Barbary (9 page)

“I think I’ll have coffee, too,” Heather said.

“Okay.”

They returned to the table. Barbary wondered how long they
had to stay at the table before they could excuse themselves.

Chhay put a tray full of steaming cups on the table. The
steam acted strange in the low gravity. Barbary would have expected it to rise
more quickly, but it collected in round clouds over the tray. Barbary
discovered she could pull her cup right out from under its steam. But she was
too concerned about Mick to wonder much or ask questions about anything else.

Barbary fidgeted. She kept expecting to be able to smell the
soggy shrimp in her pocket.

Heather poured cream into her coffee till it was barely even
tan, then added sugar. Barbary liked coffee black, but if it tasted as bad as
Heather thought, she would probably put stuff in it, too. She took a cautious
sip.

Like all the other food aboard the station, the coffee
tasted better than any Barbary had ever had before.

“Is Thea coming to the reception?” Roxane asked Yoshi.

“How should I know?” Yoshi said.

“Sorry,” Roxane said. “Didn’t mean to enter forbidden
territory.”

“I’ve barely seen her in a week.” Yoshi turned his cup
between his fingers. “Twenty hours a day at the telescope doesn’t give her much
time for the mundane things of life. Like talking to her lover or meeting a new
member of his family.”

He stared into his cup. His friends fell silent, then
changed the subject. Heather’s cheerfulness faded. Feeling uncomfortable,
Barbary pretended not to notice. She had meant to ask Heather who Thea was, but
she had forgotten. She was glad when, a few minutes later, Chhay stood up.

“We better hurry, or we’ll be late.”

All the others got up and put their dishes into the dishwasher.

“Okay,” Chhay said. “Whose turn is it to wash them?”

“Not me,” said Roxane. “I did it last time.”

“This is stupid,” Yoshi said. He slammed the dishwasher
door, slapped the “on” button, and strode from the cafeteria. The dishwasher
hummed and emitted a high-pitched whine that rose beyond the limits of human
hearing.

Heather followed her father.

“Guess it was his turn,” Roxane said dryly. Barbary hurried
after her sister.

“What was that all about?”

“It used to be a joke,” Heather said. “Because it’s so easy.
Who washes the dishes just means who pushes the button. I guess… Yoshi doesn’t
feel much like joking today.”

“He sounded sort of upset, earlier.”

“Yeah. Because of Thea. They spend a lot of time together.
Or anyway they did, till the spaceship appeared. Now, well, she’s real busy. I
mean, you can tell — she hasn’t even had time to come meet you yet.”

Barbary wished Heather would not put her in the middle of a
disagreement between Yoshi and his lover. In her experience that was a
dangerous place to be. She headed down the hallway toward the apartment.

“Wait, Barbary,” Heather said. “This way.”

“Is that a short-cut back to your place?”

“Uh-uh. This is the way to the reception hall.”

Barbary stopped. “We’re not going home?”

“Not till later.”

The other adults passed. As they turned a corner, Chhay
called back, “Come on, kids.”

“Heather — ” She waited till she was sure she could talk
without being overheard. “What about Mick? I have to feed him. My pocket is all
full of wet shrimp, and you said we could go back after dinner!”

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry — I meant after the reception. Besides,
when you said not to take anything I thought you meant he wasn’t very hungry.”

“Oh. No. I just meant —” She almost said that if anybody had
noticed Heather’s pulling soggy bits of chicken out of her curry, it would have
given them both away. But she did not want to hurt Heather’s feelings. “I just
meant you haven’t had a chance to practice sleight of hand.”

“Well, look, we can’t go back now.”

“He’s going to be awful hungry.”

“But it’ll look too suspicious if we miss this party.”

Yoshi returned.

“Are you two all right?”

“Sure,” said Heather. “We’re coming.” She glanced at Barbary
as if to say, See what I mean?

Barbary knew that if she kept behaving strangely, she would
be sent back to earth. The friendship Yoshi had felt for her mother, twenty
years before, would protect her only so far. She sighed and followed Heather.
She tried to forget her pocketful of wet shrimp.

If I don’t look at them, she said to herself, nobody else
will, either.

Heather and Barbary followed Yoshi to the one-g level of the
station and into the reception hall.

“Wow,” Heather said. “It’s hot in here.” She looked around.
“Whoever’s running balance on the station must be having a great time. I never
saw so many people all in one place.”

Barbary found the crowd neither large nor dense enough to
bother her. Back on earth she had seen riots. Once she had even been caught at
the edge of one. But Heather did not need to know about that experience. This crowd
surrounded her with cheer and expectation, with eagerness to meet Jeanne
Velory. Partitions lay fan-folded against the walls, pulled back to create a
large meeting room from areas usually set aside for classes and lectures. All
the chairs stood stacked in the corners, for the room did hold too many people
for anybody to sit down.

Barbary and Heather made their way slowly through the crowd.
Barbary could tell the station-dwellers from the grounders. About half the
people here wore rather formal clothes, and the rest dressed like Heather and
Yoshi, in T-shirts and drawstring shorts or pants. The grounders looked
heavier, somehow, as if the one gravity of the station held them, while the
station-dwellers seemed to bring with them the lower gravity of the inner ring.
Barbary puzzled over the strange impression, because of course it was
impossible. Gravity did not work that way. But that was how it looked to her
even if she could not explain it, any more than she could explain the form the
tea-steam took, or walking “down” an “up” grade, or the tilt of the elevator
floor.

She wondered what she looked like herself: a grounder or —
what
did
the people on the station call themselves? Atlanteans?
Einsteinians? All the questions she wanted to ask tumbled over one another in
her mind.

“Well. Barbary. Hello.”

She started. Jeanne Velory gazed down at her, her expression
pleasant, neutral, cool.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Settling in all right?”

“Yes. Uh… thanks.

Heather nudged her. For the first three or four pokes in the
ribs, Barbary had no idea why. Finally she figured it out.

“Jeanne, um, Dr. Velory. This is Heather. My new sister.”

“How do you do, Heather.” Jeanne shook Heather’s small,
slender hand. “We never were introduced, the last time I was here.”

“No, I was just a kid then, anyway,” Heather said.

“Have you shown Barbary the station yet?”

“We haven’t had time. Tomorrow, I’m going to start.”

Barbary blushed on being reminded that she had turned down
Jeanne’s offer of a guided tour around
Outrigger
.

“I saw the observation bubble,” Barbary said. “In the
transport ship. I found it myself. I stayed in it a lot. Nobody else was ever
there.”

Jeanne frowned, hearing the defensiveness in Barbary’s
voice, but her expression softened.

“I’m glad you found it,” she said. “And you’re right, hardly
anyone else spent any time there. We wasted our time, instead. Arguing. We’d
have done a lot better to look at the stars.” She held out her hand to Heather
again, then to Barbary. “I hope you like it here.”

“Thanks,” Barbary said.

“Dr. Velory…”

A tall man in a grounder suit touched Jeanne’s shoulder. She
let him turn her away to introduce her to a whole group of people, who closed
in and cut her off from Barbary and Heather.

“You didn’t tell me you knew her!” Heather said.

“I don’t — we just sat next to each other on the shuttle.
She knew who you are, though.”

“Oh, yeah, big deal, everybody knows who I am, Heather the
first space-baby. Really tiresome. I tell you, Barbary, it’s great to have
somebody else on the station who’s under eighteen.” She grinned. “Let’s go get
some punch. Maybe they even have a buffet ... and you can give me a lesson in
sleight of hand.”

o0o

The reception was a great success, but for Barbary it
went on forever. Only when it began to break up did Heather think they could
leave without attracting attention. Barbary had assumed they would be able to
appear, then sneak off. Back on earth, no one ever cared if she disappeared.
But Heather’s absence would be noticed as much as her presence. Barbary began
to see some of the drawbacks of Heather’s life. She still envied her all the
years she had spent up here — but she could see the drawbacks.

Now she followed Heather through the crowd. It was thinner,
but still thick enough to make finding anyone a problem. Finally they saw
Yoshi.

“I’m getting kind of tired,” Heather said to him. “We’re
going to go on home.”

“That’s a good idea,” Yoshi said. “I’ll come with you.”

Heather gave Barbary an anxious glance. Barbary took care
not to react. She figured she had about one more chance at acting weird in
front of Yoshi before he decided she was seriously nuts. Besides, even if he
came back with them everything would be all right as long as he did not barge
into Heather’s room. And as long as Mick was not yowling at the top of his
lungs when they got there.

Barbary had succeeded in forgetting about the shrimp until
she started home. Just as the books on stage magic claimed, her ignoring
something had kept others from noticing it. But as soon as she got on the
elevator to the inner ring, she became uncomfortably aware of the damp handful
of crustaceans in her pocket. And she thought she could smell them, too. She
glanced sidelong at Yoshi, but he stared out at the stars, somewhere else
entirely.

“What’s that funny — Oh!” Heather stopped herself just as
Barbary elbowed her in the ribs. “Ow!”

“What’s the matter?” Yoshi was not too distracted to hear
the protest in Heather’s voice. “What’s wrong? Are you two fighting?”

“Fighting?” Heather said. “No — why would we fight?”

“I thought you said, ‘ow,’” Yoshi said to Heather, and to
Barbary he said, frowning, “and I thought you hit her.”

“Hit her!” Barbary said. “Why would I hit her?” She was
offended. She would never hit Heather. Elbowing somebody in the ribs was not
hitting them, and besides Heather was a lot smaller than she was. She had
barely nudged her, and that only to get her attention.

“She didn’t hit me!” Heather said, just as offended. “And I
said ‘oh’ — I was thinking about something.”

“I see,” Yoshi said.

Barbary knew that Yoshi meant the opposite. Of course he
could not see; how could he? She hoped he might put this whole day down to
tiredness and excitement, and let her start fresh in the morning.

The elevator stopped. They all got out and turned the
corner.

The door to Yoshi and Heather’s apartment stood ajar.

Somehow, Barbary managed to keep walking. Her knees felt
like oatmeal. Mick must have howled. Someone had heard him and found him and
taken him away.

“Hmm,” Yoshi said. “Thea must be here.” He strode on ahead.

Heather grabbed Barbary’s hand. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
“Thea wouldn’t have any reason to go in our room.”

They hurried after Yoshi.

He stood just inside the doorway, looking at a jumble of
delicate bits of machinery and electronics spread across the living room floor.
Heather stopped short. Barbary caught her breath.

Thea — Barbary assumed it was Thea — came out of Heather’s
room, leaving the door open.

Thea grinned. “Hi. You must be Barbary. Welcome to
Atlantis.” She waved something at Heather. “Heather, I borrowed your sticky
tape. Hope that’s okay.”

“Uh…” Heather said. “Yeah, sure, anytime.” Both she and
Barbary stared at the door.

Barbary expected Mick to come sauntering through the doorway
any second. But nothing happened.

Where is he? Barbary thought.

“Where’ve you all been?” Thea said, kneeling in the midst of
the contraption.

“At the reception.”

“The reception? Oh, lordy, the reception.” Thea sat on her
heels. “I thought that was Friday.”

“It is. So is today.”

Thea ran her hands over her light brown hair. A few strands
fell free and curled around her face. “I must be losing my mind. I thought
today was Wednesday.

“Thea, I’m worried about you,” Yoshi said.

“Worried? Why?”

“You’re usually only one day off.”

Barbary would have been offended if someone said that to
her. Thea took it in stride. Perhaps it was the truth.

“I wasn’t paying attention — I have to get this thing
finished. I need some floor space to put it together. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

Yoshi looked as if he had to decide whether to lose his
temper or laugh. He chose laughter.

“Of course it is,” he said. “And this way, I might even get
to see you once in a while.”

“Well,” Heather said cheerily, “We’ll leave you two alone.
Time for bed.” She grabbed Barbary by the hand, dragged her into the bedroom,
and closed the door.

On the foot of the upper bunk, Mick sat with his paws curled
under his chest. He blinked like an owl, and then he yawned.

Heather started to giggle.

“He must have been in the bookcase,” Barbary said. “And just
now come out —”

“Maybe,” Heather said. “But I bet he was right where he is
all along. Just watching the world go by.”

“But Thea —!”

“Watching Thea go by, too. You’ll really like her, when you
get to know her. She’s great. When she’s thinking about something, a bomb could
go off right beside her and she’d never even notice it.”