Barbary

Barbary rose and walked to the tunnel, lugging her duffel bag. She hesitated at the entrance, then plunged inside. The weight of the secret pocket bumped gently against her side. She kept herself from looking down to see if the lump showed. She knew it did not. Even if it did, it was too late now.

She got as far as the elevator. She had hoped that the one attendant took passengers all the way to their seats, and that she could get on board in between Jack’s trips. Trying to stow away on a spaceship would be dumb, apart from being dangerous and probably impossible, but Barbary had a ticket for her seat and she hoped that maybe, just maybe, if she got inside, they would let her stay rather than making all the fuss of putting her off.

But another spaceport employee waited at the elevator. Barbary pulled out her ticket and offered it up. The agent took it, slid it through the sensor, and nodded at the readout.

“Your ticket’s all right,” she said, “but where’s Jack?”

“He said to go on,” Barbary said.

“He’s supposed to bring you himself.”

Barbary shrugged as pleasantly as she could. Since she had no idea what emergency might call Jack away, it made a lot more sense for her not to try to make one up. “He said just come on.”

The agent touched a key on the sensor and glanced at the read-out again. “There are still three people ahead of you on the reservation list, and only two seats. There isn’t any change there.”

Barbary held herself back from snapping “I’ve been bumped twice already,” and said instead, “He said to get on board.”

She heard footsteps behind her. She had lost her gamble.

The footsteps stopped. Jack cleared his throat. With her shoulders slumped, Barbary turned around.

The passenger accompanying Jack would take up the next to last seat. Barbary glared at her, but her anger changed to astonishment when she recognized the astronaut Jeanne Velory. The tall woman carried a scuffed briefcase and a small backpack. Her short curly hair was so dark it sparkled, and her eyes were deep green, the color of a pine forest. She was even more striking than photographs and news tapes hinted. She gazed down quizzically.

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!”