Free Barbary by Vonda N. McIntyre Page A

anyway. I never had any animal meat back there.”
    “Oh, good,” Heather said, relieved. Barbary wondered if she
had any idea how close she had come to letting too much information slip.
Barbary knew Yoshi was suspicious, even if he did not yet know what to be
suspicious of.
    “How about some shrimp? They’re surplus, from the ocean
research project, so they’re fresh.”
    Shrimp were even more of a luxury than beef, back on earth,
but Barbary had heard that cats liked them. She accepted the shrimp salad, even
though the little pink curled-up things looked kind of disgusting. They would
at least be easy to palm and hide in her napkin. Heather poured glasses of milk
for herself and Barbary. The liquid flowed slowly and strangely in the low
gravity. Barbary tried to think of a way to smuggle a glass of milk out of the
cafeteria.
    Maybe I can find a container with a lid, she thought, and
sneak back later.
    Heather chose a curry so hot that Barbary’s nose prickled
from the spices. Mick would never eat that, even if it weren’t too squishy to
take away, which it was.
    Heather didn’t bring a cat to a space station, Barbary told
herself. It isn’t her responsibility to feed him. It’s yours.
    They sat with several other people. Yoshi and Heather
introduced Barbary to them and to friends at the surrounding tables. Roxane was
a mechanic who worked outside the station, building new parts for it. Chhay was
an agricultural expert. Ramchandra worked on computer components that could
only be grown in weightlessness. He had helped to build the first picocomputer.
He said organic computers were the coming thing, and that he would have to
study biology if he wanted to keep up with his own field. Barbary did not know
if he was joking or not. She managed to keep track of the people at their
table, but could not remember everyone else’s name. They all greeted her warmly
and welcomed her to the station.
    For the first time in as long as she could remember, Barbary
began to believe she really belonged somewhere.
    “When are you getting your
dogies?” Heather said to Chhay. It sounded weird to Barbary, to hear in a space
station a word from some old cowboy movie.
    Chhay laughed, as if the herd of steers was an old joke
between him and Heather. “Somehow I just can’t seem to get that request
approved,” he said. “They’re afraid the steers will get loose and overrun the
station.”
    “Considering the birth rate of your average herd of steers,”
Roxane said, “no wonder pets aren’t allowed.”
    Everybody laughed except Barbary, who had no idea what was
so funny. Heather, who was taking a drink of milk, giggled right into her
glass. Barbary used the distraction to palm a shrimp with the Murada technique.
Her sleight of hand was only passable, but since no one was watching for her to
fool them, and since they were all still laughing at the joke, she got away
with it. Barbary had read about people no better at stage magic than she was,
who had pretended to have special powers, real magic, and everyone believed
them.
    At the mention of pets, Heather stopped laughing and wiped
off the splash of milk. She glanced at Barbary with a far-too-sober expression,
calling attention to her just as she slipped the shrimp into her napkin.
    Barbary frowned at Heather and pretended to be studying her
salad. How were she and Mick ever going to get away with this? Heather had no
experience at all at hiding things or lying, that was certain.
    Ramchandra glanced at their table’s single vacant chair.
    “Where’s Thea?” he asked.
    Barbary palmed another shrimp.
    Yoshi shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. He sounded
disappointed. “In the observatory, probably. Working on the probe.
Alien-watching. How’s your salad, Barbary?”
    She crumpled up her napkin in her lap. “Um, I haven’t tasted
it yet.” She stuck her fork into it and pushed it around so no one would be
able to tell how much was left. She hesitated, then gulped a