half-g level contained only ten
tables. Barbary wondered if the one-g level of the station had a larger
cafeteria, where more people and more commotion would make pilfering food much
easier. Barbary supposed, though, that Heather must have to eat here most of the
time.

“What do you want to eat?” Heather said, standing on tiptoe
to see the top shelf.

“I don’t know — what is there?”

“Chhay keeps threatening to import a herd of steers,” Yoshi
said, “but he hasn’t got clearance for it…”

“Or a place to put it,” Heather said.

“Anyway, there isn’t any red meat,” Yoshi said.

Barbary had never tasted beef.

“I didn’t think of that,” Heather said in a stricken voice.
“Barbary, will it be okay? I mean…” She stopped.

Barbary realized that Heather meant, was there anything
Mickey would eat. Mickey had never tasted beef either. Heather was going to
have to learn to keep her mouth shut, or they were all going to be in a lot of
trouble.

“Yeah, sure, it’s okay.”

Yoshi looked at them both oddly. “Heather, I’m sure Barbary
doesn’t expect everything to be just the same up here as back on earth.”

“No, I don’t,” Barbary said. “I mean, it doesn’t make any
difference anyway. I never had any animal meat back there.”

“Oh, good,” Heather said, relieved. Barbary wondered if she
had any idea how close she had come to letting too much information slip.
Barbary knew Yoshi was suspicious, even if he did not yet know what to be
suspicious of.

“How about some shrimp? They’re surplus, from the ocean
research project, so they’re fresh.”

Shrimp were even more of a luxury than beef, back on earth,
but Barbary had heard that cats liked them. She accepted the shrimp salad, even
though the little pink curled-up things looked kind of disgusting. They would
at least be easy to palm and hide in her napkin. Heather poured glasses of milk
for herself and Barbary. The liquid flowed slowly and strangely in the low
gravity. Barbary tried to think of a way to smuggle a glass of milk out of the
cafeteria.

Maybe I can find a container with a lid, she thought, and
sneak back later.

Heather chose a curry so hot that Barbary’s nose prickled
from the spices. Mick would never eat that, even if it weren’t too squishy to
take away, which it was.

Heather didn’t bring a cat to a space station, Barbary told
herself. It isn’t her responsibility to feed him. It’s yours.

They sat with several other people. Yoshi and Heather
introduced Barbary to them and to friends at the surrounding tables. Roxane was
a mechanic who worked outside the station, building new parts for it. Chhay was
an agricultural expert. Ramchandra worked on computer components that could
only be grown in weightlessness. He had helped to build the first picocomputer.
He said organic computers were the coming thing, and that he would have to
study biology if he wanted to keep up with his own field. Barbary did not know
if he was joking or not. She managed to keep track of the people at their
table, but could not remember everyone else’s name. They all greeted her warmly
and welcomed her to the station.

For the first time in as long as she could remember, Barbary
began to believe she really belonged somewhere.

“When are you getting your
dogies?” Heather said to Chhay. It sounded weird to Barbary, to hear in a space
station a word from some old cowboy movie.

Chhay laughed, as if the herd of steers was an old joke
between him and Heather. “Somehow I just can’t seem to get that request
approved,” he said. “They’re afraid the steers will get loose and overrun the
station.”

“Considering the birth rate of your average herd of steers,”
Roxane said, “no wonder pets aren’t allowed.”

Everybody laughed except Barbary, who had no idea what was
so funny. Heather, who was taking a drink of milk, giggled right into her
glass. Barbary used the distraction to palm a shrimp with the Murada technique.
Her sleight of hand was only passable, but since no one was watching for her to
fool them, and since they were all still laughing at the joke, she got away
with it. Barbary had read about people no better at stage magic than she was,
who had pretended to have special powers, real magic, and everyone believed
them.

At the mention of pets, Heather stopped laughing and wiped
off the splash of milk. She glanced at Barbary with a far-too-sober expression,
calling attention to her just as she slipped the shrimp into her napkin.

Barbary frowned at Heather and pretended to be studying her
salad. How were she and Mick ever going to get away with this? Heather had no
experience at all at hiding things or lying, that was certain.

Ramchandra glanced at their table’s single vacant chair.

“Where’s Thea?” he asked.

Barbary palmed another shrimp.

Yoshi shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. He sounded
disappointed. “In the observatory, probably. Working on the probe.
Alien-watching. How’s your salad, Barbary?”

She crumpled up her napkin in her lap. “Um, I haven’t tasted
it yet.” She stuck her fork into it and pushed it around so no one would be
able to tell how much was left. She hesitated, then gulped a shrimp.

“Hey,” she said, surprised. “It’s good.”

“Eating one’s first shrimp is an act of great courage,”
Roxane said, and everyone laughed. Barbary was ready to get angry, till she
realized they were not laughing at her.

As soon as she had finished eating, Heather jumped to her
feet and grabbed her tray. “Come on — I’ll show you what to do with your
stuff.”

Barbary had to crush her napkin and shove it into her pocket
before she could follow Heather. She caught up to her new sister on the other
side of the cafeteria. A recess in the wall held racks for dirty dishes.

“You put the scraps over here. We make them into compost.
Then —”

“Give me a little warning, will you?” Barbary muttered. “I
had a lap full of shrimp.”

“Oh, Barbary, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize — I didn’t see
what you were doing.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

Heather picked up her plate and poked at the leftover curry
sauce. “Should I get some chicken for him?”

“No, never mind, don’t take anything.”

“But —”

“You guys want anything? Tea?”

Barbary shut up as Chhay passed behind her. Heather opened
her mouth to speak and Barbary glared at her to make her be quiet, but her
sister surprised her. Heather scraped her leftovers down a narrow slide, then
put her plate on a rack in a glass-fronted machine.

“After you clear off your dishes, you just stick them in
here and when everybody’s done we close the door and turn it on and sonic
vibrations clean everything off. Tea would be great, Chhay.”

Barbary turned around, trying to maintain her composure.

“Is there any coffee?”

“Sure.” He poured a cup of coffee and put it on his tray, then
looked over the selection of teas.

“Heather, how about mint?”