"Do you know that I can now recite all the subway stops on the F line between Rockefeller Center and Coney Island?" Garma asked Iserina as their train cleared Prospect Park station. They were sitting side-by-side in two seats at the front of the car, their fingers tightly intertwined. "Strange to think I'll always link romance with this funny musty smell."
They had chosen the subway as a place to meet and talk because of the observation of Iserina's that no one ever looked at anyone else on the subway. Furthermore, if someone did, all they had to do was start kissing and the observer would look away again.
"I hate to use a cliché, but we've got to stop meeting this way."
"Does your dad ever go away?"
"Not without me. You've kind of got your own place."
"Emphasis on the 'kind of'. Site security is extremely tight, and well it should be. I couldn't bring you into my quarters without you having a thorough security check which I can assure you you'd fail."
"Too much top secret stuff on your desk, huh?"
His dark eyes met hers. "I can't even confirm or deny that. This isn't a game, Iserina. You don't know what I'm risking for this." He was silent for a moment. "Although maybe I can still use that secrecy to our advantage."
"I don't want you in trouble, love."
"So do I. Give me some time to think."
The Royal Jion Cartography Service came to Garma's aid quickly. An ordinance map was produced, marked carefully, and given in an envelope to Carl. Carl was dispatched in civilian clothes to a beach in Long Island where Iserina had been instructed to wait.
"His Highness asked me to give this to you."
Iserina took the envelope and glanced inside. "Thank you."
"I know it can't be easy for you, miss."
"What can't be easy?"
"Having to love him in secret like this."
"No. No it isn't."
"Life is unfair, taking people from such different walks of life and throwing them together so."
Iserina took a closer look at Carl's expression. "Oh no. Carl, I'm sorry."
"Social status can be a cruel thing, miss."
"It can. And why should a Jion and an Earth person have any better chance than a prince and a valet?"
"Indeed," Carl said enigmatically, and left her with the map.
The map was for a public road that skirted the far east side of Garma's base. He had marked out a time at night, a date, and a place for her to be standing outside the fence to wait for him.
It was late July, so the wait would at least not be cold. She'd used the excuse of going to Sonya's and then gave Sonya the excuse of going to a "womyn's" music festival in the midwest. Sonya had thought that was great. Late on the night selected, Iserina parked where Garma had indicated and walked up to the fence. It was dark and she felt afraid. Were there animals in these woods? Bears? Anything that could hurt her? She backed herself against the chain link and hoped Garma wouldn't be late.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when a spotlight pinned her. Iserina gave a little scream and spun around. Her terror magnified when she realized that she was in the headlight of a Zaku II.
Oh God, I've been caught. I've finally been caught by the enemy....
"It's okay, Iserina, it's me," Garma's voice said through the Zaku's PA system. "Here."
The mobile suit's massive hand reached over the fence and lowered down to her level. Iserina climbed on and held onto the thumb. The hand raised her to the level of the cockpit, which opened to reveal Garma sitting inside.
"Come on in!"
Iserina jumped in and settled onto Garma's lap in the pilot's seat. He closed the cockpit and changed the angle of the cameras so that all they could see on the Zaku's screens was night sky. It was quiet inside, with the whirr of the air circulation as the only sound.
"Isn't this classified?" Iserina asked.
He snorted. "Your government has had the plans of this antiquated thing's cockpit for ages now."
Iserina ran her fingers through his hair, which was thick enough to keep her fingers from combing through it easily. She marvelled at how long his eyelashes were too; she knew girls who would kill for mascara that would do that.
Garma was clearly nervous for some reason. His hands rested on her hips as if he didn't know what to do next. Well, maybe he didn't. Iserina leaned forward and kissed him, tasting peppermint on his tongue. His arms went around her and she returned the embrace. Tension was making his shoulder muscles rock-hard and she began to massage them as they kissed.
"You're shaking," she observed after a moment.
"I'm really nervous."
"Why?"
"Iserina, I know we've only been going out a few months, but you've come to mean everything to me. I like being here on Earth, but you've been the absolute best thing about it."
She smiled. "Better than Earth-grown veggies?"
"Much better." He kissed her again briefly. "I called you out here so I could give you this."
As Iserina watched, he pulled a silvertone ring from the third finger of his left hand. She'd noticed many Jions wearing them. "This is the ring worn by everybody who graduates from the Academy on Side 3. I know you can't wear it on a chain or on your finger, or anywhere people will see, but I want you to have it." He pressed it into her hand and closed her fist around it.
"Garma!"
He rested his forehead against hers. "I love you, Iserina."
Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn't realize how much she'd been hoping to hear the words. "I love you, Garma Zabi."
They held each other tightly for a few minutes before coming together again in a kiss. How could two people from such separate worlds be such a perfect match for each other, Iserina wondered. It was the element of mutual hope, she realized then. She didn't know where this love would take them, but she trusted it.
*****
Their next meeting was in the middle of a week. Carl had again delivered instructions to Iserina, directing her to a remote part of Central Park. Once, she would have refused the meeting place, saying it was too dangerous, but the Jions had been quite efficient in cleaning up the area. Consequently, she found the location of a tree-shrouded green hill by a big rock formation very romantic.
Garma arrived and they sat down together to decide on what to do next. They had barely started talking when Iserina's eyes opened in horror.
"DADDY!"
He wasn't alone; Sonya was with him. "Iserina, come here!"
"No! You can't order me around."
"You're 17 years old, underage, and I can order you around as much as I need to!"
Estenbach grabbed her arm and dragged her to his side. Garma jumped to his feet.
"Mayor Estenbach, you are way out of line here!"
"Shut up, you genocidal monster! You may have taken my people's lives and our land, but you aren't going to have my daughter!"
"Rina, come on, honey," Sonya soothed, glaring at Garma.
"No!"
"Estenbach, let her go. She hasn't done anything wrong."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"Garma!" Iserina cried out. Her father slapped her, hard.
In a split second, Garma had Estenbach by the tie. His right fist flashed outward into a straight jab to the nose. Estenbach immediately started bleeding profusely. Iserina screamed, not knowing where to turn. Estenbach grabbed for Garma's shirt and Garma reached down for a handful of dirt, hurled it into the older man's eyes, then tackled him. The two wrestled on the ground with Estenbach landing the occasional punch, but Garma's youth and agility gave him the edge. Finally Iserina grabbed her boyfriend's shoulders and hauled him off.
"Stop it, both of you! Listen, Garma, if this is what it takes to make you stop fighting, so be it. I'll talk to you later." She helped her father from the ground and quietly walked away with Sonya.
Garma sat on the turf for a few moments, deciding that letting it all go was a better thing to do right now than keep fighting. He'd communicate with Iserina later. Beating up her father was not the way to her heart. He'd seen the fear of her father in Iserina's eyes, but he'd seen love for Estenbach there as well. A difficult combination. He got to his feet and touched his jaw gingerly; Estenbach still packed a good right cross and he'd be swollen in the morning. He went in search of a cold bottle of water and the subway.
*****
"Before you argue with us, Iserina, Sonya and I thought we should make it clear why it's so important you not see that boy."
They were in Sonya's tiny kitchen with Iserina shoved into a chair at the little wooden table. Estenbach had a makeshift ice pack on his face.
"How did you know where we were going?"
"We had a tip-off from a concerned citizen," Estenbach said. "That's all you need to know."
"Iserina, I know he seems nice, but he's way too dangerous for you," Sonya said. "And if he's not dangerous, his family is."
"Garma's not dangerous. He doesn't even eat meat."
"Neither did Hitler. Sonya, the photos."
Iserina gasped as Sonya dropped a pile of 8 x 10 colour photos in front of her. The top one was a closeup of a dead person, a woman Iserina thought. It was hard to tell. Her(?) skin was green and her features were too distorted to tell.
"The colony that was dropped onto Sydney, Australia? They didn't evacuate the population before they did that, they gassed them," Estenbach said. "These were transmitted by some brave souls who wanted to let the outside world know what was happening before they died. Look, here's more. Men, women, children, all killed without mercy. This one, now, part of what used to be Side One? Nuclear weapons." He turned to photos of charred bodies, mutilated survivors. "Nice, eh? There's your Zabi handicraft for you."
"You have no proof Garma had anything to do with this."
"He was working directly for his sister Kishiria, hun," Sonya said, her arm around Iserina's shoulder. "We can prove that, just with Jion newspapers. It wasn't anything they hid."
"Look," Estenbach said, and he tossed down printouts from microform of various newspapers. Sure enough, there were photos of Giren and/or Kishiria delivering speeches, and Garma was in the background of all of them, blurry because he wasn't the focus.
It was true. Garma had never said that he was against the war or anything like that. He believed in his kingdom enough to have its seal tattooed proudly on his arm. "He was only a spy," she whispered.
"Afraid so, hun," Sonya said.
"Come on, Iserina, let's go home," her father said gently.
That weekend, Iserina waited for Garma under the clock at Grand Central Station. When he came sweeping towards her, she put a hand on his chest to keep him back.
"This isn't a social call," she admitted.
"Oh?"
"Garma, I have to end it. Here." Iserina took his officer's ring from her pocket and handed it to him.
"Iserina, why? What's this all about? Was it the fight with your father? I'm sorry, I just couldn't watch him hurt you like that--"
"It's not that. It's your family, Garma, and their war crimes, and that I don't know if you were part of them."
Garma was silent. "Oh."
"Do you see my problem?"
"Can you walk with me?"
Iserina pointed to the west side of the concourse. "My dad's over there. See him?"
Garma turned so his back was to the mayor. "Iserina, I can't talk freely to you here." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I have opposed the war, but it had to be secret."
"Yes, well you're good at that, aren't you?"
"I am, thank you very much."
"So what did you do," Iserina asked sarcastically, "conspire to kill Giren? Free General Revil?"
Garma gaped. "Iserina, even if I did, I couldn't talk to you about it. I'd be a dead man."
"I can't live with all this secrecy and intrigue anymore, Garma. I'm sorry. I hope you meet a woman or man of your own class who'll understand, because I certainly don't." She turned and walked away from him.
"What you did was a difficult and courageous thing, Iserina," Estenbach said as she joined him. "Let me buy you lunch."
"I'm not very hungry, Daddy."
"Then we'll go right home."
"I think that'd be best."
*****
Garma quietly returned to his quarters and poured himself a glass of tequila. He sat down at the baby grand in his living room and rested his fingers gently on the keys. With no effort, something in A minor began to emerge from his fingertips, echoing the pain and unease in his soul. He moved down the keyboard into the more thunderous range of the piano, then back up. He still didn't have words to express what he felt, but Garma Zabi was no animal to simply howl his grief against his pillows. He let his hands and the keyboard make the sounds instead.
Garma stopped and drained the glass of tequila, then refilled it. A piece of song came into his head and he played the opening chords before going straight to the words that touched his heart:
"Well you can fall for chains of silver, you can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold
You promised me everything, you promised me think and thin
Now you just says, oh Romeo yeah you know I used to have a scene with him.
Juliet, when we made love you used to cry
You said I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die
There's a place for us, you know the movie song
When you gonna realise it was just that the time was wrong?"*
He closed the cover over the keyboard, not wanting the saltiness of his tears to damage it.
*"Romeo and Juliet", by Dire Straights, covered poignantly by the Indigo Girls.
They had chosen the subway as a place to meet and talk because of the observation of Iserina's that no one ever looked at anyone else on the subway. Furthermore, if someone did, all they had to do was start kissing and the observer would look away again.
"I hate to use a cliché, but we've got to stop meeting this way."
"Does your dad ever go away?"
"Not without me. You've kind of got your own place."
"Emphasis on the 'kind of'. Site security is extremely tight, and well it should be. I couldn't bring you into my quarters without you having a thorough security check which I can assure you you'd fail."
"Too much top secret stuff on your desk, huh?"
His dark eyes met hers. "I can't even confirm or deny that. This isn't a game, Iserina. You don't know what I'm risking for this." He was silent for a moment. "Although maybe I can still use that secrecy to our advantage."
"I don't want you in trouble, love."
"So do I. Give me some time to think."
The Royal Jion Cartography Service came to Garma's aid quickly. An ordinance map was produced, marked carefully, and given in an envelope to Carl. Carl was dispatched in civilian clothes to a beach in Long Island where Iserina had been instructed to wait.
"His Highness asked me to give this to you."
Iserina took the envelope and glanced inside. "Thank you."
"I know it can't be easy for you, miss."
"What can't be easy?"
"Having to love him in secret like this."
"No. No it isn't."
"Life is unfair, taking people from such different walks of life and throwing them together so."
Iserina took a closer look at Carl's expression. "Oh no. Carl, I'm sorry."
"Social status can be a cruel thing, miss."
"It can. And why should a Jion and an Earth person have any better chance than a prince and a valet?"
"Indeed," Carl said enigmatically, and left her with the map.
The map was for a public road that skirted the far east side of Garma's base. He had marked out a time at night, a date, and a place for her to be standing outside the fence to wait for him.
It was late July, so the wait would at least not be cold. She'd used the excuse of going to Sonya's and then gave Sonya the excuse of going to a "womyn's" music festival in the midwest. Sonya had thought that was great. Late on the night selected, Iserina parked where Garma had indicated and walked up to the fence. It was dark and she felt afraid. Were there animals in these woods? Bears? Anything that could hurt her? She backed herself against the chain link and hoped Garma wouldn't be late.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when a spotlight pinned her. Iserina gave a little scream and spun around. Her terror magnified when she realized that she was in the headlight of a Zaku II.
Oh God, I've been caught. I've finally been caught by the enemy....
"It's okay, Iserina, it's me," Garma's voice said through the Zaku's PA system. "Here."
The mobile suit's massive hand reached over the fence and lowered down to her level. Iserina climbed on and held onto the thumb. The hand raised her to the level of the cockpit, which opened to reveal Garma sitting inside.
"Come on in!"
Iserina jumped in and settled onto Garma's lap in the pilot's seat. He closed the cockpit and changed the angle of the cameras so that all they could see on the Zaku's screens was night sky. It was quiet inside, with the whirr of the air circulation as the only sound.
"Isn't this classified?" Iserina asked.
He snorted. "Your government has had the plans of this antiquated thing's cockpit for ages now."
Iserina ran her fingers through his hair, which was thick enough to keep her fingers from combing through it easily. She marvelled at how long his eyelashes were too; she knew girls who would kill for mascara that would do that.
Garma was clearly nervous for some reason. His hands rested on her hips as if he didn't know what to do next. Well, maybe he didn't. Iserina leaned forward and kissed him, tasting peppermint on his tongue. His arms went around her and she returned the embrace. Tension was making his shoulder muscles rock-hard and she began to massage them as they kissed.
"You're shaking," she observed after a moment.
"I'm really nervous."
"Why?"
"Iserina, I know we've only been going out a few months, but you've come to mean everything to me. I like being here on Earth, but you've been the absolute best thing about it."
She smiled. "Better than Earth-grown veggies?"
"Much better." He kissed her again briefly. "I called you out here so I could give you this."
As Iserina watched, he pulled a silvertone ring from the third finger of his left hand. She'd noticed many Jions wearing them. "This is the ring worn by everybody who graduates from the Academy on Side 3. I know you can't wear it on a chain or on your finger, or anywhere people will see, but I want you to have it." He pressed it into her hand and closed her fist around it.
"Garma!"
He rested his forehead against hers. "I love you, Iserina."
Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn't realize how much she'd been hoping to hear the words. "I love you, Garma Zabi."
They held each other tightly for a few minutes before coming together again in a kiss. How could two people from such separate worlds be such a perfect match for each other, Iserina wondered. It was the element of mutual hope, she realized then. She didn't know where this love would take them, but she trusted it.
*****
Their next meeting was in the middle of a week. Carl had again delivered instructions to Iserina, directing her to a remote part of Central Park. Once, she would have refused the meeting place, saying it was too dangerous, but the Jions had been quite efficient in cleaning up the area. Consequently, she found the location of a tree-shrouded green hill by a big rock formation very romantic.
Garma arrived and they sat down together to decide on what to do next. They had barely started talking when Iserina's eyes opened in horror.
"DADDY!"
He wasn't alone; Sonya was with him. "Iserina, come here!"
"No! You can't order me around."
"You're 17 years old, underage, and I can order you around as much as I need to!"
Estenbach grabbed her arm and dragged her to his side. Garma jumped to his feet.
"Mayor Estenbach, you are way out of line here!"
"Shut up, you genocidal monster! You may have taken my people's lives and our land, but you aren't going to have my daughter!"
"Rina, come on, honey," Sonya soothed, glaring at Garma.
"No!"
"Estenbach, let her go. She hasn't done anything wrong."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"Garma!" Iserina cried out. Her father slapped her, hard.
In a split second, Garma had Estenbach by the tie. His right fist flashed outward into a straight jab to the nose. Estenbach immediately started bleeding profusely. Iserina screamed, not knowing where to turn. Estenbach grabbed for Garma's shirt and Garma reached down for a handful of dirt, hurled it into the older man's eyes, then tackled him. The two wrestled on the ground with Estenbach landing the occasional punch, but Garma's youth and agility gave him the edge. Finally Iserina grabbed her boyfriend's shoulders and hauled him off.
"Stop it, both of you! Listen, Garma, if this is what it takes to make you stop fighting, so be it. I'll talk to you later." She helped her father from the ground and quietly walked away with Sonya.
Garma sat on the turf for a few moments, deciding that letting it all go was a better thing to do right now than keep fighting. He'd communicate with Iserina later. Beating up her father was not the way to her heart. He'd seen the fear of her father in Iserina's eyes, but he'd seen love for Estenbach there as well. A difficult combination. He got to his feet and touched his jaw gingerly; Estenbach still packed a good right cross and he'd be swollen in the morning. He went in search of a cold bottle of water and the subway.
*****
"Before you argue with us, Iserina, Sonya and I thought we should make it clear why it's so important you not see that boy."
They were in Sonya's tiny kitchen with Iserina shoved into a chair at the little wooden table. Estenbach had a makeshift ice pack on his face.
"How did you know where we were going?"
"We had a tip-off from a concerned citizen," Estenbach said. "That's all you need to know."
"Iserina, I know he seems nice, but he's way too dangerous for you," Sonya said. "And if he's not dangerous, his family is."
"Garma's not dangerous. He doesn't even eat meat."
"Neither did Hitler. Sonya, the photos."
Iserina gasped as Sonya dropped a pile of 8 x 10 colour photos in front of her. The top one was a closeup of a dead person, a woman Iserina thought. It was hard to tell. Her(?) skin was green and her features were too distorted to tell.
"The colony that was dropped onto Sydney, Australia? They didn't evacuate the population before they did that, they gassed them," Estenbach said. "These were transmitted by some brave souls who wanted to let the outside world know what was happening before they died. Look, here's more. Men, women, children, all killed without mercy. This one, now, part of what used to be Side One? Nuclear weapons." He turned to photos of charred bodies, mutilated survivors. "Nice, eh? There's your Zabi handicraft for you."
"You have no proof Garma had anything to do with this."
"He was working directly for his sister Kishiria, hun," Sonya said, her arm around Iserina's shoulder. "We can prove that, just with Jion newspapers. It wasn't anything they hid."
"Look," Estenbach said, and he tossed down printouts from microform of various newspapers. Sure enough, there were photos of Giren and/or Kishiria delivering speeches, and Garma was in the background of all of them, blurry because he wasn't the focus.
It was true. Garma had never said that he was against the war or anything like that. He believed in his kingdom enough to have its seal tattooed proudly on his arm. "He was only a spy," she whispered.
"Afraid so, hun," Sonya said.
"Come on, Iserina, let's go home," her father said gently.
That weekend, Iserina waited for Garma under the clock at Grand Central Station. When he came sweeping towards her, she put a hand on his chest to keep him back.
"This isn't a social call," she admitted.
"Oh?"
"Garma, I have to end it. Here." Iserina took his officer's ring from her pocket and handed it to him.
"Iserina, why? What's this all about? Was it the fight with your father? I'm sorry, I just couldn't watch him hurt you like that--"
"It's not that. It's your family, Garma, and their war crimes, and that I don't know if you were part of them."
Garma was silent. "Oh."
"Do you see my problem?"
"Can you walk with me?"
Iserina pointed to the west side of the concourse. "My dad's over there. See him?"
Garma turned so his back was to the mayor. "Iserina, I can't talk freely to you here." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I have opposed the war, but it had to be secret."
"Yes, well you're good at that, aren't you?"
"I am, thank you very much."
"So what did you do," Iserina asked sarcastically, "conspire to kill Giren? Free General Revil?"
Garma gaped. "Iserina, even if I did, I couldn't talk to you about it. I'd be a dead man."
"I can't live with all this secrecy and intrigue anymore, Garma. I'm sorry. I hope you meet a woman or man of your own class who'll understand, because I certainly don't." She turned and walked away from him.
"What you did was a difficult and courageous thing, Iserina," Estenbach said as she joined him. "Let me buy you lunch."
"I'm not very hungry, Daddy."
"Then we'll go right home."
"I think that'd be best."
*****
Garma quietly returned to his quarters and poured himself a glass of tequila. He sat down at the baby grand in his living room and rested his fingers gently on the keys. With no effort, something in A minor began to emerge from his fingertips, echoing the pain and unease in his soul. He moved down the keyboard into the more thunderous range of the piano, then back up. He still didn't have words to express what he felt, but Garma Zabi was no animal to simply howl his grief against his pillows. He let his hands and the keyboard make the sounds instead.
Garma stopped and drained the glass of tequila, then refilled it. A piece of song came into his head and he played the opening chords before going straight to the words that touched his heart:
"Well you can fall for chains of silver, you can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold
You promised me everything, you promised me think and thin
Now you just says, oh Romeo yeah you know I used to have a scene with him.
Juliet, when we made love you used to cry
You said I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die
There's a place for us, you know the movie song
When you gonna realise it was just that the time was wrong?"*
He closed the cover over the keyboard, not wanting the saltiness of his tears to damage it.
*"Romeo and Juliet", by Dire Straights, covered poignantly by the Indigo Girls.