Saifa Johnson surveyed herself in the washroom mirror, smoothing the wrinkles in her long, black abaya. With a swift, smooth movement, she reached up and pulled the agal - a black band braided with strands of orange and white that displayed her rank and specialty -- from the top of her head. She stowed it in her handbag and took out another, one with threads of red and grey and pink. She settled it in the old one's place, snugged it tight over her forehead and pulled the face veil of her abaya into place. Smoky blue eyes stared back at her from the mirror and Saifa smiled beneath the flap of fabric, tucked a few errant strands of light brown hair under the edge of the cloth. She was, for all practical purposes, unidentifiable. There were plenty of spacers with blue eyes, and with the new agal, she had gained a new rank and a new specialty -- a new identity. "Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim," she mouthed to her reflection. In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate . Then she swept out the washroom door and headed towards Social Center C, pulling her abaya close round herself.
It was mid afternoon and the SoCenter was crowded. Men and women were scattered around the room in twos and threes, playing games, chatting. In one corner, a large group was engrossed with a poetry reading. Across the room, a dozen painting students were seated around a display stand draped with lengths of brightly colored cloth. Saifa chose an empty table near a cabinet of digitalia. She pulled a notebook and pen from her handbag and began to write.
Twenty minutes later, a woman took the seat next to Saifa. She placed a sheaf of what appeared to be lab reports on the table in front of her and began to make notes on the top sheet. Her face, too, was covered with the veil. It wasn't that uncommon -- some women wore them habitually, others raised them when they didn't want to be disturbed. Saifa glanced surreptitiously at the newcomer's agal. Amidst the white and crimson threads -- Officer 2 nd class, Agronomist -- was a light pink one. A pink that matched a thread in her own agal. A pink that had no official standing.
Saifa flipped the page of her notebook, continued writing. She filled two more pages and then pulled a small envelope from her bag, rested it on the table under a fold of her sleeve. She closed the notebook, stowed the pen in its binding, stood up, and walked away from the table, leaving the envelope behind.
It was hard to resist the temptation to look back, to see if the other woman simply picked up the envelope, or if she covered it with a fold of her sleeve too, but Saifa kept her eyes ahead of her as she headed towards the exit.
Suddenly, her pen slipped from the notebook and clattered to the floor. As she bent to pick it up, Saifa glanced toward the woman, observed that she had flipped the top page of the lab report over the envelope. The woman looked up and for a moment brown eyes met blue ones. Then she turned back to her notes.
*****
Mahdi Al-Amwali slipped an access card into the key reader of the Dock Three flight supplies storage room. The door slid open and he stepped inside. Catching his reflection in the shiny surface of a replacement stabilizer, he had to laugh. He reached up and flipped the veil from in front of his face, the wavy black hairs of his beard making an odd contrast with the feminine garments around them. He pulled the agal free, and let the robes drop to the floor.
He laughed again. His contact knew he was neither an Agronomist, nor an Officer 2 nd Class, but he doubted she had any idea that he wasn't even a woman. A dozen times they had passed information, yet she had no way of knowing he was a man. He pulled a small bottle of baby oil from the soft nylon bag in which he carried the agronomist's reports and began wiping the kohl from his eyes.
Mahdi laughed a third time. Perhaps his contact wasn't a woman either!
He reached into the bag and pulled out the envelope she had left on the table. The disc inside was small and shiny and it fit neatly into the inner breast pocket of his flight suit. He scooped up the agal, the abaya and stuffed them along with the envelope into the bag. The oil went into his flight case. Every once in a while, he made a show of rubbing it on the backs of his hands in front of the pilot or the communications officer of his transport ship.
Mahdi picked a spare headset off a shelf. His old one had conveniently developed a short just the day before. He checked its stock and serial numbers against the requisition order he had secured earlier that morning from Maintenance and then stuffed the headset into his flight case.
He picked up the two bags and strode out of the storage room. A few doors down he turned into a janitorial station. Containers for paper and metal recyclables stood next to cabinets of cleaners and cloths. Mahdi crossed to a gaping opening - the incinerator chute. Unrecyclables were burned, the ash purified, filtered, minerals recovered. No waste on a spaceship. He tossed the black bag down the chute and smiled. One less piece of evidence to worry about.
Mahdi glanced at his chronometer. Half an hour until crew check-in. He would be early, but he did have the extra work of installing the headset and checking its functionality. And the shuttle's pilot, Officer Yevgeney Olashev, would never complain about his co-pilot arriving ahead of schedule.
