Barbary

Barbary wanted to curse herself out at the top of her voice. It was her fault, not Thea’s, even if Thea had let him out. Barbary should have been more careful. She knew Thea came in and out of the apartment, lost in a fog of plans and calculations, leaving doors open as she passed.

Should she wake Heather? Mick could take care of himself. He would probably come waltzing home in ten minutes, maybe even carrying a big rat that was more or less dead. It was silly to worry about him, now that everyone knew he had permission to be here and a job to do. And Heather looked so tired...

The computer could track Mick by his collar. Heather knew how to get the information from the machine, and Barbary did not. But the computer was smart. Perhaps it would understand the question no matter who asked it.

She turned on her terminal and logged in.

Hi, she typed. Do you know where my cat is?

“What is your cat?” the computer said. Barbary jumped at the sound of the machine’s voice. “Can you hear me?” she said.

“I can hear you.”

She had forgotten the computer could speak — that it always spoke unless the user turned off the sound.

“My cat — Mick — was in the apartment but now he isn’t. He had on a collar with a radio in it. Jeanne said it would tell me where he is in the station.”

“I do not understand ‘cat,’ ‘Mick,’ or ‘collar,’ but I do understand ‘radio.’ Please wait while I obtain more information.”

The screen blinked into fancy patterns that changed like a kaleidoscope. After a minute the voice returned.

“I now understand ‘cat’ and ‘collar,’” she said — Barbary thought the voice sounded like a she — “but I cannot discover the meaning of ‘Mick.’”

“Mick is the cat’s name. It’s short for Mickey. Can you find him?”

“The transmitter has not yet been registered, so I am not currently tracking a frequency for Mick, a cat. However, finding an unregistered transmitter is possible. Please wait.”

Again the kaleidoscopes appeared. At first the pictures had been beautiful, but now Barbary wished she could make them stop and just get an answer to her question.

Several minutes passed, as the patterns became more colorful, before the voice returned.

“The unregistered transmitter is not in the station.”

“But it has to be! Maybe he got out of his collar somehow…?”

She stopped, realizing that the transmitter would still transmit, even if it were not still attached to Mick.

For a minute Barbary thought she was going to cry. All she could think was that Mick must have gotten himself in such a bad place that his collar had been destroyed.

“Did you look everywhere?” she asked.

“Yes,” the computer said. “And I find no unregistered transmitter on the station.”

“But you have to!”

“It is outside the station.”

“Outside? How could it be outside? Where?”

“The transmission corresponds to the position of a raft that is heading away from the station.”

Then Barbary knew what had happened.

o0o

Barbary ran down the hall and punched at the controls of the elevator. By the time it arrived, she was about to go looking for the stairs, despite the distance to the hub. When the doors slid open, she plunged inside, still panting. She hit the control for top level, the nearest to the center, the hub, and grabbed a handhold to steady herself against the tilt.

The elevator halted and she rushed out.

She propelled herself off the floor and into the air. Tumbling and struggling, she managed to grab a strap. She thudded against the wall and bounced to a halt. Here she had no weight, but she still had momentum, and ramming into the wall hurt. When her balance returned, she grabbed the next handhold, and the next, and crawled toward the launch chamber. However much she wanted to run, she would have to move — to sly — smoothly and carefully. As she was about to enter the raft chamber, she heard voices, arguing. She stopped herself and listened, too desperate even to be embarrassed about eavesdropping.

“I tell you I didn’t know about the message!” Thea shouted. “If you’d announced it when it first came in — if it weren’t for this infernal secrecy —”

“You should have known better,” the vice president replied.

“This is a research station, I’m an astronomer. I’m supposed to be doing research.”

“It’s quite possible that you’ve committed a diplomatic faux pas in the most important meeting since… since… the beginning of history!”

“All right, dammit,” Thea said. “I’ve already turned it around. What more do you want?”

Barbary peeked around the doorjamb. The vice president sat in one of the skating chairs that transported novices in free fall. His two bodyguards clung to straps. Thea and Yukiko floated nearby, studying a display.

“Besides,” Thea said, grumbling, “‘Please do not approach us’? What the hell does that mean? We aren’t approaching them. It’s just a drone with a camera. If they’re so advanced, they can tell it doesn’t have any artificial intelligence, and there’s nobody in it.”

But there is! Barbary thought. Mick’s in there — he’s got to be!