Barbary

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “If you can get all that right here,” Barbary asked, why did Yoshi go to the library?”

  “To write,” Heather said. “He went to the book library, not the computer library. A lot of people brought books from earth because they like to read that way instead of on the computer. I don’t understand why myself. But that’s how it is. Some of them got together and put their books all in one place so they’d have a library. Anybody can borrow the books. Yoshi likes to work up there.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a poet.”

  “Oh. I mean what does he really do?”

  “He really is a poet!” Heather said. “People are, you know.”

  “Okay, okay, I just never heard of a poet on a space station before.”

  “I guess maybe you haven’t heard of everything in the whole universe yet, then, have you?”

  “What are you so mad about?”

  “How would you feel if you did something important something nobody else could do — and somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s nice, but what do you really do?’”

  “I’d be mad,” Barbary admitted.

  “Well.”

  “Um, I’m sorry,” Barbary said. “Can anybody read one of his poems?”

  “You can read everything he’s published. It’s in the library.”

  “The computer library?”

  “No, the book library.”

  “Why isn’t it in the computer?”

  “Yoshi doesn’t like computers much.”

  “Oh.” She could think of several questions, but she was afraid she might upset Heather again, so for the moment she kept her silence. Besides, Heather turned on the two terminals and began to show her how to use hers. Almost everyone had computers on earth, so Barbary knew something about them. But it seemed to her that they always judged and graded her and reported her failures to adults.

  “I won’t hang over your shoulder,” Heather said. “But I’ll be right here if you need to ask anything.” She set both terminals to respond on the screen, rather than by speaking, so she and Barbary could work without interfering with each other.

  “Okay.”

  Heather perched cross-legged on a chair and immersed herself in her own work.

  Barbary’s computer was smarter than any other she had ever met. And though it acted friendly, it knew a great deal about her. All her records were in memory somewhere, and while she supposed she should not care if a computer had read them, she hoped Heather had not done so. She asked the machine if anybody could read anyone else’s records.

  It scrolled its reply on the screen. “No, that requires special permission.”

  Barbary felt relieved. She was not very adept at schoolwork.

  The computer chatted with her. It never forgot anything she told it, and it never made fun of her for forgetting things it told to her.

  But Barbary realized that it was doing what computers always did. She stood and pushed away the keyboard. In the low gravity her chair tumbled over backward and bounced across the room.

  Heather blinked at her, far away.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “This thing is testing me.”

  Heather looked confused for a moment. “I guess you could call it that. It’s finding out what you know so it can tailor lessons for you.”

  “That’s what people always say it’s doing, but what they mean is, it’s testing you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think of it that way. But even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have thought to say so — why are you so upset? All the teaching computers I ever heard of work like this.”

  “I don’t like to be tested — I particularly don’t like to be tested when I don’t know I’m being tested.” She recalled one time in particular, when she had been judged by people hidden behind a one-way mirror. Without talking to her, they had decided that she had to go to a different foster family. She “was not adjusting well,” whatever that meant. The original family was easier to live with, and a lot more fun, than most of the people she had stayed with. No one, not even the family, ever could or would explain why she had to leave. She had been moved around so often that she would have been glad to stay in a difficult place if she just did not have to move again. But the juvenile authority said she must move; so she moved.

  “It is just trying to help you, Barbary.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve heard that before.”

  “What did it say that made you so mad?”

  “I just don’t like being tested and graded all the time! I thought maybe here things would be different.”

  “But it isn’t grading you.”

  “Then why’s it doing what it’s doing?”

  “It needs to find out what you know already about different subjects. Otherwise it’d have to start from the beginning on everything, which would drive you crazy, it’d be so boring, or it’d have to say, Oh, she’s twelve, she ought to be here — but nobody is ever right on the average for their age in everything, so it would be behind you or ahead of you, and you wouldn’t like that either.”

  “But it will tell everybody what I’m behind on, and they’ll say I’m stupid.”

  “Stupid! Anybody who thinks you’re stupid is stupid!”

  Barbary glared at the floor with her fists clenched.

  “Hey, Barbary,” Heather said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can trust me. Honest.”

  Barbary raised her head. The screen glowed as the patient computer waited for a reply, now and then scrolling out a line of encouragement or a hint. The letters blurred and Barbary blinked them back into focus.

  “I’m trying,” she whispered. “I guess it must not seem like it. But I am.”

  Heather hopped off her chair, came around the edge of computer table, and hugged her hard.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  o0o

  Once Barbary knew the computer would not report on her to some social worker, she began to enjoy working with it. The time passed so fast she hardly noticed it.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and looked at the computer screen again. She still had trouble bringing the letters into focus, and she wondered what was wrong. Finished with his prowling, Mick curled near her, purring. For a while he tried to catch the cursor with his paw, but after batting at it a few times, he recognized the glass screen as some weird kind of window and gave up trying to catch the little moving light behind it.

  “Hey, Heather, do you have any aspirin?”

  Heather glanced up from her own work.

  “Sure. What’s wrong?”

  “My eyes kind of hurt. I never worked on a computer this long before.”

  “Really? This isn’t very long at all.”

  She followed Heather into the bathroom and found out where they kept the aspirin. Barbary gulped a couple down.

  “You ought to rest your eyes in between staring at the screen,” Heather said. “Like if you’re thinking about how you want to write something, you should close your eyes, or look at something way on the other side of the room.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “That way you can keep going about as long as you want.”

  Barbary hoped she would not have to spend all day every day at the computer. Heather had been engrossed in whatever she was doing. It was probably so far ahead of whatever Barbary knew that Barbary would not even be able to understand an explanation, much less the subject.

  “Why don’t you lie down for a little while?” Heather said. “That’ll make the headache go away.”

  “I will if you will.”

  “I guess I ought to,” Heather said.

  When they returned to the living room, Thea had uncovered her contraption.

  “Hi, Thea. How’s it going?”

  “Oh, it’s nearly finished,” Thea said. “I’m checking the braces, to be sure it’ll fit into a raft. I’m going to try it out in a little while.”

  “Hey, nea
t,” Heather said. “Can we help?”

  “There’s not that much to do,” Thea said. “But sure, you’re welcome to come along when I take it out.”

  Mick strolled over and climbed into her lap.

  “Nice kitty,” Thea said, scratching him under the chin. “You are a nice kitty, but the last thing I need is cat hair in my lenses.”

  Thea picked him up and offered him to Barbary, holding him behind the front legs so his paws stuck out in front of him. He bristled his whiskers and looked about to growl. Barbary rescued him.

  “We’ll take him into our room with us,” she said. In a low voice, to Heather, she said, “Pretty soon you better show me how to keep track of him so I can let him out.”

  “That’ll only take a second,” Heather said, delighted to have an excuse to put off her afternoon nap a few minutes longer. “Let’s do it right now!”

  As she headed back to her computer, the call-signal chimed. Heather accepted the message:

  “General announcement regarding the alien craft. Main meeting room. Immediately.”

  “Wow!” Heather said. “Let’s go! Thea, did you hear? There’s an announcement about the alien ship!”

  Thea looked up, frowning and startled.

  “An announcement?”

  “Yeah, down in the main meeting room. Want to come with us?”

  Thea hesitated. “No,” she said. “I want to finish here. I’ll be along later.”

  “Okay, bye, come on, Barbary!”

  Heather headed for the door. Barbary took just enough time to put Mick in the bedroom.

  “You be good,” she said. “When I come back, you can go out.” She hurried after Heather.

  Chapter Eleven

  People filled the hallways around the main meeting room. It was even more crowded than the reception for Jeanne. Barbary and Heather ducked around and between people, till they managed to get inside. They could not see anything, even standing on tiptoe, and though most of the adults around them gave them sympathetic looks, the crowd packed the room far too full for anyone to let them nearer the front.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Jeanne Velory’s soft, powerful voice radiated from the speakers.

  “Several hours ago, we detected a change in the alien ship’s path,” Jeanne said. “The change was the result of a deliberate application of acceleration.” She paused. “Soon thereafter, we received a radio transmission.”

  The silence crumbled into chaos. Barbary imagined Jeanne at the front of the room, quiet and patient, not trying to speak above the clamor or shout anyone down, just waiting until the crowd fell silent.

  “A transmission!” Heather shouted. “Holy cats, it’s aliens! Can you believe it?”

  “She hasn’t said what it is we’re supposed to be believing, yet,” Barbary said.

  Five minutes passed before the chaos settled enough for Jeanne to speak.

  “The transmission is quite simple. It arrived in a large number of languages.”

  She turned on a recording, and the words flowed over the crowd. Barbary did not understand the first language, nor the second, but quite a few other people did, because they began to murmur to each other.

  The crystalline clarity of the voice made Barbary want to sob. She did not know why, except that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard in her life.

  “Greetings,” it said, when it began speaking in English. “We come in peace to welcome you into civilization. Please do not approach us, but wait for our arrival.”

  It changed languages still again. The voice’s beauty continued to increase, as if it were singing.

  When the final translation ended, some of the people in the room were crying. Barbary let out the breath she had been holding.

  “The alien ship has begun to decelerate,” Jeanne said, “at a rate that would be difficult for our technology to match or for humans to tolerate. It will not, as we previously believed, cross the earth’s orbit and pass us at high speed. Instead, if it continues decelerating, it will reach zero relative velocity a few thousand kilometers from Atlantis.”

  The noise of everybody trying to speak made Barbary feel as if she were standing beside a buzz saw. Heather said something, an excited expression on her face, but Barbary could not hear her.

  Barbary thought, But it could be an automatic response the alien ship gives every time it comes across some half-civilized bunch of people, like us, who’ve barely even made it into space.

  And then she wondered, How could anything so beautiful be a voice from a machine?

  Finally she thought, They’re aliens, they can travel to the stars. They can do anything.

  The noise level dropped as people began to recover from the first shock of the communication. Barbary began to be able to pick out individual conversations and questions. Everyone was excited, but some were excited with joy, and others with fear. People discussed what the aliens might teach to human beings, or what harm they might cause. She heard several people quote a famous writer, whose theory was that any civilization so advanced it can travel to other stars ought to be too civilized to wage war; and she heard others reply “Hogwash!”

  Heather touched Barbary’s arm. Barbary turned toward her sister.

  Heather was very pale. Barbary grabbed her arm, afraid she might faint and be trampled. Barbary held her up, not absolutely sure that was what Heather wanted, but willing to risk her sister’s anger if she was mistaken. Barbary thought Heather was leaning on her, but she was so light that it was hard to tell. Barbary bent down, straining to hear.

  “Can we get out of here, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Barbary said. “But I’ll try.”

  Supporting Heather, Barbary sidled through the crowd. People tried to make way for her, when they noticed her, but most of them remained deep in conversation. Suddenly the whole room quieted. Barbary spied a space and hurried through it before it disappeared. She only had to go about five more meters to reach the door. She wished the meeting were being held in zero g so she could sly around and between all the people in her way. She kept glancing at her sister. Heather gripped Barbary’s arm tight.

  The meeting hall fell silent.

  “Colleagues,” said the secretary-general of the United Nations, her voice a papery whisper. Her presence was so powerful that Barbary could feel it without even being able to see her, and everyone remained so quiet that they seemed to stop breathing.

  Barbary plunged through the doorway, pulling Heather along behind her. Sweat ran down her face. She gasped a breath of the cooler air. Ambassador Begay was still speaking, but out here Barbary could only make out her voice, not her words.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Heather.

  Heather leaned against the wall.

  “I think so,” she said. “Thanks for getting me out of there.

  “You’re welcome. I’m kind of glad to be outside, too. Want to go home?”

  “I think I better.”

  They trudged up the corridor, boarded the elevator, and rode to the half-g level.

  “Did you see Yoshi anyplace?”

  “Uh-uh,” Barbary said.

  “I guess he must still be in the library. When he’s writing he sometimes doesn’t even hear PA announcements.” Back in their home territory, Heather regained her strength. She grinned. “That means we’ll probably get to tell him about the aliens.”

  They reached the apartment and went inside.

  “I really am going to take a nap this time,” Heather said. “Wake me up when Yoshi gets back so we can both tell him, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Heather disappeared into her bedroom.

  This was the first time Barbary had been by herself with nothing specific to do since she reached Atlantis. The living room seemed large and empty — strange, since it had felt so small the first time she saw it. Then she realized why: Thea had taken her contraption away.

  Barbary remembered the aliens’ message: “Please do not
approach us,” it had said. Poor Thea — she must be disappointed, after all her work, not to be able to launch her probe.

  “Mickey,” Barbary called. She did not see him anywhere in the living room. He must be asleep on the bunk. She crept into the bedroom, hoping not to wake Heather. She chinned herself on the edge of her bed, then climbed the rest of the way to look inside the bookshelves.

  No Mick.

  Beginning to worry, Barbary leaned over the edge of her bunk. Heather must have fallen asleep as soon as she lay down, because she had not even taken off her shoes or slid under the blanket. But Mick was nowhere to be seen.

  Barbary hurried into the living room.

  “Mick!”

  She hesitated in front of the door to Yoshi’s room and knocked. Receiving only silence, she opened it. The sparse furnishing offered no hiding place for a cat.

  Thea! Barbary thought. When she moved her contraption, she must have left the door open long enough for Mick to get out. Maybe she thought it was okay for him to go, but more likely she didn’t even notice him.

  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.”