Barbary

Chapter Two

The seconds display on the clock flicked along as if time were speeding up. Neither of the other two passengers had arrived.

“They can’t leave without me,” Barbary said.

“I’m afraid they can,” Mr. Smith said. “So let’s go home.”

“But I’m right here, and they’re taking off with an empty place.”

“There’s nothing to be done about it, Barbary. These things happen. Come along, now.”

He took her arm. She jumped up and tried to pull away.

“It’s stupid!” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense! It’s — it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money!” Even as she said it she knew how ridiculous it sounded, though it was perfectly true.

“You’re right,” someone behind her said.

Mr. Smith looked up. Startled, Barbary turned. Jeanne Velory stood in the entrance tunnel, leaning out with her hands against its sides.

“You’re right,” she said again to Barbary. “Come on, let’s go.

Mr. Smith was so surprised that his grip on Barbary’s arm loosened. She pulled away. Dr. Velory grinned and disappeared into the tunnel. Barbary grabbed her duffel bag and sprinted after her, without a backward look.

She had to run to keep up. The secret pocket jounced. She bent slightly sideways to try to hold it still.

At the elevator, Dr. Velory stopped and waited, holding the door for her. “Are you okay? Do you have a stitch in your side?”

“No,” Barbary said, then, “well, yeah, I guess.”

Dr. Velory let the doors close. The elevator lifted them past several rows of seats, then stopped. Doors on each side opened. The vice president and one of his bodyguards sat on the left. The vice president read a newspaper and the bodyguard watched for assassins.

Dr. Velory gestured to the right, to the last empty seats. Because the shuttle had to sit on its tail for liftoff, the place that would have been the floor in a regular airplane formed a vertical surface, like a wall leading up between the passenger seats, which lay flat back in the horizontal position necessary for liftoff.

Barbary slid across and into her place. The elevator fell away, then its shaft retracted. It was part of the launch facility, not part of the spacecraft. After delivering the passengers to their places, it withdrew behind the safety of walls of concrete. The doors of the shuttle bay closed, sealing the passengers safely inside.

Barbary looked around. One of the bodyguards watched her from across the aisle.

“That was pretty risky, Dr. Velory.”

“Not nearly as risky as having Reston and Kartoff arguing over one seat,” she said.

Instead of responding to her joke, he frowned. “Just what we need right now on the station — a kid.”

“She’ll be a good deal less out of place,” Dr. Velory said, her voice soft and cool, “than the Secret Service.”

The vice president remained hidden behind his newspaper as the bodyguard started to retort.

The second bodyguard leaned toward them from the next row down. “Why don’t you lighten up, Frank?”

Frank glared at him, too, then snorted in annoyance and lay back in his seat with his arms folded.

Dr. Velory reached over and strapped Barbary in. Barbary had to squirm to keep the secret pocket free of the harness. She could see the bulge, but she hoped all the outside pockets would conceal it from everyone else.

“That’s a terrific jacket,” Dr. Velory said to Barbary.

Barbary felt the blood rising to her cheeks, in embarrassment and fear of being found out. “Thanks,” she said.

“You won’t really need it on the station, but I can see why you like it.”

Barbary was too flustered to say anything.

“What’s your name?”

“Barbary.”

“I’m Jeanne.”

“I know,” Barbary said hesitantly. “Thanks. For getting me on board.”

“It was self-preservation. Reston and Kartoff are always competing, and I’m right next to the ecological niche they both would have wanted.”

The ship vibrated all around them.

“Are we starting?”

“Not quite yet. A few more minutes. It’s easiest if you can relax — I know that sounds hard.”

“How many times have you gone into space?”

“Oh, goodness, I don’t know. I’ve lost track. A couple of dozen, I suppose.”

But on one of her trips into space she commanded the Ares mission, the mission that sent people to Mars. The year Ares launched itself from low earth orbit, Barbary was only six, so she barely remembered it. But she remembered very clearly when it came back three years later. The Ares astronauts returned with samples of Martian life, the organisms that all the robot missions had missed.

“Are you emigrating to one of the O’Neill colonies?”

“No,” Barbary said. She had never before felt in awe of anyone she had actually met. But the scientist sitting beside her had been, with her shipmates, farther from earth than anyone else in the world. She had walked on another planet, not just the moon, but Mars.

“No,” Barbary said again, embarrassed that her voice sounded shaky. “I’m going to the same place you are, to Einstein, to the research station.” But I’m just going there to live, she thought. Not to be in charge of everything.

“Oh,” Jeanne said. “You’ll be a member of our interesting little tour group, then.”

“They’re all going to Einstein? For a tour? If that’s the only reason, why weren’t there any cameras or reporters when they left?”

Jeanne gazed at her for several moments without answering. She was silent for so long that Barbary wondered if she had said something wrong.

“You might as well know now,” Jeanne said. “Everybody off earth already does. We’re a greeting party, I think. I hope. Maybe an archeological expedition. Something entered the solar system about a year ago. At first we thought it was just a comet. But it isn’t. It’s an alien ship.”

“An alien ship!” Barbary thought of three questions all at the same time. “No — where — how come nobody’s told us about them?”

Jeanne smiled. “We don’t know where they’re from, and I agree that it’s dumb for it to be kept a secret. The council thinks everybody will be frightened, and maybe that’s true. But they’re going to have to know sooner or later. I go along with the people who think sooner would be better, so we’d all have time to get used to the idea.”

“What do they look like?”

Jeanne shrugged. “We don’t know. They haven’t responded to any of our radio transmissions. They aren’t transmitting in any mode we know how to detect. Maybe they aren’t ready to talk to us or show themselves to us yet. Maybe they’re waiting to see how we react to their ship. Or maybe there isn’t anybody on board. A lot of people think the ship’s a derelict. I don’t believe it, myself. But it could have been floating around in the universe for millions of years, with nobody left inside. That’s part of the trouble with announcing that it’s there — I’ve just told you about all there is to tell about it. People will want to know more. I sure do.”

“Are you going out to it?”

“If I can persuade the council to send a ship,” Jeanne said, “you can bet I’ll be on it.”

The faint vibrations of the shuttle increased.

“Remember what I told you about liftoff,” Jeanne said. “Relax. Take slow deep breaths, then exhale slowly.”

Barbary inched her hand sideways till it lay over the secret pocket. Then she realized how much her hand would weigh when the acceleration reached its height, so she jerked her fingers away again.

The sound increased suddenly.

The shuttle lifted off.

Acceleration pressed Barbary into her seat.

Barbary had dreamed of riding the shuttle since she first realized that people were inside that little ship attached to its ungainly fuel tanks, blasting away so beautifully and with such speed and power. She had read every description of space travel that she could find; she had imagined how this would be. But she had not imagined enough.

She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry. Then all her thoughts were overwhelmed by the liftoff, the acceleration, the incredible noise. Though the forces of acceleration pressing her down did not hurt, it seemed as though she could count each individual lock of hair clamped between the seat back and her scalp, as though she could feel each ridge of her fingerprints pressed against the armrests.

Suddenly the acceleration and the sound stopped and she felt completely weightless: she took a moment to realize that she really was in zero gravity, not simply relieved of the extra weight of acceleration. Before she could move, the second set of fuel tanks ignited.

The brief instant of weightlessness blended with the acceleration. One seemed hardly any different from the other, they were both so strange to her.

The vibration and noise of the engines cut off. In the intense quiet, Barbary could hardly tell if the sound in her ears was her heartbeat or the echo of the rocket. She lay very still.

She was in space.

“Feel all right?”

“Yes, I…” Barbary said, then stopped, uncertain. This time weightlessness was more than a lurch and an instant’s change. She had thought she knew what to expect: “A long ride down in a fast elevator,” someone had written. But it was more than that; and it continued. Barbary wondered if anyone could describe it. She would have plenty of time to try. From now on, where she intended to live, gravity would be the artificial condition and free fall the natural one.

“Are you sure?” Jeanne sounded worried.

“I had to decide,” Barbary said. “Yes. I like it. It’s great.”

Jeanne grinned. “Good.”

Once the ship reached orbit, the couches no longer lay horizontal. The floor no longer extended up and down like a wall, but it did not lie “beneath” Barbary, either. There was no “up” or “down,” no “beneath” or “above.” Barbary found that depending on how she looked at anything she could give it a different orientation, as if she were inside a tremendous optical illusion.

“It all takes a while to get used to,” Jeanne said. “Excuse me a minute — I want to introduce myself to someone.” She unfastened her harness and pushed herself into the aisle. Free and graceful, she drifted a few seats ahead and paused beside Ambassador Begay. She said something in a language Barbary had never heard. The elderly diplomat glanced up at Jeanne, startled, then smiled and replied in what must have been the same language. She extended her hand, and Jeanne shook it gently. They talked for a few more minutes, then Jeanne smiled and nodded and with one easy push floated back to Barbary.

“I always wanted to meet her,” Jeanne said. “I hope there’s time to talk to her some more, up on the station.”

Barbary realized, with surprise, that Jeanne felt as much admiration for the secretary-general as Barbary did for Jeanne.

“What language was that?” Barbary asked.

“Navaho. It was a requirement in grad school. It’s so different from English, particularly in the way it deals with time, that it helps you understand advanced physics. I’m afraid my accent is pretty terrible, though. Say, Barbary, would you like to get up?”

“Sure!” Barbary said, then almost took it back because of the secret pocket. But she could slip out of her jacket and leave it tucked under the harness. Ever since she could remember, she had dreamed of floating in zero gravity, of flying, of freedom.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Frank, the bodyguard, had only been pretending to ignore them.

“Yes,” Jeanne said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I do.”

Jeanne freed the catches of Barbary’s harness. Barbary drifted away from the comforting solidity of the seat. She glanced back to be sure she had pushed the sleeves of her jacket between the cushion and the arm rests. The action of turning produced a reaction that sent her tumbling, out of reach of anything. Laughing, Jeanne caught her.

“Slowly,” she said. “Everything slowly and gently. That’s the thing to remember, at least till you get used to it. Then you’re less likely to make a mistake, and even if you do, you have time to correct it before you fly across the room and run into a wall.”

“Let me try again.”

Jeanne drew her to a handhold, let go, and floated backward a few meters along the aisle.

“Push off toward me.”

Jeanne did not seem to mind being watched by the other passengers. Most of them looked on with interest, though Frank glowered.

Barbary kicked off toward Jeanne — wrong again: much too hard, much too fast. She flew across the compartment, soaring past the other passengers. Jeanne caught her again. Barbary felt embarrassed.

“It takes a while to get the hang of it,” Jeanne said. “Can you swim?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“You can get around that way, though not very fast.” She backstroked down the aisle, but with both arms moving together, instead of alternately.

Barbary began to be able to make the direction she decided was “down” stay where she put it, in her mind. But if she thought about her surroundings in a slightly different way, suddenly she would lose “down” and feel as though she was diving scarily toward a floor. It was easier, she found, to think of all the surfaces as walls.

“One more time,” Jeanne said, turning toward her.

Barbary steadied herself, aware of everyone watching her. The friendlier bodyguard watched with curiosity, maybe even with some envy. Barbary wondered if he had ever been in space before.

Then suddenly Barbary saw her jacket drifting free above her seat. She leaped to catch it. She arched across the cabin. People shouted and ducked. Her shoulder hit the wall. She bounced back, tumbling. Flailing to regain her balance, she cartwheeled across the compartment. She heard a shouted warning. The toe of her shoe caught the vice president’s newspaper and tore it from his hands. With a rattling, ripping sound it wrapped itself around her legs. The second bodyguard tried to catch her, but she was moving too fast. She hit the wall with her other shoulder and rebounded. For a moment she looked straight into the surprised face of the vice president, who still held one shred of newspaper in each hand. She spun away. The face of the second bodyguard flashed by. He had crinkly lines around his eyes as if he were struggling not to laugh.

Jeanne, braced against the wall with her foot hooked through a handhold, caught Barbary and held her. As soon as she had stopped, the shuttle started to spin around her and for the first time she felt nauseated. She closed her eyes. Both her shoulders ached. To her surprise, she had managed to grab her jacket and keep hold of it. She clutched it tight.

“I told you this was a mistake!” Frank snarled.

Jeanne ignored him. “Barbary, are you okay? You took a couple of nasty bumps.”

“Yeah,” Barbary said. The shakiness of her voice surprised her. “I think so.” She opened her eyes. Things had stopped spinning. “That was dumb,” she said. “That was really dumb.” She glanced toward the vice president. Her face burned with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said. She unwrapped the ruined newspaper from her foot and held it out to him. The quiet bodyguard took it from her and suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter. His laugh was more like a giggle. Barbary felt another wave of embarrassment rise across her face. Shreds of newspaper floated around the vice president like a halo, and Frank snatched at them, still scowling. The vice president opened his hands. The last pieces of paper floated away.

“Well, never mind,” he said to Barbary. “But do try not to do it again.”

“It really is okay,” Jeanne said. “Wait till you hear some of the stuff I did before I was used to it.”

She swooped to their seats. “Easy, now, right this way. Relax, and just a touch...”

Barbary put her feet against the ceiling, held tight to her jacket, and pushed off very, very gently. She moved so slowly she was afraid she would stop before she got across the space between her and Jeanne, but she reached out, being very careful, and Jeanne grasped her fingers.

“Perfect!” The other passengers applauded. Doubly embarrassed, Barbary ducked down in her seat.