Barbary

She followed Heather into the bathroom and found out where they kept the aspirin. Barbary gulped a couple down.

“You ought to rest your eyes in between staring at the screen,” Heather said. “Like if you’re thinking about how you want to write something, you should close your eyes, or look at something way on the other side of the room.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“That way you can keep going about as long as you want.”

Barbary hoped she would not have to spend all day every day at the computer. Heather had been engrossed in whatever she was doing. It was probably so far ahead of whatever Barbary knew that Barbary would not even be able to understand an explanation, much less the subject.

“Why don’t you lie down for a little while?” Heather said. “That’ll make the headache go away.”

“I will if you will.”

“I guess I ought to,” Heather said.

When they returned to the living room, Thea had uncovered her contraption.

“Hi, Thea. How’s it going?”

“Oh, it’s nearly finished,” Thea said. “I’m checking the braces, to be sure it’ll fit into a raft. I’m going to try it out in a little while.”

“Hey, neat,” Heather said. “Can we help?”

“There’s not that much to do,” Thea said. “But sure, you’re welcome to come along when I take it out.”

Mick strolled over and climbed into her lap.

“Nice kitty,” Thea said, scratching him under the chin. “You are a nice kitty, but the last thing I need is cat hair in my lenses.”

Thea picked him up and offered him to Barbary, holding him behind the front legs so his paws stuck out in front of him. He bristled his whiskers and looked about to growl. Barbary rescued him.

“We’ll take him into our room with us,” she said. In a low voice, to Heather, she said, “Pretty soon you better show me how to keep track of him so I can let him out.”

“That’ll only take a second,” Heather said, delighted to have an excuse to put off her afternoon nap a few minutes longer. “Let’s do it right now!”

As she headed back to her computer, the call-signal chimed. Heather accepted the message:

“General announcement regarding the alien craft. Main meeting room. Immediately.”

“Wow!” Heather said. “Let’s go! Thea, did you hear? There’s an announcement about the alien ship!”

Thea looked up, frowning and startled.

“An announcement?”

“Yeah, down in the main meeting room. Want to come with us?”

Thea hesitated. “No,” she said. “I want to finish here. I’ll be along later.”

“Okay, bye, come on, Barbary!”

Heather headed for the door. Barbary took just enough time to put Mick in the bedroom.

“You be good,” she said. “When I come back, you can go out.” She hurried after Heather.

Chapter Eleven

People filled the hallways around the main meeting room. It was even more crowded than the reception for Jeanne. Barbary and Heather ducked around and between people, till they managed to get inside. They could not see anything, even standing on tiptoe, and though most of the adults around them gave them sympathetic looks, the crowd packed the room far too full for anyone to let them nearer the front.

“Thank you for coming.”

Jeanne Velory’s soft, powerful voice radiated from the speakers.

“Several hours ago, we detected a change in the alien ship’s path,” Jeanne said. “The change was the result of a deliberate application of acceleration.” She paused. “Soon thereafter, we received a radio transmission.”

The silence crumbled into chaos. Barbary imagined Jeanne at the front of the room, quiet and patient, not trying to speak above the clamor or shout anyone down, just waiting until the crowd fell silent.

“A transmission!” Heather shouted. “Holy cats, it’s aliens! Can you believe it?”

“She hasn’t said what it is we’re supposed to be believing, yet,” Barbary said.

Five minutes passed before the chaos settled enough for Jeanne to speak.

“The transmission is quite simple. It arrived in a large number of languages.”

She turned on a recording, and the words flowed over the crowd. Barbary did not understand the first language, nor the second, but quite a few other people did, because they began to murmur to each other.

The crystalline clarity of the voice made Barbary want to sob. She did not know why, except that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard in her life.

“Greetings,” it said, when it began speaking in English. “We come in peace to welcome you into civilization. Please do not approach us, but wait for our arrival.”

It changed languages still again. The voice’s beauty continued to increase, as if it were singing.

When the final translation ended, some of the people in the room were crying. Barbary let out the breath she had been holding.

“The alien ship has begun to decelerate,” Jeanne said, “at a rate that would be difficult for our technology to match or for humans to tolerate. It will not, as we previously believed, cross the earth’s orbit and pass us at high speed. Instead, if it continues decelerating, it will reach zero relative velocity a few thousand kilometers from Atlantis.”