Free Barbary by Vonda N. McIntyre

turn?
    “Well,” Heather said, “I have to. There’s something wrong
with my heart. I’m only allowed to go into one g a couple of hours a day.”
    “Oh,” Barbary said. “I’m sorry.”
    “You don’t need to be. I don’t care. I like it here. I don’t
know why people want to stay at one g anyway.”
    She probably knew better than Barbary, who only knew what
the instruction book said. If people did not stay used to regular gravity, then
after a long time in space it would be too hard for them to go back to earth.
    As she drifted off to sleep, Barbary thought, But I don’t
want to go back to earth. I want to live in space, where there isn’t any
gravity.
    o0o
    Barbary flung her arm across her eyes to block out the
sunlight —
    There was no sunlight. She woke abruptly.
    “Come on, kids,” Yoshi said. “Dinnertime.”
    “Okay,” Heather said. “Just a minute.”
    Barbary reached for Mickey. He was gone. She froze.
    Yoshi had only made the lights go on; he had not come into
the room or even opened the door very far. He closed it again.
    “Heather!” Barbary whispered. “Mick’s gone!” She flung off
her blanket and searched her bunk and the bookcase, but the cat had
disappeared.
    “I’ll get up in a minute.”
    The covers rustled as Heather turned over.
    “Mick’s gone!” She jumped off her bunk, but he was not
curled up on a desk or a chair or in a corner or anywhere.
    Heather sat up. “Did you look under the bed?”
    Barbary knelt and lifted the edge of the comforter, then
scowled at Heather in disgust.
    “There isn’t any ‘under,’ under the bed!” It was all
drawers. “Will you wake up?”
    “Uh-huh. Sure.”
    She flopped back down and pulled the comforter over her
head. Barbary realized that Heather could carry on a conversation while she was
still almost asleep.
    “Heather!”
    Heather yelped and flung aside the quilt.
    “Jeez,” Barbary said, “you don’t need to be that way about
it.”
    “I just found Mickey.”
    Mick curled sleeping in the middle of her bunk. He raised
his head, yawned widely, his whiskers bristling, his tongue curling, put his
head down again, and went back to sleep.
    “Mick!” Barbary said. “You scared me to death.” Mickey made
no reply. “I thought he got out.”
    “Oh, he couldn’t,” Heather said. “Come on, let’s get ready
for dinner. I’m starved.”
    “Do we have to go?”
    Heather glanced from Barbary to Mickey, and back again. “I
know how you feel. I really do. But it’ll look kind of strange if we don’t go
eat.”
    “I guess,” Barbary said.
    “And nobody will be here to find him.”
    Barbary chewed her thumbnail.
    “Okay?” Heather said.
    “Yeah,” Barbary said, unconvinced.
    o0o
    The cafeteria on the half-g level contained only ten
tables. Barbary wondered if the one-g level of the station had a larger
cafeteria, where more people and more commotion would make pilfering food much
easier. Barbary supposed, though, that Heather must have to eat here most of the
time.
    “What do you want to eat?” Heather said, standing on tiptoe
to see the top shelf.
    “I don’t know — what is there?”
    “Chhay keeps threatening to import a herd of steers,” Yoshi
said, “but he hasn’t got clearance for it…”
    “Or a place to put it,” Heather said.
    “Anyway, there isn’t any red meat,” Yoshi said.
    Barbary had never tasted beef.
    “I didn’t think of that,” Heather said in a stricken voice.
“Barbary, will it be okay? I mean…” She stopped.
    Barbary realized that Heather meant, was there anything
Mickey would eat. Mickey had never tasted beef either. Heather was going to
have to learn to keep her mouth shut, or they were all going to be in a lot of
trouble.
    “Yeah, sure, it’s okay.”
    Yoshi looked at them both oddly. “Heather, I’m sure Barbary
doesn’t expect everything to be just the same up here as back on earth.”
    “No, I don’t,” Barbary said. “I mean, it doesn’t make any
difference