Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

“Nor could I experiment—successfully, at least—with autoeroticism. Masturbation is, I think, the common word. At least, I have heard, that word used on Aurora. On Solaria, of course, no aspect of sex is ever discussed, nor is any sex related word used in polite society.—Nor is there any other kind of society on Solaria.

“From something I occasionally read, I had an idea of how one might go about masturbating and, on a number of occasions, I made a halfhearted attempt to do what was described. I could not carry it through. The taboo against touching human flesh made even my own seem forbidden and unpleasant to me. I could brush my hand against my side, cross one leg over another, feel the pressure of thigh against thigh, but these were casual touches, unregarded. To make the process of touch an instrument of deliberate pleasure was different. Every fiber of me knew it shouldn’t be done arid, because I knew that, the pleasure wouldn’t come.

“And it never occurred to me, never once, that there might be pleasure in touching under other circumstances. Why should it occur to me? How could it occur to me?

“Until I touched you that time. Why I did, I don’t know. I felt a gush of affection for you, because you had saved me from being a murderess. And besides, you were not altogether forbidden. You were not a Solarian. You were not — forgive me — altogether a man. You were a creature of Earth, You were human in appearance, but you were short-lived and infection prone, something to be dismissed as semihuman at best.

“So because you had saved me and were not really a man, I could touch you. And what’s more, you looked at me not with the hostility and repugnance of my husband but with the carefully schooled indifference of someone viewing me on trimensic. You were right there, palpable, and your eyes were warm and concerned. You actually trembled when my hand approached your cheek. I saw that.

“Why it was, I don’t know. The touch was so fugitive and there was no way in which the physical sensation was different from what it would have been if I had touched my husband or any other man—or, perhaps—even any woman. But there was more to it than the physical sensation. You were there, you welcomed it, you showed me every sign of what I accepted as—affection. And when our skins—my hand, your cheek made contact, it was as though I had touched gentle fire that made its way up my hand and arm instantaneously and set me all in flame.

“I don’t know how long it lasted—it couldn’t be for more than a moment or two—but for me time stood still. Something happened to me that had never happened to me before and, looking back on it long afterward, when I had learned about it, I realized that I had very nearly experienced an orgasm.

“I tried not to show it—”

(Baley, not daring to look at her, shook his head.)

“Well, then, I didn’t show it. I said, ‘Thank you, Elijah.’ I said it for what you had done for me in connection with my husband’s death. But I said it much more for lighting my life and showing me, without even knowing it, what there was in life; for opening a door; for revealing a path; for pointing out a horizon. The physical act was nothing in itself. Just a touch. But it was the beginning of everything.”

Her voice had faded out and, for a moment, she said nothing, remembering.

Then one finger lifted. “No. Don’t say anything. I’m not done yet.

“I had had imaginings before, very vague uncertain things. A man and I, doing what my husband and I did, but somehow different—I didn’t even know different in what way—and feeling something different—something I could not even imagine when imagining with all my might. I might conceivably have gone through my whole life trying to imagine the unimaginable and I might have died as I suppose women on Solaria—and men, too—often do, never knowing, even after three or four centuries. Never knowing. Having children, but never knowing.

“But one touch of your cheek, Elijah, and I knew. Isn’t that amazing? You taught me what I might imagine. Not the mechanics of it, not the dull, reluctant approach of bodies, but something that I could never have conceived as having anything to do with it. The took on a face, the sparkle in an eye, the feeling of—gentleness—kindness—something I can’t even describe—acceptance—a lowering of the terrible barrier between individuals. Love, I suppose—a convenient word to encompass all of that and more.

“I felt love for you, Elijah, because I thought you could feel love for me. I don’t say you loved me, but it seemed to me you could. I never had that and, although in ancient literature they talked of it, I didn’t know what they meant any more than when men in those same books talked about ‘honor’ and killed each other for its sake. I accepted the word, but never made out its meaning. I still haven’t. And so it was with ‘love’ until I touched you.

“After that I could imagine—and I came to Aurora remembering you, and thinking of you, and talking to you endlessly in my mind and thinking that in Aurora I would meet a million Elijahs.”

She stopped, lost in her own thoughts for a moment, then suddenly went on:

“I didn’t. Aurora, it turned out, was, in its way, as bad as Solaria. In Solaria, sex was wrong. It was hated and we all, turned away from it. We could not love for the hatred that sex aroused.

“In Aurora, sex was boring. It was accepted calmly, easily—as easily as breathing. If one felt the impulse one reached out toward anyone who seemed suitable and, if that suitable person was not at the moment engaged in something that could not be put aside, sex followed in any fashion that was convenient. Like breathing.—But where is the ecstasy in breathing? If one were choking, then perhaps the first shuddering breath that followed upon deprivation might be an overwhelming delight and relief. But if one never choked?

“And if one never unwillingly went without sex? If it were taught to youngsters on an even basis with reading and programming? If children were expected to experiment as a matter of course, and if older children were expected to help out?

“Sex—permitted and free as water—has nothing to do with love on Aurora, just as sex—forbidden and a thing of shame—has nothing to do with love on Solaria. In either case, children are few and must come about only after formal application.—And then, if permission is granted, there must be an interlude of sex designed for childbearing only, dull and brackish. If, after a reasonable time, impregnation doesn’t follow, the spirit rebels and artificial insemination is resorted to.

“In time, as on Solaria, ectogenesis will be the thing, so that fertilization and fetal development will take place in genotaria and sex will be left to itself as a form of social interaction and play that has no more to do with love than space-polo does.

“I could not move into the Auroran attitude, Elijah. I had not been brought up to it. With terror, I had reached out for sex and no one refused—and no one mattered. Each man’s eyes were blank when I offered myself and remained blank as they accepted. Another one, they, said, what matter? They were willing, but no more than willing.

“And touching them meant nothing. I might have been touching my husband. I learned to go through with it, to follow their lead, to accept their guidance—and it all still meant nothing. I gained not even the urge to do it to myself and by myself. The feeling you had given me never returned and, in time, I gave up.

“In all this, Dr. Fastolfe was my friend. He alone, on all Aurora, knew everything that happened on Solaria. At least, so I think. You know that the full story was not made public and certainly did not appear in that dreadful hyperwave program that I’ve heard of—I refused to watch it.