Barbary

“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.