Barbary (2 page)

Jack frowned. “Go back to the waiting room and sit down,” he
said with some asperity. “Or go home and wait for the next liftoff.”

Humiliated and furious, fighting tears again, Barbary pushed
past him. She refused to cry, and she refused to leave. In the waiting room she
flung herself into a chair and tried to think.

“Barbary.”

She started. She had not heard Mr. Smith come back in. The
social worker stood over her, looking down with his perpetually sad expression.
He never acted happy or excited about anything. Only sad.

“We might as well go. I’m afraid you’re not going to get on
this flight, either.”

“There’s one more seat.”

“I know. But it’s reserved. In fact it’s reserved for two
different people, and they don’t know what to do about that.”

“Kick both the others off and give me the place. It’s mine!
It isn’t fair!”

“Perhaps not,” he said. “But there’s a meeting at the
station. They have to transport the participants.”

“And they figure somebody who’s only twelve years old
doesn’t have anything better to do, anyway, except sit here waiting.”

He blinked his sad brown eyes. “If you want to look at it
that way, I’m afraid that’s quite true. But I’d advise you to accept the delay
gracefully. You’ve caused us all considerable worry, with your stubbornness and
your running away.”

“I didn’t run away!” Barbary said. “I had to find a new home
for Mickey!” If he stopped believing what she had told him, everything was
ruined.

“You risked your emigrant status. You should have sent that
cat to the pound.”

“You…”

She stopped herself in time. She wanted to swear at him, to
scream and curse. She could do it, too. She knew words he had probably never
heard of, and she knew how to use them. Up to a couple of months ago, she would
have. But Barbary had recently noticed that civilized people did not swear, and
that they looked down on people who did. If she wanted to live on the research
station, if she wanted her new family to let her stay and to have some regard
for her, she had to learn to behave like a civilized person.

Instead of cussing Mr. Smith out, she glared at him and turned
her back.

“I know you’re eager to get to your new home,” Mr. Smith
said. “But you ought to look on the delay as an opportunity. You might not be
back on earth for years. You have a chance to look at things for the last time,
and see things you’ve never seen before…”

“There’s nothing I want to see again and nothing I want to
see for the first time, not here. I want to leave and I don’t care if I never
come back!”

He hesitated, as if shocked by her determination. “Well,” he
said, “all right. But you aren’t going to be able to leave today. Let’s go
home.” He took her wrist.

Barbary twisted her hand from his grasp. “I’m staying right
here till they let me on or lift off without me. And if they go without me I
may stay here anyhow!”

On the TV screen, the shuttle prepared to launch. It had to
take off within a specific period of time, during the launch window. When those
few minutes had passed and the shuttle lifted off, Barbary’s last chance would
vanish in the trail of the rockets.

Jack came out of the tunnel. He walked through the waiting
room quickly, without looking at Barbary.

“There’s one seat left,” she said as he reached the door.

He stood very still with his shoulders hunched and stiff.
After a moment he faced her

“Now, see here —!” He cut off the words and began again,
though he still sounded angry. “You aren’t going to get on this flight.”

“Kick off those bodyguards. Then there’ll be room for
everybody.”

“I can’t do that.”

“The ship can’t wait much longer,” Barbary said with
desperation. “We’re already into the launch window. Let me get on. Tell the
pilot to take off and tell the people who’re coming that they’re too late.
Everybody knows you can’t delay a shuttle like any old airplane. Then you won’t
have to try to figure out which one of them to give the seat to.”

Jack not only looked tempted, he looked as if he were about
to grin. But he shook his head. “I don’t have the authority.”

“Then who does?” Barbary cried.

He left the room, not even looking back.

“Barbary, please sit down,” Mr. Smith said. “Relax. I can’t
understand why you’re so upset. Be reasonable. It isn’t going to hurt you to
wait for the next shuttle.”

“Yes it is! I have to —!” She stopped, afraid she had
already said too much, afraid she had aroused his suspicions. She was on her
feet, clutching her silver coin till its smooth worn edge cut into her palm.
She did not even remember standing up. Holding back tears of rage and
frustration, she obeyed Mr. Smith’s request. She did not know what she was
going to do if she had to wait for another liftoff. She feared she would have
to choose between abandoning her chance to emigrate and breaking a promise that
meant as much to her as her dreams.

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.