Isaac Asimov - The Naked Sun

“Ready,” growled Baley, and as though the word were a signal, the far half of the room was alive with light.

Daneel said at once, “I neglected to have the robot specify that all visible openings to the outside be draped. I regret that and we must arrange—”

“Never mind,” said Baley, wincing. “I’ll manage. Don’t interfere.” It was a bathroom he was staring at, or he judged it to be so from its fixtures. One end of it was, he guessed, a kind of beautician’s establishment and his imagination pictured a robot (or robots?) working with unerring swiftness on the details of a woman’s coiffure and on the externals that made up the picture she presented to the world.

Some gadgets and fittings he simply gave up on. There was no way of judging their purpose in the absence of experience. The walls were inlaid with an intricate pattern that all but fooled the eye into believing some natural object was being represented before fading away into an abstraction. The result was soothing and almost hypnotic in the way it monopolized attention.

What might have been the shower stall, a large one, was shielded off by nothing that seemed material, but rather by a trick of lighting that set up a wall of flickering opacity. No human was in sight.

Baley’s glance fell to the floor. Where did his room end and the other begin? It was easy to tell. There was a line where the quality of the light changed and that must be it.

He stepped toward the line and after a moment’s hesitation pushed his hand beyond it.

He felt nothing, any more than he would have had he shoved the hand into one of Earth’s crude trimensionals. There, at least, he would have seen his own hand still; faintly, perhaps, and overlaid by the image, but he would have seen it. Here it was lost completely. To his vision, his arm ended sharply at the wrist.

What if he stepped across the line altogether? Probably his own vision would become inoperative. He would be in a world of complete blackness. The thought of such efficient enclosure was almost pleasant.

A voice interrupted him. He looked up and stepped backward with an almost clumsy haste.

Gladia Delmarre was speaking. At least Baley assumed it was she. The upper portion of the flickering light across the shower stall had faded and a head was clearly visible.

It smiled at Baley. “I said hello, and I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I’ll be dry soon.”

Hers was a triangular face, rather broad at the cheekbones (which grew prominent when she smiled) and narrowing with a gentle curve past full lips to a small chin. Her head was not high above the ground. Baley judged her to be about five feet two in height. (This was not typical. At least not to Baley’s way of thinking. Spacer women were supposed to lean toward the tall and stately.) Nor was her hair the Spacer bronze. It was light brown, tinging toward yellow, and worn moderately long. At the moment it was fluffed out in what Baley imagined must be a stream of warm air. The whole picture was quite pleasing.

Baley said in confusion, “If you want us to break contact and wait till you’re through—”

“Oh no. I’m almost done, and we can talk meanwhile. Hannis Gruer told me you would be viewing. You’re from Earth, I understand.” Her eyes rested full on him, seemed to drink him in.

Baley nodded and sat down. “My companion is from Aurora.”

She smiled and kept her glance fixed on Baley as though he remained the curiosity nevertheless, and of course, Baley thought, so he was.

She lifted her arms above her head, running her fingers through the hair and spreading it out as though to hasten drying. Her arms were slim and graceful. Very attractive, Baley thought.

Then he thought uneasily: Jessie wouldn’t like this.

Daneel’s voice broke in. “Would it be possible, Mrs. Delmarre, to have the window we see polarized or draped. My partner is disturbed by the sight of daylight. On Earth, as you may have heard—”

The young woman (Baley judged her to be twenty-five but had the doleful thought that the apparent ages of Spacers could be most deceptive) put her hands to her cheeks and said, “Oh my, yes. I know all about that. How ridiculously silly of me. Forgive me, please, but it won’t take a moment. I’ll have a robot in here—”

She stepped out of the drying cabinet, her hand extended toward the contact-patch, still talking. “I’m always thinking I ought to have more than one contact-patch in this room. A house is just no good if it doesn’t have a patch within reach no matter where you stand—say not more than five feet away. It just—Why, what’s the matter?”

She stared in shock at Baley, who, having jumped out of his chair and upset it behind him, had reddened to his hairline and hastily turned away.

Daneel said calmly, “It would be better, Mrs. Delmarre, if, after you have made contact with the robot, you would return to the stall or, failing that, proceed to put on some articles of clothing.”

Gladia looked down at her nudity in surprise and said, “Well, of course.”

“It was only viewing, you see,” said Gladia contritely. She was wrapped in something that left her arms and shoulders free. One leg showed to mid-thigh, but Baley, entirely recovered and feeling an utter fool, ignored it stoically.

He said, “It was the surprise, Mrs. Delmarre—”

“Oh, please. You can call me Gladia, unless—unless that’s against your customs.”

“Gladia, then. It’s all right. I just want to assure you there was nothing repulsive about it, you understand. Just the surprise.” Bad enough for him to have acted the fool, he thought, without having the poor girl think he found her unpleasant. As a matter of fact, it had been rather—rather.

Well, he didn’t have the phrase, but he knew quite certainly that there was no way he would ever be able to talk of this to Jessie.

“I know I offended you,” Gladia said, “but I didn’t mean to. I just wasn’t thinking. Of course I realize one must be careful about the customs of other planets, but the customs are so queer sometimes; at least, not queer,” she hastened to add, “I don’t mean queer. I mean strange, you know, and it’s so easy to forget. As 1 forgot about keeping the windows darkened.”

“Quite all right,” muttered Baley. She was in another room now with all the windows draped and the light had the subtly different and more comfortable texture of artificiality.

“But about the other thing,” she went on earnestly, “it’s just viewing, you see. After all, you didn’t mind talking to me when I was in the drier and I wasn’t wearing anything then, either.”

“Well,” said Baley, wishing she would run down as far as that subject was concerned, “hearing you is one thing, and seeing you is another.”

“But that’s exactly it. Seeing isn’t involved.” She reddened a trifle and looked down. “I hope you don’t think I’d ever do anything like that, I mean, just step out of the drier, if anyone were seeing me. It was just viewing.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?” said Baley.

“Not at all the same thing. You’re viewing me right now. You can’t touch me, can you, or smell me, or anything like that. You could if you were seeing me. Right now, I’m two hundred miles away from you at least. So how can it be the same thing?”

Baley grew interested. “But I see you with my eyes.”

“No, you don’t see me. You see my image. You’re viewing me.”

“And that makes a difference?”

“All the difference there is.”

“I see.” In a way he did. The distinction was not one he could make easily, but it had a kind of logic to it.

She said, bending her head a little to one side, “Do you really see?”