Morgan glanced at me, er expression unreadable, and then smiled back at Cori. “But they don’t claim that this ethical code was handed down to them by any sort of deity?”
“No. It was originally composed as a series of songs—peace treaties from various wars, marriage vows, divorce decrees, medical treatises, lessons for children, proverbs and parables, that sort of thing. But because it’s never been written down, there’s no standard version; it’s sung differently in different clans, new verses are always being added, and a few were changed or edited out when they were discovered not to be true, like the one about kidneys…”
“In fact,” said Morgan, er smile becoming wider and er voice impossibly sweet, “none of the other species we’ve encountered—or that the Stigrosc have encountered and told us about—have anything we would call a religion, or a deity.”
Cori considered this. “The Nerifar… don’t, the Chuh’hom… don’t, the Tatsu don’t… We don’t really understand enough about Stigrosc or Garuda culture to be sure; they often seem to regard the universe as a sentient being on a time scale beyond our comprehension, which I suppose you could consider a deity…”
“But they don’t believe that it handed down a set of laws they had to obey?”
“Only mathematical laws—which for a Stig or a Garuda, is pretty important. But not their ethical codes.”
“And none of them believe in a single ancestor for their entire species?”
“No.”
“What about the Garuda egg?” asked Jo.
Cori nodded. “Well, the first Garuda presumably did hatch from the first Garuda egg, but the ‘Garuda egg’ in their histories contained everything, so it’s probably a metaphor—or a poor translation—for the Big Bang. The Nerifar don’t have any similar stories—the only mentions of eggs in their coda are instructions on how to care for them and when not to eat them—but the Nerifar didn’t know the rest of the universe existed until the Stigrosc landed on their homeworld.”
Morgan nodded. “Do any of them worship their ancestors?”
Cori considered this. “No. Chuh’hom worship the community; they believe in a form of reincarnation, but they’re still arguing about whether souls can travel between planets, and if so, how fast.” Chuh’hom love to argue, and their committee meetings should be avoided at all costs. “The Nerifar eat their ancestors, and never speak the names of the dead. Male tatsu worship their mothers, and no one knows what the females think. Stigrosc revere their descendants, and if Garuda worship anything, it’s the sky.”
Morgan grinned, and sprang er trap. “Would you agree that only humans had religion because it was invented by human monosex males and enforced with violence, to compensate for the fact that they couldn’t bear children, that their role in creating children was ridiculously small and for all they knew, might have been nonexistent, performed by someone else—the same inadequacy that produced lunatic ideas like penis envy, sentient sperm, and women as mere incubators? That its mainspring was the idea that the father was the creator, not the mother; the father was omnipotent and omniscient, the father knew best—but not better than er father, or er father before er, and so on until the golden age before women fucked everything up?”
There was a brief silence while Morgan paused for breath. I glanced at Aisha; her face, normally pale, was the color of dried bone. Cori began saying, “Well, I think that’s a…” but Morgan was unstoppable. “And that becoming complete, becoming mafs, so that everyone could create children, could know that feeling, did even more to kill off the old religions than the bombing of Mecca and Rome?”
Cori—who was only eighteen or twenty, and had never been a mother—gulped, and began again. “I think that’s an oversimplification; I don’t think there’s ever a single cause for anything as complicated as—” but I didn’t hear the rest, because Aisha had run from the room, and I followed her.
She was running down Tranquillity Road, and I could feel her screaming, though she was saving her breath for the race. Her legs were much longer than mine, and she was nearly acclimatized to the gravity, and I didn’t have a chance of catching her before she reached Startown unless she let me. She was at least halfway there before she began to collapse; fortunately, she slowed down enough that I could catch her before she hit the solamat. Holding on to her wasn’t easy—standing up, my eyes were on the same level as her breasts—but I supported her as best I could while she cried onto the top of my head.
“It’s okay,” I murmured into her blouse. “E just doesn’t understand, that’s all.”
She sniffed. “Do you understand?”
“No, but… I’m trying to understand. Besides, I…” I took a deep breath and said it veiy quickly, “I’ve been in love with you ever since I saw you and… well, Morgan and I used to…” I tried to remember an Arabic term for “go steady,” and couldn’t think of one.
“What?”
“Well, I guess you could say we were… girlfriends, or something. Nothing serious, just kid stuff—kissing games, that sort of thing.” She pulled away slightly and stared at me through her shades. “You don’t play games like that on al-Gohara?” She shook her head violently. “Well, I guess it’s different for you. We all have the same sort of, uh, equipment, and we get to see each other naked in the change rooms, at the beach, places like that, or look in a mirror… but I think Morgan’s a bit jealous.” I shrugged. “I guess that’s one thing we haven’t gotten rid of.”
Aisha raised an eyebrow at that, and then began crying again. “Thanks for coming after me… I’m glad we can say goodbye.”
“It’s—what?”
“I can’t go back to school. Not after that.”
I stared at her, suddenly weighed down by a horrible feeling of heaviness, of sinking. “Goodbye, Alex.” She grabbed my head, kissed me quickly and violently, and then let go and turned away. I tried to yell something, but my mouth seemed to be stunned. I watched her walking, and then ran after her.
“And do what?” I panted. “Stay at home all day every day until Olivia arrives?” She kept walking. “Okay, you don’t want to go back to school, you don’t have to, neither do I, we can still see each other.”
“No we can’t.”
“There’s an empty house, way out of town, all on its own; it’s a great place, completely private, and I have a key.” She stopped, and looked curiously at me. “It belonged to Mad Cousin Yuri. It’s a long story. Anyway, it’s at the end of Barrows Road, you know, the turn-off we just passed…”
Aisha shook her head, and started walking faster.
“Send me a note if you change your mind,” I called. No answer. “Or send me a note anyway, any time you want to talk. Please?”
She stopped, and turned. “Inshallah,” she murmured.
“Is this why you call him Mad Cousin Yuri?” Aisha asked, staring at the half-finished artworks that lined the walls.
I nodded, wondering how Aisha had convinced her father to let her out unchaperoned. “E was my father’s cousin, not mine: e wanted to be an artist, and e was pretty good at it, but e hated working.” Aisha laughed. “E convinced erself that the only way e was going to finish anything was by removing erself from society altogether, so e petitioned for a house out here, no one around but the friendly neighborhood razorvines. A lot of people tried talking er out of it, but e had the right to a house of er own, and the builders couldn’t claim to be too busy or anything, so it got done; they cleared the land, built a road and the house, and moved er stuff out here. E stayed out here for three weeks.” Aisha laughed. “E came back occasionally, staying for a week or two at a time—and usually with a model or two, rarely on er own. Dad never really let er live it down—it was the first house e’d ever built, which is how I got a key—but Yuri was too easygoing to get upset. E managed to finish a few small things—some portraits, a lot of sketches, a statue or two—but e was just too fond of the cafes and the bath-houses.”