Chapter 4 Part 3

Nathan sipped his drink as the dancers upon the stage performed. After leaving the MIRA office, he had decided to look Harriet up again. It would be good to talk to her. She was fairly intelligent and would make good company and a pleasant distraction.

Harriet was singing a song as part of her act. Nathan only half listened. There was something uncomfortably tugging at his mind. It had started when they had gotten word of the meteor impact on the southern tracking station. Something was out of place or simply did not add up.

The song finished and Nathan was jarred from his thoughts by the applause. He keyed in another tip for Harriet and returned to his drink. He had hoped that she would help him relax. After a few hours of diversion, he might be better able to concentrate.

"Well Nathan it is good to see you again. Have you come to seduce me?" Harriet sat across from Nathan.

"That is not my plan, though it is a nice thought," Nathan answered. He really did not have sex on his mind, but he did not want to be rude. "I just need someone to talk to."

Harriet laughed. "That's what they all say."

"Do they?" Nathan asked.

"Yes, they do. They never want to come right out and admit that they are here for sexual stimulation, but eventually that is what it leads to."

Nathan frowned. "You must get tired of that," he said.

"Not really," Harriet admitted. "There are two sexes for a reason. The ultimate goal of any relationship between two people of opposite sexes that is not strictly intellectual is sex." She took Nathan's glass from the table and sipped his drink. "Do you mind?" she asked afterward.

"No," he answered. "Would you like one of your own?"

"No I only wanted to wet my throat. Singing makes it dry."

"By all means," Nathan urged her, "go ahead. You were saying?" He wanted to hear what she had to say.

"About sex?" Harriet swallowed. "Well, a lot of women don't really like to admit it, but the old line of 'lets be friends,' is just so much gunk. If I wanted a friend, I would be better off getting another woman to hang out with. We would understand each other much better than a man and I would. It is the same way with men. With the exception of intellectual stimulation, men and women only get together for one reason: sex. Of course, the relationship may sour before it reaches its goal, but that is the ultimate goal, make no mistake."

Nathan leaned forward, intrigued. "What of siblings?"

"Oh that is entirely a separate issue," Harriet amended. "I was speaking of persons not related by blood."

Nathan chuckled silently. "Harriet you have a unique view of society."

"In my business, you can't afford some of the illusions that most people like to believe in." She smiled knowingly.

Nathan smiled back. "Would you accompany me to a play?"

"What did you have in mind?"

Nathan removed a flyer from his vest pocket. "Tonight is the opening night of King of Blood. It is the new play by Arthur Bass about the assassination of Matt Ronalds, the first Oriental American President."

"Isn't he the one who came to office because a militant group assassinated the white president while Ronalds was the vice president?" Harriet asked. It was a well known era in history.

"That's the one," Nathan agreed. "It happened way back in 2023. Ronalds was cleared of any connection with the crime, but it was too late. That instance was the beginning of the end of all racial tolerance in that country. It was their ultimate downfall. They had perverted their own governmental core with ultra liberalism so much that it was on the verge of collapse. If the Free Market hadn't been formed, the American nation would have regressed into a bloody civil war. And that country had a massive number of nuclear weaponry. It could have gotten ugly."

"I guess it was a good idea that the Market came about," Harriet commented.

"Things could have been much worse," Nathan agreed.

"They could also have been much better," she countered.

"That is also true," Nathan admitted.

"What do you say we skip the play and study a little more history, say of the late nineteen sixties," Harriet suggested slyly.

"Nineteen sixties?"

"You know, 'make love not war'?"