Free The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov Page B

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 I 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?”
    “Yes.”
    “Does that mean you wouldn’t mind if I took off my wrapper?” She was smiling.
    He thought: She’s teasing and I ought to take her up on it.
    But aloud he said, “No, it would take my mind off my job. We’ll discuss it another time.”
    “Do you mind my being in the wrapper, rather than something more formal? Seriously.”
    “I don’t mind.”
    “May I call you by your first name?”
    “If you have the occasion.”
    “What is your first name?”
    “Elijah.”
    “All right.” She snuggled into a chair that looked hard and almost ceramic in texture, but it slowly gave as she sat until it embraced her gently.
    Baley said, “To business, now.”
    She said, “To business.”
    Baley found it all extraordinarily difficult. There was no way even to make a beginning. On Earth he would ask name, rating, City and Sector of dwelling, a million different routine questions. He might even know the answers to begin with, yet it would be a device to ease into the serious phase. It would serve to introduce him to the person, make his judgment of the tactics to pursue something other than a mere guess.
    But here? How could he be certain of anything? The very verb “to see” meant different things to himself and to the woman. How many other words would be different? How often would they be at cross-purposes without his being aware of it?
    He said, “How long were you married, Gladia?”
    “Ten years, Elijah.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Thirty-three.”
    Baley felt obscurely pleased. She might easily have been a hundred thirty-three.
    He