She did not have to finish the thought. The nearest robot brought her what she wanted, correctly and with speed.
Gladia adjusted the nose filter and snuffled a bit to make sure it was properly seated (she was in no mood to risk infection with any foul disorder that had survived the pain staking treatment during quarantine). She said, “What does he look like, Daneel?”
Daneel said, “He is of ordinary stature and measurements, madam.”
“I mean his face.” (It was silly to ask. If he showed any family resemblance to Elijah Baley, Daneel would have noticed it as quickly as she herself would have and he would have remarked upon it.) “That is difficult to say, madam. It is not in plain view.”
“What does that mean? Surely he’s, not masked, Daneel—”
“In a way, he is, madam. His face is covered with hair.”
“Hair?” She found herself laughing. “You mean after the fashion of the hypervision historicals? Beards?” She made little gestures indicating a tuft of hair on the chin and another under the nose.
“Rather more than that, madam. Half his face is covered.”
Gladia’s eyes opened wide and for the first time she felt a surge of interest in seeing him. What would a face with hair all over it look like? Auroran males—and Spacer males, generally—had very little facial hair and what there was would be removed permanently by the late teens—during virtual infancy.
Sometimes the upper lip was left untouched. Gladia remembered that her husband, Santirix Gremionis, before their marriage, had had a thin line of hair under his nose. A mustache, he had called it. It had looked like a misplaced and peculiarly misshapen eyebrow and once she had resigned himself to accepting him as a husband, she had insisted he destroy the follicles.
He had done so with scarcely a murmur and it occurred to her now, for the first time, to wonder if he had missed the hair. It seemed to her that she had noticed him, on occasion, in those early years, lifting a finger to his upper lip. She had thought it a nervous poking at a vague itch and it was only now that it occurred to her that he had been searching for a mustache that was gone forever.
How would a man look with a mustache all over his face? Would he be bearlike?
How would it feel? What if women had such hair, too? She thought of a man and woman trying to kiss and having trouble finding each other’s mouths. She found the thought funny, in a harmlessly ribald way, and laughed out loud. She felt her petulance disappearing and actually looked forward to seeing the monster.
After all, there would be no need to fear him even if he were as animal in behavior as he was in appearance. He would have no robot of his own—Settlers were supposed to have a nonrobotic society—and she would be surrounded by a dozen. The monster would be immobilized in a split second if he made the slightest suspicious move—or if he as much as raised his voice in anger.
She said with perfect good humor, “Take me to him, Daneel.”
17
The monster rose. He said something that sounded like “Good afternoon, muhleddy.”
She at once caught the “good afternoon,” but it took her a moment to translate the last word into “my lady.”
Gladia absently said, “Good afternoon.” She remembered the difficulty she had had understanding Auroran pronunciation of Galactic Standard in those long-ago days when, a frightened young woman, she had come to the planet from Solaria.
The monster’s accent was uncouth—or did it just sound uncouth because her ear was unaccustomed to it? Elijah, she remembered, had seemed to voice his “Vs” and “Ps,” but spoke pretty well otherwise. Nineteen and a half decades had passed, however, and this Settler was not from Earth. Language, in isolation, underwent changes.
But only a small portion of Gladia’s mind was on the language problem. She was staring at his beard.
It was not in the least like the beards that actors wore in historical dramas. Those always seemed tufted—a bit here, a bit there—looking gluey and glossy.
The Settler’s beard was different. It covered his cheeks and chin evenly, thickly, and deeply. It was a dark brown, somewhat lighter and wavier than the hair on his head, and at least two inches long, she judged—evenly long.
It didn’t cover his whole face, which was rather disappointing. His forehead was totally bare (except for his eyebrows), as were his nose and his under-eye regions.
His upper lip was bare, too, but it was shadowed as though there was the beginning of new growth upon it. There was additional bareness just under the lower lip, but with new growth less marked and concentrated mostly under the middle portion.
Since both his lips were quite bare, it was clear to Gladia that there would be no difficulty in kissing him. She said, knowing that staring was impolite and staring even so, “It seems to me you remove the hair from about your lips.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Why, if I may ask?”
“You may ask. For hygienic reasons. I don’t want food catching in the hairs.”
“You scrape it off, don’t you? I see it is growing again.”
“I use a facial laser. It takes fifteen seconds after waking.”
“Why not depilate and be done with it?”
“I might want to grow it back.”
“Why?”
“Esthetic reasons, my lady.”
This time Gladia did not grasp the word. It sounded like “acidic” or possibly “acetic.”
She said, “Pardon me?”
The Settler said, “I might grow tired of the way I look now and want to grow the hair on the upper lip again. Some women like it, you know,” and the Settler tried to look modest and failed—“I have a fine mustache when I grow it.”
She said suddenly grasping the word, “You mean—”
The Settler laughed, showing fine white teeth, and said, “You talk funny, too, my lady.”
Gladia tried to look haughty, but melted into a smile. Proper pronunciation was a matter of local consensus. She said, “You ought to hear me with my Solarian accent—if it comes to that. Then it would be ‘estheetic rayzuns.’ The ‘r’ rolled interminably.”
“I’ve been places where they talk a little bit like that, it sounds barbarous.” He rolled both “r’s” phenomenally in the last word.
Gladia chuckled. “You do it with the tip of your tongue. It’s got to be with the sides of the tongue. No one, but a Solarian can do it correctly.”
“Perhaps you can teach me. A Trader like myself, who’s been everywhere, hears all kinds of linguistic perversions.” Again he tried to roll the “r’s” of the last word, choked slightly, and coughed.
“See. You’ll tangle your tonsils and you’ll never recover.” She was still staring at his beard and now she could curb her curiosity no longer. She reached toward it.
The Settler flinched and started back, then, realizing her intention, was still.
Gladia’s hand, all-but-invisibly gloved, rested lightly on the left side of his face. The thin plastic that covered her fingers did not interfere with the sense of touch and she found the hair to be soft and springy.
“It’s nice,” she said with evident surprise.
“Widely admired,” said the Settler, grinning.
She said, “But I can’t stand here and manhandle you all day.”
Ignoring his predictable “You can as far as I’m concerned,”—she went on. “Have you told my robots what you would like to eat?”