Barbary (3 page)

The vibration and noise of the engines cut off. In the
intense quiet, Barbary could hardly tell if the sound in her ears was her
heartbeat or the echo of the rocket. She lay very still.

She was in space.

“Feel all right?”

“Yes, I…” Barbary said, then stopped, uncertain. This time
weightlessness was more than a lurch and an instant’s change. She had thought
she knew what to expect: “A long ride down in a fast elevator,” someone had
written. But it was more than that; and it continued. Barbary wondered if
anyone
could
describe it. She would have plenty of time to try. From now
on, where she intended to live, gravity would be the artificial condition and
free fall the natural one.

“Are you sure?” Jeanne sounded worried.

“I had to decide,” Barbary said. “Yes. I like it. It’s
great.”

Jeanne grinned. “Good.”

Once the ship reached orbit, the couches no longer lay
horizontal. The floor no longer extended up and down like a wall, but it did
not lie “beneath” Barbary, either. There was no “up” or “down,” no “beneath” or
“above.” Barbary found that depending on how she looked at anything she could
give it a different orientation, as if she were inside a tremendous optical
illusion.

“It all takes a while to get used to,” Jeanne said. “Excuse
me a minute — I want to introduce myself to someone.” She unfastened her
harness and pushed herself into the aisle. Free and graceful, she drifted a few
seats ahead and paused beside Ambassador Begay. She said something in a
language Barbary had never heard. The elderly diplomat glanced up at Jeanne,
startled, then smiled and replied in what must have been the same language. She
extended her hand, and Jeanne shook it gently. They talked for a few more
minutes, then Jeanne smiled and nodded and with one easy push floated back to
Barbary.

“I always wanted to meet her,” Jeanne said. “I hope there’s
time to talk to her some more, up on the station.”

Barbary realized, with surprise, that Jeanne felt as much
admiration for the secretary-general as Barbary did for Jeanne.

“What language was that?” Barbary asked.

“Navaho. It was a requirement in grad school. It’s so
different from English, particularly in the way it deals with time, that it
helps you understand advanced physics. I’m afraid my accent is pretty terrible,
though. Say, Barbary, would you like to get up?”

“Sure!” Barbary said, then almost took it back because of
the secret pocket. But she could slip out of her jacket and leave it tucked
under the harness. Ever since she could remember, she had dreamed of floating
in zero gravity, of flying, of freedom.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Frank, the bodyguard, had
only been pretending to ignore them.

“Yes,” Jeanne said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I do.”

Jeanne freed the catches of Barbary’s harness. Barbary
drifted away from the comforting solidity of the seat. She glanced back to be
sure she had pushed the sleeves of her jacket between the cushion and the arm
rests. The action of turning produced a reaction that sent her tumbling, out of
reach of anything. Laughing, Jeanne caught her.

“Slowly,” she said. “Everything slowly and gently. That’s
the thing to remember, at least till you get used to it. Then you’re less
likely to make a mistake, and even if you do, you have time to correct it
before you fly across the room and run into a wall.”

“Let me try again.”

Jeanne drew her to a handhold, let go, and floated backward
a few meters along the aisle.

“Push off toward me.”

Jeanne did not seem to mind being watched by the other
passengers. Most of them looked on with interest, though Frank glowered.

Barbary kicked off toward Jeanne — wrong again: much too
hard, much too fast. She flew across the compartment, soaring past the other
passengers. Jeanne caught her again. Barbary felt embarrassed.

“It takes a while to get the hang of it,” Jeanne said. “Can
you swim?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“You can get around that way, though not very fast.” She
backstroked down the aisle, but with both arms moving together, instead of
alternately.

Barbary began to be able to make the direction she decided
was “down” stay where she put it, in her mind. But if she thought about her
surroundings in a slightly different way, suddenly she would lose “down” and
feel as though she was diving scarily toward a floor. It was easier, she found,
to think of all the surfaces as walls.

“One more time,” Jeanne said, turning toward her.

Barbary steadied herself, aware of everyone watching her.
The friendlier bodyguard watched with curiosity, maybe even with some envy.
Barbary wondered if he had ever been in space before.

Then suddenly Barbary saw her jacket drifting free above her
seat. She leaped to catch it. She arched across the cabin. People shouted and
ducked. Her shoulder hit the wall. She bounced back, tumbling. Flailing to
regain her balance, she cartwheeled across the compartment. She heard a shouted
warning. The toe of her shoe caught the vice president’s newspaper and tore it from
his hands. With a rattling, ripping sound it wrapped itself around her legs.
The second bodyguard tried to catch her, but she was moving too fast. She hit
the wall with her other shoulder and rebounded. For a moment she looked
straight into the surprised face of the vice president, who still held one
shred of newspaper in each hand. She spun away. The face of the second
bodyguard flashed by. He had crinkly lines around his eyes as if he were
struggling not to laugh.

Jeanne, braced against the wall with her foot hooked through
a handhold, caught Barbary and held her. As soon as she had stopped, the
shuttle started to spin around her and for the first time she felt nauseated.
She closed her eyes. Both her shoulders ached. To her surprise, she had managed
to grab her jacket and keep hold of it. She clutched it tight.

“I told you this was a mistake!” Frank snarled.

Jeanne ignored him. “Barbary, are you okay? You took a
couple of nasty bumps.”

“Yeah,” Barbary said. The shakiness of her voice surprised
her. “I think so.” She opened her eyes. Things had stopped spinning. “That was
dumb,” she said. “That was really dumb.” She glanced toward the vice president.
Her face burned with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said. She unwrapped the
ruined newspaper from her foot and held it out to him. The quiet bodyguard took
it from her and suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter. His laugh was more
like a giggle. Barbary felt another wave of embarrassment rise across her face.
Shreds of newspaper floated around the vice president like a halo, and Frank
snatched at them, still scowling. The vice president opened his hands. The last
pieces of paper floated away.

“Well, never mind,” he said to Barbary. “But do try not to
do it again.”

“It really is okay,” Jeanne said. “Wait till you hear some
of the stuff I did before I was used to it.”

She swooped to their seats. “Easy, now, right this way.
Relax, and just a touch...”

Barbary put her feet against the ceiling, held tight to her
jacket, and pushed off very, very gently. She moved so slowly she was afraid
she would stop before she got across the space between her and Jeanne, but she
reached out, being very careful, and Jeanne grasped her fingers.

“Perfect!” The other passengers applauded. Doubly
embarrassed, Barbary ducked down in her seat.

The shuttle neared
Outrigger
. If Barbary had not read
so much about space, she would never have recognized the space transport as a
ship. She had grown up in a world of jets and bullet-trains: sleek, slender,
streamlined conveyances.
Outrigger
looked like a cross between a
Tinkertoy and a spider web. Struts and towers, antennas and solar panels poked
out at every angle.

The transport ship filled the screen with its awkward form,
expanding as the shuttle approached. Soon the exterior camera showed only a
featureless metal panel. Barbary wished again for windows.

With an almost imperceptible vibration, the shuttle docked
against
Outrigger
. The doors of the shuttle’s cargo bay nestled into the
transport.

“Good work!” Jeanne whispered. She glanced at Barbary and
smiled. “Sometimes these dockings shake your teeth. Nice to know we’ve had a
good pilot.”

“Can’t you find out beforehand?”

“Sure,” Jeanne said. “But that would spoil all the fun.” She
sighed. “I used to know all the shuttle pilots, but so many joined while I was
away…”

The shuttle bay doors folded open. People from the transport
floated into the passenger compartment and began helping the newcomers out of
their harnesses.

“It takes half an hour to unload everybody one by one,” Jeanne
said. “Are you game to go with me?”

“Sure,” Barbary said.

One of the transport crew propelled himself Jeanne’s way.

“Hi, Dr. Velory,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were coming
in on this flight.”

“I thought I’d better,” she said, unfastening her harness
and floating beside him. “All things considered.” She unfastened Barbary’s seat
belt.

“Yes,” he said. “I expect you’re right.”

“I’ll see that Barbary gets where she’s going,” Jeanne said.
She indicated Barbary with a flick of her eyes, not a nod of her head.

“Thanks,” the crew member said in a low voice. “Almost
everybody else this trip is a first-timer. Keeping them sorted out is going to
be… oh… lots of fun.”

Barbary found herself hovering out of reach of anything,
drifting toward the transport. Jeanne barely touched her. She stopped moving.

“For now, I’ll just tow you, okay?” She slid Barbary’s
duffel bag from beneath the seat. Barbary snatched it. Jeanne kept her from
tumbling away, but glanced at her with a quizzical expression.

Embarrassed to have been so rude, Barbary dropped her gaze.
But she had things with her that she did not want anyone to suspect.

“Grab my belt,” Jeanne said.

Barbary slipped her arm through the strap of the duffel bag
so she could hang on to Jeanne. She felt awkward and uneasy. But Jeanne pushed
off with both feet and sailed straight out of the shuttle.

The shuttle bay doors opened into a large chamber.
Supporting struts, handholds, bright-painted lines, and narrow plastic tracks
patterned the walls. Everything was a “wall,” for nothing was “up” or “down,”
“floor” or “ceiling.”

“I read a lot of novels about space travel,” Barbary said.
“In them everybody gets around by sticking themselves to the walls with
Velcro.”

“That doesn’t work very well,” Jeanne said. “Hook
pollution.” In response to Barbary’s questioning glance, she said, “The little
plastic hooks on the Velcro break off and float around and get into things. You
can slide along the tracks if you get some skates, or a skating-chair,” Jeanne
said over her shoulder. “But this way’s a lot faster.” Jumping, ricocheting,
handswimming, she drew Barbary into a maze of corridors and tunnels. In a few
minutes Barbary felt completely disoriented. The painted lines joined their
course or peeled off from it, disappearing down other corridors. Soon all the
colors had changed but one.

“Are you following the blue?”

Jeanne pulled herself along hand over hand. She slowed,
glancing at the wall below — beside? — them. “Right,” she said. “It is blue to
deck one. After a while you learn your way around, and you forget which colors
lead where.”

She accelerated again. She moved in a way almost like
crawling, except that she did not use her legs. She kept her body parallel to
the surface containing whichever holds she happened to be using at the time.
Jeanne grabbed a rung, pulled to propel herself forward, and used her other
hand to catch another rung several body-lengths along the corridor.

“Deck one,” Barbary said. “What’s that?”

“The observation bubble,” Jeanne said. “It’s quite a sight.”

Barbary had dreamed about her first view of space. She had
had the dream much longer than she had known she would ever get to see it for
real. She barely even remembered a time before she would occasionally wake
contented from that fantasy. But one thing was more important to her.

“If we hurry,” Jeanne said, “we can watch the shuttle
undocking. Then I’ll have to get to work. But the sight’s worth some extra
time.”

“Jeanne,” Barbary said hesitantly.

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to see that, but I want to… I need… I’m awfully
tired. If I could just go to my room and be alone for awhile…”

“There’s a bathroom near the observation deck, if that’s
what you need,” Jeanne said with an understanding grin. “Do you know how to use
a zero-gravity toilet?”

“They give you an instruction booklet when you buy your
ticket,” Barbary said, a bit embarrassed. “It isn’t that. I want to see what
you want to show me. But I have to be by myself for a while.” She could not
explain any further.

“Okay,” Jeanne said, sounding puzzled.

o0o

Jeanne hovered in the doorway of Barbary’s room.
“You’re sure you’re all right.”

“Yes,” Barbary said. “Thanks.”

Jeanne waited another moment, as if to let Barbary change
her mind, as if to give her one more chance to trust her. Barbary remained
silent. She could feel the secret pocket. She had to be alone immediately.

“I may not see you during the trip,” Jeanne said. “I’m
afraid I’m going to be pretty busy from here on out. But good luck.”

“Thanks,” Barbary said.

Jeanne pulled the door shut.

Afraid she had failed a test, the first one, a very
important one, Barbary wondered if Jeanne thought her a coward, or, perhaps
worse, uninterested in her new home.

She had the feeling that she had thrown away Jeanne’s
proffered friendship, and that Jeanne seldom had time to give anyone a second
chance.