"And she talked robotics too?"
"She knew nothing about robotics. Ignorant! But she listened. She has some sort of field-force rigmarole she plays with; field coloring, she calls it. I have no patience with that, but I listened."
"All this without personal presence?" Leebig looked revolted and did not answer. Baley tried again, 'Were you attracted to her?" "What?"
"Did you find her attractive? Physically?"
Even Leebig's bad eyelid lifted and his lips quivered. "Filthy animal," he muttered.
"Let me put it this way, then. When did you cease finding Gladia pleasant? You used that word yourself, if you remember."
"What do you mean?"
"You said you found her pleasant. Now you believe she murdered her husband. That isn't the mark of a pleasant person."
"I was mistaken about her."
"But you decided you were mistaken before she killed her husband, if she did so. You stopped walking with her some time before the murder. Why?"
Leebig said, "Is that important?"
"Everything is important till proven otherwise."
"Look, if you want information from me as a roboticist, ask it. I won't answer personal questions."
Baley said, "You were closely associated with both the murdered man and the chief suspect. Don't you see that personal questions are unavoidable? Why did you stop walking with Gladia?"
Leebig snapped, "There came a time when I ran out of things to say; when I was too busy; when I found no reason to continue the walks."
"When you no longer found her pleasant, in other words."
"All right. Put it so."
"Why was she no longer pleasant?"
Leebig shouted, "I have no reason."
Baley ignored the other's excitement. "You are still someone who has known Gladia well. What could her motive be?"
"Her motive?"
"No one has suggested any motive for the murder. Surely Gladia wouldn't commit murder without a motive."
"Great Galaxy!" Leebig leaned his head back as though to laugh, but didn't. "No one told you? Well, perhaps no one knew. I knew, though. She told me. She told me frequently."
"Told you what, Dr. Leebig?"
'Why, that she quarreled with her husband. Quarreled bitterly and frequently. She hated him, Earthman. Didn't anyone tell you that? Didn't she tell you?"
15
A Portrait Is Colored
BALEY TOOK it between the eyes and tried not to show it.
Presumably, living as they did, Solarians considered one another's private lives to be sacrosanct. Questions concerning marriage and children were in bad taste. He supposed then that chronic quarreling could exist between husband and wife and be a matter into which curiosity was equally forbidden.
But even when murder had been committed? Would no one commit the social crime of asking the suspect if she quarreled with her husband? Or of mentioning the matter if they happened to know of it?
Well, Leebig had.
Baley said, 'What did the quarrels concern?"
"You had better ask her, I think."
He better had, thought Baley. He rose stiffly, "Thank you, Dr. Leebig, for your co-operation. I may need your help again later. I hope you will keep yourself available."
'Done viewing," said Leebig, and he and the segment of his room vanished abruptly.
For the first time Baley found himself not minding a plane flight through open space. Not minding it at all. It was almost as though he were in his own element.
He wasn't even thinking of Earth or of Jessie. He had been away from Earth only a matter of weeks, yet it might as well have been years. He had been on Solaria only the better part of three days and yet it seemed forever.
How fast could a man adapt to nightmare?
Or was it Cladia? He would be seeing her soon, not viewing her. Was that what gave him confidence and this odd feeling of mixed apprehension and anticipation?
Would she endure it? he wondered. Or would she slip away after a few moments of seeing, begging off as Quemot had done?
She stood at the other end of a long room when he entered. She might almost have been an impressionistic representation of herself, she was reduced so to essentials.
Her lips were faintly red, her eyebrows lightly penciled, her earlobes faintly blue, and, except for that, her face was untouched. She looked pale, a little frightened, and very young.
Her brown-blond hair was drawn back, and her gray-blue eyes were somehow shy. Her dress was a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a thin white edging curling down each side. She wore long sleeves, white gloves, and flat-heeled shoes. Not an inch of skin showed anywhere but in her face. Even her neck was covered by a kind of unobtrusive ruching.
Baley stopped where he was. "Is this close enough, Gladia?"
She was breathing with shallow quickness. She said, "I had forgotten what to expect really. It's just like viewing, isn't it? I mean, if you don't think of it as seeing."
Baley said, "It's all quite normal to me."
"Yes, on Earth." She closed her eyes. "Sometimes I try to imagine it. Just crowds of people everywhere. You walk down a road and there are others walking with you and still others walking in the other direction. Dozens-"
"Hundreds," said Baley. "Did you ever view scenes on Earth in a book-film? Or view a novel with an Earth setting?"
"We don't have many of those, but I've viewed novels set on the other Outer Worlds where seeing goes on all the time. It's different in a novel. It just seems like a multiview."
"Do people ever kiss in novels?"
She flushed painfully. "I don't read that kind."
"Never?"
'Well-there are always a few dirty films around, you know, and sometimes, just out of curiosity-- It's sickening, really."
"Is it?"
She said with sudden animation, "But Earth is so different. So many people. When you walk, Elijah, I suppose you even t-touch people. I mean, by accident."
Baley half smiled. "You even knock them down by accident." He thought of the crowds on the Expressways, tugging and shoving, bounding up and down the strips, and for a moment, inevitably, he felt the pang of homesickness.
Gladia said, "You don't have to stay way out there."
"Would it be all right if I came closer?"
"I think so. I'll tell you when I'd rather you wouldn't any more." Stepwise Baley drew closer, while Gladia watched him, wideeyed.
She said suddenly, "Would you like to see some of my field colorings?"
Baley was six feet away. He stopped and looked at her. She seemed small and fragile. He tried to visualize her, something in her hand (what?), swinging furiously at the skull of her husband. He tried to picture her, mad with rage, homicidal with hate and anger.
He had to admit it could be done. Even a hundred and five pounds of woman could crush a skull if she had the proper weapon and were wild enough. And Baley had known murderesses (on Earth, of course) who, in repose, were bunny rabbits.
He said, 'What are field colorings, Gladia?"
"An art form," she said.
Baley remembered Leebig's reference to Gladia's art. He nodded. "I'd like to see some."
"Follow me, then."
Baley maintained a careful six-foot distance between them. At that, it was less than a third the distance Kiorissa had demanded.
They entered a room that burst with light. It glowed in every corner and every color.
Gladia looked pleased, proprietary. She looked up at Baley, eyes anticipating.
Baley's response must have been what she expected, though he said nothing. He turned slowly, trying to make out what he saw, for it was light only, no material object at all.
The gobbets of light sat on embracing pedestals. They were liv-
ing geometry, lines and curves of color, entwined into a coalescing whole yet maintaining distinct identities. No two. specimens were even remotely alike.
Baley groped for appropriate words and said, "Is it supp
osed to mean anything?"
Gladia laughed in her pleasant contralto. "It means whatever you like it to mean. They're just light-forms that might make you feel angry or happy or curious or whatever I felt when I constructed one. I could make one for you, a kind of portrait. It might not be very good, though, because I would just be improvising quickly."
'Would you? I would be very interested."
"All right," she said, and half-ran to a light-figure in one corner, passing within inches of him as she did so. She did not seem to notice.
She touched something on the pedestal of the light-figure and the glory above died without a flicker.
Baley gasped and said, "Don't do that."
"It's all right. I was tired of it, anyway. I'll just fade the others temporarily so they don't distract me." She opened a panel along one featureless wall and moved a rheostat. The colors faded to something scarcely visible.
Baley said, "Don't you have a robot to do this? Closing contacts?"
"Shush, now," she said impatiently. "I don't keep robots in here. This is -me." She looked at him, frowning. "I don't know you well enough. That's the trouble."
She wasn't looking at the pedestal, but her fingers rested lightly on its smooth upper surface. All ten fingers were curved, tense, waiting.
One finger moved, describing a half curve over smoothness. A bar of deep yellow light grew and slanted obliquely across the air above. The finger inched backward a fraction and the light grew slightly less deep in shade.
She looked at it momentarily. "I suppose that's it. A kind of strength without weight."
"Jehoshaphat," said Baley.
"Are you offended?" Her fingers lifted and the yellow slant of light remained solitary and stationary.
"No, not at all. But what is it? How do you do it?"
"That's hard to explain," said Glaclia, looking at the pedestal
thoughtfully, "considering I don't really understand it myself. It's a kind of optical illusion, I've been told. We set up force-fields at different energy levels. They're extrusions of hyperspace, really, and don't have the properties of ordinary space at all. Depending on the energy level, the human eye sees light of different shades. The shapes and colors are controlled by the warmth of my fingers against appropriate spots on the pedestal. There are all sorts of controls inside each pedestal."
"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, luster-
less 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 counterdig. "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."
Asimov, Isaac - Foundation 03 - Naked Sun Page 17