Isaac Asimov - Prelude to Foundation

He said, troubled, “Keeping my hair under the skincap has probably made my scalp sweat. If so, my hair will be rather damp.”

He raised his hand, as though to check the matter, but she caught it and held it back. “I want to do that,” she said. “It’s part of the condition.”

Her fingers, slowly and hesitantly, touched his hair and then withdrew. She touched it again and, very gently, stroked it.

“It’s dry,” she said. “It feels . . . good.”

“Have you ever felt cephalic hair before?”

“Only on children sometimes. This . . . is different.” She was stroking again.

“In what way?” Seldon, even amid his embarrassment, found it possible to be curious.

“I can’t say. It’s just . . . different.”

After a while he said, “Have you had enough?”

“No. Don’t rush me. Can you make it lie any way you want it to?”

“Not really. It has a natural way of falling, but I need a comb for that and I don’t have one with me.”

“A comb?”

“An object with prongs . . . uh, like a fork . . . but the prongs are more numerous and somewhat softer.”

“Can you use your fingers?” She was running hers through his hair.

He said, “After a fashion. It doesn’t work very well.”

“It’s bristly behind.”

“The hair is shorter there.”

Raindrop Forty-Three seemed to recall something. “The eyebrows,” she said. “Isn’t that what they’re called?” She stripped off the shields, then ran her fingers through the gentle arc of hair, against the grain.

“That’s nice,” she said, then laughed in a high-pitched way that was almost like her younger sister’s giggle. “They’re cute.”

Seldon said a little impatiently, “Is there anything else that’s part of the condition?”

In the rather dim light, Raindrop Forty-Three looked as though she might be considering an affirmative, but said nothing. Instead, she suddenly withdrew her hands and lifted them to her nose. Seldon wondered what she might be smelling.

“How odd,” she said. “May I . . . may I do it again another time?”

Seldon said uneasily, “If you will let me have the Book long enough to study it, then perhaps.”

Raindrop Forty-Three reached into her kirtle through a slit that Seldon had not noticed before and, from some hidden inner pocket, removed a book bound in some tough, flexible material. He took it, trying to control his excitement.

While Seldon readjusted his skincap to cover his hair, Raindrop Forty-Three raised her hands to her nose again and then, gently and quickly, licked one finger.

“Felt your hair?” said Dors Venabili. She looked at Seldon’s hair as though she was of a mind to feel it herself.

Seldon moved away slightly. “Please don’t. The woman made it seem like a perversion.”

“I suppose it was—from her standpoint. Did you derive no pleasure from it yourself?”

“Pleasure? It gave me gooseflesh. When she finally stopped, I was able to breathe again. I kept thinking: What other conditions will she make?”

Dors laughed. “Were you afraid that she would force sex upon you? Or hopeful?”

“I assure you I didn’t dare think. I just wanted the Book.”

They were in their room now and Dors turned on her field distorter to make sure they would not be overheard.

The Mycogenian night was about to begin. Seldon had removed his skincap and kirtle and had bathed, paying particular attention to his hair, which he had foamed and rinsed twice. He was now sitting on his cot, wearing a light nightgown that had been hanging in the closet.

Dors said, eyes dancing, “Did she know you have hair on your chest?”

“I was hoping earnestly she wouldn’t think of that.”

“Poor Hari. It was all perfectly natural, you know. I would probably have had similar trouble if I was alone with a Brother. Worse, I’m sure, since he would believe—Mycogenian society being what it is—that as a woman I would be bound to obey his orders without delay or demur.”

“No, Dors. You may think it was perfectly natural, but you didn’t experience it. The poor woman was in a high state of sexual excitement. She engaged all her senses . . . smelled her fingers, licked them. If she could have heard hair grow, she would have listened avidly.”

“But that’s what I mean by ‘natural.’ Anything you make forbidden gains sexual attractiveness. Would you be particularly interested in women’s breasts if you lived in a society in which they were displayed at all times?”

“I think I might.”

“Wouldn’t you be more interested if they were always hidden, as in most societies they are? —Listen, let me tell you something that happened to me. I was at a lake resort back home on Cinna . . . I presume you have resorts on Helicon, beaches, that sort of thing?”

“Of course,” said Seldon, slightly annoyed. “What do you think Helicon is, a world of rocks and mountains, with only well water to drink?”

“No offense, Hari. I just want to make sure you’ll get the point of the story. On our beaches at Cinna, we’re pretty lighthearted about what we wear . . . or don’t wear.”

“Nude beaches?”

“Not actually, though I suppose if someone removed all of his or her clothing it wouldn’t be much remarked on. The custom is to wear a decent minimum, but I must admit that what we consider decent leaves very little to the imagination.”

Seldon said, “We have somewhat higher standards of decency on Helicon.”

“Yes, I could tell that by your careful treatment of me, but to each its own. In any case, I was sitting at the small beach by the lake and a young man approached to whom I had spoken earlier in the day. He was a decent fellow I found nothing particularly wrong with. He sat on the arm of my chair and placed his right hand on my left thigh, which was bare, of course, in order to steady himself.

“After we had spoken for a minute and a half or so, he said, impishly, ‘Here I am. You know me hardly at all and yet it seems perfectly natural to me that I place my hand on your thigh. What’s more, it seems perfectly natural to you, since you don’t seem to mind that it remains there.’

“It was only then that I actually noticed that his hand was on my thigh. Bare skin in public somehow loses some of its sexual quality. As I said, it’s the hiding from view that is crucial.

“And the young man felt this too, for he went on to say, ‘Yet if I were to meet you under more formal conditions and you were wearing a gown, you wouldn’t dream of letting me lift your gown and place my hand on your thigh on the precise spot it now occupies.’

“I laughed and we continued to talk of this and that. Of course, the young man, now that my attention had been called to the position of his hand, felt it no longer appropriate to keep it there and removed it.

“That night I dressed for dinner with more than usual care and appeared in clothing that was considerably more formal than was required or than other women in the dining room were wearing. I found the young man in question. He was sitting at one of the tables. I approached, greeted him, and said, ‘Here I am in a gown, but under it my left thigh is bare. I give you permission. Just lift the gown and place your hand on my left thigh where you had it earlier.’

“He tried. I’ll give him credit for that, but everyone was staring. I wouldn’t have stopped him and I’m sure no one else would have stopped him either, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was no more public then than it had been earlier and the same people were present in both cases. It was clear that I had taken the initiative and that I had no objections, but he could not bring himself to violate the proprieties. The conditions, which had been hand-on-thigh in the afternoon, were not hand-on-thigh in the evening and that meant more than anything logic could say.”