Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov [30]
"Midmorning?" he said.
"Of course."
"There are no windows in this room," he said defensively.
Dors walked to his bed, reached out, and touched a small dark spot on the wall. Red numbers appeared on the ceiling just over his pillow. They read: 0903.
She smiled without superiority. "I'm sorry," she said. "But I rather assumed Chetter Hummin would have told you I'd be coming for you at nine. The trouble with him is he's so used to knowing, he sometimes forgets that others occasionally don't know. -And I shouldn't have used radio-holographic identification. I imagine you don't have it on Helicon and I'm afraid I must have alarmed you."
Seldon felt himself relax. She seemed natural and friendly and the casual reference to Hummin reassured him. He said, "You're quite wrong about Helicon, Miss-"
"Please call me Dors."
"You're still wrong about Helicon, Dors. We du have radioholography, but I've never been able to afford the equipment. Nor could anyone in my circle, so I haven't actually had the experience. But I understood what had happened soon enough."
He studied her. She was not very tall, average height for a woman, he judged. Her hair was a reddish-gold, though not very bright, and was arranged in shore curls about her head. ( He had seen a number of women in Trantor with their hair so arranged. It was apparently a local fashion that would have been laughed at in Helicon.) She was not amazingly beautiful, but was quire pleasant to look at, this being helped by full lips that seemed to have a slight humorous curl to them. She was slim, well-built, and looked quite young. (Too young, he thought uneasily, to be of use perhaps.)
"Do I pass inspection?" she asked. (She seemed to have Hummin's trick of guessing his thoughts, Seldon thought, or perhaps he himself lacked the trick of hiding them.)
He said, "I'm sorry. I seem to have been staring, but I've only been trying to evaluate you. I'm in a strange place. I know no one and have no friends."
"Please, Dr. Seldon, count me as a friend. Mr. Hummin has asked me to take care of you."
Seldon smiled ruefully. "You may be a little young for the job."
"You'll find I am not."
"Well, I'll try to be as little trouble as possible. Could you please repeat your name?"
"Dors Venabili." She spelled the last name and emphasized the stress on the second syllable. "As I said, please call me Dors and if you don't object too strenuously I will call you Hari. We're quite informal here ac the University and there is an almost self-conscious effort to show no signs of status, either inherited or professional."
"Please, by all means, call me Hari."
"Good. I shall remain informal then. For instance, the instinct for formality, if there is such a thing, would cause me to ask permission to sit down. Informally, however, I shall just sit." She then sat down on the one chair in the room.
Seldon cleared his throat. "Clearly, I'm not at all in possession of my ordinary faculties. I should have asked you to sit." He sat down on the aide of his crumpled bed and wished he had thought to straighten it out somewhat-but he had been caught by surprise.
She said pleasantly, "This is how it's going to work, Hari. First, we'll go to breakfast at one of the University cafes. Then I'll get you a room in one of the domiciles-,a better room than this. You'll have a window. Hummin has instructed me to get you a credit tile in his name, but it will take me a day or two to extort one out of the University bureaucracy. Until that's done, I'll be responsible for your expenses and you can pay me back later. -And we can use you. Chetter Hummin told me you're a mathematician and for some reason there's a serious lack of good ones at the University."
"Did Hummin tell you that I was a good mathematician?"
"As a matter of face, he did. He said you were a remarkable man-,,
"Well." Seldon looked down at his fingernails. "I would