“As it happens I did not, but that was my choice.”

“Others offered themselves?”

“Occasionally.”

“And you refused?”

“I can always refuse at will. That is part of the nonexclusivity.”

“But did you refuse?”

“I did.”

“And did those whom you refused know why you refused?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did they know that you had a robot husband?”

“I had a husband. Don’t call him a robot husband. There is no such expression.”

“Did they know?”

She paused. “I don’t know if they knew.”

“Did you tell them?”

“What reason was there to tell them?”

“Don’t answer my questions with questions. Did you tell them?”

“I did not.”

“How could you avoid that? Don’t you think an explanation for your refusal would have been natural?”

“No explanation is ever required. A refusal is simply a refusal and is always accepted. I don’t understand you.”

Baley stopped to gather his thoughts. Gladia and he were not at cross-purposes; they were running down parallel tracks.

He started again. “Would it have seemed natural on Solaria to have a robot for a husband?”

“On Solaria, it would have been unthinkable and I would never have thought of such a possibility. On Solaria, everything was unthinkable.—And on Earth, too, Elijah. Would your wife ever have taken a robot for a husband?”

“That’s irrelevant, Gladia.”

“Perhaps, but your expression was answer enough. We may not be Aurorans, you and I, but we are on Aurora. I have lived here for two years and accept its mores.”

“Do you mean that human-robot sexual connections are common here on Aurora?”

“I don’t know. I merely know that they are accepted because everything is accepted where sex is concerned—everything that is voluntary, that gives mutual satisfaction, and that does no physical harm to anyone. What conceivable difference would it make to anyone else how an individual or any combination of individuals found satisfaction? Would anyone worry about which books I viewed, what food I ate, what hour I went to sleep or awoke, whether I was fond of cats or disliked roses? Sex, too, is a matter of indifference—on Aurora.”

“On Aurora,” echoed Baley. “But you were not born on Aurora and were not brought up in its ways. You told me just a while ago that you couldn’t adjust to this very indifference to sex that you now praise. Earlier, you expressed your distaste for multiple marriages and for easy promiscuity. If you did not tell those whom you refused why you refused, it might have been because, in some hidden pocket of your being, you were ashamed of having Jander as a husband. You might have known—or suspected, or even merely supposed—that you were unusual in this—unusual even on Aurora—and you were ashamed.”

“No, Elijah, you won’t talk me into being ashamed. If having a robot as a husband is unusual even on Aurora, that would be because robots like Jander are unusual. The robots we have on Solaria, or on Earth—or on Aurora, except for Jander and Daneel—are not designed to give any but the most primitive sexual satisfaction. They might be used as masturbation devices, perhaps, as a mechanical vibrator might be, but nothing much more. When the new humaniform robot becomes widespread, so will human-robot sex become widespread.”

Baley said, “How did you come to possess Jander in the first place, Gladia? Only two existed—both in Dr. Fastolfe’s establishment. Did he simply give one of them—half of the total—to you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Out of kindness, I suppose. I was lonely, disillusioned, wretched, a stranger in a strange land. He gave me Jander for company and I will never be able to thank him enough for it. It only lasted for half a year, but that half-year may be worth all my life beside.”

“Did Dr. Fastolfe know that Jander was your husband?”

“He never referred to it, so I don’t know.”

“Did you refer to it?”

“No.

“Why not?”

“I saw no need.—And no, it was not because I felt shame.”

“How did it happen?”

“That I saw no need?”

“No. That Jander became your husband.”

Gladia stiffened. She said in a hostile voice, “Why do I have to explain that?”

Baley said, “Gladia, it’s getting late. Don’t fight me every step of the way. Are you distressed that Jander is—is gone?”

“Need you ask?”

“Do you want to find out what happened?”

“Again, need you ask?”

“Then help me. I need all the information I can get if I am to begin—even begin—to make progress in working out an apparently insoluble problem. How did Jander become your husband?”

Gladia sat back in her chair and her eyes were suddenly brimming with tears. She pushed at the plate of crumbs that had once been pastry and said in a choked voice:

“Ordinary robots do not wear clothes, but they are so designed as to give the effect of wearing clothes. I know robots well, having lived on Solaria, and I have a certain amount of artistic talent—”

“I remember your light-forms,” said Baley softly.

Gladia nodded in acknowledgment. “I constructed a few designs for new models that would possess, in my opinion, more style and more interest than some of those in use in Aurora. Some of my paintings, based on those designs, are on the walls here. Others I have in other places in this establishment.

Baley’s eyes moved to the paintings. He had seen them. They were of robots, unmistakably. They were not naturalistic, but seemed elongated and unnaturally curved. He noted now that the distortions were so designed as to stress, quite cleverly, those portions which, now that he looked at them from anew perspective, suggested clothing. Somehow there was an impression of servants’ costumes he had once viewed in a book devoted to Victorian England of medieval times. Did Gladia know of these things or was it a merely chance, if circumstantial, similarity? It was a question of no account, probably, but not something (perhaps) to be forgotten.

When he had first noticed them, he had thought it was Gladia’s way of surrounding herself with robots in imitation of life on Solaria. She hated that life, she said, but that was only a product of her thinking mind—Solaria had been the only home she had really known and that is not easily sloughed off—perhaps not at all. And perhaps that remained a factor in her painting, even if her new occupation gave her a more plausible motive.

She was speaking. “I was successful. Some of the robot manufacturing concerns paid well for my designs and there were numerous cases of existing robots being resurfaced according to my directions. There was a certain satisfaction in all this that, in a small measure, compensated for the emotional emptiness of my life.

“When Jander was given me by Dr. Fastolfe, I had a robot who, of course, wore ordinary clothing. The dear doctor was, indeed, kind enough to give me a number of changes of clothing for Jander.

“None of it was in the least imaginative and it amused me to buy what I considered more appropriate garb. That meant measuring him quite accurately, since I intended to have my designs made to order—and that meant having him remove his clothing in stages.

“He did so—and it was only when he was completely unclothed that I quite realized how close to human he was. Nothing was lacking and those portions which might be expected to be erectile were, indeed, erectile. Indeed, they were under what, in a human, would be called conscious control. Jander could tumesce and detumesce on order. He told me so when I asked him if his penis was functional in that respect. I was curious and he demonstrated.

“You must understand that, although he looked very much like a man, I knew he was a robot. I have a certain hesitation about touching men—you understand—and I have no doubt that played a part in my inability to have satisfactory sex with Aurorans. But this was not a man and I had been with robots all my life. I could touch Jander freely.