"I suppose it's amusing," said Zdorab, not amused.
"No, I was just..."
"Surprised to know that I was worth something besides baking breads and burying fecal matter."
He had struck so close to her previous attitude that it made her angry. "Surprised that you knew you were worth more than that."
"You have no idea what I know or think about myself or anything else. And you made no effort to find out, either," said Zdorab. "You came in here like the chief god of all pantheons and deigned to offer me marriage as long as I didn't actually touch you and expected me to accept gratefully. Well, I did. And you can go on treating me like I don't exist and it'll be fine with me."
She had never felt so ashamed of herself before in her life. Even as she had hated the way everybody else treated Zdorab as a nonentity, she had treated him that way herself, and in her own mind had given no thought for his feelings, as if they didn't matter. But now, having stabbed him with the contemptuousness of her proposal of marriage, she felt she had wronged him and had to make it right. "I'm sorry," she said.
"I'm not," said Zdorab. "Let's just forget everything about this conversation, get married tonight and then we don't have to talk again, agreed?"
"You really don't like me," said Shedemei.
"As if you have ever cared for one moment whether I or anyone else liked you, as long as we didn't interfere too much with your work."
Shedemei laughed. "You're right."
"It seems that we were both sizing each other up, but one of us did a better job of it than the other."
She nodded, accepting the chastening. "Of course we will have to talk again."
"Will we?"
"So you can show me how to get to that information from Earth."
"The genetic stuff?"
"And the continental drift. You forget that I'm carrying seeds to replenish lost species on Earth. I need to know the landforms. And a lot more."
He nodded. "I can show you that. As long as you realize that what I have are forty-million-year-old extrapolations of what might happen in another forty million years. It could be off by a lot - a little mistake early on would be hugely magnified by now."
"I am a scientist, you know," she said.
"And I'm a librarian," said Zdorab. "I'll be glad to show you how to get to the Earth information. It's sort of a back door - I found a path through the agricultural information, through pig breeding, if you can believe it. It helps to be interested in everything. Here, sit across from me and hold on to the Index. You are sensitive to it, I hope."
"Sensitive enough," said Shedemei. "Wetchik and Nafai both took me through sessions, and I've used it to look things up. Mostly I just use my own computer, though, because I thought I already knew everything that was on the Index in my field."
Now she was sitting across from him, and he set the Index between them and they both bowed forward to lean their elbows on their knees and rest their hands on the golden ball. Her hands touched his, but he did not move his hands out of the way, and there was no trembling; just cool, calm hands, as if he didn't even notice she was there.
She immediately caught the voice of the Index, answering Zdorab's inquiries, responding with names of paths and headings, subheads, and catalogs within the memory of the Oversoul. But as the names droned on she lost the thread of them, because of his fingers touching hers. Not that she felt anything for him herself; what bothered her was that he felt nothing at all for her. He had known for more than a month that she was going to be his wife, or at least that she was expected to; he had been watching her, certainly he had. And yet there was not even a glimmer of desire. He had accepted her proscription of sexual relations between them without a hint of regret. And he could endure her touch without showing the slightest sign of sexual tension.
Shedemei had never felt more ugly and undesirable than she did right now. It was absurd - until a few minutes ago she had had such contempt for this man that if he had expressed any sexual interest she would have been nauseated. But he was