Barbary

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.

Chapter Seven

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.