Barbary

Chapter Thirteen

The alien ship drew the raft closer, growing larger and larger till its expanse of incomprehensible shapes stretched as far as Barbary could see.

Trembling, she hugged Heather. She wrapped her jacket around her sister’s shoulders, trying to keep her warm. The raft slid between two irregular projections from the alien ship’s hull: a spire taller than any building on earth, covered with delicate strands and symbols, and a wavy, faceted shape resembling the crystals that form around a string suspended in a supersaturated solution of sugar and water.

Roof first, Barbary’s raft floated toward a wide black slash in the ship’s hull. If she did not keep telling herself she was going “up,” she felt as if she were falling, upside down and in slow motion.

Intense darkness closed in around her.

The raft’s control panel spread a ghostly light on Heather’s pale face and Barbary’s hands. She heard the echo of Mick’s plaintive miaow, and the feathery whisper of Heather’s breath.

A faint chime rang, growing louder and closer. Barbary blinked, trying to figure out if she only imagined light outside the raft, or if she were seeing a glow as gentle as dawn. The ringing reached a pleasant level and remained there, while the light brightened till Barbary could see. She had weight as well, but she had not noticed when the gravity appeared. She felt as if she weighed as much as she did on earth, and this increased her concern for Heather.

Her raft hung in a round room whose surface glistened like mother-of-pearl. The columns supporting the ceiling looked like frozen waterfalls or translucent pillars of melted glass. She searched for the opening that had let her in, but it had closed or sealed itself up. From the wind-chime sound transmitted to her through the raft’s body, she decided she must be surrounded by an atmosphere, but she did not know if it was oxygen or — as Heather had speculated — methane or cyanide. She had no way to tell whether it was safe to breathe, or poisonous.

Mick miaowed again, louder.

“It’s okay, Mick,” she said. She swallowed hard, trying to steady her voice. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Do you hear us?”

The radio spoke with the beautiful voice of the alien’s first message to Atlantis.

“Yes,” she whispered, her throat dry. “Can you hear me?”

“We sense you. Will you meet us?”

“I want to. I really do,” Barbary said. “But I have to get Heather into zero g and back to the space station. She’s sick and I can’t wake her up. The gravity’s too strong for her here. Besides, all the important people are waiting to meet you, and they’ll be really angry if I see you first.”

“But,” the voice said, “you have already seen us.”

Barbary stared around the chamber, looking for creatures, great ugly things like the aliens in old movies, or small furry things like the aliens in books. They must be hiding behind the tall glass pillars.

The gravity faded till it was barely enough to give Barbary’s surroundings a “down” and an “up.”

“Is this gravity more comfortable for you?”

“Yes,” Barbary said. “Thanks.”

“We believed we calibrated your gravity correctly.”

“You did,” Barbary said. “At least it felt okay to me. But Heather… Heather has to live in lower gravity. Won’t you let us go? She’s sick! Anyway, I can’t see you —” She stopped, amazed.

Though she had not seen them move, the crystal columns had come closer. They clustered around her. Their rigid forms remained upright, yet they gave the impression of bending down like a group of worried aunts or friendly trees. A long row of crystalline fibers grew along the side of each column. The fibers quivered rapidly, vibrating against and stroking the main body of each being, producing the wind-chime voices.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. I do see you. You’re beautiful!”

“We will loose your craft if you wish,” the voice on the radio said. “But our ship will reach your habitat before your vessel could fly to it, and here the gravity can be controlled.”

“Can you hurry? I’m really worried about Heather.”

“We will hurry.”

Barbary listened to Heather’s rapid, irregular heartbeat.

“Can’t you help her?” she said to the aliens. She remembered all the movies she had seen where people got hurt and aliens healed them. “Can’t you make her well? Aliens are supposed to be able to make people well!”

“But we have only just met you,” one of the aliens said, perplexed and regretful. “We know little of your physiology. Perhaps in a few decades, if you wish us to study you…”

Barbary thought she should have learned by now not to expect anything to work the way it did in books or movies. She leaned over Heather again, willing her to awaken.

Heather’s eyelids fluttered.

“Barbary…?”

Heather opened her eyes. She sounded weak, confused, and tired.

“It’s okay, Heather. Anyway, I think it is — what about you?”

“I feel kind of awful. What happened?”

“We’re on the alien ship.”

A spark of excitement brought some of the color back to her sister’s cheeks. She struggled to a sitting position.

“Are there aliens?” Heather whispered. She was shivering. Barbary chafed her cold hands and helped her put on the jacket.

“There are other beings,” the gentle voice said. “We hope not to be alien, one to the other, for very long. Will you meet us?”

“Can we breathe your air?” Heather hugged the jacket around her.

“It is not our air. We do not use air. It is your air. You should find it life-sustaining, uninfectious, and sufficiently warm to maintain you.”

Barbary gingerly cracked the seal of the roof-hatch. Warm, fresh air filled the raft. Heather took a deep breath. Her shivering eased.

“If you join us,” a voice said, no longer from the radio but from one of the crystalline beings, “then we may rotate your vehicles and release the small person in the lower craft. It does not respond to our communications in an intelligible fashion, and it appears to be quite perturbed.”

Barbary could not help it: she laughed. Heather managed to smile. Barbary picked her up — her weight was insignificant in this gravity — and carried her from the raft. The aliens made a spot among them for her; they slid across the mother-of-pearl floor as if, like starfish, they had thousands of tiny sucker-feet at their bases. The floor gave off a comforting warmth. Barbary laid Heather on the yielding surface.

“I’m okay, I really am,” Heather said. She tried to sit up, but she was still weak. Barbary helped her, letting Heather lean back against her. Heather gazed at the aliens. “Holy cow.”

Mick’s furry form hurtled across the space between the rafts and Barbary. He landed against her with all four feet extended and stopped himself by hooking his claws into her shirt. Somehow he managed to do it without touching her skin with his claws. He burrowed his head against her, and she wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his soft fur.

“Boy, Mick,” she whispered, “did you cause a lot of trouble.”

She looked at the beings, who had rotated the rafts and opened the hatch of Mick’s with no help from her. They could have opened up her craft and plucked her and Heather out like peas from a pod, if they had wanted to.

“Aren’t you mad?” she asked.

“Our psychology differs from what we understand of yours, but we believe you would consider us sane.”

“I didn’t mean mad-crazy. I meant mad-angry. We didn’t mean to bother you, but we had to rescue Mick.”

“We comprehend this. We are not mad-angry,” the nearest being said. “How could we rouse ourselves to anger over actions taken in distress?”

“Then how come you asked us not to approach you when you first called us?”

“When a species advances beyond a certain point, it must be introduced to civilization. Otherwise it would discover galactic society, and the rules of galactic society, in a random way. This might cause it shock. Yet even when a people has reached a technological position of adequacy, it may not be ready in the psychological sense to meet other beings. We have found, through experience, that meeting new citizens is easier for them if they are in a large group of their own people. Then their fear of other beings, their xenophobia — which is inevitable in some degree — is acute. In this case, however, we recognized an emergency.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever approached you before?”

“Yes,” the being said. “Several times. But always with the aim of conquest or attack.”

“What did you do to them?”

“We showed them the futility of violence. Oftentimes disarming the aggressor is sufficient, though sometimes their aggression must be turned back upon them.”

Barbary decided to leave questions on that subject till later. She wondered if she was ready to find out all the things the beings could do if they had to.

But Heather felt braver, despite her pallor.

“What rules did you mean?”

“The rules that, beyond your own planet, you may create, but you may not destroy. You may observe, but you may not interfere.”

Those rules sounded reasonable to Barbary. They sounded like what any sensible person would try to do.

“A lot of people won’t like those rules,” Heather said, her expression troubled. “They’ll want to break them.”

“They will be persuaded to comply. There is no choice.”

Heather leaned against Barbary, thoughtful and solemn. Barbary tried to think of something to say.

Mick changed the subject for her. He had stopped burrowing into her armpit. He curled against her, purring and watching. Now he squirmed out of her arms and leaped into the air, coming down and bouncing ten meters away. He stalked up to one of the beings and sniffed its base — its feet? — then rubbed against its side. His fur stroking the crystal surface made an electric, musical note. The beings swiveled toward him, fascinated.

“What a delightful feeling!” said the one that Mick had touched, “What a fine song the small person has invented.”

“He’s pretty inventive all right,” Barbary said.

“I do not wish to ask a rude question,” one of the beings said, “But why is the small person permitted to operate the vehicle? The controls have not been adapted to him.”

“Um, that’s a long story,” Barbary said.

“We love long stories. They help pass the time of travel between the stars.”

Heather drew herself back from her troubled reverie. “How long have you been traveling?” she asked.

“About a billion of your years.”

“Your people have had space travel for a billion years?”

“Oh, no, we have had space travel for a time an order of magnitude longer: for ten billion of your years. I thought you meant to ask how long we here had been exploring the stars.

“Ten billion years of star travel,” Heather said. “You must be the oldest intelligent species in the universe.”

“We have not found any older, but we search, and hope.”

Heather stared at the beings in awe. “No wonder you like long stories.” She tried to smile. “Barbary, you can show them magic tricks.”

“Magic? You have begun to use technology… yet you believe in magic?”

“Not real magic, that’s just what it’s called.” Barbary tried to think of a quick way to explain, but gave up. “Um, it’s another long story.”

“How excellent,” the being said. “We will look forward to hearing it.”

“I’m Barbary,” Barbary said, remembering her manners, “and this is Heather, my sister. And the — the small person is Mickey.”

“We do not have names, as you know them,” one of the beings said. “Each of us forms impressions of all others, and refers to the individual by the position in the image.”

“That sounds complicated,” Barbary said

“Not as complicated as recalling so many individual designations,” the crystal being said. “Without a pattern, how do you tell each other apart?”

Barbary, who had been trying to fix in her mind the variations between the beings so she could remember each one’s name — if they had had names to tell her — looked over at Heather. They both burst out laughing.

The delicate filaments on each being quivered and twined, and multitudes of wind-chime voices rang. At first Barbary wondered if she had hurt their feelings by laughing, and then she believed the beings were laughing along with her.

“Another ship is approaching,” the musical voice said. “The beings within appear to be… quite perturbed.”

“They don’t know what’s happened to us,” Heather said. “They probably think we’ve been swallowed up.”

“As indeed you have.”

“To be eaten, I mean.”

“No. We do not ingest organic molecules. Will you speak with them?”

“Can we? Please?” Heather said. “My father will be worried.”

“Should we?” Barbary said.

“Of course we should!” Heather said. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe if they worry about us a little more, they won’t be so mad at us when we go back.”

“If they’re going to be mad, they’re going to be mad,” Heather said. “I don’t want Yoshi to be worried anymore and I don’t want anybody out there to do anything that the other beings might think they need to be shown is futile.”

“Okay,” Barbary said.

“Would you like to speak to them now?”

“Yes, please,” Heather said.

“They will hear you.”

Barbary saw no radio equipment, no change in the chamber to indicate a transmitter.

“Hi, this is Heather,” Heather said to the air.

“Heather!” Yoshi said. “Are you all right? What about Barbary?”

“I’m okay.”

“So am I,” Barbary said. “And so is Mick.”

“What’s happening in there?” Jeanne asked.

Barbary looked at Heather, who gazed back at her and smiled.

“We’re with the — the beings in the starship,” Barbary said. “They’re bringing us home.”