“Isn’t there a bath here?” asked Aisha, a little nervously.
“Sure—down the hall, second right. You want to take a bath?”
“I’ll need to wash before I pray…”
Stupid of me. ‘Yes, there’s a bathroom—down the hall, there.”
“Then why did e have to go to bathhouses?”
“Ah,” I said, sitting down on a chair that was twice my age. “Well. We go to the bathhouses for sex—I mean, I don’t, you have to be at least eleven, that’s about thirty-one of your years—but that’s what they’re for. I think that’s where my parents met, or at least—” I noticed that Aisha was looking disturbed, even slightly revolted, and shut up. I’d had to wait five weeks before she contacted me, and another four before she’d agreed to meet me here, which left only eleven weeks and three days before Olivia arrived—Time’s winged chariot hurrying near, as Andrew Marvell would have said.
“We may be more different than I thought,” she said, softly, staring at the picture that Yuri had been working on on er final visit here. It was a sketch of er favorite model, Kai, the one e used to joke about being buried with. E was very pregnant, and topless—or bottomless, rather; Yuri hadn’t drawn er below the waist, just a halo of curly hair, a beautiful round face, and beautiful round breasts with large nipples the color of Aisha’s eyes. “I mean, I shouldn’t be lying to my father, I shouldn’t even be here with you, especially not alone…” I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. “Why not?” I asked. “I mean, we’re not even doing anything—”
“But we might be!”
“—and what if we were? Whose business is that but ours?”
“You don’t understand!”
“No! I don’t!”
We glared at each other for a while, and then she shook her head. “What do you want?” she asked, softly.
“Where do I begin? I want to—I want us to be able to see each other whenever we want.”
“I’m leaving in eighty days.”
“You could stay here; you could be happy here—” She raised her eyebrows at that, and then bhnked, as though the idea had never occurred to her before. “Anyway, we were talking about what I want. Next thing on my list is, I wish I knew what you wanted.”
She continued to stare, and then shook her head. “So do I,” she whispered. “Alex, you’ve been wonderful, you’ve been kinder to me than anyone since my mother…” She turned away, and I could tell she was about to cry; I reached up and out to touch her shoulders, comfort her, but stopped when my hands were only a few millimeters away. “My mother,” she repeated, rather stiffly. “Was executed. For adultery. Now do you understand?”
I had the feeling that I was understanding less and less the longer I knew Aisha; I shook my head.
“My father brought me with him on this trip because he didn’t trust my mother’s family to watch me, he thought I might disgrace him—”
“That’s—”
She turned and faced me, tears in her eyes and a crooked smile on her lips. “And how do you get on with your father?”
“That’s not the point.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, so maybe it is the point. But I know my father is wrong about you—and about a lot of other things. Is yours?”
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?” She glared at me, then glanced briefly around at the windows, and then removed her scarf. As I stared, she shook her long hair free, pulled her jacket open, stepped out of her skirt, and then stood there wearing only a pair of pants and a strange harnesslike garment covering her breasts. A moment later, that popped open, and then she removed her pants and sat down on a chair opposite me, legs slightly apart and one foot propped up on the seat. She was even more beautiful than I’d imagined.
“Now do you understand? On al-Gohara, I’ll be my mother’s daughter until I’m my husband’s wife. Here, I’d be considered a freak, mutilated, incomplete—and that includes emotionally as well as physically, sexually. We couldn’t even have children naturally!”
I admit, I hadn’t thought that far ahead—I couldn’t legally switch off my contraplants until I was fourteen—and I was surprised that Aisha had. Of course, if “naturally” meant “without gene surgery,” then she was right, but so what? Or was that against al-Goharan law, too? Suddenly, uncontrollably, I began laughing.
“What’s up?”
I took a deep breath and leaned back in my chair. “I’m just glad I didn’t fall in love with a Stigrosc; that would have made my life really complicated.”
Aisha stared, her eyes bugging slightly—and then she, too, burst out laughing, which set me off again. I slid out of the chair and kneeled in front of her, close enough to almost taste her, close enough to hear her heartbeat. I reached out and stroked her hair, running my hand along the side of her face down to her lovely neck—and felt/heard the cry of the muezzin, transmitted through the bone from a complant, calling her to zuhr, noon prayer. She looked into my eyes sadly, then grabbed her clothes and ran to the bathroom, while I collapsed face-first onto her chair.
I heard the bathroom door slide shut, and then open, and she disappeared into Yuri’s bedroom to pray (it’s considered inappropriate to perform salat in a bathroom). When she re-appeared, fully clothed, I was sitting back in my own chair.
“When Olivia arrives…” I began, as she walked toward the front door. She stopped. “Just in case I don’t see you before then,” I said. “Olivia won’t be able to wait for you; it’ll only have an hour or two to rendezvous with the shuttles before going to the jump point. If you’re not on the shuttle in time, your father will have to choose between you and waiting another six years for er hajj—six years here. Which do you think e’ll pick?
“We can hide here,” I continued, quickly. “Or, better still, we can hide in the razorvine; even if they can find us, they’ll never be able to cut us out in time—”
“I can’t stay here either,” she said, “not in this house, not on this world…” and then she walked out. I stared at her back, waiting for her to turn around; then, when she disappeared behind the next hill, I grabbed one of the razorvines that was snaking around the house, feeling the thorns bite into my palm and my fingers, standing there silently, knowing that Aisha wasn’t coming back, and understanding nothing.
The clouds were the same grey as Aisha’s robes, and the razorvine rustled and groaned alarmingly as I biked down the road toward the starport. I’d crept out of the house as soon as the sun had risen, after the longest night I’d ever stayed awake through. I hadn’t heard from Aisha since Ramadan began, five weeks before, and that had been just another goodbye. She hadn’t even answered my mail; maybe her father had taken her book away. If e had, e’d know I was here, waiting; if not, she would.
I watched the first bus arrive as the shuttle hangar unfolded like a flower, then heard another bike behind me. I turned, and saw Morgan, dressed in jeans and a fine mesh jacket against the morning cold, dismount and walk toward me. “Saying goodbye?” e asked.