Asimov's Future History Volume 5

by Isaac Asimov

  She must have thought so, for she reached out to him and stroked his hand. “I won’t hate you, Elijah. Why should I? You did nothing to me that I can object to. I did it to you and I’ll be glad for the rest of my life that I did. You freed me by a touch two years ago, Elijah, and last night you freed me again. I needed to know, two years ago, that I could feel desire – and last night I needed to know that I could feel desire again after Jander. Elijah – stay with me. It would be –”

  He cut her off earnestly. “How can that be, Gladia? I must go back to my own world. I have duties and goals there and you cannot come with me. You could not live the kind of life that is lived on Earth. You would die of Earthly diseases – if the crowds and enclosure did not kill you first. Surely you understand.”

  “I understand about Earth,” said Gladia with a sigh, “but surely you needn’t leave immediately.”

  “Before the morning is over, I may be ordered off the planet by the Chairman.”

  “You won’t be,” said Gladia energetically. “You won’t let yourself be. – And if you are, we can go to another Spacer world. There are dozens we can choose from. Does Earth mean so much to you that you wouldn’t live on a Spacer world?”

  Baley said, “I could be evasive, Gladia, and point out that no other Spacer world would let me make my home there permanently – and you know that’s so. The greater truth is, though, that even if some Spacer world would accept me, Earth means so much to me that I would have to return. – Even if it meant leaving you.”

  “And never visiting Aurora again? Never seeing me again?”

  “If I could see you again, I would,” Baley said, wishing. “Over and over again, believe me. But what’s the use of saying so? You know I’m not likely to be invited back. And you know I can’t return without an invitation.”

  Gladia said in a low voice, “I don’t want to believe that, Elijah.”

  Baley said, “Gladia, don’t make yourself unhappy. Something wonderful happened between us, but there are other wonderful things that will happen to you, too – many of them, of all kinds, but not the same wonderful thing. Look forward to the others.”

  She was silent.

  “Gladia,” he said urgently, “need anyone know what has happened between us?”

  She looked up at him, a pained expression on her face. “Are you that ashamed?”

  “Of what happened, certainly not. But even though I am not ashamed, there could be consequences that would be discomforting. The matter would be talked about. Thanks to that hateful hyperwave drama, which included a distorted view of our relationship, we are news. The Earthman and the Solarian woman. If there is the slightest reason to suspect that there is – love between us, it will get back to Earth at the speed of hyperspatial drive.”

  Gladia lifted her eyebrows with a touch of hauteur. “And Earth will consider you demeaned? You will have indulged in sex with someone beneath your station?”

  “No, of course not,” said Baley uneasily, for he knew that that would certainly be the view of billions of Earthpeople. “Has it occurred to you that my wife would hear of it? I’m married.”

  “And if she does? What of it?”

  Baley took a deep breath. “You don’t understand. Earth ways are not Spacer ways. We have had times in our history when sexual mores were fairly loose, at least in some places and for some classes. This is not one of those times. Earthmen live crowded together and it takes a puritan ethic to keep the family system stable under such conditions.”

  “Everyone has one partner, you mean, and no other?”

  “No,” said Baley. “To be honest, that’s not so. But care is taken to keep irregularities sufficiently quiet, so that everyone can – can –”

  “Pretend they don’t know?”

  “Well, yes, but in this case –”

  “It will all be so public that no one could pretend not to know – and your wife will be angry with you and will strike you.”

  “No, she won’t strike me, but she will be shamed, which is worse. I will be shamed as well and so will my son. My social position will suffer and – Gladia, if you don’t understand, you don’t understand, but tell me that you will not speak freely of this thing as Aurorans do.” He was conscious of making a rather miserable show of himself.

  Gladia said thoughtfully, “I do not mean to tease you, Elijah. You have been kind to me and I would not be unkind to you, but” – she threw her arms up hopelessly –” your Earth ways are so nonsensical.”

  “Undoubtedly. Yet I must live with them – as you have lived with Solarian ways.”

  “Yes.” Her expression darkened with memory. Then, “Forgive me, Elijah. Really and honestly, I apologize. I want what I can’t have and I take it out on you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not all right. Please, Elijah, I must explain something to you. I don’t think you understand what happened last night. Will you be all the more embarrassed if I do?”

  Baley wondered how Jessie would feel and what she would do if she could hear this conversation. Baley was quite aware that his mind should be on the confrontation with the Chairman that was looming immediately up ahead and not on his own personal marital dilemma. He should be thinking of Earth’s danger and not of his wife’s, but, in actual fact, he was thinking of Jessie.

  He said, “I’ll probably be embarrassed, but explain it anyway.”

  Gladia moved her chair, refraining from calling one of her robotic staff to do it for her. He waited for her nervously, not offering to move it himself.

  She put her chair immediately next to his, facing it in the other direction, so that she was looking at him directly when she sat down. And as she did so, she put out her small hand and placed it in his and he felt his own hand press it.

  “You see,” she said, “I no longer fear contact. I’m no longer at the stage where all I can do is brush your cheek for an instant.”

  “That may be, but this does not affect you, Gladia, does it, as that bare touch did then?”

  She nodded. “No, it doesn’t affect me that way, but I like it anyway. I think that’s an advance, actually. To be turned inside out just by a single moment of touch shows how abnormally I had lived and for how long. Now it is better. May I tell you how? What I have just said is actually prologue.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I wish we were in bed and it was dark. I could talk more freely.”

  “We are sitting up and it is light, Gladia, but I am listening.”

  “Yes. – On Solaria, Elijah, there was no sex to speak of. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I experienced none, in any real sense. On a few occasions – only a few – my husband approached me out of duty. I won’t even describe how that was, but you will believe me when I tell you that, looking back on it, it was worse than none.”

  “I believe you.”

  “But I knew about sex. I read about it. I discussed it with other women sometimes, all of whom pretended it was a hateful duty that Solarians must undergo. If they had children to the limit of their quota, they always said they were delighted they would never have to deal with sex again.”

  “Did you believe them?”

  “Of course I did. I had never heard anything else and the few non – Solarian accounts I read were denounced as false distortions. I believed that, too. My husband found some books I had, called them pornography, and had them destroyed. Then, too, you know, people can make themselves believe anything. I think Solarian women believed what they said and really did despise sex. They certainly sounded sincere enough and it made me feel there was something terribly wrong with me because I had a kind of curiosity about it – and odd feelings I could not understand.”

  “You did not, at that time, use robots for relief in any way?”

  “No, it didn’t occur to me. Or any inanimate object. There were occasional whispers of such things, but with such horror – or pretended horror – that I would never dream of doi
ng anything like that. Of course, I had dreams and sometimes something that, as I look back on it, must have been incipient orgasms, would wake me. I never understood them, of course, or dared talk of it. I was bitterly ashamed of it, in fact. Worse, I was frightened of the pleasure they brought me. And then, of course, I came to Aurora.”

  “You told me of that. Sex with Aurorans was unsatisfactory.”

  “Yes. It made me think that Solarians were right after all. Sex was not like my dreams at all. It was not until Jander that I understood. It is not sex that they have on Aurora; it is, it is – choreography. Every step of it is dictated by fashion, from the method of approach to the moment of departure. There is nothing unexpected, nothing spontaneous. On Solaria, since there was so little sex, nothing was given or taken. And on Aurora, sex was so stylized that, in the end, nothing was given or taken either. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure, Gladia, never having experienced sex with an Auroran woman or, for that matter, never ‘having been an Auroran man. But it’s not necessary to explain. I have a dim notion of what you mean.”

  “You’re terribly embarrassed, aren’t you?”

  “Not to the point of being unable to listen.”

  “But then I met Jander and learned to use him. He was not an Auroran man. His only aim, his only possible aim, was to please me. He gave and I took and, for the first time, I experienced sex as it should be experienced. Do you understand that? Can you imagine what it must be like suddenly to know that you are not mad, or distorted, or perverted, or even simply wrong – but to know that you are a woman and have a satisfying sex partner?”

  “I think I can imagine that.”

  “And then, after so short a time, to have it all taken away from me. I thought – I thought – that that was the end. I was doomed. I was never again, through centuries of life, to have a good sexual relationship again. Not to have had it to start with – and then never to have had it at all – was bad enough. But to get it against all expectation and to have it, then suddenly to lose it and go back to nothing – that was unbearable. – You see how important, therefore, last night was.”

  “But why me, Gladia? Why not someone else?”

  “No, Elijah, it had to be you. We came and found you, Giskard and I, and you were helpless. Truly helpless. You were not unconscious, but you did not rule your body. You had to be lifted and carried and placed in the car. I was there when you were warmed and treated, bathed and dried, helpless throughout. The robots did it all with marvelous efficiency, intent on caring for you and preventing harm from coming to you but totally without actual feeling. I, on the other hand, watched and I felt.”

  Baley bent his head, gritting his teeth at the thought of his public helplessness. He had luxuriated in it when it had happened, but now he could only feel the disgrace of being observed under such conditions.

  She went on. “I wanted to do it all for you. I resented the robots for reserving for themselves the right to be kind to you – and to give. And as I thought of myself doing it, I felt a growing sexual excitement, something I hadn’t felt since Jander’s death. – And it occurred to me then that, in my only successful sex, what I had done was to take. Jander gave whatever I wished, but he never took. He was incapable of taking, since his only pleasure lay in pleasing me. And it never occurred to me to give because I was brought up with robots and knew they couldn’t take.

  “And as I watched, it came to me that I knew only half of sex and I desperately wanted to experience the other half. But then, at the dinner table with me afterward, when you were eating your hot soup, you seemed recovered, you seemed strong. You were strong enough to console me and because I had had that feeling for you, when you were being cared for, I no longer feared your being from Earth and I was willing to move into your embrace. I wanted it. But even as you held me, I felt a sense of loss, for I was taking again and not giving.

  “And you said to me, ‘Gladia, please, I must sit down.’ Oh, Elijah, it was the most wonderful thing you could have said to me.

  Baley felt himself flush. “It embarrassed me hideously at the time. Such a confession of weakness.”

  “It was just what I wanted. It drove me wild with desire. I forced you to bed and came to you and, for the first time in my life, I gave. I took nothing. And the spell of Jander passed, for I knew that he had not been enough, either. It must be possible to take and give, both. – Elijah, stay with me.”

  Baley shook his head. “Gladia, if I tore my heart in two, it wouldn’t change the facts. I cannot remain on Aurora. I must return to Earth. You cannot come to Earth.”

  “Elijah, what if I can come to Earth?”

  “Why do you say such a foolish thing? Even if you could, I would age quickly and soon be useless to you. In twenty years, thirty at the most, I will be an old man, probably dead, while you will stay as you are for centuries.”

  “But that is what I mean, Elijah. On Earth, I will catch your infections and I will grow old quickly, too.”

  “You wouldn’t want that. Besides, old age isn’t an infection. You will merely grow sick, very quickly, and die. Gladia, you can find another man.”

  “An Auroran?” She said it with contempt.

  “You can teach. Now that you know how to take and to give, teach them how to do both as well.”

  “If I teach, will they learn?”

  “Some will. Surely some will. You have so much time to find the one who will. There is –” (No, he thought, it is not wise to mention Gremionis now, but perhaps if he comes to her – less politely and with a little more determination –)

  She seemed thoughtful. “Is it possible?” Then, looking at Baley, with her gray – blue eyes moist, “Oh, Elijah, do you remember anything at all of what happened last night?”

  “I must admit,” said Baley a little sadly, “that some of it is distressingly hazy.”

  “If you remembered, you would not want to leave me.”

  “I don’t want to leave you as it is, Gladia. It is just that I must.”

  “And afterward,” she said, “you seemed so quietly happy, so rested. I lay nestled on your shoulder and felt your heart beat rapidly at first, then more and more slowly, except when you sat up so suddenly. Do you remember that?”

  Baley started and leaned a little away from her, gazing into her eyes wildly. “No, I don’t remember that. What do you mean? What did I do?”

  “I told you. You sat up suddenly.”

  “Yes, but what else?” His heart was beating rapidly now, as rapidly as it must have in the wake of last night’s sex. Three times, something that had seemed the truth had come to him, but the first two times he had been entirely alone. The third time, last night, however, Gladia had been with him. He had had a witness.

  Gladia said, “Nothing else, really. I said, ‘What is it, Elijah?’ but you paid no attention to me. You said, ‘I have it. I have it.’ You didn’t speak clearly and your eyes were unfocused. It was a little frightening.”

  “Is that all I said? Jehoshaphat, Gladia! Didn’t I say anything more?”

  Gladia frowned. “I don’t remember. But then you lay back and I said, ‘Don’t be frightened, Elijah. Don’t be frightened. You’re safe now.’ And I stroked you and you settled back and fell asleep – and snored. – I never heard anyone snore before, but that’s what it must have been – from the descriptions.” The thought clearly amused her.

  Baley said, “Listen to me, Gladia. What did I say? ‘I have it. I have it.’ Did I say what it was I had?”

  She frowned again. “No. I don’t remember – Wait, you did say one thing in a very low voice. You said, ‘He was there first.”

  “’He was there first.’ That’s what I said?”

  “Yes. I took it for granted that you meant Giskard was there before the other robots, that you were trying to overcome your fears of being taken away, that you were reliving that time in the storm. Yes! That’s why I stroked you and said, ‘Don’t be frightened, Elijah. You’re safe now,’ t
ill you relaxed.”

  “He was there first.’ ‘He was there first.’ – I won’t forget it now. Gladia, thanks for last night. Thanks for talking to me now.”

  Gladia said, “Is there something important about you saying that Giskard found you first. He did. You know that.”

  “It can’t be that, Gladia. It must be something I don’t know but manage to discover only when my mind is totally relaxed.”

  “But what does it mean, then?”

  “I’m not sure, but if that’s what I said, it must mean something. And I have an hour or so to figure it out.” He stood up. “I must leave now.”

  He had taken a few steps toward the door, but Gladia flew to him and put her arms around him. “Wait, Elijah.”

  Baley hesitated, then lowered his head to kiss her. For a long moment, they clung together.

  “Will I see you again, Elijah?”

  Baley said sadly, “I can’t say. I hope so.”

  And he went off to find Daneel and Giskard, so that he could make the necessary preparations for the confrontation about to come.

  73.

  BALEY’S SADNESS PERSISTED as he walked across the long lawn – to Fastolfe’s establishment.

  The robots walked on either side. Daneel seemed at his ease, but Giskard, faithful to his programming and apparently unable to relax it, maintained his close watch on the surroundings.

  Baley said, “What is the name of the Chairman of the Legislature, Daneel?”

  “I cannot say, Partner Elijah. On the occasions when he has been referred to in my hearing, he has been referred to only as ‘the Chairman.’ He is addressed as ‘Mr. Chairman.”