Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (38 page)

“You mean if I were to put my finger there–” Baley advanced and Gladia made way for him. He put a hesitant forefinger down upon the pedestal and felt a soft throbbing.

“Go ahead. Move your finger, Elijah,” said Gladia.

Baley did so and a dirty-gray jag of light lifted upward, skewing the yellow light. Baley withdrew his finger sharply and Gladia laughed and then was instantly contrite.

“I shouldn’t laugh,” she said. “It’s really very hard to do, even for people who’ve tried a long time.” Her own hand moved lightly and too quickly for Baley to follow and the monstrosity he had set up disappeared, leaving the yellow light in isolation again.

“How did you learn to do this?” asked Baley.

“I just kept on trying. It’s a new art form, you know, and only one or two really know how–”

“And you’re the best,” said Baley somberly. “On Solaria everyone is either the only or the best or both.”

“You needn’t laugh. I’ve had some of my pedestals on display. I’ve given shows.” Her chin lifted. There was no mistaking her pride.

She continued, “Let me go on with your portrait.” Her fingers moved again.

There were few curves in the light-form that grew under her ministrations. It was all sharp angles. And the dominant color was blue.

“That’s Earth, somehow,” said Gladia, biting her lower lip. “I always think of Earth as blue. All those people and seeing, seeing, seeing. Viewing is more rose. How does it seem to you?”

“Jehoshaphat, I can’t picture things as colors.”

“Can’t you?” she asked abstractedly. “Now you say ‘Jehoshaphat’ sometimes and that’s just a little blob of violet. A little sharp blob because it usually comes out ping, like that.” And the little blob was there, glowing just off-center.

“And then,” she said, “I can finish it like this.” And a flat, lusterless hollow cube of slate gray sprang up to enclose everything. The light within shone through it, but dimmer; imprisoned, somehow.

Baley felt a sadness at it, as though it were something enclosing him, keeping him from something he wanted. He said, “What’s that last?”

Gladia said, “Why, the walls about you. That’s what’s most in you, the way you can’t go outside, the way you have to be inside. You
are
inside there. Don’t you see?”

Baley saw and somehow he disapproved. He said, “Those walls aren’t permanent. I’ve been out today.”

“You have? Did you mind?”

He could not resist a counter dig. “The way you mind seeing me. You don’t like it but you can stand it.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you want to come out now? With me? For a walk?”

It was Baley’s impulse to say: Jehoshaphat, no.

She said, “I’ve never walked with anyone, seeing. It’s still daytime, and it’s pleasant weather.”

Baley looked at his abstractionist portrait and said, “If I go, will you take away the gray?”

She smiled and said, “I’ll see how you behave.”

The structure of light remained as they left the room. It stayed behind, holding Baley’s imprisoned soul fast in the gray of the Cities.

Baley shivered slightly. Air moved against him and there was a chill to it.

Gladia said, “Are you cold?”

“It wasn’t like this before,” muttered Baley.

“It’s late in the day now, but it isn’t really cold. Would you like a coat? One of the robots could bring one in a minute.”

“No. It’s all right.” They stepped forward along a narrow paved path. He said, “Is this where you used to walk with Dr. Leebig?”

“Oh no. We walked way out among the fields, where you only see an occasional robot working and you can hear the animal sounds. You and I will stay near the house though, just in case.”

“In case what?”

“Well, in case you want to go in.”

“Or in case you get weary of seeing?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” she said recklessly.

There was the vague rustle of leaves above and an all-pervading yellowness and greenness. There were sharp, thin cries in the air about, plus a strident humming, and shadows, too.

He was especially aware of the shadows. One of them stuck out before him, in shape like a man, that moved as he did in horrible mimicry. Baley had heard of shadows, of course, and he knew what they were, but in the pervasive indirect lighting of the Cities he had never been specifically aware of one.

Behind him, he knew, was the Solarian sun. He took care not to look at it, but he knew it was there.

Space was large, space was lonely, yet he found it drawing him. His mind pictured himself striding the surface of a world with thousands of miles and light-years of room all about him.

Why should he find attraction in this thought of loneliness? He didn’t want loneliness. He wanted Earth and the warmth and companionship of the man-crammed Cities.

The picture failed him. He tried to conjure up New York in his mind, all the noise and fullness of it, and found he could remain conscious only of the quiet, air-moving chill of the surface of Solaria.

Without quite willing it Baley moved closer to Gladia until he was two feet away, then grew aware of her startled face.

“I beg your pardon,” he said at once, and drew off.

She gasped, “It’s all right. Won’t you walk this way? We have some flower beds you might like.”

The direction she indicated lay away from the sun. Baley followed silently.

Gladia said, “Later in the year, it will be wonderful. In the warm weather I can run down to the lake and swim, or just run across the fields, run as fast as I can until I’m just glad to fall down and lie still.”

She looked down at herself. “But this is no costume for it. With all this on, I’ve
got
to walk. Sedately, you know.”

“How would you prefer to dress?” asked Baley.

“Halter and shorts at the
most
,” she cried, lifting her arms as though feeling the freedom of that in her imagination. “Sometimes less. Sometimes just sandals so you can feel the air with every inch–Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve offended you.”

Baley said, “No. It’s all right. Was that your costume when you went walking with Dr. Leebig?”

“It varied. It depended on the weather. Sometimes I wore very little, but it was viewing, you know. You
do
understand, I hope.”

“I understand. What about Dr. Leebig, though? Did he dress lightly too?”

“Jothan dress lightly?” Gladia smiled flashingly. “Oh no. He’s very solemn, always.” She twisted her face into a thin look of gravity and half winked, catching the very essence of Leebig and forcing a short grunt of appreciation out of Baley.

“This is the way he talks,” she said. “‘My dear Gladia, in considering the effect of a first-order potential on positron flow–”

“Is that what he talked to you about? Robotics?”

“Mostly. Oh, he takes it so seriously, you know. He was always trying to teach me about it. He never gave up.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“Not one thing. Nothing. It’s just all a complete mix-up to me. He’d get angry with me sometimes, but when he’d scold, I’d dive into the water, if we were anywhere near the lake, and splash him.”

“
Splash
him? I thought you were viewing.”

She laughed. “You’re
such
an Earthman. I’d splash where he was standing in his own room or on his own estate. The water couldn’t touch him, but he would duck just the same. Look at that.”

Baley looked. They had circled a wooded patch and now came upon a clearing, centered about an ornamental pond. Small bricked walks penetrated the clearing and broke it up. Flowers grew in profusion and order. Baley knew them for flowers from book-films he had viewed.

In a way the flowers were like the light-patterns that Gladia constructed and Baley imagined that she constructed them in the spirit of flowers. He touched one cautiously, then looked about. Reds and yellows predominated.

In turning to look about Baley caught a glimpse of the sun.

He said uneasily, “The sun is low in the sky.”

“It’s late afternoon,” called Gladia back to him. She had run toward the pond and was sitting on a stone bench at its edge. “Come here,” she shouted, waving. “You can stand if you don’t like to sit On stone.”

Baley advanced slowly. “Does it get this low every day?” and at once he was sorry he asked. If the planet rotated, the sun must be low in the sky both mornings and afternoons. Only at midday could it be high.

Telling himself this couldn’t change a lifetime of pictured thought. He knew there was such a thing as night and had even experienced it, with a planet’s whole thickness interposing safely between a man and the sun. He knew there were clouds and a protective grayness hiding the worst of outdoors. And still, when he thought of planetary surfaces, it was always a picture of a blaze of light with a sun high in the sky.

He looked over his shoulder, just quickly enough to get a flash of sun, and wondered how far the house was if he should decide to return.

Gladia was pointing to the other end of the stone bench.

Baley said, “That’s pretty close to you, isn’t it?”

She spread out her little hands, palms up. “I’m getting used to it. Really.”

He sat down, facing toward her to avoid the sun.

She leaned over backward toward the water and pulled a small cup-shaped flower, yellow without and white-streaked within, not at all flamboyant. She said, “This is a native plant. Most of the flowers here are from Earth originally.”

Water dripped from its severed stem as she extended it gingerly toward Baley.

Baley reached for it as gingerly. “You killed it,” he said.

“It’s only a flower. There are thousands more.” Suddenly, before his fingers more than touched the yellow cup, she snatched it away, her eyes kindling. “Or are you trying to imply I could kill a human being because I pulled a flower?”

Baley said in soft conciliation, “I wasn’t implying anything. May I see it?”

Baley didn’t really want to touch it. It had grown in wet soil and there was still the effluvium of mud about it. How could these people, who were so careful in contact with Earthmen and even with one another, be so careless in their contact with ordinary dirt?

But he held the stalk between thumb and forefinger and looked at it. The cup was formed of several thin pieces of papery tissue, curving up from a common center. Within it was a white convex swelling, damp with liquid and fringed with dark hairs that trembled lightly in the wind.

She said, “Can you smell it?”

At once Baley was aware of the odor that emanated from it. He leaned toward it and said, “It smells like a woman’s perfume.”

Gladia clapped her hands in delight. “How like an Earthman. What you really mean is that a woman’s perfume smells like
that
.”

Baley nodded ruefully. He was growing weary of the outdoors. The shadows were growing longer and the land was becoming somber. Yet he was determined not to give in. He wanted those gray walls of light that dimmed his portrait removed. It was quixotic, but there it was.

Gladia took the flower from Baley, who let it go without reluctance. Slowly she pulled its petals apart. She said, “I suppose every woman smells different.”

“It depends on the perfume,” said Baley indifferently.

“Imagine being close enough to tell. I don’t wear perfume because no one is close enough. Except now. But I suppose you smell perfume often, all the time. On Earth, your wife is always with you, isn’t she?” She was concentrating very hard on the flower, frowning as she plucked it carefully to pieces.

“She’s not always with me,” said Baley. “Not every minute.”

“But most of the time. And whenever you want to–”

Baley said suddenly, “Why did Dr. Leebig try so hard to teach you robotics, do you suppose?”

The dismembered flower consisted now of a stalk and the inner swelling. Gladia twirled it between her fingers, then tossed it away, so that it floated for a moment on the surface of the pond. “I think he wanted me to be his assistant,” she said.

“Did he tell you so, Gladia?”

“Toward the end, Elijah. I think he grew impatient. Anyway, he asked me if I didn’t think it would be exciting to work in robotics. Naturally, I told him I could think of nothing duller. He was quite angry.”

“And he never walked with you again after that.”

She said, “You know, I think that may have been it. I suppose his feelings were hurt. Really, though, what could I do?”

“It was before that, though, that you told him about your quarrels with Dr. Delmarre.”

Her hands became fists and held so in a tight spasm. Her body held stiffly to its position, head bent and a little to one side. Her voice was unnaturally high. “What quarrels?”

“Your quarrels with your husband. I understand you hated him.” Her face was distorted and blotched as she glared at him. “Who told you that? Jothan?”

“Dr. Leebig mentioned it. I think it’s true.”

She was shaken. “You’re still trying to prove I killed him. I keep thinking you’re my friend and you’re only–only a detective.”

She raised her fists and Baley waited.

He said, “You know you can’t touch me.”

Her hands dropped and she began crying without a sound. She turned her head away.

Baley bent his own head and closed his eyes, shutting out the disturbing long shadows. He said, “Dr. Delmarre was not a very affectionate man, was he?”

She said in a strangled way, “He was a very busy man.”

Baley said, “You
are
affectionate, on the other hand. You find a man interesting. Do you understand?”

“I c-can’t help it. I know it’s disgusting, but I can’t help it. It’s even disgusting t-to talk about it.”

“You did talk about it to Dr. Leebig, though?”

“I
had
to do something and Jothan was handy and he didn’t seem to mind and it made me feel better.”

“Was this the reason you quarreled with your husband? Was it that he was cold and unaffectionate and you resented it?”

“Sometimes I hated him.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “He was just a good Solarian and we weren’t scheduled for ch–for ch–” She broke down.

Baley waited. His own stomach was cold and open air pressed down heavily upon him. When Gladia’s sobs grew quieter, he asked, as gently as he could, “Did you kill him, Gladia?”