Barbary by Vonda N. McIntyre Read Free Book Online Page B

shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “Haven’t you even seen a picture of her?”
    Barbary shook her head. “Not for a long time. I had some
stuff, but it got lost. I don’t know. I don’t remember.” She did remember. She
used to have some smoke-damaged photographs, and a ring. In one of the places
she stayed, the ring disappeared. In another, they threw away her photos as a
punishment. She pretended not to care, because she would not give anyone the
satisfaction of hurting her. Who cared about a bunch of old pictures, you
couldn’t see anything on them anyway. That’s what she said out loud.
    It was true that the images were out of focus, obscured by
time and misfortune, and only two-dimensional anyway. She had no clear memory
of her mother’s face, either from life or from pictures. But she did care.
    “I’ve got a couple of snapshots,” Yoshi said. “They’re from
a long time ago, but still… I’ll get you some copies.”
    Yoshi glanced at the diplomats and assistants and
secretaries who surrounded them. Most of them looked awkward and uncomfortable
in zero g. “This crowd will be about as useful as a flock of sheep.” To Barbary
he said, “Did anyone tell you what’s happened?”
    “Yes,” she said. “But it’s still a secret back on earth.”
    “They’re afraid an announcement will make the grounders
panic,” Heather said.
    “I didn’t panic,” Barbary said.
    “But you’re not a grounder anymore.”
    “Grounder or not has nothing to do with it,” Yoshi said.
“More than a handful of people should know what’s going on. When we meet that
ship — it’s history. Even if it’s a derelict. That’s the majority view. Which I
don’t subscribe to.” He reached for Barbary’s hand. “Aren’t you hot in that
jacket?”
    “No. Yes. A little. It’s easier to wear it than carry it.”
    “Okay. Ready?”
    Barbary nodded. Yoshi and Heather pushed off, towing Barbary
behind them.
    Yoshi sailed from wall to brace to floor, around small
groups of people, past doors and monkey-bars and tracks. He oriented himself as
if the edge of the doughnut-shaped room were the floor, and the flat top and
bottom its edges. Barbary would have put herself ninety degrees the other way,
so the flat parts of the room were floor and ceiling, and the curving places
were walls. That would have felt more natural. Farther out toward the rim of
the station, the curving wall would be the floor, so Yoshi’s orientation made
more sense. Heather, when she was not holding Barbary’s hand, paid no attention
at all to walls or floor or ceiling. She swooped from one point to another,
turned upside-down or sideways to the direction her father was facing. She
acted as if she saw no difference at all.
    They slyed over the juncture between spinning and
non-spinning parts of the station. The slow relative motion was hardly
noticeable. They got into one of the elevators. It had a weird paint job: white
footprints on the surface of one wall, which was green, and the outlines of
people on the beige wall opposite the elevator door.
    “This will be the floor when we reach bottom,” Yoshi said,
indicating the footprints. “But this wall will tilt on the way down.” He used a
strap to hold himself against the wall with the outlines, and to keep his feet
on the surface with the footprints. Heather did the same.
    “You want to be pretty firmly planted,” Yoshi said. “Between
the momentum and the spin, it’s a fairly strange feeling.” He drew Barbary
beside him.
    The elevator started to move. Barbary felt as if she were
leaning against a steeply-tilted wall. Startled, she grabbed Yoshi and held on, afraid they were going to crash.
    “It’s okay,” Yoshi said. “You see what I mean.”
    “It’s supposed to work like this?”
    “This is the way the laws of physics make it work.”
    As they fell, the tilt changed, making Barbary feel as if
she were standing more and more upright.
    Heather seemed not even to notice the odd